Entertaining Spin

Rona's tribute dance to Michael Jackson. Pretty amazing.

THE LETTER: to Oprah re: Rona

One day Rona said, "HAILEY! YOU need to write to OPRAH about this class!" I agreed. She went on to compliment me in all sorts of ways, which I appreciated, but only raised the bar a few feet, her specialty. Letter writing is easier said than done. Now my first ever letter to OPRAH! is done. Voila:

Oprah talks about how dreary exercise is...that is because she hasn't been to Rona's spin class yet. Simply put: The WORLD'S GREATEST SPIN CLASS is at the 800 North Gold's Gym in Orem, Utah -- Oprah should come & join in the fun!

Every Monday, Wednesday & Friday at 9:15 a.m. (sharp!) the party begins. The lights are low, the fans are on and the music on the stereo is sped up. Hip-hop, Rock, Funk & the latest pop music, is Loud! Rona is already talking about the latest celebrity gossip and news.

Rona's personal style is stunning: big blond hair, flashy nails, tight colorful clothes, big smile, LOUD voice. Her teaching style is Brutal. She has us Spriiiiiiint!, clap, yell, lean to the left/right, dip, wave, scissor kick, arrow down, jump, imagine all sorts of cycling scenarios & sweat like mad.

There is really no easy way out of that class and yet a group of regulars comes every week. We have become friends and call each other by the nicknames Rona doles out, Taz, Peanut Butter, Cinderella for example. The group is a mix of people who want to loose weight (most have, Rona used to weigh over 220), competitive athletes, college students, stressed professionals and stressed out mothers. People come almost an hour early to reserve a bike. One woman never missed a class throughout her pregnancy, with twins!

Recently Rona hosted a party for 2 favorite regulars, for their 55th birthdays! There were balloons, treats, gifts and silly party hats in class. There are parties for Halloween (with costumes) and Christmas (with gifts). The best fete was probably for Rona's surprise birthday, complete with disco balls, special gifts, gourmet cupcakes & singing. The room is regularly decorated with random seasonal decor, lights and a rogue glittered gnome.

I never miss a class & although my legs & butt are hard as rock, I go for my mind. I am a happier, healthier, calmer & better person for attending Rona's class.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

S is for Spin Fun.

The Valentine Gnomie... The white flag should've read, "I surrender!" Didn't really have time to create and be clever, if not brilliant. Wrapped him in an assortment of valentimey decor and called it "Done." Meanwhile I worked on a magnet board for the room.

The following is from an in-class party last week:

Treat #1: Rum Balls by Birthday Girl Vonda! A professional chocolatier.

Treat #2: Peanut Butter Bars brought in by the very trim "Peanut Butter" -- Don't ask about grams of fat, she said the next class.

Treat #3: Cream Filled Chocolate Mini-Cupcakes, brought in by Shauna, a chef.

The On-as: Donna, Vonda, Rona & Shauna!
It was an amazing, fun and HARD workout. I asked birthday girl Donna (who I've known for about 17 years, & whose son is a pal of S's) if she's had a good life so far... Rona was trying to kill us. Well, Rona made us earn the treats.

I've learned that when treats are offered at Spin, take one. Once I said, "No thank you." Only to go home and do a lot more dammage than one mini cup cake would have done. Thankfully, there aren't treats very often... and never before a trio of treats.

Halloween Day Time

This is my favorite picture ... my pal,the bishop's wife, Donna.

Rona and her look-alikes... the gal on the left is her stalker, ah ah ah.


The ol' bag lady and the hot biker chick. I forgot my nose and glasses. Lame. Better figure something better out for next year.

Puppetree

Love this photo. C made the face. This is from Round Two. Round One is the painted face at the top. The hair is an entire ball of yarn.
Things/projects move slowly around here, eventually they get done.
Yesterday and today somehow I was able to make a mess with vintage wallpaper. Mmmm. It isn't quite there yet,the It-factor hasn't been reached.

N's baptism was yesterday. It was wonderful. Powerful spirit. Sweet sweet child.

At one point M came up to me and said, "I have something for you." She handed me a folded bill, of money. Hmmm...? I opened it and it was a $50.00 bill! Pretty cool find for a 4 year old. I gave it to the Bishop. It was lovely to hold for a moment though.

P is for the Professor.

A back to school tableaux for the spin class.

R is for Rona.

This is Rona at her best, cute in pink, with lights and gnomes in the background.

My Mum, pictured below, was surprised when she met Rona for the first time via this picture. That says something for someone from SF (that stands for both Spanish Fork and SAN FRANCISCO, where she has lived for more than 2/3rds of her life.)

Rona is a great teacher, a professional, a mentor and a good friend and very smart. She is Grand! Looking forward to Friday at 9:00.

F is for a Fish (Plate) tale.

