Saturday, 26 November 2011

I Still Have A Reflection

Some days it would be the smart thing to just stay in bed.

I tried this morning, but I had to get up eventually for fear of developing bed sores. I had no reason to want to stay in bed so long at the time, but I guess that my subconscious knew what it was doing.

Nothing bad happened; it is just that I have been out of sync all day. I accomplished nothing and for all I know, the world just paused while I got my shit together. It was one of those days that I wished I could have spent it sitting on the couch watching barrel jumping. I miss barrel jumping!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4603198265945452960#


I would always check to see if the Wide World of Sports had barrel jumping scheduled, and if it was I would hunker down and watch one of the world’s oddest sports. It isn’t that hard to explain the rule, you skate around the rink/lake/pond to build up speed and then you race at a line of barrels and …well…jump over them. The challenge is that others were trying to jump over more barrels than you did and if you succeeded in clearing the line of barrels the officials would add another barrel and it would start all over again.

It might interest you to know that Yvon Jolin of Canada currently holds the world record of 18 barrels which is 29 feet 5 inches which was set on Jan. 25, 1981. The sport started with speed skaters jumping the barrels which were used to mark the course. Speed skating became more popular and lucrative, so they stopped risking injury on what everyone (almost) would agree is an odd sport. They tried for years to get it sanctioned for the Olympics, but year after year they were shot down. I think the Olympic committee missed a golden opportunity.

Well, thankfully the day has passed and it is now an acceptable time to go to bed. The only drawback is that I am no longer tired. Maybe I am becoming a creature of the night. Vampires and werepeople seem to be very popular lately.

I think I will check the mirror to see if I still have a reflection.

1 comment:

  1. I loved barrel jumping also as 60's kid on ABC'S Wide World of Sports, always would cringe when that ski jumper missed the jump and crashed on their opening credits. OK now I'm worried we live in a parallel universe, are you getting that Outer Limits feeling? B

    ReplyDelete