There is a moment of dialog when Darth Vader sounds like George Bush and mutters, "If you're not with me, then you're my enemy," which comes off a bit unfair because most of the time our president sounds like Yoda – "Freedom, weapons of mass destruction is." But if the moral glue between the latest three Star Wars films and the original ones is (besides the importance of familial microcholridians) that there are shades of grey then my opinion of the last film is also in that murky limbo.
The film is about a man struggling to manage his career with his impending fatherhood and making some rather bad choices. Puff Daddy Vader is Othello in a galaxy far, far away. Not only because both rolls have been played by James Earl Jones, but because they share a nasty temper. No one criticizes Shakespeare on plausibility, but basically one misplaced handkerchief leads to a large body count. Lucas has better special effects, not all of which go into Natalie Portman's hairstyles, to make that same character transition, but lacks the playwright's language even if he did get the author of Shakespeare in Love to assist him with the script.
There was no help for the acting.
I think the first three films worked the best because Lucas had the fortune of casting two of the most archetype actors of the last century – the thespian's thespian in Alec Guinness and the intellectual action star in Harrison Ford. I think only Larry O. and Bogart would have been better, but I don't think either would have worked for scale. Ewan McGregor's wonderful smile is perfect when singing Elton John love songs to Nicole Kidman, but comes off as out of place as Chewbacca doing a cell phone commercial. It is a hard film when I think the actor that does his best work is R2D2.
So while I don't think Lucas did a very good job of capturing Shakespeare's themes, he does a much better job of playing to the front of the audience. The effects are amazing to the point that unbelievable becomes real. For the first film he had to put a couple of fur suits on elephants from Marine World to create mounts for sand people, but now he lives in a world of pixels where someone can ride on a lizard and there are neither wires nor seams to see. The animated character of General Grievous is so well done that we forget than he is descent of the same technology that gave us Jar Jar Binks and Ally McBeal's Dancing Baby.
Yet at times the technology almost too dominated the film – I think Lucas would love to replace everyone in the cast with robots if he could. (I see the continued casting of Jude Law in movies (but not in this one) as part of the same larger trend).
I went back to see the original's light saber battle and while it looked so grounded, because it was after all two old guys just taking hacks at each other, it felt more emotionally fulfilling. Now the rattling of swords are almost secondary to the mid air flips. The fencing has been reduced to rhythm gymnastics, and has the same gravitas shift from a battle where warriors clash to a competition where costumes matter. The Lord of the Rings is such a superior filmmaking effort not because Legolas can do a better triple pike, but because Peter Jackson has the common sense to use the effect sparingly. In one of his better sword fight plays, Hamlet, Bill wrote, "brevity is the soul of wit," and George seemed to miss all three – the brevity, the soul and the wit.
The best that can be said is that we get closure on that far away land (far better than we will ever get in Iraq). There is no surprise that Vader is going to have twins, but it was nice to know why Luke got screwed with being stranded on a desert planet with the last name equivalent of Stalin, and Leia got to be a princess. I think this movie has a great sequence for the fate of the various Jedi, which is better than anything in the prior two films, and seeing the helmet put on Vader is more devastating than any of the carnage done to a death star.
I am not with the new film nor am I its enemy; I am not Mark Anthony seeking to bury Lucas nor praise him. The movie is worth a couple of hours of summertime and the price of a ticket, but I don't think it will linger in my subconscious. Perhaps it is the final end of the nostalgia for being a child during the seventies, that I, too, like Vader will need to put on the heavy gear of responsibly and sigh frequently at work. But I think that there still will be magic out there, even if I have to wait a few more weeks for the next thing at the multiplex.
Sunday, May 29, 2005
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
Twice Around
I think the first time you do any sport you play by the Rocky I rule. The goal is to last the fifteen rounds of the experience while some short old guy says, "you're an animal". Bruised and bewildered you should finish aware enough to shout out for the shy pet store girl and if lucky collect an Oscar for best picture. You will get later attempts to handle Creed, the Russian, or Mr. T. The first time is about going the distance.
The clerk at the local ski store was the first person I told that I was thinking about skiing a 50k. I explained to him that I hadn't skied since Reagan was in office and the goal was by the end of winter to be able to ski that length under the five hours and fifteen minute time cut off with the small issue that it never snows at my home city. I asked "What skis would do you recommend?"
He looked at me at the same way that a dog owner looks at their pet when they realized it swallowed a golf ball. "You know that fifty kilometers is really far?" Instead of buying, I rented skis for a while.
At the Team in Training information meeting (a fundraising organization for Leukemia Research), Dave, who became one of my coaches, talked about how 25k was the equivalent of a ski marathon, and he was thinking about emphasizing the valor of 10k for novice skiers. I asked him what it would take for the 50k. He, too, said, "that 50k is really far."
But I spent the winter practicing anyway with patient coaching and quality three-hour car rides. I was in decent shape but still had technique problems. I have three athletic attributes - I am good on a kickboard in a pool, I get very hot when I exercise, and I have strong determination. Coordination isn't a personal skill and even now I still can only really pole on my left side and can't really balance very well on my right leg. I look longingly at the gracefully strides of expert skate skiers the same way that a prairie dog must look at a gazelle. At some point there must have been a common evolutionary ancestor, but we each had specialized a long time ago.
Headed to the race I was confident that I could make the time cutoff unless there was a snowstorm or I messed up my hydration. For the later I had been practicing by putting perpeturm, a sugary fuel mix like cool aid with the calories cranked up, in with water into my camelbak reservoir for nutrition. It is trail mix in a tang format.
For the weather, the six times I went to practice skiing I had nothing but blue skies and 40-degree highs. I had lucked into missing all of the snowy days in the Sierra, and it had been one of the driest winters in the Rockies. If it were to snow I would have to improvise.
The night before the flight to Bozeman, I put the perpetum in the camelback and carried small snacks on the plane. I had not been to Montana since right after graduating from college for my roommate's wedding and looked forward to seeing him, his wife, and their four kids. It had been a long time.
Bozeman is a charming compact town that blends quickly into the rolling hills and jagged peaks that surrounds it. A love of hiking is almost a requirement for citizenship, and there very well could be more dogs than people. It has successfully kept its main street, a victory against the malls of America, and shops range from the expected sporting goods store with a rifle as a logo and gift shop with a moose crossing sign in the window to the unusual authentic Thai restaurant named Smilers. In San Francisco a place called Bang and Tail would be a bar, but in Bozeman it sells biking and skiing equipment. Foot apparel is available at Boots and Shoes, with the later seeming like an afterthought when shuffling through the mud of the early spring thaw. It is a boot kind of town except for the scuba shop, which felt about out of place as me. If in California we dream of mountain retreats, then from time to time in Montana they must think of warm beaches. Escapism is universal.
