| Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:31 PM | ||
| ||
Some of the course is under water - keep checking back with us for updates on the race's new date. Sorry about this guys.
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Friday, June 7, 2013
GYNOMERICA
When did we become a nation of vaginas?
I don't mean that in the literal sense, of course -- nearly fifty percent of us sport penises and generally the attendant scrotums -- I mean it figuratively and I hope offensively. That is: when did we become a nation populated by people without any balls?
Before you have an estrogen hissy, yep, I am aware that when we speak of balls as a metaphor for courage, or toughness, or tenacity, or even simply balls as the inclination to stand one's ground, that women can have balls commensurate with men's. Or bigger.
But the thing is, generally women don't. Which puts them in a dead heat with men, who don't have any either. It's a tie. I can't diagnose the causes, with so many to choose from. Suspects include our national panic over liability, which is the flip side of our national zeal to sue when our feelings get hurt. Couple that problem with this other likely perp: we are, excepting you and a few of your friends, lazy, apathetic nerf herders.
But it is our fear of getting into trouble, and of being held accountable, that I speak of here.
Our collective pussification comes to mind because of a local 15K race. The race either is or isn't tomorrow, depending on the sponsor's stomach for risk. See, this race, the Crimestoppers Azalea Run, was scheduled for May 4th, 2013 but was rained out. Yep. Called for rain. Not lightning, not the thunder that forebodes it; not a tornado watch; not impassible roads or even power outage.
Cancelled for rain. And not even actual rain during the actual race. Yep, they called it for puddles. Certainly, lawns were soaked from the night before, and indeed there was standing water around the course. But you've run in way worse. And will again.
When we showed up at the starting line, we noticed dozens of entrants collecting their t-shirts and walking back to their cars. The lady from Crimestoppers explained with a straight face that the race had been called off. We scoffed. She became defensive and averred "the course is underwater!"
Acceptable retorts included:
A. Awesome!
B. So what?
C. Not so.
But she had made up her mind. And so the race that benefits crime victims, sponsored by an organization who exhorts them to be resolute and not retreat from evil -- that race was cancelled because no one should be expected to get wet for the cause.
I read recently where some health expert conjectured that only three percent of Americans can run three miles without stopping. I hope this isn't true, because if it is we really are a nation of pussies. But if it is, then the people showing up at a local 15K are arguably among the toughest 3 percent of Americans. Yet we can't expect them to run in rain?
There is blame to share all around. I also take to task we entrants, who paid 30 to 45 dollars to race, depending on when we signed up. We got ourselves down to the north end of Forsyth Park, learned the race was arbitrarily cancelled -- and then for the most part accepted our t-shirts without remonstrating, and said things like "hey, let's go get pancakes." Indeed, that is a direct quote. From a friend who, as she uttered it, was pulling on the t-shirt from the race she had just finished not running.
Me: Well, you're here, ready to run. Why not run anyway, then get breakfast?
Her: They called the race.
Me: Yes. Absurd. Still, you're here to run, so run.
Her: T-shirt! (she was pointing to it). They cancelled the race. Breakfast time.
Me: Stay dry.
As an aside, this supports my suspicion that the t-shirt is a lot of why people show up for these things. But this woman runs three or four times a week with a running group. I see her in the park when I'm running. I don't do organized group runs, but I am pretty sure you don't get a t-shirt every day.
So, some friends and I ran the course anyway, since we had paid, bothered to show up and -- this was a bunch of triathletes -- we would have been training on any Saturday, race or no race. We didn't push it really, just ran the course and enjoyed the morning. For the hour and change we were running the race course, what there wasn't was any rain. There were clouds and a breeze, but we survived.
And so we received an email that the race had been rescheduled for tomorrow, June 8th. I am out, as I have a triathlon this weekend, as does everyone I was running with back on the original date. The irony is Tropical Storm Andrea has been pounding us for the last two days and now Savannah really is saturated, and I suspect parts of the course really are underwater.
