GYM PROS: Sumner ISD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9TuvyDAHIA
For a delivery as far out as Kentwood, Louisiana, you want to get started early, which is why we left Houston at 6 AM and drove east, right into the rising sun. But before you take off, you’ve got to put your delivery together.
Right at the start of this video, you’ll see Chris and the assembly crew cobbling all the machines and benches together.
We are experts in making weights for lifting, but as Gym Pros, we know that the fewer weights we lift at one time, the more we’ll be able to move over the long haul. That’s why you see us pushing and pulling dollies wherever possible.
As you can see, at the 1:45 mark, we were traveling over bridges and bayous, moving into Louisiana swamp country. I'm a Lufkin native myself, so I always feel more at home, more comfortable when I’m out of the piney woods and into the wetlands. It's just more familiar.
What wasn’t familiar was Sumner ISD, a place I’d never heard of before, but it looked like a classic Louisiana high school: sturdy buildings, enthusiastic students, and wise teachers quick with old Southern truisms. I know for sure they’re more resistant to the heat than I am because it was 100 degrees outside (maybe more), and the football players were out running scrimmages. As soon as they saw us, the whole team came crowding round the truck, offering to help us unload the new equipment. I didn’t get any footage of them pitching in (you never know who’s going to object to their kid being on YouTube), but we were grateful for the help.
You can see Oscar there, our general manager. Then there’s Delfino, a veteran driver and builder, Reydel, and Yanoski. The person you don’t see is me, the camera guy, but you can clock some of the dirty looks I was getting. That’s Reydel comparing the weight of my Sony A7S3 to the 11 and 7-gauge steel beams he’s been carrying around all day.
The boys' gym looked well-used, the walls marked by decades of exercise. You could tell that a lot of muscle was built here. On the whiteboard (which you can see in a few shots), they had the workout for the week and some words of inspiration: “There are two things you can control every day,” it said, “effort and attitude.”
No disrespect to the coaches at Sumner, but I can’t seem to control either. Probably why I didn’t go all-state when I played football for Corrigan County. Yeah, that's the only reason. The whiteboard also had a graphic of the word Me turned into the word We. . . or maybe it was the other way around. I don’t know. If you can’t tell, I’m not very good at inspirational iconography.
The girls' gym looked a lot more pristine, at least to me. Maybe it was a more recent paint job. Maybe the girls just don’t scuff the walls as much, but I shall leave such speculations to those with the inclination to pursue them.
Enough about me and my bad attitude, the overall install took us about eight hours on the first day and six hours on the second day. It was a huge job, dozens of racks assembled, thousands of pounds of exercise equipment unloaded and installed, and (probably) hundreds of hot wings eaten. There was a Wing Stop nearby; the other guys prefer Buffalo Wild Wings, but they have no taste.
Our drive back was just as slow as our drive out there, even though both of our trucks were several tons lighter; I don’t mind. I like watching the stumps in the water whip past my window. It reminds me of when I’d go fishing with my dad on Lake Rayburn back in Nacogdoches. Maybe I can’t control my attitude every day, but the Louisiana swamps always put me in a good state of mind.