My roommate's kids are being raised as good Christians and Red Sox fans. They wear the caps more of the second and don't seem amazed that the Red Sox won the series. Faith is the strength that gets you through winters not just Octobers. My Giants lack Montana's natural modesty and kindness, but my roommate's family has that by the bushel.
After a pleasant day spent in Bozeman, complete with a tour of the noodle on stick art sculpture and nice morning walk, I met up with the rest of my teammates for the bus trip down to West Yellowstone. Instead of looking out the window to see actual wildlife we watched a video about a pack of wolves called the Druids that were released from their cages and sent out with GPS collars into Yellowstone. They played, howled, and hunted together, and I thought about how our own little team of charity skiers had done a similar adventure of traveling out into a new world unsure of the terrain but confident that we could handle the task together. The wolves then ate a deer and bred off-camera to make a litter of four cubs, and I felt the analogy wasn't going to work as well.
The ski race wasn't the only thing in West Yellowstone that weekend; there was also Sno-Blast, a convention for artic cat snowmobile dealers. Snowmobiliers are people who enjoy nature with the smell of napalm. They wear thick helmets to mask the sounds of their engine for themselves but leave the noise for everyone else and large neon jumpsuits that make them look like the Pillsbury Doughboy with a Star Wars fetish. They are the answer to the question of what would happen if bad taste were given a bunch of money and proceeded to drink heavily, smoke consistently, and destroy the hotel hot tub.
Needless to say there was a slight body composition difference between the cross-country skiers and the snowmobiliers, and I was a little disheartened when the hospitality clerk got me confused with the snowmobile crowd. I wanted to lean over to her and say "no, really I am here to do the 50k," but I think she would have just pointed me to the bar and told me to keep drinking.
The town of West Yellowstone was friendly like that. The ski shop there that sounds like a San Francisco bar is called "Free Heel and Wheel" and serves a great mocha. Most of the town was motels and gift shops, but they did have an I-Max theatre that showed NASCAR racing twice a day and a small zoo consisting of grizzly bears and wolves. I wondered how the animals felt to be caged so close to an actual park and thought the experience must be similar to the prisoners in San Quentin who can look out across San Francisco Bay to the sourdough city. Escapism is universal.
After race registration, a pasta dinner, a good night's sleep, and two pancakes for breakfast I arrived at the starting line for a quick warm-up. I was in the last wave with most of my coaches and lined up next to them. For the first fifty yards of a ski race you must double poll, which is to say you can't use your legs. The gun went off and I pressed forward. I could poll well, but my entire team had passed me on the first hill. It was going to be a long day.
Thirty minutes into the race it started snowing. It was a light flurry at first but then turned to large wet flakes that clung to my sunglasses. The 50k race had become a great deal harder.
One of the secrets of endurance racing is know what you can and cannot worry about. Your thoughts won't change the weather and so it is important to concentrate on what you can control - your pace and fueling. I took the first sip out of my camelback and realized only then that after three days perpetum in water ferments. Nothing grows in Gatorade, but the problem of drinking something healthier is that it was healthier for other creatures as well. Despite my careful preparation, my camelback was useless, and I would have to rely in the food I kept in my pockets and the water on the course.
By the first water stop I had passed a coach and her partner. They have much better technique than I do, but the thick snow meant that gliding wasn't going to work very well. Without the glide we were left to run through the snow with two very large sticks attached to our legs so everyone was going to be awkward – dashing across the snow, we looked more like penguins that deer. With my heart rate was ten beats above where it should be, I was worried that I was going out too fast because but there was a loose 11:30 am time cut-off for the first lap and I had not this far just be push aside.
Despite the weather I kept getting hotter and spent most of the time looking at the backs of two skiers ahead of me. By the third water stop I passed them as well in full throttle to make 11:30. Right towards the end, just before the Subaru ski team lapped me, I caught another group of teammates/coaches.
I went down the long straightway to the lap marker at 11:34 and was very nicely allowed to continue. (The year before the cutoff was noon, so they weren't sticking too hard on this point). The race close was at 2:30 pm so I would need to the second lap in just under three hours.
I shed my useless camelback and long sleeve shirt and gave these to our team managers extraordinaire, Barb Smalley and Ananda Baron, who kindly checked on everyone. They were next to the race director and could listen on the radio for our race numbers - mine was number 390. Down to a red fleece vest and a short sleeve t-shirt I headed out again to do the course one more time.
I don't believe in second chances. Even if you arrive back to exactly where you were before, you will be older and more tired when you look at that same path. Not that there isn't the longing - I have the times when I wish I wasn't as shy like a life long audition for the lead in "Sideways" - but the things you do can't be taken back.
One of those days I wish I could do over was May 2, 2004, the last time I did a race with Team in Training. The Olympic distance triathlon race was meant to be a tune up for a longer one a few weeks later, but I made a series of mistakes and was betrayed by two of my athletic features - that I exercise hot and that I am determined to go through anything.
That day I was amped from watching my teammates do well the day before and when I passed the final transition on to the run course the cheering of young, attractive women made me want to push even harder. I drank water and Gatorade before and during the race, but in retrospect I should had five water cups at each stop instead of just one.
The last thing I remembered I was three hundred yards from the end of the race at the base of the final hill with the finish line just around the corner.
I woke memoryless in a hospital. A mere minutes away from the end I had a heat stroke and seizure and had to be helicoptered out. A heat stroke is when the water in your brain has evaporated and your circuits are literally frying. I fear for what I might have lost. Barb came as quickly to the hospital and after an overnight stay I was released physically okay but restricted from doing any events in the heat.
A few months later I realized that if I could go far in the heat then I should try it in the cold and decided to switch sports to cross country skiing and came up with the silly goal of a 50k.
Yes, I don't think we ever get truly get second chances, but what we can get is second loops. Often we tend to travel in circles and when we come to that familiar fork, more worn and weary, we know the weight of each. The first time through a loop is done with blind exuberance that we had in our twenties. But now as we wander the second time through what we lack with energy is made up with focus.
This ski race wasn't a comeback. I can't return to the heat. But it was a chance for me to show that I still could go out and seize a day. Perhaps I wasn't the dominant wolf in the pack, but I still could hunt and howl at the moon. This race was about going the fifteen rounds.
I slowed down to conserve energy and returned to the first water stop just as they were closing it. They had already removed the trail markers but still had some water and PowerAde left. They asked me how many people were behind me, and I told them at least six. As I left they poured some more cups, which I didn't realize were going to be left unused.
