Planet fitness

I love planet fitness! For just 25 a month I’ve found a way I can work out, shower, and get some fancy water massage thing. It’s like a massage place I can go to 24/7 (almost).

I sound like an ad. Living in the van can be so uncomfortable and stressful sometimes. I’m six foot two, and there’s only one place I can stand up straight in the whole RV: Here.

*insert Roof Bubble Image*

Here, I can stand up and look out and around like a sentry, with a 360 degree radius. Standing there, with the rain smacking and tapping on the window above me, I really do feel like I’m outside almost all the time. So it’s definitely not all bad.

I can imagine coming here, to this gym, or even just to the massage room, on a quiet Sunday afternoon — when it’s empty at least, which I’ve found the app can tell me. When I went to ask for another free massage chair session, I was joined by a rugged-looking stranger coming with a large, full backpack, who made a beeline to the chair rooms. He sat on the absolute opposite side as me and wiped down his seat with some cleaning spray from a wall mount I had completely missed earlier.

And then for a while I pondered just how wildly useful a gym membership was, even outside of the obvious use: working out. For 10 a month (or 25, if you want extra perks, like using any location) I had… a bathroom. One I didn’t need to clean, and with a tank I didn’t need to empty. With nice showers I could stand up in fully. I had air conditioning and heat (at this time, my heater was broken… and at night the temperature would drop below freezing.) I had open space, and a nice place that I myself didn’t have to keep nice…

That night, I was so relieved to have a break from fighting against my small living space, and I happened to have parked far away, and it started raining heavily after I went in…

I used the heavy rain as an excuse to skip plans. Really, I was just so stressed at having to learn and organize and buy and put away and somehow find time to work and talk to people I cared about — Everything was new, and my aim was high, but I crumbled a little bit under the pressure. Pressure is a hard thing isn’t it?