It’s pretty clear video games are insanely popular … perhaps too much so. Time magazine has called them “the greatest threat facing America.” (Note: I totally made that up.) A grown man was mugged in my neighborhood a decade or so ago, an obvious target because he was walking down the sidewalk absorbed in his Game Boy. The very next day I saw him again, this time at the nearby train station, still absorbed in his Game Boy. I couldn’t decide whether to push him on to the tracks or mug him myself so I slipped between the horns of the dilemma by silently pitying him.
Considering the wealth of smartphone gaming apps, and gamers’ souped-up computers, and X-Boxes and Playstations etc., it seems like we must be in the heyday of video games. What’s seldom remembered is that there was a lull in this national pastime, when kids got too lazy to trek out to the arcades but before the time when the home consoles got really sophisticated. This post, from my archives, documents a bit of that time, and wistfully recalls what I once took to have been the glory days of video games. I wrote this in college, when I was a student at UC Santa Barbara.
Video Gaming in the ‘80s - December 7, 1988
We can all remember the big video game days, back when there were fifteen arcades in town, all offering at least ten tokens on the dollar. Machines were scrubbed shiny; knobs were packed with grease or oil for extra smoothness. These were the salad days of the gaming world. Finding any kid was as easy as remembering which arcade he preferred. We were good, too. Any seasoned vidiot could play for at least forty‑five minutes on one token. But alas, kids eventually came around and the arcades died out suddenly, just like the dinosaurs.
It’s a good thing, too, because the games being designed today are not so innocent and harmless as what we played back then. My favorite was Tempest, a game in which your “guy” (a random thingy shaped kind of like a C-clamp] skittered around on the edge of a geometrically shaped hole shooting abstract figures, which had names like flippers, tankers, spikers, and fuzzballs. Shooting a tanker caused it to vomit up two flippers, complicating your job. When you’d destroyed everything coming up from the hole, you flew through it (avoiding dangerous spikes that could skewer you), then briefly through space (on autopilot, apparently), and landed on another hole to shoot more figures.
If you didn’t like shooting stuff, you could drive a racecar; that was a popular format. It started with Monaco GP which had really lame graphics; when Turbo came out I like that a lot better.
Then we got Pole Position. Its graphics were so amazing, it was tempting to throw over Turbo entirely, except that a game of Pole Position just didn’t last very long (typically 90 seconds). Sure, you could get Extended Play if you drove well enough, but if you got really good at it, eventually you’d make it to the Finish line and then—well, you’d be finished! I was pretty ticked the first time that happened, but then what did I expect? It’s the Finish line!
Or you blasted spaceships. That was the meat and potatoes of the vidiot. Those games were abstract, and promoted manual dexterity. Today, a typical video game involves beating up street thugs and prostitutes with clubs, or gunning down soldiers with a machine gun. I know this because last summer I went bowling with the boys from Broad Street Bikes and we observed the mêlée. I have to wonder what the lasting psychological effect of such blatantly violent games is on our youth. But all preaching aside, I must confess that recently, I have visited the arcade here [in Isla Vista] on more than one occasion.
It’s nothing like the old days. But one night, a few months ago, I was out with the boys and we wandered into Video Madness [a video rental place]. They had a bunch of the new-fangled games. I could hear the grunting of the street thugs as they pulverized each other, and the shrieks of the karate champs as they beat each other into submission. But over at the end of the dark room was a Tempest machine. I had to investigate.
Alas, the original knob was gone … the machine was out of order. But right next to it was Space Duel. For me, this game is nostalgic, since [my brother] Bryan and I used to play it back during the glory days of video games. I even talked Mom into playing it with me once, although I doubt she’d remember.
[This video is amazing, by the way. It’s an Atari ad showcasing the game in order to sell it to arcades. It even shows, here, how to set dip switches on the printed circuit board to select different languages.]
Space Duel is a totally unique game among the rest. The graphics are nothing special, the controls are nothing unique, but the method of play is unlike any other. There are various options of gameplay, but my favorite is the cooperative play mode. Two spaceships, joined about their rotational axes by a short rod, are controlled by two different players, who work together to blast various octahedra and other geometric shapes. The cooperation is key. While the players rack up individual scores (the object of any video game), they also rely on each other for survival. Kind of reminds you of the real world, don’t it? And when one player gets hit, his ship is seriously disabled, and his partner begins to outscore him. The wounded player almost longs, at this point, to get hit again so that he and his pal both get new ships and his point deficit is minimized.
The tragedy of the commons is ever‑present here. The injured player has seemingly little to gain from preserving his friend’s life, since this limits his own ability to get points. But if he decides to end it all, he hurts the common fighting unit. And remember, he’s here at the arcade playing with a friend … who would do that to a friend? Well, almost anyone actually. I mean, it’s not like there’s no recourse … your friend can always punch your arm or something. Still, the point of the game isn’t just to score points—it’s to make the game last as long as possible. So you usually limp on.
[Oddly enough, I didn’t know at the time that Space Duel was kind of hip, in a way. The Who had featured it on the cover of their 1982 album “It’s Hard.”]
Naturally, Space Duel can also be played by one person alone, and I haven’t lost the touch. I mostly drop in to Video Madness after intense study sessions, to remind myself how trivial school is when you’re fighting for your very existence against a variety of colorful geometric foes. I’ve discovered that I can actually use my score to monitor my stress levels. The lower my overall stress in my life, I have realized, the better I do at the game.
Occasionally, the game itself begins to cause me stress. I mean, losing at anything can be emotionally taxing, and in the moment it can be hard to remember this is just a game. When this happens, and it dawns on me that I’m paying good money to stress myself out, I fire my thrusters on full, sending my ship reeling out of control to its eventual death and the end of the game. In this way I remind the video machine that times have changed, and—unlike the game-possessed vidiots of the past—now I am the master.
Postscript
For further reading, specifically on the video game of the future, check out this fictional albertnet post: Robotron 2084’.
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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.
If you are a cat person, you might be predisposed to like
the following poem … unless, of course, you decide it fails to do cats justice,
though judging me harshly might also be enjoyable. If you’re a dog person,
perhaps this poem will help you to see the light and change your ways before
it’s too late.
The Poem
Ode to Cat
“To be or not to be,” that’s just BS.
“To do or not to do?” is what I ask.2
Are weekends best for resting, to de-stress,
Or time to chase down countless little
tasks?
I ponder this and then I see my
cat.
As if to taunt me, all she does is
nap.6
She looks so wise … could this be
where it’s at?
I pick her up and put her on my
lap.
The cruel, accursed beast—she
never stays!
A rescue cat, she’s skittish as
they come.10
To run for cover’s just how she
allays
Her fear (though nothing’s what she’s running from).
I could have written this for my cat in particular (i.e.,
Ode to Freya), but I want to give a shout-out to housecats in general. (Note to
Berkeleyites: I know that by city resolution, the term “pet” is out in favor of “companion animal” and “owner” has been
replaced by “human guardian,” so the phrase “my cat” may startle you. Yeah,
yeah, I know you can’t “own” an animal. I’m tempted to apologize, but then Freya
just feels like “my cat” and I refuse to be disingenuous about this. I also
gather that in some quarters “Berkleyan” is strongly favored over
“Berkeleyite” so I’m tempted to apologize for that, too—but haven’t you folks
derailed this commentary long enough?)
