Unlike this poor schlob, i AM Michael Phelps

During the Olympics this summer you may have seen the BBC news reporter who is not Michael Phelps.



I know how he feels. I've taken up swimming at Pirate's gym, mostly because 2/3 of the time I show up for weight-lifting or circuits classes they get canceled due to me being the only one HARD CORE enough to show up. So I hit the pool instead.

I used to be a really slow swimmer. A really really really slow swimmer. Then I discovered the box of flippers next to the kick boards. Now, rather than praying for the wall at the opposite side of the pool, which advanced so slowly I used to fear the second coming would happen before I reached it, it rushes toward me with such rapidity that it frightens me, and I have to slow down to avoid an out-and-out crash.

"So this is what it feels like to be Michael Phelps" I thought, the first time I swam with the flippers on. "Brilliant!"

Now crowds follow me where ever I go. I can't get out of the locker room without signing autographs. Oh well. It's all part of the price of fame.

Bad Ass

I've begun taking jujitsu and boxing. Jujitsu on Tuesdays and boxing on Thursdays. It's brilliant. It's helping to bring my fitness back up to snuff (which has suffered abysmally since Henley last June), and is helping my mental state as well. Get me, I'm tough. *Grrrrr!*

I officially declare

blackberry season to be... OPEN!


At Pirate's cricket match on Saturday I went down the lane while the guys were warming up and picked a kilo of early blackberries to put out with the tea. Yummers!

Amongst the brambles and nettles were several big buddleja bushes in full bloom

And on one of the bushes was the most beautiful butterfly I have ever seen in England. It was lovely, and so distinctive I knew I had would have no trouble identifying it after I got back and consulted Prof. Google.

And do you know what butterfly it was, sucking happily away at the buddleja bush? It was this one!:
This is a peacock butterfly. (I didn't take these photos, btw. I didn't have my camera, so I borrowed these from t'interwebs.) You can read about it here.

Oh, and the match went well. Pirate didn't take any wickets, but he batted 46 (not out) off 22 balls! Aw yeeeah. Das my man, hunnachile.

Pirate's Awesome Match at Lord's

Pirate played a cricket match at Lord's recently. It was quite the red letter day. (For the Yanks who don't know, Lord's is the most prestigious cricket ground in England.)

He opened the bowling and took 2 wickets, more than anyone else on his side, but not until the opposition had racked up 165 runs with their opening partnership. Ouch.
During lunch the crowd (yes, there was a crowd of about 3,500 people. We were all seated in the Grand Stand, where I took these photos from, so looking across the pitch all you see are empty seats, but that's because all the spectators were behind me) was entertained by a very good band.


At teatime the players were introduced to Princess Anne (that's her in the yellow dress. I was too lazy to paste an arrow in for you). I asked Pirate what he said to her and he told me that she enquired about his job, which he described for her. Then she went on to feign interest in the next player.

Finally Pirate got to bat. When he came on to the pitch it was looking dire for his side, as they had lost a lot of wickets quite quickly and gotten few runs. The team and the crowd were getting despondent. Then he came out and smashed a 4 off the first ball and the crowd cheered. He continued hitting 4s until he had taken the team from a position of almost certain defeat to a likely draw. At one point the crowd was even chanting his name! Pi-rat! Pi-rat! Pi-rat!
When he was eventually bowled they put his photo up on all the big scoreboards. He is even awesomer than I am. The end.

How I pulled my ass cheek

This weekend Pirate and I were going to see Wall-e, but I got the date for the release wrong and it wasn't out yet. Grrrr.

So instead we went to the club and stuck me in the nets to teach me how to bat properly. (Apparently the half-ton I got this weekend for the Bowl Movement CC was a fluke.) It turns out I'm a left-hander.

I started out as a right-hander, which is what would be expected, since I'm right-handed. But i just couldn't get the coordination right. It felt forced and contrived and totally unnatural. So I switched sides. After 10 seconds of feeling slightly weird it all came together and I was blocking shots like a pro.

Pirate is a good coach, if slightly exasperating. In his job he is a pirate trainer, taking kids off the street and instilling in them all the best pirating values. I got a good sense yesterday of how his wee piratettes see him.

