Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Coach

With apologies to Johnathan Edwards.

This is the third in a series of posts. The first is here. The second is here. But this is the part of the show where you probably start not to like me so much--if you like me at all. Even some of you in the choir (those already engaging in an active lifestyle) will probably think I am taking this a little far. But having grown up Southern Baptist, I know no other way. I'm about to serve up some o' that "come to Jesus" luciousness. If you can hang in there, I'll issue an alter call and will help you down the aisle.

But if that is not your particular brand of vodka, there's a little red "x" in the upper right hand corner. Use it. You have been warned.

In the last two posts, I tried to lay out an inspiring case that "anyone can do this," that is, anyone can create their own healthier outcomes and participate in a vigorous sport. Now, I'm switching gears. Anyone and everyone can do this, but more, anyone and everyone should be doing this. And there is a moral component if you are not.

Now, bear in mind, I'm not talking to everyone. There are people who cannot participate in an active lifestyle and who suffer from debilitating chronic diseases that cripple and kill due solely to genetic factors. I'm just talking to the 99.99% of people who were born with two arms, two legs and sufficient ambulatory gifts to move themselves across the face of the planet.

So, yeah, brothers and sisters. I'm probably talking to you. And I'm talking about moral and ethical duties.


If you are Roman Catholic, I would point out that gluttony and sloth are both included in the list of seven deadly sins. In fact, between these two, you've got almost 29% of the list covered.







If you grew up in Baptist Sunday School like me, I'd roll out the parable of the talents and liken thee unto the man who received one talent and who, instead of investing that talent on his master's behalf, buried it in the ground. "Thou slothful and wicked servant . . . cast him into outer darkness where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

Wow, that was cheery, huh?






If you believe in any kind of supreme being at all, I would simply ask how one can squander and dishonor the temple of a perfectly adequate body, especially when many don't have those blessings. How can we not live lives of thanksgiving in motion?






If you are a complete atheist, I would point out that you are a marvel of millions of years of evolution. Your very body was evolved to run. You are the hairless mammal of the steppes who is adapted to dissipate heat through sweat rather than respiration like the mammals you hunt. You are evolved to run four and five hours with your tribe at a time at a 10 minute pace until the antelope or deer drops of heat exhaustion and the protein and calories from its meat feed the ginourmous brain that sets you apart from Australopithecus. You, my friend, were born to run.



It's so easy, even a cave man can do it. Why are you sitting on your ass?

"OK, preacher," I can hear you saying, "Now you've left off preaching and gone to meddling. You ain't better 'n me just because you exercise, and if I don't wanna, that's my business."

True, friend, it is your business--if you alone suffered the consequences. But now I'm going to get really personal (as if I had not already). I want to talk about the people who count on you.

If you are putting yourself slowly to death with your plate and your inactivity, are not just an island nation having no effect on anyone else. The message you are sending by your choices to those who count on you is that they are less important to you than your cheeseburger or your reality TV.

You'd rather have Cheesie Poofs and put your feet up while watching electronic sedatives every evening than walk down the aisle at a future wedding.

You'd rather sleep an extra hour than grow old with a spouse.

You prefer fried Twinkies to playing with grandchildren.

And, prepare yourself, all you sedentary conservatives, for I am about to drop the conservative equivalent of the nuclear weapon ----------



No matter what your words say, your actions say that you expect and demand your offspring or your government to take care of you as if you were a helpless and incapacitated ward of the state rather than exercise personal responsibility by being a grown up and taking care of yourself.

**Gulp**

Gone too far have I?

Do we not think some of the same things about people who harm and prematurely abandon their families through abuse of drugs, alcohol and tobacco?

How is abuse of food and leisure any different?

So, I've probably pissed you off or touched a nerve or at least prompted a moment of thought. I hope so.

If you're human, you are looking for a way out, a way to mitigate or avoid altogether the moral charge I've leveled.

Well, watch this space because there's more on that later.

