GLADYS DONGO AND THE FITNESS FLYER (1)
Date: 1999/12/23
It is reported that Ms Gladys Dongo, the well-known celebrity, is to sue the manufacturers and distributors of the exercise machine known as the Fitness Flyer.
The Fitness Flyer, along with the Health Walker and other similar devices, is a contraption that enables the user to walk a hell of a long way without actually going anywhere, as has been demonstrated ad nauseam on the TV. At the end of it, users are supposed to emerge fitter, healthier, and infinitely sexier.
The Fitness Flyer in question was installed last Wednesday at the Nyamandhlovu hideaway which Ms Dongo shares with her friend and mentor, Professor Isosceles Vilikazi, the well-known etc etc etc.
Initially, Ms Dongo's experience with the Fitness Flyer was trouble free. Swinging her thighs back and forth, she was able to simulate the walking experience, while reading out, on the electronic counter provided, the number of steps she was taking, as well as the number of calories consumed in the process.
The problem started as Ms Dongo got the hang of the machine and began to increase speed. After about seven minutes, she was operating at 180 paces per minute, and burning 327.6 calories per second.
According to her lawyers, this translates into a virtual walking speed which they would only describe as "significant".
At this point, the Fitness Flyer, which is designed as a sedentary device, apparently began to move.
Ms Dongo, being unfamiliar with the machine, at first presumed that this was normal. However, when the machine, with Ms Dongo aboard, crashed through the east wall of the residence and continued across the lawn into the bush beyond, she began to suspect that something might be amiss.
Details of the path of the Flyer are not entirely clear. A herdsman between Nyamandhlovu and the Victoria Falls Road reported three cows dead and the rest stampeded, but otherwise it is not known exactly how Ms Dongo reached the main road and turned north.
Another witness, Mr Astonished Mkizi (38), recounted that he had been dozing outside the trading store at Lupane when he had heard the sound of what he took to be an approaching motorcycle. Mr Mkizi, a Harley Davidson enthusiast, stood up to take a look. However, the oncoming object turned but not to be a motorcycle at all, but the Fitness Flyer, with Ms Dongo still firmly attached.
Asked how fast it was going, Mr Mkizi said that the slipstream had knocked him arse-over-tit into the bushes, so he couldn't actually say. However, he did estimate that it was cruising at an altitude of about three feet.
The affair turned into an international incident when the Flyer reached the border post at Victoria Falls. It crashed through the control boom, flattened the Chief Customs Officer, and entered onto the Zambezi suspension bridge, where it knocked an Australian bungee jumper over the parapet.
Unfortunately, his bungee cord had not yet been attached. Police are withholding his identity until his next of kin have been informed.
At this point, however, the runaway Flyer was at last brought to a halt, by the fortunate arrival of a southbound goods train that happened to be on the bridge at the same time.
In the resulting head-on collision, both the Fitness Flyer and the locomotive were totally written off, while Ms Dongo suffered shock, bruises, impairment of dignity, two cracked ribs and a broken toe.
Ms Dongo was not able to explain why she had simply not stopped swinging her thighs when the machine got out of control. Professor Vilikazi indicated that he knew exactly why, but was not prepared to speak because it would prejudice Ms Dongo's legal action against the Fitness Flyer people.
A spokesman for the distributors of Fitness Flyer was understandably tight-lipped, but indicated that both he and the manufacturers were very surprised at what had happened.
"Ms Dongo is an unusually strong woman," he observed.
Notwithstanding her impending legal action for damages, Ms Dongo has ordered another Fitness Flyer, as she is planning to visit her cousin in Chirugwi in the New Year.