Several buckets of tennis balls later (i didn't have any pads, so we used softer balls), Pirate's bat was feeling very heavy indeed, and my back was getting sore, so we called it a day. I woke up today with a pulled ass.

Just because it's football doesn't make it OK

I arrived home yesterday evening from Salisbury to find Bristol in an uproar -- riots in the streets. There were dozens of people screaming, shouting, chanting, cars incessantly honking horns. I had no idea what was going on.

I arrived at my flat and phoned the police. The 999 operator said "is your life in immediate danger?"
"No" I said.
She hung up.

There are plenty of legitimate reasons for phoning the police when one's life is not in immediate danger!

So I looked up the non-emergency number on the web and spoke with a constible. I explained that I was afraid to leave my flat again, and that from my window I could hear the shouting and chanting and horns and the noise was a significant disturbance of the peace, and asked them to intervene.

"It's just the football," he said. "They're just celebrating. We don't want to spoil their fun."

???

If I threw a party for some -- any -- reason and caused that kind of disturbance the police would surely have broken it up. How come it's acceptible if it's football?



*grumble grumble*

another fucking sleepless night.

I am SO sick of this bleeding city.

Blogasm

What a weekend!

This post is going to come out in one, giant, joyous explosion of wonderful things that I experienced this weekend.

Actually, that would be a little scary. Let's break it up into lots of little, tiny, joyous explosions, in bullet-format. Little popcorn blogasms, like the orgasms you have when you're super-saturated with horniness and you've already had 3 or 4 big, earth-shattering ones but you're still so hyper-sensitive that the slightest touch sends another little aftershock through your pelvis, over and over and over again.

Yeah, this post is going to be like that. (That was a metaphor, by the way. This post will not be about sex. Just in case you were wondering/dreading.)

Saturday morning:

• Went sculling in a single (Sal is still sick). It was a beautiful, sunny day.
• Saw the heron, fish leaping out of the water, a cormorant diving, said cormorant popping out of the river with aforementioned flappy fish in beak, little twinkly babble stream flowing into river.
• Did an awesome 1k piece. Balance was perfect, rate was high, catches were quick and strong, and my boat sang to me, churning little bubbles along the bow that giggled and whispered to one another.
• Got sunburn.

Saturday afternoon:

Cycled up through Ashton Court to watch Pirate's cricket game. There was a mountain bike race going on. I needed to get to where I was going, and there was no good alternate route, so I just slotted in with them on my own (heavy) mountain bike. The trail is a bitch: it's not gravelly but properly rocky, uphill, into a headwind. I didn't get passed by any of the competitors, not even the men. They may have already been at it a while, but I wasn't exactly fresh either, having already cycled 22 miles that morning and sculled 12k. And I was carrying cargo. I crossed the finish line and waved my arms in the air like they do on TV and lots of people clapped and cheered. A marshall shouted at me for not having a number and so I yelled back "I'm not racing! I'm just awesome!" And went to go watch the cricket. (They lost.)


Sunday morning:

I cycled from Bristol to Pirate's cricket game in Devizes along the National Cycle Route 4. This is the route I take to the boathouse, but I've only ever ridden it as far as Bath. I've wanted to try the bit east of Bath for a long time.
It was the most stunning bike ride I've ever taken. I saw:

• Lovely, cool, shady old-growth hardwood forests dominated by 100-year-old beech trees, with their beautiful silver bark that makes you think you've stumbled into Lothlorian and start looking around for armed and paranoid Elves (which is pointless because you know bloody well that you won't see them until they decide to grant you the priveledge, but you do it all the same).
• Cottages and gardens overflowering with rambling roses in June bloom that were so charming Miss Marple herself would vomit rainbows at the sight
• A black, tuxedo-clad cat wearing white spats and sitting in a dignified manner beside a potted geranium. Like you do.
• Amazing aquaducts! The Kennet-and-Avon Canal, constructed by the Victorians, is a highway for river barges. And is has bridges. Not bridges that go over it, but bridges that it uses to cross gorges and valleys. So you can be on a boat and float along a water-filled bridge hundreds of feet above another river! It's genius! I'd never seen anything like it. Extraordinary. I'm so pissed off I didn't have my camera.
• The 29-lock sequence leading up to Devizes. I had no idea it was there, and certainly didn't expect to come across such an extraordinary sight. Honestly, the victorians kick our ASSES when it comes to daring building projects. It was awe-inspiring and beautiful at the same time.
• By the time I got to the locks I had cyclecdabout 39 miles. Because of the huge lock-sequence the last mile was all uphill. It didn't bother me. I finished the ride as strongly as I started, and never slowed down along the way. No exhaustion, no lactic acid. I wasn't even tired. I impressed myself. (And believe me, given the high opinion/expectations I already have of myself, that actually takes some doing.)
• A pair of neon blue and firey orange kingfishers, darting about in the sunlight over the pools beside the locks, more irridescent than dragonflies and swifter than swallows. It's easy to see why people believed in fairies. They were supernaturally incongruous inhabitants of a normally drab and dreary country.