See we live on the Atlantic Coast in the Southeastern United States. It is officially hurricane season in June, and we are all on notice of that every year. The storm has blown through by the look of it, and I think it would be hard to postpone for puddles again. Perhaps they will cancel it altogether, rather than subject athletes to 15K on wet streets. But at least IHOP is dry, for after you get your T-shirt.
State's exhibit 1 (May 4th, 2013):
I don't mean that in the literal sense, of course -- nearly fifty percent of us sport penises and generally the attendant scrotums -- I mean it figuratively and I hope offensively. That is: when did we become a nation populated by people without any balls?
Before you have an estrogen hissy, yep, I am aware that when we speak of balls as a metaphor for courage, or toughness, or tenacity, or even simply balls as the inclination to stand one's ground, that women can have balls commensurate with men's. Or bigger.
But the thing is, generally women don't. Which puts them in a dead heat with men, who don't have any either. It's a tie. I can't diagnose the causes, with so many to choose from. Suspects include our national panic over liability, which is the flip side of our national zeal to sue when our feelings get hurt. Couple that problem with this other likely perp: we are, excepting you and a few of your friends, lazy, apathetic nerf herders.
But it is our fear of getting into trouble, and of being held accountable, that I speak of here.
Our collective pussification comes to mind because of a local 15K race. The race either is or isn't tomorrow, depending on the sponsor's stomach for risk. See, this race, the Crimestoppers Azalea Run, was scheduled for May 4th, 2013 but was rained out. Yep. Called for rain. Not lightning, not the thunder that forebodes it; not a tornado watch; not impassible roads or even power outage.
Cancelled for rain. And not even actual rain during the actual race. Yep, they called it for puddles. Certainly, lawns were soaked from the night before, and indeed there was standing water around the course. But you've run in way worse. And will again.
When we showed up at the starting line, we noticed dozens of entrants collecting their t-shirts and walking back to their cars. The lady from Crimestoppers explained with a straight face that the race had been called off. We scoffed. She became defensive and averred "the course is underwater!"
Acceptable retorts included:
A. Awesome!
B. So what?
C. Not so.
But she had made up her mind. And so the race that benefits crime victims, sponsored by an organization who exhorts them to be resolute and not retreat from evil -- that race was cancelled because no one should be expected to get wet for the cause.
I read recently where some health expert conjectured that only three percent of Americans can run three miles without stopping. I hope this isn't true, because if it is we really are a nation of pussies. But if it is, then the people showing up at a local 15K are arguably among the toughest 3 percent of Americans. Yet we can't expect them to run in rain?
There is blame to share all around. I also take to task we entrants, who paid 30 to 45 dollars to race, depending on when we signed up. We got ourselves down to the north end of Forsyth Park, learned the race was arbitrarily cancelled -- and then for the most part accepted our t-shirts without remonstrating, and said things like "hey, let's go get pancakes." Indeed, that is a direct quote. From a friend who, as she uttered it, was pulling on the t-shirt from the race she had just finished not running.
Me: Well, you're here, ready to run. Why not run anyway, then get breakfast?
Her: They called the race.
Me: Yes. Absurd. Still, you're here to run, so run.
Her: T-shirt! (she was pointing to it). They cancelled the race. Breakfast time.
Me: Stay dry.
As an aside, this supports my suspicion that the t-shirt is a lot of why people show up for these things. But this woman runs three or four times a week with a running group. I see her in the park when I'm running. I don't do organized group runs, but I am pretty sure you don't get a t-shirt every day.
So, some friends and I ran the course anyway, since we had paid, bothered to show up and -- this was a bunch of triathletes -- we would have been training on any Saturday, race or no race. We didn't push it really, just ran the course and enjoyed the morning. For the hour and change we were running the race course, what there wasn't was any rain. There were clouds and a breeze, but we survived.
