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In a few weeks I’m going to start traveling pretty often. First on my list is Green Bay, Wisconsin. The location was picked for me quite randomly and I’ve made an educated guess or two. I have spent a lot of time traveling over the last year since leaving my last place of work in North Carolina. Initially I did quite a bit of flying in and out of San Antonio & Austin, TX areas due to there being a large airport in both those cities. This would have started in about June or July and ended when I finally decided to move here in August 2022.

Since then I have made a road trip out to Denver, Colorado for about a week. While there I had stayed at an airbnb location. On the way there I stopped in Missouri to see some family that I’d been planning on seeing for about a decade. After returning from Colorado I stayed here in Texas for a few weeks. There was a number of places I stopped at along the way, all logged elsewhere around that time, offline. While staying in Texas, I had spent a good three weeks in early October checking out San Antonio a bit more in depth. It’s essentially a city that’s made up of quite a few other cities, and I often describe it as much when talking to folks here.

At this time San Antonio is celebrating in what is called Fiesta San Antonio. I don’t much know where the tradition came from, this is quite a new experience to me. Essentially folks just throw parades, events, carnivals, fair’s all across the different cities in San Antonio and they have this thing where the people that go to it look for and wear Fiesta Badges reminiscent of something they took part in, or for performing some task, or sometimes just from having traded or paid for one – whatever the reason folks just cover themselves in these things as a way to hype up the festival. One of the more lively events here at this time was a parade on the riverwalk. I didn’t get a chance to see the parade directly this year but did spend some time on the riverwalk last week and found there to be quite a number of folded up plastic chairs for onlookers to see the parade floats that were being stored along the riverwalk under a building i had passed by at one point.

Anyways, my other part of traveling last year was going and traveling to New York through driving there in my truck. The sights were alright and I didn’t hit any snow. I do enjoy the driving so it was nice. I had also logged the bulk of this traveling offline and am only gonna summarize it here this time. So in New York I re-visited the southern Hudson Valley area, where I grew up, and visited a few estranged friends and stayed with family. It was a wonderful time.

After visitng New York on this long car trip I drove south to North Carolina, to re-visit the place I had spent the previous 6 years at. I stayed with family during this time and celebrated christmas here as I stayed for quite a few weeks this time. Since about January I have mostly just vacationing locally – a thing you can do when you live in a city of cities so you can travel while you’re traveling! I’ve also been logging most of this offline since then, too! I meant for this blog to be a place for me to write out the places I get to check out when I’m traveling away from San Antonio, at least at this time and so I would expect that come another week and a half that I’ve got some things to say about the Green Bay area!

So I’ve decided that the best way for me to learn the city is by going to random gyms inside of it. Learn the city means a lot of different things to different people. For me, I’m quite literally just talking about the roads. Simple. So yesterday I went to two different gyms: A Planet Fitness at 4400 Fredericksburg Rd and a Gold’s Gym at 255 E. Basse Rd Ste 310.

I first got to the Planet Fitness, walked in, got to the lockers and went to change and realized that I had forgotten my shorts and shirt. I’d taken the weekend to rest and for some reason had assumed that I had put these back in the bag earlier in the weekend. Anyways I drove back home, got two sets and put one as a backup in the truck. Then I drove back and worked out for 2 hours. 1 hour on the bike, and 1 hour on the treadmill. Both machines were in good condition and not bad. I then went and got a tan. I didn’t realize the tanner was on a timer, so I came out and accused the machine of being broken to the woman at the front desk. She told me they were on a 4 minute timer (not 3 or 5!) and so I said, “Okay thanks, I’ll head back now” and did.

After the tan I came back out and the 3 folks at the front desk were engaged with an angry old white dude complaining about not getting his moneys worth for something surely too much to ask for to begin with. I got the attention of one of the three visibly frustrated employees and asked for a hydromassage, during this short conversation the dude seemed to have calmed down and left. After the massage I went back, changed and then left. Overall not a bad gym, none of the folks there seemed overly creepy. The new years crowd is still rolling through. The parking lot was a small shopping center, not the greatest neighborhood but the facade of the building itself looked okay. I recall seeing an empty beer bottle standing up on what would appear to be the drivers side of an empty parking lot on my way out. No complaints here. The next stop was Gold’s Gym.

The whole place is located in a wonderful part of town, I think it’s called The Quarry. If not, it should be as a lot of places there indicated “so and so” at The Quarry. The upscale stores in the area along with the nicer restaurants indicated that the area was designed for a more luxurious living pace. The gym itself was next to a cinema inside a parking lot that rivaled the size of a mall parking lot. There were even a few parking lot security guards roaming around on bikes and what not. I couldn’t say it was the highest of the high end, like I didn’t see a Gucci store there, but definitely for the more bougie folks. Anyways I walk in theres a woman at the front desk, who tells me to have a good workout, so I say “thanks” while I scan the card and walk over to the locker room.

