Deep Thoughts, by RunFiestaGal
Am I dating myself? It just occurred to me that I haven’t seen a “Deep Thoughts” segment on Saturday Night Live in a while, so I decided I better check Wikipedia to make sure those of you in the under-30 crowd would get the reference…
Well crap.
Turns out the last time that segment aired was in 1998. Lalalalalala…
Jack Handey (born 25 February 1949) is an Americanhumorist. He is best known for his Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey, a large body of surrealistic one-liner jokes…
Some of Handey’s gems include the following:
“It’s easy to sit there and say you’d like to have more money. And I guess that’s what I like about it. It’s easy. Just sitting there, rocking back and forth, wanting that money.”
“If I ever get real rich, I hope I’m not real mean to poor people, like I am now.”
“To me, boxing is like a ballet, except there’s no music, no choreography, and the dancers hit each other.”
I’m telling you, people: comedic gold. In the late 90s, “Deep Thoughts” was more recognizable than “twerking” is today. (Yeah, I went there.)
In fact, when I worked Freshman Orientation at UT circa 2002, we were still ripping off the skit in our end-of-the-session comedy show. After spending 3 days telling students they’d be publicly flogged if they tried to go absolutely anywhere without their ID, we (by which I mean “people funnier than me”) came up with this gem:
“If you lose your ID in a river of boiling lava, just let it go, because man, it’s gone.”
Okay, so we’re all clear on what “Deep Thoughts” are? Good. Because I might fall back on this from time to time when I’m at a loss for what to write about.
Ironically, I have plenty to write about today, because tonight I’m running my first ever Zilker Relays!
If you’re a runner in Austin, this event is kind of a big deal. Like my dog:
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| Doof’s new collar! Daddy was *thrilled*. |
From their web site:
“One summer evening I was running in Zilker Park while the sun was setting: I stopped and thought, what a great venue for a relay, party and concert,” states [race founder Paul Perrone].”
So basically, this was a race started by a guy who was so delirious from running in 100-degree heat that he decided to talk all his friends into running in the heat, too!
Of course, by the end of August, Texas runners are so used to excessive temperatures that we’ve simply learned to incorporate “laughing maniacally” and “crying at our own insanity” into our “average run energy expenditure” calculations.
I got talked into running this thing about 4 days ago, when one of the (34!!!) Rogue-affiliated teams needed a last-minute replacement runner. I made them swear up, down, and sideways that they would bow at my feet if I managed to maintain anything under 10-minute mile pace for my lap, and signed on up with the team “Rogue Rage”.
Note: This team name is ironically appropriate for me. If you ever meet Handsome J in person, ask him about the “Horn of plenty”.
It must be something about my personality — probably the wanting people to like me part of it — because 3 days later I’d gone from “last minute addition” to “person designated to pick up race packets for not one but twoteams”:
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Okay, technically I offered to be the packet getter.
But pretend these weigh 50 pounds each. It makes the story better. |
This was an adventure that involved two separate stops and a trek across a highway at 3:30 pm. (Calm down, Mom. I was *under* the highway. Across just sounds better. Just think of my blog as exposure therapy.)
I ended up hauling around no less than 16 shirts, and according to a race organizer, while the men’s and women’s shirts look identical, they are actually gender-specific. “I’ll fold the men’s shirt in this bag backwards so you can tell it apart.”
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| Okay, I promise not to mess up the folding as I trek back across this highway. |
Even better, I was having this particular conversation at a new CrossFit gym (sorry, “box”), and given that I know not all CrossFitters love distance runners (and vice versa) and given the fact that I was carrying 2 giant Rogue Running bags, I was already feeling slightly flabby and conspicuous.
So, are you wondering what all this has to do with Deep Thoughts?
Well, just as I was leaving, the race organizer called me back: “Oh wait, I almost forgot!”
And handed me these:
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| For non-runners: These are capsules of electrolyte tablets that dissolve in water. |
“Oh cool,” I said, “free Nuun!”
“These are your batons,” she said, “and they’re empty because we already have the Nuun chilling on ice!”
* Cue crestfallen look from me *
So I started my trek back to my car in the bazillion degree heat, and I started to think:
There were a lot of different flavors of Nuun in that baton box. How in the world are they going to organize that? Will they have separate coolers labeled? Did they even separate them, or are we just going to get some brownish “multi-flavor” grossness? Gosh, imagine how long it would take to dump 12-packs of Nuun into hundreds of 5-gallon coolers. I mean, 1 tablet = 16 ounces. Wouldn’t it be awesome if they made “gallon cooler” size tablets? And then we could mess with non-runners and tell them this is a Frisbee-sized Alka-Selzer?
And then I had my deep thought:
“If you put a Frisbee-sized tablet of Nuun in a 5-gallon cooler, would the cooler explode? Because man, that would be amazing to watch.”
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