Friday, November 7, 2008

Glad to meet you!

Last night I had set the morning alarm at 8:00 am but unusually I woke up at 6:30 am this morning. Since I was awake, I thought it would not be a bad idea to check out the apartment gym. It had been more than 3 months I had been to this 'not so exciting' place; at least for me.
I was surprised to see two other people almost half way through their workout already. Last time I was there at this time, I got to see only the cleaning service folks. I was happy to know people still do use our apartment gym :)

One of the people on the treadmill welcomed me with a sweet smile. Now, a smile from a strange
r and that too in a place which can get dreadful at times, was good enough to give a kick start to my morning workout.


Since both the treadmills were occupied I decided to try the Elliptical. One of them was lying on the floor, broken into pieces. I climbed the other one. It made a cracking sound and I was not sure if it was the introduction to my weight that caused it to cry out loud! I did not want to claim the 'last person using it' tag for the equipment; so decided will wait for the treadmill. The lady looked with the same familiar smile and said "They need to replace those". I agreed.


Soon I was on a treadmill and the new Friend and I were working out on equipments side-by-side. I am Linda BTW she said. Yes, friend had to have a name too! I told mine and we talked about how badly this place needed renovation.


Earlier, Linda was walking on the treadmill, and her hand bag fell off the machine and lots of papers fell off from her bag. Only later she told me that she was a writer and worked for kids. No wonder she
had so many papers in her bag.

She asked me where I was working. I told her I was working in the IT department and that she might be interested in taking advantage of a discount for family and friends at my client stores. So that was how I got her email id and I promised to send the coupons to her. She was in a hurry saying that she had to pick a friend at work and left.


I continued my workout and in a little while was ready to leave. Suddenly I saw Linda's hand bag lying near the treadmill. I was not sure if she would be back; I assumed she wouldn't as it was already quite some time since she had left. In the hurry to leave early she had completely forgotten about the bag. I decided to leave the bag at the leasing office and drop her an email that she could pick it from there. I was happy that I had taken the email address from her.

I drove back home and first thing wrote her an email. But unfortunately the mail bounced back! Now I knew I had mistyped the email address in my cell phone. Why don't the 'g's sound like 'g's and 'p's sound like 'p's to me! I need to work on my american accent I thought.

Now what do I do? What if she comes to the gym to look for her bag? I had to contact her and let her know that her stuff was safe.


I looked for her name over the web. 'Linda Piepenbrink' and gosh! I found so many links on the net. I was very excited; one- I was sure that now I would get her cell phone # and secondly- I came across a person who was famous. At least to some extent I was sure. On the internet, I saw her books on sale on ebay, amazon etc.


I managed to get her office number and dropped her a voice message. But what if that's her old office? It said Wisconsin and I was not sure if anyone would go for a workout early morning if they had to travel to work so far. I looked for her on facebook and luckily found her in th
ere. I left her a message on facebook too.
Later I dropped her hand bag at the leasing office.

When I was in office I was happy to get a reply from Linda. She said she would collect the bag from office and was thankful for taking care of her stuff. And I was glad to have met her.


My trip to the gym got me a new friend along with few calories off.

1 comment:

Abi said...

"Soon I was on a treadmill and the new Friend and I were working out on equipments side-by-side. I am Linda BTW she said. Yes, friend had to have a name too!"
what a line!