And so we received an email that the race had been rescheduled for tomorrow, June 8th. I am out, as I have a triathlon this weekend, as does everyone I was running with back on the original date. The irony is Tropical Storm Andrea has been pounding us for the last two days and now Savannah really is saturated, and I suspect parts of the course really are underwater.
See we live on the Atlantic Coast in the Southeastern United States. It is officially hurricane season in June, and we are all on notice of that every year. The storm has blown through by the look of it, and I think it would be hard to postpone for puddles again. Perhaps they will cancel it altogether, rather than subject athletes to 15K on wet streets. But at least IHOP is dry, for after you get your T-shirt.
State's exhibit 1 (May 4th, 2013):
We regret to say that the Azalea Run is not happening today. The race director has been forced to postpone the race due to the inclement weather. Again, the race WILL happen on a later date, this is for everyone's safety and we will post updates as future plans become finalized.
And while we are at it, see State's exhibit 2:
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Insomnia
If you can swing it, I recommend life as a functioning insomniac. Contrary to its reputation as the destroyer of souls, a constant, predictable insomnia is freeing. I was designed to require little sleep, but it wouldn't matter if I did require it. I'm just not very good at it. And so when the rest of the world is sleeping, folks like me get work done at odd hours, finish the three books we've been reading, and have ideas worth having.
This is not tough guy talk. There is nothing commendable about getting by with less where sleep is concerned, any more than it would be admirable to require less air. It's just how you are riveted together. I've never been one of these Spartans who assure you sleep is overrated, or they'll sleep when they're dead, or any such platitude. These folks are nothing like me. They are tacitly conceding that sleep is important and feels good, but showing off their tough guy behavior. It's pride in self-denial, in endurance, the idea of hanging in there to git 'er done, when most couldn't.
As a practical matter, I suspect a lot of these no sleep tough guys are lying. Everyone I ever knew who offered that he could go for days without sleep is someone I eventually caught napping.
Thing is, something's up.
I'm sleeping.
Heavily, and well, and a lot. I fall asleep early and end up uncharacteristically sleeping through alarms. and I don't wake up during the night. This, after a lifetime of waking up every other hour, nonsense dreams, and routinely throwing up my hands, saying screw it, I'm up now, and getting dressed at 3:30 AM. Triathlon season is over, so skipping morning swim practice for Zs is fine -- for now. I am not troubled, during my off season, to be a single workout per day guy. And it wouldn't matter of I were -- this is like a virus I can't shake. I leave work, go to my kids' practices, ride my trainer for an hour, and pass out. Often without showering. Then it's 7 AM and I am waking up and considering rolling over for another 15 minutes. As opposed to sitting bolt upright at 4:30, and 25 minutes later using a pull buoy and paddles.
I suppose it's possible my body is telling me I need the sleep, but I don't buy it, at age 44, for the first time.
And you normal sleepers -- is this how you feel? Do you wake up after 8 hours feeling sleepier than when you went to bed? What the hell is that? I wake up at 7 and am paralyzed.
This better be a phase. There's a reason this blog has gone unattended like an overgrown garden. Insomniacs get stuff done. Just maybe at odd hours.
Insomnia per Ed Norton's nameless character/Tyler Durden..
Love the book, love the movie, love this scene -- but this is the conventional view of insominia. Well, I dissent. I hope not to sleep though the night again, and soon.
This is not tough guy talk. There is nothing commendable about getting by with less where sleep is concerned, any more than it would be admirable to require less air. It's just how you are riveted together. I've never been one of these Spartans who assure you sleep is overrated, or they'll sleep when they're dead, or any such platitude. These folks are nothing like me. They are tacitly conceding that sleep is important and feels good, but showing off their tough guy behavior. It's pride in self-denial, in endurance, the idea of hanging in there to git 'er done, when most couldn't.
As a practical matter, I suspect a lot of these no sleep tough guys are lying. Everyone I ever knew who offered that he could go for days without sleep is someone I eventually caught napping.
