Taking Off the Peanut Butter Wetsuit

It's not that I'm way out of shape at all. For real. I've been lifting weights and doing cardio and all that for years -- it's just that I've got a thick wetsuit of peanut butter over top of all this gym-built muscle. I think of it as the peanut butter wetsuit.

Near as I can tell, I put the wetsuit on one weekend at a time, pulilng on a thin layer of fat molecules every time I sip bourbon, go to the Florida Avenue Grill or eat at Ben's Chili Bowl. I'm thinking the fact that they actually apply butter to grits WITH A LADLE at the Grill might bein conflict with my exercise routine Just a smidge.

Maybe it's the fact that I write for the gay channel at AOL, and am exposed to a level of physical self-awareness that I thought only existed in prom queens and seriously unpleasant people. Or maybe it's that I just turned thirty and realized that unless I stage a serious intervention, this is as good as I'm gonna get, physically -- and it ain't Men's Health cover material. But something must be done.

So on the one hand, I have the peanut butter wetsuit. Such a ZINGY rhythm that phrase has, like music! On the other hand, I also know that I can never be truly happy unless I am doing something completely crazy. So my man Ryan and I decided to slap those hands together, and starting at dawn tomorrow, we're cycling to work together.

Those of you that know me well know that I work in Ashburn, and live in Washington, D.C. Those of you that don't know the area need to understand that it's twenty miles from my bedroom to my cubicle. This, my friends, is gonna hurt. Hurt so good, I hope. If I can just do this twice a week, that peanut butter wetsuit is gonna be a little thong made out of rubbing alcohol in about two months.

I actually bought a racing bike for this express purpose a month or two ago, and have been steadily training up to it. As long as nobody gets eaten by a bear tomorrow, I think we'll be cool The operative work here is THINK.

But you know who will be cool: you guys. Because adventure, true adventure, is another person's extreme discomfort, related to you in a humorous and engaging way. I've been in my little cubicle at the Death Star, as I call my corporate megaplex, for too long. The wetsuit is too thick. Hopefully if I don't enjoy taking off the peanut butter wetsuit, at least y'all will laugh at my pathetic attempts.

A brief note about this photo -- it's from this Flickr set, found via BoingBoing< as all great things are. The photographer is the mother of the two toddlers in the set, who turned her back on the kids JUST long enough for them to open a jar of peanut butter and dump it all over each other. It's disgusting, hilarious, and cute all at once, which is just the way I want to be most of the time.

posted by Jeff Simmermon @ 10:20 PM