Road Season is Over and other rambling nonsense

092417

Cycling season is over.  Cyclocross doesn’t count.  Cyclocross is mud and wet and cold and in many ways it is the most miserable thing I can think of.  I remember one race watching some of the juniors waiting in line, in freezing temps, for the use of a hose so that they could have their parents, or friends, aim the thing at their mud-caked bodies, while still wearing their kits, and spray them off.  I felt so sorry for them.  Why go through this terrible ritual just for the sake of a 45 minute race on a course that could be described as a replica of a World War I battlefield?  I did a few of them and I guess it’s just not for me.  Cold, wet conditions are not my friend.  I need to be very warm in order to perform optimally and ‘cross just is not normally like that.  Current conditions are definitely not an accurate representation of the mean conditions that normally greet racers.  It has been in the 90s this week and there have already been at least two local races as far as I can tell and the racers are sweating like war horses as they pedal and run up hills and all that crap that’s part of cyclocross.  But that will soon change and it’ll be back to rain and cold slop and those of you who do this sport will regale instagram and facebook and twitter with tall tales of heroic exploits and “Almosts” and I will have to unfollow all of you.  And enough of that.  I have a lot of friends that participate in that kooky sport and some of them are actually really good at it…some of them are pretty dominant.  Thermal skully hats off to ye…

But the road season is over now.  Except in Belgium where Jack and Robert are slaving away doing kermesses and muddy crits and having an all around great time…according to social media.  I have been so impressed with the development of those two.  First IB has really taken care of them and the team has made it possible for them to do what a lot of young, talented racers dream of.  But for us masters and the other young guns who train relentlessly day after day and week after week over the winter and spring just to be in shape to do one-hour crits in the summer…the season is finished.  And that sucks.  I loved this year.  it felt different than years past.  Team Heroes was pretty damned good and we had some great results.  The other strong teams in this region were still strong but we had an answer for anything they threw at us and we were more proactive in our race strategies also.  Personally, I had a great season and won some races and raced hard and tried to be a good teammate and I think all of that was pretty damned neato.  And hell no I am not thinking of doing some ‘cross races.

Crits are fun.  Going super fast on bikes in extremely close quarters with a bunch of other guys who are bumping bars with you and always searching for better position and attacking and countering and bridging and cornering so hard you can feel your rear tire slide a little bit…all of that is super addictive and I miss it already and it sucks that we have to go through winter and trainer season before we can do all that shit again.  Damn!  That was a long sentence!  Long sentences are sort of fun, though, aren’t they?  They create a sense of anticipation and a buildup of tension until at the end, there is some sort of combination of words that creates a resolution and you can sigh and start something new.  Like music.  I’m rambling now.  No matter…it was crits we were talking about.  I like cornering the best.  I love being at the front of the group approaching hard corners and just blazing through them as hard as I can and looking back at what sort of gap I created.  The sensation of the rubber gripping the asphalt and the tension in the wheels as you reposition your body low and forward on the bike so your center of gravity is correct is just pure roller coaster school and I highly recommend it to anyone with a healthy bit of aggression and killer instinct.  

Killer instinct is something I talk about a lot with the athletes I coach.  I firmly believe you are either born with it or you are not.  Now, that’s not to say that there are not varying degrees of killer instinct, because there are.  There is no such thing as an absolute, IMHO.  But it has been my experience that the riders I have placed on teams or coached fall into two camps.  Those with natural killer instinct, whom I call Killers, will generally be more successful in races, with less effort on my part.  They simply “want it” more than the other guy.  There is an inborn need to be better than everyone else.  And while they may not ever actually be better than everyone else, they will always work toward that goal.  I can tell if an athlete has killer instinct almost immediately upon meeting them.  There is a sort of fiery-eyed confidence that radiates out from a Killer.  And it infiltrates and punctuates pretty much everything they do in life.  You have to be careful with them, though.  They can be a bit emotional when things don’t go their way.  I’ve seen pure phenoms go to tears when they missed out on the winning break and had to roll in with the peloton in ignominy.  Or at least ignominy according to their aggro-addled brains.  Killers are the fun ones to coach.  They always want to do more.  They always want to push the intervals a little bit farther.  They will always skirt the high edge of the zone they are in and they will never miss an opportunity to sprint you if you prod them. 

