I haven’t been here for a while. I guess I could check the date of the last entry and be more specific. Fuck you, so could you. I’m not sure it matters that much to either of us. Maybe if we painted these journals on the walls of caves in Lourdes …
A bunch of shit has been happening, I’m almost positive, I just can’t put it in a neat package. Well, yeah, I can, but that’d be like work. I went to check out gyms yesterday with GF. This one place … the owner was like a cartoon character or a guy from a sit-com. The writers weren’t sure if they wanted dumb jock or shark salesman. Whichever he was, he insisted he wasn’t. Huh. I liked the guy, I’d have a beer with him. When we came in his girlfriend had this eight week old pit-bull puppy on a treadmill. I was under the impression he met the puppy only seconds before I did. He spent forty five minutes giving us the tour of a place where you could see 350 degrees from the front door, one step east and you could see the other ten degrees. He was doing a soft hard sell. I couldn’t tell whether that was his intention or if he didn’t have the abs for a hard hard sell. Heh.
Cartoonish in that he couldn’t hold his arms flat against his body. I’m guessing weight lifting, but no definition; just bulk. In a nutshell that’s why I didn’t join. The whole place had that vibe, and the GF and I were by and far the oldest people there, which doesn’t sound like a problem, but if you’ve lived in a big ten university town … When I was a child I called the students kids. Granted it’s because all the grown-ups I knew called the undergrads kids and me, well, Young Man or Buddy or called me my Christian name (you know, Jesus). The guy wrote out the deal he could give us on a business card. I’m not sure that he actually knows that’s why people don’t like gyms, or sign up and then never go.
I feel a little sheepish talking about fitness and shit, so I told the story of what I didn’t do. I’ve been going to this very cool … place, for private sessions just trying to get my back to straighten up and fly right. It’s not a workout and probably doesn’t fall under the category of fitness; it’s the most medically sound attention my back has had since 1991, and it is pretty fucking hard. Dude at the gym insisted the GF try out a machine, I saved her by acting like I was eager. Dude had it set to thirty pounds and it’s similar to an exercise I do in private sessions; chest and shoulder stretch to elongate lower spine. The weight lifting crowd calls it something else. I realized that the gentle souls at the sort of spiritual yoga PT place haven’t been going easy on me. Thirty pounds resistance was much lighter than what I’ve been doing in simple stretches. Um, just an observation, I thought the girls were going easy on me.
Shoot me if I ever start typing how much I can press. My main goal is to not deteriorate, not to intimidate the guy who kicked sand in my face. Hmmm, that might be too obscure of a reference from you youngsters. There used to be a standing advertisement in the back of comic books for, I think, a gym, there was a line drawing of a big guy kicking sand at the scrawny guy with his girlfriend at the beach. I always took the meaning as Get Big, Get Revenge. And it seemed obvious why advertise in the back of comic books.
I got this saddle for my bike, Italian by way of the UK. My ass can’t remember the last time it was so happy (well, sure it can, but will deny so in public). I’ve been discovering hidden little bike paths. One goes back to this place I thought had been destroyed by the subdivision that, according to my memory, was sitting on top of it. No. It’s the back yard of some overpriced condos in a place where condos shouldn’t even sell at all. They get a view of the lovely swamp that reclaimed the old gravel pit, or if you’re fancy, rock quarry. And cyclists, pedestrians, bunnies and puppies get a view of their back windows. Between the new saddle and the wonder I went for a much longer ride than I had intended and it wasn’t until I got back that I realized how much my ass didn’t hurt and my balls were in the same shape as they had been before I started. Literally; geometrically. An ass can get calloused, balls not so much. Cycling shorts pad the ass, they shove the balls up to pre-pubescence though. Without them on most modern saddles, all your weight is resting on your balls, unless you’re a girl, but I’ll guarantee that’s not one of the few things that’s a plus for being female. It’s going to get you one way or the other.
I think that’s why guys who are way into cycling are such douchebags and likely childless. I used to tour bikes, multi-century runs as a young man. Those guys were douchebags then and they are now, and my child self and my old man self are riding just as hard, but smile about it. I don’t really think of that as a workout either, it is, but it’s way too happy a feeling, wind in your hair and gliding through the air, you forget that, too, your little legs are pumping furiously. Part of the whole gym idea is to be encouraging to the GF who is very hard on herself and wants to be back in whatever shape she wants to be back in. I like her shape. But I like her joy too, so there’s no point in arguing, that and I try hard not to get into arguments that I can’t win or ones where the victory is hollow.
I am a compulsive son of a bitch. I’ve been looking at bikes, specs, price … I keep finding ways of saying out-loud to as many people as I can “It’s a poor musician who blames his axe”. The thing is I like my bike. It’s hardly a hoopdee. What I wanted was like a ten speed shaped bike with a rigid frame. I wasn’t finding any in town, so I bought a mountain bike that felt good to ride rode it in the fall of 2012, and pulled it out of the garage in late June of this year. Biomechanically it’s not as good for my back as other styles of bikes. When I replaced the saddle I realized a couple of things; I know how to build a bike from scratch and I know how to tweak one. Axe, Build, tweak. I repeat that like a mantra every time I seriously look at buying a bike closer to what I had in mind.
The number of gears is no longer a thing. Ten speed shapes have from seven to twenty one gears now. They call them road bikes. The cost of alloy frames, or carbon fiber, jacks the price up into four and five digits. They talk about the geometry of the frame and, pretentiously, especially for the American built bikes, they use centimeters. I think it’s to convince online buyers that they buying the right fit. If you’ve bought enough clothes online you know the waist and inseam means something different to, say, Levi Strauss than it means to, say, wrangler. Those are only double digit mistakes. In real life no matter what the centimeter count of the center tube or its diameter, you get on the thing and peddle until you either say ‘Ahhhh’ or ‘Fucking ouch’.
In the bad old days a Best Buy salesman could sell a four thousand dollar TV without knowing how to plug it in. Here, you can’t sell a bicycle without … knowing how to plug it in. People here, in general, are serious about their fitness, or, you know, are old country buffet people. I like the seriously goofy crowd, them what jog on my bike path at sunrise in old sweats and pink Floyd t-shirts. We are few and far between. The majority are in neon tight blouse with super wicking properties and two hundred dollar sneaker. I always flash to an image of the hood where I worked in Portland and fancy sneakers hanging from a telephone wire. I try hard not to judge, but it’s a bit entitled and sheltered motherfucker than jogs in a wardrobe spendier than my best Armani suit. I ride, now with an ass friendly saddle, in khaki’s and Hawaiian print button downs. The pink Floyd joggers know what I mean. The lunatic is on the grass, remembering games and daisy chains and laughs, got to keep the looneys on the path.
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