Scenic Utah

As any reader of my blog knows, I’ve just spent the past weekend crewing for a buddy of mine in an ultra bicycle race in Utah. The race is called the Hoodoo 500. It’s put on by Planet Ultra, which is owned by my friend Debbie Bowling. She’s been in and around the ultra game for years. She knows how to put on a world-class event.

For those of you in my reading audience who are not familiar with ultra-style events, let me give you a quick explanation. Ultra means any running or cycling event that goes beyond what any sane person would do.

I’m a fan of this type of athleticism. I compete as often as possible in these events. When I’m not competing, I try to contribute by crewing for a friend in the event. Again, for the uninitiated, these events go on for way past 24 hours in most cases. It’s necessary for a cyclist or runner to have a chase vehicle with crew members who can hand food and water as the participant runs or cycles.

So that’s what I spent my time doing this weekend, crewing for my friend David Holt in southern Utah.

I told you that to tell you this. The Planet Ultra Hoodoo 500 offers plenty to love. You can sign up for it close to the event time. In some races, you must put up your money and sign up several months ahead of time, not knowing if you will even be available at the time.

The event also has a unique voyager class. This is a solo division, but the rider has no crew following and must fend for themselves.

One of the things most people love about this event is that the pre-race meeting the night before is very short. I timed the event from when Debbie said her first words until she concluded with, “I hope everyone has a good race.” It lasted 19 minutes. This allowed racers and crew to put the final preparations together. We also had a good night of sleep before the race started Saturday morning.

As you can imagine, the race course was absolutely beautiful and scenic, offering mountains, bluffs and hoodoos. The scenery is so amazing, cameras never seem to fully capture it.

I love this race and may be back as a crew member or competitor in the near future.

Now for the bad. The only words I can come up with are bad ass. And by that, I mean David Holt, Joel Sothern and Dave Elsberry. Let me explain what these three men did. David Holt, my good friend who I was crewing for, won the event out-right. At 58, he didn’t just win his age group. He beat kids half his age. Joel Sothern, 53, won the Voyager class out-right, beating people half his age. And Dave Elsberry, 59, came in third place, behind Holt. These men prove that age does not matter.

I had breakfast with all three of them this morning. I think Joel and I will start training together. I hope so, he seems like a pretty cool guy.

Now for the ugly. From what I can tell, the people of Utah, for the most part, are idiots. At the very least, they hate cyclists.

They all seem to drive big pickup trucks with diesel engines. They will purposely pull up to a cyclist, let off of the pedal and then punch it to blow a cloud of diesel smoke at the cyclist. They all seem to get as close as they can to the cyclists to let them know they’re not welcome. And then the oddest thing I’ve ever seen, they actually sit on their horns when driving in the opposite direction to let cyclists know they’re not happy to see them.

Then again, I would be pissed off too if I knew I was headed home to eight wives.

Sophia Loren...probably hates Utah

I grew up in a painfully middle-class family. Both of my parents were school teachers. Getting a good education and going off to college meant everything to them. So I obliged. Sometimes I think education is the worst thing that ever happened to me. But I digress.

I went to a much better school than I could have ever afforded. Generally, kids who come from middle income families go to state universities. In my case, that would have meant LSU. But I had a talent that colleges love. I had the ability to find and catch the guy with the football in his hand and annihilate him. Therefore, I got a scholarship to Tulane University.

Once I graduated from Tulane with a degree in education, I found myself smack dab in the middle of downtown New Orleans, the home of some very wealthy, blue-blood oil money types. It was back in the day before every soccer mommy who dropped their kids off at preschool and needed something to do during the day set out to be a personal trainer. Back then, trainers were few and far between. I guess you can say I was in the first group of fitness trainers.

I learned a lot from these folks. They taught me about the finer things in life. I went to operas, symphonies, art exhibits, fine restaurants and even traveled with them.

