The age I’m at I can now think of grown men, old enough to go to war or buy a gun or vote, as kids. Every human who has the fortune to, will arrive at this place in life. Be thankful. Tupac didn’t make it.
So there’s this kid who calls KAMO home. He arrives like the marauders in Mad Max, piloting what appears to be a monster truck to my city slicker eyes. The rig is older than he is, but he’s twice as tough. His sole complaints revolve around bailing hay.
“I can’t relate.” I tell him. He laughs and takes a hit from his inhaler. In minutes he’ll be lapping whole adults partaking in our chosen, communal methodology, CrossFit.
The rationale Rogue used in naming the Echo Bike was that when an individual voices displeasure in its implementation everyone in the immediate vicinity echoes the sentiment. This is conjecture, of course.
It’s a Thursday night, and the gym is at low tide. The kid is perched next to me with his sights set on my calorie count and cadence. You could transpose him from here to the perimeter fence of a rodeo and no one there would notice.
There is no downhill point in a 15-minute max calorie bike. There are no flat straightaways when you’ve established a maximum RPM and are now beholden in keeping your cadence at or above 60% of it. The kid encourages me. The kid keeps me honest.
The hour before, he performed the same workload. We both exceed our expectations; the most painful joy.
March will be 10 years. Fortunate doesn’t do my life justice. In the same ilk that my nickname was “Luckbox” in the military (due to my uncanny propensity to avoid catastrophic wartime events), the dice continue to tip and tumble in my favor.
Nick Petersen is my business partner. The programming at KAMO happens as follows: Nick is the author and I am the editor. That being said, how often do you read a book and feel compelled to applaud the editing?
Nick is Peter Parker AND Spiderman, which makes me J. Jonah Jameson Jr. How I feel in scrutinizing his design is how a band manager must feel appealing to a rock and roll talent to downshift the partying to save the next night’s set. It is rare I find anything arguable on the whiteboard, and by the end of the week, none of it will lay unproven.
This all ricochets and gambols about the forefront of my thoughts as the kid is roosting next to me. That I can remember, there hasn’t been a time I’ve spent 15 successive minutes chasing a caloric barometer on a bike. Ten years I’ve been doing this. TEN.
That’s the beauty of CrossFit. You can have the tenure of a senior samurai and old Masamune might just compose a faster blade. When you arrive at this place in life, be thankful.
