Outliers

Normally, if I'm home and not working between four and seven in the afternoon, I enjoy wasting time and messing about with Toni "Ol' Blue Eyes" Garrido, listening to his program "Asuntos Propios" on Radio Nacional Española. I was glad I didn't listen this afternoon, however. Garrido's featured guest was singer Soraya, who represented Spain in the annual cheesefest that is Eurovision. Over the past few years, Eurovision has gone from being simply tacky to a full-on Gong Show, and this year, the European Broadcasting Network cracked down on the messing about and made every country present something relatively normal.

Not that that's necessarily a good thing. "Normal", as the saying goes, "is only the mean average of every bit of weirdness and boring crap out there," and though Soraya can certainly belt a song with the best of them, she was one blonde singing a vaguely disco-ish song with five backup dancers. And in any Eurovision contest, there is no shortage of blonde babes belting dance tunes while dancers writhe in the background. Not surprisingly, Soraya got her ass handed to her on a plate, but it probably isn't her fault - the song was nothing special, she was one of a more than a dozen blonde singers that night, and the whole thing was an exercise in mediocrity. And in spite of this, Soraya appeared on "Asuntos Propios" and, apparently, came out swinging against the powers that be at Televisión Española for her failure to rise any higher than second-last. Which is not to say that she wasn't good or competent or talented. She just wasn't different enough to win.

I think about being different a lot. I guess it can't be helped: short and stocky and light-skinned in a country filled with willowy olive-skinned beauties; lapsed Protestant in a Catholic nation; girl who cycles. No matter how you cut it, I don't fit in. But I refuse to see that as a disadvantage.

Yeah, I have pretty big legs, but I can sprint well. Once I got over the initial fear of him thinking that I was a complete nutjob, I had no problems sending an e-mail to a coach and being honest about where I wanted to go with cycling. (If anyone is still doubting whether or not to contact Yago for help, do it, if only for that last thing.) You can't make fun of me and embarrass me. I do it to myself all the time, and I am not afraid to have a laugh at myself, something which sets me apart from the vast majority of people I know. I AM weird. I AM ridiculous. Your point being....?

I mean, I don't want to be SO ridiculous that people feel they need a slide rule just to figure out what I'm talking about. But I'm not afraid to be different, and I think that that has been a big advantage with my cycling. I am the idiot who will go out in the snow and the rain. I am the person who will ride a hill seven or eight times over to get a feel for the curves. I am the person who will throw it all into a ride, even if it means crawling home on my hands and knees.

I guess I just want it more than the others do; that, coupled with a distinct lack of fear of looking silly, is what's going to make this work.