Y, oh, Y!

Photo: Steven Evans

I am in love with a building. I've fallen in love with a city before on first sight -- that being Edinburgh, Scotland, with its castle rising above green parks, and sweeping me into the 18th century.
And certainly I've been enamoured and impressed with buildings and architecture in the past.

But rarely have I seen a structure so well-designed and suited to its purpose than the Metro Central YMCA.

I joined the 'Y' last weekend to help my middleaged, rusting body try to regain a sense of form and life. I can't say it was love at first sight, though its pool beckoned through glass as I walked in the doors. No, it was a gradual awareness and appreciation over my first week that everything about the place has been thought-out, is amazingly functional, and aesthetically pleasing.
And it's a gym!

It's a gym that inspires, from its airy pools to its centrepiece of stairs that climbs like Mayan steps, challenging and beckoning.

I think it's going to become a second home -- to which my body will say thank you.