This was taken early last summer in the Tampa Bay area. We have our sun back in the Sunshine State this week but the Canadian snowbirds brought their cold temps back for a month longer than we usually feel them!
I discovered the beauty of tanning beds this past Christmas/Hannukah though, and the best part? They only take 10 - 15 minutes out of one's day, and you BARELY break a sweat! (Barely
carries BOTH meanings here, LOL.) The beds are nice--warm and their fans create a steady little flow of air like a breeze through the bed's core air space. Hot Spot has 2 locations in the western Tampa Bay locale & mine has 5 private cubicles for lay-down-on-your-back tanning beds and 1 stand-up booth for tanning in the round & standing the whole 10 minutes! Only 10 min. in the stand-up cuz it's the newest tanning equipment bought and is that much more intense! (But 10 minutes is great for a quickie around lunchtime if you don't have another kind available.)
The time-operators of our reliable Hot Spot insure the indoor sun eclipses no later than 20 min after start! They set it up via remote computer and do not enter the private tanning cubicle you lock for privacy the whole time. The operator makes safety recommendations of 10 - 15 minutes for the 1st couple of baths til you see how you tan and get your skin used to it. I think this blog will start with things I wish I'd known before I hit the tanning booths. I did ask a couple of my bartenders & servers who have been using them for a few years and are very, very tan (and keep it up to look Florida-sexy year-round). They gave me some ideas before I started in booths and they answered questions that occurred BETWEEN sessions.
For awhile, it became my routine to go to the Hot Spot directly after leaving my bar & grill 2 or 3 days a week. It is wise to leave at least 1 day open between tanning sessions and most people only go a couple times a week. Hot Spot has a great "flat rate" of only $19/mo for unlimited days of tanning if you sign up to do that for a minimum of 1 year. If you go on vacation or have surgery or something else, you can put your account "on hold" and pick up any extended time for free after the contract period ends. (There IS a penalty of $50 to 'buy-out" early if you want to stop your contract permanently.) These are the policies at MY tanning spa; of course, others must vary some & it is probably worth shopping around for the best price deal!
The young, nude-tanning hedonists I know at my bar & grill thought it quaint that I asked if their tanning salons allowed totally-nude tanning. (A typical, conventional, tanning-bed newbie question?) For my first 2 shorter tanning sessions, I had "speedo" underwear on to tan as much as possible but protect what I thought might be extra sensitive areas never before exposed to sunlight. LOL. A very pretty server giving me advice later teased me to "wear a sock!" But I thought it was a GREAT idea! And ever since, I have gone nude with my complete genitalia shoved into a white athletic sock. (I gave her a modest souvenir pic of me later entitled "Cock-in-a-Sock!" LOL, it surprised her but was pretty well-received!)
Be sure to put SPF 45-50 over all tattoos or the repeated-trip exposures will destroy your colored ink quickly; if you tan well but don't use SPF45+, your skin's mellanin will eventually tan even the tattoo and make the tat mostly disappear! There is an AM-FM-CD player in each booth so you can bring in your fave music to tan by. Altho I could barely hear it once I turned the tanning bed on. Oh yes, upon entry, my spa's bed has the typical white towel which can be folded into a sunshield until an initial tan is acquired on "virgin" areas. I learned by burning the small of my back that I should have folded a little towel-triangle to place there the first few times. The operators also leave a melt-in-your-mouth peppermint candy on top of the towel for each new customer. Tastes/smells refreshing after a slightly dehydrating 20-minute tanning session.
The beds have a countdown timer to allow you 10 minutes to strip down, & put skin preps on (a dry tanning lotion as well as dry SPF if you like.) Sometimes, those lotions are available for purchase from the tanning spa in their front entryway -- it is not greasy and will not have to be cleaned up after you finish. After you leave, the operators do wipe down & sanitize all areas that you might have touched in the tanning booth, anyway. If you need an extra 5 minutes to use the bathroom or apply fast-tan lotion that the spa sells, let the operator know & they will accomodate you. The bed's countdown timer reads out your remaining session time once you start the machine. You can turn off the bed at any point short of the full time, but it will not re-start without reset from the front of the shop.
Sunhat and eye protection: You can purchase this protection right there at the spa at a very reasonable cost (lotions are pretty expensive, tho.) One of the nurses at my cardiologist's said she had gotten cataracts from unprotected tanning bed use -- she had used no eye covering when in HER spa's beds. For just a few bucks at my spa, I bought little plastic eyeball UV protectors that have a see-thru part. AND MOST IMPORTANT, when I don't need to look at anything, I SHUT MY EYES AS IF ASLEEP! Last summer, I noticed that my middle-aged hair started bleaching GRAY very fast when I would tan outdoors without a hat! Luckily, I have carried my Grandmother's brown hair genes into later middle-age. So I had already learned to wear a hat and, at the spa, I bought what looks like a special cloth shower cap to filter out much of the UV-rays which would bleach some of my brown hair to gray while indoors!
Good place to see girls too, I found!! There are often one or two pretty girls signing in ahead of me. They are always friendly, up-front, and usually "chat-able!" Sometimes, they will even run from one tanning booth to another to get something from a friend who is already ALL-nekkid and they are only TOPLESS! Woo-Hoo! I just happened to step out into the narrow hallway as she came by. Of course, Gentleman that I am, I turned my eyes away [sorta... ;-) ]. I wouldn't mind fucking her, NOW! May I have ONE Do-Over, please?
OK, if you've stayed all the way to here, I'll give you one more part-nekkid-me IN the tanning booth today. I like a "no-sweat" booth better, anyway! Next week, if you come back, I'll show you a little more of me in my tanning bed (birthday) suit. I can make this a strip-tease of sorts for a month of Thursdays out of just one Hot Spot trip!
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