In the mean time, can I get an "AMEN" from the choir.

RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE

***This is a rant. If a rant is not your cup of tea, and if you're not prepared to hold out the possibility that the things you accept as true might be in error, then you might want to skip this. If, however, you want an entertaining cranial explosion from someone whose law practice has involved health care policy for the better part of the last decade and a half that just might make you think, read on and enjoy. You have been warned.***


If you watch American television, and if you're an American the chances are very high that you watch A LOT of American television, you've doubtless seen the Sprint "direct connect" commercials about "what if delivery people ran the world," or "what if lumberjacks ran the world," etc. The object is to sell "direct connect" cell phones by applying the problem solving ethos of a certain profession like lumberjacks to problems outside lumberjacking such as family court.

I want to ask a different question, and that question is:

WHAT IF TRIATHLETES RAN THE WORLD?

I'm going to apply this question to the issue of health care financing and reform. The purpose, beyond being to entertain, is to point out questions and issues that should be front and center in any discussion about health care, and which neither the agents of reform nor the opponents of reform are adequately addressing.

First, if we know anything, we know that triathletes are the science geeks of the athletic world. We are, after all, the folks who brought heart rate monitors, power meters, aero bars wetsuits and aero helmets to the mainstream endurance sports. Thus, if Dave Scott or Mark Allen were tasked with overhauling health care, they would first take note of certain laws of economics and policy that are as immutable as Newton's laws of motion. Keep these laws in mind throughout the rest of the rant, because just as physical laws of the universe affect how you move through space, these laws affect whether any policy idea is a good idea. The laws are two:

1. THERE IS NO FREE LUNCH.

2. YOU GET MORE OF WHAT YOU SUBSIDIZE AND LESS OF WHAT YOU TAX.

Taking the first "law": there is no free lunch. This is really just the law on which all of economic theory rests. Economic choices are merely the result of individuals or groups with unlimited desires deciding how to prioritize those desires consistent with their limited resources. The point of this next part of the rant is just to get you to put down the electric Kool-aid. What I hope you conclude is this: we have to carefully and wisely marshal very limited resources to handle a very expensive problem.

Electoral politics is the art of persuading individuals and populations that this "no free lunch" law does not exist: you can have everything you want and there will be no consequences and and it will not cost you anything. It has taken numerous forms over the decades regardless of party:

Reagan: the promise to eliminate the deficit by cutting waste and fraud in government.

Bush 41: "Read my lips: no new taxes."

Clinton: Promising consequence-free FHA home loans to low income families -- who are now in default at astounding rates to the detriment of the world economy.

Bush 43: American troops will be greeted as liberators in a short, clean Iraqi campaign.

And not to pick on the Messiah or anything, but the campaign statements on health care are full of this sort of thing: We will cover everyone and it won't really cost anything because we'll pay for it by eliminating (i.e., Ronald Reagan) waste and fraud in Medicare and (i.e., Bill Clinton raising taxes on "The Rich."

No one should have believed the "free lunch" promises from any of this President's predecessors, and one should not believe the current variety now. The plain fact of the matter is that you could confiscate all the income of everyone making over $250,000 and not pay for the current federal budget without the expense of health care. Moreover, Medicare reimbursement rates are already so low that medical students wishing to make a living no longer pursue gerontology as a specialty. As a result, the average gerontologist in America is himself rapidly approaching retirement age.

A scientific triathlete, therefore, upon hearing such nonsense would immediately conclude that someone had just attempted to repeal the laws of gravity by the power of his own voice or told him he could expect to do an 8 hour Ironman without significant training. He or she would conclude that rather than count on this coming true, we must take for granted that "there is no free lunch." Again, the conclusion: we have to carefully and wisely marshal very limited resources to handle a very expensive problem.

So, how do we spend currently our health care resources in this country? The answer is fairly clear: we spend an astounding amount of money on lifestyle-induced chronic diseases--expensive, life-long illnesses we acquire by our own choices.

