Wielding Jehovah's Cyclocross Battleaxe
- Thread starter Norm
- Start date
Pearl
THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING
Good post! We all like what we like, and that can change over the years. I used to like to climb ... ha!! Those days are gone.
The negative thing hits home with me. I find it out there everywhere too. That is one reason I like to ride mountain bikes by myself. I feel like I can escape the negative. Even then, the woods can get me negative when I am faced with telling volunteers that they need to rebuild the trail they built last week b/c some self entitled biker decided he wanted to rip out. I have no idea why everyone is so limited with what they like, and even worse yet, they feel that they are entitled to control what others like . We need to let everyone enjoy what they like and share this great sport.
We all need variety readily available. It's what makes our riding area so special. ... variety! That goes for types of riding too. I was thrilled to see some of my CX friends come out and race mountain bikes this year.
Although I do not train for cross either, I think it is a nice addition to my year. It also forces me to run a little and my doctor says I ride too much and could benefit from some running. I hike instead b/c I like the woods and have the time to get to them. I can certainly see why people run from home to save time. That's what I did before I rode a bike. Once I took up riding, I did not think running was fun anymore. Anyone else have that problem?
As you know, I am a Negative Nelly and I don't really like chess, mainly because it's stupid and it sucks, but otherwise I am impartial to it.
I did like that you said there is some kind of balance with the negative stuff. I largely removed myself from FB because of the negativity and stupidness and I think the comment sections on youtube are pointless and have only ever read them when someone pointed me there and I was sad as a result.
I have said this before, but I am not for the sunshine and butterflies fake world that people paint when responding to something someone posted. Good job Johnny!!!, Way to go Sam!!!, You sucked in this race but you will get 'em next time!!!! All of this means nothing when after every race or event, it is the same thing.
Negative stuff is the balance, but that doesn't mean browbeating people all the time or ever, but maybe some of the time. I don't think anyone sits there and says, I want to be negative today, but it is often easier to focus on that, than the positive, hence reinforcing your original comment on the topic.
I did like that you said there is some kind of balance with the negative stuff. I largely removed myself from FB because of the negativity and stupidness and I think the comment sections on youtube are pointless and have only ever read them when someone pointed me there and I was sad as a result.
I have said this before, but I am not for the sunshine and butterflies fake world that people paint when responding to something someone posted. Good job Johnny!!!, Way to go Sam!!!, You sucked in this race but you will get 'em next time!!!! All of this means nothing when after every race or event, it is the same thing.
Negative stuff is the balance, but that doesn't mean browbeating people all the time or ever, but maybe some of the time. I don't think anyone sits there and says, I want to be negative today, but it is often easier to focus on that, than the positive, hence reinforcing your original comment on the topic.
SpartaBard
Well-Known Member
I agree with your assessment of bike riding and in the mean time will cull back my public display of enthusiasm.
gtluke
The Moped
Either getting old, or 533 episodes of #JRE has removed 90% of my negativity. I agree with Kevin, which is shocking since I think I did that already this year.
I almost completely stopped giving a shit what other people do. I used to care a lot. 5 years ago 50% of the "strictly metal" thread would have been thousands of posts by me making fun of people's terrible taste in half assed music. I've never even posted in it. I also like kevin have removed myself from facebook several years ago. It's garbage. Every once in a while I'll scroll through a few pages to remind myself why I don't go there. Kinda like Tito's Burrito's. You have to go once in a while to remember why you don't go there. Facebook is just pictures from people who you aren't really sure who they are, but they friend requested you and their profile picture contains a bike and they have 27 mutual friends, or it's people you don't really care about complaining or humblebragging.
I ride bikes for the zen. I can't be the only one that does this. It's like an afternoon nap where you sort out all your problems in your head. With moments of 100% focus on exactly what you are doing. I ride bikes alone, for this reason. Car racing and rock climbing also provide this same zen feeling. They are more extreme though. More concentration, way more. It's only that exact moment in that exact place that matter. These mental/physical exercises are probably what brought me to the first line in this post.
