Thursdays(?) Five -Tony

A busted rear bike tire & a burnt up blender, for me they are closely related (although the bike tire is a way, WAY bigger deal).

How are these two unrelated things connected in Tony-Land?

they reflect two of my passions: Biking & cooking. Both of which were way-laid by mechanical failures, biking by a razor sharp chunk of asphalt, cooking by too-stiff cream cheese that strained my blender to a very early grave.

We all have things that we are passionate about. So many of my friends have these twitter-sations about coffee grounds & grinding coffee & putting coffee in boiling water & main-lining coffee & the best blends to put in your IV drip & on & on & on.

Coffee moves them.

It shapes them.

It shapes what they think about.

It shapes the meth-lab-esque paraphernalia they spend their money on to concoct their dark caffeine laden draughts with.

Stuff moves me, here’s a worthless list of 5 things that i’m passionate about:

1) Biking

2) Cooking

3) Music

4) Books

1. Tea (real tea, not that duff you get at the grocery store)

My passions affect me & the way i view the world, to me it’s not crazy at all to spend more on a bicycle than a car. i’d love copper cookware that would cost me a whole paycheck. i really need that much space on my ipod. My bedroom looks like a book-mobile overturned in it. i tend to buy my tea loose leaf, by the ounce and at a premium price.

Someone once told me, “Show me your bank statements & i can tell you what’s important to you.”

You could also say, show me how you spend your time and i’ll show you what’s important to you.

Two question i ask myself (& you my friends): What’s really important in my life? Are the things i hold to be important really worthwhile? Where does my love of music & cycling stack up against my spiritual life?

What are some of your passions in life? i’d love to know. Not for any real good reason, but just because i’m a curious booger.

Thursdays 5 -Tony

5 Things my Mom’s recent battle with cancer have shown me or reminded me of:

1) My mom is possibly the most selfless person i know:

My mom spent over 9 hours Monday either in surgery, pre-op or recovery. When she finally was carted into her room my dad, my mom’s sister & me waited patiently in the hallway as the nurses got her settled in so we could see her.

She had just endured major surgery, life saving surgery! Was still wrestling against the grip of anesthesia and as the three of us tentatively gathered around her bed she looked at my dad and asked him this question:

“Are you ok?”

“Yeah,” he replied.

She looked up at her sister, “Are you ok?”

“Yeah,” she smiled back

Then to me, “Are you ok?”

“Really Mama! You are not allowed to ask me that question right now!”

Here is the real kicker: she wasn’t being polite or clever, she really wanted to make sure we were all ok! She has to be the most selfless person i personally know. Her other conversation revolved around making sure we had eaten while she was in surgery, fussing at me for worrying, and giving my older sister strict instructions to take me out for dinner (even though i’m 34)!

i hope that one day i will genuinely care for other people the way my mother cares for others

2) We use humor to deal with stress

i’ve always wondered where i got my #1 coping tool from, disarming nerves with humor, and when i watched my immediate family dealing with mom’s serious surgery i saw it in action. We all spent a long, nervous day migrating around the surgery waiting room, eating hospital cafeteria food & flipping through magazines we would otherwise never have cracked the cover on. The thing i noticed that seemed to set us apart from the other people in the waiting area was the fact that our family circle had much more laughter than any of the others.

It wasn’t that we were ok with mama being operated on, we were all bundles of nerves. It’s just that we cope with stressful times by keeping our spirits afloat with laughter.

Humor is such an important part of dealing with pain for me, and my family, and i’m glad. i hope we laugh through every surgery, every tragedy, every struggle. i hope that when people gather around my cold dead body to celebrate/berate my life that there is plenty of laughter in the room.

3) My family is Stoic by nature

It wasn’t until all this went down with my mother that i really realized that stoicism is a family trait, along with male-pattern baldness and a fiery temper. That thought actually hit me when i was speaking to a room full of youth leaders at a retreat a few weekends ago. i was blown away, all of my friends who were there responded to my revelation with some variance of, “DUH”.

When i asked my mom, via telephone, a few days before the surgery how she was with it all she replied, “I’m really ok, this is just something I have to do and there is no way around it.”

My former mother-in-law once told me that if there is a problem you are powerless to affect, then don’t waste your energy fretting over it. All my life my mom and dad have faced difficulties with a staid, quiet reserve. i’m sure that somewhere that’s where i wound up adopting “Cest la vie” as my life-mantra.

4) The power of presence

Sometimes in life you have no clue what to say to people. At funerals, after a breakup or divorce, when the diagnosis comes back bleak, in the waiting room. But one thing life has taught me, and recent events have reminded me of is: the power of presence.

There is just a comfort that comes when the right people are around you, when no words are there, their physical presence becomes the support you need.

Although, sometimes, you just want to be left alone, finding the right balance between being there, and being available is a tricky road to navigate, but one well worth the effort.

5) Compared to cancer (aka real problems) most of the other “Stuff” we worry about is insignificant and trivial

We get our drawers in a wad over so many things; someone said this, i can’t get the tv i want, they don’t like me…

We expend the bulk of our energies fretting over problems that don’t even deserve our attention. When our daily bumps in the road are laid side by side with the real problems life throws at us they seem ridiculous. i hope that’s something i can remember when the big problems aren’t so front and center.