Thing is, something's up.
I'm sleeping.
Heavily, and well, and a lot. I fall asleep early and end up uncharacteristically sleeping through alarms. and I don't wake up during the night. This, after a lifetime of waking up every other hour, nonsense dreams, and routinely throwing up my hands, saying screw it, I'm up now, and getting dressed at 3:30 AM. Triathlon season is over, so skipping morning swim practice for Zs is fine -- for now. I am not troubled, during my off season, to be a single workout per day guy. And it wouldn't matter of I were -- this is like a virus I can't shake. I leave work, go to my kids' practices, ride my trainer for an hour, and pass out. Often without showering. Then it's 7 AM and I am waking up and considering rolling over for another 15 minutes. As opposed to sitting bolt upright at 4:30, and 25 minutes later using a pull buoy and paddles.
I suppose it's possible my body is telling me I need the sleep, but I don't buy it, at age 44, for the first time.
And you normal sleepers -- is this how you feel? Do you wake up after 8 hours feeling sleepier than when you went to bed? What the hell is that? I wake up at 7 and am paralyzed.
This better be a phase. There's a reason this blog has gone unattended like an overgrown garden. Insomniacs get stuff done. Just maybe at odd hours.
Insomnia per Ed Norton's nameless character/Tyler Durden..
Love the book, love the movie, love this scene -- but this is the conventional view of insominia. Well, I dissent. I hope not to sleep though the night again, and soon.
Monday, October 22, 2012
What Have I Become
Three seasons ago, I broke down and procured a time trial helmet. Now, you might reasonably see this as a throwaway moment in a fungible life: an instantly forgettable economic choice. Not so. I gave it at least as much thought as which lever to pull in the voting booth, because it underscored a larger, ugly truth: life is a series of compromises.
See, I deplored the sight of these helmets the moment the first one showed up at a sprint triathlon somewhere. I despised the absurd stinger jutting out impractically behind the rider's skull. I hated the ostentatious, frivolous expense, and the notion that the wearer intended to buy himself some extra speed. Of course every race I went to, there were more. These helmets spread through the elite triathlon ranks like cold sores among strippers. I scoffed.
Soon, setting up my bike pre-race, I'd find myself the last holdout with an old-fashioned bike helmet, that didn't look like what you'd wear to work on the Death Star.
Well, TT helmets were my line in the sand. Bucking the trend was not just a matter of sports and fashion, but a moral imperative not to join the aerodynamic herd.
Triathletes are like competitive sheep, if sheep could compete at something. When the newest pricey gewgaw comes out -- provided it is rumored to confer some athletic advantage -- everyone gets one. Which is why everyone I know has a Quark Power Meter that costs more than his first bike, and a Garmin 310XT, two sets of race wheels, and the ubiquitous time trial helmet.*
Part of my pit-of-stomach revulsion at TT helmets was the poseur factor. Triathlon is saturated with athletes who crash the gates and immediately try to buy their way to the top. I speak of the mid-life crisis surgeon, who attends his first sprint triathlon on a $7500 tri bike with top-end race wheels, but leaves the toe bucket pedals on, because he hasn't actually ridden the thing yet, and doesn't know how to clip in. Or the low country cyclists who ride exclusively where there are no hills to climb, but obsess over bike weight -- this new crankset will save me 75 grams! -- as opposed to riding what they've got, and losing the 29 pounds that have a accrued around their middles.
And so all haughty and superior, I clung to my old, round, plastic yarmulke of a bike helmet, and snubbed the TT helmet crowd as if they were sneetches without stars. I mocked them. Called them cone heads. There was only one problem. Time trial helmets work. I mean, really work. The science is in. Depending on whose study you buy into, they may matter as much as your 1500 dollar rear disc wheel, more than what anything on your bike weighs, and may tie for second behind the body positioning you spent a year trying to dial in, tinkering with seat yaw or stem pitch or something.