I understand the concept of cross racing. If it were a neighborhood thing or a weekday event it would be fantastic. What I don't understand is "wasting" an entire beautiful fall weekend spending 8 hours in the car to stand in a different soccer field for 10 hours to ride your bike for 40 minutes. If my commute to a ride is longer than the ride itself i consider that a fail. But hey, that's me. You do what you want. But what makes the whole anti-cross thing come up constantly is not the people who don't do cross, it's the people who DO cross never shutting the fuck up about it. I find people talking at me about cross about as interesting as when my wife tells me about her dreams or a 6 year old tells me about their imaginary friends. But it never stops. You might as well be give me details about your winter trainer rides in your garage.
One of the things I've been trying to work out in my bike riding zen head is an explanation about why posting on Strava is unhealthy. I can't seem to align the words correctly to explain my feelings about it.
Do you enjoy riding bikes? Are you sure? Really sure?
You could have a bang up night with your wife with sex with the lights on and never have the slightest desire to share that on facebook. Why? Because you don't need any justification for that enjoyment because you really enjoyed it. Then why do we feel the need to quantify and qualify our bike riding? I used to do it. The garmin was like 50% of my motivation to ride. Now I make it a point to just leave it home. Do I want to ride today? Do I want to ride further? Do I want to ride at a different park? Now it's up to me, not guilt or justification. It seems like a useful tool for day to day motivation to train for those who are training. Some days you need some motivation for your greater desire to train. I get that.
On running. I bet you can get some of that zen with running. But you never get those moments of extreme focus. I ride uphill to find that focus coming down, or ride further out to find different obstacles of focus or to see something different. Same reason I have a hard time road biking. But at least there is some speed and flow and a lot more scenery to blow through. Trail running seams cool, you can get to a lot more places on foot than you can by bike. Running in the street seems awful. But hey, I wake up at 5:30 to go do squats at a gym, that's probably worse. But the more squats I do, the more tacos I can eat. Maybe that's what the runners are saying too.
I almost completely stopped giving a shit what other people do. I used to care a lot. 5 years ago 50% of the "strictly metal" thread would have been thousands of posts by me making fun of people's terrible taste in half assed music. I've never even posted in it. I also like kevin have removed myself from facebook several years ago. It's garbage. Every once in a while I'll scroll through a few pages to remind myself why I don't go there. Kinda like Tito's Burrito's. You have to go once in a while to remember why you don't go there. Facebook is just pictures from people who you aren't really sure who they are, but they friend requested you and their profile picture contains a bike and they have 27 mutual friends, or it's people you don't really care about complaining or humblebragging.
I ride bikes for the zen. I can't be the only one that does this. It's like an afternoon nap where you sort out all your problems in your head. With moments of 100% focus on exactly what you are doing. I ride bikes alone, for this reason. Car racing and rock climbing also provide this same zen feeling. They are more extreme though. More concentration, way more. It's only that exact moment in that exact place that matter. These mental/physical exercises are probably what brought me to the first line in this post.
I understand the concept of cross racing. If it were a neighborhood thing or a weekday event it would be fantastic. What I don't understand is "wasting" an entire beautiful fall weekend spending 8 hours in the car to stand in a different soccer field for 10 hours to ride your bike for 40 minutes. If my commute to a ride is longer than the ride itself i consider that a fail. But hey, that's me. You do what you want. But what makes the whole anti-cross thing come up constantly is not the people who don't do cross, it's the people who DO cross never shutting the fuck up about it. I find people talking at me about cross about as interesting as when my wife tells me about her dreams or a 6 year old tells me about their imaginary friends. But it never stops. You might as well be give me details about your winter trainer rides in your garage.
One of the things I've been trying to work out in my bike riding zen head is an explanation about why posting on Strava is unhealthy. I can't seem to align the words correctly to explain my feelings about it.
