Last March, when I had my first swim meet the same weekend as the great blogger meet-up, NPW, Stefanie and Lara came to watch me compete not drown, quickly. After my race, one of them (I think it was Lara?) asked me what I think about while I swim. I didn’t have an answer to that question at the ready. Now, I do. I think about Lara asking me what I think about while I swim. But sometimes I think it was Stefanie who asked the question, and sometimes I think it was NPW. As I go, I scour the back of my brain for the original memory, but it’s gone. Maybe ya’ll can clear it up in the comments.
There are other things I think about when I swim, such as:
- Elbows up!
- What shall I make for breakfast today?
- All of the perfect traits I would want in a boyfriend, as if knowing exactly what I want will make him appear out of thin air. Then I usually create the perfect man from an amalgam of all of the guys I know, discarding all the less palatable qualities.
- How many strokes I have taken until getting to the wall. (See the title.)
- And sometimes there’s just that empty buzzing sound.
When I bike to work, it’s the same thing, except I do a little more math. Take this kind of inner monologue from yesterday’s ride:
You don’t even realize how much this seat hurts your butt until you sit on it again for the second day. So this ride is 3 miles there, and three miles back, that’s 6 miles. Man, for the first time in his life, Obama looked dorky when they got that picture of him on his bike. I can’t even imagine what I look like, because I’m pretty dorky every day. And my car gets about 32 miles to the gallon since I started driving like an 80 year old. Oh man, that is one weird shadow I’m casting. Better suck in that gut! So how many trips do I have to take to equal a gallon of gas? Easy. 32 divided by 6. Which is… You know who doesn’t give you any damn room on the road when passing? School buses, that’s who. What is the deal with that? Oh wait, I was trying to divide 32 by 6 when I was so rudely interrupted by almost dying. That number does not go evenly. What is the closest integer to 32 that’s divisible by 6? I haven’t thought the word “integer” since graduating high school. Cool. I know! 30. Okay, so let’s say I get 30 miles to the gallon. That’s 5 trips! Five days of biking to save one gallon of gas, which is currently $4.29 at the station I go to. So if I bike for a week, I save $4.29. Dude, that is not a lot of cash, in the grand scheme of things. You don’t notice how bad roadkill really smells until you start biking to work. Yuck! So if I owe the credit card company $39 for paying a day late, it would take me how long to save that money by biking? I’m in way over my head with this math here. Let’s round the fee up to $40, and round the gas down to $4. (I wish.) That’s 10 gallons. And 5 trips is one gallon. Do I want to times 5 by 10? Or divide? I’m tired, but man, my arms are looking hot! No, I got it, it would take me 50 trips to save that money. That means (roughly) biking to work every day this summer, rain, shine or heat wave.
I should probably just get a second job.
