Though not for the likes of Shaddy Dubstoevsky. No, it's not like Mark Cavendish crashing at the opening stage of the Tour de France, in Harrogate, England, hometown of the fesity sprinter's mother. THAT is bad luck and bad news. But for me, humble in my enthusiasm for the bike, not being able to ride (twelve days and counting) is a bitter pill. I'm still filled with restless energy, still feel terrific overall, like I could jump on the bike and knock back 35 hard miles. Except for the left leg.
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| Did you hear the one about the one-legged bicyclist? |
Reality aside, this year's edition of the World Cup has been electric, weird, heartbreaking, scintillating. LuisFuckingSuarez and his chomp to the shoulder of the Italian canoli, the magical run of the underrated Costa Ricans, the tease of Team USA and the enthusiasm across the country for their games, the disappointment of Team USA who, despite prior suggestions that averred this would be a creative attacking force, seemed, like tournaments past, mostly hesitant, un-creative, reactive, passive, unable to take a match by its throat and throttle out a victory. Instead, we got half victories (the tie with Portugal), defeat as victory (the 1-0 loss to Germany that allowed us to move past group play), and just defeat (2-1 to the Belgium Yawns); only during final 12 minutes of extra time against Belgium did the US decidedly show the world that it can play with the best but that, as has often been the case with the US, it was too little too late.
In other scenes of triumph and despair, there was the robbing of Mexico by the referee who bought into the Flopping Interior Decorator, Cock Robben of The Netherlands, and who awarded an undeserved penalty at the nth minute of the match thus handing the Dutch a ticket to the next round (Alas, the Mexicans once more get no respect). There was the "one goal is all you need" Argentine squad that used Lionel Messi like a fly strip to gather the gnats of the Swiss defense to him before the Diminutive Wonder slid a perfect pass to the aquiline Di Maria (Ángel Fabián Di María Hernández) who rifled the ball into the back of the net in the 118th minute to secure the Argentine victory. There was the German squad with their controlled approach to the game; a cliche to use it, yes, but the Germans do play like a finely-tuned Mercedes. They are well-built, perform as expected, and betray a touch of elegance and flash on occasion; they are the quintessence of the high performance luxury car. And of course last night we saw the cudgels come out in the game between Brazil and Colombia, a slug fest of a match that the referee allowed to unfold and that ended, yes, with a Brazil victory but also with a Brazil loss with 22 year old wunderkind Neymar being kneed brutally in the back and suffering a tournament-ending broken vertebrae. It was a truly ugly, wince-inducing foul to witness.
But it's still a crystal clear July day of the most supreme sort and I'm still here with my left knee feeling like it has a Kevlar duct tape strip stretched tight across the knee cap from quad to shin, unbendable. With the fuckness.
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| Dubstoevsky after 12 days of forced inertia |
have got my Shadman altar set up - the ventoux snow globe sprinkled with espresso on a breugel postcard. am mouthing roadbike inanities before it with regularity: "headwind, rabbit, rasputitsa ... "
ReplyDeletelet me know as soon as the knee responds and the swelling and pain recedes!
yours!
scrod
ps reading tip: joachim meyerhoff, alle toten fliegen hoch (the dead fly up), a young german spends a year at a high school in laramie, wyoming. should be translated soon. best orgy account i have ever read. of course i haven't read that many.