Friday, July 21, 2006

a way with words

"GOD DAMN!"

-- Bob Roll, Tour de France, 2006

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

why is that?

no matter how much science i have taken in school, or have otherwise learned, i still find it bizarre that standing at the South Pole does not give one the sense of being upside down.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

things people on the streets of downtown denver have said to me

- hey! gimmee a bite of that candy bar!

- wanna buy a sticker?

- where's a good place for breakfast?

- i'm a hippie king...i'm a walk around hippie

- (singing panhandler during the clinton years) "she want love...he want a bj"

Friday, July 14, 2006

chew on this

Gum. I rarely chew gum. In fact, the only time I do is if someone offers me a piece. To me, gum is like going to a nudie bar -- largely a waste of time. You get a taste, but you are left feeling empty and dissatisfied.

But what is it about gum chewers? The social aspect, that is.

Maybe gum chewers are just friendly by nature. Without fail, when I am around a gum chewer or group of them, they always ask if I want a piece. They are completely selfless, sometimes even offering me their last piece!

But then, paranoia creeps in. "Oh. Would she really offer her last piece if she didn't think I needed it? My God! I must have periodontal disease! Are my gums bleeding? Does my cake hole reek of death?!" Then usually I accept the gum only to see if the expression is one of extreme relief, or one of true friendliness.

Perhaps then, offering someone a piece of gum should be considered faux pas, or downright rude. It is akin to requesting that someone go douche or asking "would you care for some deodorant?" It would be impossible to tell for sure whether offering gum was out of genuine politeness, and therefore I would submit that doing so should be avoided in social settings.

Or what if gum chewers are zealous crusaders for fresh breath? "Please! Take my gum! Join me and you too can have the same minty fresh breath that I enjoy! Take two pieces and give one to a friend!" Perhaps they are more self righteous in nature. "I am chewing gum. See me chew? My breath is fresh. Yours is not. Unless you partake of my gum, you shall never achieve my freshness."

It is this that makes me prefer mints. Ever see mints stuck to the underside of tables, chairs, and shoes?

3:13 a.m. and pie-eyed

someone please tell me what possessed me to drink two cups of french roast before bedtime.

Work-Life Imbalance

At what point do you begin to accept that your job is your life? I certainly haven't begun to reach that perilous precipice (and refuse to) but it would seem that my job has chosen to interfere with unacceptable gall.

If my profession demanded my sole devotion, my every thought, every ounce of my energy, I might accept giving up personally important moments for its cause. A trauma surgeon expects to be called away on business at any moment. He expects to give up longstanding plans because it is he, and only he, who can execute the one finite act of dexterity that might save another human's life on one untimely occasion.

My job comes nowhere near approaching that degree of critical weight and it is for this reason that I cannot accept the turmoil and disruption that it has brought to one consecrated ritual in my world.

The Man Weekend.

I have written of it and extolled its virtues. For my betestacled friends and me, it is pilgrimage to Mecca. It is communion. It is solstice and equinox, reunion and rejoice. Above all, it is tradition, and my job is blaspheming it. We hold the Man Weekend every year (ok, two years running now) on or near the weekend of September 11th. The significance of our nation's darkest anniversary is not unnoticed, but it is merely coincidental and has nothing to do with ManFest. It is simply the first weekend that falls after my wedding anniversary.

Each year, we commune for the better part of three days in an idyllic setting high up in the mountains, dwelling merrily in a cabin that might just as well be a page out of Mountain Living magazine. From its deck, we sip the essence of barley and malt or occasionally coffee, and we gaze across the creek toward a soaring mountain peak that is close enough to touch, but too far to climb. For that would mean we were ambitious and nay, the Man Weekend is not about that. It is about gathering a very small group of very good friends, telling stories, and laughing more than we have collectively laughed in the year that has passed since our last gathering.

When Man Weekend ends, we all agree that yes indeed, we shall do it again in about 365 days. We begin discussing next year's event roughly two weeks after it has ended. It is on all of our calendars, permanently etched in the blood of friendship and camaraderie.

Then came this year and I am overwrought with bitterness, perhaps more than I should be yet I feel this chagrin and woe and I will not hide my disdain. Someone within my job's chain of command way far away in a big leather chair threw a golden dart at a calendar and chose -you guessed it- the exact same weekend as The Man Weekend to forge into place a monstrous synergy of two companies' billing systems.