Thursday 5 -Tony

Well, after my Christmas rant i took some time off from posting, but now it’s back to the grindstone to entertain the masses (& by masses i really mean the 3 people who actually read what i post here haha). Today i want to extend my vehement cynicism beyond just the Christmas holiday and take aim at the New Year.

5 Reason’s New Years “Resolutions” are worthless:

1) They’re typically dumb

How many times do we make a resolution to do something that, for most of us, is just dumb?

This is the year I loose these 55 extra pounds.

This year I’m going to head to the gym before work 4 days a week.

This year I’m going to completely change the way I eat from the ground up!

This year I’m going to pray for 2 hours a day.

Now, on the surface none of those are “dumb” goals for a new-year. What makes them dumb is that they would require a complete & radical (& probable unsustainable) restructuring of our lives.

Loose that 55 pounds: That’s about 4.5 pounds a month, not undoable. But: most wellness/exercise sources say that to loose one pound you have to burn 3,500 calories. So that’s over 15,000 calories burned a month. Over a year to shed 55 pounds you would have to burn 192,500 calories, or assuming that you exist on the 2,000 calorie recommended diet the equivalent of burning 96 days worth of nourishment! To burn that you’re gonna have to run about 1,400 miles! Or spend nearly 600 hours lifting weights. Short of a three month hunger fast ;Not gonna happen there Ghandi!

Go to the gym before work 4 days a week: Hey there snooze button surfer, the only thing that’s gonna get you out of bed early is a house-fire!

Change the way you eat from the ground up: You’re probably going to go into DTs if you quit your mistress Little Debbie cold turkey.

Pray 2 hours a day: Sure your current prayer-life is 3 minutes of rapid-fire requests a day but a 3,900% increase in daily prayer is totally doable.

All i’m saying here is this: if you feel like you have to set some goals for your life in the new-year, set yourself up to succeed, not fail; & if it makes you feel any better all of these goals i took jabs at are pretty close to ones that i set for myself in years past.

2) It’s usually a half-hearted attempt to assuage our guilty conscience:

Not that a guilty conscience is a bad motivator, it’s often a pretty effective one. The problem is the half-hearted part. If we really want to make change in our lives we should just make it, not wait for the right calendar date to roll around. If you really want to change; change, stop waiting for an “excuse” to make change in your life.

3) Really, do we really think we’re gonna follow through?

This really ties in with the half-hearted part, but “resolutions” come with this built in parachute, this idea that it’s “just a resolution”.  But last time i checked, “resolution” and “resolve” are pretty close relatives linguistically speaking. But most of our resolutions lack resolve.

4) Nothing really changes because we throw a calendar in the trash

New years is a great holiday, we get the day off work to spend with family and friends, we stay up late and watch a giant christmas decoration make it’s painfully slow descent down a flag-pole (or watch Travis Pastrana make an anti-climactic jump onto a barge). Some people watch practice squads play football (AKA: College Football). But ultimately it’s just another day. Hunter-gatherer tribes in the remotest nooks of Africa don’t even know that it has come and gone. If it wasn’t for our calendars there would be no discernible difference between December 31st and January 1st.

Yet, so many of us expect life to be different because it’s the “New-Year”.

But life moves in its own way, regardless of what date it is. Regardless of if it’s rolling over to Y2K & you sit with flashlight in hand and a pantry packed with canned foods you will ultimately throw out in three years, or 2013 rolls around and we find out that just because the Mayan calendar ended, the world didn’t. Life moves on, at it’s own stuttering pace; long periods of mediocrity punctuated by jarring times of accelerated change.

Don’t expect things to be different just because you put a new far-side desk calendar on the corner of your desk.

5) Did i mention they’re typically dumb?

Pretty sure i did, but just wanted to drive that point home, plus i needed a filler or this would have been a Thursday’s Four!

It’s not that i think having goals are a bad idea. i have goals that i would like to see accomplished this year:

Shed a few more pounds

Ride my bike competitively

Bike Moab

Summit a 14er.

But i don’t do resolutions anymore. i may or may not make it out to Utah with my Mountain Bike this year, i hope i do; but if i don’t that’s ok. There’s always 2011!

Dave ….Family Vacation

Ok, it’s been a while I know, but it’s not like there were many of you reading my posts anyways.  Aside from my wife and Tony I’m not too sure anyone was reading, however, on the mere obscure chance that there is some lonely, desperate, and insane blog fanatic reading pointless blog posts, then this blog is for you.

I don’t have anything in particular to blog about today so I thought I might just ramble a bit and see if anything worthwhile comes out of it.  I just spent a week with my family in Florida that was kind of relaxing and yet stressful at the same time.  How can spending a few days at the beach in lovely Florida be stressful you ask.  Well, when you add the fact that I was there with my two sisters and their families along with my mom and dad, oh yeah, don’t forget my 3 kids and a dog, it makes for a not entirely restful bliss.  8 adults and 7 kids and one spoiled dog for those of you who want and need the numbers for this to make any sense.

