Mountain Biking

After re-habbing my knee 3 times in the past 15 years, I'm beyond sick of stationary bikes. They make me feel like a gerbil. When I was griping about how out of shape I was from writing my thesis over a year ago, my husband bought me a mountain bike for Christmas. He promised that he would teach me to mountain bike. In the 2 years I've had the bike, I've gone trail riding exactly 3 times. The first time, I ended up falling sideways off a little bridge and landing in a bush (have I mentioned that my sense of balance sucks?). Not a bad place to fall, but I ended up with a branch up my nose and a very nice cut. Made for some cute pictures at a family party the following week! I did much better the second time a week later. However, since that time, I haven't gone trail riding. It's been over a year. Last summer, the weather was abysmally rainy for the first part of the summer and then I was prepping for my defense through the second part of the summer. So I was not surprised at how badly I sucked trail riding this past weekend. I wiped out twice. The first time in sand that I didn't have enough speed to make it over and the second time when my bike bounced unexpectedly and I got tossed over the handle bars. Meanwhile, my husband was battling deer flies while waiting for me to catch up with him. Two days later, I have some really nice purple splotches all over my legs and the palms of my hands (can we say death grip on the handles) and my husband's arm is swollen from all the bites. I think its bizarre that I can't wait to try again....

New Heights of Boredom - Actually Watching Soccer!

Since my family moved to the 'burbs when I was 10, I've enjoyed playing soccer but I have never been into watching soccer. It just isn't fast paced enough to hold my interest the way hockey does. So I'm a bit shocked by my current interest in the World Cup. Am I really that bored? Or is it simply because I'm cheering on 4 different teams (US, England, South Africa and Australia- the last 3 in the order that my husband has followed since a child) and I'll lose interest as these teams are knocked out of the tournament?

I find myself spending the majority of my time watching wondering if ESPN doesn't want to expand the market for soccer in the US. I'm assuming that more people tune in for the World Cup matches than the average MLS match (this could be completely erroneous). People that aren't necessarily soccer fans but want to see what all the hype is about. So you'd think that ESPN would employ an announcer that explained some of the rules of the game. I do understand that they don't want to annoy people that are already fans by chatter explaining the game or the rules, so at the very least, you'd think they'd have the announcers refer you to a website that has the explanation of the rules. What I'm looking for is something like how the MLB explains the rules and stats of baseball on its website. The point of all this is that I spent 45 minutes searching the internet for FIFA's official red card rules. Basically, I just wanted to know if South Africa's goal keeper would be able to play their next match against France (as I now understand the red card rules, he will not play but be suspended). Do you think I could find those rules anywhere? I found a whole ton of crap about how red cards relate to human trafficking (some sort of soccer-themed promo to raise awareness of human trafficking), but nothing about the FIFA World Cup rules. It was incredibly aggravating. Eventually, I fell back on asking the question on Facebook, where an old friend nicely clarified things for me (Thanks again Jill!). Still, I can't help but feel that if FIFA wants to expand their audience, shouldn't they make it easy for people to find the rules for their tournament? Or maybe they left it up to ESPN and it's ESPN's failure?