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Birthday Blog—Spin4Heroes Recap—Ready to Race?—The many fatuous and imbecilic intricacies of Return of the Jedi
Yesterday was my birthday. I am 44 now. I am a middle-aged man. 44 is not so bad a number in and of itself but, on the other hand, it is not a number you would tell a girl at a bar. “Hey there, we seem to be hitting it off! Wanna go to the lounge in the back and have a quiet drink together? By the way…I’m 44.” Nope, it does not work. That damned number admits me into a club of which I do not want to be a member. The mid-life “what the fuck am I doing with my life?” club. This club is like a high-dive with a disorganized multitude of platforms next to a beautiful, olympic-size pool but the lights are off and it’s pitch black! So I went into the club and made it up the ladder to the middle platform of the strange and terrible place and was thusly faced with many options from which to continue on. Each of them requires a jump and a dive and my cardinal traits shout at me to just trust my gut and bull-rush full bore into that unfathomable black ether.
So I did it. And it was the right choice. I won’t delve into what I’m doing now because I’ve already done that in another piece. But I’m still getting older…flecks of grey hair are appearing now and then when I look at myself in the mirror. They catch the light just right and shine like little bastard reminders that I can no longer grow my hair out in a skater-cut. I cut it really short now. It’s easy. Cashiers at the grocery ask me if I’m in the military. “No, I just have lazy hair.” My eyes are failing me also. I’ve had better than 20-20 vision as long as I can remember but suddenly, when I turned 40, my eyes went screwy and I needed readers for close up stuff and my left eye was all blurry when I looked at things more than ten feet away. Went to the optometrist and got all fixed up and now I wear glasses all the time. So I have the trifecta now: The number 44, little bastard grey hairs invading my head, and screwy eyes. Ah well…at least I can still touch the rim when I shoot hoops.
So Spin4Heroes: It was a great time as usual. Our team raised over $4000.00 for the Heroes Foundation! I rode all four hours and had a great time just hanging out with Don next to me on trainers and riding hard, twenty-minute intervals with our mouths wide open gasping for air and our eyes stinging from the sweat pouring off of our heads. We could not use fans in the gym because they were tripping breakers with the addition of the sound system. So the air in the place became as humid as the Amazon basin and I could actually taste the steam coming from my teammates pedaling around me. Eeeiiichh! Miserable conditions but very satisfying workout. I got handshakes and hugs from countless people that I have met throughout the years of owning Motion and I have to say…I really miss those people…you people. It hit me that I hosted the first Spin4Heroes in the shop with only about ten teams, raising just a few thousand dollars and only eight years later, Vinny has grown the thing into a monster of fundraising that is very professional and very important to the foundation and its fight against cancer. It really is a profound thing to experience. Give it a whirl if you have not already.
Okay let’s get to the fun stuff…racing bikes. I am ready. I have been training my butt off. My training has been a little different than last year. Some pretty non-traditional stuff. I have not been on the bike all that much. I do get my rides in, mind you…at least three a week, but I have been running a shitload also and doing some pretty interesting and difficult work in the gym. I’m not going to go into detail about what I’m doing but it seems to be working so far. We’ve also done a few Wilbur rides…a few hundred milers, a lot of trainer rides, a lot of running, a lot of hours. I want to make my legs and my body more durable and overall fit this year. So I pound the shit out of them in various ways and challenge myself and it really fucking hurts like hell sometimes to the point that I am unable to stand up and have to lay on the ground gasping. It’s interesting…some racers try to hide their training and make it secret. I guess they think they’ll be like ninjas when racing starts. Hiding in the bunch and then striking with all of that secret training backing them up so that they can create unstoppable breakaways or lay down bullet-train sprints. It makes me laugh. It really is silly. We all train really hard and we all want to hide the fact that we are fit as a fiddle and capable of winning races or at least making them hard and helping a teammate win. Why hide that fact? So here it is for me: I feel really strong on the bike right now. I am not very sharp because I have done absolutely NO speedwork…but I am strong. I can probably go in any break and do my pulls and I can probably throw down a 75% sprint at the end. I plan on starting to do speed work and more VO2 stuff now and by the time Fat and Skinny comes around, all of you powerhouse regional teams better watch out. Our team is strong this year with the addition of Justin Kirk, who has a similar power profile to me and has been riding his ass off all winter on the road and on the trainer. The boy can lay down a sprint and has already proven that he can be at the front in most races. I watched him get better and better last year and got so scared of him that I had to put him on our team for fear that he would beat me this year! Anyway, we are going to race hard and hey you, TRH and Zipp and OhioVelo (Riverpoint) and anyone else we encounter…we’re gonna BEAT YOU this year! HAHAHAHA!!! Yeah, I said it. I am calling you out. Team Heroes and/or Gray Goat/Bullseye are gonna be super strong this year and I am excited to get going. This weekend is an omnium in Louisville. I cannot race Saturday but I can go on Sunday. If it’s not raining and freezing cold I might be there. Or I might just do another hundo just to top off the tank before I start ripping legs off.