On the second loop without kilometer markers I had no idea how fast I was going because I could not see anyone ahead either and kept myself amused by mumbling movie quotes. My favorite was King Théoden from the "Two Towers" when he was on the wall at Helms Deep as a sea of orcs attacked, "Is this all you have Saruman? Is this the best you can do?"
But whom I should have been really quoting was Frank the Tank from the movie "Old School." The two of us shared a moment of being out on our own without much clothing convinced very much that there was a pack of like mind people following them. Franks wife pulled him aside and asks him what he is doing and in a slurred moment of exuberance he responded, "We are streaking".
I was out there, too, streaking and striding in my short sleeve shirt. Only there was no one in a minivan to pull me over. The skiers behind me had left the race, and I am making a new rule that you know it is a tough ski day when your coaches from Alaska and Latvia drop out because of bad conditions. Later back at the hotel, we would joke that DNF stands for "definitely not foolish" But I had only me, two flasks of hammer gel, and geeky movie quotes to keep me going.
I only started to really worry when I found the second water stop had been abandoned. I had not seen anyone in an hour and wasn't carrying water. I could still follow the deep tracks, and onward I trudged. I started to fall more going down hills because my core muscles were tired, and the climbs seemed twice as long the second time around.
I wasn't the only one worried. Ananda and Barb were frantically listening on the radio for skier 390. If it had been anyone else, anyone who they hadn't been to the emergency room the time before, anyone who tended to be at least somewhat sane during a race, they probably would have relaxed, but I was the last one out. Why was I out there with a short sleeve shirt? Could anybody see me? If they can put GPS collars on wolves why can't they put them on skiers?
50k is far. It is roughly five miles further than a marathon. Sometime between what would have been the second and third water stops I passed that point slower than I have ever run that distance. It was going to be a long day. The one little bit of luck I had graced me at the third water stop. They had still had a few cups left and some cookies, and again I left some water for the non-existent people behind me.
Invigorated I looked at my watch and realized that I was going to have to really step it up to make the 2:30 pm cut-off. I started to push hard again and saw my first person in about two hours who was taking apart some of the 10k course. He radioed back to the finish line, and Ananda and Barb were relieved.
I ran into the head coach with about 3k left on the course and kept pressing to make the time. One wrong turn during the final chute made a me have to go over some gravel to get to the finish line. My watch said 2:26 and I felt I did not go all this way to let mere gravel get in the way. I hopped over the gravel and skied back and forth to the finish line. Expecting me to come down a different route six of my teammates came running down to greet me at the end. Ananda quickly put an old fleece over my exposed arms. The clock was at 2:27:30. Two and half minutes to spare.
I finished 164 out of 164 roughly fifty minutes behind anyone else. Of the 209 people who entered the race 45 did not finish which is just over 21%. The people with common sense were from places like Saskatchewan, Colorado, and Vermont where winter isn't just a weekend folly. One of the Subaru professionals called it a day early, as did four of my coaches. I was the sole team in training participant to finish and one coach and our category two bike racing captain finished as well. I have never been dead last at anything and felt so proud.
I had gone the fifteen rounds.
And if Rocky can shout at the end of his match so can I.
I want to really thank Ananda and Barb. One day we will have an ordinary race day with fair temperatures and sunny skies. We have been through so much together, and I hope you remember the good parts. I cried a little when Ananda drove me to MacDonald's afterward because I was so happy to have finally reached that finish line that has escaped me for ten months. And so happy that I could share it with her.
I want to thank my mentor Tracy and her partner Sigrida for so much guidance and not to mention rides up and back the to slopes every other weekend. I hope my offbeat humor was offset with my spiffy iPod.
I want to thank the coaches and captains, and especially Scott for leading the entire gang.
50k is far, and while I won't pretend that it wasn't deeply personal I won't forget the other reason I did it. I am just so grateful to have done a second lap, but the purpose of the program is to give cancer patients a second lap of their own. During the course of training we heard statistics like 80% survival rate, which can seem abstract at times. But when I look at the numbers of the race as a comparison, I realize that 20% can include quite a few people who are noble and special on their own. I don't want to lose any of them.
Thanks again to all
The clerk at the local ski store was the first person I told that I was thinking about skiing a 50k. I explained to him that I hadn't skied since Reagan was in office and the goal was by the end of winter to be able to ski that length under the five hours and fifteen minute time cut off with the small issue that it never snows at my home city. I asked "What skis would do you recommend?"
He looked at me at the same way that a dog owner looks at their pet when they realized it swallowed a golf ball. "You know that fifty kilometers is really far?" Instead of buying, I rented skis for a while.
At the Team in Training information meeting (a fundraising organization for Leukemia Research), Dave, who became one of my coaches, talked about how 25k was the equivalent of a ski marathon, and he was thinking about emphasizing the valor of 10k for novice skiers. I asked him what it would take for the 50k. He, too, said, "that 50k is really far."
But I spent the winter practicing anyway with patient coaching and quality three-hour car rides. I was in decent shape but still had technique problems. I have three athletic attributes - I am good on a kickboard in a pool, I get very hot when I exercise, and I have strong determination. Coordination isn't a personal skill and even now I still can only really pole on my left side and can't really balance very well on my right leg. I look longingly at the gracefully strides of expert skate skiers the same way that a prairie dog must look at a gazelle. At some point there must have been a common evolutionary ancestor, but we each had specialized a long time ago.
Headed to the race I was confident that I could make the time cutoff unless there was a snowstorm or I messed up my hydration. For the later I had been practicing by putting perpeturm, a sugary fuel mix like cool aid with the calories cranked up, in with water into my camelbak reservoir for nutrition. It is trail mix in a tang format.
For the weather, the six times I went to practice skiing I had nothing but blue skies and 40-degree highs. I had lucked into missing all of the snowy days in the Sierra, and it had been one of the driest winters in the Rockies. If it were to snow I would have to improvise.
The night before the flight to Bozeman, I put the perpetum in the camelback and carried small snacks on the plane. I had not been to Montana since right after graduating from college for my roommate's wedding and looked forward to seeing him, his wife, and their four kids. It had been a long time.
