I wanted to take an international trip over Thanksgiving. The requirements were pretty simple:
1. Somewhere I’d never been.
2. Cheap flights.
And basically, that’s how my buddy Jeff and I found ourselves in Korea.
Turns out, we probably should have added a few more requirements. And maybe done a little research before going. Korea fucking blows. A lot.
It blows so much so that we ended up spending most of our time alternating between our room, the concierge lounge and the hotel gym as we waited for a pre-planned side trip to Beijing (which, incidentally, most definitely does NOT blow). On the plus side though, all that free time eventually led to the video above, which is probably the greatest thing I’ve ever been a part of.
Special thanks to my buddy Hoa for the amazing editing work.
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Tri… and fail.
Last weekend I participated in my first triathlon. I would say competed in my first triathlon, but that would be a lie; I was competition for no-one. And any false pretenses that I may have been under beforehand that I might have a chance of doing well were quickly forgotten. Quickly as in approximately 75 meters into the mile-long swim when, out of breath, off course, and having recently mounted and dry humped my 7th fellow wet-suited man aged 30-39, I first contemplated the very real possibility of abandonment… But I’m getting ahead of myself. I should really tell you how I got to this point in the first place.
For whatever reason, I’ve been attracted to the idea of doing a triathlon for some time but I haven’t ever actually pulled the trigger and registered for one until now. I think the only reason is because I could never convince anyone to do one with me. But this year my friends from back in Colorado decided that they were getting into the sport and invited me to join them for an Olympic distance race in Steamboat Springs. So of course I said yes and set upon the path to ruining an otherwise lovely weekend with good friends in the beautiful Colorado mountains.
Triathlons are classed by distance and most people start the sport by competing in a few Sprint events before graduating to greater distances. But, since I’m delusional and tend to think that I’m a far better athlete than I really am, I decided that was for pussies and I should just jump in and go for the Olympic distance… at altitude. This was dumb but, not knowing any better at the time, I set out (between my 11-hour workdays and weekend binge drinking sessions) on an unregimented and piecemeal training regimen of occasional jogs, laps in the pool and sessions on the stationary bike.
Sidebar: I should probably mention here that I don’t actually own a bike and had never ridden a proper road bike until race day last Sunday. It was a nice bike though; one that I borrowed from my friend Lisa. And yes, Lisa is a girl. She actually has a really nice men’s race bike though, but it was accented with a seat specifically designed to protect the vajayjay and handlebars emblazoned with the slogan “Designed for the Woman Rider”. Perfect, but I digress…
So anyhoo, things were going relatively well I thought when, some three weeks before the event, I departed on a weeklong trip to the UK for work. There, I promptly forgot all about my training and blissfully ate out three times a day, drank as many as 8 or 10 fantastic British beers every night and, since I was in London, decided that fuck it I should probably smoke a little as well. A few cigarettes never killed anybody. Shit, Serge Blanco scored one of the greatest tries in the history of the Rugby World Cup and he had a two pack a day habit. I should be fine. Call it tapering.
So after my week in Europe, since I enjoyed tapering so much, I decided to go ahead and extend that shit by an extra week. I can just cram in all my training in the last week before the event, right? Always worked in college.
Whatever, anyway last Saturday I showed up in Steamboat pumped up and ready to rock. I had a sweet new wetsuit to protect me from the cold and this motherfucker was about to go down.
And that brings me back to the beginning of this little story. As it turns out, I was grossly unprepared for this thing. Everything I had practiced went straight out the window immediately.
I swam the aforementioned first 75 meters at a blistering pace, passing my fellow racers one after the other at an astonishing rate. Only problem was, my body apparently decided I could do this without ever breathing out. I would take a breath in on every other stroke like I had practiced but then when I would stick my face back in the water my airways decided that, fuck it, no I didn’t want to expel that used air back out. I was turning into a goddamn balloon.
At some point my body decided that it had enough of that and forced me to stop that retarded crap. I had to either start chilling the fuck out or drown. But it was too late; I was fucked. No way I could catch my breath at 7,000 feet while continuing to freestyle swim. So that’s how I managed to complete the swim: by doing approximately 75% of it as an ultra efficient breast stroke. Any shot at a good time was immediately gone.
