Give Me That Old Time Technology

I don't consider myself to be a Luddite (for those of you who aren't familiar with that term, go here) in the purest sense. My recent KW trip had moments where I would have resorted to Luddite tactics, though. Fortunately for the woman in the commuter jet blathering on her cell phone, the flight attendant moved us up about eight rows and out of the sound of her voice. Otherwise, I think I would have said something very unkind and caused a boatload of hassle.

Why is it that electronic devices like DVD players, computers, MP3 players are limited to the individual user (ideally, although there was someone using a device on this trip without...to my amazement) and cellular telephones have to be public? I don't want to know your personal business, and if you are doing your personal business, I don't want to hear you AT OVERFULL VOLUME. I doubt the rest of the passengers nearby want to, either. It's enough to make you do bad things.

The roots of my technophobia, I think, are the result of not following what some tech-geeks would call digital agnosticism. I would love to have a Suunto or Polar heart rate monitor without having to have a Wintel platform. Don't tell me I can have it both ways by getting a dual platform Macintosh or installing software that allows me to run Windows (which, BTW, I do have). It's the same reason I loathe Google Video, YouTube, and sites that have embedded video/audio players, such as Versus, Inside Triathlon, and Triathlon.org (ITU's web site). I have perfectly good software (OEM, or legally downloaded, or purchased from Apple) that plays and edits v/a; which I use for my own purposes. Give me the material and let me watch it in the manner I wish. Half the fun is being able to manipulate, cut stuff out and make my own viewing experience that much more enjoyable.

My complaint isn't limited to just Wintel/PC, either. Apple is just as guilty at the anti-democratization of technology: Build a phone that does everything but bring you a beer and do your laundry, but limit it to a single service provider/network. Oh, and let's make the d@mned thing so friggin' expensive that only the well-off and the kids with a butt-ton of disposable income (or stupid parents) who want to make that I have the latest and greatest gadget statement will afford it. Hey, I'd love to have a cell phone that holds my music, too. Perfect for those training runs or rides where I might be in BFE; one less item to carry.

However, I will not be bludgeoned into moving all my phone service from the provider I'm with just to get an iPhone. I'll gladly wait until a) the price plummets, and b) the number of service providers expands so I truly have a choice.

High-tech, realistic video games, TiVo, movies on demand...what would my grandparents think if they were alive today? As it is, I'm frighteningly close to the point where the technological advances are outstripping my ability to adapt and keep up, personal finances (read: frugality and willingness to live in obsolescence) notwithstanding.

Something Money Cannot Buy

Fresh back from a six-day respite in Key West. It was amazing to find out how much money it would take to do anything, from the morning coffee to the evening nightcap. A house that was no larger than my 1,000-something-square foot home, with less than one-tenth the yard space, just up the block from Ernest Hemingway's home, was going for a little over three times what I purchased my place for three years ago. Was it cute? Well, yes, it was a cute little cracker cottage house...enough space between you and your neighbor to hand across a cup of coffee in the morning. So what you're paying for is the privilege of not having a yard to mow. In a neighborhood where the wealthy and the poor live cheek-by-jowl. In a place where you have a big, honking bullseye on you from June 1 to December 1, just daring the tropical storm activity to come.

Since I talked at length about the hefty, hoary, hirsute herd spending $50 a whack, contending for the right to be called Hemingway's nickname, I won't go much further there.

It's pretty simple to understand why, during vacation, tourists wallets become slimmer as their waistlines expand. Especially in a place like KW, where the daytime and evening temperatures fluctuate by only a couple of degrees, and both just this side of infernal. All you want to do is nothing. And even nothing can make you hunger and thirst, which leaves you little choice but to take care of the need. I stepped on the scale this morning after my spinning class and nearly shrieked in horror; I'm the heaviest I've been in nearly 18 months, save for a time right after my first half-marathon when I took a week off and ate like a horse.

In spite of the horror, I realize this is a temporary situation. Consistent training, and not a small amount of dietary wisdom, over the next months, will get me back closer to the weight I was when I was racing well in the spring. Much like Mark Allen's advice to Chris McCormack: 'you need to be fat in July (read: early season), you need to be lean in October, when it really counts (read: Ironman world championship).'

You cannot buy thin. All you can do is be thin when it counts - race day.

Las Vegas Has Elvis Because Key West Picked First

There' nothing like going on a week's vacation...arrive in town to find two hundred portly, middle-aged-to-elderly men who all have worked very hard over the years to look like Ernest Hemingway in his later years. Each years' winner becomes local royalty. For them, it's a good thing; all they have to do is come back each year to this overpriced spit of land out in the Atlantic and judge future contests. No more political campaign-like madness for them, thank you very much.

And it does feel much like a political campaign, when you look at it from the surface. I saw screen-printed t-shirts, fans, placards; heard chants of individual supporters - usually family and close friends - more money raised and thrown about (in the general direction of the Key West High School scholarship fund) over the course of three days. Sloppy Joe's, the KW bar where 'Papa' Hemingway was reported to have written some of his greatest works, appears to be the center of the universe; Capt. Tony's, just up the block heading west, probably handles the overflow handily.

So, what would 'Papa' do?

I had the chance to talk to the preeminent, the primary, and the persistent. On Saturday morning just before a ritual "running of the bulls" finalist parade, a kindly gentleman, one of the more recent 'Papas,' took the measure of my question. He thought for a few seconds, and replied, 'I'm not certain that "Papa" would understand it.' The family member of a first-timer, fervently (and drunkenly) cheering for his Italian-accented, stumbling moment in the spotlight during the second round of 'Papa' wannabes, told me she did not think Hemingway would understand it, either.

They may be right. A man like Hemingway, who wrote much on the dignity of the individual identity...the aloneness of the man on a mission (or fool's errand), would have been confused by the number of men over the past 27 years who have tried to physically emulate him...many of them on their 20th attempt at last count; the organizers provide pins counting the number of years each participant has show up to pony up his U. S. Grant...and then some. The closest one was a local. The farthest one came from Australia.

And it's the elderly, portly 'Papa' they emulate; a young man was prohibited from competing in years past as the young Hemingway, complete with World War I-era Red Cross ambulance driver uniform.

I guess it means something. We - and by we, I mean our society - look at the decadent, white jump-suited, paunchy Elvis; to the paunchy, hard-drinking, hoary and hirsute Hemingway, as our ideal men. Perhaps this has much to do with the lives of leisure they led prior to their tragic departure from this mortal coil. Problem is, we forget how much labor and effort, the ball-busting, blood, sweat, toil and tears they shed in the development of their craft. A Hemingway short story, such as A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, or Death In The Afternoon takes much longer to write than it takes to read. It's the work, and the life experience that seeps into each word, each page, that takes so much longer. All that labor and expense paid dividend in the end, allowing both their aimless, chemical-induced life.

I have more respect for 'Papa' than for Elvis, though. At least he was still able to walk from Sloppy Joe's to his house, with a potty stop at the kapok tree on the way. Hemingway could be content with buying a drink. Elvis had to buy his friends.