I learned something else from them. When you have money and leisure time, you don’t like to wait for anything. You want things to happen instantly. That’s where I first came up with the term Diet Coke Diet.

I’m not talking about the stuff sold by Coca-Cola. I’m talking about the white powder that shows up in a little baggy. Some of these socialites who wore a size 2 wanted to wear a size 1. If they wore a 1, they wanted to wear a 0. Hell, why work for it when you can just shove a little coke up your nose.They would do this all day, until they needed to sleep. Then they had a drug for that. So it was a vicious cycle.

I hate to sound like Grace Slick from Jefferson Airplane but c’mon!

I told you that to tell you this. There’s another coke out there. A coke that probably does more harm, and it’s not a white powder, it’s a dark liquid. I’m talking about Diet Coke and Coke Zero. By the way, I don’t know the difference between the two.

Here’s what I do know. When my clients ask if they have to stop drinking diet soft drinks, I say yes. They think this is not fair. What do you mean not fair? What about before Coke was invented? You think the people in the 1800s said it was unfair it wasn’t invented yet? The point is, you don’t need it to live.

The bigger point is not how bad this product is. It’s the fact that some people think if you drink it in diet form it’s alright for you. So they drink more of it.

I had a theory about diet soft drinks back in the 1980s. Artificial sweeteners can be thrown into the same group. In your liver, it will react to it the same way it reacts to sugar. It can and will cause a glycogen spike. In the 1980s I had no way of substantiating this because I’m not biochemist.

In recent years, I’ve read many articles that agree with my old theory. Not only are diet soft drinks bad for you, these products can aid in keeping you fat. If you need suggestions on beverages to drink, try black coffee. If you have a hypertension or high blood pressure problem, you may want to stay away from it. But in that case, you’d want to stay away from Diet Coke also. Try fresh brewed tea. Before you ask me if black, green or white are OK, I’ll tell you now that they’re all fine. And then there’s my favorite: water.

I make this point with my clients all the time. Everybody wants to know the one thing they can eat or drink with total impunity. It doesn’t exist. Enjoy life.

Sophia Loren...no Diet Coke Diet for her

About two weeks ago I took a mini vacation. It was three days with my friend David, his wife, Susan, and my girlfriend, Serena. The time off meant a lot to me. I’ve literally been working seven days straight since the beginning of the year. When Serena and her daughter took their real vacation to Maine, I had too much work going on to just walk away.

My vacation was going to include running, cycling, hiking and as many massages and cheeseburgers I could fit in. It was all going great until the second day.

I was cruising down St. Mary’s Road. There was about a six percent grade going downhill. Cyclists can easily pick up 40-45 mile an hour pace there. It was a short tunnel, and as I approached it, I realized what I had already known from all the time I spent skiing up there. No matter how close I got to the wall of the tunnel, there would be very little bailout room if a car came to close.

So I slowed my bike to about 25 as I entered. As I heard a car coming up behind me, I squeezed even tighter against the wall.

The white Ford Expedition that passed me about a second later came so close that if I or the driver flinched at any moment I would have been crushed between the behemoth of a vehicle and the wall of the tunnel.

As the three-plus ton vehicle went passed me, I read the license plate. It said “Papa Ryd.” I continued down the mountain following the vehicle into town.

When I got to Mammoth, appearing in the passenger window was an older gentleman. He was close to 70 years old, and was with his wife and several friends.

I quickly changed my attitude and realized the old man probably didn’t see me in the tunnel. I then headed toward the condo.

Not long after, a white flash flew in front of me. It was Papa Ryd again. He turned to nab a parking spot for the Bluesapalooza festival that was going on.

Papa’s exploits caused me to have to do a front wheel stand on my bike to stop in time and avoid hitting his vehicle in a T-bone fashion. That same move a week earlier by a different motorist and different cyclist put my friend in the hospital with a broken hip and elbow. I simply got lucky.

I then pulled around to the passenger side as the party exited the Expedition. I mentioned to him that he almost killed me twice within the last five minutes.

