You know how the story goes. There was a time when you could buy a loaf of bread for fifteen cents and a gallon of gas was 19.9. Today blah, blah, blah. Well, there was a time when people thought anyone who lifted weights was crazy, and you could fit them all in one padded cell. Today, though they were right, you would need a small country to contain the crazed bodybuilders running loose across the world. A bunch of them were in Columbus, Ohio, this past weekend at the Arnold Global Fitness EXPO 2001, including Laree and me.

The scene was a cross between a zoo, a circus and a grand vaudeville act. The vast zillion-square-foot convention center housed 600 exhibit booths and the vociferous ongoing challenges in bench pressing, arm wrestling, martial arts, cheerleading and gymnastics. Friday through Sunday the fans crammed the aisles and roamed the colorful counters and elaborate displays like hungry buffalo on the range in spring. Moms and dads with kids in tow, guys with their lats spread and girls with their lats spread, a sufficient number of truly creature-beings of unusual proportions with imaginative garments clinging here and there and everyone with some variety of camera at the ready, digital to cardboard discardable.

Laree and I were positioned at a table attached to the popular American Bodybuilding Beverage Company where eventually all the pros stopped by to visit and offer autographs. We observed the observers and were in turn observed. Very weird but that�s what one does at these events. This went on for three days in a row, six hours at a clip and it�s exhausting. This meant no smelly tuna fish for six hours, very little water (as the john was a mile away) and no sitting �cuz you look bored, useless and small. We smiled till it hurt and invented subjects to talk about while we stood alone lest we appeared dull and dim-witted.

The truth is we seldom stood alone. There is a large force of thirty, forty and fifty-some who admire the champions of today as one admires a racehorse. I understand. I love the large sleek animal with its muscle alive and rippling, no evidence of fat anywhere. The readiness and strength it exhibits is palpable, a dessert to the primitive senses. Yet, these same enthusiasts cast their eyes downward and declare that they miss the good old days before it became so, well... different. Laree estimated with reason and consideration that I took some five hundred pictures with these good folks (that�s 500 handshakes or embraces, 500 flashes, 500 smiles and brief if not extended conversations, thank yous and good byes) and most of them, male and female, surprisingly mentioned their discontent.

We had a magnificent time, hard work but immensely rewarding. The reception by the fans, some of whom traveled half the globe to participate, was warming, energetic and genuine. They love to lift weights, intend to start someday soon, sincerely hope to get back into it again, are plain and simple fans with admittedly no personal interest in exercise or haven�t missed a workout in twenty years. They�re mostly confused with what they see in the mags and on the stage. They can�t identify with the new muscleman and, therefore, don�t have a model or champion or star upon whom they can focus their admiration and respect. No one to look toward, follow or be like. No real, warm flesh and blood and personality. The fan is frustrated, feeling unconnected and apart. What the average, aspiring, muscle-building aficionado sees is extreme-sport weirdness with every bit of the risk and exaggeration.

�Where do I fit in?� they wonder, �Of whom shall I be a fan?