Well thats it! My 20s are officially done. Over with. Kaput. I quietly turned the big 3-0 this weekend. There was no fanfare. No drum rolls or trumpets. No huge surprise birthday party or naked girlfriend bursting out of a giant cake. None ah dat.

Instead I spent a simple day climbing/hiking the incline – a 1 mile stretch of gravel and railroad ties. The incline gains 2,011 feet, topping out at 8,585 feet. It takes approximately 2,696 steps to get to the top. In comparison, the Empire State Building gains 1,224 feet and has 1,860 steps to the observatory on the 102nd floor.

And I enjoyed it!

I have never been one to celebrate big on my birthday. I hate when too much attention is lumped on me for something I really did nothing to earn. If anything its my mother who deserves all the praise for that right? So when my birthday finally came around this Saturday I was determined to spend it the same way I spent the last 10 birthdays – on my sofa watching TV. Well I was until Huggy called.

“Hey. What’re you doing?”

“Laying in bed trying to remember what I was doing on this same day 10 years ago.”

“Yeah? Well skip that… want to do the incline with me?”

I had heard of this incline. Heard how it ripped the hearts out of many a grown man. Tried it once. Got to the top in just under an hour gasping, wheezing and trying in vein to ignore the intense pain in my calves and thigh muscles. I had vowed then that it just wasn’t worth it to ever attempt doing it again. But women have a way of making me say and do strange things. No wonder Adam ate that damn apple.

“Uhmmm.. What time is it? 9:20? Yeah. Ok. Why not? Its just over 2000 steps at a 60 degree angle straight up the side of a mountain at over 6000 feet of elevation. Precisely what I prayed to God for on my birthday. Thank you God!”

“Oh stop being a damn wuss! It’ll be fun!”

So I drove over to Huggy’s place, picked up three of her friends, and went off to conquer the incline. At first me and Huggy paired up while her three friends, a girl (Asia) and two guys (Egypt and England), took the lead. Asia (not her real name) had recorded some pretty fast times doing the incline before and she routinely ran six miles a day and you could tell she was competitive as she started off as if there were a hot plate of food waiting for her at the top. Egypt, a skinny, self-proclaimed semi-professional football player was next. Huggy had told me that she went on one date with him and that she thought he still liked her. Maybe he thought this was his chance to impress her. England, who supposedly had a crush on Asia, was built like a boxer and had powerful arms, shoulders, and a huge chest. His legs were skinny for his size though and somehow I knew that would weigh against him. I brought up the rear, part because I didn’t care to race anyone to the top, and part because I had a great view of Huggy’s cute little ass wiggling as she struggled up the steps. Adam never stood a chance with that whole apple thing did he?

As we near the half-way mark I am finding the going remarkably easy. I guess all my football games have conditioned me better than I thought. Huggy is struggling a little and I tell her to pace herself. As I predicted, England is hunched over to the side spitting and dry heaving. There is just no way those toothpick legs can carry his massive torso. No way. I offer him some water and decide I had better stay with him before he feints. I had no desire to describe to a local news crew how this guy fell backwards down 800 steps to his death. Not on my watch.

We eventually all make it up with me and England being the last ones. England had to stop every 10 steps to either gag, or crouch over holding his head, or both at the same time. Huggy’s friends decide to go back down the way they came. Me and Huggy take the Bar Trail (a two mile see-saw windy jogging trail) back down. On the way down she stops, turns to face me, and gives me one of her zany grins (I so usually don’t do zany… but something about her… ).

“I like you.”

“Huh? What did you say?”

“I really like you…”

Now Huggy had taken to routinely telling me she liked me at the most random times. But this revelation seemed different. More serious.

“Well I like you t…”

She kissed me. Like Eve must have kissed Adam to get him to do something as crazy as disobeying his omnipotent creator. It has been awhile since a kiss had me feeling light-headed (or maybe that was the altitude).

“I like you too.”

