I'm going in to Montreal early on Friday so I can spend some time with the daughter before we do the Jog for the Jugs on Sunday. Today was my last day at my gym.

The usual suspects were there, the folks whose lives have woven into mine over years of familiarity. We all did our workouts, shared bits of our days and plans, and mourned the changes to come.

It felt sad and wrong to take my lock off the locker I've owned forever, to pull out my various fitness bits and pieces, stuff them into a bag. I went to the file box and grabbed the thick, battered folder that holds years and years of workouts. And just like that, seven years that greatly changed my life ended.

I arranged to get together for a post workout lunch with a group of women I've come to love through the gym. We brought potluck, ate around a picnic table. We basked in the insane beauty of a surprisingly warm autumn, the mountains around us taking on their fall glory. We laughed, joked, reminisced and promised to keep in touch.

There was pie. Peanut butter pie with dark chocolate topping and a crushed chocolate cookie crust. Normally pie heals all wounds (and I think I speak for us all when I say that chocolate makes everything better) but even the mighty powers of pie and chocolate weren't big enough for this.

I know. I'm as stunned by that as you are.

There were a few tears as we hugged good-bye because we all know that the odds of actually keeping in touch ... well, those odds aren't so high. I live an hour from most of them, across a border. But at least we got a proper good-bye.

I keep telling myself that change is good, that it's not a bad thing to shake things up. I start at the small Canadian gym bright and early Monday. It will be ... odd. But then, so am I, so perhaps we are made for each other, this new gym and I.

Time will tell, eh?

--Marn

P.S.--When I checked the donation page, there was $490 given to the Jog for the Jugs. The spousal unit and I had agreed that we'd donate 10% of what my three loyal readers did by Sept. 26, so I just threw $50 into the pot, which means together we've raised $540 to help the fight against breast cancer. You guys are the best!

Somehow I've been branded a spammer by DiaryLand, so I can't reply to your entry comments. I have a help ticket in, hopefully that will be cleaned up.