When Joan Baez (or was it Joni Mitchell) sang about the world turning round, round, I thought of heaven - whole and welcoming. I have now found its anthesis - the devil and the virgin - incarnate in the Orbital Cycle. My new testament knowledge is shaky at best but I do remember something about "Satan, get behind me". This is how I knew Orbital was the beast because, try as I may, I couldn't get behind the thing. I had managed, with the help of KY Gel, to get into one of these things before so I new the feeling of my sternum pressed into my spine..
On the last few occasions that Orbi and I have had words, he has been intransigent in the extreme. I couldn't move the seat back nor adjust the length of the arm pedals. The end result, for about 30 seconds, was a winded repetition of punching myself in the stomach. Do you remember rags like Giggles and Gags that offered "adult" humour and line-drawings of big-boobed gals in champagne glasses? One comes to mind now. Big-breasted gal is bent over a codger with a water-wheel type of machine slapping her botty - each protrusion covered in a gloved hand. Well that, including the codger which I'll come to later, is what Orbi did to me. Breathless more from the embarrassment of getting on and off a gym machine in less than a minute, than real exertion, I took refuge on the bicycle.
Ears plugged into MTV, arms at my side with my spine perfectly straight I tried to combine two important daily practices - cardio and meditation. It became increasingly difficult to focus on the breath as it rushed in and out of my chest like a steam train up the Himalayas. Instead, I focused on the people below. Lyrics from another song came to mind - "like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel" and I thought how true - in our quest for wholeness we looked for circles. Suddenly, as if boosted by A-grade pharmaceuticals, I saw the gym as a microcosm of the universe. At every glance there were circles and wheels - static-generating treadmills folding back on themselves, rounded free weights, moon-shaped exercise balls, Spinning classes and orbital cycles. Even Pretty Boy felt the rhythm as I watched him roll and unroll his sweat towel around his fist while talking to Pretty Girl in a rhythm that suggested some other motion he'd rather they were doing.
As I denounced Orbi for the beast that he was, all but turning to spit, I saw the figures of doom. A codger had rode Orbi for six minutes and 66 seconds and the numbers flashed as an evil reminder.
Another reminder, a painful jab of where I stood in the chorus of angels, was that while naked and exposed it was codger who greeted me while the only words from Pretty Boy were: "please get off my towel."