Alligator Boy

Before I get into “Alligator Boy” I want to mention that I went out on a little 20 mile jaunt with Mike and Dom last night through the beautiful roads of southern Delaware County – Cheyney, Thornbury, etc. Beautiful scenery, not alot of traffic, and relatively flat. I’ll admit that I got dropped on two hills – dropped like a dead corpse in the Atlantic ocean. But in my defense, it was my fourth road ride of the year, and I rode 45 minutes in the morning if mostly hill drills. The elevation of our path is shown below. It felt good to go fast again. For as much as I love mountain biking, you dont get the speed of flying down an open road at 30 mph while your on the trails. Mike and Dom were taking it easy on me. I didn’t do any pulling and I go dropped on the hills. But I wasnt expecting to perform any differently. I dont have the pure mileage that those two have under their belts right now. To go out and expect to take 2 minute pulls at 23 miles per hour and stay on Mike’s wheel on the hills is unrealistic. Rather, I did alot of yelling and screaming and performed alot of general jack-a$$ery. I sort of made it clear that this little ride was a one-off (since I dont own a road bike) and I wasnt taking it all that seriously. I think I got the point across.

 

So I had mentioned Alligator Boy in yesterday’s posting there is a guy at my gym that I like to refer to as “Alligator Boy.”

If you have ever watched any of the Discovery Channel nature shows with Alligators and Crocodiles, you’ll have noticed that alligators tend to float in the water with just their eyes barely breaking the surface.

I have a guy at my gym that gets in the pool and will just plop himself at the end of one of the lap lanes, with his head just above the water line, and he just stares. And he is a creepy looking dude to begin with. Kind of fat with a weird uni-brow thing going on. He’ll sit there at the end of the pool, lurking, and then he’ll swim to the other side of the pool completely underwater, which, on the surface doesn’t seem all that odd until you couple this behavior with the fact that he is swimming under people who are doing laps. Imagine you’re in the pool, doing your laps, and you see this beluga whale passing underneath you.

Dont judge lest ye be judged. I’ll be the first to admit that I am a bit left of center, so take that self-observation into account before you read further.

There are some people out there that are just plain creepy, and you can tell on first glance that they are creepy. All outward signs and appearances scream “creepy.” That’s exactly how Creepy Smoker Guy and Alligator Boy come off. Creepy. I wonder if people look at me standing on the train platform waiting my Septa chariot to take me home and say to themselves “that’s one creepy motherf*cker over there.”

I think I am going to stop taking the Quiet Car on the way home from work. I think its a great concept on Septa’s part, but I got a chicken sh*t conductor who doesnt enforce it. He looks kinda mousy to begin with. Anyway, the Quiet Car consumes me, only because of the principle – get on the car and shut up. You can tell that some of the offenders are regular commuters who should know better. I’ll be frank (ha)- it’s not like the “offenders” are having a raucus party on the train – its the principle of getting on a car and shutting up. You know its the quiet car, so why bother getting on when you’re intention is to have a conversation. It seems counter-intuitive to me. And what’s more amazing are the people that sit around and do not speak up with a polite “hey this is the quiet car.” I have already had to politely remind a few folks that they are on the Quiet Car, and I damn near got into a fist fight last week with someone. No joke. It was some punk kid who make some wise a$$ comments while my back was turned. You got something to say, you say it to my face. We had words….