Pretend Triathlete

221223 1628 I’m posting my old drafts UNEDITED. Reading the below I hope that was a rental wetsuit. I believe swimming in chlorine cancels any kind of warranty on a wetsuit. Do you like to swim? (I’ve said it before on this blog, but nothing makes you feel more out of shape than swimming.)

The day before today I got up and was at the pool by 6AM. It’s still dark here in Missouri at 6AM this time of year, and as I mentioned in an earlier post, we’re swimming at the outdoor pool. So with my shaded goggles I could just make out the stripe on the bottom of the pool, but I did come close to hitting my head on the wall the first couple of laps.

Swimming in the dark was interesting, but the significant point about this workout is how easy it felt. That’s due, I’m sure, to my wetsuit.

221223 1624 I’m posting my old drafts UNEDITED. Comment below all the mistakes you see. I remember this incident. I didn’t mention that all the riders were wearing the same fancy cowboy shirts, like they were a riding team or something. This group wanted me to totally stop my bike while they passed. Some weeks later, I came up on a couple of ladies who were riding and so I completely stopped my bike, but they insisted I keep moving. You just never know with horses I guess.

The last couple of times I’ve been out on the Katy Trail I’ve seen horseback riders. I had never encountered them while out riding, even though the trail is open to horseback riding. A couple of weeks ago a group of riders were coming towards me. I thought I was being prudent and slowed way down, barely moving. Once cowboy in group stopped his horse completely, but when I got within 25 feet his horse bolted the other way. I stopped my bike and got off. Charlie Goodnight got his horse under control and Buffalo Bills Wild West Show passed on by without further incident. They, the riders, were actually very nice and were quite apologetic

221223 1614 I’m posting some old drafts UNEDITED. Don’t @ me, I see the mistakes, but I don’t want to fix them. Besides, with my writing ability who would know the difference? However, I do have an update to the below. The shoulder is much better. I’d say it’s at 95%. Time heals all wounds. The joints giving me fits right now are my elbows. Grr.

My right shoulder has been bothering me since August, the month I did the MR340. Coincidence? I doubt it. Something about paddling a kayak for 70 hours over 3 and a half days makes me think maybe I did something then to cause the jack it up. To be honest, it’s been tweaking me for the last couple of years when I swim, so the start of whatever is there has been in place for a while. What surprises is that it hasn’t gotten better since August, but has gotten worse.

What’s the matter? Basically I can’t lift my arm up to the side or above my head and reach back. So throwing a ball is out. My kids’ school does this thing once a year where the dads play dodgeball with the kids. I learned pretty quickly that my only option to hurl a ball was under handed, like a grandma playing catch with a four year old. I have to be very careful leaving a room and reaching back to pull the door closed, or reaching over to the passenger side of the truck to unlock the door (think analog locks for all you millennials). Motions like that make it feel like a switchblade is cutting me from the inside of my shoulder.

Did I Google it? Of course I did, but only after the last four or five weeks of it getting more painful. I read about impingement and torn rotator cuffs and bursitis and whatever else could be ailing the joint. I watched Youtube to learn how to do some shoulder stretches from the internet therapists, but found I really couldn’t do them because they hurt too much. Finally, because I really wanted to start swimming again I went to see the ortho doc. By the way, this is the ortho doc who helped me push my truck out of a ditch after I pulled up too far and dropped the front tires over the edge. He then went on to win the 5K trail run I was working that morning.

The doc looked at my x-rays and then moved my shoulder around in an effort to make me wince, at which he succeeded. His conclusion? Drum roll please…inflamed tissue in my shoulder joint. That was a bit of a let down. I feel like a weakling for going to the doc in the first place and was hoping I’d be validated with something like rotator cuff tear or out of socket shoulder or something along those lines. But inflamed tissue? Boring.

However, what I can’t figure out if why it’s only gotten worse since August. After the race I took off for about four weeks and didn’t do any kind of upper body workout. I’ve even taken off the last week and a half and it still doesn’t feel better. The doc said the inflamed tissue is getting caught in my joint when I turn it in certain ways causing the pain. He put me on some anti-inflammatory meds and wants to see what happens. He actually let me choose between an MRI and meds. I’m not a pill popper but the $4 copay for the meds seemed more reasonable.

I’ll finish the meds and re-evaluate. I hope to get back up to speed so I can start swimming after the new year with all the other New Year Resolutionists. I asked the doc if the tissue would just become inflamed again once I quit the meds. He said maybe. Grr!

