As it is with all new interests, there is a steep learning curve in the beginning when one is trying as gracefully (or as in my case, not so gracefully) integrate themselves into their new “hobby”, and judo is proving to be no different. And as I have mentioned already, my “integration” to this new sport apparently, seems to include my waking up with mysterious new injuries.

I give you Exhibit B:

While I don’t rightly remember the moment it happened or anything, nor is it causing me any grief now, it is a reminder that this is a physical sport and these things are going to happen. Sure triathlon is a physical sport too, but no one is trying to knock you off your center of gravity while you do it.  Unfortunately though, these new bruises are also a reminder that someone is taking advantage of my flabby old lady arms in order to throw me to the mat so yeah, maybe its time I also reconsider that second helping of Hamburger Helper for dinner, you know what I’m saying? Fortunately, I can more or less explain away this recent injury as a “sex thing” and nobody will be none the wiser as to the developing bat wings under my arms.

Anyway, another thing that I am still learning as part of this whole integration process, is the learning of all the new Japanese terms. Like pseudo-yogi soccer mom’s commonly referring to their stretchy poses by fancy Sanskrit names during yoga, judo people like to talk about whatever it is their doing in another language to, you know, make things extra confusing for the new-comers I guess.  I am assuming this can only be to offer them some sort of strategic advantage. Seriously, by the time I’ve clued into whatever it they’re trying to convey to me – i.e. the type throw they’re about to perform on me – my ass is already on the mat.

Here’s how that exchange typically goes:

My partner: “I’m going to do an ‘Ō goshi’ now” (Hip throw)

Me:

Next thing I know …

… I’m counting ceiling tiles and wondering what the hell just happened.

(In case you’re wondering, I’d be the guy in blue.)

I would think the blank expression on my face might tip them off that I am absolutely clueless about what they’re telling me, but apparently “to remain silent is understood to consent” is a big thing for the Japanese because I’m on my clueless ass in about 2.5 nanoseconds each and every time. 

At times we do what called “Uchikomi” (Repetition training), the repeated practice of a throwing motion up to the point where the throw would actually be executed (the simulation stops at that point). The other evening for example, our leader (“Sensei”) began counting out our repetitions in Japanese for us to follow along to and I swear, everyone else was almost down at the other end of the mat and nearly done by the time I realized he wasn’t having a grand mal seizure and speaking gibberish.

Now I’m all for “tradition” and all, but … why?

Can’t we just speak English and all just get along?

Why the need to be fancy?

(I’m looking at you too Yoga.)

Where my partner might be trying to confidently forecast to me what his exact intention is to perform on me, all I’m hearing is the creepy backwards talking dwarf from Twin Peaks.

–

As it turns out, I have no problem looking like a total clod in front of everyone when it comes to being laid out like cheap hooker by my 16-year-old step daughter, but appearing as a half wit whenever anyone opens their mouth?

Not so much.

I’m just saying that it might have been helpful if someone would have recommended that I also pick up an English-Japanese dictionary before coming to my first class, that’s all. However if that’s the ‘thing’ to do, I suppose can always enrol myself for a few night courses at the community college and take my bumps in the meantime. So be it. Until then however, everything they say to me inevitably just means something along the lines of “you’re going to end up on your ass”.

What’s Japanese for “Brace yourself, fat boy”?

Some things I’m learning in this integration process are less obvious and more, shall we say, subtle, like that you don’t have to immediately say “thank you” each time someone throws you to the mat successfully. And by “successfully”, I mean they don’t also break you in any way while doing so. I know it’s not necessary, but I cant help myself – it’s %100 impulsive on my part. I get that’s not exactly a ‘gift’ they’re giving me per se, but still, I do feel obligated to express my sincerest appreciation to my partner that my body did not wind up crumpled and crushed like an old box of Saltines. Call me polite; call me obsessive-compulsive; call me a typical over-the-top Canadian, whatever – but the fact that you didn’t end up in a full body cast is worth positively acknowledging someone else for.

That’s all I’m sayin’.

Also, you don’t necessarily need to immediately apologize either if you do something wrong which, in my case, is very fucking often.