Line 1: BS
Is it verging on blasphemy to call BS on Shakespeare?
Hey—not so fast. I’m actually calling BS on Hamlet, not his creator. Why does Hamlet
consider suicide, when he’s such a bright guy he can spew perfect iambic
pentameter off the cuff? Okay, fine, his dad died and his mom is marrying an
asshole … boo hoo hoo. Get a backbone, Hamlet, would you please? I can answer
his hand-wringing “to be or not to be” quandary in one word: be. It’s too bad
Ophelia couldn’t take a page from Paloma Faith’s playbook (well, songbook) and
tell Hamlet, “Don’t say nothing/ Just sit next to me/ Don’t say nothing/ Sshhh/
Just be, just be, just be.”
Line 3: resting, to
de-stress
The phrase “de-stress” irks me a bit, summoning as it does
the cliché-ridden lingo of corporate America. But that’s exactly what I need to
connote here, because working in this realm is what tires and stresses me out
so much.
Line 4: countless
little tasks
I feel like during the week, I can barely keep my head above
water on the home front. This means anything extra—fixing my bike, organizing
the garage, mailing a package—can feel like a really big deal. If I dig deep
and take on this kind of crap, I head into the next work week more tired than
ever and gradually start to augur in. On the other hand, if all I do all
weekend is rest and recover, I feel like I don’t have a life outside of work.
It’s an ongoing dilemma.
Line 6: as if to taunt
No, I don’t think cats are actually sophisticated enough to
taunt anybody. Conversely, I’m sure they aren’t attuned to sarcasm, which is
why I feel completely free to say to my stretched-out, luxuriating cat, “Freya,
you really need to slow down—you can’t keep burning the candle at both ends
like this.”
Line 7: looks so wise
Would we love our pets so much if we didn’t project positive traits onto them? Just like dogs appear to smile, or to have thoughtful, penetrating eyes,
cats surely look wiser than they are. It’s an illusion I enjoy, so I let myself
believe it most of the time.
Line 8: put her on my
lap
In my experience, there are two kinds of cats: the kind that
love to jump onto your lap and do so freely, and the kind who generally avoid
your lap. I have yet to encounter a cat who is blasé or ambivalent about this,
so it’s pretty pointless to put a cat on your lap and expect him or her to
stay.
Line 9: cruel, accursed
beast
Given what I just said, isn’t it totally unfair to deride my
cat this way? Of course it is, but frankly, as foolish as my behavior is, everyone in my household feels affronted, every time,
when Freya bounds away. I never said humans were wise either.
Line 10: rescue cat
What, you haven’t heard the term “rescue cat”? Well, I
haven’t either. But we all hear the phrase “rescue dog,” usually spoken with
just a whiff of self-congratulation. Not that I would take anything away from
someone kind enough to rescue an unfortunate homeless dog. But I got this
kitten from the pound … isn’t that a rescue, too? Not according to the Pet Adoption page on Wikipedia on which the phrase “rescue dog” appears
six timesbut “rescue cat” not once.
Here’s the Frey when she was very young:
Line 10: skittish as
they come
As a tiny kitten, Freya was a stray, and this has left its
mark. A car door slams a block away and she races across the room and hides. A
shoe drops upstairs and she stiffens, eyes wide, threat level orange.
As a tiny kitten she liked to climb into this tiny basket.
It’s amazing she even fit. I suppose she felt secure there, perhaps almost like
being swaddled.
Line 12: nothing’s
what she’s running from
Sometimes Freya is just bored and pretends there’s danger,
just to have an excuse to race across the house. After five minutes of this
she’s ready to sleep it off, of course.
Here she is in a playful moment.
Line 12 would be near the end of a standard sonnet (just before the rhyming couplet at the end). I’m not a good enough poet to
condense all my content into so few lines, so I just kept going.
Line 17: bless her
little heart
Though I’m not real clear on the details, I’m vaguely aware
that “bless your heart,” at least in the South, isn’t exactly a compliment.
That’s about right, because the first moments, when Freya has decided to try out
my lap, mean nothing. This is her nervous period when I’m expecting her to
suddenly change her mind and leap off my lap, so this seemingly loving
expression could well be followed immediately by “you little shit.”
Line 18: kneads my lap
I have a little claw trimmer that I use to keep my cat’s claws
from getting too sharp … thus, it is neither painful nor ruinous to my clothing
when she does this classic pet trick.
Note how her tail is hooked around her front leg there. Line 20: needs this
lap
You might accuse me of using this phrase just for a nice
poetic shimmer so soon after “kneads my lap.” After all, I’ve made the case
that Freya is on the antisocial side, and it’s commonly theorized that cats
only sit on us for the heat. But in this case, I had the heater going! Nine
times out of ten she’ll take a heater vent over a lap, but that tenth time?
Remember, this cat had a traumatic kittenhood. It just might be that some
modicum of feline-human connection is actually important to her. Maybe she also
treasures this particularly quiet time when she can finally relax enough to succumb
to a lap.
Line 21: have to be
postponed
So often, postponing writing for even twenty minutes during
this enchanted morning time means losing that twenty minutes forever. When the
family is up and around, I kind of want to
be distracted. When my daughter says, “Dad, let’s get a bagel!” I
wouldn’t even consider saying, “I’m busy [needlessly] writing [endless prose
that nobody will ever read], sorry [but not sorry enough to get over my
self-importance].” Full disclosure: we’ve gone for bagels only like twice, but
it’s a matter of principle. (It sure isn’t a matter of gastronomy; I’ve come to
accept that you can’t actually get a proper bagel outside of NYC.)
Line 22: must hold
still
Do I really have to hold so still that I can’t even type on
my laptop? Most of the time, yes … especially when I’m juggling a coffee cup as
well. Plus, early in the morning before the caffeine kicks in, I’m still pretty
vulnerable to sloth and the cat plays a big role in that … she’s a terrible
influence. If she were the kind of cat who always
wanted to be on my lap, it wouldn’t be special and I’d probably make her
leave so I could work.
Since I’m a sucker for “the exception that proves the rule,” here’s a photo of Freya sitting on me without preventing me from writing. In
fact, here’s a bit of irony: if you zoom in, you’ll see she’s sitting on me
even as I compose the very poem you just read.
That said, it’s a terrible photo, which attests to the
rarity of this scenario. If this happened a lot, I’d have a lot better photo of
it.
Line 23: by chance … a
novel
Well, it’s not actually random chance that there was a novel
within arm’s reach. My wife and I were both English majors and our house is filled with books. I read a lot—not nearly as much as I
should, actually, and I could easily imagine spending whole weekend reading.