And yet, I somehow managed to complete this arduous task and successfully transition into the bike. Somewhat surprisingly, the event that I had not actually practiced so much as once was the one that went the smoothest. I wouldn’t say that I did well, but I actually kind of enjoyed this part of the race. To the point that I really do think I’m going to buy myself a road bike. (Maybe one with a man seat though. Don’t think my taint enjoyed the lady saddle too much.)
That said, 25 miles on a bike totally destroyed my legs. Within the first half-mile of the run my right quad completely seized up in a massive cramp. And this was immediately followed by the right hamstring, then the entirety of the left leg. So, while I had certainly run a decent amount pre-race, this turned out to be a completely useless bit of training since I didn’t really “run” so much as a single step of this triathlon. I’d call it more of a 10k shuffle. I could have had a walker and gone just as fast.
And that’s how I finished the course in a total time of 3 hours, 10 minutes and 44 seconds. Good enough for 250th place. Out of a total of 314. That includes all categories, including females 70+ (I beat her), males aged 60-64 (all 6 of them beat me), and people big enough to be handicapped by their size into their own categories: Clydesdales (men weighing 200+ lbs; they all beat me) and Athenas (women weighing 150+ lbs; I would have won the fat ladies category at least, which is nice).
So I guess you could say I sucked. And now I know that nothing feels more condescending and annoying as having a man with the number 65 (his age) written across his calf telling you to keep it up, you’re doing a great job as he passes you in a road race.
On a better note though, 2 of my friends were among the aforementioned Clydesdales and my friend Gates actually finished one spot off the podium in that division. The third place Clydesdale only beat him by a total of 52 seconds. Which I know has to sting like crazy since Gatesy had to stop to take a crap during the second transition. Maybe next time you’ll just pinch it off jackass.
Rental Cars
Last weekend, I went to Oregon for a wedding. (It’s its own post; I’ve just been too lazy/hungover to get around to it. Not the point.) This wedding was in Bend, but I had, for a variety of reasons, decided to fly in and out of Portland. Which means that I would need to rent a car.
If you’ve rented a car anytime in the last 15 years or so, you will no doubt know that there are two absolute certainties.
1. As soon as you turn on the radio, the fucking bass will be turned up to its max setting (possibly the treble too), and the sound quality will be about like listening to music with cotton swabs shoved into your ears. Seriously, what the hell is up with that? Thumping the stock speakers of your rental Sebring does not fucking make you Snoop Dogg. It makes you a twat. A twat who has the auditory sensibility of a meringue.
Anyway, that’s not really the point either. The other near certainty is that:
2. You are about to have some sort of an American “designed” abortion of a vehicle thrust upon you. Something like:
The PT Cruiser, aka the greatest travesty in a long line of travesties to escape the retarded marketing machines in Detroit. I have actually turned one of these pieces of shit down at the rental counter and requested a free downgrade. I would rather wear roller blades while pushing a Razr scooter than be caught driving one of these things.
So, with that expectation in mind, it was with some degree of trepidation that I strode out to my Chevy Cruze last Thursday night, only to be confronted by this:
Um, I’m sorry but what the hell is this? Clean lines, subtle design, leather seats, and… wait. This fucking thing has a sun roof?!
This is actually a nice car. It has a stupid ass name, obviously. They still can’t get everything right. But it’s a nice car (and goes for way under $20k!). When I picked up my buddy Jeff at the airport, he seriously asked me why I had spent so much on a nice rental car. And Jeff is a fucking snob about cars and shit. Well done Chevy. Proud of you. Maybe these bailouts weren’t such a complete waste of time and money after all. Fuck yes. Something to actually feel good about on this July 4th. Go America.
Oh, and I almost forgot. When I got in the bass and treble had not been fucked with even one notch. Somebody did completely max out the midrange for some reason though. But that seemed about right somehow.
Fuckin’ press won’t get off my nuts
Err… I mean nice job on the story, Kayleen. Toughmudder story is up on ESPN.com, right HERE. And since they didn’t include any of the sweet pictures our photographer took, they looked like this:
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UT - Sweet and Groovy at the CRC
Well, so last weekend the UT boys finally got out to Philadelphia to compete in the CRC and, quite frankly, they burned that motherfucker down. We may not have won the whole thing, but the team in burnt orange far outperformed expectations on the field, easily won the party afterwards, and pretty much just owned that shit from the minute they landed.
First, the rugby. Before the tournament, we were a completely unknown element. Texas does not play in the highest division of collegiate rugby and, to be blunt, weren’t really expected to do much of shit in the tournament. So when we lined up for the opening kick off against rival Oklahoma, the boys were about as loose as anyone could ever hope to be on such a big stage. The games are re-watchable here, and it is highly-recommended viewing.