All you need to do is bow to one to one another and all is forgiven.

What kind of madness is this?

And seeing how the complete absence of colour on my belt (‘Obi‘) clearly identifies me as an easy target among the other members, it’s good to know that the holding of grudges in judo is frowned upon.  So if bowing politely is what enables all that to go down peacefully, then I’m all freakin’ for it.

However, if there’s one Japanese word that strikes particular fear in me, it’s “Randori”, which roughly translates in English to “free practice”. In other words, this is the point in the class where everyone else gets to throw around the new guy like a rag doll. Being among the few new people to the club, as soon as I hear that word – Randori – I begin to break out into a sweat. And not the usual “I’m fat, out of shape and I just spent the last 60 minutes staring into a bright white light near to death” kind of sweat, but more the kind of sweat you get when you agree to, say, agree to go three rounds with Mike Tyson; the “Holy shit, I’m fucked now” kind of sweat. I might be new to judo, but I’m no idiot — I’ve been around the block.  I can see the eager glint in the eyes of the all the other more skilled and accomplished members as they begin to circle around me sensing fresh prey, and I immediately begin to feel like the gazelle who’s just mindlessly wandered into an open African plain filled with hungry lions.

What’s the Japanese term for “RUN FOR IT!”?

God help me.

Here we go again: I awoke this morning with another strange judo injury.

Unlike four broken ribs though, this one is a little more mysterious. I don’t rightly recall anything happening specifically that might have resulted in something like this, and there’s really no pain or discomfort whatsoever now, but still …

… WTF?

Is this a normal judo thing?

I mean, how this happened exactly is a complete unknown, but it does have me wondering now how many more “mysterious” bumps and bruises are going to suddenly begin showing up on my body given that I’m still so new to all this physical judo stuff. Of course I accept that it’s going to be difficult in the beginning – anything anything new typically is – however if mystery injuries are going to be a “thing” then I’d like to know about it now, so as in the case of my inexplicably bruised big toe, maybe it means hammering on my poor piggies with a ball peen hammer each morning as part of my usual waking up process in order to toughen them up. A bit unorthodox, sure … but so is smearing your ass with chamois cream before long bike rides.

Just sayin’ …

Having said that, I believe that better steps are already being taken as part of our normal “warm-ups” at the beginning of each class in order to condition my soft and spongy body for the rigours of being tossed and thrown and I have to say, as different as they all are, these new exercise routines are just as shitty as anything we ever conjured up for ourselves in triathlon.

For example, as part of these new warm-ups we (get this) … skip.

Yup, I’m nearly 50 years old and just now taking up skipping. And not the cool ‘hardcore boxer’ kind of skipping either, but more the ‘school girl frolicking through the tulips’ kind of skipping.

To summarize, not this …

–

… but this:

–

Just fucking shoot me already.

Truthfully, I want to punch myself.

And it sucks too.

After about only a minute, I’m sweating like the pig who knows he’s dinner.

Honestly though, it isn’t much different than all those silly ABC drills that I used to do while running along the Friendship Trail all those years ago (click HERE), except this time around I’m not wearing tights and I’m not doing it out in the general public so, yeah … progress?

But there are also these shitty things called “the beach” and, believe me, there is nothing ‘relaxing’ about it whatsoever. These ‘wave-like’ movements if you will, simply involve sitting on your butt and then, using your arms, scootching (yes, that’s the technical term) yourself along the mat backwards.

Kind of like this, but in reverse:

–

(Sorry, couldn’t help myself)

Sounds easy enough though, right?

Yeah, no.

Let’s put it this way: if the founding fathers of judo’s absolute prime goal was to make simple, ordinary looking movements as difficult and shitty as possible, then they one hundred percent succeeded as this particular exercise has nothing on my one-armed swim drills in the pool, let me tell you – these suck too!

But I will do them.

Oh, and as for these special “inch worm push-ups” we do …

And then there’s something called “shrimping”.

Of course being the complete doofus I am, this is the first thing that comes to my mind:

–

What can I say?

I like shrimp.

