Tag planet fitness sucks

I forgot to mention this in this morning’s post.  I was at Planet Fitness yesterday doing my leg routine as usual.  Typically when I do leg extensions and curls I do them in the “30 Minute Workout” section of the gym, the equipment in there is better than what is on the main floor.  This section is supposedly designed so a person goes from one machine to another through the entire circuit to achieve a full body workout in 30 minutes.  This feature was added probably 5 years ago and pretty much no one ever uses it as intended, people hop in there, do a couple machines they want to do and hop out.  It’s just another example of one of the fail concepts that “no lunk” Planet Fitness leans heavily on.

Just like front desk staff, this Planet Fitness location rolls through trainers like toilet paper.  In the last year I bet there have been at least five of them that have come and gone.  However the last few make me lol as they were clear examples of individuals not buying what they are selling, they were/are terribly overweight, perhaps part of PF’s brilliant no intimidation policy. The only good thing is you pay for their help what they are worth, zero.

So the current young guy that is the “trainer”, who likely has a BMI approaching 40, spends almost every minute I see him at the gym circling the floor.  It seems like he is desperately looking for someone to interact with or wanting to ask for his assistance but those requests never seem to come so he continues to circle.  Well yesterday he actually had a woman that he was “training” back in the 30 minute workout area.  They were doing the circuit per his direction, probably because it was written on the wall on how to do it. I doubt the guy has many formalized training plans in his head otherwise.

I was over on the leg curl machine when I heard the guy address another older woman who was in the area.  Like me, she had come in to use one of the machines but not do the entire circuit.  The guy scolds this woman and tells her how this area is ONLY for people doing 30 minute workouts.  She told him she was just doing one set and leaving but he said that it wasn’t true as he had seen her doing sets on other machines in there too, GASP!!!  This poor woman actually followed the fake trainers directive and left the 30 minute workout area.  Keep in mind besides the woman that this genius was training, there were only two other people in there so a total of 3 people for roughly 15 different machines.

So when this went down I had only completed my first set.  I was amazed at the stupidity of this guy and I wondered if he had the balls to come over and accost me for blatantly ignoring the circuit only sign on the wall as well.  Perhaps he read my body language, perhaps he is only comfortable reprimanding older women, but for whatever reason he said nothing to me as I completed my two additional sets on the leg curl machine before leaving the area.

I had a full diatribe prepared in my head if he dared say a word to me.  I was going to ask him if Planet Fitness was now going to actively enforce ALL of the rules they post on the walls.  Was Mr Rule Police going to apprehend all of the patrons that ignore the “Limit Cell Phone Use to the Lobby” signs aka everybody?  How about the gaggle of old men that use the exercise machines as park benches where they talk about breaded haddock and bowel movements?  Were they planning on dropping the hammer on the guys that use the Smith machines for 60 minutes at a time, disregarding the 30 minute max rule? What about the people that leave equipment covered in bodily fluids, ignoring the wipe down signs?  How about disregarding customer safety by allowing machines with frayed belts, stripped screws, and loose parts to remain in service because they are too cheap or lazy to do anything about it?  I could go on and on.

After asking the guy what training certification he currently held, I was going to top it off by letting him know I would be happy to share my thoughts with the owner, Mark, who I have known for about 15 years.  Luckily, for the fake trainer, he kept his mouth shut but if he ever tries to reprimand me in that shit hole gym I promise, I will make a scene that he is unlikely to forget anytime soon.  The reality is in a few weeks he too likely will be gone just like the rest of them.  The shelf life on most PF staff is 3-4 months.

So yesterday as promised I filed a claim with American Express regarding the transaction with the Manhattan Club.  I was able to do the entire process online which is nice.  I was quite surprised when late morning the phone rang and it was Maritza from the Manhattan Club.

She called to tell me that they were crediting the full amount of the reservation.  I was very pleasantly surprised and told her I appreciated her efforts in getting the charges credited.

