Life, the universe and everything

May 25, 2018

WHEN: 05/25/2018
QIC: Fish and Chips
PAX: Nickelback, Limburger, Pusher, Toast McQueen, Muzungu, Head Gear

Today is International Towel Day, an homage to Douglas Adams who wrote the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy books (H2G2), a trilogy in five parts. Growing up it was part of my geek background in the same way that Monty Python was and shared much of the same wit an humor. As my way of honoring the late great Adams, I led the pax at Duck and Weave in Hillsborough using the book as the guide for the workout inspiration.

The towel, what gives?

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels.
A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value—you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble‐sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand‐to‐hand‐combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindbogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you—daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: nonhitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might have accidentally “lost.”. What the strag will think is that any man that can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in “Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is.” (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)

 

The Warmup

The H2G2 guide book sold very successfully across the galaxy partially due to the fact it had the words “Don’t Panic” printed on the front in large friendly letters. The D&W pax were urged to remember this throughout the workout.

In the first two warmup exercises we got to 42, which is the answer to life, the universe and everything. We would spend the rest of the workout trying to see if we could understand what the question was.

SSH x 30, Good Mornings x 12

Plus some other warm up stuff …

 

The Thang

H2G2 is also a book about a very average Earth man, Arthur Dent. The book begins with Arthur laying in front of a bulldozer, trying to stop it from knocking his house down for a bypass. Arthur is determined to see who will rust first, so we did the same thing.

Boat canoe x 10, holding boat for as long as possible at the end
Superman hold, straight into a long hold, we were seeing which of the pax would take the longest to rust.

Arthur’s friend Ford Prefect arrives, who unknown to Arthur is actually not from Brentford after all but from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse. He convinces Arthur to go to the pub. On the way back Arthur realizes his house is being knocked down and he is very cross about it. Knowing that burpees often make the pax very cross, we then proceeded to do 42 of those.

Ford knows that the Vogon constructor fleet is arriving to demolish the Earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass. We look up into the sky to see the fleet hanging there in exactly the same way that bricks don’t, so we try to run away, all the way to the top of parking deck. Circle back to pick up the six.

Arthur and Ford beam aboard the Vogon constructor ship and have poetry read to them. Vogon poetry is the third worst in all the universe.
We would attempt to simulate how awful by completing a Jacob’s ladder of bodyweight squats and merkins.

Our two protagonists are thrown off the ship and with just one second of oxygen left are improbably picked up by the ship the Heart of Gold which has been stolen by Zaphod Beeblebrox and is piloted by Trillian. We needed our our improbable event, so we did four corners with catch me if you. Breaking into four teams, starting at one corner we did:

  • five burpees – corner one
  • ten merkins – corner two
  • fifteen squats – corner three
  • ten carolina dry docks, corner four

The pax tried to catch each other, and if they did had to wait until all had done the exercise at that corner. How long this was going to take was not clear, and to set an accurate time was improbable.

The journey continues to the ancient planet of Magrethea were our heroes are attacked by an automated missile system. Arthur manages to avert disaster by pulling the lever to engage the infinite improbability drive. A whale and a bowl of petunias appear. The only thought from the bowl of petunias as it hits the ground is “oh know, not again”. The whale tries to figure it out, and almost achieves self-awareness when approaching the ground. The landing is not pretty.

We did 42 squats.

The adventure continues inside Magrethea and we meet Slartibartfast and the mice. Mice make us uneasy, so we do step ups onto the wall. 42 times.

In a later book we discover that flying is the art of throwing ourselves at the ground and missing. We approximated this with 42, 15, 15, and 12. The pax remembered “Don’t Panic”.

At this point YHC was truly cooked.

COT

Safe travels for everyone heading somewhere this weekend.

Moleskin

I’m grateful for the chance to lead in F3, and the warm welcome in the Northern Province. Peace out.