Bozeman is a charming compact town that blends quickly into the rolling hills and jagged peaks that surrounds it. A love of hiking is almost a requirement for citizenship, and there very well could be more dogs than people. It has successfully kept its main street, a victory against the malls of America, and shops range from the expected sporting goods store with a rifle as a logo and gift shop with a moose crossing sign in the window to the unusual authentic Thai restaurant named Smilers. In San Francisco a place called Bang and Tail would be a bar, but in Bozeman it sells biking and skiing equipment. Foot apparel is available at Boots and Shoes, with the later seeming like an afterthought when shuffling through the mud of the early spring thaw. It is a boot kind of town except for the scuba shop, which felt about out of place as me. If in California we dream of mountain retreats, then from time to time in Montana they must think of warm beaches. Escapism is universal.
My roommate's kids are being raised as good Christians and Red Sox fans. They wear the caps more of the second and don't seem amazed that the Red Sox won the series. Faith is the strength that gets you through winters not just Octobers. My Giants lack Montana's natural modesty and kindness, but my roommate's family has that by the bushel.
After a pleasant day spent in Bozeman, complete with a tour of the noodle on stick art sculpture and nice morning walk, I met up with the rest of my teammates for the bus trip down to West Yellowstone. Instead of looking out the window to see actual wildlife we watched a video about a pack of wolves called the Druids that were released from their cages and sent out with GPS collars into Yellowstone. They played, howled, and hunted together, and I thought about how our own little team of charity skiers had done a similar adventure of traveling out into a new world unsure of the terrain but confident that we could handle the task together. The wolves then ate a deer and bred off-camera to make a litter of four cubs, and I felt the analogy wasn't going to work as well.
The ski race wasn't the only thing in West Yellowstone that weekend; there was also Sno-Blast, a convention for artic cat snowmobile dealers. Snowmobiliers are people who enjoy nature with the smell of napalm. They wear thick helmets to mask the sounds of their engine for themselves but leave the noise for everyone else and large neon jumpsuits that make them look like the Pillsbury Doughboy with a Star Wars fetish. They are the answer to the question of what would happen if bad taste were given a bunch of money and proceeded to drink heavily, smoke consistently, and destroy the hotel hot tub.
Needless to say there was a slight body composition difference between the cross-country skiers and the snowmobiliers, and I was a little disheartened when the hospitality clerk got me confused with the snowmobile crowd. I wanted to lean over to her and say "no, really I am here to do the 50k," but I think she would have just pointed me to the bar and told me to keep drinking.
The town of West Yellowstone was friendly like that. The ski shop there that sounds like a San Francisco bar is called "Free Heel and Wheel" and serves a great mocha. Most of the town was motels and gift shops, but they did have an I-Max theatre that showed NASCAR racing twice a day and a small zoo consisting of grizzly bears and wolves. I wondered how the animals felt to be caged so close to an actual park and thought the experience must be similar to the prisoners in San Quentin who can look out across San Francisco Bay to the sourdough city. Escapism is universal.
After race registration, a pasta dinner, a good night's sleep, and two pancakes for breakfast I arrived at the starting line for a quick warm-up. I was in the last wave with most of my coaches and lined up next to them. For the first fifty yards of a ski race you must double poll, which is to say you can't use your legs. The gun went off and I pressed forward. I could poll well, but my entire team had passed me on the first hill. It was going to be a long day.
Thirty minutes into the race it started snowing. It was a light flurry at first but then turned to large wet flakes that clung to my sunglasses. The 50k race had become a great deal harder.
One of the secrets of endurance racing is know what you can and cannot worry about. Your thoughts won't change the weather and so it is important to concentrate on what you can control - your pace and fueling. I took the first sip out of my camelback and realized only then that after three days perpetum in water ferments. Nothing grows in Gatorade, but the problem of drinking something healthier is that it was healthier for other creatures as well. Despite my careful preparation, my camelback was useless, and I would have to rely in the food I kept in my pockets and the water on the course.
By the first water stop I had passed a coach and her partner. They have much better technique than I do, but the thick snow meant that gliding wasn't going to work very well. Without the glide we were left to run through the snow with two very large sticks attached to our legs so everyone was going to be awkward – dashing across the snow, we looked more like penguins that deer. With my heart rate was ten beats above where it should be, I was worried that I was going out too fast because but there was a loose 11:30 am time cut-off for the first lap and I had not this far just be push aside.
Despite the weather I kept getting hotter and spent most of the time looking at the backs of two skiers ahead of me. By the third water stop I passed them as well in full throttle to make 11:30. Right towards the end, just before the Subaru ski team lapped me, I caught another group of teammates/coaches.
I went down the long straightway to the lap marker at 11:34 and was very nicely allowed to continue. (The year before the cutoff was noon, so they weren't sticking too hard on this point). The race close was at 2:30 pm so I would need to the second lap in just under three hours.
I shed my useless camelback and long sleeve shirt and gave these to our team managers extraordinaire, Barb Smalley and Ananda Baron, who kindly checked on everyone. They were next to the race director and could listen on the radio for our race numbers - mine was number 390. Down to a red fleece vest and a short sleeve t-shirt I headed out again to do the course one more time.
I don't believe in second chances. Even if you arrive back to exactly where you were before, you will be older and more tired when you look at that same path. Not that there isn't the longing - I have the times when I wish I wasn't as shy like a life long audition for the lead in "Sideways" - but the things you do can't be taken back.
One of those days I wish I could do over was May 2, 2004, the last time I did a race with Team in Training. The Olympic distance triathlon race was meant to be a tune up for a longer one a few weeks later, but I made a series of mistakes and was betrayed by two of my athletic features - that I exercise hot and that I am determined to go through anything.
That day I was amped from watching my teammates do well the day before and when I passed the final transition on to the run course the cheering of young, attractive women made me want to push even harder. I drank water and Gatorade before and during the race, but in retrospect I should had five water cups at each stop instead of just one.
The last thing I remembered I was three hundred yards from the end of the race at the base of the final hill with the finish line just around the corner.
I woke memoryless in a hospital. A mere minutes away from the end I had a heat stroke and seizure and had to be helicoptered out. A heat stroke is when the water in your brain has evaporated and your circuits are literally frying. I fear for what I might have lost. Barb came as quickly to the hospital and after an overnight stay I was released physically okay but restricted from doing any events in the heat.
A few months later I realized that if I could go far in the heat then I should try it in the cold and decided to switch sports to cross country skiing and came up with the silly goal of a 50k.
Yes, I don't think we ever get truly get second chances, but what we can get is second loops. Often we tend to travel in circles and when we come to that familiar fork, more worn and weary, we know the weight of each. The first time through a loop is done with blind exuberance that we had in our twenties. But now as we wander the second time through what we lack with energy is made up with focus.
This ski race wasn't a comeback. I can't return to the heat. But it was a chance for me to show that I still could go out and seize a day. Perhaps I wasn't the dominant wolf in the pack, but I still could hunt and howl at the moon. This race was about going the fifteen rounds.