Other factors to consider is that it was a 14 hr drive that, we who are so smart decided to break up by leaving early and staying with my, you guessed it, inlaws at their house.  Did I mention we left before Christmas and because we are caught up in our traditions, had to pack our presents and take them with us, instead of being post modern and smart and open them before we travel and leave them home.  So we pack the presents, the clothes,(all shorts and t-shirts because we are going to Fl where it’s warm, right?)the dog, the dog food, laptops, DS’, every movie in the house for the dvd player, and then all the food, drinks, and candy that would have kept the Donner party alive for at least 2 years(3 years if  you include the dog) and hit the road.  Now we get to the inlaws and get more presents and stuff to pack…yeah..hope you feel the sarcasm, but it’s Christmas so no complaining.

It’s Christmas morning and we head off to meet up with my family somewhere in South Carolina.  As we coordinate this event with the skill a blind man with a broken compass we somehow meet up just south of Columbia(not the country).  Ok, so were good right?  Only 7 hours until the sweet Florida sand is under toes and heavenly bliss right?  I mean, who knew hurricane like rain would start and not stop for the next 4 hrs.  Do you know how much fun it is to drive 40 miles an hr through 2 states?  This is turning into a Chevy Chase movie except even he would be laughing at us and thinking he has it pretty good.

With the rain finally stopping and making better time, we realize we won’t get there before dark but that’s ok, we have all week for the beach.  Then, the dog got gassy.  Now I don’t mean, oh, poor puppy is not feeling good and is just a little gassy.  No, I mean, Dear God in heaven what is that smell, kind of gassy.  If was bad.  What was worse, was before we figured out it was the dog, everyone insisted that it was me.  Not sure if that is a compliment or if I should be insulted.

We make it into Florida and get more gifts from my family that I have to now figure out how to pack…yippee, and then we find out that Florida will be getting a record cold front.  I love my families planning skills.  The kids and I would not be deterred from swimming in the ocean.  A little hypothermia never killed anybody.  so we brave the cold, and I got to tell ya, we had a blast.  I lost 4 toes, but I had a blast.

We got back yesterday, we are tired from the travel, worn out from sleeping in strange beds, but oddly enough, we had a great time.  I think it’s these kind of mishaps on trips that make the trip more memorable.  A true family vacation that you never forget needs to be filled with mishaps, heartache, and pain for it to be considered a great family vacation.  The moment s that I mentioned where only the highlights, there were many other moments of unexpected trouble shooting due to unforeseeable variables, but despite all that, we found a lot of time to laugh until it hurt and cry because we love each other, and thank God above to be so blessed.

Well, I guess I did have something to say after all.  I think I’ll try this stream of consciousness again sometime.

Thursdays 5 -Tony

BAH Humbug! 5 things i hate about Christmas!

Well, it’s December again. You know what that means right? It means that the beast of Christmas has risen from the sea of consumerism to plague humanity again!

Sure there’s plenty about Christmas to love, people become more giving, family meals, blah blah blah… but trust me, there’s much more to hate! Here’s some of my rants about Christmas:

1) Gift giving obligations

We find ourselves under obligation to give gifts to everyone our lives touch! In some ways giving out of “obligation” is the antithesis of generosity.

Our obligatory gift giving has spawned all sorts of illegitimate products that only show up around Christmas time:

> Deodorant/Aftershave samplers- for those friends/frenemies who you just don’t know well enough to buy anything meaningful for. And maybe they smell a little…

> Those Christmas mugs with christmas “treats” stuffed in them- They are wrapped in festive plastic, filled full of crappy candy/biscotti/other inexpensive (or even better faux-expensive) food items that no one would ever buy otherwise. These pre-packaged mugs are great when you need to buy a 5 dollar present for the 15 people you work with in the office and want to be assured that the crappy gift disbursement is equitable.

> Those $5, $10, $20 gift racks that show up in stores: Here you can find tire-pumps that fit in your glove-box, tool kits that are sure to disintegrate into fine metal powder the first time you try to put them to use, motorized rulers, flash-light/emergency beacon/dog whistle combos, and on and on… All stuff nobody really needs and few people want and even fewer will ever use.

2) Christmas music

The scourge of my tympanic membranes! It’s everywhere! Stores, restaurants, waiting rooms, funeral homes, meth labs, houses of ill repute, EVERYWHERE!!!

Plus every semi-washed-up recording artist vomits out their own collection of holiday tunes to torment the masses with (and make a quick and easy buck).

i HATE Christmas music!!! Maybe if it didn’t start playing publicly in Mid-August it wouldn’t be nearly as bad, which is the perfect segue into #3:

3) That it’s an attention whore

No other holiday is as much of an attention hog as Christmas! Don’t believe me, walk into any store on October 31st! ON Halloween we are bombarded by the first tsunami of Christmas crap! By the time Thanksgiving rolls around trees are twinkling in den windows across the land, strings of energy consuming (and visually garish) icicle lights are dangling from the front gutters of single and double-wide trailers alike, lighted plastic candy-canes are lining the walkways of suburbia! Power company CEOs across America dance a jig of jubilation as their profit margins sky-rocket as December draws nigh!

Some turkey has to lay down his life for us to feast on his tender flesh with our family members in our Thanksgiving festivities and before his mechanically separated head has landed in the tripe box many families have already bungee corded the 120volt 75watt plastic santa to their chimney!

Christmas, at least let Thanksgiving have it’s day before you come strutting in with all your tinsely pomp and demand that we see you!