That first match was probably our best outing of the whole tournament and was a truly dominating display. The boys beat the Sooners by 24-12, a match highlighted by Captain Stephen Mahoney’s plank in the try zone to put us up by two tries. Clearly the announcer is a fucking moron and thought he had pulled his hamstring when he reached his hands back. But that, my man, is perfect form. Legend.
After that, we were able to shut out the local team from Temple 19-0, setting up a final pool-deciding match against Arizona on NBC. Unfortunately, the Wildcats and their US Eagle playmaker ended up being a bit too much for us (I won’t go into it here but if you want to see a dick-sucking of epic proportion on national TV just listen to the announcers drool over Tiberio during the broadcast… assholes), but our results from earlier in the day had already qualified us for the quarter-finals against Army.
After the highs of Saturday, the match against West Point was a bit of a disappointment as we ended up going down 19-7 despite putting up the first score. But overall, what an effort and what a tournament. I know it’s a cliche in team sports, but these boys are truly a band of brothers and the love they have for each other was palpable. We received so many compliments from other coaches, players and people in the stands. These guys did Texas proud.
Which brings me to the fans. Fuckin’ A. The burnt orange was out in full effect.
A whole host of peoples made it down - parents, alumni, even a group of my East Coast friends made the trip in for the tournament - but these guys held it down.
This was fucking awesome. Most of these guys were unlucky to not have made the team themselves. Yet despite the disappointment, they never bitched or pouted and instead helped the team prepare all the way through to the tournament by busting their asses at practice 7 days a week, then flew all the way out to Philadelphia to cheer on their teammates. Pure. Class.
Toughmudder = Bitched
A little over a month ago, Kayleen called me up to say she’d been contacted by ESPN Mag to write a story about the Toughmudder race. And as part of her reporting duties for the piece, she’d have to compete in the SoCal event in Snow Valley, about an hour and a half east of LA.
The Toughmudder, in typical self-aggrandizing marketing bullshit fashion, bills itself as “probably the toughest event on the planet” and basically boils down to a 10-mile obstacle course run through mud pits and water hazards, with a few walls to climb and tattooed dipshits to avoid thrown in for good measure. They also like to contend that the majority of their obstacles are too hard to negotiate by yourself and that therefore teamwork is a major component of the event.
So, given the circumstances and the fact that Kayleen hadn’t so much as run a competitive 5k before, she asked me to join her in the race for support. And, after my initial response of “fuck off I’m not doing that gay shit”, I was eventually convinced that she needed my help (she didn’t) and that I should just enjoy the free hotel and opportunity to hang out in Southern California for the Memorial day weekend.
Which sounds all fine and good, but we all know the real reason I eventually relented is because I’m an attention whore and she said ESPN would be following us around so I might make it into the magazine. So I roped in my buddy Hoa who lives in LA to also run with us and showed up Saturday morning to jog around a pseudo-military course at a ski resort with a bunch of other morons and a professional photographer in tow.
The photog hasn’t sent us the pictures yet, so I’ll leave the full writeup for a later time, but suffice it to say that, as expected, the Toughmudder is far from the baddest event on the planet and the teamwork required is minimal to none if you can do basic things like swim for 30 yards or do a pull-up. It did take us 5 hours to complete the thing, but that was mostly due to the fact that Hoa prefers double-doubles and Shiner Bock to cardio and the big man limited his training to occasional fights with the elliptical machine at the gym two weeks before the race.
Kid did power through though, and that was pretty fucking cool. Anytime a 215 lb. man can cover 10 miles at altitude with that little training you got to give respect. Poor guy looked miserable through most of the thing. Kayleen and I managed to run most of if with a grin on our faces though because, as much as it pains me to say it, the whole thing was actually pretty fun. The esprit de corps among the participants is really pretty cool and the only part that really ended up sucking was having to wait between obstacles after plunging into the cold-ass water. I am a huge pussy for cold water.
Houston has art… kind of
My friend Taryn is fortunately about 9,000 times more mature and cultured than I am and I’m thankful that she’s chosen to invite me to a couple of art shits around town the last two weekends to keep me in some kind of equilibrium following my adjustment to coming back to work and going out trying to meet new people in Houston. The first was a trip to the Museum of Fine Arts to check out an exhibit by Carlos Cruz-Diez, a Venezuelan-born but Paris-residing artist whose work focuses on how humans interact with color in space and time. It seems like a pretty simple concept but I really, really enjoyed his work and use of truly innovative and unique techniques that I’d never seen before.