The problem is, this would feel extravagant, almost profligate, since reading—for
all its value and ability to improve my mind and soul—is still a form of
consumption, and everything I consume dies with me. The impulse to write
constantly competes: shouldn’t I be creating
something, even if it’s only an amateur record of an ordinary life, that will
probably be casually deleted shortly after my death when my kids neglect to pay
the Internet server bill?
Line 25: grand,
ambitious plans
You’re not allowed to laugh at me over my assertion that
blogging represents a grand, ambitious plan. I was making fun of myself, so you’re
required to laugh with me or not at all.
Line 25: make this
moment last
I refuse to strike or modify this line because it happens to
exactly capture what I’m doing here: I expect this time with the cat to last only
a little while, and I do want to extend that as much as possible. That said, I
concede that this phrase sounds pretty cheesy, like a Kodak ad. So now you can laugh at me.
Line 27: to do or not
to do
This return to my opening salvo would be punchier if my poem
didn’t drag out to twice the length of a regulation sonnet. What can I say? I’m
no Shakespeare.
Line 28: to rest
This last word, rest,
seems like the perfect way to end a poem about a cat, doesn’t it?
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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.
“When we were sixteen, my friend Shelly and I would mix rum
with grape soda. We called it Welch’s Belches.”
I wish I could continue in that vein, but that’s not my
story to tell. My subject, alas, is just another bike race. I’m on two teams: a
road team and (as a coach) a high school mountain bike team. Both teams have a
loose tradition of writing race reports. In the case of the mountain bikers,
coaches have to really lean on student athletes to get some snippets, which are
compiled anonymously, as you can see here. The grown-up roadies are more apt to write, but less apt to race …
especially me. My only routine outing is the Central Coast Cyclocross (CCCX)
Cross-Country (XC) mountain bike race at Fort Ord near Monterey. (Just in
case that’s not enough juicy keywords to attract readers: iPhone Samsung Galaxy
Tesla Silicon Valley Oscars celebrity gossip Scarlett Johansson Jessica Biel
Mila Kunis.) At this event, both the kids and their coaches get to race.
Fortunately, my tradition is to go heavy on the food
descriptions and mercifully light on the race details. With no further ado here
is my report (Gucci Ballenciaga Valentino Prada Versace). If you’re in a rush,
fear not: there are several versions, from briefest to goriest.
Executive summary
Dinner wasn’t as huge as everybody said
Had my student athletes paid more attention they’d have seen
me be a hypocrite
It turns out I kind of suck at this sport
Pointless suffering can be really fun in the right company
At least I enjoyed my beer afterward, and took a great
Beck’st from the experience...
Executive limerick
A biker and wannabe bruiser,
Did a bike race and came out a loser.
He thought he was fast
But this myth couldn’t last
So he’s trying out being a boozer.
Short report
Race stats: 22.4
miles (vs. 19.6 last year); 2,362 feet of vertical gain (vs. 1,608 last year);
1:41:07 race time (vs. 1:26:27 last year); 13.3 mph average speed (vs. 13.6 mph
last year). Conclusion: I was 97.8% as fast asI was last year, over a race that was about 15% longer and 46% hillier, plus
I’m a year older. I guess I should be happy about all this, but actually, isn’t
it pathetic that I have to shore up my ego this way? Meanwhile, last year I
missed the podium by just one spot, and this time I was much further from it. (How
much further? None of your damn business.)
Pre-race Dinner: At
Gino’s in Salinas:
Cream of asparagus soup that was hella good (I was thinking
to myself, “This rivals what they have at Duarte’s” and a second later our head coach said, “You know, this soup might be as
good as Duarte’s”);
Slice after slice of bread and butter because I was dying of
hunger and the entrees were made-to-order (i.e., a bit slow to arrive);
This crazy pasta special of fettuccine with cream, brandy,
stock, mushroom, spinach, and Gorgonzola with steak tips which was actually
very, very good (though I needed the 5,000 calorie size, not the 3,000).
I also inherited some fettuccine Alfredo (alas, not as good
as what I make) from one of my student athletes who, incongruously, couldn’t finish it.
Everybody was groaning about how full they were and several of them,
particularly the adults, left food on their plates. I wanted to go around
scavenging because I was in one of those moods where I could not be sated.
Breakfast: Two
thick slices banana bread; one cup super-strong coffee, black; the tip of a croissant I broke off because
I couldn’t commit to a whole one (as they’re often gross, though this was rather
edible).
During race: Two
sleeves of Clif shot blox: one GoLytely flavor, one Jagermeister flavor (okay, kidding, they were both salted
watermelon, 2x sodium); a large bottle of energy drink; 2 ½ bottles of water.
Glycogen window
treat: At least four oatmeal cookies. A fellow coach shared my towering
gratitude that whatever unsung parent baked these amazing cookies last year is still around
this year (or has been replaced by an equally talented baker).
Lunch (post-race): Tri-tip
tacos with grilled onions, jack cheese, fresh tomatoes, and guacamole … are you
fricking kidding me?! Also two or
three cheeseburgers, hella kettle chips, and a bunch of Acme bread. Probably
some more cookies too, knowing me.
Dinner (post-race): Eggplant
ptarmigan (clearly autocorrect isn’t familiar with the word “parmigiana”) that
was really good because my wife knows to salt the dickens out of the raw slices
first to disgorge that bitter brown liquid that has ruined so many ptarmigans. I
washed this down with a beer … a real treat since I was foolish enough to swear
off beer for six weeks to try to lose
weight for this race. (If that seems like a ridiculous sacrifice to make for a
meaningless amateur bike race, consider that it’s arguably less of a sacrifice
than training harder, particularly if you’re as fundamentally exhausted by life
as I am.)
New for 2020:
“behind-the-Beck’st” report
Here is the post-race Beck’st I sent around:
(If you don’t know what a Beck’st is, get thee to a brewery!
Or better yet, click here.)
A correspondent replied, “Apparently you were too tired to
give us any details.Also too tired to
consider a safer spot for your pint glass than sitting ON your laptop, just
waiting for an errant elbow to knock it down…”
So, yeah, details. There’s a lot to unpack with this photo. You
can see my old-school bike computer in its PC cradle at the left, and its
output—the course profile and race stats—on the laptop screen. If you zoom in
you can see how hilly the course was. Also check out my race checklist (the
need for which I learned the hard way). You can see all these checkboxes with “DA” next to them … up until this
year, there were boxes for “DA” and “AA,” because my older daughter and I went
to these races together. Now she’s gone off to college and it’s just “DA”
(sniff). You can also see were I’ve scrawled some stats and calculations … figuring
out how much I’ve slowed down, and if our team’s new head coach rode faster
than I did. (He did, of course, even though his Category 1 race was a lap
longer). You can also see how badly I wanted that beer … by the time I’d set up
the photo, it was half gone. (My friend needn’t have worried about it spilling
on my laptop … it didn’t last long enough for a stray elbow to come around and
knock it over.) Finally, in the background you can see a photo of my brothers
and me, more than two thirds of my lifetime ago. Could I possibly feel any
older? Sure! Ask me tomorrow!