Here is a fish plate tale. No wait, here is the tale of the souvenir fish plate that Rona received from her friend.

Rona has a d-i-l that took a trip to Mexico. Instead of bringing back a lovely, garish piece of silver jewelry the gal brought Rona a stinkin' fish plate. This is an oft told story... Jump ahead: R's stylish pal went on a trip and found this lovely fish plate and told Rona that she brought something back for her, so fantastic that she'd have to open it in front of her beloved M-F a.m. class. It was in a huge diaper box. It was a BIG cool thing! She was so excited. Rona was counting down the minutes until her friend arrived.

Then she opened it! Wow. What a disappointment. Almost as bad as when her d-i-l cut her grand daughter's hair, wacky short... Rona was cruel, but not vicious, that day.

Everyday there is a story, or she relays the latest celebrity news. Weird celebrity baby names, what to do/say on dates, her whacked out cravings. There is never a dull moment. Latest: Prevention magazine says to wear rings to look younger, gives your hands interest, makes you look hip. R is all over that and was wear a great (!) big piece of starkly bling on her hand for the class. Another health tip: get some sleep. The more you sleep the thinner you will be.

S is for SPIN.

This is where I am heading. If I can leave in a minute or two I'll ride my bike there. ..only seems fitting.
I hope to catch up on Rona/Spin posts in the next few days. These shots are from just before Mother's day. I tie dyed a bunch of towels (IKEA $.49) and put one on each bike... they were well received. (Didn't do tie dye with Taz last week.)

I love the dark room, loud music, distracting teacher, friends, sweat. It is no longer about weight loss, it is 100% for my brain. About an hour after class I am so much calmer, not really relaxed. It is just a clean feeling, even when I look sick and don't get a chance to shower until late in the afternoon. Perhaps that is the definition of an addict... showers become secondary to the drug.

T is for Thursday & Tie Dye.

If you are reading this and you want to enter some clothes in the Utah County Fair's 4H's Decorated Duds category then you might want to be at my house this Thursday. Call first. I am going to be working on some hooded baby towels for an amazing woman who is pregnant with twins (due in about a month) and goes to SPIN classes 3x a week. Wow. Also "Taz" from the class should be here.

These images are from my foray into tie dye last month. -- Needed a new work out shirt and also made a batch of exercise towels for the class, kinda a funny Mother's Day gift. They were $.49 at IKEA and were very well received. :) Loved doing them. Love that class. Something doesn't seem right about walking out of class with a chocolate cupcake...

This is the inside "peek-a-boo" art for a sketchbook I am filling with wacky ideas for a puppet show, to be posted on YouTube, about Rona and the spin classes/devotees. The cover has nothing to go with the content.

The puppet show idea is a summer project that I hope to work on in earnest soon. Maybe I'll let the children in on it, or maybe I'll just let them keep playing on the Wii and getting practically stoned on Guitar Hero.

C is for Celebrity in spin class.

Rona said to a lady, “You look just like Kirsten Dunst. Really, the spitting image!” Ha. It was her. Rona actually knew that.

It was a crazy fun class. So glad that Rona is back after a long long time of flu and crud. She is a wonderful teacher and a special person, to many people.

X is for my LETTER to X96.

For those of you not in Utah, X96 is a radio station with a cool morning show. The rest of their programming is alternative music. I just wrote this letter and thought I'd post it.

Years ago my friend Elizabeth Pfau asked me if I was going to be one of those "letter writing Moms?" YEP. One (more) reason for the name of the blog.

Hi Bill, (and Kerry and Gina),

I listened to your show on Thursday. I had been looking forward to it for the week before, then Thursday morning I was stuck forgetting about it while writing an email to my son's teacher, and ccing his audiologist. My 10th grade daughter reminded me. (Its hep that we can both listen to your station.)

Anyway... to attempt to be brief:

• We have 5 children, our 2 youngest are deaf, both have cochlear implants. They are 7 and 3 years old. Our 7 year old is in 1st grade and is mainstreamed. Everyone is amazed at how well our children hear and speak. We are too!

• Our son heard with hearing aids and then lost the rest of his hearing around his 5th birthday. That is a recipe for frustration. Although we signed with him he knew how much he was missing. He was a miserable kid to be around. The CI has completely helped him emotionally and with communication. We had to fight our insurance company to cover it. (Our cost would have been $80K!) He still needs speech therapy but that story is kinda long...

• Cochlear implants are miracles, not "satellite dishes" on heads. Is a diabetic pump on a child, or adult, something to disparage? Also, children born with hearing loss into hearing families are no longer sent to "residential" schools, isolated from their families, since they can learn to hear and speak so much more easily than in the past. Cochlear implants are the future for deaf children and adults.