This old geezer replied, and I quote (his words, not mine), “Fuck you, I was trying to hit you, you asshole.”

I replied, “You may be right. I may be an asshole. But why did you try to hit me?”

He said it was because my presence on the road was illegal.

I told you that to tell you this. What Papa Ryd was referring to is the fact that Mammoth has a pedestrian trail that parallels the road I was on. That road is meant for cyclists, joggers, walkers, skaters and other non-motorized vehicles.

Generally, faster cyclists won’t take those trails because they’re littered with kids weaving in and out. It would be unsafe to go 40-plus miles an hour in those conditions.

The point is this: Even though a bike path may be provided, it doesn’t make the road illegal to ride on. I have news for Papa Ryd and every other jerk who ever tried to hit me or any other cyclist in the name of teaching us a lesson: Bicycles have been around a lot longer than cars. Get over yourself.

As for how my conversation ended with Papa Ryd, I just turned and rode away. Let’s face it, you can’t teach an old jackass new tricks.

Sophia Loren...probably hates Papa Ryd

A few days ago I was riding bikes with my buddy Steve, and we got into a conversation about the most grueling sporting event on the planet.

We threw things out like climbing Mount Everest and such. Let’s face it, people have made it to the top of that peak with one leg and blind. Some have gotten to the top and skied down to the bottom.

Not to water down these accomplishments, but I know climbers who are not even as good as I am make it. And trust me, I’m not a great climber.

We tossed around Charlie Engel and the Running the Sahara film. That certainly was no easy feat.

We also threw out the adventure race Raid Gauloises. This list went on and on.

At the end of the day, we decided that the toughest event on the planet was the RAAM, which stands for Race Across America.

Why did we decide this was the grand daddy of all races? Competitors come from around the world to race across the continent of North America, from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic (roughly 3,000 miles), in a non-stop race.

The competitors generally stay on the bikes 22 out of every 24 hours. They sleep for two hours and get right back on the bike. The winner is sure to come in within nine days. There is a 12-day cut-off. The pace and the lack of sleep is maddening.

I told you that to tell you this. Earlier this week I wrote a blog about my close friend and fellow competitor David Holt. As a matter of fact, I will be crewing for him in a 500-mile race in Utah known as the Hoodoo 500.

You can keep track of us on this Web site where I will be blogging (VinnieBlog.com) and tweeting (twitter.com/VinnieTortorich) as much as I can, though my first priority will be keeping David on the road.

I crewed for David two years ago in the Race Across America (RAMM), where he suffered one of his few DNFs (did not finish).

I had never seen a person so prepared for a race. Something that had never happened before, happened around the 600-mile mark. David started to get saddle sores. He was basically wearing the skin from his body.

It was my job, being one of his closer friends on the crew, to dress these injuries.

The first time, they didn’t look so bad. But I also realized that he had 2,400 more miles to finish. I wondered how we would get him there.

One of my ideas was to put two pairs of shorts on him, something I had done myself in 24-hour mountain bike racing when a similar problem happened. Let’s face it, finishing a 24-hour race is a lot easier than finishing a nine or ten day race.

The second time I dressed his sores, he had two silver-dollar round spots of skin, as if someone sanded right through it. I no longer wondered how David would make it to the finish line. I wondered how he could make it another mile, or even a pedal stroke. I watched him go another 200 miles (the next 11 hours), mostly standing up off the saddle to pedal.

I had never seen such a human feat in my life. Once again, I had to dress his wounds. He was at 900 miles at this point. When I took the old bandages off, what I saw shocked me. I was looking at raw muscle fiber. It was being pulverized as if a meat clever had been taken to it. As I re-dressed the injuries, David screamed in agony. I did everything I could to fight back my own tears. I didn’t have the heart to tell him how bad it was.

David climbed back on the bike again. He went up an 11,000-foot peak, mostly out of the saddle.

