Clarity through suffering is an endeavor for the youthful ones… I am done, No Mas!

With just six days (really five days), until the 345 mile race across the back roads of Iowa begins, perhaps some reflective, albeit random discourse is in order. I feel great physically as I am well hydrated and fully rested, my faithful U.S. Steel steeds are both dialed in, and I got my parents fired up to assist with offspring. Yet, the old fire is just not there anymore. Itz like when Rocky Balboa lost the eye of the tiger when that mean Soviet Commie put that real bad beatin’ on old Rocky or itz like when the boyz gave Napoleon the big call-up after all them successful battles and Napoleon just didn’t have the fight in him no more and he just wanted to chill out with Josephine, or when old worn-out Roberto Duran couldn’t respond to Sugar Ray Leonard’s punches except to say, “No mas, no mas.”

…To be honest, I am going to have to watch this one from the sidelines. I am bowing out, I am too old, the fights gone…I’m played out…Just the other day as I was riding my bike alone on the West Side trying to get in a decent training run, I took a look around my surroundings and had a kind of epiphany; a nice looking young fella at the gas station was up the ladder making the daily upward adjustment to the big sign that displays the price of gas, as I went by he flipped me off…A hard working guy in a big pickup truck with the dual exhaust pipes made a half-hearted effort at sideswiping me and therefore putting me into purgatory. And a posse of youngsters in a black-tinted low-rider sedan with a resounding bass beat passed by me screaming expletives...so it goes...And... While, of course I never take any of it personal, the thought occurred to me at that moment that I should take up golf. That was the first time I ever considered golf. But golf seems so attractive to me now, I am gonna play golf… Rocky plays golf and so does Roberto Duran and Michael Jordan and even Lance and Tyler, I bet even Napoleon played a mean game of golf back in the day… Good luck in Iowa, but count me out!!!…I’ll be on the links, traveling among the refined in an electric cart!!!