Breaking Away

Did anyone else from my generation see the title-referenced movie a few times too many? There was a time when I could probably have told you exactly what would happen on the screen next. When I was growing up, my family had a timeshare in Fairfield Glade, Tennessee. One of the things the pubescent child I was at the time loved was that it had HBO. As a result, I would spend way too much time parked in front of the television waiting for some illicit bit to pass in front of me. I soon learned that the HBO of those days had about a dozen films in rotation at any given moment, and of those, there were two or three that carried most of the weight. Breaking Away was one of these.

It's been far too long for me to trust any remaining adolescent opinions as to the quality of the movie. The sense that remains for me is that the movie was about the struggle between what one wants to do and what one is expected to do. It's also about the idea that Italian cyclists are insufferable prats.

This weekend, I will be headed out to a cabin in the woods to spend three days or so creating and consorting with others that wish to do the same. I'm taking along two cameras (one video, one DSLR), plenty of drawing supplies, some photos that need correction, and writing materials. I almost certainly won't do all of that. It's quite likely, however, that I will do more than if I had not taken the chance to Break Away, even if just for a day or two.