u/One-Possible1906

It’s gross in there. It’s full of unwashed bodies and every flavor of body odor melting together. Everything is greasy or sticky even though people wipe it down. Hardly anyone actually cleans things properly so the sticky spray just builds up with germs and body grease.

It’s the same atmosphere as the office except worse and you pay to go there. Working out on gym equipment is boring. It’s like being a rat on a wheel. Except rats don’t like wheels, they’re too intelligent to stay engaged on them. Only very simple animals enjoy exercising this way.

When I walk to work in the morning on a beautiful summer day there are always people lined up to go hang out inside the dark, smelly gym and it just feels so sad. Why would anyone want to get up early to exercise inside when the birds are singing and the sun is turning the streets gold?

Then you have the creepy guys who think they’re God’s gift to women because they can’t walk without looking like something is stuck up their asshole and harass everyone. Then you have those bored older ladies that walk around and police everyone at the gym like they can’t get a paid job and have to invent one at the gym. The social atmosphere of the gym sucks. “Well you just have to get up at 4am/increase your income to go to the bougie gym/work out harder so you’re ripped enough to hang out with the cool guys/etc” every argument for the social atmosphere not sucking is an attestation to how much it sucks.

People don’t keep up on going to the gym because it sucks, and it’s presented to us as the only way to exercise as if humans didn’t exist and stay fit for thousands of years without the gym.

If you like going to the gym, good for you. But people who don’t aren’t inherently lazy or lacking in fitness. There are plenty of other ways to exercise that don’t involve being in a sweaty box with several dozen other people’s germs and body odors.

And going to the gym doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to do other forms of exercise successfully. I’ve hiked with gym bros and they usually putz out quickly. They don’t have the endurance and flexibility to do a 20+ mile day. They haven’t learned how to cope with the self deprivation aspect of it. Their feet are soft and get sore easily. Their egos get in the way of it all.

Because going to the gym is often performative. They have to tell everyone about the gym all the time and act like they’re ready to conquer anything because they lift things up and put them down and engage in watered down artificial boring versions of just going outside and doing something fun.

People who want to start exercising every day should consider alternatives to going to the gym if health is the actual goal and not just a body that looks like it goes to the gym. A used beginner kayak costs the same as 2 months of gym membership and can be used for many years. Same with a bicycle, snow shoes, running shoes, yoga classes, casual sports clubs, and most other sporting gear.

People would exercise more if they were encouraged to do something more fun than going to the gym. Exercising shouldn’t be to show off how early you can wake up or a chore you do just to stay in shape. It should be something you look forward to and enjoy doing, because that’s what makes you do it every day.

I have a 2017 Ecoboost with around 175k miles, 40k on replacement engine. Lately it has been sputtering on hills. It seems to resolve almost completely on a full tank of gas and get gradually worse as the tank gets empty but I can’t confirm if this is a coincidence or not. There is no check engine light.

Mechanic has had it a couple times and thinks it is the transmission. I am fully aware that it is a ticking time bomb but it doesn’t seem like the transmission to me. There is no change in RPM when it happens and it doesn’t happen when shifting gears nor is it tied to a gear or resolve after shifting. Every shift is smooth and transmission was recently serviced. Car otherwise runs like a dream.

Without a code labor is getting really expensive. Has anyone had this problem and figured it out?

I know my teenage son’s friend’s’ parents and there is no food insecurity in either of our homes.

My son’s best friend has siblings so they prefer to hang out here. This is fine, but he always arranges a ride at 8pm, meaning he is here for dinner with very short notice.

It is just me and my son is here half the time so we run into three problems:

- I only prep meals for two, so when he does eat I have no dinner that night.

- he is a big kid and eats twice as much as my kid does and is still hungry afterwards.

- he doesn’t like most of the pantry/frozen stuff we buy so trying to throw something together for him is hardly ever possible.

How do you all manage these kinds of situations? I don’t want his family to think we’re too poor to feed him because we’re not but feeding a dinner guest without a few days heads up is really hard in a household this small. Tonight they will eat the dinner I spent an hour preparing yesterday and I will have toast, and the friend will pick over the meal and still be hungry after eating all the snacks for the week and showing up before lunch, so he ate my damn lunch too.

Hungry and cranky!

I take lithium and have been stable on a low dose for 5 years. Except I have no heat tolerance.

I live in an extreme climate with more snow than anywhere else in the US. Winters are really long and sometimes too much snow to even snowshoe. Shoulder seasons don’t really exist, and summer is 80-95F and humid. So “don’t hike in the heat” basically means don’t hike at all.

Fellow distance hikers, how do you manage medication induced heat intolerance? I stay very hydrated and take breaks as needed, have been hiking over 20 years so very familiar with all the standard protocols. But after ten miles or so I’m just done. I prefer to hike around twenty miles in a day and train year round to do this. I can do it; except the heat. Anything over 70F has me sweating buckets. Even yard work or sitting in a hot building like the office is a struggle.

And any alternative I have to lithium also causes this, but doesn’t work as well and has other side effects.

I am brand new to zero drop shoes and trying out Merrell Trail Glove for the first time. They are so comfortable right out of the box and I’m usually not a fan of Merrell. So far, I’ve only put about 3.5 miles on them at a time. I have no pain with them and no more fatigue than my old shoes. Everything I’m reading says to train them for 6-8 weeks to avoid injuries however most of the advice seems to be tailored to running.

I have a 13 mile hike on relatively easy terrain planned for tomorrow and I’m really itching to wear them. Is the foot training period really that important for them if they are comfortable? I definitely don’t want injuries but I’m just not feeling where they would come from.

I tried to find a barefoot sub to post to but saw some things I didn’t need to lol

Thank you!

I typically hike Adirondack lowlands on unmaintained trails with a lot of bog crossings. This can be slow because you have to poke the bog with a pole to see how far down it goes. What looks like a few inches of water can have a foot or two of mud underneath. This means with the occasional small error, I frequently sink down up to the knee or further.

It becomes more challenging in September-June as this is a cold climate where getting wet can become a life threatening situation. As a result, I don’t spend much time in my favorite forests most of the year.

Is there any gear that can help mitigate this risk in colder weather? I see a lot of fishing gear for it but nothing that one could wear on a lengthy hike. All my searches just turn up the same old gaiters that you use for snow but these don’t keep the water out when your leg is submerged past the top of the boot. I can’t possibly be the only person with this need. Thanks!