If someone mapped my brain, 80 percent of it would glow a steady blue and orange, with the synapses simmering down during the off-season, then firing on all cylinders from spring training through to the playoffs and World Series. My team—the —do that to me every year. They’re in my blood, their wins and losses affect my moods, and I once told a date I didn’t feel well so I could go home and watch the game. This wasn’t true, but I had to do it, because the bar we were in didn’t carry the channel airing the action. Is this attachment emotionally healthy? Maybe not. But, physically, being a fan can be one of the healthiest things you do for yourself. Let’s break it down.

Step Count: The Long, Long Trip to the Yard

I live in suburban New Jersey, and I wear on my sleeve plays in Queens, so it takes significant physical activity just to get to the ballpark. On a typical game day, I leave home and walk a block to catch the NJTransit train to , where I then walk upstairs, across a platform, and then downstairs to another train that takes me to Manhattan’s Penn Station. From there I walk to either the A,C,E or the 1,2,3—routes on the New York subway system—and ride that for one stop to the Port Authority terminal on 8th Avenue. And then I walk some more and switch to the esteemed 7 Line.

The 7 is the Mets train, in that it deposits you right at the stop (Willets Point), except 
 when it doesn’t. Sometimes I think I’m on an express train (faster service, fewer stops!), but the 7 surprises me by converting to local service (too many stops!) at or near the Queensboro station, then going out of service altogether at 103rd or 111th streets, unceremoniously dumping a cadre of Mets fans onto the platform, forcing us to walk the rest of the way to the house that built. Our unexpected pilgrimage is punctuated with chants of “Let’s go, Mets” as I lay down an additional 1,000 steps on top of the 5,000 or so I’ve already done. Phew!

Let’s Play Ball! And Be Ready to Go On the Air.

Under the innovative direction of , the SportsNet New York (SNY) broadcasts of Mets games have consistently been the best show in all of Major League Baseball. The dream for fans like me is to score an moment, having an SNY camera land on you in the stands, prompting announcers , , to make favorable comments about your look as part of their award-winning banter. Like Ichiro Girl herself—a young woman named Iris Skinner, who was well-dressed and well-coiffed when her date with destiny happened—you need to prepare. That means going to the gym regularly, dressing right, and applying some make-up. After all, you’re going to a Mets game. Not a Jets game.

This past summer, I went to a road game in Pittsburgh, and I achieved the dream when GKR discussed the grammatical correctness (or lack thereof) of the Gary & Keith & Ron T-shirt I was wearing. (Gary wasn’t sure about using ampersands instead of commas; they all wanted to know if the name of Mets field reporter Steve Gelbs was on the back [no]; and Keith said he liked my shirt’s color scheme.) The possibility of another shining moment is enough for me to stick with a steady routine of working on my deltoids and biceps at the gym. The hope is that the fit of my Mets shirts is so good that being on TV will make some hot Mets fanboy propose to me on the Jumbotron, and then my mother can finally stop nagging me about not marrying the gorgeous furniture designer I dated in my twenties.

“Utah, Get Me !” A Fan’s Notes on Performance Nutrition.

I’m usually a traditionalist at the ballpark, so I’m perfectly content with a hot dog and fries or a simple sausage and pepper sandwich that’s about a foot long. But even traditionalists like options once in a while, and Citi Field has long understood the necessity for delicious snacks that take things to a higher level—for times when the game is stuck in rain delay, or we’re routing somebody 12 to 3, or an ace pitcher just experienced a season-ending injury and I need comfort food, stat.

To get to the specialty menu offerings, you must go to the top level (called the Promenade), which means climbing five flights of stairs. Yes, there are elevators, but they’re slow and small and COVID still exists, so you tackle the first set of steps and start climbing. “This is nothing, just a handful of single-leg step-ups,” you think as you breeze along, comparing your effort to something easy you do at the gym.

“OK, fine, these are more like weighted step-ups,” you say shortly after that, as the water bottle that security miraculously allowed you to bring in starts to feel as heavy as a kettlebell.

Then comes: “How am I not there yet?!” You internally scream as you realize that you kind of want to take a rest, but there’s nowhere to sit. And then you remember what awaits at the top: a fried chicken biscuit sandwich, Pig Beach BBQ’s “bases loaded” fries, or Murray’s buffalo mac and cheese. And did I mention cookies and ice cream?

So you charge ahead, with one more level to go to reach the promised land of deliciousness, knowing your butt and calves—and maybe your core if you are engaging!—will hate you tomorrow.