Do you enjoy riding bikes? Are you sure? Really sure?
You could have a bang up night with your wife with sex with the lights on and never have the slightest desire to share that on facebook. Why? Because you don't need any justification for that enjoyment because you really enjoyed it. Then why do we feel the need to quantify and qualify our bike riding? I used to do it. The garmin was like 50% of my motivation to ride. Now I make it a point to just leave it home. Do I want to ride today? Do I want to ride further? Do I want to ride at a different park? Now it's up to me, not guilt or justification. It seems like a useful tool for day to day motivation to train for those who are training. Some days you need some motivation for your greater desire to train. I get that.
On running. I bet you can get some of that zen with running. But you never get those moments of extreme focus. I ride uphill to find that focus coming down, or ride further out to find different obstacles of focus or to see something different. Same reason I have a hard time road biking. But at least there is some speed and flow and a lot more scenery to blow through. Trail running seams cool, you can get to a lot more places on foot than you can by bike. Running in the street seems awful. But hey, I wake up at 5:30 to go do squats at a gym, that's probably worse. But the more squats I do, the more tacos I can eat. Maybe that's what the runners are saying too.
this.
FINALLY, something i can answer with authority! yay! squats at 5:30A are WAY worse than running at 5:30A. and on that note, i'm not going to remind you again about the penalties for posting anything related moving weights on a mtb forum. 😀
Thank god DVRs allow CX and NFL. Or I would be 400 pounds.
Yeah, I agree with FB thoughts but I feel the need to humblebrag sometimes. It feels good when I get likes.
How far do you drive to climb a rock? Don't you sleep in the back of a truck with another man so you can wake up early and start climbing? The drive/cramping ratio to rock climbing seems kinda high. But beauty is all in the mind, to you thats a beautiful way to spend a weekend, to others its attending a cx race. Both require some prep work but both provide fun to the end user.
As far as those who don't stfu about cx, yeah it can get annoying. But also I think its good for people to have a passion and express themselves. This is a website for people to do that, do we really want people to stop posting? Besides its fun busting Bards balls.
Also we don't make our sex lives public because that would be in poor taste. Posting a ride we are proud of or seeing where we stack up against other cyclists on Starva can be seen as enjoybable or a way of taking some of the suck out of training. Personally Starva is not for me but I understand why others use it.
And finally Zen moments can be found in racing, doing intervals on a road bike and running. Pushing your body to its limits while racing/training hard is a way of shutting out everything else around you while being focused solely on whats 3' in front of you. Now there is a balance too, if you went out and went ape shit on a bike every time you rode then cycling would become just another stress instead of an outlet for it.
gtluke
The Moped
For sure Iggy. I'm not opposed to social media. I joined my first message board in I think 1997. Old social media, but still.
I just need a way to limit myself from getting dragged into arguments with idiots. And eliminating Facebook really takes out the lowest common denominator. I stick with the more fringe ends of the internet and find more interesting people and conversations.
It's 1:15 to the Trapps parking lot from my driveway
I'm sure everyone finds their zen in their own ways. Racing isn't it for me. I also don't have the physique for it. I can't put out 70% power for 2 hours, it's just never going to happen no matter how much I train. I can do very very intensive bursts of 100% power but then I need a considerable cooldown period. I'd likely make a decent high bank track racer, and might actually enjoy that, but I don't think there are any of those around here.
I just need a way to limit myself from getting dragged into arguments with idiots. And eliminating Facebook really takes out the lowest common denominator. I stick with the more fringe ends of the internet and find more interesting people and conversations.
It's 1:15 to the Trapps parking lot from my driveway
I'm sure everyone finds their zen in their own ways. Racing isn't it for me. I also don't have the physique for it. I can't put out 70% power for 2 hours, it's just never going to happen no matter how much I train. I can do very very intensive bursts of 100% power but then I need a considerable cooldown period. I'd likely make a decent high bank track racer, and might actually enjoy that, but I don't think there are any of those around here.
soulchild
Well-Known Member
I think it just comes down to the need to belong to something. The same can be explained by the conversation not to long ago about labels and people needing to distinguish themselves as part of something.
