Tag Archives: Sports

High Stepper

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The company’s fitness challenge has entered its second week and now that I am back in the office, I can tabulate my results, and Voilà, I am my team’s (the Decibels) Top Stepper. With over 100,000 equivalent steps, I am 25% ahead of my closest teammate. I say equivalent steps, because even though everyone (except me) was issued a pedometer, to count their steps, the tabulating software accepts other forms of exercise and then converts that exercise into equivalent steps. Half of my steps come from last weekend’s two bicycle rides. For bicycling, the software doesn’t count miles, like I usually do, but uses speed and duration. This is a more accurate way to count calories expended than simply mileage, so I surmise that everything is boiled down to calories.

Whether it is equivalent steps or simply calories, the company’s exercise software accepts a wide range of different physical activities. In addition to all of the standard team and individual sports, there is a host of let us say more esoteric activities. There is gardening for example. I counted an hour of gardening for the plants that Anne and I planted over the weekend and was amply rewarded. I need to mow the lawn and I noticed that I can record that activity too. I also noticed that below lawn mowing, the next category is lawn mowing, rider mower. I would take an exception to this except that most my steps have been accumulated while sitting on my butt too. I especially looked askance at miniature golf as a physical activity, but it beats sitting on the couch.

Among the plethora of physical activities, there is one category that is conspicuously missing and that would be sex. Personally, I think that this is a grave oversight, but maybe the company just doesn’t want to have to insure any more dependents? One of the wags at work told me that the iPhone has analogous Apps that do include “sexual activities”. That may be, but my prudish company chooses not to ask, so I won’t tell. In the mean time, I rode another 15 miles after work on Tuesday, but I’m just a piker. Anne rode 31 miles, I am so glad that the company’s fitness challenge doesn’t include spouses, yet.

Midwest Bike Swap Meet

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Anne and I rode 10.01010101… miles and felt great. Felt great, really? Felt good? Just OK? How about, lost all feeling in our legs? What do you expect from cyclist’s that rack up irrational mileages? My apologies to Tom and Audrey, Anne made me do it. I couldn’t help myself? I’m just jealous of Tom’s big mileages? Who knows?

Anne and I drove across the river to Collinsville, IL and attended the annual bike swap meet. After we parked in the back lot, we saw a Cooper’s hawk. It was sitting on a lamppost and was calling out, so it was kind of hard to miss. I think that it was complaining that all of these people, these bikers, were invading its territory. In addition to bikes, bike parts, bike clothes and bike paraphernalia for sale, there were also a few classic bikes on display. For you non-bikers out there, think a classic car show, but with only two wheels per vehicle. I love the colorful row of Stingray bicycles, lots of chrome. Anne shot the picture of the Arch and the old cathedral, on our way home.

I bought new bike shoes and a few other things. My ten plus year old Sidi winter bike shoes are beyond hope. Both soles are split, just behind the cleats and although I have held them together, for that last few year, with super-glue, I’m not willing to stoop to duct-tape. They were great shoes though, may they rest in peace. The Maplewood salesmen described them as being “high-tech”, but I’ve always thought that he was being derisive. He seemed kind of old school. They had two kinds of buckles, which have both subsequently become common in the world of cycling shoes. One fastener is reminiscent of a ski-boot buckle. It makes a loud click-click-click sound when being fastened. Anne would sometimes hear it and call down to me before I set out on my pre-dawn sojourn. The other kind of fastener had a flip-up key that I would turn to tighten a length of plastic line, similar to thick fishing line. I always thought that this line would break, but it is still functioning fine. I replaced my old Sidi shoes with new Sidi, no fancy fasteners this time, just Velcro. They are jet black and beautiful.

Fee-fi-fo-fum

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Fee-fi-fo-fum,
I smell the blood of an Englishman Texan,
Be he alive, or be he dead
I’ll grind his bones to make my bread.