I slowed down to conserve energy and returned to the first water stop just as they were closing it. They had already removed the trail markers but still had some water and PowerAde left. They asked me how many people were behind me, and I told them at least six. As I left they poured some more cups, which I didn't realize were going to be left unused.
On the second loop without kilometer markers I had no idea how fast I was going because I could not see anyone ahead either and kept myself amused by mumbling movie quotes. My favorite was King Théoden from the "Two Towers" when he was on the wall at Helms Deep as a sea of orcs attacked, "Is this all you have Saruman? Is this the best you can do?"
But whom I should have been really quoting was Frank the Tank from the movie "Old School." The two of us shared a moment of being out on our own without much clothing convinced very much that there was a pack of like mind people following them. Franks wife pulled him aside and asks him what he is doing and in a slurred moment of exuberance he responded, "We are streaking".
I was out there, too, streaking and striding in my short sleeve shirt. Only there was no one in a minivan to pull me over. The skiers behind me had left the race, and I am making a new rule that you know it is a tough ski day when your coaches from Alaska and Latvia drop out because of bad conditions. Later back at the hotel, we would joke that DNF stands for "definitely not foolish" But I had only me, two flasks of hammer gel, and geeky movie quotes to keep me going.
I only started to really worry when I found the second water stop had been abandoned. I had not seen anyone in an hour and wasn't carrying water. I could still follow the deep tracks, and onward I trudged. I started to fall more going down hills because my core muscles were tired, and the climbs seemed twice as long the second time around.
I wasn't the only one worried. Ananda and Barb were frantically listening on the radio for skier 390. If it had been anyone else, anyone who they hadn't been to the emergency room the time before, anyone who tended to be at least somewhat sane during a race, they probably would have relaxed, but I was the last one out. Why was I out there with a short sleeve shirt? Could anybody see me? If they can put GPS collars on wolves why can't they put them on skiers?
50k is far. It is roughly five miles further than a marathon. Sometime between what would have been the second and third water stops I passed that point slower than I have ever run that distance. It was going to be a long day. The one little bit of luck I had graced me at the third water stop. They had still had a few cups left and some cookies, and again I left some water for the non-existent people behind me.
Invigorated I looked at my watch and realized that I was going to have to really step it up to make the 2:30 pm cut-off. I started to push hard again and saw my first person in about two hours who was taking apart some of the 10k course. He radioed back to the finish line, and Ananda and Barb were relieved.
I ran into the head coach with about 3k left on the course and kept pressing to make the time. One wrong turn during the final chute made a me have to go over some gravel to get to the finish line. My watch said 2:26 and I felt I did not go all this way to let mere gravel get in the way. I hopped over the gravel and skied back and forth to the finish line. Expecting me to come down a different route six of my teammates came running down to greet me at the end. Ananda quickly put an old fleece over my exposed arms. The clock was at 2:27:30. Two and half minutes to spare.
I finished 164 out of 164 roughly fifty minutes behind anyone else. Of the 209 people who entered the race 45 did not finish which is just over 21%. The people with common sense were from places like Saskatchewan, Colorado, and Vermont where winter isn't just a weekend folly. One of the Subaru professionals called it a day early, as did four of my coaches. I was the sole team in training participant to finish and one coach and our category two bike racing captain finished as well. I have never been dead last at anything and felt so proud.
I had gone the fifteen rounds.
And if Rocky can shout at the end of his match so can I.
I want to really thank Ananda and Barb. One day we will have an ordinary race day with fair temperatures and sunny skies. We have been through so much together, and I hope you remember the good parts. I cried a little when Ananda drove me to MacDonald's afterward because I was so happy to have finally reached that finish line that has escaped me for ten months. And so happy that I could share it with her.
I want to thank my mentor Tracy and her partner Sigrida for so much guidance and not to mention rides up and back the to slopes every other weekend. I hope my offbeat humor was offset with my spiffy iPod.
I want to thank the coaches and captains, and especially Scott for leading the entire gang.
50k is far, and while I won't pretend that it wasn't deeply personal I won't forget the other reason I did it. I am just so grateful to have done a second lap, but the purpose of the program is to give cancer patients a second lap of their own. During the course of training we heard statistics like 80% survival rate, which can seem abstract at times. But when I look at the numbers of the race as a comparison, I realize that 20% can include quite a few people who are noble and special on their own. I don't want to lose any of them.
Thanks again to all
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
I honked at Santa Claus
I honked at Santa Claus.
To be completely honest, I honked about two hundred Santa Claus’s, but I think pounding the horn at any Saint Nick isn't good. Coming back from shopping and late for a spa appointment I was going down Third Street, a block away from mission, when the Honda Civic ahead of me suddenly stopped for the first Santa Claus crossing from the Museum of Modern Art side of the street to the Yerba Buena Gardens. Before the Honda Civic could start came the next Santa, and then the next.
The fifth Santa stopped in the middle of the road and did a pelvic thrust at the cars. The seventh Santa carried a sign with the words "Santa X - Crossing" that looked rather obvious given the number of red jackets and caps that had just gone by. There were lanky Santa’s and stout ones. There was a transvestite Santa and a plump bouncy Korean Santa who nearly fell out of her red shorts.
There was more facial hair than the Phish farewell concert, and the pack gave the sense that they had all camped together at Burning Man a half a year ago. One Santa put candy canes on the cars’ windshields, much the same way flowers were put into the rifles at Kent State. It was getting later and later, and I kept wondering if it was okay to clip an elf.
One came by with reindeer antlers, and a few wore mini skirts. Some of those were girls. Having reached some sort of holiday critical mass, none of them stopped for the traffic lights. I guess on Christmas Eve if Santa obeyed all the highway laws he would never be able to get to all of the nice little girls and boys around even if he excluded the pagan ones. Still I can’t remember too many Christmas carols discussing the merits of civil disobedience or the need to goof helpless people in cars.
I started honking.
It was out of frustration that kept me hitting the horn. The massage therapist I see is brilliant at working on my rotator cuff injury, and I really did not want to miss the appointment. The holidays are stressful enough that the kneading of hamstrings becomes almost essential.
But it was after I had done two steady minutes of pounding that I wondered if I was the biggest jerk on the planet. Who honks at Santa because they are late for the spa? Is this pretty much how you get in the express lane to hell? Was my place on Santa’s homeland security naughty list now etched in stone? Did Scrooge insult peasants during his carriage rides? Am I going to be visited by three ghosts who are going to tell me that I should have made a better move on that one girl during a college summer? Is there nothing but coal for me?
I think we are all busy. Those that are married with kids live in coordinated world of carpools to soccer games or birthday parties. In the "other" category my evenings are spent shuffling to spin class, master swims, lecture series, poker nights, Giants' games, and an occasional movie. We live in a world fueled by Ritalin and caffeine, and in our great rush so starved for time for careers, family, friends that we from time to time push through politeness in the attempt to get just a few moments more. Or we might just sometimes be tired and cranky.
I am starting a new project, cross-country skiing, which I have not done since Reagan was in office. It is a fundraiser for team in training 75% of what I raise goes directly to cancer research and patient services. (if you would want to donate please go to http://www.teamintraining.org/personalpages/page.adp?user_id=164696&event_id=549156 )I need to work out on my Christmas karma somehow - seasonal giving is a good way to balance out the holiday crankiness.
Our only time out on the slopes the coach looked at me with my legs flailing in the preset tracks like Keith Richards at the Rolling Stones office holiday party and wondered how I could just spend so much energy to go nowhere. I wanted to tell her that I had a lot of practice, but I was a little too out of breath for that.
She told me the secret to skiing long distances was the glide zone. Push then glide. Push then glide. If you keep pressing constantly you don’t go anywhere.
I want to apply this elsewhere. In college there was a work hard play hard mentality, which came close, but I think I could this time of year a work hard play easy approach. To misquote the Cranberries I really should let things linger.
Santa, after all, specializes at one hard day of work followed by 364 of kicking back at the pole. I do hope that he in the off hours at his workshop understands how being in a hurry can drain seasonal cheer. I like to think that he, too, must be a speed freak with a carbon fiber sled and getting the fastest reindeer, "Blitzen", he can.
So my wish is that if he could take just a small moment of forgiveness for my breakdown at Third Street and Mission, and that this year he will bring something to help me learn how to glide.
To be completely honest, I honked about two hundred Santa Claus’s, but I think pounding the horn at any Saint Nick isn't good. Coming back from shopping and late for a spa appointment I was going down Third Street, a block away from mission, when the Honda Civic ahead of me suddenly stopped for the first Santa Claus crossing from the Museum of Modern Art side of the street to the Yerba Buena Gardens. Before the Honda Civic could start came the next Santa, and then the next.
The fifth Santa stopped in the middle of the road and did a pelvic thrust at the cars. The seventh Santa carried a sign with the words "Santa X - Crossing" that looked rather obvious given the number of red jackets and caps that had just gone by. There were lanky Santa’s and stout ones. There was a transvestite Santa and a plump bouncy Korean Santa who nearly fell out of her red shorts.
There was more facial hair than the Phish farewell concert, and the pack gave the sense that they had all camped together at Burning Man a half a year ago. One Santa put candy canes on the cars’ windshields, much the same way flowers were put into the rifles at Kent State. It was getting later and later, and I kept wondering if it was okay to clip an elf.
One came by with reindeer antlers, and a few wore mini skirts. Some of those were girls. Having reached some sort of holiday critical mass, none of them stopped for the traffic lights. I guess on Christmas Eve if Santa obeyed all the highway laws he would never be able to get to all of the nice little girls and boys around even if he excluded the pagan ones. Still I can’t remember too many Christmas carols discussing the merits of civil disobedience or the need to goof helpless people in cars.
I started honking.
It was out of frustration that kept me hitting the horn. The massage therapist I see is brilliant at working on my rotator cuff injury, and I really did not want to miss the appointment. The holidays are stressful enough that the kneading of hamstrings becomes almost essential.
But it was after I had done two steady minutes of pounding that I wondered if I was the biggest jerk on the planet. Who honks at Santa because they are late for the spa? Is this pretty much how you get in the express lane to hell? Was my place on Santa’s homeland security naughty list now etched in stone? Did Scrooge insult peasants during his carriage rides? Am I going to be visited by three ghosts who are going to tell me that I should have made a better move on that one girl during a college summer? Is there nothing but coal for me?
I think we are all busy. Those that are married with kids live in coordinated world of carpools to soccer games or birthday parties. In the "other" category my evenings are spent shuffling to spin class, master swims, lecture series, poker nights, Giants' games, and an occasional movie. We live in a world fueled by Ritalin and caffeine, and in our great rush so starved for time for careers, family, friends that we from time to time push through politeness in the attempt to get just a few moments more. Or we might just sometimes be tired and cranky.
I am starting a new project, cross-country skiing, which I have not done since Reagan was in office. It is a fundraiser for team in training 75% of what I raise goes directly to cancer research and patient services. (if you would want to donate please go to http://www.teamintraining.org/personalpages/page.adp?user_id=164696&event_id=549156 )I need to work out on my Christmas karma somehow - seasonal giving is a good way to balance out the holiday crankiness.
Our only time out on the slopes the coach looked at me with my legs flailing in the preset tracks like Keith Richards at the Rolling Stones office holiday party and wondered how I could just spend so much energy to go nowhere. I wanted to tell her that I had a lot of practice, but I was a little too out of breath for that.
She told me the secret to skiing long distances was the glide zone. Push then glide. Push then glide. If you keep pressing constantly you don’t go anywhere.
I want to apply this elsewhere. In college there was a work hard play hard mentality, which came close, but I think I could this time of year a work hard play easy approach. To misquote the Cranberries I really should let things linger.
Santa, after all, specializes at one hard day of work followed by 364 of kicking back at the pole. I do hope that he in the off hours at his workshop understands how being in a hurry can drain seasonal cheer. I like to think that he, too, must be a speed freak with a carbon fiber sled and getting the fastest reindeer, "Blitzen", he can.
So my wish is that if he could take just a small moment of forgiveness for my breakdown at Third Street and Mission, and that this year he will bring something to help me learn how to glide.
Friday, November 05, 2004
Mayans
It is the off-season, and after a month of an improbable baseball games, two weddings, and two engagement parties, Octobers optimism has shed into November anxiety. There are only so few times we can pick our future – a time you decide to cross a room to talk to someone who catches your eye who winds up becoming your spouse, a moment when you decide on a school because they were throwing Frisbees on the main quad or the job learn about over a cocktail that gives you a fist full of stock. Troubled by our uncertain future I went to the Legion of Honor Museum to find out about our past.
The Mayan exhibit was the main attraction, and I used an accoustiguide to compensate for my ignorance of native Southern Americans. These devices have changed from their modified tape players of the eighties; they have switched to digital access through typing in key codes at each statue. Someday I wonder whether we will have museums for old accostiguides. They are the information descendants of scrolls and stone tablets, but have yet to acquire the necessary dust.
