by David Thill

Created on: November 19, 2010   Last Updated: November 20, 2010

I drag myself to the gym most days after work. Since I am no longer in my 20’s, my body has decided to convert as much of what I eat as it can possibly manage into tummy fat, and I just plain love food too much to live on rabbit food and diet graham crackers all the time.

Since I am also, frankly, terribly terribly vain, I can’t tolerate letting myself go and lose competitiveness in the Dating Olympics. So my torture device of preference is the elliptical machine. If you’ve never used one, I recommend it. No impact on aging ankles and knees, but all kinds of snazzy options for interval training or cardio or fat burn or what have you. There’s a handy podium-type thingy where you can prop your supermarket rag or your iPad or a book, and a spot for your water bottle, and you can just plug in some headphones and grind away the pounds to music, if that’s your thing. For me, after a busy day at work, it’s down time in which my brain unwinds, produces a bunch of happy endorphins, and burns off the extra helping of Creme de Menthe ice cream with chocolate-flavored whipped cream I had for lunch.                                                                                          

However, the one thing that really, honestly drives me a little nuts every time I climb onto trusty Elliptical Machine 11 (the pulse counter on number 10 doesn’t work, and someone has permanently frozen number 12 to output its numbers in kilograms and kilometres), is that all that time and effort I’m putting in is not generating electricity. Why not?!? I mean, I’m going to be up on that thing for 4 or 5 hours a week, whipping the handles back and forth and thrashing my legs like a snowshoe salesman being chased by wolves. Why isn’t the darned thing attached to a generator? I mean, I’m already multitasking like crazy with the fat burn and the happy brain chemicals and reading and listening to music and watching the guy with the taut calves and the big arms on the treadmill in front of me,

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