Sunday afternoon: Pirate's cricket game

One of my favorite things about cricket is listening to the opposition discuss the Pirate while his team is fielding. They sit around and discuss the game and the players, and they have no idea who I am or that every one of their little words will make it back to Pirate's ears. I love being a fly on the wall of the enemy's locker room!
This week Pirate bowled and batted especially well, and the other team spent a good 90 minutes talking about him and him alone. Here are some of the juicier tidbits:

• (about Pirate's bowling) He doesn't need those glasses to see. They must have some kind of digital display or targeting system on the inside of the lenses. Some sort of Batman-esque readout. Or cross-hairs. That's it! The fucker's got cross-hairs on his glasses!
• I thought he'd have begun to slow down by now, but he's on his 10th over and he's as fast as his first. He's not human. It's like facing a bowling machine. That can think.
• I need a lid to face this guy. And a chest-plate. Can I borrow your chest plate? Please, someone must have a chest-plate I can use. I don't want to face this guy without more armor!
• (about his batting, uttered by the bowler who, despite his best efforts, gave away 22 runs in one over to the Pirate, one ball of which was a massive 6 that earned Pirate his half-ton) He made it look so easy! That's just talent, plain old raw talent. He bats as well as he bowls, just one after another, 4, 4, 4, 4, 6, as easy as you like. Honestly? I'm glad there are men like that in the world.
• I hear he's a Pirate. I feel safer knowing that he's out on the high seas protecting us. It must suck for the drug runners who cross his path!
• Which member of the Royal Family do you think he should marry? I dunno, none of the women are really good enough for him. I suppose maybe Princess Beatrice. Or Fergie herself even? (Yes, a bunch of 20 to 30-something guys sat around trying to decide which Royal the Pirate should marry. I couldn't make this up if I tried!)

So in the car on the way home I conveyed all of this to the Pirate who, after laughing hysterically for 30 minutes, declared "I'm going to need to get a bigger car! My ego won't fit in this one any more!"

12th (wo)man

I HAD SEXUAL RELATIONS WITH A SMALL, BLACK INSECT WHO SEDUCED ME BY CHIRPING!

I LOST MY CRICKET VIRGINITY YESTERDAY!

Actually, I got thrown in to one of the Pirate's games on Sunday. One of their men never showed up and they couldn't get hold of him, so they threw me some borrowed kit and let me play. The conversation at lunch went something like this:

Skipper: "Bob" still isn't here.

Another player: No big deal, we can field with 10 men. We've got so many runs they don't stand a chance anyway.

Pirate: CB will play. (Keep in mind this is not a mixed-sex league/team/game.)

Me: I will?

Skipper (to me): Oh? Are you a cricketer?

Me: Nope! Never played in my life, but I'll give it a go.

Skipper: Can you catch?

Me: Not really. I'm afraid of the ball. I can't run for beans either and I throw like a girl. I make no promises whatsoever about my capabilities, only my enthusiasm.

Skipper: Do you have any whites with you.

Me: Nope!

Skipper: Sounds good to me. You can field at off-stump.

Me: Okey-dokey then! Where's that?

So I was handed some spare kit from a chap who's a lot shorter and skinnier than I am and sent out to field wearing what looked like skin-tight, cream-colored capri-style yoga pants. The look was further enhanced by my hair being up in pigtails. It was no end of comedy, I tell you.

