Combination (4/365)

11

January 4, 2015 – Off to the gym again today, the pain of that first day’s joyful hour with a personal trainer has finally worn off and I can move a few things that didn’t want to move for a few days.

It will be a challenge to keep it going once we are back to work tomorrow. I have a gym at work that I can use, and I’ve been pretty good about using it over lunch in the past. I fell off the habit last spring after fighting a cold, and then summer got busy, and fall was even busier…it’s easy to blame time and say there isn’t enough, but there always is, if you make it.

So here we are again, making time, and hoping that we continue to make the time. It’s hard to justify not going since we have memberships at Fitness World. We still have our original membership paper cards. We had to keep them, because they are so awesome when we consider the rates to join these gyms now.

Waaaay back in 1988, when we had just moved to Vancouver and were living in the West End, we wanted to join a gym. Both of us had been avid gym users in Prince George; although we met at the Midnight Express, we had seen each other working out at North Wave.

They were building a brand new Fitness World a few blocks away at Howe and Davie, and there was a temporary facility just a block away from home at Davie and Thurlow. One day I was listening to the radio and there was a call in contest. I called in, and answered the question right (Name a spin off show from The Mary Tyler Moore Show starring Valerie Harper – Answer: Rhoda).

I won a six month Fitness World membership.

Cool.

We stopped in to see the gym and they were offering a special introductory couples lifetime membership rate, heavily discounted to attract members during the construction. I told the fellow there that I’d won the six month membership and asked if it could be deducted off their special rate?

They said, “Sure”

They offered us an all access, lifetime membership at something that I think was around $160 (paid in instalments over four months) and a contract saying we’d each pay $5 a month in dues until such a time as we cancelled the agreement.

We never have.

Why would we? It was a perfect combination, a low rate, totally affordable, cheaper than we were paying back in PG, and only a block from home. So we have a lifetime membership, can use any Fitness World gym, and pay a combined $10 a month for it. Not too shabby considering that I think their current monthly individual rate is somewhere around $50 a month or more, though specials come up at around $20 a month for limited time.

When we moved to the North Shore, our condo was quite literally, right across the street from the North Shore Fitness World. We used it on and off over the 19 years we lived there.

Now we are up the hill, but it’s still on the way to and from work.

So it’s hard to let go of a membership that only costs less than a Starbucks coffee a month.

And we are back again…