Full report
It was mighty cold during the first wave of races. We have a
lot of new riders, racing in the beginner category, concurrently with the
beginning adults which included a couple of our coaches. One coach stopped when
he came through to tell me one of our freshmen had crashed, somewhere out on
the course, and might need medical attention. I scrambled around, phoned the kid’s dad, phoned another dad who was near the medical tent, talked to the medics, couldn’t
learn anything, and was just getting ready to head out on the course to go find
the fallen rider when I heard another report that he was back on his bike. This
fire drill fouled up my warm-up pretty badly, such that our second wave of student
athletes, who’ve heard my endless exhortations about getting a good warm-up,
got to see me scrambling around in the last ten minutes, barely getting any
trainer riding in.
Nonetheless, I had a great start. Maybe it’s all that
sprinting out of corners in criteriums in my past life as a road racer … on the
uphill asphalt section at the top I got almost all the way to the front and was
sitting snugly in third when we hit the single track. NOOICE! Unfortunately,
people started passing me right and left (literally) after that.
Wow, this is already totally boring! I’m sorry about that. Of
course you don’t care what happened next, and I don’t really either. I almost
didn’t care at the time … it was too much like life. I was riding as hard as …
well, not as hard as I could, but to the limit of my motivation, really feeling
the futility of it all, like I was just going in circles (which of course I
was). Here’s a photo so you can see all the bastards swarming behind me. Also,
marvel at how old I look. I don’t think the clear sunglasses help. I might as
well get bifocals.
This was a real bike-handler’s course, and I’m not a real
bike-handler, at least on the dirt. I kept getting passed on the downhills and
then I’d catch the same guys on the short flat sections, draft them through the
headwind, and drop them again on the climbs. That was pretty fun, I have to
say. I know better than to have any concrete goals for my races anymore … perhaps the best I can hope for is brilliant moments,
however fleeting.
One guy took so much time out of me on the downhill sections
on the last lap, I ran out of climbs via which to reel him back in. I’d given
him up for lost until the final flat sections when I realized he was completely
dying. I dug way deep and chased him all the way to the finish, just nipping
him at the line, throwing my bike like a real sprinter.
I was pretty stoked about that until I checked his number.
He wasn’t even in my category! I have just discovered (looking at the online results) that he’d started two minutes after I did, in the 55+ group, and made the
podium. At least he didn’t laugh in my face or anything after the race. I hope
I’m as gracious when I’m that age. I sure as hell won’t be that fast.
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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.
I am old. Fifty, and that’s mighty old, especially to try to
be an athlete. But to paraphrase Faulkner, age “might have kilt me but it ain’t
whupped me yit.” I still try to duke it out from time to time with the high
school kids whom I coach mountain biking. These kids, if they did nothing,
would continually improve just by getting older (and thus bigger and stronger).
When they train regularly, their progress is stunning. Thus we coaches enjoy
watching kid after kid go from learning the ropes to whupping us, often within
the span of a single season.
This tale concerns a quixotic effort to beat L—, my team’s
star rider, in a drag-out sprint recently on Wildcat Canyon Road toward the end
of a team practice. If the outcome was “He kicked my ass and I never had a
chance,” there wouldn’t be a story. Trust me, it’s a bit more complicated than
that. My tale involves verve, poor fitness, equipment, tactics, politics,
shame, equipment, tactics, suffering, equipment, luck, tactics, and luck. In
that order.
Verve
Who am I to be going up against our fastest rider in a
slightly downhill sprint? This kid has been on the podium in every race he’s done, except the State
Championships and Nationals (where he was top ten in both). When he first
joined the team I was expecting a very stocky kid because we inherited him from
the football team (which had such a weak bench, they had to cancel their season
when concussions claimed too many players to continue fielding a team). Instead,
his physique is perfect for bike racing. He could have been a transfer from
Team Ineos.
So yeah, why would I even try? Well, I always try. This is
because cycling is such a complicated sport … crazy things happen that can
suddenly put an otherwise non-competitive rider into contention (say, a giant
crash in the final corner of a criterium that squirts a single lucky rider
through). Moreover, I like taking on ridiculous odds just for the lunatic
thrill of it. In a sprint you always end up going fast, and if you’re on the right wheel you go really
fast, and speed feels great even when you lose.
But that’s still not the source of my foolish verve. Ultimately,
if I don’t always try, no matter how doomed I am, I’ll become one of those guys
who doesn’t try. That leads eventually to the being guy who never goes hard at
all, and then to the guy who only rides to the bakery, and finally to being the
guy who stops riding altogether.
Poor fitness
Am I going to say my opponent lacked fitness, this being
February? Ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha. He’s young—he never lacks fitness. Aware of his own talent, L— always has ample motivation to train, and even his light off-season training has a dramatic
result, meaning that the normal sine curve of seasonal fitness doesn’t apply to
him. His graph is a constant upward trajectory, albeit with a steeper slope
during the racing season.
Of course it is I who had the poor fitness. This is actually
a strength for me when it comes to sprinting. Because my training is almost all
in the hills, getting fit means climbing (marginally) better at the expense of
my (already spotty) sprinting ability. If I’m ever going to finish fast on a
flat road, it’s going to be in the early season.
Equipment
I was late to the party, about halfway through the group
when I saw the contenders boiling at the front. This might seem like poor
tactics on my part, to be caught napping like that. Actually, it was a timeworn
strategy to protect my ego: I had an excuse, I was out of position! Of course, this
is a bad strategy because the relief I feel at having an excuse is itself
shameful, so my ego comes out the worse for wear.
Fortunately, even as L— began to pull away from the other
riders, like a running back shrugging off defenders, he suffered an equipment
problem—his chain wouldn’t go into the highest gear. This slowed him slightly,
giving me hope of making it onto his wheel. Suddenly he had one foot out of the
pedal and was swiping at his rear derailleur with his foot. By the time he
kicked it just right and got into his highest gear, I was halfway across to him
with a good head of steam.
Tactics, politics, and
shame
So, the perfect tactic might seem to suck L—’s wheel until
the very last second, and then sprint around him. But this would be
problematic. It’s long run-up to the finish, along the twisty, slightly
downhill road, and that’s a long time to suck anybody’s wheel. If we were
professionals and the sprint actually mattered in the slightest, we might get
into one of those deadlocks like you see on the velodrome, where riders slow to
a crawl, neither willing to lead out the sprint. But this was just for glory,
and there’s nothing glorious about sitting in your opponent’s draft for such a
long stretch.
So, to work things right politically, I’d need to take a
turn at the front, and the sooner I started, the better. The smart move is to
pull good and hard and long so that the stronger rider will eventually see you
dying up there and decide it would be equally shabby to suck your wheel the rest of the way … so he
finds himself taking the final pull, essentially leading out the sprint. He won’t
like it, but he’ll be honor-bound to do it.That was my plan, anyway. I went to the front and started slaying
myself. I drilled it for a good while, and then started to slow down, very gradually,
as if running out of steam—but I was faking it. Sure enough, L— eventually went
to the front and I tucked in behind him. NOOICE!
