Never say Never Again

Growing up I tried to avoid being told 'no' at any costs. Granted, I will say I was prone to the half thought out, hair brained scheme in my day, but still. That being said it led me to be more of a jump first, ask questions (or forgiveness) later type. Which has, understandably, resulted in me learning many a life lesson the hard way. Consequently over the years I have built up a list of things I have learned one should never do. These are my top three:
1. Never have your fiance be the one to teach you how to drive a stick shift. You may be sorely tempted to toss them out of the moving vehicle.
2. Never attempt to jump over a creek, no matter how many people you have seen do it successfully. It's no guarantee.
And 3. Never again take a Spin Class. It was invented by the devil.

Which is why I'm still a bit mystified that I somehow found myself yesterday in what? yes, a spin class. My first experience was on a total whim and ended up being a complete nightmare where I truly thought I was not going to live to tell the tale. I was either going to A: die of embarrassment or B: die of sheer exhaustion. That experience was 8 years ago so you can see that I do not take my list of hard knocks lightly. So imagine my surprise when I found myself wanting to give it another try. And truthfully, things could only go up from last time. My standards for success would simply be: Don't fall off the bike while still attached to the pedals, and don't cry.
I gave myself a pep talk as I strapped myself in and raised my hand in response to the "anybody new?" question. It's just like riding a bike. Yeah, if perchance that bike happens to have a massive steel wheel that requires you to be locked into the pedals and hurts so much to ride it you think your legs are going to burn off. What am I doing here? It's on the list!
Well, when all was said and done, I lived, burned 650 calories, did not fall off and although I wanted to cry at times, I believe I sweated out all available water in my body. It wasn't half bad this time around and the class even applauded me at the end for keeping up for my "first time." So I guess the lesson is to never say never, although I still firmly stand behind numbers 1 and 2 on the list. The next workout adventure is Hot Yoga. I try that next week. A lover of yoga, suprisingly I've never tried it before but I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that heat is involved. So if you enjoy hearing how I subject myself to possible humiliation through group exercise, stay tuned...