Outdoor Sports: A Musical Review

No, I won’t be singing for you (you can put the earmuffs down).  Instead, since we’re still in the get-to-know-you period of this particular blog-lationship, I wanted to tell you a little about myself by combining two of my favorite things.   Nothing gets me more pumped up for having some fun in the outdoors than listening to just the right tunes as I lace up my boots.

For each of my outdoor interests listed below, I have chosen a musical artist to help me convey what the sport means to me.  Crank up the stereo and limber up, because here we go.

Road Biking – The Eagles

To borrow a line from Geo, the dear friend who introduced me to the world of spandex and saddle sores, “I hope that cycling can be my golf.”  Cycling is a blast right now, but my hope is that it will still be fun for me in another 30 years too.  After the cockpit of my kayak becomes to small for me to climb into without 3 assistants and a jar of mayonnaise…  after “climbing” becomes my term for going upstairs…  after the technology in my synthetic knees becomes more sophisticated than the technology in my mountain bike…  after all of my dearest hobbies have left me, I hope I can still get out on the bike.   

The Eagles are the same way.  The first CD that I ever owned was an Eagles CD that my big brother gave me for my 12^th birthday.  There’s something about a classic.  It just doesn’t wear out.  I still love the Eagles, and I probably always will. 

Road biking has a Zen quality – the silence of a perfectly tuned machine; the sensation of the wind, heavy with the aromas of the season, the concentration as your peripheral vision dims and you push yourself just a little harder…  Zen. 

At least until you pass some eviscerated forest creature on the side of the road.

Kayaking – Of Monsters and Men

It’s the flavor of the week.  I know.  But I desperately hope for it to be something that lasts.  How long will my shoulders put up with what it takes to roll in white water?  I’m not sure.  Will I ever learn to start down the river without forgetting the keys to the takeout vehicle?  Again, no promises.  But I hope so. 

Of Monsters and Men burst onto the scene this month with their highly anticipated album, My Head is an Animal.  Its sound is sublime.  It’s a perfect combination of an ethereal female voice with a casually chain-smokerish male one.  It’s an album that millions of listeners are probably playing on repeat right now.

Likewise I can’t get enough of my little blue boat.  I’m sure there will come a day when its just too cold, or I’ll be tired of dragging the bottoms of the local watershed with my face.  But that day is not now.  Long live today. 

Mountain Biking – Nirvana

About the time Kurt Cobain and the boys were throwing off the chains and spikes of the KISS era, I was wriggling free of the restraints of my parents supervision as I took off on my mountain bike for the local trails.

At the time, Nirvana was hide-the-album-from-your-parents edgy.  Likewise, my friends and I escaped to the woods to find freedom and try death-defying stunts away from the judgmental gaze of concerned adults.  Now, just 20 years later, Nirvana’s raw lyrics and social outrage barely register in a music scene desperate to find new ways to shock or offend, and mountain biking is pretty much a main-stream thing.

 

Fat tire riding is nothing new, but it is my first love, and perhaps the only sport on this list I’m actually pretty good at.  Sometimes it’s not about pushing the envelope or proving I’m capable of something new.  Sometimes it’s just about releasing my angst into the cranks and throwing up a little mud.

Rock Climbing – Bon Iver

This is not a perfect match because I like climbing a lot more than I like Bon Iver…  but that’s mostly because I hate Bon Iver, not because I’m some superclimber with Popeye forearms.  Reader, if you like Bon Iver allow me to do you a favor and tell you that he has you fooled.  He’s not good.  You don’t even like him.  I would argue that no sane person does.  People just like to be seen with his music on their iPod to make it seem like their tastes are really indie and hipster.  It’s like how people think all that jingly climbing gear in their closet (or perhaps hung somewhere more prominent for passersby to admire) gives them some kind of outdoor street cred.  If you want to bolster your hipster image, just grow a mustache.  At least that’s funny.  Claiming an interest in Bon Iver – especially if you subject yourself or those around you to his “music” is just tacky. 

Aaaaaaand there go two of my three readers.

As far as climbing, I’m nothing special.  No technical skills beyond what’s called “top roping,” which is to say I am not smart enough to build a system on which to climb that I would really trust, so I need to be supervised by others.  In terms of my actual ability to make it up a wall…  I’m a 5.9 right now (on the YDS scale).  5.10 when I’m in shape, although those conditions come by about as often as Haley’s Comet. 

Oh no.

 I just realized most of the time I just keep my jingly climbing gear around for people to look at and be impressed.  Please excuse me while I go clean the vomit off of my keyboard and burn my harness in effigy. 

Bonus:  I’m convinced that the character Keiran Vollard, from Dinner for Shmucks was based on Bon Iver.  If you’ve seen the movie, you’re nodding your head right now.  If you haven’t, you’re opening a browser for YouTube.  Buckle up, my friend.

Hiking – Josh Garrels

Of all the activites here, the least appreciated one is probably the one I have spent the most time on.  Hikes have a poetic quality.  At a glance they are beautiful, and they needn’t be anything else to be valuable.  However, for the walker that pushes further, into the higher altitudes and past that point where you think, “I should have turned around while this was still fun,” Hikes can become a teacher, a coach, or a lifelong companion in the form of a proud memory.  Like a good poem, the more you put in, the more you get out.

Josh Garrels’ music is poetry.  He chooses his words carefully; constructs a message within each song and a story within each album.  Like a hike or two that I’ve been on, his work has made me tear up.  All the while, his style is so unassuming.  There are no pulse-pounding, dance-floor rhythms; only acoustic, echoing peace. 

Garrels also shares one other trait with hiking.  Neither one need cost you a penny in gear.  Download Josh Garrels most recent album for free right HERE.

So there you have it, friends.  These are my interests, described in musical form.  Stay tuned for the winter sports edition of this same post, which should hit some time in November.  Come to think of it, don’t stay tuned.  Grab a cold drink, open a window, and rock some tunes.  Let me know what you think of my choices, and tell me some of your own in the comments section.