We then headed into Taos, New Mexico. David was now going into what could be considered shock as the night grew colder. He shivered. We stopped and tried to give him some warm soup in the van.

Throwing everything we had over him, he couldn’t stop shivering. We couldn’t ignore the blood stains all over his shorts.

David had an ambulance ride to a hospital that night in Taos. The attending physician said had we not stopped at that point, David’s injuries could have abscessed and caused him trouble the rest of his life. Two years and tens of thousands of miles of training ended in an emergency room.

I told you all of that to tell you this. Always use a good chamois cream in your shorts. I like to do the double application, both on my skin and in the shorts. If it feels gooey and squishy going on, add a little more then you’ll know you got it right.

One of the biggest errors people make with chamois creams is they try to cheap out on it by using regular skin lubricant. Don’t do this. Use the stuff made to get the job done. Some of my favorites are Chamois Butt’r and Assos (one of my favorites but a little pricey). It’s well worth it. They add witch hazel, which adds a disinfectant quality.

I’ve also been known to use Bag Balm. My little secret is I like to use the combination of Bag Balm with other products like the aforementioned ones.

You may ask, did David have these products available to him? The answer is yes, and he used them liberally.

We all have our theories as to what went wrong. One is the day before as he rode through the desert and the heat rose over 110 degrees, we poured a lot of water down David’s back. It could have settled in his shorts and caused friction.

Another theory is the bike shop that was a partial sponsor gave him several pairs of shorts, which he washed only once and weren’t broken in.

A third theory is David lost so much weight in the last month leading up to the race, his shorts were much looser than they should have been, causing friction. My theory: It was probably a combo dish of all three.

Sophia Loren...no theory necessary

Angeles National Forest

There’s a phenomenon that happens several times a year in the Los Angeles area. It generally happens in the late fall and early spring. I’ve never taken statistics on this, but it seems to happen more in the spring, though I could be way off.

People die.

It doesn’t happen in the traditional sense, as it normally does in L.A., from a mugging, a stabbing or abduction. These deaths occur when people go hiking in the Angeles National Forest.

They’re not eaten by bears or mountain lions, which both exist in the area. They die because when they took off on their hike, it’s 90 degrees. They get lost, and before they find their way out, night falls on them, as well as extremely cold weather.

If you happen to be hiking in cotton, as most of these people usually are, then you don’t have the proper attire, and you can succumb to hypothermia. With exhaustion and dehydration, this could be deadly.

I told you that to tell you this. Back in the 1980s, I spent a lot of summers in Aspen, Colorado. I lead hikers up 12-14,000 foot peaks. Next to having enough water for hydration, the most important thing was making sure these folks had the right clothes. It’s commonly known in high-altitude hiking and mountaineering that cotton is the killer fabric.

What generally worked best back in the day was wool. It has great characteristics. If it’s next to your skin, it naturally wicks water away, keeping you warm and dry. You can actually sweat in wool over a several day period and generally not stink. The fabric doesn’t hang on to bacteria all that well. It’s my personal favorite.

I use wool arm and leg warmers on the bicycle. My favorite company is Ibex. I recommend buying from REI. My undershirts are usually a nice thin layer, generally by Ibex. Lately I’ve been loving another company called Icebreaker. Again, REI is the place to go. Both companies offer these wools in different weights.

Now for the problem with wool. Some people find that wool can be itchy on their skin. That may be true even with these brands, but they use the best quality wool they can, Merino.

If the itching won’t get you, there are other problems. It’s generally a little more expensive, and wool takes extra care. I have pieces from Ibex I have washed repeatedly for the past two years and they still hold up. The extra care is because you can’t stick it in the dryer.

The third material is polypropylene or capilene. Several companies sell this material. When I was a kid it was called polyester. But we all know you can’t charge a premium for something called polyester, so it needed a fancier name.

There’s no shortage of companies that sell these products. Some of the bigger names in the game: The North Face, Patagonia and Under Armour. I find these items to be as pricey as the wool stuff. The other problem is after several uses it hangs on to bacteria and begins to stink.