It was my first time ever on a cricket pitch and the first time a woman had ever played for the Stragglers.

It was a friendly match and didn't count toward any kind of league, and the Stragglers were so far up that even if I made several catastrophic screw-ups it still wouldn't affect the outcome of the game, so they were happy to humor me.

The ball only came towards me 3 times in the whole innings. Twice it was so far over my head only Inspector Gadget would have stood a chance of grabbing it, and the third time it came rolling past me, so I stopped it with my foot and lobbed it back to the catcher, thereby holding what would have been 4 runs to only 1. So that was good. The rest of the game I just stood there, terrified that the ball would come near me. My fear was in vain, however, as the Pirate was bowling and didn't give the poor bastards batting many opportunities to do anything other than defend the stumps.

So I was heartily congratulated all around for being such a good sport and had a great time playing England's noble game with my Pirate.

(Also when the Pirate took his first wicket I got to smack him on the ass in a manly, athletic manner, which was fun.)

Dark Lord of the Sith (Efrica)

Okay, here we go. Sorry I haven't gotten around to telling you about my trip yet. I've been catching up on work/rowing/etc.

Speaking of work, I'm at the office, so I can't upload any photos with this post, but I will do that soon. I'll also put up the videos of me being baptized into Pirate's cricket club and the hot hot penguin horniness ass soon as I get them off Pirate's computer.

We had a good time. There were some great moments and not so great moments, but on balance it was a good laugh.

The cricket went well. Mostly. We won 2 out of 7, lost 4, and tied one. Only one of the matches that we could really could/should have been won. The others were essentially carnage. The match that tied was incredibly exciting, and converted me into a proper cricket nutter.

We played at some beautiful fields in and around Capetown, including Stellenbosch, Groot Drakenstein (it sounds scary but tranlates to Greater Ducksberg, which is not scary), and Constantia, the prettiest of them all. Wherever we played we were surrounded by trees, mountains, and vineyards, and the sun shined every day.

Except the day we went up Table Mountain. And that was ok with me. Everyone else was bummed about the fog/cloud cover because they couldn't see the grand views, but I liked it. The mountain has all kinds of wierd plantlife and rock formations, and the fog shroud made it feel like I was walking on an alien planet.

The wildlife was great. I bought a bird guide the first day there and spent a good chunk of the tour twitching. I saw
African Sacred Ibises,
hedada Ibises, cattle egrets,
red-winged starlings (much more spectacular when seen in flight),
egyptian geese (and geeselings!), all manner of sea birds,
cape white-eyes,
cape batises,
a ground woodpecker (i don't understand either),
spur-winged geese,
a juvenal black-crowned night heron (that one was a bitch to indentify),
speckled pigeons,
laughing doves (well, heard more than saw; that was the first ever species i was able to positively identify by call alone),
pied kingfishers,
LOADS of guineafowl (look at that animal and try to claim it has any other reason for living than being food for other things. I mean, it's all meat and NO BRAIN to speak of!),
a flock of cape canaries,
several nesting pairs of greater striped swallows (who LOVE to nest under the eaves of cricket clubhouses, which are ideally situated next to cricket pitches, which are ideal for catching lunch of the 6-legged flying variety),
barn swallows (if there are barn swallows, are there barn spits as well?),
a sunbird that i can't find a picture of,
african darters (which are fun because they swim with their bodies below water with only their necks sticking up, so they look like little Loch Ness Monsters),
ostriches (though i saw these more on restaurant menus than anywhere else, and they are delishous!)
and most importantly, PENGUINS!!!

The birding kept me well occupied, and i spent most of the trip with my binos around my neck. even so, i had probably a dozen sightings of things that i was unable to identify. maddening.

i'll put up some of my own photos of the penguins next week. more to come!

Cutlasses crossed

Pirate is out defending his Championship Piratey Title this weekend against a bunch of young upstarts who think they can buckle their swashes better than he. Pfft. Whatever. (But keep your cutlasses crossed, just in case.)

*Wrock!* Polly wants a trophy!


UPDATE: Damn. Pirate came in second. He had some moments that were nothing short of brilliant, but they were punctuated by brief spells of muppetry which were enough to cost him the Title. Bah. We'll get it back next year. (Having to fork over the trophy is going to be painful.)