However there is nothing tasty about this kind of shrimp and, like everything else, I find it hard to do. The idea of the exercise/movement is to develop the lateral hip movement that is used to escape from any number of holds on the ground which, in my case at my current skill level, are likely to come very frequently. The hands are also used in conjunction with the hips to simulate pushing an attacker away instead of what I would ordinarily do I guess, which would be to simply lie there and take it like Ned Beatty.

In the very beginning though, the most feared of all was practising break falls and (*gasp*) somersaults, and I was once even asked to do a cartwheel.

‘He’s joking, right?’, I thought quietly to myself.

Nope …

He was serious, and then proceeded to execute a perfect series of fluid cartwheels down the mat.

Oh shit.

You see, I feel that we triathletes spend ridiculous amounts of time protecting and shielding ourselves from getting too needlessly bumped and jostled around in order to prevent any injury to our bodies and thereby having to delay our precious training regimes, and now here I’m expected to willing tumble myself around like I’m in the Cirque du Soleil.  Shit, the first time I tried what’s called a “rolling break fall”, I expected my entire body to shatter like a sack of light bulbs, but it didn’t and now they’re even getting a little easier to boot as I keep practising.  At least I’m not scared of them so much anymore.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m no Mary-Lou Retton or anything … but I am learning and I am getting better.

I completely tanked on the cartwheel though.

The thing is, as crazy and challenging as all these new exercises and movements are to me, they all make perfect total sense in the grand scheme of the sport and I understand why they’re important to master (i.e. so that I don’t get choked out like a bitch by my sixteen year old step-daughter) and the fact that I still find them extremely hard to do – is kinda awesome.  I guess if I’ve been missing anything over the past 16 months of global pandemic bullshit, it’s the sense of “moving forward” at something, making progress, and then taking pride in having gotten much better at something other than being able to throw a gnarly ‘chicken wing’ after crushing a dozen beers.

If anything, I had been back-sliding into old ways and unproductive lifestyle habits, so I am happy to have something with which to work at and improve on once again – a clean slate if you will. And as nerve-wracking as it all is still, and as silly as I end up feeling sometimes, there is no real pressure to be good at any of it just yet, as long as you’re having fun and, despite all my bitching … I’m definitely having fun.  Funnily enough, that was the very “fun” philosophy that a wise friend once shared with me years ago (Hi Steve!) back when I first started practising a healthier lifestyle, and one I have tried to endorse and embody ever since. And after the complete shit show of a year that I just endured, I am extremely pleased and grateful to be back on track with that positive mindset once again ...  bruised toes and all.

God help me.

I have another confession to make.

(Seriously, who’s surprised at this point?)

Anyway, I may have just gone and found myself another “Bro-mance”, so to speak. So move over Jens Voigt; step aside Simon Whitfield … meet Bob:

‘Who’s Bob’ you ask?

Well, Bob’s the extremely nice guy who loaned me his orbital sander for, like, practically the whole summer.

(Sorry, bud.)

This sexy little number here:

But in my defence, it did see quite a bit of action over the past, what, two months now? You could even say I suppose that by this point, I have bonded pretty strongly with that orbital sander as we’ve made some pretty cool things together in that time. Most of them you’ve probably seen before, but because I’m still all a-glow over all these successful DYI accomplishments this year I’m going to show them off once more:

So it’s not like the sander didn’t get any serious lovin’ or anything.

And don’t get me wrong, I appreciate a good “project” as much as the next Manly Man – my awesome neighbour Danny, the “Pharaoh of Fix-it” excluded, of course – but if I can take five minutes to do what it would have inevitably taken me five hours, five beers and three billion blisters to do, not to mention a hangover the next day – I’M IN, BABY!!

While I do admit to taking on some tasks for the sole expressed purpose of getting shit-faced (ie. Frisbee), sanding wood is not necessarily one of them. After taking three weeks in my driveway to do an old wheelbarrow frame by hand last summer was, well, agonizing.

Therapeutic, sure … but agonizing.

Never again.

I’m sure I gave myself bursitis.

Now?

Give me the sweet, gentle tickle of a smoothly purring orbital sander any day.