Dance Till You Drop: “Narco,” by Blasterjaxx and Timmy Trumpet

What was the song of summer, you ask? It was “,” the entrance music that was used whenever elite closer Edwin Díaz jogged onto the field to blow away the opposition and lock up a game for the Mets. The song became synonymous with Edwin’s incredible skills, so hearing it and seeing him come in generated excitement and delight in every sentient person who was in the stadium or watching at home.

himself was on hand to play it one night, just as Díaz left the bullpen during a game against the Dodgers. I was watching that game at home, and when the entrance happened, SNY made it clear that the atmosphere at Citi Field had become a full-on dance party—which I joined by bopping along solo in my living room. “Narco” is a song that makes you get up, and we all looked like we were rocking out at a bar mitzvah by the time the trumpets chimed in; awkward and slightly off beat, but with boundless joy and energy. Even if you don’t like to dance, you have no choice but to move your body when “Narco” plays. Maybe you’ll jump up and down, maybe you’ll shake your ass, but you will never be standing still. Dancing is excellent for your cardiovascular health! It builds endurance and enhances flexibility and balance!

The Axe Method for Relieving the Stress and Frustration of Enemy Teams

The 2022 Mets season has undoubtedly been a special one: 101 wins; Jeff McNeil earning the National League batting title; Max Scherzer getting his 200th win and Edwin Díaz his 200th save. was so charming and delightful when they mic’d him up for a game that he almost made us forget that this was for an ESPN broadcast instead of SNY.

But it’s baseball, it’s a long season, and it’s also the Mets—so, alas, there will be times when fate makes you want to punch things. A better alternative is ax-throwing, something I tried toward the end of the regular season, when the Mets were embroiled in a dramatic pennant race with the Atlanta Braves that we ultimately lost—still making the playoffs, mind you, but not winning the coveted crown to the National League East.

One Saturday afternoon, I, accompanied by another Mets fan, went to a place in Paramus, New Jersey, called , where they offer the best indoor game there is. (And, as a bonus, Sebastian—the axe master on duty—was also a Mets fan.) It’s really the perfect way to burn off your anxiety and resentment. You’re working your shoulders, your lats, your core! And, little by little with every strenuous toss, you’re chipping away at how mad you are that they couldn’t win just one game in Atlanta in their last road series, or that they gave away a reliever you liked at the trade deadline. Even anger contributes to our fitness! We are the healthiest fandom by far! And an added bonus if your throwing companion happens to be tall, strong and handsome, watching him fling axes at the wall is hella sexy and helps you forget the pain.

This team has undoubtedly caused me to suffer over the years. My earliest memories are from 1987 at Shea, a season coming off a World Series win, when I was six years old and I already loved these guys (mainly because one had the last name Strawberry). But even at a young age I could feel the energy and excitement in the air. I’ve felt that energy and electricity again in the early- and mid-aughts, then in 2015, and now this year. I’m all in for these guys and always will be. But, on the off chance that my October baseball get cut short, you can find me throwing more axes in Paramus, toning my arms for SNY broadcasts in the spring of 2023. !

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I don’t want to sound too optimistic, but it looks like this summer is seeing a return to the vigorous outdoor activities that are a gateway to one of my favorite things: the post-activity shower. Granted, we all showered a lot during the lost year of the pandemic, but for some reason, the shower you take after a hard day of laptopping in your pajamas isn’t as good as the one you take after mountain biking, swimming at the beach, backpacking, fishing, or flying halfway around the world. Showers that follow a day of exercise, exploration, or travel have a transformative power, giving you a refreshing reset and a thirst for getting back out there. Below, with some input from a few fellow hot-water experts, are my personal top ten.

The I-Just-Spent-72-Hours-in-a-Tent Shower

The thing about backpacking and camping is that your skin and hair are exposed to multiple coats of grimy, smelly substances, and they all meld together into a malodorous layer of sweat, bug spray, dirt, and campfire smoke. When you’re in the wild, you succumb to the diverting natural experience of sleeping under the stars, and you don’t realize how gross you are until you go home and step into that post-camping shower, which is absolutely luxurious. So what if a friend accidentally spilled boiling coffee on your $400 puffy jacket? Doesn’t matter now. And while it might take a few days to get all the dirt out from under your fingernails, you emerge feeling clean, fresh, and ready for a restorative round of wine and Netflix.

The Attitude Adjuster

I had a track coach in high school who liked to say, “Nervous sweat smells twice as bad as regular sweat.” In response, I always showered before a race to ward off anxious perspiration. While I was at it, I did some pregame meditation, calming myself while I visualized 3.1 miles of “contained sprint,” as the veterans on my cross-country team liked to call it. șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű contributor Eva Holland, author of , takes a slightly different approach: she thinks about the shower she’ll take after the stress and hard work are done. “You’re like, Oh, man, the next time I’m in the shower, this adventure race will be over one way or another,” she says. “Meanwhile, I hope these French braids hold up—and also my body.”

