Ornoth

It’s been a standing joke for as long as I can remember: what is Ornoth’s body fat percentage? Well, after my recent purchase of a scale that includes body composition, we now have a definitive answer.

Sort of.

Before this posting, I solicited guesses from our studio audience. There were four non-outlier responses: 5, 11, 12.4 and 17.5, which yields an average of 11.5 percent. And now I’m ready to reveal the answer. Or answers, actually…

The problem is that the scale has two modes—athlete mode and tuber mode—and if I measure myself in both modes, the readings I get vary by nearly eight percent, which is a huge difference. So how do I know which mode better reflects reality?

Fortunately, the manufacturer provides a helpful definition. An athlete is “a person involved in intense physical acivity of approximately 10 hours per week and who has a resting heart rate of approximately 60 beats per minute or less.”

But that doesn’t really help. In the summer, my cycling usually qualifies me for athlete status, even though my actual measured moving time doesn’t always break the 10 hour minimum. But in the winter, I’m about as sedentary as anyone.

So what to do? Do I switch between modes as the seasons change? Do I consider myself a 70 percent athlete and do some specious math to come up with a guesstimate? There’s no easy answers.

But you want to hear my numbers, not a bunch of disclaimers. So here they are. If you use athlete mode, my body fat percentage averages 6.6 percent, but it jumps to 14.1 percent if you use Average Joe mode.

Based on that, it’s probably safe to say that I have a body fat percentage in or close to single digits. But if I want to get a more reliable measurement, I have to wander down to the Weymouth Club and pay $60 to use their Bod Pod.

On the positive side, if you pick one mode on my scale and stick to it, the measurements are quite consistent, so you can track relative changes. You just can’t get a single, absolute, irrefutable number.

But that’s okay; it would only just depress you, anyways… ;^)

Among the books I got this Xmas were two with a common theme: bicycle racing. Having little else to do this week, I sat down and read them both on Saturday, and I found an interesting, if not totally unexpected, commonality.

First, I’d like to share a few citations with you. I’ve kept a larger part of the context, but I’ve bolded the particularly pertinent sections.

The first excerpt is from Tim Krabbé’s novel “The Rider”, his not-really-fictional telling of his participation in the 150k half-day Tour de Mont Aigoual race. It’s one of the few true classics of the genre:

In interviews with riders that I’ve read and in conversations I’ve had with them, the same thing always comes up: the best part was the suffering. […] How can that be: suffering is suffering, isn’t it? […] Because after the finish all the suffering turns to memories of pleasure, and the greater the suffering, the greater the pleasure. That is Nature’s payback to riders for the homage they pay her by suffering. Velvet pillows, safari parks, sunglasses: people have become woolly mice. They have bodies that can walk for five days and four nights through a desert of snow, without food, but they accept praise for having taken a one-hour bicycle ride. ‘Good for you.’ Instead of expressing their gratitude for the rain by getting wet, people walk around with umbrellas. Nature is an old lady with few suitors these days, and those who wish to make use of her charms she rewards passionately. That’s why there are riders. Suffering you need; literature is baloney.

The next two excepts are from Lance Armstrong’s new/second book, “Every Second Counts”:

I’d suffered more in winning the Tour a second time […] But in a way, suffering made it more gratifying. Suffering, I was beginning to think, was essential to a good life, and as inextricable from such a life as bliss. It’s a great enhancer. It might last a minute, or a month, but eventually it subsides, and when it does, something else takes its place, and maybe that thing is a greater space. For happiness. Each time I encountered suffering, I believed that I grew, and further defined my capacities—not just my physical ones, but my interior ones as well, for contentment, friendship, or any other human experience.

And he goes on to say:

The experience of suffering is like the experience of exploring, of finding something unexpected and revelatory. When you find the outermost thresholds of pain, or fear, or uncertainty, what you experience is an expansive feeling, a widening of your capabilities. Pain is good because it teaches your body and soul to improve.

Here’s one final example, from Paul Fournel’s Oulipo avant-garde classic “Need for the Bike”, wherein he talks about bonking, which he calls “blowing up”:

Why not give up the bike after a blowup? Because the blowup is a journey, and the cyclist is first and foremost a traveler. Then because, after a blowup, your organism is altered. There’s a kind of purification in falling flat, an impression of fasting. A threshold is crossed …

I find it interesting that suffering is such a universal thread in writing about cycling. The discussions go far beyond the more familiar “no pain, no gain” mantra and describe suffering as necessary, integral to happiness, and even transformational. The texts, especially Krabbé and Fournel, wax poetic when talking about the suffering of cyclists, reading more like Zen Buddhism or Existential philosophy than a description of riding a bike. Here’s more of Fournel’s treatise on bonking. Note the eloquence and panache that he uses to describe this most humbling of experiences.