Let's take just one example: Type II Diabetes. According to one source I heard this week (and I'm sure it depends upon how one counts), 40% of all of our health care expenditures are related to treating this one condition and all of its complications. There are an estimated 23.6 million people in the U.S. (7.8% of the population) with diabetes with 17.9 million being diagnosed, 90% of whom are type 2. With prevalence rates doubling between 1990 and 2005, CDC has characterized the increase as an epidemic.

It's no mystery where Type II diabetes comes from.

Type II diabetes is the type you choose--the type you earn through lifestyle, diet, and obesity. If (as is reported) health care is 20% of our Gross Domestic Product, this means we spend approximately 8% of our entire gross domestic problem on this one aspect of being lazy fat arses.

65% of American adults are overweight or obest. That's nearly two thirds, people. This means it is normal to be unhealthy. The flip side is that it is abnormal to be a healthy weight. In fact, only one state (God bless you Colorado) has an obesity rate lower than 1 in 5:


You can click here to see how the obesity rates have exploded over time. During that time, Type II diabetes, long thought to be a disease of adulthood, has appeared with alarming frequency in children as childhood obesity rates have risen.


And this is just one example of one lifestyle-induced chronic disease. Obesity and sedentary lifestyles are also related to osteoarthritis, cancer, heart disease, depression, disability insurance claims, blah blah blah. It's no secret how to prevent any number of conditions of this type:
Healthy habits and choices--often times with lots of outside support and intervention because this is admittedly hard work. This brings us to the second law, which works on opposition to making hard but good choices. We not only fail to enable the making of good choices, we are actually paying people to make bad choices.

YOU GET MORE OF WHAT YOU SUBSIDIZE AND LESS OF WHAT YOU TAX.

One example of this law is the obesity crisis itself and government subsidies for the ingredients of fast food like corn (high fructose corn syrup), grains, soybeans, etc. rather than broccoli, spinach and organic free range chicken. Another is the moral hazard posed by any type of insurance.

If someone else pays for the financial consequences of your bad lifestyle choices, you are insulated from the costs. You have less incentive to choose wisely. Even worse, if the government is paying those costs with other people's money--healthy people's money--the government has instituted a policy of taxing health and subsidizing chronic disease. (This same phenomenon was reflected in the problems behind the fee for service system: the doctor gets paid more for doing more, whether or not it is truly necessary, and the patient does not care because the costs were largely born by his employer and his insurer.) This will not "bend the curve" of health care inflation. To the contrary, it will keep it on the rise. And back to "no free lunch," at one point, it has to be paid for.

So, if Triathletes ran the world, what would they do? They would turn these laws to work on the problem. If poor lifestyle choices were directly reflected in the cost of one's health care, you would be get less of what you tax. If it were expensive to be fat--instead of the government paying for your electric scooter or your insulin--people would get skinny. If your coach and your masseuse and your physio were fully paid for, you'd get more of what you subsidized.

Mark Allen or Dave Scott might well make your diabetes coverage contingent upon inspecting your training log and food diary. But an insurer (government or private) might well make your health premiums increase as your BMI increases, or might have higher deductibles for all lifestyle diseases. (Our current insurance plan already charges me an exhorbitant deductible for Mrs. Greyhound's home injectibles for a non-lifestyle disease because it is trying to make insulin injections more expensive.)

"How dare they," some of you are saying. "It's none of the government's business how much I weigh or what I eat or what my cholesterol numbers are." Ah, but there's the rub, my friend. This is the flip side of taking the government's money: if Uncle Sam pays the piper, Uncle Sam gets to call the tune. And the closer we move to a single-payor system, the more Uncle Sam will call the tune. Indeed, it is actuarially sound for any insurer, government or otherwise, to charge high risk individuals higher premium. It would be morally hazardous and financially foolish to institute a system that failed to do so. That's why teenagers and habitual speeders pay more for auto insurance and why it costs more to insure a house on the coast or on a fault line. Duh.