That’s all I want to talk about regarding bike racing. I saved the weirdest topic for last. Return of the Jedi. Yes, the movie. A couple of us at work have been watching this fine film and dissecting its many oddball scenes and goofy characters. Overall, the film works well as a conclusion to the war against the Empire but there are many, MANY things in this movie that I cannot help but criticize and, frankly, laugh my ass off at. So here is a list of these things that is very incomplete, and necessarily so, because if I included all of the foolhardy scenes and characters and dialogue and fight choreography that intertwine and bind this film together, this piece would be many more pages long. Enjoy:
- C3PO basically just sucks.
- Leia says that “somehow, I’ve always known” that Luke is her brother. Yet she full on open-mouth kisses him in The Empire Strikes Back. Come on now…..
- When Wicket first finds Leia, she is unconscious next to the big log. She was hit so hard, presumably on the head, when she crashed her Speeder, that she was knocked unconscious. That means concussion. Yet, somehow, Wicket the teddy bear Ewok startles her awake and she displays absolutely no symptoms of a head injury and proceeds to make nice with the little furry bugger.
- About ten minutes later Leia appears in a dress and with braided hair. Where the fuck did the dress come from? Who braided her hair? What was she doing in that little hut before Luke and Han were brought up to be roasted?
- Why doesn’t Luke just use the Force to untie their bindings and escape? Couldn’t Luke just Force lift all the Ewoks around him up into the air and simply walk away?
- When Leia holds the “thermal detonator” in Jabbas chamber as a threat to force Jabba to accept the financial terms of the agreement to hand over Chewy, what does she plan to do if she has to go through with her threat? She is holding the bomb. Will she blow up the chamber and herself if Jabba will not pay the sum of “fifty thousand”? (fifty thousand WHAT, by the way) This does not make sense.
- Does Jabba have a restroom? Or does he simply piss and shit on that rolling platform of his while one of his pals mucks it all up?
- Why does Vader wear a cape? WTF? What does it do? Is it like me wearing a necktie? Both are useless pieces of fabric that are very silly when you think about it.
- Where does the Empire get all the energy to power all of their shit???
- This one is from Empire: Why did the Empire use At-Ats to attack the rebel base? They are clearly very, VERY slow moving and very top heavy. And why did they land them so far away from the base? Those things took forever to get near the base and were easily defeated by simply tripping them with a big string. If finding and destroying the rebel base was so important to the Empire, why did they choose such ridiculous and incompetent vehicles to accomplish the task?
I really could go on and on and on about this but it would take maybe a week or so of constant typing. We have watched Empire so many times now that I can basically recite the entire thing upon request. I put this film in the same state room as the Rocky Horror Picture Show due to its highly memorable dialogue and weird, yet endearing characters. Empire is a great film. It is not the best film of the Star Wars franchise. That honor goes to The Empire Strikes Back, as everyone knows. I have to say, though, that the Last Jedi really does make a strong challenge for that spot. At any rate…I will continue to play Return of the Jedi at least once a week at the store if anyone is interested in watching. Cory, Dallas, and I have a rollicking good time picking the thing apart and pointing out all of its illogical, irrational, and muddle-headed nuances.
Yub Yub,
Chris