I did like her. Huggy was so charmingly honest with me all the time it was hard not to like her. She hid nothing and was ashamed of nothing. I find that quality enchantingly attractive being as private a person as I am (yes… I know I publicly blog.. but thats different). For once I am glad I didn’t spend my birthday on the couch. Adam was probably just as glad he ate that apple.

Disclaimer: This is not really a mushy post, though it may read like one. I am a manly man. In fact I spent the rest of the day playing tackle football, shredding huge chunks of beef with just my teeth, and hunting for mountain lions. Thats as manly as it gets people. Nothing to see here… move along!

I know I haven’t posted anything in exactly a week, but I have a good excuse: I spent the weekend getting battered, bruised, elbowed, kicked, head-butted, and spit on while participating in a state soccer tournament here in the Springs. And boy was it fun!

And I say that not just because my team won the entire thing, or because I was named joint-tournament MVP, but because its been soooo long since I have played in an organized sporting event. The thrill of competing and winning against the odds is a feeling that is second to very few things in life.

My team, the Casuals FC, were a mish-mosh of former varsity and former semi-professional players, most of whom were individually capable of holding their own in most amateur tourneys. But we had very little playing time together and there were even a couple players on the team a little past their primes. In addition to those short-comings we initially lost our first three games (albeit by small margins). The more we played the better we got though and by the fourth game we had found some chemistry and a strategy that worked for us. We eked into the finals against a team from New Mexico that was basically made up of very good Mexican immigrants (possibly illegal too).

This is where it gets exciting!

The New Mexican team had been killing their opponents and I don’t think anyone gave us a chance to even score a goal against them. In fact, our strategy was to somehow keep them from scoring and take it to penalties. After five minutes into the game that strategy went out the window when the New Mexican team scored first. We tried to get some offense going but this only served to expose our slower defenders against their lightning quick forwards and we were down 2-0 in the first half. Up till then I had been playing in the midfield acting as a defensive enforcer in front of the central defenders and distributing the ball wide to our flank players. But I was tired of seeing the Mexicans run circles around our tiring defenders and, being one of the fastest players on the team, I volunteered to play central defense. The gamble worked like a charm. If its one thing the Mexicans lacked it was size and strength, and while I am not exactly huge, my 175lb., more muscular frame caused them lots of problems. I was either fast enough to keep them in front of me or strong enough to hold them off and they knew it, as evidenced by the nickname I had earned via the chants from the Mexican fans on the sidelines. El negro torro. The black bull.

Having effectively slowed down their attack we started to play with renewed vigor and their midfielders started to tire. We scored 2 quick goals and suddenly were right back in it! Well we were until they got a penalty and made it 3-2. I am not sure how we managed to tie the game up at 3-3, because they were attacking us in constant waves and it was all we could do to keep them from scoring more goals. As luck would have it their keeper made a mistake and one of our forwards capitalized on it to bring us level.

The next ten minutes left in the game was a true battle. Both teams attacked to different drum beats. The New Mexicans used speed and craft. We were more direct and brutal with crunching tackle after crunching tackle. The game seemed headed to a stalemate and penalties… exactly what we had hoped for. Then the incredible happened. With what must have been seconds on the clock a New Mexican player broke through our off-side trap and went in one vs. one on our keeper. I was sure he was going to score… but our keeper is 6′4″ and huge and maybe he panicked… he went for the shot way too early instead of rounding the keeper. The keeper managed to get a foot to the ball and it skidded across to me standing near half-line. Because there were only a few seconds on the clock their keeper, anticipating the winning goal by his teammate, had strolled all the way off his line and was standing near the edge of his box. Looking up and seeing the goalie off his line I took two quick strides across the half and curled a looping ball goalwards. The keeper backpedaled, then spun and tried to get back in time. It was too late, he was too far out, and my shot was too accurate.

I still can’t believe we won! Vive el negro torro!

Tears stream down the face of former US sprinter Marion Jones, once considered the fastest woman in the world, as she admits to using performance-enhancing drugs before and after the 2000 Olympics. Jones will most likely lose the record five medals she won at the 2000 Olympics and is the latest casualty in the BALCO drug scandal.