I view running and cycling industry articles and posts and studies about the "science" of running and cycling with a jaundiced eye. I don't use the air quotes to suggest that there isn't a ton of real science on endurance sports -- God, is there ever -- but to emphasize that much of what they foist as science is really advocacy. Or speculative entertainment. Or just gussied up, generic advertising with graphs. And some photos of stern men in lab coats observing some skinny specimen on a treadmill, often wearing an air tank. And electrodes.
Lava and Velo News need you to buy stuff from their advertisers. Runner's World needs you to buy those motion control shoes and built-up orthotics, because without a running industry -- the latest Asics whatevers -- they don't have a magazine. As an aside, I tossed my built up shoes and orthotics in 2011 and started running in glorified slippers. Since then I've been running with impunity, after four years of nagging injuries. I agree with this man that the shoes and inserts were making me worse. But with the billions Nike and Asics and the rest pump into advertising, it's hard for the industry to admit that you were better off running in 1975 Nike Waffle Racers -- slippers with waffle soles -- than in the latest Air Max.
I quit subscribing to anything from, for example, Rodale Press, partly because they write down to an audience of giddy initiates, and partly because the same publications contradict themselves like Nathan Thurm. And it isn't just the newbie fanzines like Runner's World, either. Granted, science and medicine -- and athletes -- advance. Carb loading used to require a carb depletion phase, then it didn't. Until it did and didn't again.
But some matters are settled.
Like time trial helmets. Arguing against their efficacy is like arguing for a flat Earth. The evidence is in -- they work. They absolutely make you faster, on the identical effort, vs. wearing a conventional helmet. Free time, just by wearing a pointy hat. But I had my pride. The mouthy critic would be eating major crow, if he broke down and got one. And then a friend at the bike shop, knowing that I had USAT Nationals coming up, handed me a new, black and blue Giro TT helmet for free. Someone had worn it a few times, sweated in it, and brought it back claiming there was something wrong with it. Bike store guy said here, it's yours.
A conundrum.
People who know me and like me almost invariably describe me as "uncompromising," or similar. That, or "you asshole!" Two ways of describing the same phenomenon, I suppose. But so much for that -- these alien helmets forced me to compromise, and I loathed them for it. Two competing values weighed against each other on my internal ethical scales: my strident individuality on the one side vs. athletic advantage on the other.
As I learned in tenth grade -- but occasionally have to relearn -- Emerson wrote that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Truer words never spoken. Tenth grade is a good time to read Emerson and Thoreau, because that's when a fellow ought to grasp that doing something to be different for the sake of being different allows others to influence your choices just as much as does conforming. Sheep or anti-sheep, no matter. Each is equally controlled by the herd. My innate need to be in the minority, to be different for its own sake had -- yet again -- collided with a more reasoned, mature individuality. Wear the helmet, don't wear the helmet, whatever. Just do what you're gonna do, and be who you are.
Overthink much?
And so the man who'd ridden his first two iron length triathlons on a used 400 dollar aluminum road bike, showed up at Nationals in 2009 in a shiny new TT helmet. I was mildly chagrined -- I still deplore how they look -- but there you go. Change is glacial with me.
I ended up biking 57 minutes for the hilly 40K bike leg, at 41 years old. A credible time. That helmet bought me 30 to 45 seconds, and helped qualify me for Worlds. I out biked most men of any age. Wearing the TT helmet, I had both beaten 'em and joined 'em, simultaneously.
Whatever. Time trial helmets still make you look like a douche. Here's a quick primer for the uninitiated, then I'm off to go sell out some more.
One big reason I resisted TT helmets: I didn't want to look like small-time retro super hero, The Rocketeer. A flying bellhop in the very first time trial helmet saves an art deco Los Angeles! At least it's easier to go to the bathroom in his flying suit than in Tony Stark's.
Which settles the debate: can a woman be a douche? Why yes, yes she can.