It unfortunately doesn’t really lend itself to photography however, which is probably just as well since I found out I wasn’t really supposed to be taking pictures in there. Whatever, suck it I did it anyway.
Anyhoo, so after the highs of the MFA and Mr. Cruz-Diez, yesterday I decided to test my hangover by walking down the street to check out the Art Car Parade, where apparently the definitions of both “Art” and “Car” are both pretty flexible.
Seriously, check out this piece of shit and tell me it’s a car:
Go-cart maybe, but definitely not a car.
And maybe this is mostly a reflection on me, but while watching these ambulant abortions cruise by I couldn’t help but wonder where these people keep these eyesores for the remaining 364 days of the year. Seriously, how pissed would you be if you came home everyday and your neighbor had this thing parked in the driveway?
And furthermore, how the hell to you even get these things to the parade in the first place? There’s no way they’re street legal. You can’t tell me I have to pay $45 to get my car safety-inspected in Texas but this asshole gets to drive his chicken coop around town?
It’s for sale by the way. Maybe I’ll give him a call and see if it can handle the potholes any better than my Volkswagen.
In case you can’t tell, I actually had a great time at the car thing. Here’s one more for good measure:
First Impressions
This evening, after what was effectively my 4th full day of work at the new company, I met our CEO in the elevator on my way home. And since I am an abject retard, I obviously had no fucking clue who he was until he introduced himself midway through our conversation. Good thing they made us practice elevator speeches about a thousand times in business school. I clearly retained that information. God I’m useless.
Speaking of my overpriced education, when he found out I went to Georgetown his reaction was an I shit you not “I didn’t know they had a business school.” …I wonder if it’s too late to get a refund.
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About time to change the tagline
Well, so after over a year and a hundred fruitless online job applications, it appears that I have finally found a job. Which means that starting at the beginning of next month, I should probably find a different tagline for this stupid bit of egocentricity. Gotta think on it some so it doesn’t totally blow though so I’ll probably keep this one up for a little while. Deal with it.
Anyway so I’m moving to Houston in the next few days. Had my house hunting trip and everything already and I’m really, really looking forward to moving back in to my own pad again after so much time back in the nest. I love my parents but there’s a reason people in their 30s don’t move back home for any extended period of time. It fucking sucks; and I think the only reason I didn’t kill them or myself is in no small part due to my involvement with the rugby team. I broke the news tonight at the end of practice and I don’t know if it was just exhaustion-induced delirium after the 28 100-meter sprints we’d done earlier in the night but I actually got a little emotional thinking that I won’t get to keep coaching those little fuckers.
I mean, I didn’t cry or anything. I’m not a pussy. But it had been about 5 years since I’d been involved in the sport in any meaningful way and I honestly thought I was done with it. But being around those guys and witnessing the camaraderie and passion and the eagerness to learn that they all show has been really inspiring. I’m really grateful that Jacob invited me to help out and that our head coach Butch allowed it. And I’m especially thankful for the players, who had to put up with my smart-ass comments and annoying self-aggrandizing stories. I’m really going to miss it.
Those kids are pitted. So pitted. And goddamnit I really think they’re going to turn some heads in Philly this June.
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Thank you Skylar!!!
This little dreamboat is Skylar from Tyler. He’s one of my players on the UT Team and, before now, was probably best known for having these funny-looking puffy nipples that he absentmindedly likes to fondle through his jersey in the team huddle.
On Tuesday night, out of the goodness of his heart, Skylar volunteered to drive me to the hospital then waited for me get my dislocated shoulder reduced before driving me home. Since the hospital emergency room is basically the worst place on Earth, typically populated with recent immigrants suffering from unidentifiable and likely highly contagious skin or lung diseases, I’m extremely grateful that he volunteered to escort me there and home.
Anyway, I’m telling you this because Skylar texted me last night saying he was hurt that I hadn’t given him so much as a little shout-out on the blog. And I agree with him. I absolutely acted like a self-centered ass.
So Skylar, thanks buddy. I really, really appreciate what you did for me on Tuesday. You’re a deeply sensitive and caring young man and I love you.
XXOO,
Julien
(P.S. Thanks for reading!)
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