Dudes

For some reason I use the word "dude" quite a bit. I think it comes as a result of growing up in Southern California during the 80's. My oldest son, who is 5, has picked this up and uses often as well. In honor of our frequent usage of this word I am going to focus on some "dudes" that amused or annoyed me from this past week.


Bad-Luck-Dude
We all have some streaks of bad luck but how about this in one day for my buddy Fish: Break a chain while riding. Go to shop and buy new chain. Notice that carbon aerobars had a little crack perhaps from overtightening. Ride anyway. Cross railroad at 25 mph and aerobar fails and the $300 dollar Garmin falls to the ground and shatters as a result. Bummer man. That is enough to pack it in for the day. At least you were OK. Better now than at the Vikingman. Despite all of that you still rode 60+ miles, nice work.




Snooty-Lawyer-Dude
Today at church we were having a discussion. Everything was fine and dandy except about halfway this guy decides to drop into the adversarial mode for some reason. He just moved into the area from London and he works at the snootiest law firm in town. Admittedly I have sort of a bias against him for a couple of reasons, he has a job at any law firm and he sometimes breaks out a hint of an English accent. He only lived there for a short time, there is no need to have acquired any accent. I don't know why this accent bit bugs me but it does. It is like he is showing off that he is cool or something. Anyway, I don't mind the adversarial mode at all, but church is not law school and while playing the Devil's Advocate is cool, it should not be used to show your supposed uber-intellectual-ness. And please, to everyone that wanted to argue with him, when it is time to go let's just go and let it be. I am hungry and just want to go home and get some food by the time church is over . At this point I don't care who is wrong or right. I stopped caring (and I was one of the ones engaged in the debate) at about 1:55 PM and church is over at 2PM. Lets wrap it up so I can feed the beast within.


Ferrari-Dude
You really need to stop trying to see how quickly you can go in your Ferrari from 0 to 30 mph in the 24Hour Fitness/Performance Bike parking lot. How many times do you have to do this? I keep waiting for you to plow into some pedestrian/bike rider. You are an idiot. I don't know how you got your money, but seriously are you this immature that you must continually show off whenever you come to workout? Does your music have to be 120 db while doing these repetitious loser parking lot drag races? Geesh. I know that the fitness club can be a place to pick up chicks, but you are ridiculous.


Butt-Sweat-Dude
There is a guy at work who seems to only sweat from his butt crack. He went to lunch via his bike and when he arrived back at the shop he was only sweaty on his back side. Not even his T-shirt was damp, but his shorts had sweat mark the shape of an hourglass. Gross. And Hilarious! We were all utterly amazed. He said that it had been always been that way, mostly just sweating out his back side. Nevertheless, I am glad he doesn't sit on my furniture. It was a great laugh and we all enjoy having him around despite the butt sweat.

ESPN Commentator-cum-Cyclist-Dude

Tonight was fun. A lawyer-friend I know from church, Stuart, has a brother that does color commentator stuff for ESPN's college football coverage. He is in town to buy a boat which he will be driving back to his place in Utah. Stuart has gotten into road biking and for some reason he thinks of me as an expert, which is sort of fun. I can spout out my biases and someone actually pays attention for once. It is nice that Stuart bugs me about cycling questions so I don't feel too bad about bugging him for job info regarding my attempts to get on with a Portland law firm.

Stuart rode over to our place and had his brother, Mr. ESPN, in tow. Mr. ESPN was pretty funny. He had bought a Trek 5500 used from some older guy in Utah. It is in good shape, but it is really too big for him. At the very least he needs a shorter stem and perhaps a non-offset seatpost. The dude is way stretched out, it is to the point where is arms are close to being locked while he is on the hoods. He also has no idea how to shift. He doesn't seem to quite get the trim feature of the left shifter. Yet, when I or Stuart get on it everything is fine. He also revealed that his junk falls asleep after less than an hour of riding. That always makes for humorous conversations especially when the brothers start making fun of each other. Anyway, Mr. ESPN-cum-Cyclist-Dude is a cycling neophyte, but he knows it and revels in it, if that is possible. And he has a great since of humor about this. I like talking bikes to anyone, but it was fun to talk to these guys about biking and other related topics. For a TV guy, he was really down to earth. Fun stuff, it made an otherwise boring evening pretty enjoyable.