Sunday, March 13, 2011

Dirty words.

One of the things that I'm minorly proud of is that I've been able to avoid most of George Carlin's "seven words that you cannot say on television" while crafting posts for my blog. My children often read my blog and I try to make it so that they can read with without overt embarrassment. Perhaps in some strange way this a quest of some sorts to be a role model but realize there are ample opportunities for me to cause the feeling of shame by my children in other manners (and I have) so this isn't that big a deal in the scope of things. Anyway I'm proud of it in some strange sort of way. No, not of the shame, but the avoidance of those words.

In real life, though, I've been known to utter many, if not all, of these words. Some almost at the same time given the right circumstances. Those readers who thought in some manner that I am on the road to sainthood would be gravely disappointed. Insert the word of your choice here. I'm not as bad as many but I can probably curse with the best of them. I avoid this though but I've found that there are appropriate times to use these words. Some of these times are during training for endurance sports and many of these words are targeted not at others but at myself or inanimate objects.

Today was a classic example. A small group was leaving my house on a bike ride led by my coach. The night before he mentioned to me that this was going to be a hard ride with lots of hills. I really haven't done "lots of" only "the occasional" in the hill department. This set me up perfectly for verbal eruptions.

After almost 2 hours of hill work of including roads with actual names of Mt. Misery Road, Cold Spring Hills Road, Snake Hill Road, and Harbor Hill Road, we turned up a road with yet another hill. This road was named Laurel Hill Road (not Lauryn Hill although there was to be miseducation involved) the following conversation happened:

KK: I hate when the street name has "hill" in it. Lauren Hill Road. Sigh.
Rockstar: This name one has a middle name too, I'm sure.
SS: Yup, and I bet you it begins with an "F".
All: Absolutely.

This got me thinking. Athletes look at and refer to paths, roads and road names differently that non-athletes. How many times while driving hilly roads in a car have you thought about where you would be downshifting? Have you, while driving along, thought that this road would be great for running hill repeats? If you say to a cyclists from these parts "I'm riding up Snake," the response may involve one of these dirty words (note in this case it completely acceptable to leave off the "hill" and "road"). When this happens, the use of this type of word IS socially (within the biker society) encouraged and the context has made the word transform from the dirty word list to the non dirty word list.

On the other hand, certain hill or road names, in and of themselves, become dirty words. On today's ride, I found a few new ones. Those not on this ride may think this innocent but those on the ride know what I mean. You may even have one of these near you.

Private Road. Although it doesn't need to, today's Private Road has a middle name too. Guess which letter its middle name starts with?


8 comments:

Aka Alice said...

I'm going to send this to my friend (and herd-member), Betty who is attempting to give up the F-Word AND any F-type sounding words for Lent.

I, personally, don't think she can do it...and if I really wanted to test her resolve, we'd do an "effin" hill ride next weekend...LOL (and yes, I am that much of a b-word to do that to her).

Great post!

Al's CL Reviews said...

Your post and Alice's response just made me laugh.

I curse all the time (shocker). But I was driving a course this weekend and then went to run it. There was a more colorful way of "no way am I running down that hill...I'll have to run up it."

Michael said...

Creative post. I love it. I have named a few roads for sure. And I love the part about how we see things differently - I do that all the time - man this hill would SUCK to go up on a bike, or it would be a great hill workout - depends on the mind frame that day!

Tri-James said...

It is not a hill unless it has a name. Sounds like all your roads have names.

TRI714 said...

First I had that Carlin set on 8 track. O.K. NOW IM AGED.

Hills have names for sure. Some better than others :-)

all have middle or last names that need adult consent

Emz said...

Omgosh. Love the F hill conversation.

And

Your comment today. Completely. Rocked. Love. It.

Ewa said...

I don't mind dirty words in English at all. Since I was not raised in the States, those words don't really shock me or make me feel uncomfortable. Now dirty words in Polish are not something I like to hear or say.

joyRuN said...

I've been trying really hard not to curse, but it comes out during 1) hill work & 2) at work.

I need a Private Road on my routes...