I’d even go so far as to say that using that orbital sander became almost meditative in the same sense as, say, scrunching your toes up in plush shag carpeting – it feels strange but not altogether unpleasant … ya know? In fact, sometimes when I’m using the sander it’s more about me than it really is about the “project” per se. I just hope that this isn’t also the first sign of me developing some weird new fetish or something, because I’m pretty sure that most of my neighbours are only just barely tolerating me at this point as it is. So something twisted like that would likely just push them right over the edge altogether and I’d end up being chased out of town for good.

And who would blame them really?

They’ve already endured years and years of seeing me flaunt my rather hefty frame all over the area in tight-fitting cycling jerseys, turned many a blind eye whenever I jog past in unflattering threadbare running tights, and have even been very patient with the constant “work in progress” that is my front yard, so I’m pretty confident that then having to also see me do questionable things with a power tool in my garage is going to send them automatically running for their torches and pitchforks.

Just sayin’ …

But to tell you the truth, you know what’s really going through my mind when I’m sanding stuff?

Nothing …

It’s a blank slate upstairs …

Absolutely zero percolating in the cubby hole of my cerebral cortex …

It’s glorious.

And now that I’ve taken the sander back to it’s rightful owner once more, having successfully finished all my planned projects – at least the sanding parts anyway – there is now an empty space in my heart, as there is a spot on my workbench.

Goodbye, dear orbital sander …

—

God help me.

I have been wanting to write another story about my mother lately – one that doesn’t involve dead guinea pigs anyway (click HERE) – and lately, most memories of my mom have been coming while listening to the radio, but not necessarily in the way you might think.

My mother loved music – “rock and roll music” in particular.  Now by “rock and roll”, I’m specifically referring to the likes of Gary Lewis & the Playboys, Neil Diamond, and Johnny Mathis, which I realize would be questioned by most other music aficionados as even being “rock and roll” in the first place but, alas, to my mother these guys were absolute bad asses. And it’s not like my mother recognized or could even distinguish the different types of rock and roll like, say, Garage, Punk, Glam, New Wave, et al., it was the Big Three or nothing; everything else was referred to as “that crap you listen to”.

Primarily, my mom listened to her rock and roll in the car while driving us around between ball practices, errands, doctor appointments, etc., and periodically we would listen to something else; lest we forget the great Stealing Home soundtrack binge in the summer of ‘88 where it was on repeat in the cars cassette deck for at least three months. But for whatever reason, it always came eventually back to the guy with a weird fascination for sad clowns, the Jewish Elvis and a black, Texas crooner.

Needless to say, I don’t think back on family road trips very fondly.

It was only on very rare occasions where we were allowed to either change the station, or more correctly: eject the God forsaken “Johnny’s Hits” cassette from the cars console for – finally – some sweet reprieve, and listen to the radio instead. Even more rare, was our being granted the opportunity to outright put something on ourselves that wasn’t one of the big three. Honestly, you had a better chance of running into a break-dancing Sasquatch by the side of the road, but we remained hopeful nonetheless.

And it was probably a good thing we didn’t get to choose our own music very often, because “that crap you listen to” was nearly always misheard or misunderstood by my mom and would then be subsequently banned from ever being listened to in the house again. Had we been able to play more of our music for our mom in the car growing up, it’s likely that the only thing that she wouldn’t have been banned would have been Gary Lewis & the Playboys, Neil Diamond, and Johnny Mathis.

The Big Three.

Thankfully, music was something that I explored and enjoyed more or less on my own as a direct influence of what my friends were into, as well as whatever was popular at the time on Casey Kasem’s weekend broadcast of the American Top 40 that I would listen to on my own in my bedroom, so my mother remained largely ignorant of whatever else was popular at the time and more directly, what it was that I actually enjoyed. It’s not like she was absent or uninvolved in my interests growing up, but she sincerely didn’t think of my music as real “rock and roll” and therefore, dismissed it all as, well … “that crap you listen to”

C’est la vie …

Occasionally however, a song would slip past her defences should she, say, walk into my bedroom abruptly while I was listening to something, or more commonly, suddenly opening the door to get back in the car while we were blasphemously listening to the radio, and she would hear something alarming – or rather, think she heard something alarming – and she’d immediately be off on a tangent about the sanctity of decent music versus “that crap you listen to”, and before you know it … there would be another banning.

