The Odyssey

Prologue:

After a period of hibernation, I burst into the world yesterday with nuclear forcefulness, sending me on a trail of adventures not seen since the time of Homer.

As you know, I like to go to the gym (it's how I maintain my Adonis-like physique) but my regular membership ended while I was in the UK during and post-Edinburgh. Turns out I could have "frozen" my membership while I was away, so that missed months weren't missed, but it's probably better that I didn't. In fact, for more than a year and a half, I carefully avoided contact with the gym's membership office and my home branch because of a situation that arose early in my membership.

I had arranged automatic payments using my PayPal debit card but by the third or fourth month, I didn't have any money in my PayPal account and I figured my membership would be suspended. Surprisingly, this never happened because, for some reason, PayPal kept paying the monthly bill, sending my PayPal account into the red to the tune of a couple hundred dollars.

This wasn't supposed to happen. They were supposed to refuse charges for which there were no funds in the account. Something must have been wrong with their system.

But what of it? I wasn't responsible for their mistake and, in the meantime, I kept going to the gym, where I was still paid up. Then, one day, PayPal demanded the 200 dollars, which, of course, I didn't have. So, they closed my account.

And soon thereafter, I received a letter from the gym telling me my latest payment had not been received and what was I going to do about it.

Well, at first I faxed them "check is in the mail"-style excuses (though more creative than that and based in the truth of my PayPal situation). But eventually. when I realized I wasn't gonna be able to pay them for quite a while, I figured I'd just ride the situation as far as it would take me and hopefully, when they finally clamped down, I'd have the cash and all would be well.

So, at the beginning of each month, I would nervously enter the gym (though not, of course, my home branch, where they'd more likely ask questions), expecting to be told I was not welcome. But it never happened.

Instead, they just kept sending me form letters telling me there had been a problem with my payment. It seemed I had gotten lost in a system glitch of some kind and, eventually, so many months had passed that I would almost certainly not be able to pay the accumulated fees when they were inevitably assessed.

Which only became truer as six months became on year and one year stretched on toward two

"How glitchy could these guys be?" I wondered.

And then it came to me -- they weren't letting me continue to attend because of a mistake. They were continuing to let me in because they loved me.

(Only kidding.)

Actually, what I realized was that they'd probably allow entry for the duration of my 2-year contract because if they didn't, they couldn't sue me for the full amount of the contract. If they simply denied entry upon non-payment of dues, they'd be out 70 bucks or so and that would be that. And I'd have had the benefit of their facilities for the discounted price afforded 2-year members.

But if they waited, they could dun me for the full amount they'd signed me for and it would be a big enough chunk of change to be worth pursuing legally. (I think if I'd stopped by my home branch, the membership people there, who'd actually signed me up, might have sought remuneration and, realizing none was forthcoming, cut their losses by prematurely terminating my contract. But as I said, I never went to my "home" club.)

And that's the way it went down. After two years, I showed up at the reception desk of the Soho club and was told my membership had concluded. (I believe I owed a mere $1200 or so by that time.)

But I still needed a gym. Especially moving around as I've been; living like a bedouin, staying with different people and in different places.

A nice visit to the sauna can make one feel like a respectable citizen again.

So, I started seeking out various gyms' free trial periods, checking out Crunch and Bally's. (I even found I could simply walk up the stairs into Crunch Soho and use their facilities at will, but one day I heard a manager-type saying they had hired a new guard and I didn't want to tempt fate.)

Then I got a free trial from, of all places, the very gym from which I was estranged (different branch, of course) by spinning a prize wheel on 14th Street. (I said my name was A.J. Lederer -- which it is -- hoping it wouldn't summon Andrew's past missteps from the system.)

After that, I bought a $20, 2-week membership from the same gym (different branch) under the name "Drew" Lederer.

Which ended yesterday.

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3 February, 2007 @ 16:32:30 GMT
http://blogs.chortle.co.uk/andrewjlederer