Indoor Cycling: It's a Learning Experience (Dave Barry) LOL

ATHENS -- Today, in our ongoing exploration of Olympic Sports That Americans Don't Get, we present: indoor bicycle racing.

This is taking place at yet another of the dozens of large, spanking-new facilities built expressly for the Olympics by the Greeks over the course of about two frenzied weeks in late July. If you have a wedding or bar mitzvah coming up, and you'd like to hold it in a large, almost-new building with plenty of seats and just the faintest whiff of world-class-athlete b.o., come on over here and make Greece an offer. For the right price, I bet they'd let you take some of these spanking facilities home.

The indoor-bicycle-racing facility contains a large oval track that is steeply banked on the curves and surrounded by foreign people shouting. What they're shouting about is somewhat confusing, or at least it was to me. I watched a men's ''sprint'' event, which worked as follows:

Two racers on bicycles would come up to the starting line. They were wearing those high-speed Spiderman suits, and had thighs the size of military pontoons. As the racers waited for the starter to blow his whistle, their bicycles were held up by coaches, because the racers' feet were strapped onto the pedals, apparently so they could make a quick sprinting getaway. As the start approached, the crowd grew quiet; the racers hunched over their handlebars, tense, waiting, until finally the whistle sounded and at exactly the same instant both cyclists did . . . nothing.

Well, OK, almost nothing. They did start moving forward, but at an extremely slow wobble, like when you were a kid and you and your friends had a contest to see who could ride his bike the slowest. It definitely didn't look like a ''sprint.'' It's as if runners in the 100-meter dash were crouched in their starting blocks, and when the starting gun sounded, they all stood up and started to mosey.

Obviously, there's some tactical reason why, in a bicycle ''sprint,'' you don't start out actually sprinting. In some races I watched, the racers went halfway around the track at the speed of toenail growth, with the crowd shouting as if this were the most exciting thing that ever happened. I was standing behind a group of foreign broadcasters, and they were yelling into their microphones. I have no idea what they were saying, but it would have to be along the lines of: ``They are going very slow! They are hardly moving! Wait! Ohmygod! Now they are going even slower! I have never seen such slowness. This is so tactical I may wet myself!''

Then, all of a sudden, one of the racers would start to go fast, and of course the other racer had to go fast, too, to try to catch him. They went three laps total, and in every race I saw, the first guy to start going fast won, which made me wonder why the racers don't just go fast to begin with. But what do I know? Nothing! That's why I'm here, at the Olympics: to learn. So far, it's not working.

My goal this year is to watch less than five minutes of "olympic" coverage. So, far, so good. But I did see one "sport" I didn't understand - they were playing it on a field about the size of a football field, but they nets at the ends - somewhere between the size of ice hockey and soccer nets. Players could run with the soccer-sized ball and throw it at the net. They could bounce it, and also run with it (no bounce). Seemed like a really stupid sport to me.

The Olympics Suck(tm). Stupid sports, doping, and professional athletes allowed. Just say no.

I believe the perfect man would be a combination of Ronald Reagan, Ken Jennings, and Dave Barry. :) Barry is a hoot (Have you seen this more recent one? I laughed so hard I thought I might have injured myself. :)

At the risk of tarnishing my reputation as an intellectual (stop laughing), I believe I have in my possession every book he has ever written (the far and away best one being 'A Short History of the United States').

One of my favorite excerpts (of hundreds):
__________

The UN consists of two main bodies: (1) the General Assembly, which is open to just about every little dirtbag nation in the world. It has no power. Its functions are to (a) have formal receptions, (b) listen to the Grateful Dead on headphones, and (c) denounce Israel for everything, including sunspots. And (2) the Security Council, which is limited to nations that have mastered the concept of plumbing.
__________

As far as cycling goes, you've hit a nerve. You know about the race my friend and I have entered this weekend in New England. We planned this months ago, and so far I have been able to stick to my training regimen, even while out west and in Virginia. This last week is most important, and I have a really good (closely mirroring the terrain of the most difficult portion of Saturday’s race) thirty-mile local course laid out that I covered tonight, and plan to cover tomorrow morning and Friday morning as well. So what happened today, and what’s the weather forecast for the next two days? Rain … rain … and (oh, did I mention?) … more rain.

Part of the course goes through a huge wildlife (migratory bird) preserve, and I swear the ducks and geese that I passed tonight were snickering at me as they took shelter from the downpour.

(You've reached a new personal low when you've been duck-snickered.)

So, thanks to the wet pavement, I'm not breaking any personal speed records (though I expect to comfortably surpass Barry's speed of toenail growth), ninety percent of the purpose of the ride is lost, and I'll no doubt be sporting water-puckered skin for the next couple of weeks.

Ask me what it's like to live a charmed life. :)

~ (water-soaked, and engaged in major pouting) joanie

(That ought to teach him to ping anything to my attention for a while ...)

(That ought to teach him to ping anything to my attention for a while ...)

Not a chance.

If I remember right, Barry has had a pretty hard life. Mental illness (maybe even suicide) in his family, and other stuff. He's risen above it. I have one of his older books---I don't remember the name or where it even is. But I remember breaking up on every page.

Those Keystone ducks are a cruel lot. :-)

Check your mail.

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