The good side is you can wash it and dry it. You can do anything you want with it. It’s made with petroleum products.

Remember, if you want to stay warm, try these products. And if you want to help keep this site up and running smoothly, shop through the vendors you find here, such as Amazon.

And if you want to save a little money, pull out that old polyester leisure suit, turn the pants into shorts, and try to convince your friends it’s the cool new look for the fall.

Sophia Loren...possibly wearing wool

I could be wrong about this, but almost everything I’ve ever learned in life, I’ve learned from Saturday Night Live.

I haven’t actually seen the show since the Eddie Murphy days, also known as the last time it was funny. Even earlier, the first “Not Ready for Primetime Players” hit on some funny and poignant subjects. I guess it was 1975 or so when they did the skit called “Shimmer Floor Wax.”

Sophia Loren...naturally clean

As it turned out, it was a dessert topping and floor wax all in one. The idea was, if you dropped your dessert on the floor, Shimmer would shine it up.

A lot of things were like that in the 1970s. It was a time when we tried to invent one thing that did several things.

Saturday Night Live would pick up on these things and run with it. As I’ve mentioned in an earlier blog, we have cell phones that do more than a Swiss Army knife would. Our cell phones are no longer just a telephone. It’s our answering machine, a texting device, a paging device, a camera and if you have 3G service, a mini-computer. That’s not to mention GPS, etc., etc.

Apparently companies such as Johnson & Johnson and Proctor & Gamble haven’t followed suit. They make money by creating more products. In order to create a product, you first have to create a need.

I told you that to tell you this. Like most women, my girlfriend Serena decided that her laundry room had to be a different shade of white. Therefore, it needed to be painted.

The good news is, she didn’t ask me to do it. She actually got an over-competent source in our friend Randy, who is a contractor. Randy gladly took the job, mainly because he likes the way I make coffee. But I could be way off on that.

The only thing Randy required was for Serena to remove everything from the cabinet. Now this is a small cabinet that I never look into. The only product I ever use from the laundry room is laundry detergent, and it’s not in that cabinet. All of that stuff was moved to the table where I write this blog.

These are the products: Capture Soil Release Premist, Oxi Clean, charcoal lighter fluid, Penquin Ultra Dry, Suade & Nubuck Cleaner, Lysol Bathroom Cleaner, Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner, Lexol Leather Cleaner, Septi Cleans, Mr. Clean with Febreze Fresh Scent, Bissell Fiber Cleansing Formula, Magic Sizing, Soft Scrub Total Bath and Bowl, Old English Wood Cleaner, Surfaceguard Penetrating Sealer, Scrub Off Water Spot Remover, Fabuloso Cleaner, Easy Off One Step, Easy Off Microwave Wipes, bleach, Goo Gone, Simple Green, Easy Off Bam, Windex, Swiffer Wetjet, Pledge, Brawn Toilet Bowl Cleaner and Easy Off Oven and Grill Cleaner.

Got all that?

I asked Serena if this was all of the cleaning products. She said no, there was more under the sink and in the bathrooms. It was merely a portion of what we use.

To be perfectly honest, I’m embarrassed. I’ve always taken pride in being conservative. I even shower with natural soaps, trying to do my part for the environment. But here I am, one of the biggest offenders.

Will I demand we get rid of all of these? No. I want to have a clean, disinfected house like the next person. But in the name of using less chemicals and having fewer plastic bottles, I am working on combining several of these to use for different applications.

We’ve also started using natural products. But not nearly enough. I’m connected to an affiliate right here on this site called Gaiam.

Once we’re finished with the current products, I’ll take my own advice and use the products from Gaiam to further erase my footprint from the destruction of the planet.

Sorry to get on my soapbox, but at least it’s a box of natural soap. Thank you very much.

Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer

This weekend there was a Hollywood wedding between Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer. My girlfriend’s sister, Samantha Scott Thomas, and her actor boyfriend, Bert Portal, attended the affair in Malibu.

Since they were in town, I had dinner with Samantha and Bert. Of course, the whole conversation was about the wedding and who wore what. And as usual, I could care less.

It all got me thinking as I was leaving Malibu. I thought about marriage and weddings. I’ve always felt like it’s an outdated contract. But there is something that disturbs me even more than that. I’ve often heard young people say, and I’m quoting, “It’s time to get married, I’ve had my fun.”

It’s as if they’re saying that once they get married life is over with and there will be no more fun. If that’s true, why get married in the first place? The proof is in the statistics. Most marriages don’t last.

But that’s beside the point. I’m here to tell you that life is never over. Not until you stop breathing.

I told you that to tell you this. There’s an ultra cycling race taking off Saturday in Utah. It’s called the Hoodoo 500. As with all ultra racing, once the gun goes off, whoever gets to the 500 mile mark first will win.

I’m not doing the race this year. I’ve never done that particular race. But I’ll be crewing for a close friend of mine, David Holt.

Last year David won the race in 34 hours and 27 minutes. He’s also won other races in the past couple of years, notably the Sebring 24-hour race. He held the record at the Davis 24-hour race. And he’s come in second, and no worse than fifth, in the Furnace Creek 508.

Here’s the part that makes David so amazing. All of the races I’ve just mentioned happened after his 50th birthday.

Before you go off thinking David won these races in his age group, think again. He wins these events out right. At 57 years old, he’s generally beating people less than half of his age.

David does all of this and still holds a position as a vice president in a large company. He is an absolute inspiration to me, and many others.

People often tell me that they would run a marathon, or write a book, or climb Mount Everest…if only they had the time. The next time you think you can’t, or don’t have time, remember the man who has a wife, raised two sons, holds a full-time job and still manages to train before work and at lunch. With the aid of bicycle lights, he can also train at night.

I can’t say enough about how inspiring he is. Clearly, David is still having fun, and has a lot more fun ahead of him.

There’s nothing ridiculous about that.

Sophia Loren...also inspirational

I was standing in a horse barn one day. I was talking to one of the barn hands. I looked down the row of stalls and saw someone I didn’t know standing there.

The horse had its head peering out and the woman was making all kinds of motions around the horse’s head but not actually touching the animal. Her hands were waving slowly kind of like Barbara Eden when she danced on the I Dream of Jeannie sitcom. This woman’s movements were slower and more labored. It was as if she was moving her hands through a giant bowl of Jello.

So I asked the groom who I was standing next to, let’s call him Bobby, since that was his name, about the woman. I asked, “Bobby, what’s that woman doing?” He explained to me that she was a horse psychic who had been hired by the owner of the horse. I repeated back to him in disbelief, “A horse psychic?!” He replied, “Yeah, that’s right.”

He went on to explain that the owner wanted to know what his horse was thinking. The psychic was charging $500 for 20 minutes. Bobby then said, “Hell, give me $500, I’ll tell you what that horse is thinking. It’s thinking, ‘I need some more alfalfa and grains.’”

I told you that to tell you this. I live in southern California, commonly known around the country as the land of fruit and nuts. People will buy into anything.

One of those things happens to be chiropractic care. The thought pattern is that the body needs alignment. And before I get a hundred e-mails about scoliosis and other conditions, I’m here to tell you general exercise will do more for such conditions than chiropractic care, which will do absolutely nothing.

Here’s some news: Your body is not out of alignment. And even it was, a glorified knuckle-popper will not be able to get it back into alignment. Some of these idiots refer to themselves as doctors. But they’re not doctors. If someone was having a heart attack on an airplane and someone yelled out for a doctor, these idiots wouldn’t be of any help. But I digress.

