Caffeine Queen

This morning I managed to get to Spinning early enough to ensure myself a bike, but I also inconvienently placed myself in front of the most annoying woman on the planet. At first I thought perhaps she had just done a line in the toilet, but after hearing her loudly proclaim, "I've had so much caffeine!" I deduced that it was coffee, not coke, that was to blame. She was wired from the get-go and ready-to-go with her big, loud mouth as ready to exercise as the rest of her.

Spinning, as a class, seems to attract a lot of very vocal cyclers, and they like to shout and whoop and yell, and I understand and accept that it is part of the culture of the class. Personally, I am only a whooper, a shouter, and a yeller when I am drunk (I am also very likely to be a stand-on-the-tabler), but in class, I prefer to peddle and leave the encouraging cheers to those who enjoy it. Today's class was a hard one, at least by my standards, and the instructor had awesome music (which is really the key to a spinning class, in my humble opinion) which inspired a lot more whooping and yelling from the back row, especially from "caffeine queen" behind me. She seemed to crown herself the monarch of the class and felt it was her god-given duty to cheer us all on.

In the mirror, I could see her peddling madly away and occasionally pumping her right arm in the air Arsenio Hall style (which was a trend I was happy to see die and was not pleased to see resurrected). Like I said, it was a grueling class, with the instructor pushing us to peddle hard and keep our resistance high, and I had sweat pouring off the end of my nose. And when I've worked like that for fifty minutes, I look forward to the cool down ( it is my theory that one of the best feelings from exercise is the end when you've finished -- nothing compares to the mixed feelings of relief and accomplishment), but as the instructor started slowing it down, the annoying woman yelled for more, more, more! The instructor laughed it off (there's always a few crazies in any class), but she got completely obnoxious yelling that she hadn't worked hard enough and she needed to burn more calories. The instructor said something about her being the only one who felt like that since the rest of the class looked like they had burned plenty of calories. She then yelled, "I guess I'll just have to go run on the treadmill afterward!"

Now, the instructor didn't say anything, but it was a cue for the entire class to turn and give her dirty stares (mine, is a wicked one; I've spent years perfectly it and I hope it will one day shame my children when they have done wrong and I won't have to use physical force on them). "What?" she said with her arms raised in mock innocence. "I'm a New Yorker, so I guess I just tell like it is."

These transplanted New Yorkers are the worst kind of Floridians. There are many of them here, but they've lived here for like twenty years, yet they still consider themselves New Yorkers, and they go on and on about how things are always better in New York, which always begs the question: "Why did you move away from New York?" I had guessed earlier that she was from New York because of her nasaled Brooklyn accent, but right after she made her remark, the woman sitting next to her says, "I'm from New York too and we may say it like it is, but we are not rude." This seemed to appropriately shame her; you just don't insult an instructor after he or she worked hard to give you a good workout. If it's not enough for your caffeine-addled nerves, that's fine, but we don't need the announcement.

She seemed pissed at the whole class as she packed up her stuff and left with the rest of us. I don't know if she hopped on the treadmill or not, but I was happy to not be stuck near her anymore.