– San Francisco’s 2010 edition of Grimm’s Fairy Tales

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For a team that barely made it to the playoffs, the San Francisco Giants are looking pretty good on this Saturday morning before game three of the World Series.  They are up two games to none over the Texas Rangers.  For all the pre-series talk about great pitching the first two games have been real slugfests.  Game one at least had the appearance of a contest and some semblance of back and forth, but ended in a commanding Giant’s victory of 11-7.  Game two was close until the eighth inning when the Giant’s let loose with a barrage of seven runs, for a 9-0 shutout.  Maybe the Rangers just snuck out early, in order to beat the traffic and get back to Arlington sooner?  Anyway you slice it, the Rangers need to quickly learn the steps to the Texas three-step and sweep their three game home stand. Otherwise, the way things are going now, come the witching hour on Halloween the San Francisco Giants are going to go Boo! and then the Texas Rangers are just going to disappear.
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Earlier this week I spoke with my Dad and asked him which team he would be rooting for, the Giants or the Rangers.  He seemed aghast that I would even ask such a question.  I thought that it was a reasonable question, because although he lives now in the shadow of the Bay Area, he had lived for twenty years in Arlington, Texas.  In truth though, I had my tongue planted firmly in my cheek when I asked this question and I got just the reaction that I was looking for, “That’s George Bush’s team!”  I too wish the Giants well and hope that they sweep this series.  Sorry Carl, but spring training is still a few months away and a few more games won’t make it come any sooner.

The Giants last won the World Series in 1954, which also happens to be the year of my birth.  1954 featured a four game series too.  At that time they were the New York Giants and had not yet moved to San Francisco.  In the sixties, when we use to live in the Bay Area, my brothers and I use to idolize the Giants along with the likes of Willie Mays.  In the intervening years my fondness for the Giants has been tempered with my newer love for the Saint Louis Cardinals.  This new love has been much more rewarding.  Since I have moved to Saint Louis, the Cardinals have won two World Series and appeared in another three.  I suppose one can become almost jaded after being treated to such a record, but such is the price of success.  😉

– Being all up in your business, le Marquis

MSU 34, Notre Dame 31

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The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

On Saturday night, Anne and I took advantage of the rare opportunity to watch our college Alma mater, Michigan State, play football on TV.  Here in Saint Louis, where the Big Ten is narrowly defined as simply that other team that happens to be playing Illinois this week, MSU viewing opportunities are few and far between.  Notre Dame, our opponent for the night, was the primary reason that ABC was showing the Spartans in a Saturday night football game. 

I was initially apprehensive about our prospects, when I learned that Michigan had beaten Notre Dame the week before.  Such defeats normally serve just to rile the Irish up, who then vent there anger on the next Michigan team that they face.  But this game was in East Lansing and home field advantage counts for a lot in a college football game.  The first quarter only seemed to reaffirm my apprehensions, Notre Dame scored first, while MSU couldn’t seem to find their footing, by half time though things were looking better.  The third quarter turned frenetic with the Spartans and the Irish trading touchdowns, by the end of the fourth quarter though it was all tied up at 28-28.

When I went to State the game would have ended then and we would have all gone home, but nowadays there is college football overtime.  This game was my first exposure to this phenomenon.  Remember folks, there is not much in the way of Big Ten football here in Mound City and watching other peoples teams seems not really worthwhile, so I don’t watch a lot of college football.  I am familiar with Pro football’s sudden-death overtime, as its name is suppose to imply, score first or die.  Where as, Pro football’s overtime is a real-time duel, college football’s overtime seems to be turned based.  On Saturday night, Michigan elected to go second.  Notre Dame went first and scored a field goal.  State’s drive faltered and the Spartan’s were looking at a 50+ yard field goal attempt, but then the fun began.

MSU faked the field goal attempt and instead of just holding the football, the Spartan’s holder, a high school quarterback, threw a great pass to a wide open receiver and won the game.  Subsequently there were some recriminations about the play clock being expired, but they turned out to be just sour grapes.  In an on-field interview, State’s head coach, Mark Dantonio, named the winning play the “Little Giants”.  According to Dantonio, the Irish head coach called it a gutsy call.  It was a gutsy call and calling it must have added a lot of stress to an already stressful job, because Dantonio had a heart attack shortly after the game and subsequently had heart surgery.  He is expected to recover.

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Shortly, after the end of the game thunderstorms rolled into Saint Louis.  They lasted through the night and through Sunday morning.  Our usual Sunday plans to go bicycling got washed-out; I couldn’t even mow the lawn (Boo Hoo), as Anne and I settled into a lazy Sunday afternoon.  Anyway, Notre Dame may have been happy getting the worm, but only until MSU got the cheese.