The other athlete, the one without natural killer instinct, will often test very high for FTP or maximum sprint power but it is much more difficult to get them to the point where they can be competitive in races.  It can happen, but it just takes a different approach.  These athletes want to be competitive…they want to be bike racers, but they tend to be too analytical and tentative when faced with extremely fast-paced challenges like fast, hard cornering or positioning during a sprint.  It tends to be very easy to get them in really good shape but when it comes to applying that fitness to the actual sport, it takes a lot of conversation and sometimes a practical, hands-on approach like making them follow you through hard corners on a practice crit course until they can stay on your wheel…or making them stay in the top six or eight riders in a very difficult local group ride…a “worlds” type ride or local Hammerfest.  These athletes find it difficult to do these things because their personalities are not conducive to that sort of riding.  But…with a lot of practice and some practical and/or motivational conversations, the non-killers can become pretty good bike racers.  Oh and by the way, I am building a website for my coaching biz.  it's called Zone-6 Coaching.  I'll put something on social media soon.  If anyone is interested, let me know.  Yes, I know what I'm doing.  

Tired of talking about that also.  So here are some things that make me happy during bike season:  Bikes and asphalt and hot sun and water bottles…10 x 10 tents and sticky skinsuits and shit!  Where the hell is my rear wheel?!  Furiously attempting to pin a number on when it’s 93 degrees and you got to the venue a half hour after you wanted to.  Tom always leading the first lap, no matter where we are.  Tom always knowing about a thousand different people NO MATTER WHERE WE ARE.  Harry’s Jorts and the Bri and the girls with their love affair with many different brands and patterns of socks.  Court off the front.  Court off the front.  Court off the front.  Aaaaaand Court off the front…  Don just generally being the most selfless teammate I could ever imagine.  My need for hour-long warmups on the trainer while Tom and Harry casually pedal around for fifteen minutes and whatever, dude…  The general awesomeness of the atmosphere at Indy Crit and the teams always congregating in the same spot under the usual tents with teammates, friends, and family hanging out and cheering and bullshitting and drinking beer and hot damn it’s just such a great sport…

What a super rambling, possibly incoherent piece of nonsense this thing is.  I apologize if you read it all and missed something important on the TV like some stupid platitude-filled post-game speech by one of the overpaid NFL players that just narrowly missed getting a concussion today (to be sure, I like the NFL and watched most of the games today).  Everyone hates Trump, especially the NFL right now...well, except Jerry Jones.  Sports and politics mixed up like concrete and hair-gel and who the hell cares, anyway?  (probably a lot of us, but it sounded good)

I need to go and watch the new Star Trek now and then go to bed.  Beth is already being magnetically drawn toward the stairs.  The Tempurpedic mattress uses the Force to draw her in and she falls asleep in five minutes nightly.  Wish I had that ability.  Oh well…  Later,

-C

Rats! And the Force! And the miserable Colts.

091717

Rats are gnawing on my irises!  They are literally chewing on the backsides of my eyes because they are in my skull right now.  They have not eaten much of my brain yet, which is why I can write this, but I am afraid that they will do that soon enough.  

They got in my head last night when I was passed out next to the fire pit on our patio.  I don’t know how I lost track of time, or my consciousness, but it happened, and those filthy fuckers cut straight through some of my neck tendons and crawled up through the foramen magnum, one by one, with help from their razor sharp claws and powerful leg muscles.  Rats are very strong.  They are also attracted to white matter, apparently…and eyeballs.  

What I DON"T want to happen is for them to mess with my higher cognitive functions and my eyesight, in general.  I already have to wear readers when I am looking at anything closer than about two feet from my face.  And I don’t want them to get too close to my pre-frontal cortex.  That would be disastrous.  I can feel them wriggling around in there like two huge beetle larvae just eating everything they can until they develop their armor and legs and can escape.  But escape is not what these awful devils want.  They want to take control of my mind and direct me like a shitty little homunculus with ten arms and a fiendish book of instructions that was created specifically by someone or some thing on acid or mushrooms.  

