Feb 2 the ride.....oops

    February is one of my favorite words. It's also one of my least favorite months but because it's the shortest it's not so bad. Love the R behind the B. It's so...not English. Bru ha ha.
   February 2nd. Groundhog Day! I've been to Punxatawny more than a few times and it is the brutal sad northern terminus of the industrial Appalachians. It's kinda where Ive always felt Steeler Nation hits a border. The Mason Dixon of the Allegheny forest.
   Poor groundhog. I want him to tear those guys a new one. As everyone knows he saw his shadow and what a glorious monster of a winter it has been, incredible. Fourteen feet of snow in the Sierras in a week and minus minus temps back East for days. A pity it didn't lay down some snow before Xmas. Winters rarely do these days. But nice to have the monster back. We need, I need four seasons.
    Global warming greening the Nativity. Sucks.
    But Feb 2 is also the Anniversary of end of the Battle of Stalingrad. Next year it will be 75 years. And since ten year olds and 15 year olds fought on the Russian front for the Soviets there'll still be some old boys standing proud at the ceremony. I'm fuckin going. Bad enough I missed the 50th in Moscow years back. All praise to the American and Allied Forces in WWII but the straights facts are the Russians won that war. Without them Germany would have owned Europe for 30 years. For two years they had an Iwo Jima ...every day. That many casualties ....every single day.
   Put it this way: take every town between New York and Chicago and burn them to the ground. Kill half the people, men women and children. That's what the Russians lived through. And worse.
   So yeah- Putin's a monster, a disgrace, a liar to his countrymen and women. But next time you wanna give a Russian some shit keep their history in mind.
   Feb 2 is the Anniversary of the Death of Sid Vicious, bassist for the Sex Pistols.
   All I can say there is...a moment of silence. He did it his way.
   And Feb 2nd, yesterday was also the day I just couldn't get off the couch. Kept thinking, another 20, another half and hour....I can still get 3 hours on the bike, I can still get 2 and a half, ride some in the dark coming back...big deal....and then it was 4:30 and I knew....I'd broken the deal.....Ride Every Other Day! I was gonna lame out.
   So I walked down to the odd little gym down on Sunset with the word Soul up on the marquee and the row of stationery bikes in the back and the men all dressed in black with The Wall emblazoned on their hairless chests and I thought Okay I'll do their dinky little work out and feel like I took a pseudo rest day but didn't completely flake. Bring it boys.
    And they kicked my ass. Brutality. Thighs screaming in anerobic fixed positions. Ruthless calesthenics with weights and dance moves. Couldn't keep my balance, couldn't breathe, almost collapsed and then at the end, no not the end!, 40 minutes on a bike spinning at a pace that reminded me of chasing my buddy Etsu's team up a mountain road in New York. My heart beat and vomit become one matter of will.
   And the whole time the guy who lead us was laughing and smiling and he and the whole miserable process couldn't have been more fun. What a lark. What a fun little diversion. How nice to be pulled off the non fiction novel of "my bike ride" and into their jazz dance, ab ripping, pose and posture posting world where all my endurance meant squat really, and I remembered how much fun it is to leap around and laugh.
  Kinda thing you need on a crappy early February Day.
  Thanks boys.