~ As posted in the Coo Yah! section

In the recent wake of Marion Jone’s “shocking” (yeah right) admission to use of performance-enhancing drugs I have had numerous conversations with co-workers and friends on athletes and drugs and race. One such conversation took an interesting turn when I asked my co-workers why 2/3rds of the NFL was black yet less than 1/3rd of the quarterbacks in the NFL were still white. They had no legitimate answer for this.

This lead to a conversation with myself (don’t worry… I have conversations with myself all the time):

“Why is it that blacks dominate certain sports?”

Hey! Don’t start on that “black athletic superiority” bull… do whites have greater mental capacities?

“Well no… but c’mon… what does one have to do with the other? Is athleticism and intelligence mutually exclusive?”

No. But to insist that a particular race is better suited for certain activities is bordering on racism no?

“Hmmmm. I don’t think so. Not if we are discussing this in the vacuum of genetics and biology where the concept of race doesn’t exist. Instead we need to look at this as people adapting genetically to best survive their environment and passing these genes down to their descendants.”

Ok. I guess I can work with that. But you don’t think societal and economic dynamics have a lot to do with this as well? Maybe blacks are better at certain sports because they see it as their only way out of a bad situation.

“I suppose those factor into the equation in some cases. But in a controlled environment, all things being equal, they aren’t the controlling factors. Why haven’t any white sprinters from racially homogeneous, low income populations or countries run under 10 seconds in the 100 meter sprint?”

Oh no. Not this “white men can’t jump” crap!

“Oh white men CAN jump. Just not as high as the black… No. Lets not revert back to race… just not as high as people from the West African region and their diasporic descendants.”

So…

“Nor can they run as long as the people from the East African diaspora.”

Fine. You might have a point there. The numbers do kind of back you up. I mean I can’t tell when last I have seen a white or asian person win a sprint at the Olympic games. The NBA is 80% black. The NFL 70%. Blacks dominate boxing, the long jump, the high jump. Even soccer, which is still a majority white sport, is dominated by the country with the largest number of people of African descent outside of Africa – Brazil. But hold on a minute… if what you say is true then why aren’t the Nigerians and Ghanaians dominating sports?

“I was waiting for you to ask that. I think its for an interesting combination of reasons…”

Like?

“Like the Slave Trade for one. The exodus of West African blacks from the African continent resulted in a weeding out of the genetic weak. Only the strongest of the strong could survive the journey across the Atlantic and then they quickly learned that their value depended on their physical abilities in the New World. “

Ohhh. So genetically African Americans, Latinos of African descent, and West Indians are descended from the cream of the crop. That does make some sense. Genetics do play a part in sports.

“Yup. Then when you add the better resources available to them in the Americas you get a diaspora that will outperform its origins.”

I suppose. But you have gone away from the vacuum of science you spoke of earlier. Does science back you up?

“I think so. I am no expert but its been scientifically proven that genetically people from the West African diasporic have a higher proportion of ‘fast-twitch’ fibres, more testosterone, and a more favourable muscle-to-fat ratio than their white counterparts. Fast-twitch fibres are responsible for the explosiveness necessary to jump high or run fast.”

So in essence this is not really a ”black” thing. Its more attributable to ethnic origin then?

“Exactly! Kenyans from the Kalenjin tribe of the Great Rift Valley show distinct genetic characteristics that help them store oxygen in the body and reduce fatigue. As a result its not uncommon to see them win the long distance races. The Ethiopians also have a high proportion of slow-twitch fibres necessary for endurance.”

Wow. You actually made a load of sense today. From now on I am only talking to you on Mondays.

United States President George Bush bumbles an analogy meant to link Mandela’s ideology of peace and equality with what was needed in Iraq. Instead the President’s awful gaffe comes off sounding like he was accusing Saddam of killing Nelson Mandela. Mandela is very much alive.

~ As taken from the Coo Yah! section.