I’m surprised I still have an account. I don’t remember the last time I logged in here. OK.

Have a great day?

Ken

5/31/22

12:26

Clinton, MO

Good news, everyone! I know you’ve been waiting to hear this. I got the blu-ray player in the garage to connect to my wifi! And when I say I got it to connect I mean it just started working again.

Of course you understand the implications of this unexpected reconnection of electronic devices. That’s right, I now have the entire Netflix library available to me while I ride. I’m no longer bound to talkies recorded onto the silver discs that the pioneers had to use to watch movies. For instance, I have ridden through several episodes of The Walking Dead over the last couple of weeks (Ooh, that Negan is so horrible, but so mesmerizing, I’m so confused).

Last night, while not riding my bike, I watched kind of a weird movie in the living room. It is called The Survivalist. Not exactly what I had in mind but not a bad movie, probably a little slow for most people. It was just a little on the artsy side. And be warned, there’s a couple of uncomfortable scenes so don’t watch with your mom unless you have a different kind of relationship with her than I have with mine. Anyways, as I’m apt to do while watching movies in my living room I Alta Vista’d it and was reading a little about the movie. It turns out that the girl in The Survivalist will be in a remake of Suspiria. Isn’t that weird? On my last post I was just telling you how I was watching Suspiria, the 1977 version. Now I learn there’s remake coming out.

A friend and I had talked about riding the entirety of the Katy Trail this weekend, but it didn’t pan out. We’ll, or at least I, will find another weekend to do it. It’s been a goal of mine to ride the entire 237.7 miles from start to finish. My friend has done it before, so it’s no big deal to him, but it’s still a bucket list item for me. I guess that’s why I’ve gotten back on the bike recently. I want to be ready when the time comes. It may not be smart to do the run in the late fall or winter, but hey, what else you gonna do? Or, I could wait until Spring. We’ll see.

I recognize that at some point I have to get the bike off the trainer, out of the garage, and on the road, but it’s such a hassle putting all those extension cords together for my blu-ray player. If I don’t get on the road soon I will have forgotten how to ride a bike, which everyone knows can be done.

Actual picture of me riding my bike for the first time in a long time.

Wow, it has been a long time since I rode a bike. The last recorded instance of me pedaling a bicycle was June 30, 2017. The time before that was December 3rd, 2016. Now, I know what you’re saying. “You’re not a real cyclist.” And, “You’re not a real triathlete.” I tend to agree with you. I am more of a pretend triathlete. As a matter of fact this whole summer passed and I didn’t even do one triathlon. Most of the summer I had the MR340 on my mind.

I also laid off running this year. I’ve ran relatively few miles since my last marathon in November 2016. In some ways I’m regretting it. It’s been tough getting back up to speed. When my easy pace was an 8:30 mile and now an 8:30 feels like a 10K pace it’s easy to doubt your strategy of taking a long break.

Do I even need to say swimming has been nil?

I said earlier I hadn’t been on a bike since June. Well, that was until today. I have picked up running again over the last two or three weeks and have been running six days a week. But today I just wasn’t feeling it and my knees were sore, so I set up the trainer and I rode for an hour. It was just an easy spin but I still ended up drenched in sweat as I’m ought to do when I ride in the garage.

Pictured above is my set up in the garage. I know, it looks pretty messy from that angle. I did just reorganize my peg board last weekend so cut me a little slack. I was watching a movie called Suspiria. It’s a 1977 horror movie. I got it because it’s an Italian move but it was all in English, so I’m not sure what’s going on there. I’ve watched quite a few Italian movies from my bike. Not recently of course, but last year I did. These include a number of Federico Fellini films. I’m sure there are some ‘normal’ Italian movies but I gravitate to the ones on the artsy-fartsy side. They’re usually pretty boring. You have to remind yourself that you are experiencing culture. Suspiria is pretty tame by today’s horror movie standards. I have a few minutes left so I’ll definitely have to get back on the trainer this week to see if our heroine survives the mysterious happenings at ballet school.

Just like while hitchhiking through the galaxy, whenever you ride the trainer you want to have a towel handy. That’s of course to soak up the copious amounts of sweat that pour off you. My towel is there on the handle bars. You may be tempted to ride topless but that is a mistake because then the sweat will have many more drip points and you don’t want all that salty brine dripping all over your bike.