The Itch Reliever

An unfortunate by-product of any activity in a wooded area is possible exposure to that dreaded plant: poison ivy. I was on a night run once in the neighborhood where I grew up, and showed off for some porch-sitters by leaping onto and off of a retaining wall, tramping through what I thought were rhododendrons before going back to the pavement. Less than two days later, poison ivy’s evil active ingredient, , had done its rash-causing thing on both my legs, part of my left arm, and one of my eyeballs. The only relief I felt over the next two weeks was when I stepped into the shower. I ran the water colder than usual, because that almost numbed the incessant itchy feeling, if only briefly.

The Slathered-in-SPF-75, Sand-in-Every-Crevice Shower

In theory, beach-house living is more refined than campsite living. But as I know from growing up in New Jersey, the beach—properly known as “”—can really mess you up, thanks to salt, sand, copious applications of sunblock, and those chicken necks you used as bait while crabbing off a pier. Sometimes, tragically, you aren’t able to take a shower before heading home. Whether you’re ensconced in the air-conditioned comfort of your own vehicle or relegated to public transportation, you become intensely aware of the sand covering every square inch of your body. When you finally hit the shower, watching all that grit flow away is a true delight. “Beach showers are a lifesaver,” says șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű editorial director Alex Heard, who used to go to the coast a lot in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. “Preferably, the place you’re renting has a one-two setup—an outdoor shower for the initial emergency removals, then indoors for more soapy fine-tuning.”

The Post-șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Race Shower(s)

Years ago, after competing in an obstacle-course-riddled fitness competition that ended with me swimming through a muddy canal, I started my recovery with a shower provided by the event organizers: cold water from a hose. There was a time limit, and there were still eight more layers of dirt left on my body when I had to relinquish it for the next person. I understood that this sploosh was offered mainly so competitors could feasibly get in their cars without ruining their interiors, but a half-assed shower when I’m that dirty makes me feel even worse: cold, wet, with the grime merely moved around, like on a finger painting. While my focus was on obtaining the physically clean feeling, Kat Scicluna, my racing partner that day, took it to an existential level and recalls that her post-mud shower “was like washing away any fear or lack of confidence in myself that I could start something so physical and actually finish it.”

Once I got home, I stood in the shower and scrubbed and scrubbed until the water finally ran clear, and yet I could still smell something unpleasantly pungent. It was mud that had caked so far up my nose that I couldn’t even see it. This is when I learned that cotton-tipped swabs aren’t just for ears.

The Hangover Shower after the Post-șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Race Celebration

Once you’ve completed an adventure race or triathlon, it’s customary to invoke the power of the highly regarded shower beer. This can lead to many more beers post-shower, which will often lead to a hangover shower the following day. You wake up with sore muscles and the unwelcome smell of alcohol and other signs of reckless abandon. But then the water hits your skin, washing away the retrospectively bad decision of calling your friends at 1 A.M. to coerce them into singing Celine Dion’s cover of “”

The Shower You Have to Take Twice

Be warned that a hangover shower like this may not “take,” so you might have to try again. George Constanza immortalized this phenomenon in of Seinfeld, when he described an upcoming business meeting that made him nervous, and then mentioned an earlier shower that didn’t quite cut it: “Argh, it wouldn’t take 
 ten minutes from now, I’ll be sweating all over again, I can feel it. I’m a human heat pump!” According to , a holistic psychotherapist based in Washington, D.C., George was onto something, because the context of your shower can affect how it feels. “Showering is a routine action,” she says, “but if your body is physiologically in a different place, you can’t expect the same results taking the usual kind of shower.” So don’t be shy about going back in, and let’s get it right this time.

The AprĂšs-Journey Shower

Remember flying on commercial airlines? What a time that was! And how good a shower felt when the closest thing you had to cleaning up in the 24 hours before touchdown was the wet napkin that came with your $9 snack box of stale crackers, hummus, and an off-brand Slim Jim. The post-long-flight shower is the most incredible sensation; it’s like you’re washing off all the recycled air, airport stench, and shuttle-bus exhaust. When you’re finally in your hotel room after an arduous travel day, this beautiful shower banishes the funk and gives you a sense of cleanliness, satisfaction, and peace.