The other half of you are asking, "Why don't we do that already? Why should I pay for the health care costs of some fat arse with a smoking habit?" Why? Because it is currently illegal to do make individual risk assessments in group health insurance.

Because of the historical accident of wage and price controls during WWII, most Americans get their health insurance through their employment. (Employers of the era dcould not give raises, but they had to compete for scarce labor while the men were off in Europe, and so they began offering health care coverage. We never broke the habit). Under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) and other federal laws that regulate employee welfare benefits, the insured groupr can only be determined by those who are "active at work" when they sign up for benefits, and risk analysis is illegal. Oh, and all that talk about "pre-existing conditions," such exclusions are already illegal under the Health Insurance Privacy and Portability Act (HIPPA) for employee health insurance. (I don't recall the President pointing that out in selling insurance reform to town halls full of people who mostly get their insurance from private employers.)

Ever heard anyone on either side of the debate talk about ERISA or HIPPA or the moral hazard or lifestyle chronic disease. I didn't think so. As long as they don't, we are courting a system that is primed for demographic and actuarial and political melt down.

Most people in this economy do produce and are reasonably satisfied with their health care. (Granted, many are unaware of the problems baked into the system and have given it very little thought). Among the people in this system are a whole gaggle of baby boomers who are getting older and largely fatter and sicker by the day (except for those baby boomers who can and do regularly kick my slow skinny arse at the races). In the big picture, we are contemplating taking money from people who produce (and from people who don't need health care, for that is the nature of insurance and risk spreading) in partial subsidy of people who don't produce and who, in the final analysis choose to be sick. The solution is not to fail to provide health coverage at all, for "there is no free lunch" and those costs will be born in some fashion. But "free health care for everyone" is not an option either.

BLARRRRRGH!

I can't swim 10x100m @ 1:55.

I can't. Not possible.

I can't follow that up with 6x 25m @35 and a 500m time trial.

Training Peaks can say it all day long, but it might as well say:

"Remove your own spleen and describe the procedure in the blue book that has been provided for you. You will find rubbing alcohol and a scalpel under your chair."

I tried my hardest. I can't.
I can't.
I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.

I'm condemned to the ignominy of greater than 2:00 per 100m and a transition area devoid of bikes.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

And all you swimmer kids can just STFU with your turning up your noses at a mere 2:00 per 100m. You people who warm up at 2:00 per hundred and swim an Ironman in an hour. PTUI!

I find it startlingly easy to play Chopin nocturnes or Beethoven slow movements on the piano. What's so hard about that? Didn't you take piano from your mummy from the age of 5?

And writing a 50 page brief with a 100 or so citations to authorities in a couple of days? Piece 'o cake. What? You find this complicated?

I guess you mighta' missed something staring at the black line on the bottom of the pool.

But I WANNA SWIM!~ WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And enough with the "technique technique technique"

BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGHHH

I TOOK lessons from Total Immersion. I glide. I float fine. I drill. But apparently I'M JUST FREAKIN' SLOW.

And I'm getting slower

And I gained a pound

And I fell asleep at my desk like an octegenarian

And I want to be 6'4" and look like Tom Selleck.

BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHH

Journalistic Drinking Game

I have pictures and video that I still intend to put up on the hurricane blog when I have both time and a broadband connection. Currently I have one or the other--a broad band connection at work and no time, or time in the dark at home, but no internet connection at all. And not to put too fine a point on it, but all the best things to do when the power is out require a partner. Mine isn't here.

OK, TMI. Back to the post.

In the interim, the local and national news has become tiresome. Nationally, we're apparently off the radar screen. If it bleeds it leads, but we're not bleeding or disfunctional like New Orleans. Our mayor is basically giving FEMA the forearm shiver, forcing it to get the heck out of the way so that folks who know what they're doing can get the trains running on time again. And most folks in Houston would be happy to take care of themselves, thank you very much, if the lights would just come on. So, don't mind us, NBC or CNN. Sure, we're the fourth largest city in the country and we go dark every night without civil disorder, and we're responsible for 25% of the country's refining capacity. But don't mind us. We're just fine.