There were two tracks available – one for adults and one for children. The children one was narrating by an adolescent descendant of the Mayans. She talked about breaking her nails in one section and how like totally great her ancestors were. I stuck with the adult track.
I learned about the Mayan gods. They had one for rain, one for corn, and, best of all one for chocolate. The vase saluting coca had a large guy with a potbelly comfortably reclining in his thrown. There civilization was a thousand years from the remote control, but they had laid the groundwork.
They loved sports and had a game where you wore a barrel. I am sure whichever team was the Yankee equivalent had the most expensive wood. They had music and writing.
And they had ritual bloodletting. Granted this isn't too far away from the Christian blood themed communion, but rather being on the receiving end of hemoglobin, priestesses would cut their tongues and drain themselves to inspire visions. The future must have always tasted bitter.
They also bled their prisoners. But rather than using Rumsfield to cover up their brutality they made steps shaped like prisoners and murals to boast their triumphs. It was at this point I wondered what exactly was playing on the kid's accoustiguide.
How can you look at the sorrow of this world and present it to a child? I did type the children's code at the great mural at the end of the show and the girl said that sometimes her ancestors did things that upset her, but she was still proud of them.
Coming out of the museum I realized I was still in a world with two different tracks. One is color-coded red that captures our religious and warring fever. The other is blue from seeing the millions of jobs lost, thousands killed, and hundreds tortured. One believes that our president wasn't responsible for most of this, and the other wants a responsible president.
Together we as a country must see the same things, but somehow we have typed different codes into our accostiguides. I can't help but wonder what would have happened if four years ago if four hundred votes switched in Florida. I believe the airplane attack was inevitable, but the economic, cultural, and diplomatic damage from the deficit and wars afterwards were completely optional. There was a time four years ago when we could have been on a different road than the one we are on now.
And we just passed another point of return. I have no idea what the validation of the president's policies will be. I have no idea where intellectually drained visions from his god will lead us. As magnificent as Mayans were they, too, did crumple. There has been no nation, no culture that at the height hadn't purged itself. The Romans, the French, the Germans, the Russians, and the Chinese all have had moments of extreme nationalism with a high body count.
I feel lost now. Disillusioned. I know that I will still try to comfort myself with mocha and baseball. But the future once again tastes like blood.
The Mayan exhibit was the main attraction, and I used an accoustiguide to compensate for my ignorance of native Southern Americans. These devices have changed from their modified tape players of the eighties; they have switched to digital access through typing in key codes at each statue. Someday I wonder whether we will have museums for old accostiguides. They are the information descendants of scrolls and stone tablets, but have yet to acquire the necessary dust.
There were two tracks available – one for adults and one for children. The children one was narrating by an adolescent descendant of the Mayans. She talked about breaking her nails in one section and how like totally great her ancestors were. I stuck with the adult track.
I learned about the Mayan gods. They had one for rain, one for corn, and, best of all one for chocolate. The vase saluting coca had a large guy with a potbelly comfortably reclining in his thrown. There civilization was a thousand years from the remote control, but they had laid the groundwork.
They loved sports and had a game where you wore a barrel. I am sure whichever team was the Yankee equivalent had the most expensive wood. They had music and writing.
And they had ritual bloodletting. Granted this isn't too far away from the Christian blood themed communion, but rather being on the receiving end of hemoglobin, priestesses would cut their tongues and drain themselves to inspire visions. The future must have always tasted bitter.
They also bled their prisoners. But rather than using Rumsfield to cover up their brutality they made steps shaped like prisoners and murals to boast their triumphs. It was at this point I wondered what exactly was playing on the kid's accoustiguide.
How can you look at the sorrow of this world and present it to a child? I did type the children's code at the great mural at the end of the show and the girl said that sometimes her ancestors did things that upset her, but she was still proud of them.
Coming out of the museum I realized I was still in a world with two different tracks. One is color-coded red that captures our religious and warring fever. The other is blue from seeing the millions of jobs lost, thousands killed, and hundreds tortured. One believes that our president wasn't responsible for most of this, and the other wants a responsible president.
Together we as a country must see the same things, but somehow we have typed different codes into our accostiguides. I can't help but wonder what would have happened if four years ago if four hundred votes switched in Florida. I believe the airplane attack was inevitable, but the economic, cultural, and diplomatic damage from the deficit and wars afterwards were completely optional. There was a time four years ago when we could have been on a different road than the one we are on now.
And we just passed another point of return. I have no idea what the validation of the president's policies will be. I have no idea where intellectually drained visions from his god will lead us. As magnificent as Mayans were they, too, did crumple. There has been no nation, no culture that at the height hadn't purged itself. The Romans, the French, the Germans, the Russians, and the Chinese all have had moments of extreme nationalism with a high body count.
I feel lost now. Disillusioned. I know that I will still try to comfort myself with mocha and baseball. But the future once again tastes like blood.
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Game 6
Fear Game Six.
Fear it with all your heart.
It is the witching game, the moment when summer finally freezes.
It is Calton Fisk, Bill Buckner, and Dave Robertson dropping a Joe Jackson fly ball to give Chicago its last World Series in 1917.
It is the rally monkey. It is Joe Carter.
Fear Game Six.
It is two weeks before Halloween, and, perhaps even scarier, two weeks before President Bush might get reelected. (Or elected if you believe the Florida Supreme Court).
We all have such times. There are divorces, downsizing, and trips to the emergency room. There are the compromises, the arguments, the broken promises.
It is the twilight of our dreams, the time when we wake just before the alarm clock goes off but still remember our sleep.
Linger there. Huddle underneath those sheets. Fear Game Six, but know there is a chance, a fluke, a possibly of something a little larger. That sometimes even after our mistakes and mishaps that we catch a break out of nowhere. That sometimes you get a Game Seven.
Fear it with all your heart.
It is the witching game, the moment when summer finally freezes.
It is Calton Fisk, Bill Buckner, and Dave Robertson dropping a Joe Jackson fly ball to give Chicago its last World Series in 1917.
It is the rally monkey. It is Joe Carter.
Fear Game Six.
It is two weeks before Halloween, and, perhaps even scarier, two weeks before President Bush might get reelected. (Or elected if you believe the Florida Supreme Court).
We all have such times. There are divorces, downsizing, and trips to the emergency room. There are the compromises, the arguments, the broken promises.
It is the twilight of our dreams, the time when we wake just before the alarm clock goes off but still remember our sleep.
