Definitions and the agony of defeat

So I email my part-time training buddy Darren on the weekend and say, "F the rain - let's ride!!" After sitting on the fence about it for an agonizingly long time (for him, about 20 seconds) he says, "let's roll!" We went out for an A-one ride, over 100km, on nearly deserted streets - and for a bonus the rain stayed away.

Having said all that, here's the kicker: we were both born and raised in this country, and both allegedly speak English as our "mother tongue"; however, there is a clear, obvious difference in our definition of at least one adjective: "flat".

My definition of flat: pancakes, Saskatchewan, a calm quiet lake, you know, like this:

Darren's definition of flat: cactus, Colorado, rolling waves - like this.

Mind you, he'd still look at the grain elevator in the middle of a flat field of wheat and say, "cool, let's ride the elevator!" Note to self: when a 8% ascent shows up two minutes into your easy, flat ride you should maybe know that there is a miscommunication of definitions. That was later followed by riding up a skihill.

Overall, great ride, great day.

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Here's the real agony of defeat. The agony of defeat is when your kid's baseball team loses the first game in the round-robin playoffs and are told, "win your last two games to make the semifinals". The kid's team then improbably goes ahead and wins those games (17-16 and then 9-8) over two teams that had beaten them in the regular season, only to find out that going 2-1 wasn't good enough. Two other teams in the "division"went 3-0 and that the kid's game only mattered to the "other" team, whose season also ended with the loss.

To see their little faces crumble when they found out after the game (they were told after the game, after going in thinking all they had to do was win) was as heartbreaking to the parents and coaches as it was to the kids. The kids (the team logo was Red Sox, and that was bad enough) hit well enough to win and played unbelievable infield defence - just in time for the season to end. Oh well - hockey tryouts are less than a month away.

Peace.