One of the constants in my life has been I always tend to end up with a group of very funny friends. And there is always that one guy or girl in any group who is just funnier than me. Just like in sports, a person knows when they are overmatched. Being the very competitive type, I do my best to keep up, knowing that while I may score a point or two, in the end everyone will know who the funnier person is. The best (or worst, depending on one’s perspective) part is the funnier person knows it too. They may try to act all humble and shit and pretend that “you are way funnier than me,” but deep down they know who the comedy boss is.
One of these funny folks, Jill, is currently on a 30 day(ish) 2700 mile mountain bike ride from Banff, Alberta to Somewhere, Mexico. The route just goes over pass after pass down the Rocky Mountains and includes something silly like 200,000 feet of total climbing. She has been documenting her journey doing these selfie style monologues that are at times spit the coffee out funny. She does while in the midst of this incredibly challenging and inspiring event she is tackling. While there is no doubt the ride is getting to her at times, she always seems to find a nugget or two to make the viewer (and she has a lot of them) get a belly laugh or two.
So, Jill does videos that her 1000s of viewers can be inspired by while giggling their way through them. I in turn do a blog that my 10s of readers can see me taking mostly mundane events and making them mildly amusing by my seemingly endless store of ineptitude. So, here follows some ineptitude.
I got the chance to hit my first mountain steam of the season the other day. I won a GoPro Session4 (GoPro’s very compact version) at a golf tournament recently and took it along planning to use it to take pictures as I don’t have a hat mount yet. I managed to hook up with a very, very nice cutthroat and wanted to film it, but couldn’t figure out how. Then I thought “hey, its really small and water-proof. Maybe I can just hold it with my teeth.” So I did. And I have to say, it took a wonderful video. There’s just this one little tiny issue that will become glaringly obvious as you watch the video linked below. It starts subtly but gets less so as the video progresses. Stay till the end, it’s even funnier when I try to talk.
High sensitivity microphones are not always welcome
I had 0 intention of actually posting this, until I watched Jill’s latest video and thought she might need a laugh (shes at like mile 2200 and would really like to be off her bike now). I messaged her a short version of this story, and telling her that I can’t make any selfie style videos as people would just think I was copying her. So I had to do it point of view and the only thing I could think of was anchoring it in my teeth (a lot of thought went into that sentence to avoid all the obvious comments). My miscalculation was proximity of the microphones to my big honking nose, and my inability to not swear when things don’t go perfect (like a fish that just won’t come to the darn net). I sent the message at 6 PM expecting her to not read it until sometime the next day as I knew she would still be riding at 6PM as they typically ride until dark. To my surprise I get a message back saying “Rick, I’m sitting in the dirt on the side of the road reading this. Yes, I’m laughing… thank you!” Then she started talking about wind in her face, and fully loaded mountain bikes and bad roads and hills and blah blah. Honestly, I stopped paying attention after she said I was funnier than her, or at least that’s how I heard it.
My friends name is Jill Simek. Look her up on facebook or on instagram as @jmelland. Follow her, unless of course you intend to follow her instead of me (@stumblingthroulife), in which case, don’t follow her. Jill, keep doing the videos. They are hysterically inspirational. I might have to trademark that phrase!
To close, here is another video from the same day, before I realized I need to go buy a ball cap mount. Enjoy, I hope. And it’s summer. Get out and do fun stuff!!
juststumblingthroughlife 