We interrupt this race prep for an unimportant announcement

This blog is basically my racing diary. But racing is only one of several hobbies. So I thought I would talk a little bit about other hobbies for no particular reason.

Historically, tennis has been my favorite athletic activity. I have about 20 tennis racquets. I use them all because I enjoy the feel of different compositions (graphite, fiberglass, aluminum, and even wood composites). I used to go through tennis shoes at the rate of 1 pair per month. If you take sport-specific shoes as a sign of how serious I am about a sport, I’ve also been serious about skateboarding, basketball, lacrosse, and auto racing. But not golf. I’m pretty terrible at golf.

I am a competitive person by nature. I like the challenge of winning. But oddly, I don’t really care about winning. Improving and trying my best are more important to me than the outcome. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy winning. I do. But it’s not very motivating. So it’s probably no surprise that I like gaming in a competitive environment. I used to play a lot of World of Warcraft. That game caters to many different audiences from questers to raiders to pet collectors to erotic role play. And then there’s the PVP modes, which I enjoyed most.

And then I discovered Overwatch, Blizzards futuristic class-based team-based shooter. Millions of people play Overwatch and there’s even a professional league with International city-based teams. Now that my knees are totally shot and I can’t compete athletically, I’m getting my competitive fix via Overwatch. My birthday is in about 2.5 weeks, and I’m headed to LA to see some professional Overwatch matches in person. Honestly, I’m not that big of fan of Pro eSports, but it’s like going to an NBA game in its inaugural season: historic. If you want to play overwatch with me, my battletag is murloc#12442. I’m a pretty average player. Given that I’m 50 years old and don’t have 1000 hours of Call of Duty or Counterstrike behind me, being average among the gaming generation is just fine with me.

I also have non-competitive hobbies. I like making stuff. That could be software, electronic gizmos, duct tape wallets (well, leather now), etc. I also like to play music. For a couple years I was the bass player in “Minor Groove”, a band made up of mostly scientists. The name is a pun on the structure of DNA. Really, I want to be a guitar player, but the others were so much better than me. My favorite music genre is Shoegaze. If you’re not familiar with that, it’s like a smoothy if smoothies were made of reverb and distortion. It’s rich, textured, flavorful, possibly nourishing, but without sprinkles or any look-at-me posturing. My favorite guitar is one I made, pictured below. It’s made from a skateboard. I never use the volume or tone controls, so I wired the pickup directly to the jack. The pickup is a stacked humbucker in a Telecaster shape. I’m also making guitars from car engines… but that’s a topic fo another day.