Pirate's Cove

No, really

My God, it's real. pic.twitter.com/VuIwMzdTKy

— Jeff Blehar is *BOX OFFICE POISON* (@EsotericCD) July 5, 2018

Good grief

It was November 2016 and the only person I knew who believed Trump would win the US election was the owner of my gym. This was clearly a ridiculous prediction so, seeing the chance for some easy money, I offered to bet him $100 that Hillary would win.

But the gym owner, clearly not wanting to do his dough, pointed at this horrible thing in the corner with the name “sled” and said: “If Trump wins you have to pull 70kg on it.” (snip)

After Trump claimed victory, I went up to the gym in a foul mood. “Just fucking load up the fucking sled, all right, and let’s get it over with,” I said without much grace as I strapped a belt around my waist.

I pulled the sled like a human oxen while being filmed and the gym staff cheered. I did it. But the Trump victory soured my successful show of strength.

Yeah, I could pull a pretend sled. But how was that going to help me when the world had been destroyed by nuclear weapons or climate change?

So far, it hasn’t, but, don’t let your derangement go, honey. So, she went to a restaurant and had a bad meal

I never went back. But I also didn’t return to the gym. I associated it now with Donald Trump, the bad meal and pulling the sled.

It was 9 November 2016 and my thinking about fitness changed almost overnight. In tune with the times, it became more Trump, less Obama.

In the spirit of the Donald, I drank more bottles of Diet Coke and ate more McDonald’s. I dropped the gym – embracing Trump’s belief that we are given a certain amount of energy and if we use it then we are depleting a finite resource.

According to the book Trump Revealed: “Trump believed the human body was like a battery, with a finite amount of energy, which exercise only depleted. So he didn’t work out. When he learned that John O’Donnell, one of his top casino executives, was training for an Ironman triathlon, he admonished him, ‘You are going to die young because of this.’”

I didn’t want to die young, so I didn’t go to the gym.

This keeps going on and on and on.

I walked. I this. I that. Months passed. Then a year. Trump was going to be in power for another 1,000 years. Or at least that’s what it felt like. Could I really avoid the gym for the entirety of his presidency?

I missed being strong enough to open jars and carry groceries. So, last week, I returned to the gym, slinking back in as if no time had passed. I hoped that by wearing a puffy jacket and MC Hammer pants I could hide my lack of definition – that I could pretend I had maintained my fitness on my own. At home, running to the building next door. On the couch. While tweeting.

These people. Seriously.  Just insane.