Saddle Sore

Last Saturday I cycled 25 miles (12 to the boathouse, and further 13 to the Pirate's).
Sunday I cycled 26 miles (13 each way from Pirate's to boathouse and back).
Monday I cycled 25 miles (home to Brizzle from Pirate's).
Tuesday I cycled 26 miles (13 miles each way to my chiropractor in Clevedon).
Wednesday I could have cyled to the boathouse and back (total 24 miles), but I got a lift because I was sick of cycling.
Thursday I cyled 26 miles (Clevedon and back to see my chiropractor).

Tonight I'm cycling to the Pirate's (25 miles).

Thank god the girls are in London racing this weekend, so I don't have to cycle to the boathouse. I can go to the gym and do a weights session instead.

Because on monday I have to cycle home from the Pirate's (25 miles) AND go to the chiropractor in the evening (26 miles). Total: 51 miles.

My bum hurts.

What's the difference...

...between France and a teabag?









A teabag stays in the cup longer!!!

GO ENGLAND!!!

Our heroine returns!

Cycling down the A4 this morning, clad in my flourescent-yellow armor -- whose magical, light-bending properties make me impervious to the advances of speeding lorries, over-confident bus-drivers, harried commuters, and road-kill -- I mused over the events of the weekend.


Friday night on the way to the Pirate's i blew a tire. Not just a puncture in the inner-tube -- that is a small matter i have dealth with many times before -- but an actual tire blow-out, where the tire itself split and left an inch-long hole. I was only 2 miles from home and still 24 miles from the Pirate (who was at the archery range doing some standing-still practice), so i stuck a sock between the tire and the tube to protect the tube from gravel and road flotsam and crossed my fingers it would be enough to get me the rest of the way. it was.

Saturday was a bright, blue, beautiful day. We slept in late and made love in the sunshine.

Blue, beautiful day.

(I took this photo of the sunflower fields about half a mile from the Pirate's house.

I did not nick this from teh interwebs.)

First stop was to the bike shop where we procured a new tire for my ride. Next stop was the car shop where we procured shampoo, polish, wax, and chamois cloth for the Pirate's new baby (known henceforth as The Big Car, because referring to it as The Aston is "just too pretentious for words," so sayeth the Pirate).

We got back and set to work at our respective tasks, me repairing my bike, putting the second canteen rack on, adjusting the derailer (which comes out of alignment every 100 miles or so, which for me is about 2 weeks) and generally tightening up things that work themselves lose from the vibrations. Also adding more reflective tape to things. Because one can never have too much reflective tape, can one?

Pirate set to work, whistling all the while, cleaning and shining the wire wheels on The Big Car and making everything sparkle. We admired our work. I put my car away and we climbed in his to go into the village, where we got ground sirloin, buns, and bleu cheese for burgers, and fresh corn and tomatoes at the farm stall. Dinner that night was burgers on the grill, sweetcorn, tomatoes, and beer, and we sat at the table in the back garden was watched the sun sink below the trees.

What struck me over and over again through the course of the day was just how normal it seemed. It was the most natural thing in the world, him playing with his car, me puttering around with my bike, shopping together, I cooked dinner (this is not an endorsement of a patriarchal culture -- I really really really love cooking and Pirate hates it, so this is just one of our divisions of labor: i cook, he cleans. We're both happy with this arrangement. The feminists can stop growling now) and we sat at the table and enjoyed the food, the surroundings, the season, and the company. For that evening I was in paradise, with not a care in the world that needed immediate attention beyond the fact that I overcooked the burgers slightly, and I had a glimpse of what live could (and hopefully will be) like. That's not to say that I expect every evening to be perfect like that one, but there's no reason why some of them can't be.

I proposed a stroll after dinner to aid the digestion and enjoy the last of the dwindling light. Pirate countered with a bike ride, which would do the same but be slightly more vigorous. I readily agreed, and we took a lovely 11k ride around the plateau where he lives, careening around quiet country lanes overlooking the most glorious vistas and valleys, spilled over with the golden evening sun. We picked some late season blackberries and sucked their juice. And anyone who thinks they need an afterlife and 72 virgins or harp-wielding angels to find paradise or true happiness has never been in love, or been loved.

