My web development class is becoming more relaxed and informal now that we have completed the core material. The kids, who I would presume range in age from mid-twenties to what I appears to be late fifties or early sixties, have become comfortable enough with the course, the material, and the general environment, to enjoy making wisecracks about me. This is a good sign, and I encourage it.
Although they were originally a very quiet group, they have become more animated as well. Often, when I am not lecturing, they strike up conversation amongst themselves. Another good sign. And I hope the course evaluations they filled out this past Saturday reflected what I perceive to be their positive impression of the course.
Nevertheless, after 9 hours of teaching, one needs a shvitz to wash away the heavy layer of sticky grime that comes along with several hours of personal responsibility. And so it came to pass that Elliot and I arranged to once again meet up after class, to ford the Hudson River, overcome the flats of Teaneck, to brave the inclement climes of BRC Sauna and Spa, the New Jersey banya.
Elliot is rumoured to have driven there many times before. Yet both occasions on which we have gone together, he has forgotten the route. Our first stop was NYU’s Coles gym, where I rushed to pick out a pair of shorts and old plastic flip-flops from my locker in the unspecified-gendered men’s locker room. Once back in the climate-conditioned microcosm of the VW wagon, we reminisced unironically about the masculine tuna salad fiasco, worked ourselves into a particulate froth of bitterness. And a few miles past the George Washington bridge we found ourselves unsure of whether our last turn off of the highway had been correct. Luckily my iPhone GPS was able to direct us down NJ Route 4 to Fair Lawn, NJ, where the banya is located in the basement beneath a nondescript mini-mall, in typical suburban New Jersey fashion.
Elliot stayed in the car, as is etched in tradition, and I proceeded alone, down the cavernous steps, past the monumental statuettes of lions prancing on their hind legs, and into the windowless brown basement lobby of the BRC Sauna and Spa, the NJ banya. To my despair, instead of the humorlessly bear-chested Russian man of two weeks yore, a short scrawny Israeli-looking girl checked me in, took my wallet and iPhone for storage in a secure locker, had the chutzpah to begin explaining the banya system to me, and eventually shut up when I cut her off with a sharp wave of the hand. Finally she gave me a key to locker #7 in the men’s changing room.
Opening locker #7, it was empty. I filled it with my undergarments, overgarments, footwear, and then I slipped on my gym shorts, flipped my feet into their flops, and made my way along a rectangular path that surrounds the enclosed, windowed, immaculate swimming pool room: first along the main sitting area near the bar, then past the narrow sitting area that takes you around the long side of the swimming pool room, finally past the tertiary sitting area at the top of the swimming room, and around the corner into the Turkish steam room.
Here is an attempt at a map of the floor plan:
New Jersey Banya Floor Plan
The banya was almost empty. The Turkish room was entirely empty, and it was hot. I immediately jumped on the bed of stones and began stomping back and forth. The rocks are tightly packed, and don’t move easily. So one really has to stomp into them to get a thorough workout of the soles of one’s feet. Although I had been skeptical and self-conscious of this rock bed the last time, this time it was is extremely therapeutic, and I continued to stomp for five minutes, until my body had rediscovered its connection with the earth (assuming it had once known such a thing).
Then I sat down on a bench and admired the sparkle of cleanliness on what little bit of the tiling I could see through the almost impenetrable fog. Not a drop of water fell from the ceiling in this well designed cavernous space. I recalled the filth of the Turkish room in the Wall Street banya, and this just reinforced my feeling of current well being.
After 10 more minutes of sitting in ecstasy, I left to rediscover Elliot in the sitting room area the bar. We then ventured together into the dry sauna, which was scorchingly hot, even hotter than the hot last time. A look at the thermostat revealed a temperature of nearly 210 degrees Farenheit, where it stayed the entire night.
Time and again we entered the dry sauna, sat for a while, jumped in the cold plunge, pulled the lever for the gravity dump, sat down near the bar for a few minutes, and repeated, until hours later, I had reached the spot that I had been seeking. In the dry sauna, I learned to sit with my flip-flops underneath my butt, because they had begun to melt. Without sitting on them, putting the flip-flops on my feet after being in the sauna for just 5 minutes was like walking on burning coals with molten glass wrapped around the tops of my feet. One time experiencing that is enough, and I saw that my choices were to either sit on them each time, or walk barefoot out of the sauna, which itself would have been a harrowing ordeal.
I won’t bore you with every last detail of the excellent, superb heat of the dry sauna, the lukewarm temperature in the unaromatic “aromatherapy” sauna, the unenthusiastic feelings I felt towards the perfectly adequate but lackluster shvitz, the inexplicably lightweight mug of beer I ordered which only cost $3, the pleasure of sipping a bottle of Baltika #5 in the banya whereas I would never have #5 in normal daily life, or my surprising lack of desire to sample the food after watching Elliot maneuver a masculine tuna and biodiesel garlic potatos down his hatch.
But I have confirmed for myself, if there was any doubt, that New Jersey banya is good banya for enthusiastic intelligent-type.
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Nov 25, 2009 
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