That is what it feels like sometimes.  Levers are pulled and buttons pushed and I do things and say things and move around as if controlled and directed by a foul-tempered wizard.  I don’t know why I do some of the things I do!  I just can’t help it.  I mowed the lawn and planted a tree and made the bed but I didn’t ask my wife what she wanted to do today because I thought, for whatever reason, that my doing chores was something good and something for which I should be rewarded.  But this is marriage, people!  It does not work that way.  (she is sitting next to me with a blanket over her and playing on her computer…Bella is between us and Walter is on the floor and we are watching the Colts game and waiting to go to church)  What I should have done was work out (ride) while she was doing her workout and then come home and ask her what was most important to her today.  That is what a husband should do.  Happy wife / happy life…as they say.  And I should have done that.  But…I didn’t.  It’s the rats.  

I can tell they have made their way into my temporal lobes.   I can’t remember things like I could twenty years ago when I was smart.  But they are eating my temporal lobes now and it is much worse.  They need to stay away from the dura mater.  That is the lining of the skull.  Can’t let them get to the actual bone…the calcium.  They need it to aid their muscle contraction…especially the heart muscle.  And they can get it if they drill through to the bone.  So I am officially asking anyone reading this right now if you have some rat poison or repellant which I might borrow…or just take, so that I can stuff it up the open wound in my neck and kill the evil bastards.  I think they may have targeted me.  I have spoken to some of my neighbors and they all seem to be fine.  They sort of look at me queerly when I tell them I have giant rats in my head trying to blind me by eating my eyes from the inside out, but what am I supposed to do?  What I can’t tell, though, is which one of them set the dirty things loose on my patio (rats don’t normally live around here).  Whoever it was must have been watching me…which leads me to believe that it was one of my closer neighbors.  I’ll find out.  You can bet on that.  I have ways!  A person like me always has ways.  inexhaustible resources…intellectual purpose and laser-focused direction, my friends.  I’ll catch them soon enough and then it’ll be rats for them!

But in the meantime…it has to be poison.  That’s the only way to get rid of rats…especially when they obviously have a purpose and are motivated to fill their bellies with axons and dendrites.  Gotta be careful, though.  Can’t just stuff it up there because I don’t want to destroy any more of my brain than absolutely necessary to get rid of the fiends.  I may need professional help.  If I could find an exterminator with a gentle hand and surgical precision i would hire him or her but I doubt that person exists.  And it figures.  And so it goes…  That’s always the way it goes with rats.

When your wife is happy with you, or forgives you for something, or is just generally nice to you, the rats get sick and begin to die.  I don’t exactly know how it works but you can actually feel them slowing down their movements and they stop chewing so incessantly on your eyes and dura mater and whatever lobes they happen to be near.  Sometimes you still need rat poison to fully rid yourself of the little shits but I do know that the surest way to mitigate the damage done by them is to be a good husband.  Don’t be selfish.  Take her for a walk sometimes with the pups.  Talk to her.  Listen to her.  Go and do something that she wants to do on your day off.  Make her dinner.  Lots of things…  They all help kill those rotten buggers in your skull…in my skull.  They are still there and I can feel them but they are getting tired, I think.

Colts just threw an interception and now the Cardinals are poised to kick a FG and put a bullet through the horse.  Hell they may get a TD.  Fegging Colts.  Oooohhh…FG it was.  Being a Colts fan is like being in a submarine that has a random tendency to Crazy Ivan without permission from the Captain…or anyone else, for that matter.

But the rats.  I just pulled one out.  It was disgusting…all bloody and covered in my grey and white matter and cerebrospinal fluid.  Skinny thing.  I opened the back gate and turned it loose toward the middle of the commons area.  No, I did not kill it.  I don’t do that.  All life is sacred, and all that crap.  Beth always gets mad when I capture spiders and let them loose outside instead of killing them.  Anyway the coyote or the red fox will probably get him…he was pretty weak.  The other one is still in there but I think I can get him before the end of the night.  If not, I will get him tomorrow morning after I have some coffee.  I think the caffeine might help because it is a vasoconstrictor.  Might make some more room for me to reach up there.  It’s almost dead, I think.  My wife seems to like me right now.  Some sort of inverse relationship between our relationship and the health of the rat.  I assume it is some form of telepathy mixed with the Force.  And I really believe in that shit, mind you.  Lightsabers and dead rats.  The fate of the galaxy in the balance and I have to deal with fucking rats.  