With that thought I will say ciao. Or as Fellini would say with an abundance of wind noise and and some nudes painted silver in the background, good-bye.

I’m not sure I got that saying right, but as I was out running this morning I realized I had some opinions. And I very much like my opinions, so I guess in a way the title is correct; everybody likes their own opinions.

I’d like to tell you about a couple of my own opinions.

I live in a small town in west central Missouri. It’s a nice little town of 9,000. I guess given the history of the area and the history of Missouri you’re apt to see confederate flags flying from peoples’ houses around here. On our town square there is a statue of two soldiers, one Union and the other confederate. The inscription reads something like, “They fought bravely.” Now, don’t get the wrong impression, it’s not like every single house flies the confederate flag around here. There’s really just a few that I can think of on my various routes, but they’re there.

I spent my formative years in Ohio and Kansas, and growing up in those states I don’t ever remember seeing confederate flags. The only exposure I really had to the confederate flag was on the Dukes of Hazzard, which oddly enough, for a boy my age, was never one of my favorite shows. I always considered myself a Yankee and felt proud to be from a part of the country that fought to mend the Union, if not to ensure that all men lived free in these United States.

That’s not to say that I come from a long line of progressive woke liberals. Far from it. However, I always got the sense from the adults in my life that you ought to treat everyone the same. And it always seemed wrong to me that one man could own another man like a horse or a dog.

So when I see the confederate flag flying at a house I can’t help but think there’s someone who lives there who does not believe that all men are created equal. It’s just because of what that flag stood for not all that long ago in our nation’s history. And so I’m not a big fan of the confederate flag, but since I believe in freedom of expression, I support the right of those folks who may or may not believe the way I do when it comes to equality to fly those flags. However, I don’t believe any government entity, town, county, state, anything, should fly the confederate flag. It’s an insult and the confederacy lost. Take it down.

I assume this pic is a joke but I thought it was funny.

I feel the same way about the nazi flag. It’s particularly disgraceful to fly the nazi flag. What person in their right mind and who is not a degenerate bigot could hoist that banner?

old nazis, neo-nazis. What’s the difference?

So now I probably have a bunch of leftists saying, “Alright, I kinda like this guy.” But keep reading.

There’s this group right now running around in their ninja pajamas calling themselves the “antifa”, and supposedly they are anti-fascists. I can’t hardly say “antifa,” I have to call the them “fascist antifa.” Don’t dare have an opinion that isn’t theirs. They won’t like it, and I won’t say they resort to violence because violence seems to be one of their first options, and they will try to make you shut up. They really have a hard time with people who think thoughts that aren’t their own. They’re Orwell’s Thought Police.

fascist antifa

So when I see the fascist antifa clashing with the nazis I have the same question I have when the Broncos play the Steelers. Can’t they both lose?

I suppose both sides use the slippery slope argument, that if we allow them to make their argument or fly their flag or have their little march then the next thing we’ll be doing is putting people in shackles and selling them at auctions or strapping them down in a chair so that they can undergo the Ludovico Technique. It’s all kind of ridiculous.

What about the monuments? What about that confederate soldier on the square in my town? This gets a little more complicated for me. I don’t believe everything is black and white. In a lot of arguments I see shades of grey and that is not a popular position to hold. We all have to be for or against something, no middle ground, apparently. I guess my thought is this; If we start taking down monuments because the dude was a big jerk a lot of the time, where does it stop? Julius Caesar was a murderous slave-trading bastard if ever there was one, but should we topple all his statues? Who doesn’t get sick when they hear of isis destroying ancient statues? I don’t know. I can certainly see the point in removing the confederate soldier. Sure, he fought bravely. He fought so bravely to keep my forebears in chains. By all means, let’s honor his bravery. (Italics indicate sarcasm. I know leftists have a hard time detecting that.)

The inventor of the Caesar Salad, the Caesar cut, the Orange Julius, and the C-section. Hail Caesar!

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”

That is my opinion and that is the opinion shared by my man St. Paul when he wrote to the Galatians.

He had a lot of opinions that I like:

“Owe no man anything, but to love one another.”

“As much as it depends on you, live at peace with all men.”

And let’s not forget the words of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: “Do unto others…”

How would you like it if your neighbor flew the banner that represented the people who considered you mere property?

So there you have it, my doughnut hole.

PS. I know this is snarky but I failed to capitalize certain words throughout this post on purpose. All the other typos are the result of my neglectfulness and ignorance.