One of My Most Embarrassing Moments

Let me tell you about the time I completely embarrassed myself in spin class.  It was an 8am class on a Sunday morning at SoulCycle.  There were maybe 10 people in the class that morning.  I chose the end bike in the very last row.  In this particular spin studio, the last row had two cutouts with 3 bikes in each.   The cutouts were surrounded by mirrors and mixed with the dim lighting, it created these weird reflections..  A random guy chose the bike one over from mine (the other end bike in our cutout).

The class began and I did my best to keep up with the instructor.  As always, the class was fast-paced and challenging, and I did what I could.  After our ride finished, the instructor told everyone to turn to the person beside them and give them a high-five; a reward for getting ourselves out of bed early on a Sunday morning.

Now, as I mentioned, there was a person one bike over from me but I didn’t know this guy and so I wasn’t about to give him a high-five.  Out of the corner of my eye, I see the reflection of the random guy in my cutout reaching his hand forward, and I thought to myself, “Great.  This guys wants to high five?  Ugh!  Annoying!!”  But I didn’t want to leave him hanging (because I’m not a monster and I know high-five etiquette), so I reached my hand up to return the high-five, but as I did I realized that he wasn’t actually reaching his up to give me a high-five… he was reaching his hand forward to grab his water bottle!!

So now, I’ve got my hand extended, ready to high-five and he’s reaching forward for his water bottle.  But as he’s reaching for his water bottle, he sees my hand up and then I think, “OMG!  This is horrible!  He didn’t want to high-five me, but now he thinks that I want to high-five him.”

So then out of pity and because he didn’t want to leave me hanging (apparently he wasn’t a monster, either), we awkwardly high-five’d… except there was an empty bike between us, and if you’ve ever been to a SoulCycle class you know you have to rent cycling shoes from them that clip into the bike, so it’s not like you can just step off your bike quickly to give a high-five.

So both myself and the random guy are now trying to lean over as far as we could so that we could high-five each other, all the while trying not to actually fall off our bikes.  The whole thing was made even worse by how far we had to reach over.

When we finally did make contact, it was the worst moment of my life (not to mention a really shitty high-five).  I could not wait to leave the class and never go back.  Why do awkward moments happen to seemingly good people??  Keep in mind, this all happened in a matter of about 120 seconds.

Anyway, that was my last SoulCycle experience; an embarrassment I will never forget.