4) Black Friday:

When GROWN men i know start getting up at 4AM with shopping fever something is woefully wrong! When as a nation we accept a couple of trampled grandmothers as collateral damage to us getting a real deal on a LCD TV from Best Buy, our society is broken! When ANY sale runs from “4AM till Noon”, we have reached a state of collective retardation that needs help!

Black Friday: i hate you! You represent everything that is wrong with Christmas in America! While people who live in rough neighborhoods have to cope with slow police response times YOU, Black Friday, pull a thin police force from protecting the poor to assuring that the middle-class don’t kill one another over PS-3s…..

5) Christmas Garb

It doesn’t matter how “adorable” you think it is, it’s just ugly! Only one piece of Christmas garb has ever brought humanity any real joy! And it is THIS ONE:

God Bless you Cousin Eddie for your Dark Dickie & White Sweater!

So yeah, i’m starting to hate Christmas! Why can’t we just be generous all year long instead of running up credit card bills on stuff people won’t use anyway? If you hate Christmas with me let me know! If you are absolutely in love with Christmas then feel free to wish bad tidings on me.

There are things i do love, watching my kids get stuff they’ve wanted, Rudolf on TV, The Christmas Story!, seeing family, getting Christmas cards…. Ok NOT that last one! Let’s strip a forest bare to produce land-fill fodder in the name of “Christmas Spirit”!

Anyway, happy birthday Jesus! This year we’re giving you unbridled consumerism for your birthday! Hope you like it!

Thursdays 5 -Tony

5 MORE Technological advancements we could do without!

In our world filled with technological marvels some are marvelous, others are just paltry baubles of modern society. Here are 5 i felt like complaining about today!

 

 

1) Blue Headlights

Because headlights weren’t blinding enough when met head-on in highbeam! We bring the world blue headlights, who possess the jarring glare of regular lights set to high even when they are only on low beams. God forbid a driver equipped with blue beams accidentally brights you! The retina searing power is roughly the equivalent to having Lasik Surgery done drive-by style!

 

Please Mr. Blue beams, get some normal headlights!

 

 

 

2) News Networks

We already live in a culture of paranoia! Having 24 hour news networks is like putting in a free wet-bar at the Betty Ford clinic! But, we not only have A 24 hour news network, we have MANY! All carefully tailored to fit your personal political slant on your obsessive socio-political nail bitting! (unless you are an honest to goodness centrist)

 

First off, there really isn’t THAT much news! It’s really just the same 45 minutes of coverage over & over & over & over!

 

Secondly, it’s just plain ridiculous! If you listened to the news networks (and many of us do) you would think the world will be doing good to hold out for December, 12 2012 to fold in on itself!

 

 

 

 

 

 

3) Remote Controls for Computers

One word: REALLY??!?!?

 

 

 

4) 3G networks

i know that my iphone tirade sort of bordered on this complaint but i can’t get away from it. Soon we will be a culture with access to ALL knowledge and retention of none!

 

that said, i’d still love to have a 3G phone, just in case you are looking for Christmas ideas for me! Also on the list: New Road Bike, New Back Pack, I-Tunes Gift Cards…. if you need any other suggestion feel free to ask!

 

 

 

 

5) Pre-Lit Christmas Trees

Honestly, i’m a total scrooge anyway, i have grown to despise the Christmas season! But i do like Christmas trees… sort of.

 

But a pre-lit plastic monstrosity? We, the plastic spoon society*, have become so bloated on satellite television and McLattes that we can’t even wrap lights around a fake tree?

 

*Plastic spoon: We live in a society where it’s “easier” to pump crude oil from the soil, refine it into plastics, mold that into spoons, ship them out where they are bought and used once to be thrown into landfills than it is to wash a dirty spoon when we are done with it.

Thursdays 5 -Tony

5 Best things about living in small town America:

 

Living in a small town definitely has it’s disadvantages; unless a new place opens you’ve already sampled all the local cuisine, God help you if you need some odd piece of technical equipment in a hurry, you have a limited amount of (typical) entertainment options… The list goes on, anyone who has ever lived in po-dunk-ville for yourself could easily add a couple hundred items to that list. But there are some pluses to living in a slice of Americana with fewer bodies per acre, here’s a few of of my favorite things about it:

 

 

 

1) The special pace of small towns:

Over the course of my life i’ve lived in a couple of small towns and worked in many more and one thing that seems to be common amongst them all is the pace that life seems to move at in a small town: s……….l………..o………….w…………….e…………….r…………………

 

There are times when i think i’ll have an aneurism having to wait behind a pair of “good-ole-boys” catching up on hunting conditions! What’s the problem with that my metropolitan friends may be wondering, it may have just a tad to do with the fact that they just stop on almost any two-lane road, back up and sit window to rolled-down-window talking shop; deer-scat, gutting techniques (the new “use your pick-up truck to yank the hide off” method seems to be quite the talk these days), calibers, bans on flavored tobaccos and just whatever other girlish chit-chat they need to catch up on.

 

Trips to Walmart can also wind up playing like something best reenacted by  the likes of Bill Murray. Jet into Walmart in any sort of hurry and you will find yourself practically assaulted by a spirit of Sloth, and i don’t mean laziness- i mean human beings channeling the very essence of the three-toed sloth of South America, moving slow enough to foster a thriving population of moss on their backs!