Equipment
My mountain bike, though it sports a carbon fiber frame and
modern brakes etc., is old-school in that it has a triple chainwheel. In the
realm of mountain bike culture, this is as lame as, well, being fifty years old.
A double chainwheel is much more current, and all the best cross country bikes
have just one chainwheel (a “one-by”). I’ve often mused that if the one-by came
first, and then the industry added a second and later a third chainwheel, that would be considered rad. Yeah, my
drivetrain doesn’t look as clean, and there’s more room for shifting failures,
but that third chainwheel gives me a higher gear. At the speed we were going, L—
was fairly wound out in his highest gear and spinning really fast, which wasn’t
as efficient as my cadence. Plus, knowing my top gear was higher than his
stoked my mojo.
Tactics – Part II
As much as I longed to shelter myself in L—’s draft for as
long as possible, I realized the chief problem with this strategy: I don’t have
a lot of fast-twitch muscles, and it’s possible that at the very end, once I
swung out to the side out of L—’s draft, he might have enough punch to hold me
off. It’s never a good idea to underestimate the sheer power of a young, faster
rider and I’ve been burned this way before. It’s also the saddest way to go
out: you suck the guy’s wheel to the very end but still lose. So I decided I
had to use the element of surprise and launch my sprint far sooner than he
would ever expect. If I gave it everything, I figured it was just barely
possible he’d fail to get my wheel. So, marveling at how stupid it felt to try
this, I attacked L— as hard as I could, well before the end.
Suffering
Well, it worked … sort of. Truly caught out by my seemingly
suicidal move, L— failed to catch my wheel. Now I was fully committed and just
hammered my brains out. This is where experience can really help: part of what
holds a rider back is fear of acute pain, but I’ve suffered too badly, too many
times, to succumb. Resignation is a skill that can be refined and polished. I’ve
learned how to distract myself slightly from the agony by stepping back to look
at it, to marvel at it. Wow, it’s just searing
pain! It’s amazing! The legs don’t want to turn anymore, but they do! Look
at ‘em go! What a bizarre behavior, all this self-abuse just for the chance at
a tiny dollop of glory I’ll almost certainly be denied in the end anyway! What
a fool! Let’s see how far we can extend this!
Equipment
Every second L— failed to get my wheel increased my chances
of success, so I was pedaling harder than ever and my chain started skipping. I
guess I kind of knew my 11-tooth cog was worn out, but had forgotten because
honestly, how often do I pedal this hard in that gear? The skipping reduced my
efficiency, of course; not a lot, but I needed all the planets to line up here. This. Was. Not. Good. I looked
over my shoulder and L— was not far behind. I still had a long way to go. It
didn’t seem possible for me to hold him off. Ah, well … there were a dozen ways
to fail at this, and going too early was one of them.
Luck
Suddenly I came around a bend and saw a car up the road, not
so far ahead, that had passed us earlier when we weren’t going so fast. It was
going just a tiny bit slower than I, and I figured if I could close the gap to it, I’d benefit from the large slipstream a car produces. If I got into that
draft, and not L—, maybe I could maintain my lead.
Tactics – Part III
The problem with giving it everything to catch the car is
that if I did, but it wasn’t going fast enough to keep me ahead of L—, I’d have
expended all that energy for nothing … I’d be stuck behind it as L— caught up.
Then, when the road flattened and straightened out, and the car pulled away, L— would leave me in the
dust. What I really needed was for the car to speed up a bit once I caught its draft.
I figured the chances of this scenario were 50/50 … a lot better than just
holding my own. So I went all-in, going almost anaerobic to close the gap. (Don’t
worry, I’m not an idiot … I kept plenty of distance between me and the car, so
I could react in time if it did something erratic ... about as far back as another motorist would stay.)
Luck – Part II
As I approached the car, I was close enough to see, through
the rear window, that the driver was male. Ka-ching! If you wondered earlier
how I’d reckoned my odds were 50/50, here’s your answer: a male, observing any
kind of challenge from another male, will generally be provoked to take action.
Sure enough, this guy’s ego couldn’t handle the idea that a bicyclist—that is, a nerdy person using
a child’s toy as though it were a vehicle—could match his speed. Naturally, he
accelerated. Even at the higher speed, my workload was much reduced. I had a
free ride, and unless L— had also closed the gap (I dared not look back to see),
I was home free. In the event, he hadn’t … he never got my wheel.
So … yeah, man! I took the sprint! I fricking won!
Epilogue … so what?
Needless to say, though his tiny victory meant something to
me (at least in the moment), it meant nothing to L—. It was just another day, another ride, another
sprint. “That was fun,” was all he said later. And he was right.
So … is there anything to take away from this little tale? I
think so. When I decided to rise to the occasion and contest the sprint, I
figured my chances of prevailing were very, very small. And yet I took my shot
anyway, because you just never know. Moreover, there would be no downside to
losing, as that was practically inevitable to begin with. To succeed was a nice
reminder that throwing everything you have at a challenge is actually sometimes
enough.
And when we compare cycling to life, that’s where the real
lesson is. Life is often (usually?) harder than sport, and in so much human
endeavor we face terrible odds. I don’t know about you, but I seem to be blocked
continually by obstacles that, in aggregate, can produce an overarching feeling
of futility. But by continuing to show up, by continuing to dig deep into our
personal grab bag of parlor tricks, lessons learned, and arcane capabilities,
we can sometimes prevail. You never know when you might have a breakthrough …
all you need is the right chain reaction of verve, tools, tactics, politics,
shame, suffering, and a little luck.
--~--~--~--~--~--~--~---~--
For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.
I consider bicycling to be a reasonably safe activity.
Obviously it has its risks, and I’ve been injured a few times. Even so, by my
rough calculation, I’ve cycled close to 200,000 miles, so I’m fine with my track
record so far. There are those who think urban cycling in particular is unconscionably
dangerous, but you know what else is dangerous? Urban walking. I don’t recall
anybody trying to make the case that pedestrians should just give it up (unless you count Irvine, California where walking is so unheard of, it’s practically against the law.)
A recent article in “Berkeleyside” provides maps of where in Berkeley the reported pedestrian and cyclist
accidents occurred last year. According to the Berkeley police, 230 people were
injured across 220 accidents, and three killed. Of these, 98 involved bicycles,
with 99 injured and one dead. Here is the map of bicycle accidents:
A yellow marker indicates that the driver was at fault; blue
means it was the cyclist’s fault. So how does this break down? Police ruled
that “fault was evenly split, with drivers and cyclists each responsible 47% of
the time.”
What about the other 6% of the time (indicated with a green
icon)? In those cases, police didn’t assign blame to either party. And yet, in
three of these four accidents, the cause was “unsafe door opening.” So … would it
be that hard to ascribe blame? Let me
give you cops a hint: do bicycles have doors?