There are warning signs of a blowup, but they aren’t appreciably different from from the signs of normal tiredness. Now that I think about it, metaphysical anxiety might be one hint. Riding is absurd—climbing to descend, going in circles, behind this mountain there’s another, why hurry? … Riding is absurd like peeling vegetables, skiing, thinking deeply, or living. The moment these questions come up, while you’re riding, you should take note. That’s when your quads are demanding more oxygen from your heart than your lungs can provide. That’s when it gets foggy. If you’re on a friend’s wheel, he’ll pull away by two bike-lengths without accelerating. You come back, dancing on your pedals, but then you lose the two lengths again. You do this rubber-band trick ten or so times, and then you let him go, telling yourself you’ll catch up soon. In fact, the next time you see him is when he turns around and comes back, worried, to find out what happened. At that point you won’t recognize him, or, better yet, you’ll recognize him, but only as someone who might buy your disgusting bike.

Well, if drugs make for more interesting novelists, and tortured lives make for better painters and composers, why shouldn’t the kind of cycling-induced mental impairment I talk about in this previous post (Defining the Natural High, 6/11/03) produce better philosophers? It does, however, make me wonder about my recent enquiries into Existentialism and Buddhism, though!

What was/is your favorite subject in school? Why?

In high school, I loved Diplomatic History with Mr. Bartholomew. He brought a goofy enthusiasm to the subject, gave us the best textbook ever (Bailey's "Diplomatic History of the American People" -- I still have an old copy that I stole), and involved us in classroom activities like playing Avalon-Hill's "Diplomacy" (still by far the best game ever invented) and the Model United Nations. It really tapped my already-strong interest in international politics, and set my course toward a bachelors in International Affairs. Honorable mention needs to go to M. Ayotte's accelerated French class, where he exposed us to the great Existentialists (Sartre, Camus) and Theater of the Absurd (Ionesco) in their native language.
 
In college, my favorite classes continued in this vein, including American Diplomatic History, International Relations, International Law, Islamic Fundamentalism, Cultures & Societies of the Middle East, Communist Government, Foreign Policy of the Soviet Union, Marxian Economics, History of Modern Japan, and so forth. Honorable mention also goes to my accelerated language programs in German and Russian, which were also a blast. It's really kind of a pity I never went to classes during college!
 
Although I've only been in art school for a year, so far my favorite courses there have been Typography and 2-Dimensional Design.
 

Who was your favorite teacher? Why?

I really didn't form many close associations with teachers. My seventh grade English teacher read "The Hobbit" to us in class, setting me on a path toward Tolkien fandom, zine publishing, the SCA, D&D, and most importantly fiction writing. I've already mentioned my two main high school influences: Bart and M. Ayotte. In college, I guess Lek Pyle, my Russian instructor, was a favorite because of his easygoing and goofy ways.
 

What is your favorite memory of school?

I don't have any particularly vivid memories of high school, but I do recall enjoying writing a 12-page term paper on "The Role of Antarctica in U.S. Foreign Policy" for U.S. Government, and also giving a speech on it for Speech class; both received A+'s, of course...
 
In college, there were many memories, but I guess one of the most personally meaningful was the day FSFnet (now DargonZine) was born. It was a Saturday afternoon in December, and the UMaine computer center was absolutely dead because of a heavy snowfall the previous night. With a light snow still falling, the only people around were myself and Murph, the computer operator who was on-duty in the machine room. We hung out for a while and he liked my idea of starting a fantasy and science fiction "zine" that would go out over BITNET. Eighteen years later, it's the longest-running electronic magazine on the Internet, and has transmuted into an all-fiction publication, dedcated to helping aspiring writers improve their craft through collaboration and mutual support.
 

What was your favorite recess game?

Well, dodge-ball will always be a particular favorite, due to its inherently violent nature, and the fact that, like tennis and racquetball, my reaction time and athleticism gave me a natural advantage. Kick-ball was the staple, though. During first and second grade I went to a school that had an immense boulder (think room-sized) on the grounds, and we used climb around on it.
 

What did you hate most about school?

There's really not much I hated about school, other than the constant mental discipline required. Really the only thing that sticks out as particularly unpleasant were the ritualized fights that took place in grammar school, around fourth or fifth grade. That always seemed really pointless to me.