Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Writer's Block is Real

Hey friends, been a while. Animals, PB's and Pink Tights was such a blessing that I wanted it to be the first and only post that people saw for the last 4 months. Hell as a matter of fact, those pink tights were such a hot topic that I'd be fine without writing another blog post again. Yeah its been 4 months since my last time on here; shit I suck. Writing is tough work. I know it's tough because no one else my age takes 2 hours out of their time to come up with BS and post it on the net. Or maybe everyone has better things to do with their time. Bingo. My motivating factor for coming back to Beer Soup is because I promised Mr. Distance Running Super Fan, Pat Robitaille, an update last Friday. Never met Pat, but we've had our fair share of twitter conversation over the last while. From what I can gather, PR is a real stand up guy. Very involved with his little ones, his wife's/his own running, and the sport as a whole. He follows this stuff very closely and he's always mixing in the conversation with the really fast dudes. I wish I was a pro runner, or any sport for that matter. I'd take my fans out to dinner. I'd be the most interactive pro-to-fan athlete there is. Pat we need to go for a beer. Pat insisted I get back to blogging about my mediocre/half-ass running career; mentioning that tumbleweeds were rolling across this damn page. Thanks for getting me back on track man, but sorry for breaking that Friday promise. I'm bound to hit a wall at some point in this post. If I don't get at least 200 views I'm gonna be discouraged and pissed. Been away from educational facilities since december; I'm already sweating and fumbling for vocab and words, my room is spinning, tunnel vision...this is going to be a tough son of a bitch to write. Where am I.

The goons downstairs finally turned off the Lana Del Rey and they're off to the bar..Now it's Josh time at last; finally gathering some focus. So 4 months in a nutshell goes something like this. After Beast/Predator Distance Project athlete, Clint Smith, banged up his leg or knee or toe or ankle (not sure which one it was), we both kinda fell apart in April. I ran a 5k road PB of 15:29 shortly after the half-marathon in Burlington, but my noggin just wasn't on straight with Clint not being able to help me train. It's always nice having a runner around that has to take shits as much as you do during a run. He's not afraid to poop in the woods though cause he's from the country. I'm a city boy so I need at the very least a Tim Horton's...and that toilet has to be nested. So there we were, back to square 1, off and on from running, losing fitness, eating tubs of ice cream and other lard ass crap that runners shouldn't eat. We were getting fat and slow all over again. What a waste of training man. I recall workouts together where we completely blew each others socks off. But who cares about that nonsense, I departed to Asia for a much needed culture shock.