In my experience, and that of most of my cycling pals,
police are quick to assign blame to cyclists in the absence of overwhelming
evidence that the motorist was at fault. Consider my worst bike accident ever: the
driver ahead of me inexplicably swung to the right, and then cut a hard hairpin
left turn in front of me to head into her driveway. Needless to say she didn’t
look behind her, nor signal her turn. I laid down the bike trying not to T-bone
her car. Later, after the ambulance hauled me away, the cop rang her doorbell to
get her story. (She’d been hiding in her house throughout the ordeal, ignoring
my screams, which her neighbors heard a block away.) She claimed to have used
her turn signal and that she had behaved very predictably and safely. The police officer took
her word for it, even though (as detailed here) her testimony cannot have made any sense. The fact that my bicycle didn’t
actually collide with her car further exonerated her. The cop chalked it up as
my fault because I was “going too fast” (even though I was below the speed
limit). I guess he had a point: if I’d been going walking speed, I might have
been able to stop in time. So I’ll make a deal: I’ll go at walking speed from
now on, so long as motorists agree to do the same.
Bicycling (like driving) will always involve some risk, no
matter how careful we are. Just today, a friend of mine was hit by a car while
bicycling. The driver was texting. While driving. While driving, in fact, through
a roundabout. Who does that?
But yeah, I’ll confess that cycling has its dangers even when
drivers aren’t directly involved. I recently stumbled across an email to a few
friends from about six years ago, recounting my most bizarre bicycle accident
ever. What follows is about 80% gripping yarn, 20% cautionary tale.
Freak bike accident –
November 2013
Let me tell you about my crazy bike accident. Yesterday
evening I was riding home from Bart [the train station, less than a mile from
home] in the dark, around 6 p.m. I had basic lights front and rear. I was
trying to turn left on Gilman Street and thought a particular driver was going
to let me in, so I was out in the road. It’s a never-ending stream of cars at
that hour, heading towards I-80, and they’re all fricking zombies, stricken by
tunnel vision as they slog through their commute. Alas, it soon became apparent
that, eye contact notwithstanding, the driver wasn’t going to let me go ahead
of him after all. The gap he’d allowed to open ahead of his car was apparently unintentional,
for now he closed it right up, shaving precious fractions of a second off his
commute time. I guess the look he gave me was meant to convey, “I see you
there, and I don’t care.”
[Coincidentally enough, this act of non-courtesy occurred almost
exactly at the site on the map below, where—about four months ago—a driver
failed to yield while turning left, struck and injured a cyclist, and didn’t
stop.]
This guy’s attitude was shared by the whole line of drivers,
whose safety seemed assured at this speed even though unbeknownst to most of
them they were slowly dying, a withering wasting car commuter’s death, the
death of actual living that doesn’t become apparent until it’s too late. I rode
back across the (empty) left lane and hopped the curb up onto the sidewalk. My
plan was to head a short distance down to a crosswalk where I could walk my
bike across Gilman, as that’s the only way to get these rush hour motorists to
let you through.
So there I was, riding along on the sidewalk, and then
suddenly I was down. I mean, it was the weirdest thing, because normally you see
a crash coming, and in fact time seems to slow down. (This is because, as
detailed here, “your amygdala [acts] as an emergency control center that gets all the other
parts of the brain to quit mucking around with their daily tasks and
concentrate all the resources on the one, main thing that is happening.”)
Normally, there’s an opportunity for evasive action or at least to think, “Oh,
shit!” But not this time. I just suddenly realized I was no longer in control,
was no longer moving, and was somehow in great pain. Given the suddenness of this
situation, and the astonishing force of it—suddenly, everything hurt—I automatically assumed a car must have been
involved.
And yet, the weirdest thing was, I wasn’t actually on the
ground. The bike was down and I was tangled up with it, but I’d landed on my
feet. “Landed?” you may well ask. “What do you mean landed? Like, from where?” I know, it makes no sense. Somehow I
went from biking to landing with seemingly nothing in between. I immediately
dreaded having to tell my wife about the crash, and the whole situation was so
horrifying I found myself yelling, “NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!”
And then I thought, wait, if I’m not actually down on the ground, then I haven’t really crashed. This was a bit of a relief because I was wearing a
nice suit and it’d have been ruined. But it wasn’t much of a relief because I
was in so dang much pain. My back hurt, my neck, my groin, but especially my
head. My head? WTF!? Why would my head hurt when it was nowhere near the
ground?
My mind raced, trying to make sense of the situation. With
no car involved, and my head far from the ground, I figured somebody must have
bashed me with a baseball bat or something. Or maybe I’d been shot? I staggered
around, taking in the scene. And then I finally put it together: there’s a tree
planted in the median with a big stout bare branch, with very dark bark,
sticking out over the sidewalk. I never saw it and I’d simply run headfirst
into that bad boy—it was a bit like being clotheslined. I wasn’t going all that
fast, but this was nevertheless a terrible way to be (mostly) separated from my
bike.
Man, it was horrible. I righted the bike, was amazed to see
the chain hadn’t even fallen off, and remounted, but I was in so, so much pain.
My head, man, it was just killing me. And my groin, it felt like somebody very
strong had tried really hard to rip my leg off. My shoulder hurt , my neck
hurt, my back, my legs ... I just moaned and groaned the rest of the way home
(only a couple blocks). I got into the garage, flipped on the light, and
inspected my helmet. I’m so, so glad I was wearing it. Sure enough, the foam
was compressed and cracked ... totally unsurprising given that my head felt
like it had taken a hit from a bolt gun. This was a big burly Bell helmet, my
commuting helmet, and I though I’m sad to see it go, it obviously served me
well.
I hobbled into the house, and my 12-year-old daughter saw me
and gasped: “Oh my gosh, Dad!”
I thought, oh no, I must be missing some memory of this
thing—maybe I did hit the ground,
maybe I’m all bloody or ripped up or something! But I tried to play it cool. “What?” I asked faux-innocently. Alexa
said, “Well, it’s just ... I’ve never seen you in a suit before!” Man, what a
relief. She didn’t suspect a thing.
I went upstairs and it hurt just taking my suit off. I
crawled into bed to rest a bit. It hurt to move so I just lay there on my back.
I just wanted to lie there the whole night, but of course there was dinner to
prepare and kids to deal with, and actually I knew in the back of my mind that
it would probably be a good idea to stay awake for a few more hours and make
sure I didn’t get dizzy, or hurl, or look in the mirror and see my eyes dilated
or spinning like pinwheels or whatever happens when you have a concussion. [If,
back then, I’d had the concussion protocol training I’ve since received as a
high school mountain bike coach, I’d have had myself checked out far more thoroughly, believe me.]
So I stuck it out, finished out the evening, cleaned the kitchen, read to my younger
daughter, stayed up until 10 or 10:30, took like four Advil and some beer, and
got to bed. I woke up this morning feeling really sore and stiff, and I can
barely walk. My head hurt most of the day but it’s better now. (I took a
two-hour online training on RFID technology and passed the test, so my brain
does still seem to work.) Mainly my groin hurts, but also my neck, like I can barely turn my
head. Riding is pretty much out of the question. It’s horrible.