Think is, what she thought she heard … was very seldom what was actually being said (sung). Now whether she was actually partially deaf*, or it was actually a cleverly crafted ruse by which she could slap a ‘cease and desist’ order against anything that she deemed as “crap”, which was everything, I’ll never really know but a lot of stuff was banned from being played in our house. And often, these songs will come on the radio now and I will be instantly reminded of those moments when she would be on a misguided tirade over something that she had mistakenly heard, or had assumed about what we were listening to and just smile to myself.

The following are but a few of those specific songs that had suffered the inevitable fate of being ultimately banned from ever being playing in our home.

Thick as a Brick – Jethro Tull

Now, don’t get the idea for one second that I was ever a fan of Jethro Tull at any point growing up, or even knew what the hell he (it) was back then. I was into Kermit the Frog, the Oak Ridge Boys and the Transformers at the time, not British progressive rock flautists. I don’t even recall the exact circumstances in which my mom came to recognize this as an inappropriate song to listen to, but for as long as I can remember, if this song ever came on the radio it was immediately shut down. Pronto! And it t wasn’t for some time later as a teenager that I actually got it out of her why this song was held in such disdain.

You see, my mother wasn’t hearing the songs rather simple refrain: “Your wise men don’t know how it feels / To be thick as a brick”. No sir, she was hearing something entirely different. What my mother was hearing definitely rhymed with “Brick”, and it wasn’t “Lick”, “Chick”, “Hick”, or “Rick”. In fact, when prefaced by the words “Thick as …”, what my mother heard was entirely obscene and absolutely not what Ian Anderson was trying to say, like, at all. What she ever thought about what those “wise men” were “feeling”, we’ll never know.

Yes folks, my mother believed she was hearing it as “Thick as a Prick” (or “Dick”, it was never clear), and she just could not work out in her mind why such an obscene thing would ever be allowed to be played openly over the airwaves. I’m pretty sure she even felt like she was protecting us from these vile vulgarities, and preserving our delicate moral fabrics by preventing us from ever listening to the heinous Jethro Tull** – this song in particular – and it wasn’t until I’d made it to university many years later when I even heard the song in it’s entirety for the first time and realized that is was, well, harmless. I never corrected her though, and I continued to allow her over the years to believe in her falsely prefabricated myth that Jethro Tull was all about the bulging phallus’s.

(Sorry mom, but that’s some funny shit.)

So yeah, when Thick as a Brick comes on the radio, you can bet your sweet bippy which version of the lyrics I’m singing in my head.

Paradise Skies – Max Webster

In 1979, I was five years old. It might have been a year or two afterwards, but I know I was young because we were picnicking in a public park along the Niagara River in Fort Erie, Ontario, and we only ever did that early on in my childhood. Anyway, that’s the year this song was released.  On this particular occasion I remember our having to sit near another table of picnickers who also had a ghetto blaster cranking out all the popular hits, and by “popular” I mean everything other than Gary Lewis & the Playboys, Neil Diamond, and Johnny Mathis. I remember my mom disapproving but as there were no other tables to move to, we were forced to sit there and listen to the offensive cacophony over our buckets of KFC. Everything was swell. It seemed like the perfect evening … “that crap they’re listening to” notwithstanding.

But then, the mood changed considerably when this particular song came on the radio. To anyone else, it would have been maybe the ideal musical anthem for an otherwise glorious and memorable evening along Niagara River, but to my mom it was something different … something dastardly. Suddenly, our cooler was packed and had been hucked into the trunk of the car along with the bucket of chicken and we were bidding a hasty retreat out of the park, tires squealing.

?

Again, I had no idea what had just transpired and it wasn’t until years later when I had the opportunity to question my mother on this point, this time while I was driving her … in my OWN car … where we listen to MY music …

… and the song came on the radio and, of course, she immediately reached over and deftly turned it off.