 

But overall, in a world that seems to be winding itself up to higher and higher speeds, a world where we don’t just want high speed internet- we want it in our pocket! The slower pace can be so refreshing. When i see some old guys sitting in a local eatery, lunch long consumed, just sitting and reading the paper or chatting or hitting on some calloused yet southern-friendly waitress i’m reminded that soon enough, just around the corner really, i’ll be dead and feeding microbes and invertebrates and if i don’t take a breath and drink in TODAY, today will be gone for good.

 

 

2) “Rush Hour”

Yep, there really is none! Sure there is a surge of traffic around quitting time but compared to the flames of tortuous aggression and bumper-to-bumper retardation of the D.C. beltway small town traffic isn’t even a match-flame.

 

 

 

 

3) You have a name:

In small town America, everyone has a name and lots of people know it. In a world where we are striving to live in anonymity (from online shopping to self-checkouts to ATM’s to automated call centers we are steadily removing human interaction from our world) it is nice to NOT be anonymous from time to time.

 

Sure it has it’s own breed of irritations, just try and do ANYTHING secretly in a small town! You have a colonoscopy and they are running the images on page 3 of the paper! Try to be anti-social for a day and you’ll find you have to stay at home to pull it off, go out for a tube of Pringles and a movie (even from the Redbox) and you’re going to bump into at least three people you know.

 

But, it was nice when a few weeks ago the manager of Walmart greeted me by first name. Or when the theater manager let me in for free. Or when i go down-town to grab a cheese-burger at the Grill and if the owner is in there i have trouble paying, he just won’t take my money just because i’m his nephew’s youth pastor.

 

It’s nice to be more than a social security or a debit card number.

 

 

 

 

4) Creative entertainment

i’m sure i’ve mentioned this before sometime but this is one of my favorite things about living in a small town. Life in a more metropolitan area means free time is usually consumed with going out to eat. i think if i lived in a city i would weigh 300lbs, i’d be that guy on the hover-round, heart straining to push my gravy-blood around my sprawling body-mass, lungs working like an asthmatic summiting K-2, ladling au jus over deep fried french toast sticks. Man, i LOVE food!

 

But i don’t live in a city, i live in the dead center of nowhere! Living inside a post-card picture has nurtured my love of the outdoors. And it’s to the outdoors that people in small towns must look for many of their entertainment options.

 

“Going for a swim” for me an my friends doesn’t involve a single drop of chlorine, instead it involves a minimum two mile round-trip on foot, a full fledged “swimming hole”, heck often they become full fledged Huck Finn-esque endeavors.

 

Small town living has to get some credit for my love of back-packing, biking, canoeing, and a flagrant disregard for “No Trespassing” signs!

 

You can have your Ruby Tuesday’s, PetSmarts, Sam’s Clubs and Cold-stone Creameries… give me my abandoned mines, fire-roads and low-traffic black top!

 

 

 

5) Firearms!

Where else can a man who hasn’t been on a hunting trip since he was 13 or 14 years old own an assault rifle and not raise a single eye-brow?

 

MAN! i do love my guns!

 

i don’t own many, but if you’d like to see them just break into my house one night while i’m asleep and i’ll introduce you to at least one of them!

 

Just knowing they are in the house makes me want to wear something that says “Carhart” on it, put the dog in the bed of the pick-up, crank up some Waylon Jennings crooning about “makin’ their way, the only way they know how” and ride to the store for a CASE- yes a case, not a box- of shells! My inner red-neck is cutting donuts in my brain on his four-wheeler as i write this!

 

 

 

 

When i was a kid growing up in a small town all i wanted to do was get out of small town living, but like so many who shared those same aspirations i found that i didn’t really mind living in a small town… in fact i prefer it!

Thursdays 5- Tony

5 Things i got from my first organized bike ride:

 

Last Saturday i loaded up my road bike and headed out for my first organized bike ride. i wish i could say i wasn’t a bundle of nerves with a sack of rabid butterflies for guts, but that would be a bold faced lie. It wasn’t a big ride by any stretch, many of the area die-hards were out of town for a mountain bike race. But i had caught the buzz… the Mt. Airy crowd was going to be there! Now, i realize that means absolutely nothing to the vast majority of the universe but if you live here in Galax it means a-lot. It means you are going to get shown up, you are going to look like a an asthmatic on a bike trying to keep up with Team Astana! Some of these guys are pros!

 

So it was with a low level of brooding dread that i pulled into the parking lot of the Rec Department Saturday morning for the Tour De Grayson (a ride to raise money for the High School’s French program) and took my 25 year old road bike off the trunk rack, and with trepidation made my way down to the registration table to sign in.

 

After what seemed like an eternity we were under-way. Here’s 5 things i took away from my morning spinning out mileage on two skinny tires (2 brand new tires actually, that burnt a $104 hole in my wallet!)

 

 

 

1) Found out where i stand as a biker

To all my non-bike riding friends this seems like a no-brainer. But to anyone who spends hours of their life perched on a tiny seat powering a motor-less vehicle till their quads are burning it’s not so cut and dry. i’m still hauling around 20 extra pounds (YES folks, i said 20. i know so many of you think i’m crazy but i won’t be genuinely competitive till i’m 170 or less- i know you guys think i’ve lost my mind, but i promise; i haven’t).