The bottom line is that no one needs to qualify anything in their lives to anyone, period. I tell my nephew all the time "you don't owe anyone anything". We do (don't do) the things we do because we choose to (or not to). You want to share an experience, you want to do something for someone, you want to give an apology, you want to tell someone to go F*** themselves - that's all on you and only you. What you do is your choice - own it, however, you have to man up and live with the consequences of what you choose to do (or not to do).
In "A Return to Love", Marianne Williamson writes:
"Your playing small does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you."
Humblebrag if you want to Iggy. It's your world.
gtluke
The Moped
We absolutely need to belong to something. Without the ability to share our experiences with others, what's the point? Dudeman figured that out the hard way in Into the Wild.
Prison is a punishment. But solitary confinement is hell. Why? Both ways you aren't allowed to do shit, but in solitary you lose human contact, and that's far far worse.
The problem with facebook is that it's set up not to to just link you with your friends, but with everyone you ever met and their friends too. It's too many.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number
You can't keep track of that many people, and when you try and interact with that many people the connections you do have are compromised.
Another problem I've been working on in my head is trying to explain the social fallout of knowing too much. One of the reasons I also quit facebook is that I honestly believe that there is information about people that I shouldn't know. Good information, or bad, I don't think it's healthy to know this information about this many people.
Say for example if Norm ran himself over with his lawnmower drawing dicks in his lawn, I'd know about that with or without the internet within a few days. It's something that I should know. In a life without internet, someone would call me and tell me that this happened. Or I'd find out about it word of mouth.
Now if someone else suffered the same fate, say like Carson, would I know in a world without the internet? I mean I care about Carson, but we don't normally communicate. How does this now affect our friendship? Good or bad? Instinctively you would say it's a good thing to know that. But that's why I've been thinking about this.
See like a month from now I'd bump into Carson at some MTBNJ event and have no idea, and he'd be all scarred up from his Murray lawnmower incident and I'd react, and I'd find out what happened. And he'd get a vibe from me about my reaction to his story. And I'd get an understanding about how this has affected his life. We would both learn from each other from sharing this story. Something would be conveyed that's more than just the story.
But now, I'd know the whole story, every detail about the operations to secure his manhood back in place and if it still worked or not, about his lawsuit against the defunct lawnmower company for allowing the blades to spin when he wasn't in the seat, I'd know every person that visited him in the hospital because they all took selfies with his I.V. bag.
But that whole moment of discovery is lost. He'd never see my true reaction.
Something's lost there, for sure. But something is gained. I may have been given the opportunity to know, and see him in the hospital and bring him donuts and DVD copies of COPS MIAMI.
This comes up every time my wife reads me something off facebook. "so and so just got engaged" I've now brought my reaction to be "I shouldn't know that". And she's like "You don't care that your 2nd cousin is engaged" Well, it's not that I don't care, it's that I just don't think that i am supposed to know that. And what do I not know now because that piece of information was just put into my head? Displacement, I believe in it.
Maybe I should go through my facebook friend's list and just delete everyone who's phone number I don't have. But about 300 people would think I'm a dickhead. Including Carson 🙂
P.S. Carson, I hope you never run yourself over with a lawnmower while drawings dicks on a lawn, that would be terrible.
Prison is a punishment. But solitary confinement is hell. Why? Both ways you aren't allowed to do shit, but in solitary you lose human contact, and that's far far worse.
The problem with facebook is that it's set up not to to just link you with your friends, but with everyone you ever met and their friends too. It's too many.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number
You can't keep track of that many people, and when you try and interact with that many people the connections you do have are compromised.