The AprĂšs-Hunting Shower

This is a type of shower I haven’t experienced—and don’t intend to, as the closest I’ll ever come to field-dressing an animal is eating a steamed lobster—but I find it compelling nonetheless. Longtime șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű contributor Dave Cox heads out into the woods every fall to try and bag an elk for his freezer, using nothing more than his wits and a bow and arrow. It’s a demanding sport, because if you succeed, you have to haul elk meat out of the woods as fast as you can. Cox recalls one hunt in which he had to lug 75 pounds of elk for several miles, while under attack by bloodthirsty yellow jackets. What was the shower like after stripping off the gross-out clothing? “Hands down, best one I ever had,” he says.

The Big Un-Chill

Many rom-coms will lead you to believe that winter sports and activities are inherently romantic. That’s not exactly the case when the temperature is so low that you’ve lost all feeling in every extremity and your whole face. After many runs down the mountain, ice crystals begin to take up residency in your eyelashes and eyebrows. This is when you have to stand in the shower for a solid 30 minutes, as your nerves slowly come back to life from their cryogenic state, before even picking up the loofah and soap. The worst moments, of course, are those few seconds between taking off all your ice-encrusted layers and stepping into that life-changing shower. Just ask Matt Mason, formerfirst assistant director for the beloved, long-running . He often works 13-hour days outside in New York winters. “I feel the cold in my bones,” he says, and he always looks forward to that time at the end of a frigid day “when I call wrap, and we’re all ‘done-done,’ and then I run-run to a hot shower.”

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Only one other person showed up at the designated meeting spot, though at least she brought trail mix. Everybody else wussed out. All the shared excitement from the previous night—about our big plan to hike through a Maryland state park that contained what we’d been told were the actual woods from —had vanished by the time our alarms went off early that morning.

I was disappointed but not truly mad that there weren’t more of us. It was 2001, we were students at the University of Delaware, and we’d decided to go along on a bus ride with a campus club that was doing a day trip to Maryland. But we were all talk sometimes, buzzed and holding our red Solo cups, filled to the brim with Natty Ice while we made grandiose plans—usually without a shred of coherent thought as to what shape we might be in the next day.

I only got mad later. Not just at the people I was hanging around with back then for being kind of obnoxious, but also at myself for continuing to travel with them.

Because I partially blame myself for the mistakenly high expectations I had about the concept of group travel in those days. In theory, it seemed so glamorous and grown-up. When I was a teenager in New Jersey, desperate to be old enough to experience road trips and adult vacations, I should have paid more attention to how every movie or TV show I loved depicted these activities as featuring a fair amount of drama. Then I might have anticipated that my longed-for cabin-in-the-woods weekends—all hot tubs, sex, and beer—would end up feeling more like a slasher film where everyone gets murdered by a chainsaw-wielding psychopath.

“Włó±đ°ù±đ were you?” The accusatory statement hit me the moment I came through the door of a rented condo in the Catskills one winter.

“I’m sorry, did you think I’d gone missing?”

The question was rhetorical, because we both knew she hadn’t been concerned for my safety. “She” being the self-proclaimed organizer of that particular trip, and God forbid someone step out on her pristine and careful itinerary. Everyone had been napping after a late night, and I’d gone on a walk through the grounds of the resort we were in. I’d discovered that the spa had a last-minute opening for a massage, and I was on vacation, after all. (I thought.)

But apparently my absence prevented everyone from doing anything, because we weren’t all together to make a group decision, and Organizer Lady was pissed. Which made no sense, given that the group’s decisions were always just a disguised version of her telling us what she wanted to do, and no one argued.

In general, something always fell apart when my crew formulated any kind of travel plans. New Orleans, Disney World, Las Vegas, upstate New York, the Jersey Shore—the location didn’t matter. There would be someone who didn’t like heights (me), someone who didn’t want to do much walking on a tour (not me), someone who was late, making us miss the shuttle to this thing or that (definitely not me).

Back then, there was a core—sort of. We were all women, college friends in our twenties, getting together in groups that usually started with two people having an idea for a trip, then inviting friends who also invited friends, so that on any given trip you’d probably know half the people fairly well and the other half in name only. It was an understandable mismatching of personalities based on the shared experiences of living in dorms together and thinking that would transfer over to being together anywhere. Because if you can share a communal shower, you can handle anything, right? (Wrong.)

During that weekend of skiing in the Catskills, a sullen “we all go or we don’t go” attitude marred every single thing we attempted to do, including breakfast, snow tubing, and a Golden Oldies night at a lodge that had a very strong Dirty Dancing vibe.

