Sunday Musings 12/5/10 (By Request)
Per a request from my Crossfit friend, Jake Parent.
Sunday musings (tough audience version)…
1) TSO. Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Crank it up.
2) Game. Couple of rather large deer strolling through the backyards in Bingoville today. Not sure who’s more more frustrated, my neighbor the hunter or my (electric fence restrained) border collie.
So close…so close…
3) Competition. Funny thing about our big competition, the Crossfit Games. Seems they keep changing. I dunno, constantly varied, or something like that. Four years, four very different set-ups. Four very big jumps in participation. Just when we get used to thinking about the last one, along comes Dave and Coach and WHAM it’s something different.
Ya gotta listen to the whole statement, though. Funny, that. Seems there will be two ways to get to the Regionals, either through an online qualifier, or (here’s the cool part for the community) through a qualifier that is certified and run by a Crossfit gym. Imagine, coming to a city so near you it’s actually YOUR city…taDAH…a sectional qualifier. I’m having a really hard time figuring out how this is a bad thing.
More people participating in more places…nice job HQ!
4) Wistful. How I feel about my own part of the Crossfit world as it’s grown. Once upon a time this particular part of our world, the Main Page and the Comments section, was the center of the Crossfit world outside of Santa Cruz. Affiliates, garage CF’ers, and solo Globo guys like yours truly were all here. Lurkers and posters alike, the Main Page was where it was at.
Now? Not so much. An enormous amount of the community, its people and its energy and its growth, is now in the 2500 Affiliate gyms scattered around the world. Both in “real” space and cyberspace, the local CF gym is the center of the community, the hub for the gym members.
Much of the rest of the community we remember, and to be sure much of the Affiliate community, can now be found on and around Facebook. Same folks. Same very positive vibe. Same energy and enthusiasm. It’s nice, frankly, just a bit…fractured I guess is a good word.
Neither good nor bad, I guess. Growth happens. Things evolve. There’s still an important role for the Main Page to play, else Coach and HQ would move on, too. I’m just a little bit wistful (or whiny, if you dislike musings), I guess, maybe a little bit lonely as my little part of our world seems more and more to be less and less as far as the communal aspect of Crossfit is concerned.
5) Gift. Mrs. Bingo and I are doing a little shopping. In truth she does most of the shopping for the bingo progeny; every now and again I try to find something to surprise everyone, even “Mrs. Santabingo”, but she really carries most of the load.
It’s funny, but for a guy who really hates surprises I really like it when Mrs. Bingo gets just exactly what I needed or wanted but just didn’t know I needed or wanted. A gift like that represents a very deep understanding of the gift receiver, a level of caring for that person that is something beyond the ordinary or regular. The gifts aren’t always big, not at all–they’re just always perfect.
After many years of not exchanging Mrs. Bingo and I will be able to gift one another this year. I am a coward; I will seek to be told what she wants or needs, and I will then do everything in my power to try to make it happen. I simply lack the imagination to create a gift giving act that reflects the deep knowledge I have of my better 95%, so I will express my caring through a very extended cross-examination. She will resume right where she left off 5 years ago when we last exchanged, surprising and thrilling with the perfect gift.
This is really a (typically) long-winded way of saying “it’s the thought that counts”, isn’t it? Large or small, expensive or not, when we have a gift-giving occasion we have an opportunity to express our feelings by demonstrating that we do, really, know what it is that makes our loved ones tick. We HAVE listened and watched.
Only 19 more shopping days until Christmas.
I’ll see you next week…
Tags: Crossfit
This entry was posted on Sunday, December 5th, 2010 at 9:27 am and is filed under Crossfit, Random Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.