Lambert - St Louis

I am sitting in Lambert - St. Louis International as I compose this post, waiting for my homeward flight to start boarding. I have an hour to burn, so I am watching people going to and from their flights. A lady just walked by with one of those roller suitcases, with the handle and the two wheels on the bottom, but it had a broken wheel that laid out sideways, so it didn’t roll very well. It just drew a scratch in the tile behind her. If she gets lost, she can do the Hansel and Gretel thing by following all the chipped floor tiles back to her car.

When nobody interesting walks by, I am thinking of all the ways I didn’t work out the past few days. I didn’t lift or run or walk or do much of anything during my visit to St. Louis, and, while I feel bad about it, I have my reasons. It was a bad trip. (That sounds like a line off of a cheech and chong record, huh?) It was a really bad trip.

Things started off bad when I arrived three days ago. It was a bumpy flight because the pilots had to dodge thunderstorms on the way in. I assume they were pilots anyway. Nobody knows for sure. They might have been thrill seekers or maybe they were the guys on that TV show where they intentionally fly through thunderstorms to gather weather data. Anyway, it was bumpy.

I am thinking now that the third diet coke before takeoff was a mistake. I sat in the window seat and I didn’t think I needed to disturb the guy next to me in 27E during the flight so I could get to the lavatory. He was a bigger guy and seemed to have trouble getting his seatbelt on. He needed a couple seatbelt extensions to get it to snap shut. His right hip, thigh and generously proportioned waist were in my lap for the duration of the flight. I guess he thought that since I wasn’t using my lap for anything productive, it was available as a parking garage for use at his discretion.  That was my fault, I should have explained the whole personal space thing upfront when they forklifted him in.

After we landed, three things made me forget to stop off in the mens room at the airport;

  First, I was dizzy from the flight. Like I said it was bumpy.

  Second, I was carrying my two, non-wheeled bags and they were getting a little heavy which made me forget the pain in my bladder. I was going to bring a wheeled bag, but before I left home, I noticed one of the wheels on my bag was broken so I left it there. Maybe that was a mistake.  I guess its common practice to use your broken wheeler bag as a plow at Lambert - St Louis International.

  And last, as I walked to the car rental shuttle, I was trying to air-dry all the man-sweat on my shirt deposited by my 27E buddy and I just forgot to stop because I was busy tugging at the collar of my shirt and waving it around like a madman.

Anyway, I get to the car rental place, get in my rental car, which, apropos of nothing, smelled like bananas. Ripe bananas.  So then I take off in fruity smelling car and I get lost trying to get to my hotel. I always get lost driving. A three minute trip turned into thirty minutes of bladder pain. I get to the hotel, check in with the Mensa member masquerading as a hotel desk clerk, she gives me my room key and I sprint across the lobby to the ultra-slow elevator, ride up one flight, and walk down the mile long corridor to my room. Ms. Mensa wrote room 220 on the folded key holder paper. I checked. 220. I compared the number on the door, 220, with the number on the folded piece of paper, 220, and I try the key. It doesn’t work. I am doing the two-step dance while I try the key ten different ways in the lock, it doesn’t work. So I run back down the hall, get in the elevator, because this hotel doesn’t own stairs between the lobby and the second floor, run back to the desk, and ask for a new key. Ms. Mensa looks at my folded key holder paper and types it into the machine, then she frowns. That’s never good. My bladder asks politely if she can speed it up. So Ms. Mensa shrugs, types some stuff into the machine and a new key card pops out. I grab and run across the lobby, ride back up one flight, hop on one leg down the hall and try the key in room 220. It works. I go in, throw my stuff down, and look for the bathroom.

At that point, the guy on the bed wearing the Hawaii shirt jumps up while the lady not wearing the Hawaii shirt scrambles to hide her exposed self behind the curtain.  I don't remember what Mr. Hawaii shirt looked like, but his bed mate was quite fetching.  Quite fetching.  I said “what are you doing in my room” at the same time Mr. Hawaii shirt said "what are you doing in my room?".  We stare at each other, then doubt starts to creep into my rather slow cerebellum. He explains to me why I need to leave, while I try to explain about the three diet cokes and the bumpy flight with the guy in my lap and the lady with the suitcase plow and the smelly car and the Mensa lady, but somehow, it just doesn't seem to register with Mr. Hawaii.  He was nice enough about it when he asked me to leave for a second time.  I made a weak attempt to again assert my claim on the room, but I couldn't find fault with his logic and I sort of lost my will to fight it out, so I gave up the room.  I shook Mr. Hawaii's hand and waved at Mrs. Hawaii's seriously enraged purple face peering out from behind the curtain.  She didn't wave back.