If someone didn’t want to go, what was the point of guilting them into it by announcing that unless they went, no one would? If someone didn’t feel up to or couldn’t handle a walking tour, why all the huffing and muttering? Just let them lie by the pool and read a book or blow their money at a slot machine if that’s their preference when you’re in Las Vegas! (No, I’m not still upset about that one.)

“What the hell do you mean no one is coming to pick me up?!” I shrieked in the quiet NJTransit train car, earning several disapproving looks and a hushed “Language, please!” from a mom with her two young kids.

I was on my way to a beach house that we’d all chipped in for ahead of time. The two organizers had said the money would go toward a big dinner and enough booze for both days. I couldn’t get off early from work on that particular Friday, so I missed the various carpools leaving New York and was relegated to taking the slow, bumpy, often-delayed train into New Jersey.

Earlier, when I explained my predicament about work, I was promised that there were at least two nondrinkers with cars who could come pick me up at the train station, which was a couple miles from the beach house. But then, when I was one stop away, my phone rang. It was someone from the house calling to say, oops, sorry, everybody is drunk, so no one can come get you after all. The cab companies I called quoted $45 to $60 to travel the two miles from the station to the house. Without any options, I grudgingly forked over the dough.

After the exorbitant cab ride, I arrived to find that the dinner and wine had already been snarfed. It was 4:30 p.m. I was sheepishly offered half a bowl of lukewarm rigatoni and a bottle of water, making me mad enough to say, prior to my first bite: “This better be the best fucking rigatoni I’ve ever eaten.”

Rigatoni Weekend is when I gave up and officially decided that my answer to group trip invitations going forward would be an across-the-board hell no. As nerve-wracking as this position was, and after all the Lifetime movies I’d seen that scarred me about traveling alone, I thought I had to bite the bullet, because no fear of mine was worse than overpriced pasta.

Going forward, I didn’t want to compromise so hard on a potential daily activity that no one ended up liking anything we chose to do. I wanted to be the travel director and itinerary planner. The one who made all the decisions without having to check with anyone else or uncomfortably stretch my budget to fit the group dynamic.

And for years, it was glorious. I rented a beachfront apartment on the Jersey Shore, all on my own. Made several trips to California, where I did portions of the coast drive, stopping whenever the hell I felt like it. Went to Indianapolis to visit all the Kurt Vonnegut tourist spots, like the nerd that I am. My biggest solo trip—a month in Iceland—was life-changing, but it was also the first time I felt a nagging sense that maybe, just maybe, I wished my friends were there with me.

Years passed, and I no longer had relationships going with the people who’d driven me crazy in the past. Now I was using WhatsApp, FaceTime, and iMessage to talk to my new friends every day from Iceland, whenever I saw some beautiful waterfall, black-sand beach, or lagoon that I knew they would love. I was saying “wish you were here” and meant it.

All my solo travel had taught me to embrace the fact that I actually was something of a control freak, and that, in the old days, I hadn’t been surrounding myself with people I could be honest with. All the exhausting round-robin conversations—with everyone casually saying, “Yeah, I’m easy, I’ll do whatever,” when the opposite was true—seemed long behind me. I’m not that easy! I’ll admit it now! It just seemed easier to tolerate the seemingly well-intentioned whims of others than to fight for what I wanted to do or spend.

Thanks to a combination of my failing to sound off and choosing ill-suited travel companions, I ended up not enjoying my trips and regretting my expenditures. I had shouted from the rooftops for a decade that group travel was terrible, but it wasn’t, necessarily. When group travel didn’t live up to what I’d hoped for, I blamed the whole institution instead of examining the various individual components. Including myself.

I know now that the right kind of group travel lets anyone involved make decisions and might include smaller groups splitting off for various activities, with some people doing solo adventures and catching up for dinner.

Or maybe not! It just takes time to find your group, and there might be different groups, depending on the kind of trip. Imagine thinking you have to do everything with the same people all the time, no matter what it is. Who knew that you could do solo travel and group travel and it could all be great? Actually, lots of people probably knew, but it blew my mind.

In May, I did my first group travel trip in years: to Miami, where we all had a wonderful time. Our beach stints were mostly together, but we ate, went shopping, looked at art, took naps, got coffee, and went for walks in various twos and threes without any set schedule or drama. When someone wanted to go back to the hotel because they were tired, they went without getting grief. If someone wanted to get up early and go do yoga on the beach, they went, while the rest of us pretended not to think about our unhealthy choices!

So, I don’t speak ill of group travel anymore. I’ve made my peace, and we’re all cool now. Which is also the reason I can confidently say that I would rather throw myself down a sewer grate and feed myself to the raccoons than go on your big group camping trip next weekend. I don’t care if there are s’mores.

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