*See also: Skinsuits and --in the case of wealthy luntatics -- oxygen sleep chambers.
See, I deplored the sight of these helmets the moment the first one showed up at a sprint triathlon somewhere. I despised the absurd stinger jutting out impractically behind the rider's skull. I hated the ostentatious, frivolous expense, and the notion that the wearer intended to buy himself some extra speed. Of course every race I went to, there were more. These helmets spread through the elite triathlon ranks like cold sores among strippers. I scoffed.
Soon, setting up my bike pre-race, I'd find myself the last holdout with an old-fashioned bike helmet, that didn't look like what you'd wear to work on the Death Star.
Kona? Check. Alcatraz? Check. Alderaan? Check. Check.
Well, TT helmets were my line in the sand. Bucking the trend was not just a matter of sports and fashion, but a moral imperative not to join the aerodynamic herd.
Triathletes are like competitive sheep, if sheep could compete at something. When the newest pricey gewgaw comes out -- provided it is rumored to confer some athletic advantage -- everyone gets one. Which is why everyone I know has a Quark Power Meter that costs more than his first bike, and a Garmin 310XT, two sets of race wheels, and the ubiquitous time trial helmet.*
Part of my pit-of-stomach revulsion at TT helmets was the poseur factor. Triathlon is saturated with athletes who crash the gates and immediately try to buy their way to the top. I speak of the mid-life crisis surgeon, who attends his first sprint triathlon on a $7500 tri bike with top-end race wheels, but leaves the toe bucket pedals on, because he hasn't actually ridden the thing yet, and doesn't know how to clip in. Or the low country cyclists who ride exclusively where there are no hills to climb, but obsess over bike weight -- this new crankset will save me 75 grams! -- as opposed to riding what they've got, and losing the 29 pounds that have a accrued around their middles.
And so all haughty and superior, I clung to my old, round, plastic yarmulke of a bike helmet, and snubbed the TT helmet crowd as if they were sneetches without stars. I mocked them. Called them cone heads. There was only one problem. Time trial helmets work. I mean, really work. The science is in. Depending on whose study you buy into, they may matter as much as your 1500 dollar rear disc wheel, more than what anything on your bike weighs, and may tie for second behind the body positioning you spent a year trying to dial in, tinkering with seat yaw or stem pitch or something.
I view running and cycling industry articles and posts and studies about the "science" of running and cycling with a jaundiced eye. I don't use the air quotes to suggest that there isn't a ton of real science on endurance sports -- God, is there ever -- but to emphasize that much of what they foist as science is really advocacy. Or speculative entertainment. Or just gussied up, generic advertising with graphs. And some photos of stern men in lab coats observing some skinny specimen on a treadmill, often wearing an air tank. And electrodes.
Lava and Velo News need you to buy stuff from their advertisers. Runner's World needs you to buy those motion control shoes and built-up orthotics, because without a running industry -- the latest Asics whatevers -- they don't have a magazine. As an aside, I tossed my built up shoes and orthotics in 2011 and started running in glorified slippers. Since then I've been running with impunity, after four years of nagging injuries. I agree with this man that the shoes and inserts were making me worse. But with the billions Nike and Asics and the rest pump into advertising, it's hard for the industry to admit that you were better off running in 1975 Nike Waffle Racers -- slippers with waffle soles -- than in the latest Air Max.
I quit subscribing to anything from, for example, Rodale Press, partly because they write down to an audience of giddy initiates, and partly because the same publications contradict themselves like Nathan Thurm. And it isn't just the newbie fanzines like Runner's World, either. Granted, science and medicine -- and athletes -- advance. Carb loading used to require a carb depletion phase, then it didn't. Until it did and didn't again.
But some matters are settled.