I then had to go remove my “manhattan club sucks” post tags from yesterdays entry to keep that phrase from skyrocketing up Google search results for the place.  I then contacted American Express to tell them that the hotel agreed to credit my card so I could drop the dispute.  They said the credit has not posted yet so the best thing to do was just leave the dispute open.  It will automatically close as soon as the credit is posted anyway. It felt nice getting a win where someone that was less motivated to fight would have been stuck with 4 bills out of their pocket for absolutely nothing.

Although I am generally happy with my gym, Retro Fitness, there are a few things that do bother me.

The place is not cleaned as regularly or as thoroughly as it should be.  Quite often there are dust bunnies roaming around under some machines.  Since I spend a lot of time there on my hands doing body weight exercises, I get a real sense of just how dirty the black floor is. It takes no extra money to have employees go around and clean areas of the gym throughout the day.

There are some simple repairs that need to be done that seem to linger on forever like reattaching cleaning solution holders to walls. Oh and bathrooms have no appreciable hot water to speak of.  When I took a shower there the other week it didn’t have one shred of warmth even with the handle turned to full hot.

I also think it is silly that Retro has a shake bar that sells high calorie shakes to “refuel” after a workout where you wind up consuming twice the amount of calories that you burned.  I never understand why people want to cancel out the benefits of exercise by over indulging afterwards. It’s sort of like the way we address the deficit, half way.  Anyway, I am sure the shake bar is just viewed as another profit center for the gym and has little to do with the overall health benefit of the customers.

Evidently some of the warts I saw were also seen by the corporate management at Retro.  The guy that was running the gym has been told to get out.  I have not seen him in a couple months at this point. Evidently besides my observations there have been issues with missing inventory and complaints of poor treatment of both staff and customers at the place.

I just hope they get the issues sorted out and that it isn’t a warning sign of failure of the gym.  Despite the warts it still is leaps and bounds in front of shitty Planet Fitness and that old dirt hole Powerhouse/Pure Fitness that I used to frequent.

So the 2012 Camaros are now in full production.  I am hoping once I get back from our trip Ali and I can look at possible road maps and time frames to when I can go and place my order.  It seems that we keep having these periodic big expenses (water equipment, tractor) that are making saving money at a good clip difficult. My goal is to have one in my garage or at least ordered before 2011 expires.

I plan to temporarily add an international data roaming plan to my phone for the Ireland trip.  I am going to buy 125 meg of data usage, thinking that should be enough to get us through the week.  My plan is to use this to make internet access available for anyone in my family by utilizing PDANet to create a on the fly wi-fi hotspot they can connect to.  I just need to make sure that people know that they need to abstain from watching YouTube videos or downloading MP3’s while we are overseas.  If I go over the 125 meg the charges ring up fast, $10 for every 10 mb over.

I had heard from a couple people about a new gym that recently opened up near work.  On Friday I cut my workout short so I could pop over there and check it out.  The gym is a chain called Retro Fitness.  They put it into a space that used to be occupied by a Walgreens.  I walked in and instantly knew my days of looking at a lunk alarm were soon to end.  The place is spacious and filled with brand new equipment.  All of the cardio equipment has it’s own dedicated lcd tv.  The free weight area is large and COMPLETE.  They have weights up to 120 pounds instead of the measly 60 pound cut off at Planet Fitness.  They even have a squat rack, something that PF bans because it attracts too many lunks.  Retro Fitness also has a theater cardio room which is what it sounds like, cardio machines in a movie theater.  If you prefer you can do your cardio while watching a movie on a 22 foot screen. Oh and the place doesn’t smell like sewage either.

There are only two negatives which are insignificant.  It costs $20 a month instead of $10 at PF, still very cheap, and it is a little farther away than PF, again no biggie.  So now my plan is to spread the word to my inner circle at Planet Fitness in the hopes that I can get them to jump with me.  I’ll cancel my membership at PF and hopefully be working out at Retro Fitness sometime this week.  I am hoping PF doesn’t give me any bullshit when I go to cancel. I’m excited about the prospect of getting away from Planet Fitness with their laundry list of bullshit rules and most importantly the f’ing lunk alarm.  I’ve always felt like I was sacrificing part of my soul by working out in that place.

We had another nice weekend weather-wise although it was ultra windy on Saturday.  The new front screen door was utilized heavily over the weekend.

