Since moving into an apartment that offers free cable, Marty and I have been catching up on the world of crappy television shows. One of our favourites is Mantracker on the Outdoor Life Network. I didn’t enjoy it at first (something about a man being called ‘Mantracker’ left a sour taste on my can-we-find-a-gender-neutral-term tongue), but now I get a rush watching people trying to escape from this crazy (and mean!) old man on a horse.
Marty would be superb as ‘prey’ for Mantracker. He’s skilled in the outdoors, has excellent navigating skills, and he’s seen enough episodes of the show now to know what not to do (e.g. no mooning Mantracker, no filming him with the prey cam if you’ve narrowly escaped capture, no flashing the man the finger, no silly games or ineffective, time-wasting ‘traps’, and especially no teasing or taunting.) I, on the other hand, would be the worst prey in the history of the show. I would probably be caught somewhere in the first 3 km, even with a headstart of the same distance! I’m an OK hiker, but I’m a ‘stick to the trails’ kind of girl—a definite ‘no-no’ on Mantracker. Plus, I can’t swim (for shame) and I can’t navigate to save my life. Literally. I SUCK at reading maps.
This brings me to yesterday, when Marty and I were about to attend the Brazilian Festival concert. We were riding our bikes to the auditorium, and we were hopelessly lost. My fault. I had checked out the location of the auditorium on Google, and I had led us to the other side of the city with 5 minutes left until the concert started. Sigh. What should have been a relatively simple 6 km ride ended up being a gargantuan 25 km at high speed, and of course we ended up getting there about a half-hour late. I couldn’t have ridden faster if Mantracker was on my tail!
What we saw of the concert was well worth the sweat and the 200 beats per minute heart rate: (forgive the blurry photos)
I’ve decided that if I ever undertake a program to focus my mind and to heighten awareness of my body in space, Capoeira is the way to go. Forget yoga: Brazilian martial arts/dance-offs are way more my style. (Ignore my lifelong history of awkwardness in gymnastics and my complete inability to do things like somersaults, and the fact that the four-year old Capoeira students could easily kick my ass—a girl can still dream, right?)
3 comments:
Alas I cannot swim either, we should take a pact one day to both take lessons, and then be a hardcore female team to beat on ..ahem..womantracker (okay that just sounds like guys out to pick up chicks, we just can't win).
Shows how smart I am, I was trying to figure out what mant-racker would be...couldn't figure out why gender would be a problem there. As for swimming lessons: I highly recommend them, I've been having a lot of fun, though i could already swim it's true.
Jet's super into capoiera. I thought about taking the class at school but decided against it when I realized he was going to be in that class also. Like you, I'm awkward and generally look bizarre trying new things. I decided I could go without publicly humiliating myself in front of a guy who's too young for me to be dating anyways.
But, the people who do capoiera seem to really really love it. You should try it out for both of us! I can live vicariously through you.
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