It was a sweaty August weekend and I was up against a deadline or two.
The date was Saturday, August 11, 1990. Sunday night, I would be driving to Syracuse to get on a train. Those long twin silver lines (yes, a Bob Seger reference) would then take me to Austin, Texas. There was a lot to be accomplished before leaving town. As you can imagine, there were a lot of loose ends to tie up, and many friends to visit.
But there was also one little musical adventure that needed to be finalized. There was a demo tape that needed to be recorded.
I will admit that the last minute chain of events made my last weekend in Canada just a little crazier than I had imagined. But, it also left me with some fantastic memories and a farewell demo tape for the archives.
I interrupt your Olympic viewing to bring you this special announcement. Spoiler alert. Oh, wait, NBC might be too transfixed on Michael Phelps or Gabby Douglas or Missy Franklin to pick up on this one anyways.
We were just witnesses to one legendary wow moment of far beyond Olympic proportions. NASA has done it again. At 12:39 am central time, Curiosity landed on Mars and started sending back images from the Red Planet.
The video from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, once Curiosity landed on Mars, was akin to that seen after a gold medal performance.
The Olympics are upon us. We’re now through day 6, and all is well in London. It would appear that the biggest scandal in these Olympics thus far has been the attempted game-fixing in badminton. Oh, those crazy badminton cheats. Now that is big news. I guess that says a lot about how smoothly these Olympic Games are moving along, even though London certainly isn’t Salt Lake City.
Though NBC provides the United States with a bazillion hours of coverage, we don’t really see the broad perspective of the Olympics. We see the American drama, and the occasional smattering of the cool things happening to the rest of the world. We also have to bear with Bob Costas, who has his moments of greatness and his moments of utter goofiness.
This episode of the Rhubarb Report has a decidedly Olympic slant to it, with a touch of NYC just to bring it all back home again.
After just four days of the London Olympics, we have already seen a number of incredible performances. We have also heard the tales of quite a few Olympians whose epic journeys have brought them to this place in time and sport history. We’ve laughed and we’ve cried.
Some of those stories are admittedly pretty dramatic. Awe-inspiring. Motivational. Each and every Olympian would appear to have a dramatic journey that brought them to London.
Every couple of years, the media do a great job of presenting us with two weeks worth of human interest stories.
But what about the other 102 weeks?
If nothing else, the Olympics should serve to remind us of one important fact: Olympian or otherwise, we all have a story to tell.
Life provides us with a myriad of choices and interactions on a daily basis. While we rumble along on our daily journey, we carry with us our hopes, our dreams, our perceptions, and our very own map of reality.
Each and every day, our greatest challenge isn’t the difficult patient, or the perplexing business project, or even the difficulties we may face with a spouse, friend, or family member. Those are minor details in the grand scheme of things.
Our greatest challenge is ourselves.
It’s time for another installment of the Rhubarb Report. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that this week’s Report has a few fine political morsels. But it also has a note of passing, and a thank you card attached.
With that said, let’s dive right in to Episode 45.
1. From the pit-of-your-stomach, sounds-wrong-because-it-probably-is department, I bring you Mitt Romney and his tax records. Actually, I bring you one – no, sorry, make that almost two – years of tax returns from the presidential candidate.
Two years of returns. That’s it. Why not more? Is there something hiding in there? Let’s face it - if there wasn’t anything to hide, the easiest way to put this issue to rest once and for all would be to release more returns to the public. Simple. Unless, of course, there is something to hide.
I would have to admit that it is, at first, an odd phrase to utter: the Rolling Stones are 50 years old. Say what? Seriously? Hard to believe, isn’t it? Queen Elizabeth II just celebrated 60 years on the throne. Now, the Rolling Stones celebrate their golden jubilee, with 50 years on the throne as the undisputed kings of rock and roll.
In 1974, they said “it’s only rock and roll”. Little did they know just what rock and roll would mean to the culture as a whole over the past 5 decades.
We can thank the Stones for bringing the blues to mainstream awareness. It started with the name – derived from a Muddy Waters song. The blues inflections didn’t stop there though. Their earlier music had that greasy, behind-the-beat vibe of the blues greats. Somehow, they translated this feel into some of the greatest rock and roll songs of our era. A Jagger – Richards song can be a thing of beauty, and only 3 or 4 chords total.
A good band might put out some good albums, but the real test is in the live performances. After all these years, this is what continues to be the life blood of the Rolling Stones.
Up to 60% of runners will sustain an injury within any given year. Poor running mechanics, in conjunction with poor, ineffective and outdated training methods, can pose a significant injury risk. "RunSmart" was written to address these issues in the running community.
"Running Injuries: Etiology And Recovery- Based Treatment" (co-author Bridget Clark, PT) appears in the third edition and fourth editions of "Clinical Orthopaedic Rehabilitation: A Team Approach" by Charles Giangarra, MD and Robert C. Manske, PT.
Allan Besselink, PT, DPT, Ph.D., Dip.MDT has a unique voice in the world of sports, education, and health care. Read more about Allan here.
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