Pre-Base Training Week 3

Mo: 0:30 swim
Tu: 0:30 run
We: 0:45 weights / 1:10 bike
Th: 0:30 swim / 1:05 bike
Fr: 0:30 run / 0:20 weights
Sa: 2:00 bike
Su: 2:00 bike

Go check out RadioheadRemix.com if you are into the band. The idea is really cool. You can download individual "stems" (bass, lead vocals, backing vocals, guitar, piano/strings and drums) from the song "Reckoner", off the In Rainbows album, and remix them as you like. Then you upload them to the site to be shared with others, and possibly played on the radio. I heard 2 different versions on Sirius Channel 26 (Left of Center) Blog Radio segment at lunch today, on my way to swim. Interesting, and I had all these weird beats repeating in my head the whole time I was in the water, feeling weightless.

I always have these kinds of strange and surreal experiences with Radiohead songs. The last time I had an MRI done (about 1 year ago), I was loaded feet-first into the mouth of the tube-shaped machine, then horizontally "lowered" to the top of my head. My face was below the rim, with the top of my head more or less parallel to the rim, and my eyes were only inches away from the inner wall of the white cylinder. I repeatedly looked down at my feet to remain calm and lucid during the 45 minute procedure. If you are claustrophobic (generally, I'm not, but I get a little freaked out inside the MRI machine), you don't want to be in there. And even if you're not, it is still discomforting - I feel like I'm in my own coffin - and you cannot move or you may cause errors with the imaging process. You have to remain as still as possible for almost an hour. The machine makes strange clicks and popping noises intermittently, like a pod of robotic dolphins vocalizing to one another in burst-pulsed electronic sounds.

I had Muzak headphones on tuned to NPR's "All Things Considered" segment with John Ailey. Austinites can appreciate this - he's always playing weird stuff on there. John Ailey played Christopher O'Riley's solo piano version of Radiohead's "Everything In Its Right Place", and the mixture of the resonating chord voicings of the song with the electronic clicks and popping sounds emanating from the wired intestines of the MRI machine combined with a slight sense of claustrophobia to produce an hallucinogenic tonality that had me doing deep breathing exercises to keep from freaking out. Hard to explain but it was very surreal.