This to me is stomping on the Shroud of Turin. This is the burning of my flag. That someone could pick a date, any date, and have it be the one weekend of rare convergence with my very busy friends is surely pure twisted fate. We, after all, made plans last September. Work made plans a relative few months ago. By rights, I should be able to say "sorry, I already have plans" but no -- I can't do that because I am expected to be on the ready for my job.

On one hand, I can accept that. It tells me that what I do is important to someone and if I am needed, that is a good thing. On the other hand, my very small piece of this enormous puzzle (and I emphasize the word "puzzle") should be solidified and completely in place before this big corporate advent. My work should be tested and ready to roll well before the actual weekend. What's more, if there does happen to be something out of whack, we have a good month or more before any customer would even get to see the results of our labor. This translates into time available to fix things the might have gone wrong. So why is it that what I do has the dishonor of disrupting the plans and schedules of six individuals?

Innocent victims of inadvertent, random corporate terrorists. That's what it is.

Friday, July 07, 2006

i'm free

Don't you hate it when you ride your bike to work, and you arrive and open your pack to learn that you forgot underwear?

I hate that. I know it happens to everybody, but still....don't you hate that?

Monday, July 03, 2006

Le Tour 2006

I had started to write this bit about this year's Tour de France and how exciting it would be. "Wait! Lance Armstrong has retired -- why would we even watch it now?" many of you might ask.

I was ready to pounce on the fact that, even though I am a huge Lance fan, it would be even more exciting than in recent years because of the unknown. When Lance raced, it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that he would dominate as always, but this time I was giddy to alert everyone that now, there were new cycling supermen to emerge. Ivan Basso, who just won the Giro d'Italia, had been heavily favored to win the Tour as well. Jan Ullrich, Lance's long-time rival, had been under scrutiny for his conditioning, but had begun to show some dominant form. The stage was set for an epic battle to see who would be the heir to the Lance throne. Even some of Lance's former Discovery lieutenants like George Hincapie or Paolo Savoldelli stood an admirable chance of winning it all, even if only sentimental favorites.

Then Friday morning, I anxiously pulled up www.velonews.com and www.thepaceline.com with great anticipation on the eve of the Tour prologue. What I saw sent me reeling. "Tour in turmoil as Basso and Ullrich ejected" shouted one of the the headlines. For weeks, in the cycling world, we have been reading about Operacion Puerto - a Spanish doping probe which has been threatening to upend professional cycling.

Unfortunately, performance enhancing drugs have been a dark and disenchanting part of the sport. Not all elite cyclists are dopers, of course, but it happens. Several big names began to appear in the probe, but they were just allegations with no hard evidence. We learned that the evidence was so compelling that over 50 riders have been implicated and several suspended by their teams on this the night before cycling's Super Bowl; the World Cup on wheels.

So many things about this are hard to believe. It is hard to believe that these riders are presumed guilty until proven innocent. It is hard to believe that the sport of cycling did not learn lessons from the 1998 Festina doping scandal. It is hard to believe that riders would subject themselves to unknown dangers of performance enhancing substances. It is hard to believe that the biggest names in cycling are involved. Ivan Basso? Jan Ullrich? No way. It just can't be. Even the timing of all this on the eve of the Tour....hard to believe.

I have been waiting for this year's Tour since the end of the 2005 Tour. What new fiasco will unfold each morning when I tune in to the Outdoor Life Network at 6:30 a.m.? Well, I wanted an exciting race, and that's what we'll see without a doubt. Only now it's more than the racing itself. It has become a much bigger story than who is the fastest over 2,000+ miles. It is beyond any predictions, prognostication, and hands-down favorites.

And out of this bleakness, there is one shining note: not one of the members of the Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team is involved in the scandal. Does all of this mean favorable conditions for Lance's old teammates? Absolutely. Keep your eyes on Hincapie. He's someone we can all cheer for and hope for. For years, he has been the right hand man and now it is his chance to shine. There will be those who want to put an asterisk next to whomever wins this year's Tour. In my mind, anyone who races that distance and wins is a god, "yeah, buts" and "what ifs" aside.

If you like the "unscripted" drama of reality TV, I give you the 2006 Tour de France. Maybe, just maybe, the race will now be clean and the drama will indeed be the race itself...not the accompanying soap opera.