Chrissy Gets Inspired

I know you're not supposed to use a pen to write a blog, but I was sitting in a tent cabin on the shore of the American River (about half a mile a way from Sutter's mill, where gold was discovered in California) when I decided to start a blog, and I didn't have my computer with me. So it was either use a pen or type it on my daughter's computer, and that seemed, well -- just wrong. This is a transcription.

What's my blog about? I'm going to swim the 200-meter butterfly, or try at least, in the Gay Games in Cologne in July 2010. About a year ago, I set myself the goal of swimming the 200 fly in a swim meet before I turned 60. My original plan was to accomplish this in a local Masters meet, somewhere in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I live. But when I saw an article on the Web about Cologne, I decided that was the place to do it.

I will turn 60 in September 2010, in 405 days to be precise, and I figure if I'm going to swim the 200 fly in a meet before then, why not in an international meet where it would be really embarrassing to fail? (Although, nobody watches the 60-year-old swimmers, anyway - they all want to see the young guys, especially at the Gay Games - so even if I run out of steam after the first 100 and have to be fished out of the pool with a hook, although it will be personally mortifying, not many people will actually notice.)

Anyway, my blog's going to be about training for Cologne, with a little back story about how I got to this point in my journey.

I wonder how far back I should start. Should I go all the way back to junior high school, and tell you about the sissy boy who was bullied, and spat on, and tripped, and had his books dumped, and was chosen last on every team, and generally hated anything to do with sports or athletic activity? Or should I start more recently, two months and three days ago, when I had surgery on my lumbar spine, because the Pilates, and the swimming, and the bike riding, and the ergonomic chair, and the neuromuscular reprogramming (a form of deep-tissue massage), and the chiropractic, and the acupuncture, and the naprapathy, and the deep breathing, and finally, the Vicodin, weren't winning the battle against sciatic pain?

Hard to decide. You'll get to hear about all of it eventually. For now, though, I should probably settle for introducing myself, because I don't have much time today. I'm going whitewater rafting in a few minutes.

My name is Chrissy the Sissy. That's not my real name, of course. I also go by Camo, which is short for Camomile de Quellequechose. But for this blog, I'm going to use Chrissy the Sissy. I'll explain later. Right now, I have to get ready to go rafting.

I hope my back does okay. It should be fine. I stretched it out at dawn this morning on this big rock by the edge of the river. And the section of the river we're doing is only Class III.