Pardon me for just a moment…

29:58 … 29:59 … 30:00 – workout completed!

Whew – another job, well, done, anyways!  I’ve sweated, I’ve groaned, I’ve ached trying to crawl out of bed the next morning after working my body into a sore and exhausted mess, but of course, it’s all just another day in the life of a guy who recently bought a new exercise machine after feeling exceedingly guilty about never going down to the gym by conjuring up such brilliant excuses as “I can’t go now – it’s raining!”, “I can’t go now – it’s much too nice outside!”, and my own personal favorite, “Zzzzzzzzzz…”

It’ll all be different this time, though … at least that’s what I told myself when I was signing the credit card slip, and then again while wrestling its beastly box out of the car, and maybe even once or twice while we were sorting through the roughly 83,000 pieces scattered across the living room floor during the torturous “assembly process.” Buying a new piece of exercise equipment is like a new beginning – a chance to start over and make amends for previous weight loss transgressions, to get back in the ring and show those calories who’s boss, to finally prove to the world that maybe you’re not destined to always buy your pants from Olaf the Tentmaker after all – at least as long as this one doesn’t break like the last stupid piece of junk that we bought, anyways…

Oh, don’t even get me started on that embarrassing waste of money because it too seemed like a great idea at the time … right up until the night when it tried to buck me off halfway through an otherwise invigorating evening of hardcore elliptical’ing!  Conveniently just outside of its meager 1-year warranty period, it would’ve been more buckazoids to patch the wretched beast up than it would be to just buy a new one, so ultimately I had to put her down, and yet here we are again years later, still somewhat less than a model of physical health, ready and willing to plunk down even more money than ever to re-ignite that faint glimmer of hope for six-pack abs, buns of steel, or maybe even just not getting winded on my way to the kitchen for a second helping of dessert!

For what it’s worth, though, and feel free to call it flab-inspired wishful thinking if you’d like, but honestly this one does feel exponentially different than my last wild trip down the Slip ‘n Slide of home exercise equipment ownership.  It hasn’t broken and thrown me on my ass yet, which for starters is a big plus in my book.  It seems to be sturdy enough to actually support my jiggling stature, and on top of that, it even has all sorts of neat statistics that it can track while I’m working out – you know, like length of stride, effectiveness of gait, rate of wheezingtons of useful stuff! (no pun intended)

It’s also got this neat built-in computer that has the ability to critique you while you’re working outwalk faster, try a harder incline, put down the Twinkie while you’re working out … it’s really only a few steps shy of one of those creepy, science fiction endings where they fade out to people getting whipped by robot overlords who’ve enslaved the human race.  But you know what?  I’ve been trying to lose this weight for years now – maybe it’s time to put my health in the hands of an emotionless Robo Motivator whose only desires are seeing me lose weight and a fresh jolt of 120 volts every now and then.  Frankly, at this point if it means finally being able to drop these unwanted pounds and say goodbye to snug swimsuit scenarios once and for all, I’ll be the first to line up on the treadmill and greet my deadly mechanical motivators with open arms!

Aside from the eventual carnage and destruction when they finally gain sentience and put us all on fitness programs that gravitate from treadmills and cardio towards mining and dying from exhaustion while mining, what’s the worst that could happen?!

I don’t know about you, but for this fair-weather fan of robotics, beach season has never felt closer – thanks, technology!