Like time trial helmets. Arguing against their efficacy is like arguing for a flat Earth. The evidence is in -- they work. They absolutely make you faster, on the identical effort, vs. wearing a conventional helmet. Free time, just by wearing a pointy hat. But I had my pride. The mouthy critic would be eating major crow, if he broke down and got one. And then a friend at the bike shop, knowing that I had USAT Nationals coming up, handed me a new, black and blue Giro TT helmet for free. Someone had worn it a few times, sweated in it, and brought it back claiming there was something wrong with it. Bike store guy said here, it's yours.
A conundrum.
People who know me and like me almost invariably describe me as "uncompromising," or similar. That, or "you asshole!" Two ways of describing the same phenomenon, I suppose. But so much for that -- these alien helmets forced me to compromise, and I loathed them for it. Two competing values weighed against each other on my internal ethical scales: my strident individuality on the one side vs. athletic advantage on the other.
As I learned in tenth grade -- but occasionally have to relearn -- Emerson wrote that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Truer words never spoken. Tenth grade is a good time to read Emerson and Thoreau, because that's when a fellow ought to grasp that doing something to be different for the sake of being different allows others to influence your choices just as much as does conforming. Sheep or anti-sheep, no matter. Each is equally controlled by the herd. My innate need to be in the minority, to be different for its own sake had -- yet again -- collided with a more reasoned, mature individuality. Wear the helmet, don't wear the helmet, whatever. Just do what you're gonna do, and be who you are.
Overthink much?
And so the man who'd ridden his first two iron length triathlons on a used 400 dollar aluminum road bike, showed up at Nationals in 2009 in a shiny new TT helmet. I was mildly chagrined -- I still deplore how they look -- but there you go. Change is glacial with me.
I ended up biking 57 minutes for the hilly 40K bike leg, at 41 years old. A credible time. That helmet bought me 30 to 45 seconds, and helped qualify me for Worlds. I out biked most men of any age. Wearing the TT helmet, I had both beaten 'em and joined 'em, simultaneously.
Whatever. Time trial helmets still make you look like a douche. Here's a quick primer for the uninitiated, then I'm off to go sell out some more.
One big reason I resisted TT helmets: I didn't want to look like small-time retro super hero, The Rocketeer. A flying bellhop in the very first time trial helmet saves an art deco Los Angeles! At least it's easier to go to the bathroom in his flying suit than in Tony Stark's.
This man at least has the excuse of being European, and also riding in the Tour De France, so I will cut him some slack. He's still a douche,because his TT helmet has a blast shield, but in mitigation it also has plastic mutton chop sideburns, which are novel. NOTE the clothing, however. This man is also wearing a bike onesie, a close relative of the tri-onesie. This means it is harder for him to go to the bathroom than it is for either Tony Stark or the Rocketeer. This will be addressed in further petty, judgemental posts about racewear.
*See also: Skinsuits and --in the case of wealthy luntatics -- oxygen sleep chambers.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Best Food Yet!
If you grew up in the South, you are probably familiar with Huddle House. For those unfortunate enough to have grown up where grits are exotic, Huddle House is like a lower rent Waffle House. Truly. It's a chain like Waffle House, but more resignedly self aware. Huddle House knows it only gets off the bench late in games, for junk minutes. Management understands it can't compete, so it erects Huddle Houses in places like Millen, Georgia, where they only have to compete with a tire retreader and the 18-34 year old males openly selling crack in the parking lot, vying for your wages. Crack, not meth! Quaint.
It's Waffle House minus the waffles, resigned to its fate as a vo-tech dropout. In that regard, it's like Mr. Pibb, Dr. Pepper's underachieving half-brother who couldn't hack anatomy, but constantly reminds you of it by calling himself "Mr.," even in casual settings.
For my money, Waffle House has more parking lot fights, but Huddle House has better ones. And that is just fights between customers. A friend of mine used to manage a Waffle House, and has managed other places. Like so many of my friends, he is a skinny triathlete, often at a size disadvantage. He avers that staff-on-staff violence is a store-to-store thing, irrespective of the company, but that controlling it is more about attitude and how a man carries himself than brute size. He adds that managing a diner chain requires a fellow to be part cook (cooks get arrested a lot, and otherwise no-show), part bouncer, part ref, and -- routinely -- father confessor. If the priest-penitent privilege doesn't apply to conversations between shift manager and waitress, it should.
