The Brazilian Gym

In Rio (and perhaps in the rest of Brazil), there is a really crazy gym fashion. Women wear super tight and super bright tights to the gym (think 80’s leopard, zebra and fluorescent), accompanied with knee-high soccer socks. Ridiculous. The streets of my neighborhoods are swarming with the jungle animals.
Today I went to the source of the problem, the gym.

To my greatest shame I must admit that the last time I’ve visited such an establishment was about 3 years ago, so just the mere thought of returning put shivers down my spine. However, thanks to a motivated colleague of mine, I made the leap of faith and decided to find out the rates at the local “academia” (this is how they call gym here..).
We were greeted by a local gym beauty (ok, she was not so beautiful but I was very intimidated by the overload of exercise conscience people), who took us around the facilities. The rooms were CROWDED by young and fit people, looking all tanned and motivated. It felt like an episode of Fame or Beverly Hills. They were just too perfect.
Passing by the spinning room, I became oh-so-nostalgic, missing my amazing super-fun-and-super-gay spinning instructor Carl at Crunch in NYC, who made every painful class seem like a disco party. Those were the days..

Drifting between inspiration and anxiety, I got home and stuffed myself with food (cooked by my super-maid) and set myself to make an important decision.

To be continued…