Of course I wasn’t going to let that slide, so I decided to poke the bear as to why she didn’t like this particular song, and she happened to bring up that same quick evacuation from the Fort Erie riverside park all those years earlier. No kidding! Apparently, this song had come on the ghetto blaster belonging to our neighbours at the next table and my mom had heard the chorus of “Happiness is beginning to ride / From the streets into paradise skies”, as instead being “My penis is beginning to rise / From the sheets into paradise pies”.

The. Fuck?

In her mind, my mother had turned something otherwise innocent into something dirty.

Uh-mazing.

This time around however, I corrected her understanding of the lyrics but the damage had already been done, her brain had been long since programmed only to hear about the nonexistent dick in the song. There was seeing it no other way.  Of course, as a result of this debacle I too can only hear the words penis and paradise pies now, and I am unashamed to sing them at the top of my lungs in the cab of my work truck should it ever come on the radio.

Thanks, mom.

Blinded by the Light – Manfred Mann’s Earth Band

(Yes, yes, I know this is actually a song by Bruce Springsteen. Everyone knows that. But that wasn’t the version of the song that happened to get banned in our house and as far as I know, my mother never even knew that a different Bruce Springsteen version even existed. Regardless, if this little mis-credit annoys you, you can go and start your own blog and re-post my stupid story with the credits being wherever you like. P.S. Bite me.)

In all fairness, my mother never stood a chance the first time we heard this song on the radio. Nobody did, unless you were cool and were already previously familiar with the popular Bruce Springsteen original – which we weren’t. Seriously, it’s practically impossible to decipher what Manfred is actually singing unless you’ve already been previously tipped off, and there are many misinterpretations of the lyrics out there. However, on this occasion when the song happened to come on the radio, in one of those rare instances when I was lucky enough to be allowed to listen to a local (and usually “off limits”) radio station, what my mom heard instead of “Blinded by the light / Revved up like a deuce / Another runner in the night” was “Blinded by the light / Rammed up like a douche / Another boner in the night”.

Again with the dick.

I tried reasoning with her that there was nothing “rock and roll” about douches and it was highly unlikely that’s what the singer was saying, but not being able to really decipher it properly myself and provide a reasonable alternative for her, my argument died a quick and noble death right there on the spot – the song was “sick”, and that’s all there was to it.

End of story … so it was written, so it shall be told.

Hurting Kind (I’ve Got My Eyes on You) – Robert Plant

In the Autumn of 1990 Robert Plant played Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, Ontario as part of the “Manic Nirvana Tour” promoting the album of the same name. It was my first “rock and roll” concert and it was my first time getting high as my seat was in the nose bleed section, meaning I was breathing in everyone’s second hand smoke the whole night. I remember the concert less for the music and more for the incessant need to pound back three large hot dogs from a street vendor outside afterwards. However, this was not the reason why my mother ultimately forbid me from ever playing my CD with my bedroom door open (she had since mellowed in later years and had relented on banning songs from the house entirely, and more from just being in her ‘presence’ in general).

It’s because she thought that Robert Plant himself was (and I quote) “rude”.

Not because anything he ever did, particularly anything involving a mud shark …

… but because of his recent single Hurting Kind (I’ve Got My Eyes on You) that she managed to overhear while I was listening to my new CD fresh from Columbia House and my mother had somehow misunderstood the rather repetitive chorus as being “I’ve Got My Asshole On You”.

But hey, finally … no dick’s.

Thank Christ.

I tried to rationalize with her that the way she heard it didn’t make a lot of sense (thankfully this was long before there was ever such a thing as an online Urban Dictionary), especially considering it was being performed by a bona ride rock star lyricist who wasn’t necessarily known for making such flippant “rude” comments. I probably even tried to show her the written lyrics in the album’s liner notes but she was having none of it … Robert was “rude”.

Again, her mind was made up.

That was it.

There were lots of others of course, however, funny as it may be, Guns & Roses were never banned in our house. Of course, I just never brought them home, like … ever.  You see, as it was back then, it was the kind of guy who wore Guns & Roses t-shirts to school who would most likely torment me in the locker room with vicious tower snaps, swirlies, and the dreaded “purple nurples”, so I did as much as I could to distance myself from all things Guns & Roses.  However when Paradise City came on the radio at some point around that time, my mom was … impressed.