On Saturday we weeded which included the garden.  Despite the cold temps that killed a bunch of our garden we still are getting some nice production as you can see.  Ali pulled a PERFECT carrot out on Sunday.  Many of you may remember the mutant carrots we produced last year.  This year we raised the area that we planted carrots in so the soil would not be compacted.  It looks like the effort was worth it. In addition to the carrots we have been harvesting great quality beets, peas, broccoli, romaine lettuce  and spinach. 

Ali was gone a good portion of Saturday, first at a Phi Mu luncheon and then she went to a concert with a girlfriend of hers.   I spent a couple hours doing data entry for work.  It was extremely tedious, by the end of it I was starting to lose my mind. 

I also sat down and watched Dark Knight again.  I enjoyed it but not as much as seeing it the first time.  I also played WoW until after 11.

On Sunday, despite the time shifting one hour forward I wanted to be productive out of the box.  I worked on getting my various Sunday house chores knocked out early.  Ali and I talked about running during the day so I didn’t want to have to do a shitload of work after running.

We decided to go back to the North Collier Regional Park to run, the place that also houses the water park.  The temps were nice, but not swimming nice for me.  The park was open and I saw people in the water!  Well, I saw kids in the water, I didn’t see any adults getting wet.  They HAVE to heat that water, our pool is at 66-67 degrees right now.

We had a great three mile jaunt around the park.  I love running there, it’s so scenic and diverse visually.  The park is a bee hive of activity.  Everywhere you look there are people being active which is great to see.  I get so used to seeing so many human sloths day to day, I sometimes forget that there are some people that actually “get it”.

After our run we had a couple errands to run.  First we stopped at Best Buy.  I was pricing a flat screen tv’s in the 32 inch range.  On Friday at Sam’s Club I saw a 32 inch LG 720P set for $360 and change.  I was curious what Best Buy would come in at. Surprisingly they had nothing that was a similar deal on display.  My thoughts are to replace the monstrous conventional tube 32 inch set in our bedroom.  The thing weighs a TON.  In conjunction I would like to update the Tivo in there since an upcoming Comcast change is going to limit the existing non-hd device to only getting the major networks.

While we were at Best Buy we also looked at washer/dryer sets.  We got sucked into a 5 minute sales pitch from some guy despite us telling him we weren’t looking to buy right now.  Both Ali and I would definitely like to update our set sometime soon.  The new models save a lot of water/electricity in comparison to the older conventional models.

While I was there I was taken in by some baseball game that was running on a PS3.  I took a couple of at bats and failed miserably, the highlight was fouling off a couple pitches before striking out.  The graphics in the game were simply amazing.  The detail and realism that is possible on the new consoles just blows me away.

After a quick lunch at Panera we headed to Sports Authority.  Ali needed to get a new pair of swimming goggles for her new endeavor, swimming.  She started swimming lessons last week.  It was her New Years resolution, to learn to swim. 

Once we got back I decided to finally work on the Moto Guzzi.  The last time I took the bowl off the one carb I noticed the float assembly was sticking which was surely causing the fuel leakage issue I was seeing.  When I took the bowl off this time the assembly felt just fine, no binding.  I still removed the float as well as the needle and seat that I replaced previously to verify all looked well, it did.  The only difference between now and when I checked it last was the carb was dry yesterday and wet with gas originally.  Perhaps something in the gas is gumming up the works.

Well I wanted to give starting the bike another try so I hooked up the battery charger.  Instantly I knew I had a problem when I saw the voltage on the battery didn’t cross 4 volts.  Dad had mentioned the bike has some “electrical problems”.  The battery is almost new, it shouldn’t have failed already.  Well 5 hours of charging failed to raise the voltage level, the battery is f’d.

 I suppose I will snag a battery for it but I am just about at the limit of the time/money I will put into the bike.  To be honest my desire to ride a motorcycle  has waned significantly.  It seems like since my dad brought it down I just happen to catch the “Motorcyclist dies in accident” headline more and more.  A Camaro will deliver more thrills without the risk of getting taken out by some blind q-tip.

Back to the grind.