When in doubt....

whip it out..

No, this isn't some form of odd innuendo. Trust me, I am almost a southern woman now, and I know better than to give y'all the vapors. So if you have any less than wholesome thoughts when reading that statement, it's all on you. "When in doubt whip it out" is actually a saying used in skydiving. It refers to the idea that if you are ever not sure about the status of your main parachute, you "whip" out your reserve.

You see, when husband-dear and I were in our mid-twenties, we both spent an entire summer skydiving. To be honest, I'm not sure why. All I can think of is that we must have had oodles of time on our hands and balls of steel (and where both of those things went, who knows). At any rate, we both really liked it, but decided that one summer was enough. In spite of the relative brevity of our skydiving career, there are still plenty of remnants of it in our lives. To this day, I am still finding packing cords in the oddest places, I also still have my goggles and altimeter in the back of my sports clothes drawer, and we use expressions like the one above on a daily basis. Especially when it's time for me to make a decision.

I should probably add that I generally suck at making decisions. I can seriously get into a frenzy over what to have for lunch. A sandwich? Or soup? Or a Leanpocket? Will it be enough? Too hot? Too cold? It's not normal, I'm telling you. I will weigh the pros, the cons, the possible outcomes, rethinnk my pros and my cons, and then ask everyone around me. And then weigh the cons some more. And the pros. And then sleep on it. And flip a coin, but not like the outcome, so I'll go back to redesigning a pros and cons list. It's exhausting, and so the above saying works pretty well for me at times. Especially when I'm feeling very pro-active. When I'm feeling a little less gung-ho, we have an alternative saying, "When in doubt, do nothing at all." And that works too. If nothing else, both sayings save husband-dear a lot of headache, which makes him happy, and that makes me happy, and then we're both happy. Even without having made any decision at all.

So this past weekend, we were faced with another difficult decision. With Jimmie in the hospital, was it still appropriate to do a triathlon? It would be husband-dear's first, and my third, and may the record show that we had been training our behinds off. It would also be during a time when the hospital did not have visiting hours, so our alternative would be to sit at home until we could leave for said visiting hours. And we already knew Jimmie would be coming home on Monday. So it seemed like competing in a triathlon would not be the worst idea in the world. But still, could a responsible, loving parent just go and race on a day like that? Obviously, it's not on a par with calling your child "it" and making it sleep in the bathtub, but we weren't sure if it wasn't some sign of parental neglect. Or lack of caring. Or something that Dr. Spock might frown upon.

Well, in this case the "when in doubt whip it out" perspective applied, because after some thought, we both agreed that we would go out and "whip" some butt. It would make the time go by faster, it would distract us, and we would get some good exercise in before sitting in a car for another two hours.

So as of Saturday morning, we are both married to a triathlete. Although I smashed last year's time, and came -this- close to placing in my age category (why is there never an award for fourth place? I mean, really?), and husband-dear did his 5k so fast I think he may have broken the sound barrier, we have been in better shape. During my first transition, I had my bike shoes on, gloves, glasses, and was about to run off with my bike, when I realized; "Crap! Helmet!". How I could have forgotten that, while it was lying on top of my shoes, and would have resulted in a DQ, I don't know, but there you go. Husband-dear's chain came off his bike during the first 500 yards, and we both managed to almost run out the wrong gate during the second transition, which cost us precious seconds as we then had to race all the way back to our backs and out the other end of the transition area. But we had fun. And Jimmie loved the triathlon cap we brought back for him.

And just to stay within the "whip it out" angle, we have now registered for three more triathlons this season, one in August, one longer one in September, and a full Olympic in October. You see, that ties in with another one of our beliefs:

"When you do something, you do it all the way or not all."