Apricot light; end of day, end of summer.

I'm not trying to say that my life is perfect or better than anyone else's so nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-NYAH-NYAH or anything. I'm only trying to make the point that the world and our place in it is what we make it, and there's no reason to wait for the next life to be happy; it can be found in the here and now.

Anyway.

Sunday was a cricket day, and dawned clear and blue again. I've seen some of the most picturesque bits of the English countryside from her cricket fields, and yesterday was no exception. The game went well, with the Pirate getting run out at 96 runs. I was gutted. He hasn't had a century all season, and this was the very last game of the summer. I really wanted him to make his ton, but it didn't happen. As it was, it was still his best score of the season, so that was OK, and they won the game. His team mates were still talking about his performance the previous week, where a mighty 6 off his bat sailed over the clubhouse and won the game in the penultimate ball.

The Pirate bowling.
You can just make out red ball (click for bigness) on the left of the pic. He took a wicket with that one. Note for cricketers: as you can see he's bowling right-handed, which means he ran up on the left of the stumps. Look where his feet are. He's not standing on the wrong side of the track; he's more than a foot in the air.

(Better view: the scenic side of The Pirate.)

(and people wonder why I like cricket.)

Toward the end of the match an amazing thing happened: the emergence of the crane flies. Crane flies are nasty, horrible, disgusting things. I don't like them. I acknowledge they have place in the world, but that place is in Pirate's carnivorous plants, not all over my legs and feet.

Exhibit A: one of Pirate's fly traps eating a crane fly. Yummers!

Crane flies lay their eggs in the grass where they become grubs which eat the roots (cricket pitch grass is, i'm told, especially delicious to them) and then emerge from the ground as adults to boink and make more flies. What no one told me is that they emerge all at once.

It was like a fucking Hitchcock movie. There we were sitting on the porch of the pavilion watching the sun set behind the last few overs of the match (which they won thanks to Pirate bowling 3 consecutive maidens and making the rate unacheivable for the opposition), when a lone crane fly crawled up over the wooden step onto the porch and approached my feet. I stepped on it. Then another one came. I stepped on that one too. Soon there were several. The women on the bench beside me started stepping on them. We looked down and there were dozens of them, all walking towards us. Actually, they were being blown gently by the wind, but we were facing square into the wind, so they came straight at us.

Then I looked up. The sun had burst through from behind the clouds creating the most spectacular sunset (also creating impossible condidtions for the poor batsmen), and what I saw next shocked, horrified, and captivated me. The low-angle of the sunlight was glinting off the wings of the crane flies as they emerged from the ground, and the criket pitch sparkled like a snow-field. There were millions of them, glittering and dancing in the sunset. It was at once one of the most beautiful and most disgusting things I have ever seen. I was not able to capture the effect on my camera.

We stopped in the pub across the street with the rest of the team and had dinner. (Chicken, bacon, and leek pies. Mmmm.) before heading home.

After a snuggly night I packed up my things, stuffed them in my sunflower-yellow paniers, and hit the highway, like a bee with giant pollen sacs heading back to the hive.


OOh, I almost forgot to mention: Pirate's boss asked the People In Charge if he could keep Pirate for a few extra months, so he won't be moving at the first of the year as planned. Instead he'll stay where he is (within cycling distance) for an extra three months! YAAAAAAAAY!!!!)

Presidents, golf, and evolution

The game of golf is an evolutionary inevitablitiy, invented by a woman. It has a very clear evolutionary function: to keep men from getting under foot. Ask any wife whose husband has retired if she likes having him around an extra 40 hours a week, and she will no doubt exclaim that while she loves her husband dearly, he gets in the way more often than the 2-year-old twin grandchilden, and she is perpetually having to invent little jobs and games and errands to keep him occupied and out from under foot. Golf is one such game.

This goes back to the days of Neanderthals. When an old Neanderthal grandpa (let's call him 'Ugh') got too slow to keep up with the group hunting mastadons and turned into a safety liability (proto-lawyers and insurance salesmen who had recently appeared on the neolithic scene were already displaying disturbingly successful adaptations), the hunting party left him behind in the cave to annoy the crap out of his but-ugly yet extremely capable wife, Mumph.

