Hampton Inn gym

See what happens when you travel like 300 days out of the year? You end up blogging about your accommodations (um, actually…that I blog at all). Not to worry though…I’m not talking about accommodations in a certain house in Southern California [I'm no idiot]…but hotel accommodations.

Here are things I have noticed about the Hampton Inn gym:

The gym at any Hampton Inn is barely one hotel room that management has grudgingly turned into gym facilities….but is maintained in such a way that it could EASILY be returned to a profit center at the drop of a ballcap.

The generic-brand treadmill and a $200 elliptical machine that you threw out were apparently rescued by the Long Island Hampton Inn.

Your workout is entirely dependent on arriving at the “gym” before the Lipitor man from room 425. Honestly…the only other people working out at a Hampton Inn are fifty-year-old guys OBVIOUSLY on doctor’s orders from their last physical. They always work out with the enthusiasm of cleaning the garage.

People in the Hampton Inn gym tend to look at you funny when three layers of your “Irish suntan” are peeling away.

If you have good hotel gym karma, you will have not only TWO whole stations for cardio, but one additional weight machine with which you are supposed to work out every single muscle in your body. You know the machine I’m talking about…it’s roughly the size of a Toyota and can be used in a pinch for stamping out license plates.

You are NOT allowed to provide the Toyota-sized weight machine without displaying a poster-size schematic of Body-Building Barbie demonstrating each of the 124 workouts that the station allows. I LOVE the inner thigh exercise…it requires a fabric ankle cuff and standing on one leg and…ohhhhhhhh….a certain amount of coordination. And the last time cuffs and standing on one leg were involved, I couldn’t drive for a year.

Listen people, I can’t navigate a glass wall…if you think I am going to be able to jump-start the Toyota bench press, you’re crazy.

Well listen, I’ve got to run, or else Gus from 425 is going to beat me to the Kenmore elliptical.