Anyway, the funny thing is, when I was heading out yesterday
morning, I actually thought about not wearing my helmet. I had fresh gel in my
hair, for one thing; plus, a guy in a suit wearing a helmet on his commuter
bike is just so nerdy. But I only paused for a second before doing the right
thing and putting on the ol’ brain bucket. So what if I have reactivated hair gel
and helmet-head for my big meeting ... vanity is for weenies, right? Right. Man,
oh man, I’m so glad I was wearing that thing. If I hadn’t, I might be a corpse now,
or an extremist political pundit with his own radio show.
--~--~--~--~--~--~--~---~--
For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.
I recently had my first colonoscopy. I know a bunch of
people my age who ought to have had theirs as well but are procrastinating. If
you’re fifty or over and haven’t had yours yet, read this to know what to expect (and consider this your wake-up call). If you have had one, what better
way to commiserate and have another good laugh at what you’ve been through? And
if you’re not fifty yet, this’ll be a good dose of schadenfreude and a sneak
preview of what you have to look forward to.
What is a colonoscopy?
A colonoscopy is a procedure a doctor carries out to screen you
for colon cancer. Colon cancer is the third leading cause of cancer deaths. The
lifetime risk of getting it is 1 in 23 for men and 1 in 25 for women. Early
detection is key. Colorectal polyps are fairly easy to find and remove before they can
develop into cancer. Details here.
What exactly is the
colon?
The colon is one of those weird organs down there in your guts.
It removes water from digested food and creates stool, which it conveys to the
rectum. As this is already getting gross, I’ll leave it at that.
How does the doctor
see in there?
Doctors have got a “back door” they use, through which they
thread in a camera the size of your finger.
Which finger?
I forget. To be honest, I haven’t dwelled on that, for
obvious reasons. But in all seriousness, the process is a hell of a lot less
invasive and awful than chemo, surgery, etc.
Who should get a
colonoscopy?
Anybody over fifty should get one, plus anybody with other
risk factors like family history of colon cancer, or trouble with digestion, or
if a doctor recommends it for any other reason.
Is there any
legitimate excuse for a person over fifty not to get a colonoscopy?
Of course not. Don’t be lame, just get it done. As you’ll
learn from this post, it’s really not that bad.
What is the
preparation for a colonoscopy?
For a week, you have to eat refined food like white rice,
white bread, pasta, etc. instead of good high-fiber stuff like whole grains,
brown rice, beans, etc. (So, for a week you get an interesting tour into how so
many clueless Americans eat.) Also off-limit are seeds, nuts, popcorn, iron,
fish oil, and vitamin E. Then, 24 hours before the procedure, you’re not
allowed to have any solid food. You can have light-colored juices or broth, or
even Jell-O (but why bother)?
The other thing you have to do is completely remove every
particle of food, and its downstream waste products, from your system. You do
this by drinking four liters (more
than a gallon!) of a prescription laxative drink.
Is this pre-op process
straightforward and well-documented?
Well, that depends on where you’re having your colonoscopy
done. The place I went to sent me a big packet of paperwork, and then I got a
phone call saying, “We screwed up your paperwork so we just sent out a second
batch. When you get the first packet, throw
it away. Only read the second packet.”
Well, I received both packets on the same day so I had to
figure out which was the evil twin. One set of documentation failed to specify
when and where the procedure would take place, and who would perform it, though
it did include a “Visit Date” that was wrong. The other packet at least had the
procedure date, time, and location, though it also had a (different) wrong
“Visit Date” listed. It also provided the doctor’s name, which was helpful, though
it also provided a second doctor’s name that was wrong.
I called up to ferret out which packet was the correct one. Turns
out, the packet lacking the when-and-where information was actually the right
one. Having sorted this out, I requested clarification about the timing of the
laxative drink, GoLytely. The directions say to drink 8 oz. every 10-15
minutes, and to “Take 1st dose (1/2 gallon) at: 4pm the day before” and “take
2nd dose (1/2 gallon) at: 5-6 hours before the procedure.” Well, my procedure
time was 8 a.m. Did this mean I had to get up at like 1:30 a.m., and then roust
myself again every 10-15 minutes until done, to finish 5-6 hours before, or do
they mean at least 5-6 hours before? I
asked if I could just be done with all the drinking—and its explosive result—before
bed. (No, I didn’t put it so bluntly.) The gal answered, “Uh, well, um, I think
… yeah, before bedtime should be fine … just, uh, go with that.” She really
didn’t inspire confidence.
I called my big brother for a second opinion and he said,
“Yeah, I got up every ten minutes for half the night—it was a total drag!” Keep
in mind that you’re not just drinking this gross drink. You’re also rushing to
the toilet. So this timing thing is important, and I’m here to tell you from
personal experience, getting it all done before bed (in my case midnight) is A-OK.
The doctor’s office didn’t send me away for incomplete evacuation, which had
been my greatest fear (this having happened to someone I know).
Is the laxative drink
really that disgusting?
At no point did the gag reflex kick in. That said, it’s
pretty damn disgusting, perhaps even more so than bong water (but at least
you’re braced for it; I’m pretty sure nobody has ever drunk bong water on
purpose, at least no resolute non-pot-smoker like me). Here is a video of my very
first 8-ounce shot of GoLytely:
It may or may not help to mix it with the flavor packet. I
was on the fence about this, and my decision wasn’t helped by the packet
instructions, which clearly say “Not for direct dispensing to the patient,” as
thought the pharmacist is supposed to mix the flavor packet with the drink powder
before I leave the pharmacy. Could there possibly be any skill involved in this
operation? I can’t imagine, and yet the instructions are very clear on both the
packet and the jug of drink mix:
The lemon powder smelled like that disgusting Country Time
Lemonade mix. If I did decide to flavor my drink, I pondered, why limit myself
to the lemon option? I could mix in the flavor packet from some Top Ramen, to
have, like, shrimp flavor, or beef, or a combo. But ultimately I decided to
drink it neat.
The first flavor to hit my tongue was like someone else’s
saliva, but salted and slightly fizzy as though fermented. Then the aftertaste
hit me like a thump: very chemical-tasting, like bleach or solvent. So yeah,
GoLytely really is gross, but again, nothing that would make you hurl. The
problem is, you have to drink nine 8-oz. glasses of this, ten minutes apart,
for the first “dose” (i.e., session), and then, hours later, another eight
8-oz. glasses of it, so it gets mighty old.
By the way, my instructions didn’t tell me how many glasses
to drink in the first “dose” so I had to do the math myself:
You said something earlier
about the “explosive result” of this beverage. Can you elaborate?
Well, over an hour into my first “dose,” when I’d had eight
8-oz. glasses (i.e., 64oz, almost two
liters) of the miracle elixir, nothing had happened yet. I texted my brother
with this worrisome update, and he wrote back, “Oh boy. Just you wait!” He
wasn’t wrong. Five minutes later, I decided to take the throne and see if
anything would happen. I’ll spare you the details, but an hour later I was
still there. The word “hydrant” isn’t exactly right, but it’s close.