Ugh: what's this?

Mumph: put that down, you'll break it.

(Ugh picks up something else, fiddles with it for a moment)

Mumph: Leave those tyranosaurus bones where they are; i put them there for a reason.

(Ugh wanders over to another part of the cave)

Mumph: you kicked up a corner of the bear rug; fix it before i trip and kill myself on it.

(Ugh bends over to fix the rug and notices something)

Ugh: hey! there's a giant bug with a bazillion legs hiding under the rug! Cool! (begins poking centipede with stick)

Mumph: That's it! Out with you! Out! (thinking quickly) Here, if you take these two sticks and rub them together for a really long time, something neat will happen. I promise. (snickers to herself)

Ugh: Really? what?

Mumph: uh, it's a surprise. (smirks)

(two hours later)

Ugh: Mumph! Mumph! look! I invented fire! Holy shit, i'm smart!

Mumph: (rolling eyes) Here, you want to be useful? Take these pelts down to the river and bang them against the wet rocks until they're clean.

Ugh: (crestfallen) ok, sure.

(returns)

Ugh: here you go.

Mumph: oh, for fuck's sake. look at them! they're ruined! Don't you know you can't bang a white pelt on a red rock? And this won't even fit the baby now!

Ugh: you just told me to bang them against the rocks. you didn't say which rocks!

Mumph: I've got an idea. why don't you get Blech and a couple sticks and see how many swings it takes you to hit a rock over the cliff? He's got terrible aim, couldn't hit the broad side of a brontosaurus from 10 feet away. That should keep you busy for a while.

Ladies and gentleman: the game of golf. An evolutionary adaptation which saved the human race from premature extinction. Of course, having watched the presidential debate last night, premature extinction is sounding better and better. Hmm. one more reason to hate golf.

The last shall be first

Inexplicably, I watched all 2 1/2 hours of the uninterrupted coverage of the women't marathon last night. Sitting alone in my living room, I scoffed out loud at the BBC's Olympic pundits who claimed that the heat would be just as trying for the Kenyan and Ethiopian athletes as the Brits .(Gimme a break. The Kenyans and Ethiopians were standing around muttering "you call this heat? You don't know from heat.") I rolled my eyes to the ceiling when the same blithering idiots swore that there would be lots of drama to come as the the medal contenders would change places numerous times on the downhill stretch to Athens, despite the significant distances separating the first four runners. And my heart broke with the rest of the UK when I saw Paula come grinding to a painful halt after just 36K. I sat there, pleading with the TV, begging her to get up and walk across the finish line for the sake of her own sanity. Finishing last is always better than quitting.

I know she was exhausted, I know she was in pain--they all were. But it wasn't pain and exhaustion that brought Paula to a halt... it was a broken heart. It's not a cooincidence that she gave up when the fourth place runner pushed past her and she lost the possiblity of even a bronze medal. Without a medal waiting, she saw no point in continuing.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not unsympathetic. I feel terrible for Paula, but I feel a lot worse for the 15 other women who couldn't finish. Women for whom there was never a realistic hope of a medal, but who showed up anyway, eclipsed by the glory of world-record holders, and gave it their best. I don't know who these women are. There was barely a mention of them in the papers. Unlike Paula, who decided after 36 kilometers that if she couldn't win she didn't want to play at all, these 15 women came armed with only a vague hope of a medal, but a more determined desire to just finish, and were ultimately defeated by the road.

I salute all the athletes who try their best. I especially bow to the last-place finishers, those for whom the temptation to quit is the strongest, and who keep going anyway. Though the offical Athens2004 website names the winner, Mizuki Noguchi of Japan, as the athlete of the day, I would like to take a moment to draw everyone's attention to Luvsanlkhundeg Otgonbayar of Mongolia, the last woman into the Panathinaiko Stadium, who crossed the finish line with a time of 3:48:42, an hour and 22 minutes after the gold had been decided.