• Deaf people who can speak, statistically, have MANY more options to them. They are autonomous people. From my vantage point I can't imagine saddling my children with a lifetime of being accompanied by an interpreter and never spending time with grandparents, cousins and other extended family and friends because the rest of the world doesn't sign. We sign some and don't have a problem with it, but I don't expect the rest of the world to. If our family only spoke French wouldn't it be odd to demand that everyone around us learn French? Yeah, yeah, we should then move to a French speaking county... again, AWAY from everything we call "home."

• The bit about "dating a deaf" girl kinda freaked me out. For many sick and wrong reasons deaf children are sexually abused more than other children. I don't care how hot the deaf girl was in the studio, it just didn't sound right to me. How to get to know a deaf girl or boy? Say hello and wave. I can't clarify my thoughts here... fear for my kids? or the memory of the weird friend of friends that told me that he always wanted to have sex with blind girl? --just because, he said. Girl? Blind? Again, I'm not at all articulate here, but it's just not something to encourage, at all.

• The bit about deaf education was right on. There is an excellent new program that just started in Logan called Sound Beginnings. http://www.usu.edu/ust/index.cfm?article=15151 It would be cool if you talked to Karl White from that school about what is going on for the Future of deaf children. USDB is a fairly whacked out place. Funny thing is they just don't listen. In Utah County I am involved with a foundation that is trying to get off the ground called Journey to Hear, to create a great preschool that is not in +20 year old trailers...

Thanks for paying attention, which is what I tell my children to do, since listening, whether hearing or not, is tricky.
Keep being original. Your show is great.

H ...
...Utah

p.s. Good luck to Gina. And good luck finding a sub. My daughter wanted me to enter... would've been cool. There is a spin teacher at Gold's Gym in Utah County... RONA! She would be fantastic! Even for a guest spot. She has a large devoted following. Amazing teacher.

T is for Teacher of the Year.

Don't really care if Rona wins the award this Saturday for Gold's Instructor of the year. There is simply no one else that teaches a class half as much fun/distracting or painful as hers.

Today, to the tune of the Pussycat Dolls' (Yep.) Don't Cha? The lyrics? "Don't You Wish Your Girlfriend Was Hot Like Me?" the women had to shimmy down and up (to the handlebars) while peddling and and the men had to yell "Yeahhh!" which they did with great aplomb.

P is for Puppets...

You might know that I am devoted to Spin - indoor cycling classes at a gym- classes. The teacher at the gym I go to is a Wonder. Rona. She is not for everyone. I dig her glasses. I am firing my kiln right now which always leaves me a bit sleepless. Her glass starts at 5:15 and the bikes are filled by 4:55. I am not her only devotee.

For a while I entertained teaching, but my schedule is too chopped up. I am still taking notes. Then I made a puppet while trying to figure out how paper mache works with K. Then, it dawned on me: DO A PUPPET SHOW OF RONA's CLASS. I am devoting a shetchbook to this idea. Here are some of my sketches:


There are several more pages of drawings. She gives almost everyone nick-names. She has big hair, boobs and nails. She is made of steel but can be very nice, well, to new students. She talks a lot about gossip and can be ruthless about people in the spot light.

A while ago C said he wanted to collaborate with me on something... He does amazing shadow puppet shows, this should be fun... once all the dust settles on 2007.

G is for Gnome, ah ah ah.

Since I replaced the little gold balls, with pink and white paper hearts on thin Midori ribbon, on the Christmas tree in the spin room at Gold's Gym, last FEBRUARY, I have been expected to spruce up the place.

Playing with glitter, glue and lights is not hard for me... The gnome entered the scene when Rona, the instructor, "like no other," as S would say, told me (she doesn't ask) to bring in something for Spring. Naturally I brought a lovely fake fake fake flower arrangement, a bright pink watering can and the gnome, with some glitter. Then I added more glitter since he was hard to see in the dark room. Rona went nuts! She really loved it. The echo of her tattoo (a crown); the "Team Rona" shirt, some of her devotees had actual shirts made--the glittered garden gnome, just for Rona, seemed to please her.

Now, after a year of classes, legs of iron and zero weight loss, I realize that all of that is normal. What is not is that someone would bring goofy things into the spin room to decorate. So uncool it's cool? That's a stretch. I try to fly under the radar of the uber-cool advanced riders on Tuesday mornings...spooky gnomes are probably not their idea of cool anywhere, anytime or anyhow, to boot.

At the end of Summer I grew tired of the flowers and took it all away. After I asked, S gave me an American Girl doll-size chalk board to use for the start of school. Then I took all that away for a long while.

Several people were asking about the gnome, including Rona ... so while sweating to Rona's stories of celebrity chasing, gossip and the latest hip-hop-ish/dance music, the evil alter-ego occurred to me. Something like: Dr. Gnome and Mr. Mugwumps...

Since I took the picture the silhouette has been "disappeared." The cape and lights are menacing enough and most importantly distracting from the pain.