Tri Flop

once, while daft and floating, i had the misguided fortune of spending entirely too many hours in speedos and swim goggles.

i was a trigeek's trigeek. i did the Tuesday morning group runs with the likes of Lessing, Allen, and even that uber-poofter Souza. I did the gory-glory Wednesday meathead rides up the coast through Pendleton, dodging jarheads and aerobars to the nuclear plant turnaround. I freestyled in La Jolla Cove and never, ever knew anything existed better.

young and dumber.

- - -

One year, made my way over to Kona for that big stupid tri-race they have there. It was a bit of deal for me and i had prepared well ... everything was done right ~ training was fair, equipment was there, and the mind was ready to suffer.

But then ~ the day before the event, for reasons ridiculous and immaterial, it was decided to go snorkeling. A nice long session of boating out through the white caps and dropping into the swells to watch some sushi swim around a sponge, or two.

yeah.

Well ~ about half an hour into the boat trip ... i started getting the queasy-squeezies. My stomach was gurgling and rolling out of beat to the chuggernaut vessel's ups and downs, hauling all us tourists out to see the sea, like a waterborne shortbus plugging it's way to daycamp for retards. It felt like my insides wanted outside and there was an inevitability to the sensation that had me looking desperate-like for any bathrooms on board the boat.

"Ah yes! There's one..." ~ under the snorkocaptain's deck of navigation, where it looked like a cooler of CoorsLight was attended to more than any map or sextant. A mad scurry to the door, universally marked as uni-bathroom with the skirt to one side and daddy-long leg to the other ...
NOOO!

occupado ... and as I turned away from the locked bathroom door, the hurl started it's escape route ... bolting from me, exploding from me, erupting out of me. And ... let me tell you, there was serious velocity in this matter.

My previous meals and drinkins shot out of me like somebody had jammed a firehose up my butt and spun that valve open full-throttle. I mean, the stuff came out of me like I had the cast of BackDraft man-handling me from behind.

As I turned from the bathroom and felt the explosion rising up the pipes, there ... in front of me, was the most serene and inquisitive of Japanese boys ~ not more than 6 or 7 years old. He held not an inkling of awareness of what I was going through, or going to do in mere milliseconds. His expression was one of mild curiousity and growing surprise at my widening eyes and curling torso.

Perhaps he had to use the bathroom, too. Perhaps he was just bored from gazing at the unending waters in all directions and had turned in to study the travelers. Perhaps he was just innocently walking past.

But, whatever the case, he was smack dab in the path of destruction. And I puked all over that kid's face.

I mean, projectile vomiting with such force and velocity that it snapped back his head like he'd been wacked with a porterhouse. And ... there was volume to this eruption ... so, it kept hitting him and pushing him back, causing him to stagger under the weight and shock of the onslaught.

Neither he, nor his parents, spoke a lick of english.

yeah, that was an uncomfortable following 4 hours.