Agreed, life is too short to sit back and wonder what it would have been like to race. You have your health and fitness now… use it.
Nah. Just turn up and have a crack, I’m old, fat AND slow but racing’s the funnest thing I’ve ever done on a bike. First vets’ crit I ever did I finished purple in the face but grinning like an idiot. I don’t do it nearly often enough but that’s still pretty much how it goes every time, purple in the face and grinning like an idiot.
Thanks Sime. Good advice that I should apply to life in general not just my attitude towards racing. Lacking confidence is lame.
Also when I was a very young child I was playing with my newly born chickens. I tried to wash some of them because they looked dirty and I accidentally drowned one. I was so scared about how mad my mother would be so I hid the chicken in the garden. Pretty sure I cried a bit in my room that night.
I once made out with a girl a good friend of mine had a huge crush on. Right in front of him just to piss him off.
Get a trade, make stuff. If I had my time again, I’d get a trade and make stuff.
I concur.
Fucking oath
In hindsight, I could not agree with this more.
When I was 15 my old man wanted to put me in the Army to get a trade as a sparkie.
30 years later, I would now love to have a trade, not the Army stuff, but definately the tradie stuff.
When I was a kid, and we went to the beach we’d get fish and chips. I used to break open a chip and poke a small pebble or twig in it, mush it back together and throw it to the gulls. Greedy birds that they are they would swallow it whole. Looking back that was probably a pretty cruel thing to do.
If I had my time again, I’d have done well in school and gone to uni, and not become a cabinet maker, have a job that actually pays well, and make shit in my spare time.
Nah, just keep refining your trade and focuss on a clientelle that appreciates your craft. Dostoyevsky wrote that anything that combines simple, true and good will always be successful and in demand. Just keep the faith.
I wish the other way, that I had learned to do something with my hands, a craft or skill that defines who I am. Something that I’m trying to do now in my 40’s.
Perhaps Australia doesn’t appreciate craft and tradesman like they do overseas.
I once faked an orgasm. Even I didn’t think it was possible but I was with a girl, we were both pretty out if it after a long night and I wasn’t really enjoying myself (chemistry? or lack of it). Figuring it was easier to pretend than offend I arranged myself behind here (aka doggy style), made some tell tale escalating noises and then flicked some spit from my mouth with my fingers for the crescendo that ended the drudgery and allowed me to pass out/sleep. She was none the wiser and it avoided some drug fucked inane 5am conversation over what could be perceived as a sensitive issue.
True confession: I hope you lose your license before you kill someone.
True confession: I was pretty disgusted, and amazed, given your attitude on a lot of other things, when I read that.
I told capt commuter I’d look at his Dean last week (sorry Stu I was actually flat out at work).
I’m actually getting worse at surfing as I get older.
I feel guilty about going out cycling and surfing rather than hanging out with my family.
I have no intention of ever riding a fixed gear bike on the street again.
Once i had a nosebleed inside a Little House on the Prairie book and didn’t tell mum.
I accidentally got a but of jizz on my Fabian Cancellara poster once.
I always wanted to be a teacher but I spent all of high school trying to get laid, and really didn’t give two fucks about school. When I got my enter score of 50, I started freaking out, and didn’t get in anywhere. I still think it’d be cool to be a teacher, but I feel like I’ve wasted too much time and will disappoint myself if I don’t use what I’ve learned.
I hardly ride bikes any more and struggle to afford it, because I waste so much $ on my car. I love my car, and when it works it’s amazing. But it’s not a bike.
I stopped buying cigarettes 3 weeks ago. I’ve been buying pouches instead and struggling away at rolling them. I thought this would slow me down, but I’ve been smoking a pouch every 3-4 days.
I’m starting to not like diet coke any more.
I once drove drunk. Really drunk. I didn’t know I was drunk until I fell out of the car in the carpark at work. I’ve not done it since and I never will again, it terrified me how stupid I was. I just didn’t realize. Y’see, it was so hot in my caravan, so I couldn’t get to sleep. So I thought that if I passed out, I’d be sweet! And I did.