Me in particular, I've got it really good compared to folks on the coast. I've got a job to go to, a house that's still in one piece, enough supplies to last weeks, enough money to take care of myself, and places that are open where I can purchase things with that money. Focusing a camera or a headline on "bleeding" lead stories of destruction provides none of the information we need. Most folks could mostly take care of themselves if the local news would actually provide information, born of actually asking questions like "who, what when, where, why, and how." Instead, all we get is sound bites, born of lazily attending news conferences and merely repeating what is said. Then, news radio breaks to interminably repetitious call in interviews with Joe Bob or Betty from Baytown who says the power is out, it rained really hard, and there's lines for gas.

REALLY? SERIOUSLY? I would have never known.

Beyond that, all we get is the same worn out phrases over and over. It's like some sick, college drinking game. You feel like you ought to take a shot of tequila or every time you hear the buzz words, which if I never hear them again, it will be too soon. We are well and truly tired of the following words and phrases, which through their repetition, have been denuded of any meaning:

1. Hunker--as in "hunker down." Where? How? With what equipement? For how long? Never really said. We just "hunkered."

2. PODs--as in "Points of Distribution." Giving it a TLA (three letter acronym) does not make the sites any less chaotic, nor any less necessary for those who put up a week's worth of their own supplies. The only reason they work is because local citizens took over volunteering to hand out materials to their neighbors, and local radio stations and officials knew where to put them. The real story is how neighbors are taking over, and this story is largely untold.

3. Devastated--Yeah. Barrier island. We get it. Break out your thesaurus or give specifics about streets, blocks, structures, stores--you know, like information people can use to plan their lives for the next several weeks and decide whether and how to rebuild.

4. Recovery--Again. We get it. Recovery has no meaning. What part? Where? What infrastructure? Who's doing it? What do they need?

5. "Round the clock"--blah blah blah. Yeah, Centerpoint is working "round the clock" to get the power outages restored. (See the outage map here and a map by zip codes here. According to the maps, 41-60% of the people in my zip code have power--but I saw no lights in my recon last night.) What are they doing? What's their plan? What infrastrucure specifically needs to be repaired and how? Your guess is as good as mine, because nobody has asked that question. But "round the clock" they go. Mining the internet or chat forums will get you some more details, but then you have a credibility concern about the information you're getting.

I'm sure I could think of others, but the situation really points out the utter failure of informational outlets, in government, in business, and in the media, to provide useful, raw data that people can use to make decisions about how to handle a crisis. There's a pulitzer out there for the man or woman who isn't too lazy to ask some interesting questions. But as of now, journalism is reduced to standing in front of an angry sea or a dramatic background of destruction and blubbering superlatives, as if it is "news" that hurricanes are windy and wash things away.

Nice

That's Just Wrong

Well, the Air you can Wear has returned to Houston--humid, rancid, particulate-filled, polluted air that causes your sinuses to clog and your pits to drip and makes a clammy drop of sweat roll constantly down your backbone.

You people who live in places with mild seasons, clean air, and bike lanes where you don't have to die? I. Hate. Everyone.

Yesterday, driving in from the park after my bike ride, I was less than three miles from the central business district, but the buildings were even more obscured than in this picture. That's just wrong. And it inspired this rant about other things that are wrong and should not be tolerated under any circumstances. Add you own in the comments.