 

i spent most of the ride cruising along with riders way above my level. Granted they weren’t going flat out, but neither was i.

 

The next time i get an invite to a group ride i will be able to accept with little fear of looking like a chump, even if i can’t keep up at least i know i’m won’t be a laughingstock.

 

2) Found some new routes where i live to ride

i tell people all the time that we live in one of the prettiest places on earth. Sure we don’t have the craggy peaks of the rockies, or sweeping desert vistas veined with cannons; we don’t have white sand beaches with the rhythmic pounding of the surf or amber waves of grain; but we are nestled in the low rolling mountains of the east. The wooded (claustrophobic: as one of my friends who grew up out west calls them) Blue Ridge section of the Appalachian mountain chain.

 

We cranked out some great sections of rural roads through Grayson county. Some so great i went back on Thursday and rode them again.

 

 

3) Learned the power of a pace-line in practice, not just theory

About 15 miles in i got blown away pulling a long hill by a guy named Robert Marion (a pro Mountain Biker) & his 15 year old protegee Chase. i was spinning away pushing 15mph up-hill and they pulled past me with ease, even exchanging pleasantries in a conversational (read: non-winded) manner that left me exclaiming between desperate attempts to get oxygen to my oxygen deprived leg muscles, “Dude! You are a machine!”

 

Later, around 25 miles in, his wife (also a pro Mtn Biker) and two friends came pulling steadily past me as i was struggling against a pretty stiff headwind, riding single-file in a loose pace-line. As the last of the dynamic trio passed me i dropped in behind them and let them fight the headwind for a while. Actually i followed them re remaining 20 some odd miles in to the end of the ride.

 

i’d read plenty about running pace-lines and drafting, and although i didn’t often ride tight enough behind them to call it a true pace-line the difference was still readily apparent. Since i spend pretty much all my time on a bike in solitude it was a pleasant experience for me!

 

 

4) Bummed some training tips

At the end of the ride they provided us all with lunch. i ate most of my lunch  with the three race-team members and their two friends. Mostly i just listened. i was actually surprised by how genuinely nice they all were, mostly i just listened, and asked a few questions. i really wanted to know what folks on their level do to train.

 

Someone once told me, “The best training advice you will ever hear is, ‘ride; LOTS’”

 

Turns out that’s exactly what the bulk of their off-season training consists of, hours and hours spent on a bike. Since i love to spend time on a bike that was actually pretty comforting to me. Now to figure out how to get paid to ride a bike!

 

 

5) Set a new personal distance best

Before Saturday my normal “long” ride was around 35 miles. When we rolled in for lunch i had ridden 48.75 miles and felt like i had barely taken a spin around the block, in fact i went home and cranked out a quick 10 before finally taking a shower and tossing my funk-tified bike shorts into the dirty clothes pile.

 

That record didn’t stand for long, Thursday i took some time off and cranked out nearly 60 miles, again with little fatigue. Ready to spin up my first century as soon as i can carve out a day to do it!

 

 

 

So once again i’ve waxed long about my love of biking. Hopefully next week i’ll have some topic that’s more “generally” entertaining….

Thursdays 5 -Tony

5 movies that were better than the book:

We all know them, heck some of us ARE them, those people who huff as soon as the credits roll and scoff, “The book was sooooooo much better!” Nothing wrecks the after-glow of a good movie quite like that line. OF COURSE the book was better, its a BOOK! There is a level of intimacy you experience with characters in a book that is rarely rivaled via the medium of movies. But there are a few exceptions where the movie really does come off better than the book, here are my 5 picks of movies that are actually better than the books they are based on:

1) Where the Wild Things Are:

Might as well come out of the gate swinging. Yes, i know Where the Wild Things Are is a beloved and timeless children’s book, a Caldecott winner and that Maurice Sendak is an artistic Genius. i love the book! i think it’s great. But when i read the book it feels like the story of a bratty kid who gets sent to his room, spends a few hours fantasizing and returns to reality to find his dinner waiting for him. When i saw the movie it felt much more profound: Bratty kid acts like brat, gets in trouble and embarks on a journey of imagination that reminds us all that our ideal life may not be exactly what we think it is, that we need to face down our inner demons because if we don’t we’ll deal with them till we do.

Book:     93% Awesome

Movie:    95%  Awesome

2) Ben Hur:

One of my all time favorite movies. This movie is an Epic movie in every sense of the word. i don’t think any other movie even touched on the scale of it’s story-telling until Peter Jackson took a break from making horrible slashers and took the risk of putting Tolkien’s trilogy onto film (L.O.T.R.: Book better than the movie: Book 110% Awesome. Movie: 98% Awesome).

Charlton Heston really gets absorbed by Judah Ben Hur in the movie, quite a feat considering Heston’s stature. The movie takes a few minutes to wind up, but then grabs me by the guts and won’t let me go till the ending. The pacing is slower than modern movies, but it’s got that golden age of cinema pacing that makes everything feel so much more grandiose. The book on the other hand has this slower pacing that makes it feel well, just slow. If you haven’t seen the movie watch it! And remember, that chariot race is 0% CGI & cost human lives to film!