I don't know what this woman looks like--she received no television coverage. But I imagine she was plugging along at the tail end of the pack, followed only by slow-moving police vehicles, the drivers of whom were irritated that they had to creep along behind this slowest of runners, possibly even mumbling to themselves that she might as well give up so they could go home and eat dinner. It was dark when Otgonbayar entered the stadium. She was exhaused, she was lonely (I suspect very few of the evening's road-side spectators bothered to hang around that long), and she had no hope of a medal. The temptation to quit and go home must have been overwhelming, knowing, when she was still miles away from the stadium, that the ribbon on the line was already broken. But damnit, she crossed the line under her own power. That, ladies and gentleman, is a champion.

Olympic Glory

I love the Olympics. No matter how old I get, I never cease to be moved by the event. This year as I watched the opening ceremony I was even weapier than usual. Perhaps because the world is in a state of such total crap (maybe the world's always been this crappy, but as I get older I'm more aware of it), or perhaps I'm just getting cynical, so that when a genuine reason to have hope for a more cooperative future does come along, it seems just a little more miraculous. After all the horrors I've witnessed on the news since the last Olympic games (and lets be honest, the American media only report a very small percentage of the world's horrors), and after the realization that 99% of the world's wealth and resources are controlled by six greedy bastards in a circle-jerk, watching athletes and their supporters from 202 countries stand together in 1 staduim and applaud each other really does seem like a miracle.

Of course, my love of the games isn't purely from a bleeding-heart, post-modern hippie, world peace perspective. As an athlete I've always had my own personal ambitions of olympic glory. The conscience-cricket on my shoulder can attest that I've fallen asleep more than a few times to visions of medals and cheering fans in my head. Which is exactly how I fell asleep on Friday night. I was anticipating a regatta on Saturday, in which I was entered in 3 events, the most I've ever attempted in one day. Naturally, by the time I watched them light the torch, I was convinced I would win every event and spend the evening walking around like Mark Spitz with my flat chest obscured by a pile of gold.

The idealism and energy with which I began Saturday, amplified by the drama taking place in Athens, made the poor sportsmanship of the day's events all the more shattering. I have never before taken part in an athletic even where there was such blatant disregard for fair competition.

Now, I'm not a sore loser. If we fuck up and lose as a result, I say "well, that sucked. We fucked up and lost because of it. Now we know what we need to do better next time." If we row hard and well and try our best and get beaten anyway I say "well, we did our best and got beat by a superior crew. well done, guys. we'll get 'em next time." I do not toss about accusations of cheating to alleviate my personal disappointment. Even now I will not name names of persons or clubs involved because I am aware that I may not know the whole story. Things aren't always as they seem, and I may be (and I frankly hope I am) wrong. Still, it's hard to ignore the stories that nearly every boat from my club told as they came off the water--stories of a biased start-marshall, opponents rowing in crews where they weren't allowed, and the misfortunes of badly located waterfoul.

It's sad when kids see the example set by their selfish elders and mimick their behaviour. It's sad that we can take what should be one of the most pure, fair, and ideal institutions humanity has ever created and twist it at both the local (as I saw on saturday) and international (as the drug accusations surrounding the Greek sprinters demonstrates) levels. I wish I hadn't seen what I saw on saturday. I would rather lose a fair fight than win a rigged one anyday, and it's sad that not everyone feels the same.

But I don't run the world (one of the key global problems), and not everyone agrees with me (another serious flaw of the planet). It's important to remember however, when accusations of doping and biased judging cast a dull shadow on the shining vision of the future the Olympic Games offers, that the vast majority of athletes, coaches, judges, and fans do feel the same way. For every athlete who makes the headlines because of a cheating scandal, thousands more have gone about their business, quietly pouring their mind, body, and soul into their event of choice in complete fairness and total anonymity. It is important to remeber this because it's so easy to become jaded and cynical in the face of constant reports of cheating and corruption, but cynicism and pessimism won't bring the Olympic vision of a cooperative future to fruition. We must, at all costs, maintain the naivete and optimism we had as children. We must continue to believe in the basic goodness of humanity, greatness of heroes, and the possibiltity that the little guy can still take down the giant (WAY TO GO, PUERTO RICO!!!!!). We must continue to believe, because if we don't our own skepticism will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The world is what we make it, and a better world starts with fair play and good sportsmanship in our small, insignificant, everday lives. Let the games begin.