On the way to Asia Pop's and myself jumbo-jetted to Van City for our first checkpoint of the trip. Last time I was in BC I almost croaked out on a cross country course and I was hooked up to machines and heart apparatuses in a Kamloops hospital. Not this time though BC, another 13 hours of travel was between me and all the rice and soy sauce I could eat. Then we took another plane ride over the lengths of the entire Pacific Ocean. Do you know how sweaty my palms get when being in a plane at night over an ocean for 10 hours? How can planes even keep themselves in the air for that long and how do I know Denzel Washington isn't in the crew cabin hammering shots of vodka and coked out of his mind? Rest assured we crossed that International Dateline and somehow gained a day. At this point science had just proven to me that yesterday was today, and today is now, and I don't even know how this shit works but somehow I experienced Saturday twice and got twice the amount of things done than everyone in Canada did. If you want to maximize productivity, step your ass across that imaginary line on the globe and you too can have Saturday two times in one day. And then there was Japan. The layover in the Tokyo airport was exquisite. Having been Saturday twice for me, it would only be fitting that I poop 4 times. Trust me, it wasn't planned that I talk about poop this much in a post, it just somehow happened like this. I was fortunate to experience poop number 3 in one of the most up-to-date toilets on the entire planet in this Japanese terminal. It was a robot man. It talked, it cleaned you, it warmed the seat; they definitely got us one upped in the restroom department. I was a little more at ease once we had a Chinese flight crew over to Shanghai and the possibility of Denzel was no more a threat to my safety. That was a movie reference by the way. If you don't know it, go watch more movies. Shanghai had quite a few Chinese people populated there. I guess they've got something like 23 million+ living in the city alone, and over 30 million in the surrounding areas. To put that in perspective, I believe Canada has around 30 million people in the whole damn country. Yeah you wanna see a concrete jungle clustered with little people bumping shoulder to shoulder everywhere you go, hit up Shanghai. That city is pretty sweet; the most modern buildings/skyscrapers/technology, you name it, Shanghai knows what's up. China is taking over this world for sure man. Everything you see in North America, they have it there, but bigger,(excluding the people)better,(excluding the chocolate bars)and more efficient. We however are ruining the Chinese with our North American influences. They have Burger King, McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, KFC, on every bloody street corner. These people love french fries! Look what we've done to them. My least favourite part about the Chinese is that they make everything there, yet its more expensive than over here in Canada! How can they do this! I could have asked Yip to make me the iPhone 7 in a back alley yet they're charging 800$ USD for this stuff, pure bogus, China..I felt robbed and devastated. We also went to 3 smaller cities (6-10million people) that were very neat too. At the end of this 10 day trip, we took the bullet train over to Beijing, the capital city of this foreign land. Beijing was like Toronto only 400x bigger and smoggier. Its funny how we think Toronto is such a huge city and all, but these cities are like a Killer Whale and Toronto is just a shitty little possom; making London, ON...a dried grape? A raisin. London is a bloody raisin. Climbed The Great Wall and saw people crying and puking there..it was amazing because I knew I was at the very least still fit enough not to cry and puke and look foolish. Pretty much every local thought we were just a huge joke coming over to their homeland, not knowing how to use chopsticks; they probably thought we were spies. Friggen people would stop and stare and pull out there phones to take pictures of us, videos of us, they laughed at us, man these miniature humans were mean and getting on my nerves. McDonald's in China sucks; 'MERICA! Fun times in Asia though, I wanted the culture shock and I embraced it big time. I got to see temples, gardens, Tienneman Square, zero fat people, the worst public bathrooms ever..like ya had to buy flippin toilet paper there and dump in a hole. Also saw the Olympic site, ate the same thing 10 days straight, bought an overpriced Nike jacket, the list goes on man. The trip wasn't over though. Dad and I stayed in Vancouver a few extra days before coming back to scenic Ontario. That city is just down right gorgeous. Some great running to be done in Van City; I ran in Stanley Park and that was really cool until I ended up back in the city and had to pay a cabbie 40 dollars to get me back to where my dad was. We also drove up to Whistler. Man the drive up to Whiss on the Sea-to-Sky Highway doesn't have shit on the drive up to Sarnia on the 402. Hope ya caught the sarcasm there, that drive is friggen epic. You can drive off the cliff if you're not careful..there's so much to look at. I'm able to fully understand my buddy Cheuk now and we've become good friends since my arrival back home. So good that we beat up this lanky, red shirt wearing angry boy outside of Stobies Pizza the other night. This was my first ever fight, and I can guarantee the same goes for Cheuk, although we won't call it a fight because it was the most pathetic act of violence in the history of fighting, period. At a combined weight of 240 pounds, Cheuk and I were minding our own business getting fresh out-of-the-oven 'za at Stobies after the bar. Then this hot head wearing a dumb red shirt bumps our little Asian friend and things got heated once his pizza fell. That Cheuk sure is a spark plug, all 110 pounds of him in his H&M attire, looking like a cartoon out of a magazine, or a pop singer..he started to cause a scene. Red shirt's friend wanted no trouble but red shirt was being quite the douche at this point, shoving Cheuk and yelling profanities all over Richmond St. I had enough and finally got involved once I felt the fear in baby China's eyes deepen, and we were under attack. Game on, red shirt came at me with his lanky frame and swung like a chimpanzee, but I countered with a picture perfect duck, and man I wrecked his night 3 seconds later. I wound up with this blistering hot slice of savory, sweltering, cheesey, pepperoni filled pie and planted that sucker smack dab on douche lord's face! It was a quick reaction on my part but I think it was the right move. A while back our buddy Ryan got in a scuffle outside of JBRs and whipped his hot dog at the kid. I think my instincts were to use Ryan's tactics of food fighting to show interest in the fighting match, then any other force could be used shortly thereafter. D-Lord was steaming with that delicious sauce running down his nose, coming at me once more. The amazing part about this was that his friend still had our back and was pushing D-Lord away. Maybe he felt sorry for us. A tiny Asian Justin Bieber and myself, the sailor wearing white denim jeans with a striped blue V on, being picked on by his drunk goofy friend. Pizza face ended up on the ground, and Cheuk and I scurried off celebrating our victorious encounter, although pissed about our food. 

