Fitness is highly underated as an entertainment event.

So I go to try out the YWCA’s spin class.

I get there, and the instructor is late. Ok, whatever, it’s just a few minutes.

He rolls in and oh my god. He looks like a cross between this:

And this:

Seriously. An obese spandex bumblebee. About 55 years old, and doesn’t have enough balance to stay upright while putting his shoes on.

“Sorry I’m late, I waited 25 minutes for a parking spot,” he says.

(Isn’t he supposed to be a fitness instructor? What’s wrong with parking a few streets away and then WALKING? More on that later)

He puts in a cd, and the speakers BLAST music and scare the shit out of all the ladies. One screams. It was great. He then turns out the lights, so we’re in almost complete darkness.

We get started. Finally. At this point, we’re 15 minutes into a 55 minute class.

He offers no instruction other than to randomly (and I mean randomly) scream nonsensical things like “KICK IT” or “THIS IS WHERE WE ROCK THE THING” or “GIVEITHARDNOWYEAH”

He’s been on the bike for about 4 minutes, and then decides to get off the bike, wander over to the walk clock, take it off the wall, leave the room, and then comes back in a few minutes later, puts the clock back and then hops back on the bike with another scream of KICK IT.

When he is on the bike, he tells us strange fables of roosters and minor birds in China, random rambling stuff that I only catch every 4th word, because his microphone isn’t actually turned on. I do catch something about “Giving it our all—so we can go back to work PUMPED”...

We go through the motions of a spin class, but it’s clear our instructor is the least in-shape of all of us, and at one point actually has to get off the bike because he’s hyperventilating.

He then hops (climbs slowly) back on the bike, and tells us to spread our arms out like birds, to “indicate to him where our heart-rate is”. I’m still confused by that one. Interpretive dance body-reading.

Then, for the “Cool Down” portion of the class, he plays R&B Christmas carols, which digitally breakup in the CD player because he burned the disc wrong. It’s horrible. Like stretching to Bony M being put through a meat grinder.

We finish up and that, my friends, is the end of that chapter.

Sadly, he’s now on vacation for the next month, and won’t be back till 2011.

It was amazing.