1. Any music mix in the men's locker room that includes Whitney Houston and Josh Groban. Look, it doesn't have to be death metal 24/7 , but come on. Whitney? That's just wrong.
2. Seen at the Woodlands Athletic Center Pool last weekend: man in his 50s, bald on top with hair around the edges of his head cropped to less than 1/4 inch--but with a thick sweater of long hair all over the rest of his body. That's just wrong.
3. Real men should not fuss about the hair on their head. That's why it was so fundamentally wrong for John Edwards to spend $400 on a haircut. In my opinion (given the amount of hair I don't have) blow dryers in a men's locker room are out of place. But, blow drying the hair on one's body?!!! Blow drying back hair and nether hair???!!!! That's.Just.WRONG.
4. Hey, guys--you guys at the neighborhood pool with the 30+ BMI--those tribal tattoos and barbed wire around what used to be a bicep when you were in college? Not a good look for you any more. Either mix in some salads or invest in laser tattoo removal. Otherwise? It's just wrong.
   
5. Hey, gals--you gals at the neighborhood pool with the 30+ BMI--that belly button ring that looked so sexy when you were in college? Not.So.Much. Rings in rolls are not sexy. They're just wrong.

OK, I feel a little bit better. But only a little.

LMAO

This is usually a politics-free zone, but having been born in the deep south and resided in a red state since the Reagan Revolution, this was just too funny to pass up. The video is an equal opportunity offender, so no matter which party you belong to, your ox will be gored.

**Parental Advisory** If your kids watch this they'll hear the same language they in all likelihood hear at school.

Hamsters

You know what really bothers me? It's people who act no better than hamsters.

You know, hamsters, those little furry rodents that people, usually children, keep as pets. They live their whole lives in a cage and nothing much changes from day to day. They hit the little valve on that water bottle and water comes out. They hit the food bowl and someone has put the pellets there for them. Sometimes they engage in a lot of activity, making their little wheel go 'round and 'round or scurrying through their little tubes, but they're not really going anywhere. And they eliminate all over their habitat knowing that someone else will eventually come and replace all the filth with fresh, clean wood shavings.

Lately, I've been seeing hamsters everywhere I look, sometimes even when I shave in the morning.

For example, when it is 70 degrees and sunny outside, what would you call a bunch of human beings who are inside a gym loping on a treadmill or an elliptical machine because that is what they always do? Hamsters. They were even in there yesterday morning on the elliptical machines when the gym had no power and the machines therefore had no resistance. All they needed was a little water bottle and a bowl of pellets. Hamsters.

And what do you call someone who weighs himself every day for three years, and by all appearances is just as overweight as always because there has been no change in the diet or the routine of reading the paper while slowly peddling a recumbent bicycle for 30 minutes three times each week. Bring on the pellets. That is a hamster.

And then there is the phalanx of waddling office workers, arranged in a cue outside the building before work, at lunch, and at two breaks during the day, breathing nicotine off-gas along with assorted carcinogens until 4:59 when they shut off their computers, hit the road, and go home to eat and smoke on the couch in front of the television before repeating it again tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. Looks like a hamster to me. Indeed, it looks like a hamster whose health care I will wind up paying for--sort of cleaning out the wood shavings, if you will.

Pointing a few less fingers and looking a little more in the mirror, what do you call someone who does the same commute to the same job and to the same house every day, but expends little or no effort to improve or change the things he finds unsatisfying, settling instead for predictable pellets that will keep him fed but bored. Classic hamster.

Sure, hamsters can be cute when they're rodents. But people aren't pets. We weren't meant to be taken care of by children or "kept" by anyone else. We aren't suited for cages. We are built to seek our own food, to go places outside the cage, to take risks, conquer challenges.

Sure, the Ironman part of my life is not hamster-like, and in large part, I may have taken on challenges and pain like that in rebellion to becoming a hamster and in an effort to feel really alive. But I have said it before and I'll repeat it now. I want that adventure and conquering spirit to infect the rest of my life. I want to NOT settle in any part of my life.

No more pellets.

No more habitrails.

Now what do I do?

True Confessions--Things That Make My Head Explode

Some among you may have formed the impression that I am a decent guy who rides on a fairly even keel, and may even be considered patient or kind. If so, your mistake is due to two things:

1. The magic of the internet where you can pretty much create anyone you want to be; and

2. My status as a professionally trained wordsmith who can weave a tapestry, yea an entire world of fictional believability using only the English language.

