Ugh...

I think I need to just not work. This would help my cycling fitness a lot. When I was on vacation for 2 weeks, it was possibly the best ever. I just slept in a little, and rode a lot. Watched the Tour on TV in the afternoon after riding, ran errands, paid bills, and then took a nap, and then rode again later on in the day sometimes. Those were good times. Now that I’m back at work, it’s commute in the morning for 45 minutes, work for 9, commute back for 45 minutes, and then it’s hot as blazes out there, and I can feel the fitness that I gained melting away with the late summer heat. Why? Because I don’t want to ride my bike after work, and I blame work for that. Either that or I’m at a mental state where I don’t feel like racing or riding right now. I want to continue to race, but right now, it’s just damn hard is all. Especially when you look at some of the guys, even regionally, that I have to race against. The best guys in our category are guys that don’t really work. They are guys for the most part that are just riding and racing their bikes. Sure they might have some little bit of a job somewhere doing something for 10-20 hours per week, but they’re not working/commuting for 50 hours, so that makes it really hard to compete and to be competitive against these folks. There are exceptions to this rule of course, but they are few and far between, and the guys that are exceptions to said rule, are more or less naturally gifted athletes to begin with, which, to my best knowledge, I’m not. I have to work hard at my chosen sport to even be competitive. To be really good at it, I’d have to work exceptionally hard, which is something I’m willing to do, but don’t have the time to do it. Ah, if only I had discovered this road racing business when I was younger, I would have been much better off. But instead, I discovered it too late in life to get a good head start on it. Maybe in my next life? Then again, road racing in Maine didn’t exist for the most part. It still doesn’t. There are a few races there every year now, but if you want to race, you’ve got to travel to Massachusetts, and the rest of New England before you can find acceptable road racing, so that wouldn’t have flown when I was growing up. I guess in the meantime, I’ve got to just keep flogging it, and trying to make it work out there on the roads of the SE.

You’ve got to see the movie The Woodsman though. Kind of a gripping tale I’d say, and really well done. Kevin Bacon at his “spookiest” which is I know hard to imagine if you’ve ever seen Footloose, but I digress. Good cast in this one. Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, Mos Def, Eve, Benjamin Bratt, and a few other names you’ve heard before, and amazingly enough, none of them were paid anything to make the movie, as they all loved the script and the story, so they just made it. Of course as always is the case with movies like this, it tackles a taboo subject (former child molester let out of prison and now trying to live “normally”), and the regular Hollywood channels didn’t want to touch it, or fund it. And as is always the case in these things, the movie is great, and has received rave reviews and lots of acclaim. When is Hollywood going to learn that when you think a movie is taboo, or sounds a little too independent, these are the movies that you sign up to fund and make? Year after year, you hear the same stories from different filmmakers about how the regular channels didn’t want to make their movie because it was too risky, or something of that nature, and year after year, these movies that are risky end up being the best films of the year to see. Instead Hollywood likes to fund remakes of movies that have already been made, and in some cases (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) were great to begin with, and then they re-do them anyway. Especially this summer. It’s been the summer of remakes. I’m starting to think that Hollywood is not the center of creativity that it once was. Normally, when you see something really outstanding on the screen or on DVD, it has come out of nowhere, or somewhere nowhere near Hollywood. Case in point, The Woodsman, done in Philadelphia or somewhere near there. Not your usual LA scene there for certain. Anyway, go see it. You’ll be doing yourself a favor. Something else that I’ve seen recently as well that I’ve really enjoyed, Samurai Champloo. Check it out at: www.samuraichamploo.com You won’t be sorry for checking that out as well. From what I can tell, it’s a Japanese TV show, it has samurai in it, and hip-hop, and a wise cracking bad ass. So what’s not to like really?? I think that I have mentioned this show before, and if I have, oh well, get over it, I like to repeat myself sometimes. It’s good stuff. Put it on your Netflix list immediately. And if you don’t have Netflix, get on that as well.

In looking at the results from the Tour de Toona that started this week, I see our local boys, Manulife, is not doing too bad, well, at least Hatcher is not doing too bad. He top 20’d the prologue, and hung in to get the same time in the first stage. Don’t know what else is going to happen to them going into the 3rd stage and beyond. We’ll see. There is a lot of firepower there. A lot of firepower. I am so glad that this year’s Tour de France is over as well, because damn, if I have to hear or see one more thing about Lance Armstrong, I’m gonna choke. Don’t get me wrong, I like the guy, and I like how he races, and he’s fucking tough, but damn people are obsessed with him. It’s not his fault, he’s just a victim of his own success. In looking at a cycling forum that I visit a lot, and post on, a lot, I see in the pro cycling forum, there is nothing in there except crap about Armstrong. Not even relevant stuff. Things like the following threads that I’ve viewed lately:

• Because his back is so large, does that make his lung capacity greater?
• Pictures of Lance and Sheryl
• Who is the greatest American cyclist? Lance or Greg?
• Stage 21 bike and meanings
• Jan speaks. About Lance.
• Was Robin Williams at the Tour this year?
• 1997 Lance Armstrong interview

And so on, and so on… Ugh… It’s killing me. I want to tell all of these stupid fanboys to get off of Lance. He won the Tour, talk about that. Talk about his racing tactics, and so on and so forth. Let’s not overanalyze him down to the nitty gritty. It’s freakin’ killing me, absolutely killing me. I would love to go in there and flame everyone. But I can’t. I’ll just hold my tongue, and let rip later on when after 2 months from now, they’re still talking about Lance, I’ll promptly remind them that he’s no longer a pro cyclist, so if they want to talk about pro cycling, feel free, but if you want to talk about Lance, then go somewhere else. It really makes me want to pull my hair out, and makes me want to scream. Maybe I should just stay away from said forum, but I can’t. It’s like crack. It’s a guilty pleasure. I can’t help my-damn-self. There is some good racing going on, and all these jokers want to talk about is Lance, Lance, and more Lance. I think from now on I should just place myself on probation as far as looking at that website, or at least the pro cycling forum. I’ll stick to the political forum instead. That, amazingly enough, seems to make me less mad than the pro cycling forum.