Fan Wars - April 23, 2017
Fan Wars
I once heard this wonderful statement. “Not even God can make everyone happy. Half are praying for rain; the other half – for sun.”
Conflict is inevitable with humans. Oh, but the things we fight about! In churches, it’s the “worship wars.” Half the congregation wants contemporary Christian music (CCM). The other half wants the hymns their grandparents sang. Me, I don’t mind a little bit of CCM, but my hubs Laurence would rather poke out his ear drums with the pew pencil.
Congregations try various ways to resolve this. Have both kinds of music mixed throughout the service, and then everyone is thoroughly miserable. Have the CCM before the service time – but this means the CCM-ers get their pick of the pews. Yes, we church-goers do have “our” spots. I like to be so close I’m practically sitting in the choir’s lap; others want to be located as close to the exit as possible.
Some churches choose to have two services – which may see the departure of the minister and half the choir. As a person who has done lay preaching and choir singing, I can tell you – even I don’t want to hear myself say and sing the same thing twice in two hours. Lord have mercy!
There are plenty of wars at the gym too and the current one I serendipitously got involved with is the “fan wars.” Half the class likes to have the fan blowing on them; half can’t stand it. This works out very well when the half of the class that doesn’t like the fan goes to the other side of the room. But there is always going to be that one person who parks his or herself in front of the fan, can’t stand it, and will chew out anyone who tries to turn it on, or will even turn it off if someone persists in turning on the “there for-a-reason” industrial size fan. Gah!
In one Body Pump class, there was a woman who regularly practiced prevention of fan use. I can’t stand conflict – Laur doesn’t really care what people think, but he knew that if he got into a fight with this woman, then he would later end up in a fight with me. (Makes no sense, I know. I don’t pretend to.)
Fortunately, one day a Body Pump instructor – I’ll call her Amazon – intervened, saying, “Darling, I know how you feel. I can’t stand having the fan on me either, but there are folks who want it.” She started moving the woman’s equipment to the other side of the room – and the woman, who was either too surprised to respond or too afraid to challenge Amazon, did her bidding. Solution sweet! I would love to have brought Amazon a bouquet of flowers – but then we would have gotten into the “scent / scent-free wars.” Enough conflict already for one class.
The fan war that surprised me most was one that I blundered into in the RPM (spin bike) room. There is an industrial fan in that room and for reasons unknown to me, it has been placed facing the wall. I think the idea is that having it on and blowing against the wall will improve the air circulation a little. To my mind and body it doesn’t, but I park myself as close to it as I can anyway. Our spin room gets ridiculously hot and we are not allowed to open the door because the loudness of our music and the cheering of our instructors and certain spinners (ahem!) negatively affects the peaceful, melodic hot yoga next door. I get that.
On this past Thursday, after the warm up song, I turned on the fan. A couple of ladies behind me (I’m a front row kinda gal even in the gym) asked me to turn around the fan so that it faced the class, and put it on rotate. OK, that made some sense to me, and since it wasn’t my idea – I was just the messenger – perhaps no harm would come my way. Ha!
Picking up and moving an industrial fan around is not as easy as it sounds. It weights over 100 pounds and doesn’t have any handles on it, let alone wheels. But I did it, and I set it at medium speed – a nice compromise – and pushed down the “rotate” button, and climbed back onto my spin bike. By now I had missed half of the second song – but it’s a racing track, so I really didn’t mind.
On song three, a woman a few bikes down from me got off her bike, looking ready to bite someone. “Harley” turned off the rotation and pointed it directly at me. And got back on her bike. Had I been my mother, Granny Marj, I’d have chewed Harley out right there and then changed it back to rotate and given her the glare that says, “Just watch me!”
But I am not my mother’s daughter in this respect. I just continued on cycling for the rest of the class with the industrial sized fan blowing directly at me from about 12 inches away. By the time the class was over, I had a very unusual hairdo to say the least, but at least I wasn’t sweating. Far from it. The gals behind me were furious with Harley, but I notice they didn’t come to my rescue.
I spoke to the class leader – who is amazing. Artemis (not her real name) was very apologetic and stunned by Harley’s behaviour, but in the middle of an demanding, non-stop class, there was little she could do. I also wrote the group fitness manager – who is also wonderful – and asked if the instructors could be the ones that set up the fan - and remind folks if they don’t like the fan, don’t plunk yourself near it… And I wrote to head office – I was my mother’s daughter on this one – asking if GoodLife could empower group exercise leaders across the country to be in charge of the fans. There were fan wars at the Sudbury GoodLife, so I’m sure - just like the worship wars – this is a coast-to-coast phenomenon.
Friday, back at spin class. And I noticed the fan was pointed at the wall again. And after the warmup was over, I leaned over and turned in on medium speed. Thankfully, the wall did not complain, but there were some very unhappily sweating spinners – it was so hot and humid in the RPM room that the floors were wet.
Well, alternative A and B don’t seem to be working. What might alternative C be? Introducing the O2COOL 5" Battery Operated Clip Fan! Yes, for about $40 I can have my own personal fan on my spin bike at the gym. It wouldn’t work well in my barbell class – where would I put it? But it would be perfect for RPM.
Can I foresee any difficulties? Hmm, having a valued piece of equipment in my unlocked locker while I have a swim… What could possibly go wrong?