Those who think they have met me are deceived. I am not the short and wiry, middle-aged man with a receding hairline. That is merely an actor who I have hired to make the online persona believable. I am actually a stunningly attractic and tall blond woman in her early 30s, a hard-bitten New Yorker who writes a gossip column and commiserates with my friends about the abysmal state of New York men while drinking Grey Goose martinis, moving from conquest to conquest and casting about witty banter with devil-may-care sophistication.

OK, so that's not actually true. And I kind of stole that from a TV show, so it's not even really a display of any ability at fiction writing.

What you see is pretty much what you get, except that I am a lot less kind or patient than you might have been led to believe. Patience and mercy are not my best qualities. I am not longsuffering and slow to anger. In the words of Lyle Lovett, "that's the difference between God and me."

Certain things bring out the feelings that I am about to go Krakatoa. One of them is airport security lines, which I have survived four times this week without committing a homicide, although sometimes only narrowly. She probably does not know it, but she came within an eyelash of death-by-Krakatoa. You know her. The morbidly obese, mouth-breathing lady who stood in the security line for 15 minutes, heard the verbal instructions from the TSA representative, saw the instructional signs with pictures for the illiterate, and yet still waited until reaching the x-ray conveyor to clue to the fact that she needed to put a large assortment of hopelessly futile beauty supplies into plastic baggies while seasoned business travelers stacked up behind her.

I think the TSA almost "offed" her right there pursuant to some new power granted in an executive order. No one would have blinked.

Ditto for the blinged out refugee from a Hip-Hop video who tried to walk through the metal detector with a four inch wide studded belt and various and sundry chains.

Seriously, DID YOU NOT KNOW that this funny little door tries to find metal things? Do you THINK that the Mr. T rejects around your neck, and wrist and ankle and waist might not make the funny little door beep? You do KNOW that the beep does not mean you get a prize, right?

It's time like these that I start thinking evil thoughts about travelers in strollers and wheelchairs and trying to make predictions about which x-ray line will be the fastest.

COME ON GRANDMA! MOVE IT. YOU CAN TOTALLY GO FASTER THAN THAT. I DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR TITANIUM HIP REPLACEMENT. WAND HER, SKIPPY!

Then there is the training plan. I know that I have done enough workouts and can do enough on the weekend that I am going to continue to improve and not lose any fitness, but the integrity of the graphs and training log are now all screwed up and my head is going to explode. Plus all this life stuff, what with the parenting and the earning a living and the husbanding, is making me tired and interfering with the MY TRAINING!

CAN THE WORLD PLEASE GO AWAY AND LEAVE ME ALONE???!!! I've got a sub-15-hour Ironman, completely pathetic, non-podium, generic, back-of-the-pack finish to train for!!

Oh, did I mention that I have to suppress a really selfish streak from time to time. Shocking, yeah, I know. Who knew?

I'm getting on that plane over there in one hour and heading home from Orlando. I hope I find my daddy/husband self again before I pull my car in the garage.

**breathing deeply**

Oh gawd, that screaming toddler with the mouse is is probably on my flight.

Make.
It.
Stop.

I am a bad, bad man.
(Your own true confessions solicited for the comment section).

"That Guy" Part Deux

"Guys! guys, guys, guys, GUYS!!!! STOP THE TREADMILLS!!

"It's 71 degress outside, mostly sunny, low humidity and a nice fresh breeze. There are poor, frozen triathletes in Minnesota who are starving for weather like this.

"GO OUTSIDE AND RUN!!!"

"That Guy"

Nobody wants to be "that guy." You know the guy I mean. I'm not talking about the friendly, helpful guy who encourages the newbie. I'm talking about that guy in the transition area or the gym who has all the answers, who knows that his aero helmet will save him .72 seconds per kilometer and your transition area would be 21.7% more efficient if arranged thusly, and optimal stretching is accomplished in only one fashion.