That was three days ago.  Ms. Mensa assigned me another room, but this time without roommates.  I never saw Mr Hawaii or Mrs. Hawaii again.  The furrows at Lambert - St Louis International have been repaired and the banana smell faded away in my rented car. I only hope Mr. Hawaii was able to coax Mrs. Hawaii out from behind the curtain before he went home.

Bug Eyes

I was watching TV a couple nights ago and I switched from the news to catch the final Jeopardy question, which I failed to answer correctly, then I clicked over to NBC because they have the Olympics. The Olympics isn't as good as Jeopardy, but I thought maybe they will have something good like ski-jumping or maybe bobsledding. Nope, NBC screwed the pooch and had ice-dancing on. I cant watch that. Ice-dancing makes me want to gouge my eyes out with a Number Two pencil, so I switched over to the Canadian channel. The Canadian channel always has decent Olympic coverage and I thought I might get lucky and see some curling.  If I hit the jackpot, they might show the women's Slovenia-Yugoslav hockey match. Nope. More ice-dancing. The space between my eyes and my brain caught fire, so I just mashed my thumb into the remote, looking to grab a random channel. Anything to make the pain go away. Anything but ice dancing. 

I ended up on a rerun of an old Anita Bryant movie on channel 660. As soon as I started watching the Anita movie, the programming genius that runs channel 660 switched it to an ASPCA commercial that had these dogs in cages with big eyes staring at me. Those bulimic dogs were staring right at me, cutting deep into my soul with their big, sad bug eyes. It was pitiful. The dogs were actually crying. I think some of the dogs were forced to pull little wagons in coal mines. According to the announcer, they need me to send sixty dollars to shut down that coal mine. I hit the 'back' button on the remote control and I see more ice dancing. I looked around for my Number Two eye-gouger but I couldn't find it so I sent in the sixty bucks to shut down the coal mine. It was the best I could do, given the options available.

Last Friday was Valentines Day. Instead of taking my wife out to dinner, or to a movie, I took her to spin class. I think it was a good choice. We went to the wine ride at Lifestyle Indoor Cycle. Try it. Spin for an hour, from 5:45 to 6:45, then they put out some great wine and cheese. I know, it sounds kinda different, but its a fun time.

I was suppose to run today, but I got busy with work. Tomorrow maybe.

Defcon

Everybody thinks about something when they work out. I know I do, and I am just guessing here, but I bet somebody like Usain Bolt would have a whole different mindset than I do during a workout. For instance, Usain might think to himself something like “Faster, Stronger, Better” over and over while he works out, while I might be thinking “How much further do I need to run before I can go snag a Red Robin burger and shake?” Usain and I just have different approaches to training, there is no right answer.

Actually, when I swim, I spend the first ten minutes of my workout thinking about my stroke mechanics. I try to really concentrate on improving just one thing. To that end, I keep a fairly extensive mental database of my swim flaws. Its a pretty big list. After that first ten minutes, I downshift into some simple math, calculating how many minutes until I am done. So I guess my typical swim workout is ten productive minutes of swimming followed by counting backwards from three thousand.

When I bike, I spend the entire time thinking about not falling. That might sound like its not a very productive use of my time, but I would suggest that just the opposite is true. I am all about safety and it doesn't take a lot of mental energy to concentrate on not hurting yourself. Self preservation is number two in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.  I am a big Maslowian supporter.

When I run, two things happen. The first ten minutes is pain. Lots of pain. My mind goes blank except for the singular vision of a flashing billboard shouting the pain thing in big red letters. It's almost blinding. Then it gets weird. I start to think about people I am mad at and what I would say if I saw them at that moment. I don't remember when I started these one sided conversations, but I it happens almost every time I run. My discussion with these people, who are with me only with me in a metaphysical sense, follows the five levels of war readiness used by the U.S. Military. It goes like this:

Defcon5: Usually I play it pretty cool. I try to take the high road and I don't say anything that I might later regret. I just think how much they have irritated me and try not to fixate on it.

Defconf4: I will just be running along and I quietly blurt out “sure, whatever you say” or “ya, right, you are always right”. I feel pretty smug at that point. I usually win the argument and it ends right there.

Defconf3: I start to lose my mental filter and I tell whoever it is what I really think about them. I explain in great detail how they let me down and what they did to irritate me. I sometimes yell for as long as I don't run out of breath.  One time, I think I told someone that they would "Rue the day when they...".  I meant it too.

Defcon2: I use my right index finger and poke my victim in the chest.

Defcon1: I don't know what happens at this point. I haven't let it escalate that far. I am afraid I might punch another runner if one passed me.