Its 4:11 AM, Tuesday morning. Just getting in from the gym, I'm still on the graveyard shifts so on my nights off I'm still up all night. I had to take a break from the last paragraph about China, and fighting with my Chinese friend, because I needed time to regroup and work on the 8 pack I've been trying to acquire. I guess runner's need those things to run better. And girls like looking at them so thats two reasons we need the 8 pack going. I'm okay with 6 too, whichever shows up first I guess is more than fine with me. So the boys are living at the PCI right now (Patricia Collegiate Institute) on beautiful Patricia Street., myself included. Good times at the PCI so far. Lots of soda pop and chip party's on the weekends, lot's of studying, taco nights..just a happening place. Actually no, haven't done any of that shit to date in here. PCI is a jungle, enter at your own risk. LOL just kidding its a place that brings out the best in people, a prosperous homestead that houses the likes of: Tula the Earthworm, "Beck", Dungeon Dirk, "Dent", The "Nicks" from Frito Lay, and the runner. There has been some great people pass on through this place. Like 45 year old Randy from east London, CEO of his own small company. A couple blurry Tuesday nights ago 11 of us clowns invaded our favourite new watering hole, the upstairs patio of Lonestar Texas Grill. Upon arrival we noticed a gentleman by himself drinking beer. We were getting rowdy up there and the gentleman wanted to join in on the fun. Tequilla's and all sorts of crazy beverages were put in front of this man and before you know it, we got him right liq'd! If you're wondering why this 45 year old CEO was drinking with 23 year old's at Lonestar on a Tuesday night, don't be so critical. Randy had the week off and he was looking for a good time. We gave it to him. We walked him right out of that place and took his ass to Jack's! Ahhhh, Jack's. The place to be if you're 17 and are confused about who you are. Seriously, check out the crowd in Jack's. There's everything in there. Plus it stinks like poo. And liquor. Liquor and poo and confused 17 year old's is not a good scene. Especially if you're Randy. One wrong move and that bastard is in Jail. But Randy here pulled out his Visa like a complete veteran and bought rounds of 11 shots, over, and over, and over again. Couldn't tell ya what happened to the newest addition to our crew that night cause I was pretty Jaromir Jagr-Bombed myself. Tula went downstairs to Dungeon Dirk's room in the morning to find Dirk sleeping on the couch of his own room. Odd. His name isn't Tula by the way, iPhone auto-corrected Tayler to Tula so thats the kid's name from now on. For safety purposes, Tula then performs a final shoulder check while making his departure out of the dungeon. Low and behold, Tula spots a carcass wrapped like a cocoon in Dirk's bed. As the adrenaline builds in this little earthworms body, he unveils the bed sheet to find 45 year old Randy, CEO of a small company, in the Dungeon of PCI on a Wednesday morning. Randy's picture sits right next to the word Gem in Oxford's English Dictionary.

Sadly my time at the Palace is coming to an end when things start getting serious in the cross country running department. Remember how Clint screwed himself up and wasn't running? Yeah that kid's been back for a little while now and he's chompin' at the bit. Kid doesn't run track much but he's been putting in work on that damn oval with LRDC and he's run 4:03 for 1500m and 15:12 for 5k, sick as a dog. I've decided to come out of retirement for the second time and I'm getting myself back into shape so that we can try and be glorious like we were last year. Running is getting easier and easier each day as I claw my way back on this grind. I'm leaving PCI at the start of September so that I can focus solely on the academics and the getting from the start line to the finish line as fast as possible. Love this place and love these kids but sometimes ya just gotta do the right thing that's gonna help ya have the best opportunity of being successfull. As I continue to spend all my money on Nike flats, trainers and spikes; the miles are starting to pile back up and I'm happy to say the running is starting to come around again. I haven't been this stoked for a cross country season yet. Things will be just golden over the next few months and I'm down to ball the hell out on those XC courses. 

Magna Carter is the shiiiiiiii...and if you didn't think Yeezus was a masterpiece, Kanye doesn't care.

I've got a plan in the palm of my hand, to keep me rolllllllin'
Catchya on the flip

1 comment:

  1. Nice move with the pizza slice...I once left a Teva imprint on a monster's white shirt. We were in Campbelton New Brunswick. He was a drunken savage who had just been tossed from a bar for drinking too much. I was a tourist weakened by pneumonia, and the first dude he could direct his anger at. I had no time to duke it out. He came at me with a powerhouse right; cocked at the ready. One good thrust kick to the beer belly...fight over! Sadly I thought the RCMP were going to come find the Ontarian who tuned up the local hero. But no, I could go on to enjoy many a McLobster.

    Great blog, glad it was long. Mama's out for a long run-35k.. Yeesh..Great adventures in Asia. Hope to be able to take my kiddies to such cool places when they are older too.
    Happy training.

    ReplyDelete