I don’t know why I got a hot chocolate. It’s hot enough outside. And I’m wearing a hoodie. And there’s like thirty bodies radiating heat in this small ninety square foot café. If my calculations are correct, that’s three square feet a person!
It’s tasty, but they weren’t kidding. It is one hot chocolate.
Every time I bring the mug to my lips, my arms start quivering. I can’t keep them steady. Usually that happens when I lift weights, but I didn’t pump any iron today. Instead, I decided to go for a jog. After three miles, I was tired so I thought “Hey, it’s such a nice day, I think I’ll go for a nice, leisurely bike ride instead.” So I did. Sorta.
I ended up riding for over seven miles straight along Lakefront Trail in a little over forty minutes. And it was beautiful, but I can’t really feel my legs and now my whole body is shaky. I almost threw up once or twice so I had to slow down, but, maaaan, it was fun pushing my body to the limit.
I was listening to “Crystal Castles” on Pandora and every song on that station had this nice “THUD” bass sound with every count. Like a metronome. For some reason, when I listen to music and exercise, I feel like I have to coordinate my movements with the beat. Hell, even when I don’t exercise I do it. If I’m walking down Fullerton listening to Beyonce’s “Single Ladies,” you can bet your perky tits I’m going to be sashaying to the rhythm. I guess you could say that I’d be SASHA-ying FIERCE-ly.
Because of that, I coordinated every pedal with the beat. And I had it on the second-to-highest gear, so after “Young Folks,” “Alice Practice,” and “1901,” I was winded and panting, but I felt like I had to keep going because the song wasn’t over. Occasionally, I’d get a song that was slower than 147 BPM, but those were rare.
I rode my bike to Navy Pier, turned it around at the park there, and then rode my bike right back. It’s a nice ride. Lakefront Trail is eighteen gorgeous miles of uninterrupted pavement right along the edge of Lake Michigan. Perfect for joggers, cyclists, and asshole parents pushing strollers in the middle of both lanes. I think my summer goal is to go from one end to the other and back in one trip. Thirty-six miles. Shouldn’t take me more than a few hours, right? And if Lance Armstrong can do it with only one testicle, I can do it with two.
The only problem was that I was getting passed up. A lot. By girls. Girls on bikes, zooming by like hares. Girl hares. And I was the tortoise. The boy tortoise. The boy-toise. How embarrassing.
When I was in eighth grade, I had my first girlfriend. We were both in band. She played the clarinet. I played the trumpet. Right from the start you could tell it was a doomed relationship, but I don’t think she realized it until we went on the yearly band trip to Six Flags.
There was a rock wall. In my defense, I had lifted weights the day before, so I was very sore. But there was a rock wall. And it was high. And it cost $5 a person to climb the rock wall. And I just so happened to have $10 in my pocket and she wanted to climb the rock wall because, hey, physical activity is always fun, right? And I wanted to be a good boyfriend. So we started climbing. And climbing. And climbing. And my arms started burning. And then they started tightening up. Suddenly, I couldn’t climb anymore, and then I couldn’t hang on any more, and then I let go and I swung off the wall and Todd Daniels laughed. At me. And my then girlfriend made it all the way to the top. And when the rock wall guy lowered me down, Todd Daniels said “You got beat by a girl.” And then we got on the Viper and I was really scared, but she wasn’t, and Todd Daniels could tell I was scared and so he called me a pussy.
Todd Daniels was kind of a dick.
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