There are few things more exciting than starting a new job — no, a new career. However, the prospect of soon washing off the grit and grime of hundreds of miles and several days is a pretty close second.

I didn’t walk far through the streets of Oasis Springs, staring at my phone screen for GPS directions, before I found myself at the 24-hour gym I’d been searching for. Cleanliness was finally within my grasp, and I can’t really communicate the extent of my anticipation at not smelling like a filthy wet frog any longer.

I’d give you a full tour and a rundown of their fitness equipment, in case you came here looking for a review, but this isn’t Yelp, and frankly, I wasn’t paying much attention to the exercise bikes and weightlifting paraphernalia. My mind was singularly focused on two things: running water and soap.

I quickly located the showers, and I could almost feel the warmth of a hot shower caressing my face as it ran down in heavenly rivulets, cleansing me of the collected filth of countless miles and a great deal of frog excrement.

Have you ever experienced something that felt so good that you wanted it to last forever? That’s how this shower felt. The cascading waters that flowed forth from that showerhead felt like all the love I’d ever experienced in my life, intermixed with the caring of a thousand mothers and the indescribable joy of rebirth. I was being transformed from earth to flesh, like Adam in Genesis. To me was restored the lost power of my ancestors, and the will and strength to take on the world, to smite my enemies and claim a world that was always destined to be mine to conquer.

I might be overstating it a bit, but it was a pretty good shower.

It felt great to finally be clean again, though I was more than a little exhausted after meandering through an urban metropolis, a damp swamp, and a barren desert since I had last slept. I didn’t even bother to get dressed before locating a bench in what looked like a little-used section of the gym. I had only closed my eyes for a few moments before I drifted off to sleep.

When I awoke early the next morning, I briefly panicked. Then I checked my phone and calculated that, if I left right away, I was going to have just enough time to make it back to Del Sol Valley in time to start my first day at work. My quest for cleanliness having reached a triumphant end, I headed out the door to return to my new home town of Del Sol Valley, ready to face whatever challenges my new job might throw at me.

Then I turned around, ran back into the gym, and grabbed the clothes I’d left in a pile next to the shower. There, now I was ready.