What Motivates You?

Coming back from vacation is tough to do. Actually, since I'm on a seven-month vacation, I should probably re-state that... Coming back from a trip out of the country is tough to do.

Shing and I got back from Costa Rica late on Monday night. The trip was absolutely fantastic. On the last night of our trip, we tried to pick the best part of the vacation - I couldn't even narrow it down to the best day. Each day was terrific and seemingly at least as good as the last. You know, a review of the trip should be its own post, so I'll tackle that one in the next day or so.

Last night, I went to the gym for the first time in a couple weeks. I go to 24 Hour Fitness on Ocean Ave in SF (which, coincidentally, is NOT 24 hours - they close from 2-5am) and normally they have the usual on tv: ESPN, ESPN2, Fox News, and like the Food Network. I normally find Fox News to be the most motivating thing on. Watching Bill O'Reilly or Glenn Beck blathering their nonsense, combined with the Fox News ticker is normally enough to drive me to stay on the cardio machines at least 5 minutes longer than I normally would. It blows my mind that they can even say the things they do. Luckily, I don't have audio on the Fox News nor are there captions, the images are motivation enough!

However, last night, I found something even more motivating - The Olympics. The men's half-pipe was on and each time an American took his turn, I found myself going harder on the elliptical machine. When Shaun White went on, my pulse actually jumped 10 beats per minute.

Now, I should point out that I became a huge fan of Shaun White about 3 or 4 years ago when I watched the documentary on snowboarding called First Descent. If you have Netflix, put it at the top of your queue. It's a fantastic review of the sport - starting from its punk roots and going all the way to Shaun White and Hannah Teter. The movie brings together five snowboarders: two of the pioneers of the sport (Nick Perata and Shawn Farmer), the premiere backcountry boarder (Terje Haakonsen), and the future of the sport (Teter and White). The five of them are attempting to be the first to snowboard down a mountain in Alaska, hence the first descent. It's a breathtaking movie. You should watch the trailer.

In other news, the hockey match today between Canada and Switzerland was FANTASTIC. It was one of the best hockey matches I have seen ever - the goaltending by Martin Brodeur (Canada) and Jonas Hiller (Switzerland) was phenomenal. Hiller, in particular, fended off a huge number of shots by Canada. It was unfortunate that someone had to lose the match, but after a shootout, Canada won 1-0.

OK, back to watching the Olympics!