When I was a kid, I associated Huddle House with football games, because we insisted that our dad take us to the one in Newnan, GA, late at night, on the drive home from Athens We wanted to go because brand identification works: the logo for Huddle House was a cute cartoon kid in a helmet and pads, hugging a football. At age 7 and 8, that was why we wanted to eat there.
Also, even then, we knew what most fair minded, reasonable adults eventually learn for themselves: waffles are ghastly. Bland, window-pane batter, singed by a good ironing and rendered either brittle and vile, or gooey and tasteless. You can only stomach the things with syrup. Waffles are syrup vehicles and then ashtrays, but I'd never call them food. So as kids we went Huddle and left Waffle for others.
Years later I would realize that no one eats the waffles at Waffle House: they go there for the omelets and coffee and -- if they are cops -- to pick up the younger waitresses. As an adult, I've taken my business to Waffle House and freely admit it is now my favorite chain. Breakfast is my favorite meal, and I have no compunction about making co-workers join me for lunch at an all day breakfast joint. If I'm driving, tough darts, boys, expect to return to work smelling like hash browns and No Melt. I have migrated to Waffle House partly because it's better, but also because Huddle House abandoned the football kid logo.
So I grew up, said so long to the Huddle House Football Kid, and eased into paying taxes, being a parent, and wearing clothes to work that had to be dry cleaned. I began going to Waffle House once a week, when I wanted to feel like someone who lifted heavy things for a living and didn't wear a tie. IE, myself until after college. I didn't so much abandon Huddle House like an old teddy bear, as end up living somewhere civilized. There aren't any Huddle Houses in my immediate area, because I live in civilization and all.
That's not to say there's nothing I miss.
I find I miss Huddle House's frank, sober self-appraisal as offered in its own slogan.
Best Food Yet.
That's genius.
They were banking on you to reward their honesty with your patronage.
Best food yet. We mean, sure, there's better food coming, maybe a Waffle House, where the waitresses feign interest -- but we are the best food since exit 119, And it's pouring out there tonight. We both know you're hungry, and it's late, and hey -- like you'd be ordering waffles anyway?
And so, after years away, I heard the sirens' song and found myself in a Huddle House last Sunday evening. It was pouring rain, I was hungry, and I was in fact in Millen, GA.
Best Food Yet! Please pay the ransom.
That's because I had raced the Augusta, Georgia Ironman 70.3 on Sunday, stuck around for the awards in the rain, and started my drive home wet and famished. I inhaled my 4 scrambled, double grits, wheat toast, coffee and tomato juice, stretched my 6-1 frame across the ketchup red and mustard yellow booth, and reflected on my race. I'd done well and was pleased, and was now nursing my coffee to warm up in the over-air conditioned vault of a diner. It occurred to me that I was probably the only triathlete in there this week, and certainly the only ovo-lacto vegetarian. It further occurred to me sitting there pleasantly sore after a race I was happy with, full of greasy spoon breakfast, that Thomas Wolfe be damned, you really can go home again.
Just kidding. What occurred to me, simultaneously wired and tired, was:
1. Jesus Christ I am lucky not to live here;
2. Should I sleep through masters swimming in the morning?;
3. This coffee is marginally better than police station coffee;
4. A bunch of abstruse stuff about bike fit, seat position, stem height, and aerodynamics vs. power;
5. Look! A shiny thing! And of course,
6. I need to get a blog entry done about this race while it is still fresh.
And so I sat down to blog about triathlon, and changed my mind, because I was spent and just wasn't up for it, and decided to put it off until midweek. And Huddle House will let a man feel fatalistic about his underachieving.
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