Quite Bizarre, Quite Bizarre--A Spy Workout

Yesterday's signing assignment at Curves is worthy of at least one Seinfeld episode. At least one.

If you have never been inside of Curves, it's an workout place (it's not really a gym in the truest sense) for women. There different hydraulic exercise equipment to work out various muscle groups arranged loosely in a circle, with a cool down/warm up stepping board in between each for slow or fast aerobics-like exercises. While this is going on, music is piped in at a one-two fast disco tempo and every 30 seconds a pleasant voice chips in, "Next station, please." At that instruction, you move to the next board or the next machine, round and round you go, as many times as you want, as fast or as slow.

For example, you can step on the first board and do some shadow boxing, then at "Next station, please," you hop off and go on the machine to do some benchpressing (one-two, one-two, Proud Mary keeps on turning...), then thirty secs go by and at "Next station, please," you jump off and go on a step-board and this time twist and turn (one-two, one-two, rolling...rolling...rolling on the river). There were arrows for the newbies to follow. There were hula hoops in the middle for the brave.

So Elaine, I mean, Gennita Low, sat a little bit behind a machine that has the ladies doing bench-squats. Every time a woman squats, I, being seated, have an excellent view of Proud Mary. There were women of all ages, even an eighty year old lady in tights, shadow boxing, albeit very, very slowly, to the Bee Gees. Everyone was talking to the woman behind them, gossiping, telling each other news about their lives, comparing fashion tips, and every thirty seconds, they change to the next station.

Then, after a certain number of minutes, the voice says, Stop! Everyone freezes and put two fingers to their neck, a concentrated gaze in their eyes. "Take a deep breath." Everyone does exactly that. "Count." And everyone counts their heart rate. Then they change their stations and continue their routine.

Meanwhile, my friend, the circuit trainer, walks around with her headset and mike, encouraging her girls to go faster, even old Miss Emily, an eighty-year old lady in leotards, who was shadowboxing very, very, very slowly to Abba's Dancing Queen. She said, in her cute little British accent, "Come on ladies, move those arms, shake those butts, and when you get a chance, go and buy Gennita's new book. After you're sweaty and she writes sweaty books."

Ah, I bet no author has had that introduction before! Not at Barnes and Noble, not at Books a Million. No, the latter never supplied me with a group of dancing queen in workout clothes. I even got a few shots of vitamin juices. And I even sold more books than at those places, LOL. There were romance readers among these ladies and they were kind enough to try my books.

"How was it?" my girlfriend asked, after two hours.

"After watching the ladies worked out, I'm ready for dinner," I quipped.

We were going to meet up with some friends at the Japanese steakhouse. When we arrived, the server couldn't understand why we couldn't stop laughing when she told us politely that our friends were waiting for us at Station #4.

The rest of the night included a cook who mis-juggled and nearly chopped my friend's head off with a flying spatula but that's ANOTHER spy story ;-). I'm sure it was some kind of divine punishment for sitting me behind a bench-squat machine for two hours. Nex time I get to sit behind something like that, I get to choose the age group and the sex of my butt-watching, okay?

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