Another problem I've been working on in my head is trying to explain the social fallout of knowing too much. One of the reasons I also quit facebook is that I honestly believe that there is information about people that I shouldn't know. Good information, or bad, I don't think it's healthy to know this information about this many people.
Say for example if Norm ran himself over with his lawnmower drawing dicks in his lawn, I'd know about that with or without the internet within a few days. It's something that I should know. In a life without internet, someone would call me and tell me that this happened. Or I'd find out about it word of mouth.
Now if someone else suffered the same fate, say like Carson, would I know in a world without the internet? I mean I care about Carson, but we don't normally communicate. How does this now affect our friendship? Good or bad? Instinctively you would say it's a good thing to know that. But that's why I've been thinking about this.
See like a month from now I'd bump into Carson at some MTBNJ event and have no idea, and he'd be all scarred up from his Murray lawnmower incident and I'd react, and I'd find out what happened. And he'd get a vibe from me about my reaction to his story. And I'd get an understanding about how this has affected his life. We would both learn from each other from sharing this story. Something would be conveyed that's more than just the story.
But now, I'd know the whole story, every detail about the operations to secure his manhood back in place and if it still worked or not, about his lawsuit against the defunct lawnmower company for allowing the blades to spin when he wasn't in the seat, I'd know every person that visited him in the hospital because they all took selfies with his I.V. bag.
But that whole moment of discovery is lost. He'd never see my true reaction.
Something's lost there, for sure. But something is gained. I may have been given the opportunity to know, and see him in the hospital and bring him donuts and DVD copies of COPS MIAMI.
This comes up every time my wife reads me something off facebook. "so and so just got engaged" I've now brought my reaction to be "I shouldn't know that". And she's like "You don't care that your 2nd cousin is engaged" Well, it's not that I don't care, it's that I just don't think that i am supposed to know that. And what do I not know now because that piece of information was just put into my head? Displacement, I believe in it.
Maybe I should go through my facebook friend's list and just delete everyone who's phone number I don't have. But about 300 people would think I'm a dickhead. Including Carson 🙂
P.S. Carson, I hope you never run yourself over with a lawnmower while drawings dicks on a lawn, that would be terrible.
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Wow... pretty deep, Luke. I do think the good outweighs the bad if you stay under Dunbar's number. I recently cut out about 100 people on FB, and I find it much more enjoyable and less overwhelming now. But you do raise an interesting point.
In full disclosure, I hovered over the unfriend button on your page, too, Luke. You just squeaked by. And if you unfriend me now I'll now dicks into YOUR lawn.
My next group to unfriend: all ice water challenge posters. Just donate you cheap bastards.
In full disclosure, I hovered over the unfriend button on your page, too, Luke. You just squeaked by. And if you unfriend me now I'll now dicks into YOUR lawn.
My next group to unfriend: all ice water challenge posters. Just donate you cheap bastards.
rick81721
Lothar
Now that the discussion has drifted to the far more important topic of drawing dicks in lawns, a question. Is it appropriate for guys to be drawing dicks in lawns or GPS art or should that be gals territory and we should be drawing vaginas (or other female anatomical features)?
Gals territory after they've had 3 bottles of wine and 4 of their girlfriends are over.
Pearl
THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING
gtluke
The Moped
Yeah, I talked about this last night with someone how much of an ass I am for my morning and night posts.
Now I'm curious what underground shit talking sms brigade sent you that post, since you don't twitter.
I would appreciate it more if whoever found that and found it as asinine as it is would have brought it to my attention directly. It's more effective and less 4th grade that way.
90% was a bit bold. I'll go with 50%
It's a vast improvement nevertheless.
Now I'm curious what underground shit talking sms brigade sent you that post, since you don't twitter.
I would appreciate it more if whoever found that and found it as asinine as it is would have brought it to my attention directly. It's more effective and less 4th grade that way.
90% was a bit bold. I'll go with 50%
It's a vast improvement nevertheless.
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