Book: 33% Awesome

Movie: 98% Awesome

3) Flowers for Algernon (Charlie)

When i was in High School, for some reason that is beyond me, we were forced to watch Flowers for Algernon in my 10th grade health and P.E. Class. Knowing the nature of P.E. teachers who teach us not only their passion of propelling various spherical & near spherical objects of varying resiliencies through the air for competitive reasons; but also are forced by school boards to teach us miscellaneous facts about how our bodies work*, i’m sure that at least to some extent their motivations were: Hey, watching a movie would eat up 90 minutes of class time OR a week of health class (with the alternation between “Gym Days” & “Class Days”).

i remember it was quite an affair, they herded all the Health and P.E. classes into the auditorium (my school had 3 gyms & therefore i think as many health and P.E. classes running simultaneously) and for three days one week we sat on those dark stained wooden seats and watched Flowers for Algernon. The tale of a mentally retarded man, Charlie (which is the name of the book),  who receives an experimental treatment that augments his intelligence to Hawking-esque levels. But alas- only temporarily. i remember shedding tears as it wound down, and tears in a 10th grade Health & P.E. class are the equivalent to throwing a lacerated hemophiliac into a shark pool. It’s a tough movie to find, but worth the time to watch it, the book on the other hand feels like it was written by Charlie after his experimental treatments have concluded.

Book: (aka: Charlie)  20% Awesome

Movie: (aka: Flowers for Algernon)  75% Awesome

By the way; Algernon is a lab mouse that also receives the treatments in the story.

*why any legitimate educator would pick P.E. teachers to teach  us Sex Ed is beyond me! We take the men who were the jocks in their own school career and task them with laying the foundation for the budding sexual awareness of the youth of our nation? On what level does this seem like a good idea? English teachers are the ideal choice for that job, the same people that teach you to de-code Shakespeare, it’s scandalous some of the things they required us to read, and aspire to be novelists would be much more equipped to share what is euphemistically referred to as the birds and the bees.

4) I Am Legend

The Movie I Am Legend is a great little Sci-Fi romp into a post-apocalyptic world where a modified virus has transformed humanity into a sort of zombie/vampire jacked up on PCP sort of monstrosity. It follows Robert Neville, played by Will Smith* (who is a class A action movie guy- if you don’t hold Wild Wild West against him), as he seeks to find a cure for the virus. In the movie  he has depth and does things that i confess i would probably do if i lived in an abandoned NY city, like set up a small population of mannequins  at his most frequent haunts and do things just because you could, like tearing through Central Park in a super-charged GT Mustang or hitting golf balls of the U.S.S. Intrepid into the city.

Really the movie came of as smart and engaging and i rooted for Neville through the whole thing, crying when Sam (his beloved dog) dies and literally sitting on the edge of my seat earlier when he searches for her in a building packed full of the infected.

The book on the other hand… well it felt like it was written by a 17 year old to target an audience of 17 year olds. Humanity had turned into what is closer to more traditional vampires and well, there really wasn’t anything wildly creative about it. Had i read the book first i would have skipped the movie altogether and that would have been a mistake on my part. When i read the book, instead of rooting for the main character, i found myself anxiously waiting for the vampires to finally get around to killing his boring self. When he finally does die it is boring and inglorious.

Skip the book, rent the movie

Book: 10% Awesome

Movie: 95% Awesome

* Will Smith is also one of the few human beings that if, via a tear in the time space continuum found himself in a no-holds barred cage match against himself, 40 years old vs 25 years old; the 40 year old version would literally break the 25 year old version. Literally. Break. Him.

5) The Princess Bride

For two weeks running one of the greatest movies of all times makes an appearance in my senseless ramblings!

It’s hard to best a master-piece. Honestly i almost skipped this one (although i do think the movie is better than the book) because comparing the movie to the book is like comparing the Mona Lisa (painting) to whoever the real Mona Lisa (the model) was.

Like Where the Wild Things Are, there is nothing at all wrong with the book, it’s just that the movie is so near to perfect that it almost “goes the way of Enoch”- it walked with God and was no more! The book fills in some gaps, and by claiming to be an “abbreviated version of S. Morgenstern’s longer tale” peppered with Goldman’s commentary it pulls off the same schticky feel that the movie pulls off by cutting to a protesting Fred Savage, “Wait there isn’t more kissing is there?”

Read the book and watch the movie; or watch the movie and read the book; or watch the movie, read the book and watch the movie again; or read the book and watch the movie between chapters- over and over again…

Book:   99.8% Awesome

Movie:  100% Awesome (not from concentrate)

Well, there’s my 5 picks for Movies that are better than the books. My fellow humans ; do you have any picks for movie over book? If so let me know (so i can enjoy the movie without feeling guilty for skipping the book it’s based on!)

Mondays 5- Tony (because i was lazy last thursday)

5* Great movies from my childhood that everyone should watch:

(Ok it’s really 9 but who’s counting?)

Not sure which movies my children will look at with the same warm fondness as these golden beauties from my childhood, probably Harry Potter, Finding Nemo, Wall-E, Where the Wild Things Are and the like.

A couple of years ago i picked up some DVDs with episodes of some of my favorite childhood cartoons on them. Listen people; if you have fond memories about how cool your childhood cartoons were do yourself a favor and DON’T re-watch them! i think i literally blushed with embarrassment as it dawned on me that my childhood addictions were really poorly animated, written by studio interns with proven low IQs and honestly just half hour commercials to sell us plastic toys with such high tech features as “battle punch” and “watch my thumbs fall off so i cant hold any guns anymore”.