I secretly think The Jams is the coolest person in melbourne (but don’t tell him)
Sometimes I think it would be better to be gay, because I’d then have an excuse for the things that I do. Some people presume it, based on my pink caravan, flamboyant clothes, tiny car. Andni get sooo much shit about it, really. And whenever anyone has a problem with me, the whole ‘you’re a faggot’ thing just gets so over the top and I get really sad and start questioning myself. I’d love to have the ‘gay excuse’ for my crossdressing, my expensive clothes, and generally caring about my appearance.
It’s like, at a 21st a while ago, I drove my mate there, so he could drink and I would stay sober. This happens between him and I all the time cos we’re like besties who help eachother out and stuff (he drove into collingwood to pick me up while having beers with brakefree and deadlegs). And the guy who’s birthday it was’s uncle just kept accusing us of being gay. Was it my rainbow tie? Maybe. Was it that we both had pretty interesting haircuts? Probably. The fact that neither of us wanted anything to do with this ‘commonly attractive’ skinny drunk girl who we were informed by her friend that she just needed some cock? That might be it. I dunno. But we were both the best dressed there by far, though that isn’t that hard at the Hallam pub. BUT YEAH WE GOT ACCUSED OF BEING HOMOSEXUAL AGAIN! I’m not offended by it, I just think there would’ve been less drama BEING gay than there is being stupidly flamboyant and not being gay.
Fuck
Also I miss lemontime.
And I feel like crying. Fuckin thanks brendan!
Dylan, go study and be a teacher before you get tied down. A good friend of mine in her 30’s just ditched her well paid job to go back to school and be a primary school teacher. There’s still time mate!
I, for one, am glad you are what you are. You’re one of the most interesting people I’ve met.
Dyl,
Go be a teacher if you really want it, the teaching profession could use a few young blokes like you. It’s not going to be easy but my mate Nick just qualified as a Primary School teacher, he’s 50. My friend Tanya started in her early 30’s. Rob, who was a plumber, started teaching plumbing at TAFE at 40-something. I started teaching (at Uni, admittedly) at 35*. I thought I’d do it for a couple of years while I got my PhD, I’m still in it 15 years on.
(*Cut a long story short, I did pretty ordinary at school, scraped into Uni, fucked it all up, worked a bunch of jobs for a decade, some great, some crap, went back to Uni in my 30’s and earned a degree, scored my ‘dream’ job with a ‘firm’ (hated every fucking 6-minute unit of it) , earned a Masters while I was there, then somebody gave me a tap for the Uni gig over a bowl of gnocchi and the rest is what it is. My work buddy Prof Mike used to be a butcher. Prof Terry was a carnie before he became a postman, then a teacher and so on. Terry really was a carnie. I myself spent two happy years in the early 80’s delivering gorillagrams, another colleague (who shall remain nameless) used to jump out of a cake wearing not much more than a smile, another one was a cop. Nearly everyone where I work did something else first. The die isn’t cast when you’re 25)
For all that I still wish I’d learned to make nice chairs or something. I guess the grass is greener…
Edit: and my whole family thought I was gay for years, I suspect some of them still do. and like Spirito, I once faked an orgasm with girl I was really into, in similar circumstances to his story, only at the time I was folded in half in a bright orange, early model honda civic.
Dyl, In my job before 2002 you had to have a trade already to apply to do my trade, so everyone senior to me had to start again. One of the most senior blokes i work with was a soldier in the vietcong who deserted, escpaped to indonesia as a refugee but was caught and sent to a refugee camp, escaped again and was caught again then took a year learning english enough to pass his refugee test and got to come to aus. Got an electricians trade which at the end of his whole year was told there were no jobs, so he enetered my trade. a hard enough life but the man never stops smiling.
Starting again is just what it takes sometimes.
edit:
also confessing.
When i was 17 my friends and i would steal cars to go joy riding.
I only didn’t go to uni to get a trade because that’s what my friends did.
I savotauged my frinds chances with one of my ex’s through his icq.
i let the same ex lose her virginity at 16 to a 30yo american navyman because i was to proud to tell her not to when she gave me the ultimatum of getting back with her or her f##king him.
i used to be an alchoholic.
I’m scared of talking on the phone.
I feel bad for having a nice bike and not being able to ride it as much as I should, probably because of the guilt that results from taking any time off studying to go riding. I don’t feel content with anything besides a HD or D in my subjects and I have other personal (math-related) interests that require a fair amount of work.