“I like these guys”, she said.

Obviously I was dumbstruck.

“Take me to a very nice city, where the grass is green and the girls are pretty” she quoted back to me.

(Obviously she had been paying attention.)

“That’s really positive, don’t you think? I think so. Do you have any, wait … who is this again?”, she continued.

If I was dumbfounded before, I probably passed out at this point.

Clearly she had ignored the whole “Just a urchin livin’ under the street / I’m a hard case that’s tough to beat / I’m your charity case so buy me something to eat” part, but that’s okay. Personally, I was just stoked that there was something else – anything else – that she could add to her haloed triumvirate of “rock and roll” … Gary Lewis & the Playboys, Neil Diamond, Johnny Mathis, and Guns & Roses.

God help me.

*This is most certainly not the case, as my mother could hear a child’s whisper all the way down the street in heavy rush hour traffic, with a freight train going past. It was her super talent.

**I’m also confident in telling you that she had even trained herself to recognize the song’s folky acoustic guitar intro so that she could instantaneously switch the station within seconds.

I have a shameful confession to make: I have taken lately to drinking fruity alcohol drinks in my garage instead of … *gasp* … beer.

I know … the shame of which goes without saying.

Previous to this summer, my garage was strictly considered a “Beer Only” zone in keeping with strict compliance with the traditional and commonly accepted Manly Man’s law that governs the land (click HERE and HERE) round these parts. To even consider drinking anything else other beer except maybe a coffee in the early morning, or perhaps a cold bottle of water after a hot bike ride, was completely unthinkable and subject to potentially harsh teasing and ridicule.

Fruit flavoured anything was simply ludicrous.

That’s what pansies drank.

Cider?

No way.

Wine coolers?

Uh uh.

Pink Whitney?

Seriously …

Get real.

So to even consider bringing a grapefruit Radler from the Waterloo Brewing Co. home in the first place seemed like complete madness.

A sacrilege even. 

I rationalized to myself at the time that I was being a good husband in having tasty alcoholic “froofy” drinks around for Kelly, who is rather particular when it comes to her booze but, honestly, these things are damn tasty! And then I made the mistake and brought a “Black Cherry” flavoured one home as well after an excruciatingly hot and nasty day at work and, well … game changer.

I more or less flipped teams pretty much instantly.

“So long beer, Hello pansy drinks!”

Really though, who wouldn’t want to crush something that tastes like a liquefied package of this:

Not this fucking guy!

No, sir.

That’s some tasty shit right going on right there.

You know what doesn’t necessarily give you that instant chuggable sense of total satiation?

This shit here:

These are “hops” you uncultured rube.

Face it you snob … they don’t

It looks like rabbit food for God sakes.

So call me crazy, call me a traitor, call me the Benedict Arnold of beer, whatever, but you know what I really don’t immediately want when I’m all hot and sweaty?

“Earthy and piney”.

Hells no!

(A decent blueberry wheat excluded of course, for which I would step over my own mother for.)

I’d rather have something crisp and satisfying to the pallet that doesn’t first make my face nearly implode in on itself.

Therefore, while it’s still all hot and humid outside I have more or less converted exclusively to drinking fruity alcohol drinks instead of beer while I toil away in the garage and, hey, if it’s still a little before noon that’s okay – at only 2.5% it’s practically a juice anyway.

But then I discovered the “Mixer Pack” from Mad Jack; Blue Raspberry, Tropical Punch, Cherry Berry, Watermelon Kiwi, and all at a respectable %5, meaning that I could also still get my prior requisite “garage buzz” on as well.

Oh god yes.

Sign me up!

I’m in love.

So while it’s still summer, before the chill of Autumn and Winter arrives, I’m totally all on board with the pansy fruit drinks.  When the temperatures start to drop a little and Hailey and I begin to throw around the Frisbee more, I’ll inevitably revert back to my old traditional beer-loving ways but, in the meantime I’ll unapologetically enjoy my froofy Radlers, thank you very much.

Hate if you need to.

God help me.