From Van

Americana

I was feeling a little aggressive and agitated today on my way to the gym this morning. People were driving like... well, like Armenians,  and my blood pressure was about to hit the roof. So when I arrived at the gym, I headed to the stair stepper to work out some of my aggression. After climbing the Eiffel tower (only fitting because Jared will be in Paris today) I headed over to the bikes to finish getting back to my happy place.  The bikes do not have T.V. monitors attached to them, so I grabbed my ipod, strapped it to my arm and headed into a series of hills the machine had planned for me. I begun to pedal, only to realize that my ipod was putting out very weak sound. Thinking that I had bumped the volume while it was in my bag, I reached over and cranked the volume. It was still not the greatest sound, but I attributed that to my crappy ear buds. They have been on the fritz lately.  The first song ended and it started into the next song, "Americana" by The Offspring. It fit my mood perfectly. I guess it wasn't the song so much that fit my mood, more the copious amount of profanities that Dexter Holland shouts out at random intervals throughout the song.  Anyway, so I was rocking out and I noticed that this older man kept looking over at me. It's not uncommon here, pretty much everyone stares at us everywhere we go. I inwardly rolled my eyes and kept peddling up the hill. About 30 seconds later he looked over at me again. At this point I'm thinking, "WTF is your problem?" He wasn't ogling me, he just kept staring at me. So I decided to be done with cardio and move on to a different area of the gym. I hopped off the bike, grabbed my bag and took the ear buds out of my ears. The music however did not stop, I could still hear it pretty clearly. Momentary confusion set in as I looked at the ear buds, trying to figure out why the music sounded so loud. Moments before I was barely able to hear the music with the ear buds pressed into my ears. Then I realized the the cord was not completely pressed into the ipod. I had been "sharing" my music with everyone in a 10 foot radius. It was muted to me alone because I had about 20% of the volume coming through the ear buds. Luckily few people here speak English, though I'm pretty sure the old man does. Awesome.