Running and Going Nowhere

"Now! Now!" cried the Queen. "Faster! Faster!" And they went so fast that at last they seemed to skim through the air, hardly touching the ground with their feet, till suddenly, just as Alice was getting quite exhausted, they stopped, and she found herself sitting on the ground, breathless and giddy.
The Queen propped her up against a tree, and said kindly, "You may rest a little now."
Alice looked round her in great surprise. "Why, I do believe we've been under this tree the whole time! Everything's just as it was!"
"Of course it is," said the Queen, "what would you have it?"
"Well, in our country" said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else -- if you ran very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."
"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.
If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"
-Chapter Two of Through The Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll


Greetings and welcome back to The Un-Zone, the only site on the Internet devoted to all things related to Un. If you haven't guessed by now, that means stuff that I find interesting. If this doesn't meet your standards for "interesting," you can always hit the "Back" button on your web browser and go to another more interesting site like Facebook or Google.

I've started to run and I find the activity to be quite amusing, though my standards for amusing are, put nicely, different than most people. Well, I find it amusing in an intellectual way. My legs, however, could care less what I am thinking about while running. They're probably thinking, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING? ARE YOU RUNNING? STOP IT RIGHT NOW!"
I have to admit, there is a weird feeling while jogging on a treadmill. It's sort of like the quote I have from Through The Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. You run and run as fast as you can and you never go anywhere. You have to run to keep in the same place or end up flat on your face, having an extremely painful exfoliation done by the tread going at whatever speed you've set it on. If you go twice as fast than what you've set it on, you end up going somewhere...right into the control panel or you go so fast that you trip and fall and end up with your face on the tread. Just like if you go too slow.
One of the dumber things that you do if you go on a treadmill is forget about the little voice in your head. The one that reminds you of using a modicum of common sense. Like running for a distance of 2.5 miles at a 5.0MPH speed is different than running the same distance at 4.5MPH for one mile and finishing the rest at 5.0MPH. I know this may sound pretty obvious, but the mind works funny.
And another thing. Guys seem to do it more than women, which shows that despite many years, men have the "alpha male" behavior still residing in their brains. It might show that women have more common sense. I haven't done this before as I know that I will lose any speed battles. Maybe it might pop up when I start running at a faster speed than I run right now. Or I decide to be more competitive. Nah, I don't think so.
If there is another person on the treadmill by you, you will unconsciously (maybe consciously) loook over and see what speed they are running at. Then you will look at your speed and see what you are doing. If you are running faster than they are, you will feel a sense of smug satisfaction. If you are slower, you will up your speed so you are running faster than they are. The other person will counter. And you will counter that counter. And it will continue in a treadmill Cold War until someone can't counter any more. If you happen to reach a detente(I know there should be an accent) of some sort (same speed or you're both at max speed), it will be an endurance contest of who can last the longest at that speed. It always happens at one point or another.

In an unrelated note, there is a really strange guy at the place I exercise at. It's the same place where I took a dancing class (country-western, boot-scooting boogie stuff) during the summer. I didn't have anything better to do. I still have two left feet. He dresses in the same clothes, which normally isn't too bad. There are some people there who wear the same outfit, but he takes it to an extreme. As in he doesn't wash his clothes, so he smells bad. Words can't describe the odor, but it's something akin to a run-over skunk that's been lying on the road for a few days and a septic system trunk spilling some raw sewage over the entire mess. It's that bad. He also talks and mumbles and laughs to himslef. Like he has a connection to a radio station in his head. I've though the "implanted chips in the head" stories were stories, but this might be actual proof that they are true. I'm not kidding. People have complained about his...strange behavior...but the staff can't do anything about it. Unless he goes berserk or violent, they can't do anything like kick him out. Oh well. That's just the way it is. Some things you just can't change.

Time to go to International Trade Regulations. How fun. An exciting lecture about the early history of GATT. And six pages of notes to write in a frantic rush. My wrist is so happy to be part of the experience. Carpal tunnel here I come.


That's all for now.