So you may ask. What’s the popping noise I hear when a chiropractor works on my back? That noise is the same sound as when you pop your knuckles. It’s not like your fingers get straighter when you pop your knuckles. The noise is simply nitrogen bubbles that build up between joints and pop from the quick release. It’s kind of like popping gum between teeth.

So the next time you have a sore neck or a tight back, do yourself a favor and pop a couple of Advil. And know you’ve just saved a ton of money.

I was talking to a client today, and we got into a discussion about basketball players. She was telling me how she thought they must be in such incredible shape to do perform well while dead tired. Having been on my high school basketball team, I was able to offer some information.

You have to be in great shape to play basketball so that sprinting up and down the court doesn’t actually mean much to you. It’s more about executing the skills to win the game. In other words, the very base level that is expected of you as a basketball player, is to constantly be in peak physical shape. You never want to be in a situation where you have to admit to a coach or a teammate that you’re just too tired, especially if you miss an important shot.

The client then went on to tell a story about how she got into shape for hiking trips. Lots of climbing through mountains was involved. She described it as she had done all this work to get to the peak of a mountain, look around, and it was over with. At that point, I realized that she had missed the whole point.

I told you that to tell you this. Our destination in life is far less important than the journey. I don’t want to get all mushy on you here, but often in endurance sports, the journey is all there is.

Let me explain. The average person who has never won a marathon – yet has a background in jogging – can safely get in shape for a marathon in about six months. If your only goal is to finish with a respectable time (say, four hours), you’d have to put in several hundred miles and tons of training time. This is no easy feat when you consider work and family time.

After all of that, crossing the finish line will happen in less than one second.

I told you all of that to tell you this. In my practice as a fitness trainer, I’ve often had extremely overweight people ask me how long it would take them to lose weight.

I’ve never answered that question. And in almost every case, people who ask that question end up failing. Even if they lose 100 to 150 pounds, ultimately they put it back on.

By asking that question, you’ve set yourself up for failure. If I as an ultra cyclist think about the end of the race, I’m already defeated.There is so much work to be done in between starting and actually finishing a race.

That’s why I like Weight Watchers. It’s not an end result. Life is what happens while you’re waiting for life to begin. Weight Watchers is all about making life changes. The program takes it one day at a time, one week at a time, and so on. The goal is not the end, it’s just another beginning.

Just like with the marathon, it’s all about the journey, not about the destination.

I was at Target tonight picking up a Hamilton Beach Custom Grind coffee grinder. No, I’m not a blowhard who has to grind his coffee because he needs it that fresh. I have a totally different reason for a coffee grinder. I grind my vitamins. I dump them in water and I drink them as a liquid. What most people don’t realize is that your teeth are the first stop of your digestive system. Grinding vitamins makes the rest easy on the system.

Lately I’ve been using some vitamins you might want to try, if you’re so inclined. Go to UltraSupreme.Vemma.com. They have a liquid vitamin that I love. Give it a shot. No pun intended.

The only thing I’m grinding these days is my calcium pills and glucosamine. And until Vemma comes out with that pill in a liquid form, I will continue to do so.

The Kardashians

I told you that to tell you this. While standing in a checkout line, just past the magazine section that had its usual cover shots of the Kardashians and the Bachelorette (Remember her? Ass-flag girl…she’s apparently been “betrayed” already. But I digress).

Nintendo Wii

There was no shortage of Nintendo Wii disks with every game you can imagine, from bowling to tennis to fishing. You name it, it was there. There was even an aerobics game.

Really, folks, have we become this addicted to electronics? We can’t leave the house to go to a tennis court or a bowling alley or a gym? I love the computer like the next guy. I love that tons of people visit my site and read my rants every day. I like to visit other sites. But is the computer keeping us inside a little too much?

We use it to play electronic sports, virtual reality games, dating services and masturbation (has anyone seen Playboy‘s stock lately?). I say it’s time we get out. Go take an aerobics class. Go to a batting cage. Try a bowling alley. And for crying out loud, have real sex.

Sophia Loren is a woman who has real sex.