(And yes, there are locker room wars too – a story for another time.)
I once heard this wonderful statement. “Not even God can make everyone happy. Half are praying for rain; the other half – for sun.”
Conflict is inevitable with humans. Oh, but the things we fight about! In churches, it’s the “worship wars.” Half the congregation wants contemporary Christian music (CCM). The other half wants the hymns their grandparents sang. Me, I don’t mind a little bit of CCM, but my hubs Laurence would rather poke out his ear drums with the pew pencil.
Congregations try various ways to resolve this. Have both kinds of music mixed throughout the service, and then everyone is thoroughly miserable. Have the CCM before the service time – but this means the CCM-ers get their pick of the pews. Yes, we church-goers do have “our” spots. I like to be so close I’m practically sitting in the choir’s lap; others want to be located as close to the exit as possible.
Some churches choose to have two services – which may see the departure of the minister and half the choir. As a person who has done lay preaching and choir singing, I can tell you – even I don’t want to hear myself say and sing the same thing twice in two hours. Lord have mercy!
There are plenty of wars at the gym too and the current one I serendipitously got involved with is the “fan wars.” Half the class likes to have the fan blowing on them; half can’t stand it. This works out very well when the half of the class that doesn’t like the fan goes to the other side of the room. But there is always going to be that one person who parks his or herself in front of the fan, can’t stand it, and will chew out anyone who tries to turn it on, or will even turn it off if someone persists in turning on the “there for-a-reason” industrial size fan. Gah!
In one Body Pump class, there was a woman who regularly practiced prevention of fan use. I can’t stand conflict – Laur doesn’t really care what people think, but he knew that if he got into a fight with this woman, then he would later end up in a fight with me. (Makes no sense, I know. I don’t pretend to.)
Fortunately, one day a Body Pump instructor – I’ll call her Amazon – intervened, saying, “Darling, I know how you feel. I can’t stand having the fan on me either, but there are folks who want it.” She started moving the woman’s equipment to the other side of the room – and the woman, who was either too surprised to respond or too afraid to challenge Amazon, did her bidding. Solution sweet! I would love to have brought Amazon a bouquet of flowers – but then we would have gotten into the “scent / scent-free wars.” Enough conflict already for one class.
The fan war that surprised me most was one that I blundered into in the RPM (spin bike) room. There is an industrial fan in that room and for reasons unknown to me, it has been placed facing the wall. I think the idea is that having it on and blowing against the wall will improve the air circulation a little. To my mind and body it doesn’t, but I park myself as close to it as I can anyway. Our spin room gets ridiculously hot and we are not allowed to open the door because the loudness of our music and the cheering of our instructors and certain spinners (ahem!) negatively affects the peaceful, melodic hot yoga next door. I get that.
On this past Thursday, after the warm up song, I turned on the fan. A couple of ladies behind me (I’m a front row kinda gal even in the gym) asked me to turn around the fan so that it faced the class, and put it on rotate. OK, that made some sense to me, and since it wasn’t my idea – I was just the messenger – perhaps no harm would come my way. Ha!
Picking up and moving an industrial fan around is not as easy as it sounds. It weights over 100 pounds and doesn’t have any handles on it, let alone wheels. But I did it, and I set it at medium speed – a nice compromise – and pushed down the “rotate” button, and climbed back onto my spin bike. By now I had missed half of the second song – but it’s a racing track, so I really didn’t mind.
On song three, a woman a few bikes down from me got off her bike, looking ready to bite someone. “Harley” turned off the rotation and pointed it directly at me. And got back on her bike. Had I been my mother, Granny Marj, I’d have chewed Harley out right there and then changed it back to rotate and given her the glare that says, “Just watch me!”
But I am not my mother’s daughter in this respect. I just continued on cycling for the rest of the class with the industrial sized fan blowing directly at me from about 12 inches away. By the time the class was over, I had a very unusual hairdo to say the least, but at least I wasn’t sweating. Far from it. The gals behind me were furious with Harley, but I notice they didn’t come to my rescue.
I spoke to the class leader – who is amazing. Artemis (not her real name) was very apologetic and stunned by Harley’s behaviour, but in the middle of an demanding, non-stop class, there was little she could do. I also wrote the group fitness manager – who is also wonderful – and asked if the instructors could be the ones that set up the fan - and remind folks if they don’t like the fan, don’t plunk yourself near it… And I wrote to head office – I was my mother’s daughter on this one – asking if GoodLife could empower group exercise leaders across the country to be in charge of the fans. There were fan wars at the Sudbury GoodLife, so I’m sure - just like the worship wars – this is a coast-to-coast phenomenon.
Friday, back at spin class. And I noticed the fan was pointed at the wall again. And after the warmup was over, I leaned over and turned in on medium speed. Thankfully, the wall did not complain, but there were some very unhappily sweating spinners – it was so hot and humid in the RPM room that the floors were wet.
Well, alternative A and B don’t seem to be working. What might alternative C be? Introducing the O2COOL 5" Battery Operated Clip Fan! Yes, for about $40 I can have my own personal fan on my spin bike at the gym. It wouldn’t work well in my barbell class – where would I put it? But it would be perfect for RPM.
Can I foresee any difficulties? Hmm, having a valued piece of equipment in my unlocked locker while I have a swim… What could possibly go wrong?
(And yes, there are locker room wars too – a story for another time.)