Today was one of those days that in retrospect was pretty fine. Not a totally perfect day by all means. Nor just one perfect moment like Anthony’s blog, Today’s Perfect Moment, which you could check out. It was a collection of moments, feelings, experiences, thoughts and more that together were really quite nice. Any day that includes a beautiful stranger rubbing oil on your sore muscles, a hilarious movie, and bikes, well, that’s one fine day. Do you want me to tell you about it? OK, since you insist.

How Did You Get a Free Massage, Dude?

Last October 20th, I wrote a blog mentioning various impediments to my cycling titled Distracted Biking: When Life Gets in the Way, Finding Ways to Just. Keep. Pedaling. One of the things I talked about that helped was a massage donated by a friend of a friend, Colette, toward my 2017 Mamma Jamma breast cancer fundraising ride of 65 miles. Yesterday, I decided today was going to be a day when I didn’t go to job club, and to celebrate finishing a short 12-session class about job searching. So I made my appointment at Avenue Five Institute, and after my daily walk and yoga today, I pedaled over

The more advanced student who was lined up for me was not available, but I rolled with that and was happy to have my first rub-down in several months. Also, they added 30 free minutes for the inconvenience. Lucky me! To quote Wayne and Garth from Saturday Night Live’s Wayne’s World: “Schwing!” Although she’s a relatively new student, Amanda found my sore spots and made them submit. While she’s altitudinally challenged, that wasn’t a factor. She used various techniques like myofascial release, deep tissue, regular Swedish and stretching, and it was really great. I immediately felt better and 12 hours later I still am enjoying the after effects. If you do regular cycling or other activity like A Dude does, and you don’t get massage for whatever reason, I encourage it.

In the worst case, if you don’t have a roommate that will massage you, you can’t find a student clinic near you (or if even that’s not in your budget), you might try using a foam roller like I wrote about in Foam Rollers for Post-Workout Sore Muscles: Beneficial or Torture?, Epsom salt baths and yoga. You could also consider finding or starting a MeetUp group that has good boundaries to trade massage. If Tinyhands Orangehead and the many presidents he’s irritating in countries around the world just got massages, world peace would be alot more likely, wouldn’t it? Yes. Massage is great, just wish I had my own like pro bike racers do.

Volunteering at Bike Austin’s Bike From Work Day Party

Check out my ride on Strava: To Volunteer for Bike From Work Day After Party!

Biking after the massage was alot easier, and I wasn’t in a hurry. Normally I would have preferred to go home and rest, but I was feeling good. I had seen a last minute request for volunteers from Bike Austin and thought I would show up and pitch in. It was a tad ironic, since I have no job to go to, but it turns out my help was needed, so that worked out. As recent follower and interesting guy Thomas said about my biking around, “it counts,” so I trucked downtown to Cheer Up Charlie’s, an LGBTQIA friendly bar with indoor and open outdoor spaces in downtown Austin. After hanging out a bit, a car arrived with supplies and I and a few other volunteers got busy unloading it. We put the tables, donated beverages, raffle ticket supplies and prizes in the right places, and pretty soon cyclists started tricking in.

The game is to go to as many “feeding stations” as possible. At each one, you get a stamp in a “passport,” and that gives you a raffle ticket for each stamp. Prizes included gift bags, gift cards, and the big one: tickets to the Austin City Limits Festival. I didn’t win, but the new director of Bike Austin gifted myself and another volunteer with a nice t-shirt. The image of a bike is made up of a bunch of words from Austin streets and places. Very nice, considering it was valued at $50! I got to help out at the table welcoming attenders, encouraging them to sign a petition for protected bike lanes on Shoal Creek, and generally be friendly bike guy. I’ve been so focused on job search activities that I hadn’t done any volunteering lately. So it was nice to help out.

It was also fun to see fellow cyclist Rafael, who is a beast on the bike. We met at Bike Night at Circuit of the Americas. He’s quite modest about his biking, though. I also met some groovy new folks: Sara, Allegra, Leryn, Todd, Scott, Grace, and Katie, the recent director of Bike Austin. They all do their own kind of biking. Whether they’re new to commuting, old road warriors, or something in between, everyone has a bike story. Speaking of that, I’m hoping to find more folks whose stories I can tell here on http://www.DudeAbikes.com. If you’re in Austin and have an interesting bike story, contact me via the About page and we’ll see if you’d be the right fit to be the next contestant on “Interview with ADAB”!

Vulgar, Violent but Hilarious: Deadpool 2

This movie is not for everyone, and there’s not time or space (or spacetime), for a full review. And since I saw it on opening night to avoid spoilers, I’m not going to spoil it for you. Even if you’re not a comic book nerd (I’m not), or didn’t see the first one (I saw it), this is a movie that took alot of care to entertain. Sure, it pushes buttons tii shock, and that is the essence of the character. All of Marvel’s movies look fantastic and have lots of great action and CGI effects, but Deadpool 2 goes out of its way to keep bringing things back to earth and to the characters, but also making a parody of the very sort of film they’re in. It’s so meta!

While Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Pratt may also have rapid fire jokester credentials in the MCU, Ryan Reynolds’ deadpan delivery is delightful, searingly so, and is really just spot-on. He was long-involved in bringing the character and movies to fruition, so a great performance is to be expected. There are plenty of winks to the fans, breaking the fourth wall, and just outrageous visuals and jokes galore. Plus gore galore. Not the James Bond character named Pussy Galore (look it up! I’m not making it up), but there’s even a nod to 007. I want to see this again to catch some of the humor I missed the first time. If you’re squeamish about comic-book action movie violence, please don’t go see this movie.

Well, so ended one fine day. Tomorrow’s another opportunity to enjoy my funemployment while I still can. I have a surprise blog post in the works, so stay tuned!

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