never let ‘em see you sweat

I’m sure you remember that ad campaign from a while back. I’ve been thinking about that phrase lately and how it’s probably had a really big negative impact on our lives. Not allowing ourselves to sweat means not allowing ourselves to be active which means allowing ourselves to be unhealthy and miss out on other benefits of an active lifestyle like seeing the sun set over the red ocean from the top of Brown mountain.

Today I went out for a ride in search of a new burrito. On the way, I ran into Joseph. I joined his ride out to a bike shop to pick a few parts. It was a rather warm day. Probably in the nineties somewhere and this was about midday. It was actually quite a pleasant day to ride. Keeping the pace up keeps you cool. By the time we dismounted a walked into the bike shop, though, we were about as drenched as you can get. Of all the places in the life where it is certainly okay to let them see you sweat, a bike store should be high on the list – it should maybe even be a badge of accomplishment there. Still, though, I had that thought in my mind that I was sweating way too much to be in a public area.

But if we can’t sweat in public then it makes it pretty hard to ride your bike to work or the grocer or the library or the pub. But these are places that we need to be riding to. So we need to break this whole misplaced psychological phobia by sweating it out. We really ought to be more wary of those people around us that show up cool and dry and smelling lovely. Maybe the saying should be reworked to go a little more something like this: Never let ’em see you coifed. That just might help to solve some of our energy/transportation challenges (by my precise calculations an ounce of sweat equals 4 ounces of gasoline.)

On a happy note, we did end up continuing on to a great new burrito place followed by several rounds of afternoon beers at the pub.