7/12/2002

The health club I belong to has Precor treadmills. These, while generally 
adequate, lack a convenient place to store water bottles, keys, CD players,
and other paraphernalia. (When will treadmill manufacturers wise up?) I get
around this by making a little cradle out of my towel for the CD player.
That generally works fine, but today the player fell onto the belt in the
middle of my run. Somehow I managed to avoid stomping on it, but there 
was still mayhem aplenty. The player sprang open, sending the CD rolling
across the floor while the player rocketed off the back of the belt toward
the row of steppers behind.

I did the natural thing under the circumstances, which is to stop, bend over,
and try to recover my toys before they got sucked into the mechanism. Natural
it may be, but stopping on a belt that's going 8 mph is just not healthy.
I went flying, of course. It is very hard to look health club cool while
clinging upside down from the side rail. 

Fortunately, only my ego was bruised.