Rowing to Vienna - I

I rowed 14km (and a bit) on the Concept 2 ergo last night, which took my total for the month and for the year-to-date past 100km. To keep me motivated, I thought I’d check out my progress against something I could relate to – like a real journey.

If I were to equal my 2009 total of 1014km, that would be close to the distance from Brussels to Vienna.

I’ve already spent 8 hours and 12 minutes of my year on the infernal machine, so I’m covering a kilometre every 4 minutes and 27 seconds, or a mile every 7 minutes and 9 seconds. That’s about as fast as I used to run – when I was a runner.

So I’m not rowing in a cold, cheerless hall – I’m running to Vienna!

I’ve crossed the border into Holland already, just passing Maastricht.

Self-improvement

A meagre selection of drive-in music this morning. Kraftwerk – no thanks. Floyd Wish You Were Here – much better. Two horribly low spots though – Alain Bashung, who I thought was my un-favourite francophone singer, and Arno, who promptly replaced him in the bottom spot. You wonder how people with such ghastly voices get into music, but you wonder even more about the people who buy their records.

I’m getting better at ‘chanson’. I try and follow the lyrics as best I can but eventually they always run away from me. If they catch my imagination I can Google them afterwards. You can learn a lot that way – the meaning of ‘le tintamarre du pognon’ for example (from Eiffel’s A Tout Moment la Rue, which I like very much).

Apart from Bashung, the other artist I can identify without checking the readout on the radio is Gerald de Palmas. Now him, I like, probably because his songs sound more American, country-rock-ish. On the other hand, I don’t like Cabrel when he’s trying very hard to pretend he’s an American who just happens to be singing in French. I’m told I must like Cabrel, so I’ll persevere.

Today’s featured Wikipedia article is Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn. I shall study it at lunchtime – I need to improve myself.

Into the home straight

Temperature on the drive in today: -4.5° most of the way. -2.5° in town. On the radio: AC/DC – Highway to Hell; Madness – Night Boat to Cairo; Rod Stewart – Do You Think I’m Sexy. High spot – Madness of course.

Out of mere curiosity (yeah, right) I calculated how many more days I might spend chained to this desk – God and the management willing. And it’s as I’d guessed – I’m into the last thousand. I don’t intend to tick them off like a prisoner chalking on his wall, but it’s a sobering thought that if I count back a thousand days, it doesn’t seem to take me very far into the past.

So I decided to have another go at this blog. To help to fill out those days, to divert my attention from the ticking clock. Will I have the imagination or motivation to keep it up? Remains to be seen.