Exercising The Communist Way

Wherever we travel for an extended time I make it my business to join a gym, the more “local” the better. This allows me to keep my waistline in check, meet some interesting locals and see if there are some worthwhile workout ideas. Once I worked out with shoeless soccer players in a ratty gym without walls in a remote (needed to get there on peasant ferry) northeastern beach town of Brasil. (I’ve turned on dozens of peoplThe hand protector idea I picked One summer I was a member of a storefront gym with hand built machines, some terrific, others Rube-Goldberesque, all dangerous in Villa General Belgrano, Bavarian looking town, (former outpost for Nazi conspirators on the lam with as many people speaking German as Spanish) where restaurants serve knockwurst alongside empanadas. Another summer I was a regular member of a gimansio primativo in a cavernous 2^nd floor dilapidated, Beaux Arts style building near the corner of the most busy shopping intersection in Buenos Aires.