No Power, No Problem

Being one of the unfortunate ones in the area with no power, my information line is quite limited. A seat at the local Starbucks next to a power outlet in Plainview was the hottest real estate in town. My iPhone battery goes quick and I have to pick and choose my battery life wisely. Facebook seems to win in most cases, relying on updates from Syosset Patch, friends and other local news networks to tell me what’s going on.

So last night I was pretty excited to see an update from Kristen James, the Metro Group Fitness Manager of Equinox Woodbury, saying that there will be classes even though they did not have power. Tripp Doherty’s three main event spin classes as well as Pam Polestino’s fitness class in the main studio.

I arrived at the gym this morning ready to hit the 8:30am class and was greeted by the staff at the front. After I checked in, I preceded towards the spin room through a bit of a detour. Due to a full power outage in the building there was a steel gate in the way of the lobby. On my journey I saw Assistant General Manager Louis Cohen on the floor futzing around with extensions cords. I asked him first how his house was as I do with most people I come in contact with these days. He said everything was fine and before he was able to tell me more of his story, Tripp was right behind me trying to speed things up.  Apparently there was a master plan in place to still have music in the spin room and time was a wasting.

I went on my merry way, to the locker room to put my things away and then went upstairs and greeted the usual Tripp Spin suspects.  I peaked in the fitness room, and Pam had a good sized group in there as she got started with her class. Back to the spin studio, and It was incredible to hear music through the main speaker system as we never expected that as possible, but low and behold the crew were able to connect the cord from the iPod dock and speaker system to a member’s car equipped with power. Everyone was in a glorious mood, as we all knew what was to come next, a full hour of craziness!

Of course without power meant no fans and no A/C but we didn’t care. Louis was awesome coming in several times throwing bottles of Poland Spring Water out to the spinners making sure that we stay well hydrated and happy.  The enthusiasm was off the charts from the classmates thriving off Tripp as he played classics like Kenny Loggins’ Footloose.  We clapped, sang and danced with him, totally forgetting the fact that we just went through a stressful hurricane leaving close to 500,000 people on Long Island without power, flooding and tree damage on properties.

I stayed along for the third and final class of the day which was still electric.  I almost thought we would be able to magically come together as “Everyday People” was playing, to restore power. Perhaps not enough to juice the building, however, I would say Equinox was definitely ignited this morning.

Thanks to Louis Cohen for all his hard efforts for keeping the club live through the crisis. As I stepped outside to take a break between classes, many others were vocal in their appreciations as we collectively saw the glass far from half empty, really overflowing past full.