Rachel probably will not be happy to hear this, but the last 3 days I have been on a few dates. After what seemed like months of eating chocolate, drinking beer, and turning into a marshmallow (tough life, right?), I finally got my gym membership on Tuesday at Hugo's Power Gym in Merchtem. Since then I have had a date with Hugo everyday, making the 4-5km bike ride each way.
Although the gym wouldn't pass any fire codes in the States, it has the most character of any gym I have even been in. This starts with the owner, Hugo de Grauwe, a former powerlifting world champion (and maybe olympian?) from Merchtem (http://www.sports-reference.com/olympics/athletes/de/hugo-de-grauwe-1.html). Hugo is a really friendly guy and even gave me a discount on my membership. The normal membership rates are 45 Euro for 3 months or 99 Euro for a year, a very generous deal compared to anywhere back home. Him giving me 6 months for 45 Euro is nice, but him being a nice guy is even better because if he was mean or got mad, he could easily crush me with a hand behind his back. Let's just say I'll try to stay on his good side.
The gym is open from 5-12 and 4-11, Mon-Fri and 2-6pm Saturday. And on Sunday, Hugo goes to church. Every morning when I go in and ask him how he is in my broken Dutch, he responds, "Always good," and I believe him. He seems very happy with his job and always takes the time to have a quick chat with me.
At the front of the gym is a bar so that you can grab a post-workout pintje or other reasonably priced drink. Behind the bar sits Hugo and a small television. The only rule Hugo has is that you can't bring your own drinks, and beyond that it seems like everything goes. After walking through the bar room, you get to the cardio room, adorned with 2 treadmills, a few stair steppers, and some exercise and spinning bikes, in case Allie Meyer ever comes in. To get to the weight room, you have to walk down what I like to think of as the Hugo Hall of Fame. On the walls are pictures of Hugo from competitions and at the end there is an almost life-size painting of a muscular Hugo in his youth, wearing only a banana hammock and flexing. A painting that only he could pull off having. The H.H.o.F. opens up into the main weightroom, a long rectangular room packed with a machine for every muscle in the body. The main floor is crowded with the ancient looking machines and leaves little room to walk around. While the machines are by no means state of the art, many having rope instead of cables and coming from a few decades back, they add to the ness of the gym and get the job done. The free weight sections have wooden plank floorboards that resemble something you might be able to find in an old western saloon. While I must admit I was skeptical of the gym when I first walked in, I now know the method behind the madness. Not only does the gym have everything you need, but using the aged equipment and old school machines/ropes makes you feel like even more of a bad ass.
If my camera didn't suck and break again already, I would take a picture of the place, but for now you will just have to use your imagination. I look forward to making trips to the gym a part of my weekly routine here in Belgium.
In addition to the gym, I have also been making the attempt to bike around Opwijk and the surrounding towns. If it weren't for a flat tire (probably from going too fast) I might have already turned into Lance Armstrong.
As a side note, I managed to finish up and send off the postcards and chocolate I had for my old students at PHS. Hopefully it gets there alright because it cost a pretty penny for even the small package and took a long time to write some 37 individualized postcards. I miss working with the students back in Sitka, but certainly have my hands full coaching the youth teams.
I'm off to go for a pre-practice run... hope everyone is doing well back home!
Peace
P.S. gave my first autograph as a paid baseball player after the last game, hope the kid takes good care of it because when I go into the Belgian Baseball Hall of Fame, it will be worth millions HAHA
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