Cramped style

The tight economy has hit my gym.

What was once a three-room gym - spacious everywhere, with each machine and bench surrounded by enough room to walk and stretch - has been stuffed into two rooms. The former treadmill area has been bricked off and presumably sold or rented to a new tenant in the strip mall.

I watched over the course of a recent week as the owners or managers - not sure who they were - tried to floor-plan and figure where to fit all the machines.

Their goal appeared to be saving all the equipment if not the comfort. All the machines I use in my workout remain, and for that I am grateful.

But now I can hear the music spill out of other exercisers' earbuds. Smell their sweat. Sometimes feel their breath. When I walk from machine to water fountain, sometimes I bump an elbow or shoulder.

Maybe it will all balance out: If gym membership falls along with discretionary spending, a smaller gym will be big enough.

Viennese sins

I have just returned from Austria with a gut full of goulash and sidewalk-vendor sausages that dwarf Toronto's street meat.

And so it continues: Just as I hit a stride in the gym, something - a vacation or work assignment taking me on the road to cheap hotels and fast food - screws it all up.

I went to Austria to meet my wife, who is on a six-week work stint far outside Vienna.

After a few days in the countryside, we went by train to the historic city.

But can I tell you my favourite painting from the art history musuem's collection of Rembrandt and Rubens? Or describe what it was like to walk through 2,000-year-old ruins in the middle of downtown? Or even explain the excitement of visiting Europe for the first time?

Not really. I was nearly obsessed with the fact that Vienna, while filled with heart-stopping foods and treats, is home to not one morbidly obese or badly out-of-shape person. At least, I didn't see one during my four days walking through several neighbourhoods and riding many trams and subways.

"How is this possible?" I kept thinking while eating a huge sausage crammed into a bun that is open only at one end, where the street vendor squirts almost disgusting yet delicious amounts of ketchup and mustard before squishing in the sausage. Or while stabbing my fork into a multi-layered cake at Cafe Central. Or while consuming one of many bowls of sausage-filled goulash.

I thought maybe the Vienna police hide the unfit during high tourism months. Or maybe it's only the tourists who eat these waist-busters.

It doesn't matter how, though. I am back home and faced with having to go the gym this evening, out of practice and several pounds heavier. And that sucks.