I don't want to be that guy, offering free advice on proper form to all the people in the gym. Much of my life can be explained as an ongoing effort not to be that guy. In fact, I think part of my quiet nature as a child came from observing many examples of very outgoing people who were actually "that guy" and did not know it. Thus, I became a reader instead of a talker. My policy: "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."* Stated differently, "I have often regretted my speech, never my silence."**

Thankfuly, my industrial strength speech filter was in place at the gym today or else one might have heard . . .

"Um, sir. The exercise is called a crunch, not a jerk, snap, rupture, fit, spasm, or seizure. SLOWLY. And BREATHE for the love of God. This is not a race against the clock. At least don't rip your head from your shoulders or rupture a disc until after I leave."

"Excuse me sir. Do you hear that sound? The one that sounds like an M1 going off every time your foot slams down on the treadmill? STOP IT! Nobody else in the gym is running that way, and you're going to hurt yourself. It hurts me to watch."

"Stop, stop, STOP! You're going to take someone's eye out. Besides you're doing it WRONG. You're going to rupture your rotator cuff if you keep swinging the the dumbells around like that."

"SIR! PLEASE! That horrible cracking and popping sound when you slam down into a deep knee bend--that's just WRONG."

"Um, if you can read the paper and watch television on the recumbant bicycle without breathing hard, there really is no appreciable training benefit over driving your couch. Just thought you ought to know."

I was not that guy. I held my tongue, as I'm sure you do. Buuuuuuuuuut, if you didn't, what might you say?


*Abraham Lincoln
**Publius Syrus, Maxim 1070

Bloggers Down

Newly in from the "Get A Life" division at Greyhound Central, youtube has been taken offline IN AN ENTIRE COUNTRY! Not only that, it is a country that fancies itself to be modern, secular, western and is a member of NATO. Why, you ask? Because internet dorks insulted the father of modern Turkey. Here's a news story about it:


Turkish court shuts down YouTube
By Vincent Boland in Istanbul
Published: March 7 2007 17:05 Last updated: March 7 2007 17:05
Turkey’s largest internet services provider shut down access to the YouTube video-sharing web site on Wednesday after a court ruling that some of its content insulted Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey.
The decision followed days of furious insult-sharing among Turkish and Greek users of the popular and controversial site.
The result was a flood of complaints to the site and to the media from Turkish users angered by what one newspaper said were “fanatic Greeks broadcasting videos” insulting Ataturk.

**************************
Seriously! Are democracies so fragile that they are threatened if someone photoshops George Washington?

And from the "nanner nanner boo boo" division of Greyhound Central, here is one of the offending videos. (Parental Advisory: it's not totally over the top, but may not be appropriate for pre-teens)



Ooooooo. Scary. The internet. Grow up.

Blogger Down

I avoid blogging politics or religion like the plague. I like friends. BUT, I read the news today. Oh boy. This is an excerpt of what I saw:

"Blogger Gets 4 Years for Insulting Islam
"By NADIA ABOU EL-MAGD Associated Press Writer © 2007 The Associated Press

"ALEXANDRIA, Egypt — An Egyptian blogger was convicted Thursday and sentenced to four years in prison for insulting Islam, the Prophet Muhammad and Egypt's president, sending a chill through fellow Internet writers who fear a government crackdown. * * * *"

The full story is here. The offending blog is here.

Now, I'm not a huge civil libertarian, and no one has ever confused me for liberal; BUT, how can you possibly think you can join the family of nations in the 21st century if you have to imprison electronic keyboard peckers who insult your president and your dominant religion. Pretty secure in yourselves, aren't you? If you want the western world to treat you like a big, grown up country, well then . . . .

GROW.UP.

I'm thinking about starting a new blog for reposting and linking to the writings of jailed bloggers. Sorry. Just had to get that off my chest. I'm finished now.