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Whinge
State-Dependent Memory, RWE
posted: 09/02/09
Background: This is a recurring installment wherein I examine the effect of mostly cheesy music video absorption during the '80s and early-'90s and its intersection - in my brain - with bike racing. Read up for the backstory on State-Dependent Memory and all the rest. (Or this stuff is going to make no sense whatsoever. Which is fine, I guess.)
Rest Week Edition!
A rest week has snuck up on me and I am thrilled about it. As such, less pain. Less pain means fewer repressed-memory music video triggers. Let us all be grateful.
Still, a few items of note. I do not wish to disappoint.
Last Sunday was a warmup for the State Championship Time Trial. I didn't feel too hot, dealing with some allergies (I hope), but managed to ride okay-ish and took third in my class. In my head, the entire two laps on a 16-mile course, this.
Yes, my heart was:
Beeeeeeeating like a hammmmmmmmer...
Beeeeeeeating like a hammmmmmmmmmmmmmmmerrrrrerr!
Not state-dependent, but a definite worm. Cannot. Make. It. Leave.
On my Monday coffee/recovery ride (which, I might add, was a personal best in terms of sluggishness, topping out at an all-time low average of 57 watts - yes, FEAR ME), on arrival at the cafe the classic rock was piping through, per usual. Lotta Floyd. And also Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' Refugee. And that tune (and the associated video) always reminds me of Petty's American Girl.
And that tune always reminds me of the kidnapping scene from this.
And that memory, all coming to me on a Monday morning, sitting in my bike gear, drinking a latté and enjoying a blueberry muffin at Riverwalk Coffee Roasters, had me recalling a group ride from the early-'90s which occurred, as I remember it, the morning after I'd seen "Silence of the Lambs," a film that had scared me so badly that I hadn't been able to sleep at all the night before. So I'm in the paceline on the ride and someone a few bikes up mentions that they'd seen the film earlier that week and they start to recount details and I just freak out and start yelling "SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP!!!" And then I fell back to the back of the group where I cowered the rest of the ride. Because I am a very, very strong man.
Thanks, Buffalo Bill.
Nothing on Tuesday's ride that I recall. Today brought brief tempo and a smidgen of threshold (like 15 minutes total of work, because it's a rest week, get it?). On regular build weeks, heading out from my driveway even the very thought of spending 50 minutes total at 15 watts above FTP in half an hour is generally enough to conjure up, well... stuff like this.
Today, on the way out, something that's on my time trial warmup playlist.
Once done with my mercifully brief piddlin', I headed back home easy and took note of the fact that at the moment there are probably more road reconstruction projects going on in the state of Maine than at any time since Eisenhower was in office. It's sort of comical. Stimulus. And stuff.
I live off of one of the busier residential through streets in the county. Half a mile of that street has been ripped up for more than two months now. That's right: two months to repave a stretch of road ~2,600' in length. I get to ride it coming and going. And just about every day a flagger waves me through, down a single lane, forgets (or just doesn't care) to radio to the guy at the other end with the other stop sign on a stick that a cyclist is coming through, and lo and behold, I find myself riding into oncoming traffic. It's stupendous. And I'm sure the motorists simply draw the conclusion that I, the guy on the bike, am flouting the law and riding selfishly and recklessly. Happens nearly every day. If I weren't so tired heading out and so tired heading in I'd say something about it. But I just keep on riding through the carnage. Dear road crew, please leave.
And all of this, of course, brought me to this on my last mile home, one of my favorite grooves ever. Enchanté indeed.
MTV. It's where kids like me saw a lot of T n' A in the '80s.
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September 2009
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»State-Dependent Memory, Vol. 17
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»State-Dependent Memory, RWE
August 2009
»State-Dependent Memory, Vol. 15
»State-Dependent Memory, Vol. 14
»State-Dependent Memory, Vol. 13
»State-Dependent Memory, Vols. 10-12
»State-Dependent Memory, Vol. 9
»State-Dependent Memory, Vol. 8
»State-Dependent Memory, Vol. 7
»State-Dependent Memory, Vol. 6
»State-Dependent Memory, Vol. 5
»State-Dependent Memory, Vol. 4
»State-Dependent Memory, Vol. 3
»State-Dependent Memory, Vol. 2
»State-Dependent Memory, Vol. 1
»Nobody Blogs Anymore
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