Hours later, after the second round of GoLytely, I again started
feeling some serious stirrings down there, and suddenly (oddly) started to
shiver. I ran for the bathroom, up a couple sets of stairs, with all the
urgency of an action hero fleeing a building that’s about to explode. I made
it just in time … it was so close I didn’t have a chance to close the door. My
wife, from one nearby bedroom, and my daughter, from the other, burst out
laughing simultaneously upon hearing the whooshing sound. If you don’t think
this all sounds pretty funny, click this link immediately, and go read that post, before continuing with this report.
How will I know I’m
ready for the colonoscopy procedure?
Trust me, if you’ve completed all four liters of the
laxative, you’ll be ready (so long as you didn’t “cheat” and eat anything in
the 24 hours before your procedure time). The official directions imply that
you don’t need to drink all four liters if you have “clear rectal discharge,” but
I find this to be a) gross, b) a needless thing to determine, and c) a great
name for a rock band.
All this being said, in my case I can report that after my
last toilet visit (which was, remarkably, at like 5 a.m., over five hours after
my last glass of GoLytely), it looked like I’d only peed. So complete was the
elimination, I lost four pounds. That’s after drinking about nine pounds of
GoLytely. Do the math…
Will the nurses be
hot?
This is a dangerous question to answer, but arguably the
most important one in the entire report. Needless to say, your mileage may
vary, but in my experience, these nurses were considerably hotter than the one
who helped with my vasectomy. Perhaps this is by design … to encourage periodic colonoscopies, they’d want
to make the whole ordeal as pleasant as possible, whereas with a vasectomy
nobody wants to instill the wrong kind of, uh, attention.
Will I unexpectedly get
disqualified from the procedure and sent home?
As touched on earlier, if you don’t follow the instructions
and evacuate your system, you could be sent home. Other than that, I guess the
only problem could be if your vital signs don’t look good. I had a tiny glitch
in this department. After taking my vitals and wandering off, the nurse came
back and said, “Um, are you a very active person?” At first, given recent
events and current circumstances, I thought she was referring to my bowels. But
then I understood, and said, “You mean, working out a lot? In that case, yes.”
She replied, “Okay. I ask because your pulse was only 45 so we thought you
might be on some … medication.” I assured her 45 bpm was normal for me, and it
was smooth sailing from there.
Will they stick me
with a big needle?
Of course they will, it’s a doctor’s office and you’re there
for a “procedure!” They run an IV to administer the anesthesia. But they’re
total pros. Two nurses discussed which vein to use … not because they couldn’t
find a good one, but because my skinny arms presented an embarrassment of
riches. “My husband is just like you,” one nurse said. “He’s got such great
veins, I sometimes ask him, ‘Can I please run you an IV, just ‘cause it’d go so
well?’”
Will they give me a
drug to make me forget everything?
This will depend on where you get the procedure done. My
brother, when he had his colonoscopy, did get the forget-everything drug (I
think it’s typically Versed, aka midazolam) and didn’t like the aftermath … it
really messed him up for the entire rest of the day. Myself, I hate the idea of
any drug (even alcohol) messing with my memory. My brother mentioned that some
people need colonoscopies somewhat frequently, and opt to skip the Versed. So I
asked my doctor about this before the procedure, and he said they don’t use it
anyway, and that the anesthesia I’m getting wouldn’t have any post-op
aftereffects. “You could go for a run two hours afterward,” he said.
What is the actual
procedure like?
They had me roll over on my side. This was probably the
worst part because my ass was hanging out of the back of that backwards gown
they make you wear, and it was kind of cold. The anesthesiologist warned me
that it would hurt a bit when he injected the drug into my IV, but the pain was
ridiculously minor, like being whacked lightly with a flower.
I lay there, deeply doubting that I would in fact fall
asleep, because no anesthesia could be any match for the cold air hanging over
my tuchus. So, preparing to be bored, I let my gaze fall on the patterned
curtain a few feet from my face. The curtain seemed so unfamiliar. I
wondered, did my wife buy new curtains at some point, and if so how am I just
noticing? Moreover, why am I still in bed when I should be heading over to the—oh,
shit! I overslept! I missed my colonoscopy and now I’ll have to reschedule and
go through the GoLytely purge all over again! Total disaster!
Then I thought, wait a second here. Those are not bedroom
curtains. That’s more like a hospital curtain. Oh, and I’m not in bed. I’m …
oh, right, I remember where I am. This is where the nurses and anesthesiologist
and doctor were getting ready to do the procedure. Meaning it’s over. I must
have … slept through it. Just like I was supposed to, duh!
Is there an aftermath?
There was so little indication anything had even happened, I
had to take the doctor’s word for it that the procedure had actually been
carried out. I was handed a bunch of paperwork, which I only remembered to leaf through a few days
later. It covers what they did, what they found, etc. My favorite sentence? “The
patient is competent.” That’s the nicest thing anybody has ever said about me. I
won’t comment much more about the report or the findings because that’s really
none of your business. Plus, there are possibly (sometimes? often?) lab results
that have to come back before one can conclude anything for certain.
I expected some physical discomfort after the procedure, but
in fact there was none. They’d advised me to break my fast with a small, light
meal, but I ignored that. I was starving and had a giant lunch, which went down
without a hitch. I will say I was really, really tired for the rest of the day.
I highly recommend taking the whole day off of work, as I did, for your
colonoscopy.
How do I get home?
This is the one time I won’t tell you to get around by bike.
This is also no time to get an Uber or Lyft, or even a cab (if you’re lucky
enough to live in a place where you can just hail a cab from the sidewalk like
in the movies). The clinic I went to requires that you show up with a chaperon
to drive you home. Great idea, because you won’t want to hang around waiting
for a ride, trust me.
Do I get a trophy?
What do you think this is, a kids’ soccer team where
everyone gets a trophy, even the kids who just stood around? No, you don’t get
a trophy. But you can get a certificate from Dave Barry; as he describes here, “If you, after reading this, get a colonoscopy, let me know by sending a
self-addressed stamped envelope to Dave Barry Colonoscopy Inducement, The Miami
Herald, 3511 NW 91st Ave., Miami, FL, 3317. I will send you back a certificate,
signed by me and suitable for framing if you don’t mind framing a cheesy
certificate, stating that you are a grown-up who got a colonoscopy.” Now, I don’t
know if this offer is still good, or if it’s transferable from “Miami Herald”
readers to albertnet readers, but you can download the certificate here and just forge Dave Barry’s signature. I won’t tell!
How long until my next
colonoscopy?
Wow, you can’t wait to get back, huh? Well, the rule of
thumb is every ten years until you’re about 75 or 80, after which they just put
you on an iceberg and give you a nice push. That said, your future colonoscopy schedule
will depend on what, if anything, they found the first go round.
This all sounds like a
lot of hassle. Are you sure this is really necessary?
Damn dude, I thought
this post was kind of funny until just now. What the hell?
I know too many 50-somethings who have been putting this
off. Don’t be one of them. Just get this done, and then we can share GoLytely
stories and have a good laugh!
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