But i did find some chunks of nostalgia that have held up against the passage of time and my own development of at least a shred of discerning taste: Those great movies that molded my childhood and made me the man i am today… or at least kept me entertained while my frail body awaited the onslaught of puberty.

1) The Goonies

If  The Goonies wasn’t a cornerstone of your childhood i only have one thing to say to you, “i’m so sorry, so very, very sorry.”

Where do you begin with The Goonies? There’s the truffle-shuffle, countless boobie-traps, crazed villains, One-eyed Willie, treasure, Sloth (loves Chunk), gadgets galore and….

Most Memorable Scene:

The broken statue! No other cinematic moment more fully tapped into my funny-bone as an 11 year old potty-humor loving boy than that statue scene. Then when they glue the statue’s “man-bits” back on upside down that was pure bafoonic-genius! Plus the whole thing just felt like something my mother wouldn’t want me to be watching on TV!

2) Stand by Me

i’m not sure if any other movie ever filmed has more accurately captured the heart of boys that are not yet teenagers but no longer “kids”. The dialogue, the interaction between the boys, the telling of bold face lies in the guise of “stories”, the bumbling usage of cuss words…

The main characters probably refer to one another as a part of the female anatomy more than in any other flick, ever. But hey! i remember that’s exactly how i talked to my 6th grade buddies and that’s how they talked to me.

Most Memorable Scene:

This one is a hard core tie- it’s either the scene where two of the boys are running down the trestle as a train bears down on them.

OR

THE Leach scene! That’s all that needs to be said.

3) Dark Crystal, Never-ending Story, Labyrinth

i’ve heaped all these “Puppet Movies” together (even though Dark Crystal is hands down my favorite by far). There is something magical about these classics. They rely heavily on suspension of disbelief, which is a thing of beauty in itself. In the age of “special effects over story-telling”* there is a certain magic about watching characters that are clearly puppets interact and embracing them as reality for an hour and a half.

Most Memorable Scene:

Never-ending Story:

WOW! What do you pick? Rock-eaters, snail races, sneezing turtles!!! But i think i’ll go with the ending, the ending that haunts me to this day! WHAT is the princess’ name????? WHO DID THAT SOUND EDITING? SATAN?

Labyrinth:

ANY scene where David Bowie is doing that thing with those glass balls! Although he could throw on some baggier pants.

Dark Crystal:

You know the most memorable scene if you love this movie. It’s the one you make sure everyone else in the room is paying attention. That one scene that makes brave men flinch and bold women jump! The scene where the critter jumps out of the hole in the log!

YEAH MAN!

Just FYI his name is Fizzgig, how do i know that? Pure nerdyness

*Michael Bay Footnote: Bay movies are a scourge in moviedom. They are the entertainment equivalent to rock-candy: Pure sugary empty calories that entice masses of underage consumers but that lack any real substance. Car chases and explosions are cool, but they DO not a plot make. Michael Bay, from the bottom of my heart i say to you, “Please STOP! You have already maimed the legacy of Transformers (especially with #2, which was well ‘number two’), destroyed G.I. Joe (which never really was all that compelling, it just seemed that way as a kid), and what’s next? Will you slaughter He-Man? Decimate the Thunder Cats? Open up your own CGI company and do what you love, but leave directing to those who can translate a plot to film”

4) Princess Bride

OK, seriously. Top 10 movies of all time material here. Easily THE most quotable movie of all time. i could nearly transcribe the entire dialogue of the movie from memory, Sans interaction between Fred Savage and Grandpa.

Has any movie ever been more ridiculous and more beloved? If you don’t like this movie, we are officially no longer friends… well, we probably never were!

Most Memorable Scene:

Has to be the sword fight! Greatest sword fight ever choreographed and archived onto celluloid.

Inigo: You seem a decent fellow. I hate to kill you.

Westley: You seem a decent fellow. I hate to die.

5) THE Star Wars Movies

To be absolutely clear that means IV: A New Hope, V: The Empire Strikes Back & VI: Return of the Jedi. AND it means them in their pre I-think-I-will-take-the-classics-I-made-and-add-a-ton-of-crappy-CGI-to-them-to-cheese-them-up versions. Thank you Lucas for crapping a big fat computer generated turd onto the movies nerds have cherished since infant-hood!

i honestly don’t have time to talk about episodes I,II & III here. Or how fans complain about Jar-Jar Binks but say little about Anakin’s un-compelling, rushed and unbelievable slide to the dark-side. The one great thing the “pre-quels” did have are Samuel Jackson, who is hands down the baddest Jedi to ever make wielding a purple lightsaber look totally masculine!

Most Memorable Scene:

My favorite scene in all the movies is in the first one (remember this is the real first one aka: a new hope) When R2 gets the trash compactor shut off and C-3PO hears their celebration via the com-linc and mistaking their cries of jubilation for bellows of pain laments their untimely deaths. i just love the way C-3PO’s metallic soul is crushed by his perceived failure

Sure there are other greats from my childhood, but these are the cream of the crop. Think the new Star Wars should be included in the seat of honor with the originals? Well go stick your head in a bucket of herring guts!