Anyway, be nice to your wife is the point.  And I’m out…

squeezing out some darkness

090617

it only takes one time

mom says it’s over…no more bullshit from you, son

you’ll soon be an orphan when the truck comes at five

no more hugs at bedtime and no more gentle wake up kisses

a cold cot and three meals a day with all the other dregs

my brain twists itself into a fucking knot…a starter knot

because the knot   will keep twisting and getting stronger and 

more complicated.

now i don’t know anymore.  my silence overwhelmed me and i 

don’t know who to trust…or if there is really such a thing.

i trust no one and no thing.  i am ten years old and we move to

the suburbs.  i begin to create a new chris.  the old chris is going away.

the old chris loves his mommy and daddy and baby sister.  the old chris 

loves his kitty and fred the dog and even gormorker…gypsy.  

the new chris is a gypsy, in reality and he wanders from friend to friend

and uses his perceptive and naturally mimicking and desperate nature to change himself into 

whatever or whoever he needs to be to fit the situation or the manufactured

friendship.

some chris’ make some really great friends in high school and  even has a couple of

girlfriends…but they never work out because the girls always sniff out the lack of genuineness. 

but the guys stick by me because most of them also create alter-egos and we all dance in a 

circle of lies and hurt and sarcastic humor and it is a comfortable place.  we play sports and tell

jokes and i make about six different chris’ for my six best friends.  it works and it tells me that this could work forever and i don’t have to worry about my deep hurt.  but it’s always there and it always drives me from the most powerful part of my soul.

years go by and i have so many chris’ that it’s hard to keep track.  the best ones

are great friends and sometimes are very close to the real chris.

that real chris is still there…but he is trapped in a very deep well and he is covered in 

suffocating water and is constantly fighting to stay above the water line as he looks

up at the opening of the well.

and he sees his friends and his girlfriends peering down into the well in order to get 

a glimpse of chris.  even his wife does this.  she does it the most.  chris claws his way 

up the impossibly slimy walls of the well but he cannot get up.

my mother doesn’t visit the well.  she thinks she knows me.  she knows very little 

about me and most of the time i don’t care.  i give her a chris she can live with so 

she doesn’t feel guilty about making a monster…she did make a monster…i am a monster

sometimes i hate myself and i want to kill the monster…literally kill it.  i could kill it.  it would be 

oh so easy.  i hate the goddam thing and i do my best to keep it at bay but it feels like the fucking thing wants to shred its way out of my skin and hurt something or someone.  the monster is anger.  it is pure hurt and anger and fear and that sense of betrayal that i felt kneeling on the tennis courts praying to God that i would be okay at the orphanage because i

really believed my mommy was never coming back to get me.  hurt and hurt and more hurt and

how could i ever believe in anyone ever again when the person i loved most in life and in whom i

placed my total trust betrayed everything i ever believed in about her and just chose abandonment.  abandonment instead of parenting.  cast off like a broken piece of furniture.  It only takes one fucking time...one crucial moment in a life to break a heart and break a person and yeah...it only takes one time.

I am a thing that once was loved and cuddled and kissed and tucked in.  but not anymore ever again.  maybe the physical act but never again with sincerity because the chris i manufactured that day when mommy finally picked me up was wise and did not want to be hurt again.  EVER again.  i never want to be hurt like that again because it 

ruined my soul that day and it told me that i can never trust anyone with all of my heart and intimacy and the monster came into being.  

can you trust me?  maybe.  you have a lot of time to prove yourself.  i’ll toss you a chris to interact with in the meantime but the chris at the bottom of the well has a hell of a time reaching the opening and it may take a while.  

this is your warning.  only a couple people know me.  really know me.  sometimes they have to climb down into the well and be with me down there and hold me.  i made a dry space down there with a fire and a place to sit or lay down.  i was able to do that when my twisted brain began to heal.  beth helped me heal.  even mom helped me heal.  the dry place is spreading.  when i drink, it shrinks and sometimes i fall back into the deepness of the well.  but when i am sober the dry place grows and i think that maybe someday it might cover up the deepness of the well and stairs will appear on the side of the wall.  

hope is a great thing to have.  i lived for many years without it.  God made no sense to me.  he still doesn’t most of the time.  but i am learning.  i don’t know what he is doing or what he wants with us but i want to know and i will continue to invite him into my life and my thoughts and actions.  i am patient in that regard.  

i love you, whoever reads this.