The one thing I can say about the entire gym is that there appeared to be very little concern overall for cleanliness, but it seemed to go with this specific gym. Like one could imagine the kinds of people that frequent it are the kinds of folks that don’t generally concern themselves with the messes they make, often as if they don’t make a mess at all. While I’m okay with that, it’s more of an observation than a stance and anyways the thing I noticed immediately was that there was only a sauna in the mens room. I was a little aggrivated by this because the place was advertised as having a steam room and steam rooms are my much preferred choice when dealing with these things. Anyways, I went and changed, noticed the floor was quite filthy, wet in a few spots. There was a guy that was frustrated a few lockers down from me, I overheard him muttering “god-damn i cant believe it” or something as he was fumbling with his drink bottle. So, I put my bag on the bench and he apologizes for taking up so much space, because he was also taking up the little alcove off to the side as well I guess. I said it was no problem I’d just take up the other half the bench, there being only two of us present at the time there and I needed a place to put my bag to ruffle through the contents and get my stuff out. So I changed, checked out the showers which were huge and nicely tiled, then went to the 2nd floor where all the working out is to be done apparently.

Up there there were free weights on one side and machines on the other. I went to the side with the machines, and sat on the recumbent bike and exercised for an hour. During this hour there was a dude on the bike in front of me who was one of the new years crew .. these folks stand out readily because they try a little harder than most folks and take more pictures. Anyways it was entertaining to watch him go while I sat there mostly just listening to music. He was pushing 140 rpm at times on that bike, for reference I burn more calories at about 40-45 rpm on a recumbent bike with a little more resistance in an hour, to the tune of 20% more per hour. Anyways, he wasn’t overweight, but had a pair of man tits that he covered up with a loose fitting jacket and it was really funny to watch his entire upper body flop around as he exercised as hard as he could on the bike, man-tits sloshing to and fro at the 100 rpm right along with him. Unfortunately it was one of those sights that was hard to avoid as the bike I was on was directly behind him and to the side.

Outside of the fella, there was some stretching mats off to my right a few folks would come to, and the bike also had a great view of the parking lot with a partially visible San Antonio skyline in the distance and it was nice to see this. I finished with the bike, and got some water, and then went to a treadmill, on the way there I got checked out by a pretty good looking pale brunette shortish irish chick on a treadmill further down. For reference, I’m a 6 foot flat, 255 pound blonde Western & Eastern European mix with a muscular build and heavily built legs and a decent tan, also adorable, and I can’t say I can blame her as folks doing aerobics seem to have an inclination for checking out people a bit more often. Anyways I got on the treadmill for about half an hour and was done exercising for the day .. totaling about 2000 calories according to the machines this day. So I got some more water and then when back to the locker rooms. I took a shower and then went into the sauna, which was my first mistake of the day apparently.

So I get in there and immediately I notice it’s just an electric heater dressed up with rock adornments that probably weren’t actually rocks at all. The rooms wood, so at least they got that right. There was not nearly enough space to sit down, only seating on half the rectangular room. Theres a wall with no seats, a dudes there just exercising and panting heavily and seemingly inappropriately in the corner with no seats. In the other corner a dudes just chilling in full clothes including shoes, they both were wearing shoes. The room wasn’t nearly hot enough to be considered a sauna and the floor was filthy. So I walk in in a bathing suit and covered in water and just sit down. In the fifteen minutes I spent in there, 4 or 5 other dudes walked in, all in fucking full clothing, nobody even took a shower. There was only one other dude that broke a sweat besides me in there during this time and it was the dude that was doing pushups who was the only one to leave during that time.

Anyways we all cram ourselves in there like sardines, strangely so because the room was certainly large enough to hold more than double the 7 of us in there or so, everyone wearing full ass clothing and not sweating besides me. The sauna is largely not just about going into the sauna, for reference. Sure the hot air is comforting, but the whole experience of the sauna is that you are to open up your sweat glands with hot water before going into it, this allows you to sweat for the duration in which you are inside of it, you do this with hot water from a shower or the like. Then you sit there for no less than ten minutes, sweating your ass off, then you exit and take a cold ass shower to immediately close your sweat glands. I did this. Everyone else during this short moment just wandered in wearing full ass clothing like off the street and I guess it’s, for me, about the most bizarre sauna experience I’ve ever had. Like they wanted to experience what a sauna would be, rather than go into the sauna.

Anyways, I got a shower on my way out of there and went to my car in the parking lot and left. I probably won’t be returning to this gym, mostly because it’s needing a steam room. The lower end recumbent bike I was on was in good condition, at least, and the medium end treadmill was in decent condition. If I do go back, it will be to check out the very nice area as it seems to be a place where one could come across some quality people rather easily.