May 25th is as I’m sure many of you will know, International Towel Day. It’s a day to celebrate the author Douglas Adams and his Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy books, a trilogy in five parts. From this point forward, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy will be known as H2G2.
Appropriate for the men of F3, we learn this from Wikipedia about the value of knowing where your towel is at:
Somebody who can stay in control of virtually any situation is somebody who is said to know where his or her towel is. The logic behind this statement is presented in chapter 3 of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy thus:
… 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 accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
The Warmup
H2G2 is a book. It sells very well since it has printed on the front in large friendly letters the words “Don’t Panic”. The pax of Duck and Weave would learn to draw on this advice.
SSH x 30
Good Mornings x 12.
These two exercises made for a total of 42, which is the answer to life, the universe and everything. We would spend the rest of the workout trying to figure out what the question was
The Thang
H2G2 is really the story of an ordinary Earth man, Arthur Dent. The story begins with a crew trying to demolish Arthur’s house to make way for a bypass. Arthur doesn’t want this to happen and so lays in front of the bulldozer to see who will rust first.
We did:
Boat canoe x 10, trying to outlast the other pax with a boat hold at the end.
Superman hold, just holding for as long as possible to see who would rust first.
On the way back from the pub, having been talked into it by his friend who is The house gets knocked down
You visigoths, you half baked nimcompoops
Arthur is very cross – what will make the pax very cross?
We did:
Burpees
The Vogons arrive
What the hell is that?
We did:
Run away! Top the top of the parking deck
Arthur and Ford beam up and have poetry read to them
The poetry is awful
We did:
Jacob’s ladder
They beam aboard the Heart of Gold and things are improbable
We did:
Four corners and catch me if you can
They head to Magrethea and are attacked by an automated missile system
A whale and a bowl of petunias appear
Surprise!
A whale falls to the ground while trying to achieve self-awareness
“This is coming towards me – it’s big and round, it needs a big round name, I will call it ground, I wonder if it will be friends with me” followed by a loud wet sound
We did:
Lots of squats
Moving to inside Magrethea and meeting Slartibartfast and the mice
Arthur’s brain holds the question
We did:
Box jumps
We throw ourselves at the ground and miss
42 – the answer
We did:
Manmakers, 42 of them and may have found the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything.