Riding the rails sans pants

This past weekend was the 11th Annual No Pants Subway Ride in New York. It's an event that was started by Improv Everywhere, which is a New York City-based prank collective that causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places. Other cities were encouraged to organize rides of their own, it didn't matter if they didn't have a subway; it could be done on a train, a bus, or any other form of public transportation. In the past couple of years, I've become less shy and have come to embrace the ideology that if there is an interesting event that I'd like to partake in and it can't be found in my city, then I shall either travel to said event or create my own (see Thrill The World Miami). Since one of my resolutions this year was to be a little more fearless and try new things, well, then, I guess I was going to try to get a No Pants Metro Rail ride going!

This past Saturday was D-day, or in this case, I guess you could say U-day (underwear). I grabbed a helpful friend to take pictures and babysit me, in the event that none of the other 18 people that RSVP'd on the Facebook Event Page showed up. We got to the meeting spot and waited about 20 minutes.

Crickets.

Do I know my fellow Miamians or what? ...that's exactly what happened...no one showed. Fortunately I had already resigned myself to the fact that most Miamians are flaky and was mentally prepared to go it alone (and I thought recruiting zombies was hard!) if need be. Besides, I was already there, no sense in wasting a trip....and a metro card.

We headed up to the trains and hopped in the first Northbound train. The train was empty, so I started to think, oh, this is going to be a piece of cake! Then a young guy got in. Grreat. My friend C was laughing, but she and I pretended we didn't know each other. Then another guy got in...and another. I was starting to wonder if I would chicken out. My bravery and improv skills were going to be tested. As the train pulled away from the station I waited until the next stop before depantsing (or in this case, deskirting...I figured it would be easier to remove, what with shoes and all).

Once we reached the third station and the doors shut, I now had a car full of spectators. I stood up and took my skirt off, folded it up and put it in my bookbag. I then sat back down and continued playing with my phone. I heard one lady say "what is she doing?". My friend later told me that the lady got up and switched seats.

At the next station, more people got on. I don't really think they noticed because my undies looked like short shorts and I had a long sweater on as well (I'm brave, but not THAT brave), so I didn't get as many reactions as I could have gotten. Because I was flying solo, we had the flexibility to hop on and off the train as we saw fit. At the next stop we got off and switched to another car. Upon entering the car I got a couple of looks. It was kind of nerve wrecking, but also fun to see the expressions on people's faces.

We hopped cars a couple more times and when we reached the 8th stop or so, we deboarded so we could repeat the mission going back South. I decided to put the skirt back on and do it all over because it was mostly the taking off of the skirt that got the most looks and reactions. If they hadn't seen me take it off, people didn't seem to notice that I was in underwear, they just figured that I was wearing shorts that were WAY too short for someone of my age and thigh composition.

I posed for a couple of pictures and my friend captured a couple of funny reactions as you can see in some of the pictures. It was fun to see some double takes. I not only surprised others, but also myself; I'm clearly braver (and crazier) than I thought.

I'm trying to convince my hubby to go with me to NY next year to do it with 4,000 other people instead of being the Miami Lone Ranger again. In NY the statement is We do this for fun!...over here, the statment is, I'm the crazy-pantless-traincar-hopping lady!

If you are a non-flaky South Floridian (wait, is that an oxymoron?) and would like to participate in other fun events like this one, join the Improv Miami group on Facebook. I promise that (most) future events will involve pants, but only if you promise to show up if you say you will.

Did someone say zombies...

Well, now I've gone and done it. I've thrown my hat over the fence and now it's time to figure out how I'm going to get it.

I signed up for Thrill the World for this year, so it looks like I need to start practicing my dance moves. I've updated the website I created in 2007 (the first time I wanted to do this) so I'm ready to go. This year's World record attempt event will be on Saturday October 24th at 8:30pm.

The only thing left to do now is to find more crazy people like me that would love to do the Thriller dance. Hm...good thing I have 3 months to do it in...

Alright. Here we go! So...who's in? (don't worry, I won't make you dress like a zombie...unless you want to that is).

The Craziest Loser

Every week I watch the Biggest Loser on TV. I love watching this show because it's inspiring to see these people lose the weight and feel great about themselves. I especially love the finale show where you really see what a change they've made. It's great! The irony of course is that I would watch it while snacking on some Doritos or cookies and milk. Ha ha. This year is different though. Since I am no longer planning on having more children, the time has come to lose the extra weight that I've been jostling around. As little as 7 years ago, I was at a pretty good weight, but then came marriage and school and kids and the weight went up and up and up.

Since the peak of this last pregnancy I have managed to drop 40 pounds. I would still like to lose 20 more and be around where I was seven years ago. I think the breastfeeding has helped tremendously with these first 40, so I kind of want to keep going since I have this running head start if you will. I'm setting a goal to lose 20 pounds in 20 weeks. I shall call it mini-me my 20/20 plan. Let's see how well this goes. I guess I'll be doing my own Biggest Loser except without the screaming trainers and the nationally televised weigh ins (thank God for that).

In the spirit of my new weight loss goals, yesterday I went to the gym, but I forgot my towel. If you don't have a towel, you can't go into the main room where all the machines are so I had to find an alternate way to work out (I could have paid a dollar for a towel rental, but I don't like using other towels....plus I'm really cheap like that). I thought about doing one of the classes, but realized that I had just missed the last class. I then remembered that there were some machines on the 4th floor. Perfect, I'll do that! I climbed the 1,001 stairs it took to get to the fourth floor and noticed that only one machine was empty. Ah I'm in luck I thought. Until I got on the machine that is.

The impending trap of death was precariously perched on the edge of a flimsy little railing four floors up (I am not comfortable with heights). And of course it had to be a stairmaster machine. A machine that would make me feel like I'm climbing even higher and higher just about to step off the rail. I worked out with much trepidation and held on to the machine for dear life. I realized this was going to be a long 30 minutes because I couldn't figure out where to focus my eyes. If I looked down, my knees got wobbly. If I looked straight ahead and saw no floor my knees got wobbly. If I closed my eyes, I was afraid of falling off the machine and over the railing. I finally decided to just stare at the controls on the machine. I was only on the machine 1 minute and had already broken into a sweat, not from working out, but from freaking out.

At this point, my mind started making up scenarios. What if this platform collapses and I fall over the railing? What if the machine goes bonkers and it catapults me over the railing? Could I hold on to the railing for dear life? If so, for how long? How could I hoist myself back up? Then the sane side of my brain tried to talk me off the ledge. Claudia, the building is well constructed, the platform will not collapse. Besides if it does, it doesn't matter what machine you're on, you're still fucked. The machine is a quality machine and will not break. If it does, it will not catapult you over the ledge, it will simply stop functioning. Then the freaky side would start again. What if I'm trapped on the ledge and I have to jump all the way over there, could I make it? What if someone pushed me over?

Like I said, it was a long 30 minutes.

After my freakout workout, I headed down the stairs and noticed that part of the stairs jutted out past the fourth floor platform I was on. So I realized that if I indeed did fall over the railing, if I could just manage to hold on to the railing and scoot over to the left for a couple of feet, I would be able to let go and land on the stairs. Well now, that changes everything. In that case, I think I CAN workout on the fourth floor. You know, since I have a back-up plan and all now.


Insane people should not be allowed to go to the gym.