I had an epiphany a few days ago. There was a television commercial a few years ago which, for a bright shining moment, brought "epiphany" into the collective vocabulary of the day. Its one of those words which I savor using, and this is a good day to bring it out and use it. The epiphany involved George Romero. Sort of- it involved the what I can only was the inspiration for the zombies of Romero's classic "Dawn of the Dead", which in their turn, were parodies or paid homage to in the equally brilliant (but nowhere near as dark) fashion in "Shawn of the Dead".
Jennifer and I were at the gym. I had planned to do some shoulder work, and then spend the majority of my time on the indoor track. Lifting completed, I told Jennifer I was going to the track. I started the stopwatch app on my phone, and commenced walking. I had not gotten very far (maybe a quarter of a lap) when I was confronted with a classic Formula One racing dilemna: do I venture out onto the dirty part of the track and attempt a three-wide pass? Here's the quick F1 "backgrounder": oddly enough, in F1 racing, the dirty part of the track is the part where cars aren't normally driven. Because of this, debris (generally tire clag) collects there, whereas the clean part of the track remains clean because the cars are cruising along at speeds well in excess of 150mph (240kph). And, in my opinion, three cars side-by-side (three-wide) is visually a lot of fun, and fairly rare.
So, there I was, approaching the corner when I came up on a man I would guess to be in his lower seventies and a lady in her sixties. She was on the inside lane- recognized everywhere and mandated at our track as the slow lane- walking at a robust pace with her right arm swinging wide to the right with every stride. In the middle lane was the gentleman. He was slower, but I had to admire the fellow for being on the track- and he was putting forth a great effort, even with about a fifteen degree list to the right and being very hunched over. She was slowly but surely passing the gent, but his listing gait concerned me a bit. The good news was that even though he was effectively in the passing lane with his turn signal on, he was staying in the lane.
I had seen enough- I hit my afterburners, and my orange New Balance MT610v2's responded beautifully, providing traction and lateral stability as I passed my trackmates before they even knew I was overtaking. During my session, I passed the lady four times and lost track of how many times I passed the gent.
In personal I.T.-related news, at my contract job I've started to do some programming, which is a lot more fun that just quality control. My database project has moved forward a bit, with a new table waiting in the wings, and some physical reorganization of digital media in the Secret Underground Lair. Finally, I almost pulled the trigger and bought a domain name, but then I heard that ICANN is supposed to be releasing some new TLDs (Top Level Domains). One of these would be perfect for the site I'm planning, but I may just go with a different site name just to get online.
Lastly, inquiring folks might be wondering what Michael Bay is doing in the title. Its pretty simple, really: as I passed the two walkers, I didn't look to the side or back. For a brief moment, I imagined myself piloting an F1 car and passing the other two at Monza, the sudden blast of dirty air from my wing causing the other two to momentarily lose control and slowing to avoid colliding into each other. I could see the checkered flag....
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
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