Gotta Get Away by the Offspring

After swimming for the Pleasant Hill Dolphins when I was 6-7 years old, I never participated in team sports again.  It's not that it was a bad experience, it's just that it never happened from a logistical standpoint.  I struggled with my weight throughout high school (thanks, undiagnosed thyroid disorder!!), but I started working out.  I have been a pretty dedicated gym-goer since junior year when I joined a gym in Germany.  When I came home senior year, I found a very slimmed down Sammy T. who had also become a bit of a gym-goer.  He wasn't into bodybuilding or weights - he was a cardio machine.  He became my gym buddy.  Sammy T. is Dave T.'s brother and he loved to drive, too.  He almost always picked me up, whether I was at my mom's house or my dad's.  This meant driving all the way across town to get me, in order to drive all the way back to the gym, and then drive me all the way home again.  Sammy didn't mind and I liked hanging out with him.  I picked him up once in while, but more often than not, the Mustang wouldn't start and we'd be sitting in the driveway waiting for Dave to jumpstart it or help me figure out how to start it (sometimes that meant putting the car into park.  Oy.).

Sammy and I could most often be found on the Stairmaster.  We're talking the original, torturous Stairmaster.  Teeny, tiny steps to nowhere.  No elliptical machines.  No moving handlebars.  No built in fans or TVs.  No interesting graphics.  Just the boring Stairmaster.  We stepped and stepped and stepped.  We also listed to music.  My latest mix tape was all of the latest stuff that I was catching up on after being in Germany for a year.  One of the songs was Gotta Get Away.  There were a couple other Offspring songs, some Green Day, maybe some R.E.M.  I remember making a mix to send to my friend Manuela and she wrote back saying the music was "haerter" than she expected.  She meant that it was a little rougher, harder sounding music.  European music at the time tended more towards techno and bubbly Brit groups.  It was prime grunge/alternative/punk era back in the USA.  So yes, a bit "harder" is accurate. It was just hard enough to push me to climb those endless stairs.  I think I'm on a roll, but I've gotta get away from me (and those damn stairs!).