Muscle and Machine

I love this time of year: the sun seems to be up forever (and it mostly is, given that it starts getting light before 5 am and doesn't get dark dark until 9) and it's warm without that underlying knife-edge of cold that seeps in in April and sometimes May and definitely October, but it's also not unrelentingly hot. I'd say the weeks around the summer solstice are my favorite time of the year.

I still spend most of my time working these days, though--after more than 55 hours at the bakery, I spent four or five hours yesterday and another nine or so hours today slogging through the manuscript. (I'm seeing proofreading marks in my head.) I also watched three auto races in less than 24 hours (the Indy car race Saturday night, the Formula 1 race at noon on Sunday, and the Champ Car race at 3 on Sunday), which was interesting as well. I'm getting to know a little bit more about the courses and drivers and such, and I've realized that what I like about it, in addition to the raw speed of the whole thing, is the interesting intersection between human and equipment.

With handball, for example, there's not a lot of equipment: eye guards, gloves, gym shoes, shorts, t-shirt. The rules even specify acceptable versions of much of that, meaning one simply isn't going to get an advantage from the equipment. Presumably steroids would help with the body, but even there, if you don't get to the ball, you can't hit it. Fitness certainly helps, especially at the top level, but I've also seen people who could stand to drop a few pounds--or someone who was pregnant with twins--play spectacular games. In short, it's a game that's more about the human than the equipment, and the human doesn't have to be some finely chiseled specimen to play and win.

Football often seems to me to be the worst combination of human and equipment. The players wear a bunch of protective equipment, and, over the last decade or two, have begun to add physical poundage such that you essentially have multiple collections of 300-plus pounds of flesh hurtling at each other. And, as George Will once noted, the game itself can be described as violence punctuated by committee meetings.

In baseball, it's obvious--from the home run shenanigans of recent years, in particular--that players can modify their bodies with steroids in ways that affect the game. Nevertheless, it is possible to play well and to succeed without steroids, and it's possible to be both normal-sized and good (something that's not possible in basketball or football).

With racing, though, the machines obviously make a big difference--though more in some series than others, in that, in some series, all the drivers drive cars with the same specs. What you get is an interesting nexus of driver, vehicle (teams with more money have better equipment and better crews), and engineering, all at very high speeds. You can have the best driver in the world, and if the car sucks, s/he isn't going to win. Conversely, faster/better cars need good drivers at the wheel.

Anyway.

I've been diligently applying for jobs and such, and trying not to panic. The "don't panic" injunction works some days better than others. But hey, my anniversary is coming up, which means we'll have one less piece of paper to file when we file for the divorce (working on that, too). (In this state, if you've been married less than two years, you have to file an additional form of some kind.) Next week's project involves going to the Clerk of the Court's office and getting the papers to file. And editing, of course.