Linger there. Huddle underneath those sheets. Fear Game Six, but know there is a chance, a fluke, a possibly of something a little larger. That sometimes even after our mistakes and mishaps that we catch a break out of nowhere. That sometimes you get a Game Seven.
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
The Writing Process
George Orwell and Joan Didion both wrote short essays entitled "Why I write." I am not really sure what wisdom was in those pieces but I do very much believe the secret to writing is to put a really famous name in the first sentence. Muhammad Ali and Piers Anthony also work here. If you have a particularly long and vague essay, it is the best to start with De Tocqueville - preferably in the original French. This can be accomplished by putting an "ez" at the end of most words.
I often get asked about my writing process, usually by the same voices in my head that give me an Oscar every year for best Supporting Actor. I tell those voices that I start with the all of the verbs. This makes the piece move. I list them off in order (wrote, sure, believe, embezzle, etc...) and stick in simple ones in case I want to write a boring paragraph or a shopping list.
Next I add the conjunctions for structure. Most great authors like George Orwell, Joan Didion, and De Tocqueville talk about structure. The important thing I gathered was that you should have a good structure. No one really talked about a bad structure or whether it was supposed to be sturdy or moist.
Sometimes I get comments that I have no structure or stuff like "what is this shopping list doing in the middle of your piece?" But if I tell them that it is a neo deconstructionist style, they usually just leave it there. The key is to put the "neo" part in, because even if the person you are talking to knows what neo deconstructionist could possibly mean, they will be worried that your "neo" might be even more "neo" than the one they have.
Finally, I sprinkle in the adjectives and nouns like toppings on a salad bar or a make your own sundae bar if you aren't dieting. I find that caramel really goes well with chocolate ice cream, but you know it is a world class one if it has Heath Bar shavings.
Closing an essay gets tricky. Usually I just cheat, look what I wrote in the first paragraph, and just use it over again. So, in conclusion what George Orwell and Joan Didion must have written at some point:
Eggs
Butter
Milk
Heath Bar
I often get asked about my writing process, usually by the same voices in my head that give me an Oscar every year for best Supporting Actor. I tell those voices that I start with the all of the verbs. This makes the piece move. I list them off in order (wrote, sure, believe, embezzle, etc...) and stick in simple ones in case I want to write a boring paragraph or a shopping list.
Next I add the conjunctions for structure. Most great authors like George Orwell, Joan Didion, and De Tocqueville talk about structure. The important thing I gathered was that you should have a good structure. No one really talked about a bad structure or whether it was supposed to be sturdy or moist.
Sometimes I get comments that I have no structure or stuff like "what is this shopping list doing in the middle of your piece?" But if I tell them that it is a neo deconstructionist style, they usually just leave it there. The key is to put the "neo" part in, because even if the person you are talking to knows what neo deconstructionist could possibly mean, they will be worried that your "neo" might be even more "neo" than the one they have.
Finally, I sprinkle in the adjectives and nouns like toppings on a salad bar or a make your own sundae bar if you aren't dieting. I find that caramel really goes well with chocolate ice cream, but you know it is a world class one if it has Heath Bar shavings.
Closing an essay gets tricky. Usually I just cheat, look what I wrote in the first paragraph, and just use it over again. So, in conclusion what George Orwell and Joan Didion must have written at some point:
Eggs
Butter
Milk
Heath Bar
Spiderman, Too
The first time I asked a girl, Natalie, to marry me, she immediately said, “Yes.” Then again she might have been the one who proposed. I can’t remember exactly whose idea it was and have forgotten several other major details like the time of year. I want to pretend that it must have been summertime, the lush season with plums, nectarines and blueberries, and the long day’s light that gives everything such warmth that the universe seems endlessly ripe and tender even if it is tempered with the reality of sun burns and insect bites.
I do remember the place. We were at my parents’ weekend home in a hammock underneath the redwood deck. From the deck you could see patches of Tomales Bay through scraggly oak trees, but underneath there was just our own little world in a section that my mom decided that she did not need to garden, and the deer tended to avoid.
We were wise enough then to know that there would be difficulties. All relationships have those obstacles, not so much of late night shared insomnia but the questioning on the ride home on a Tuesday "is this really the right thing" as if it there could be an answer for something like that in the back of a teacher edition of life’s little handbook. Still we knew we could handle these things because we had such bravery then, and we would face together the major dilemma that we were eight years old.
She must have been the one to propose as a way of getting me to place some kind of ultimate version of the game of house. It might be fine to have little teas with stuff animals, but if you really wanted the ultimate domestic experience hold out for an actual boy.
Most change when wandering into a relationship, but there is a part of you that you want to hold onto. Not so much your soul because that is the first thing that love takes, but your desires and sometimes your toys. A friend of mine was upset that in order to get her boyfriend to move in she had to agree to DSL, a plasma screen TV, and a leather recliner. I wish that I had told her that soon after he moved in that they would start to use the “we” word consistently and spend more weekends together going to Beds, Bath and Beyond than he would get to go surfing. However, I also knew the ability to watch Sports Center is a right that we, men, are not going to relinquish whatever the odds.
On the hammock the deal that I ultimately pitched to Natalie for our great future is that if we were to be married then I got to be Spiderman.
She thought that this was a fair trade and said okay. She also wanted superpowers and I think we came up with the name Queen Spider for her. This was all before we had gone to the class where we learned that from a guy’s perspective the spider marriage is not really a great idea. But we were strong enough then to hold off on any biological urges. It would be years later before I had my first kiss.
She said we would have two kids - first a girl and then a boy.
I thought that was fantastic as long as they both were radioactive.
Of course, she insisted and we wandered off to tell our parents the good news. Mine gave me the same look that they had when I kept on insisting that we did science projects like baking mud in the oven just to see what would happen. Unfortunately, I lost interest in that after a while and the great field of microwave geology was never created.
Natalie’s parents, I think, were friends of my mom, and they were visiting from someplace like Kansas. I know that it was distant and had to be in some far off exotic world like one of those planets in Star Wars. Perhaps Nebraska or the East Bay. I never saw her again after that day.
A few years ago my mom softly told me, in the way that I learned that our goldfish were gone, that Natalie had married somebody else. I still remembered her, but less of an actual being and more as a concept of that one great afternoon when you really made a wonderful discovery even if it did not involve a nuclear reactor.
Spiderman Two is opening up across the country right now and I think of all of those children going see it. I hope it catches them in that twilight time before the reality of fractions enters in when they can believe for just a few years that the best thing in the world is to have a girl look longingly at you when you tell her your hopes for super powers.
I do remember the place. We were at my parents’ weekend home in a hammock underneath the redwood deck. From the deck you could see patches of Tomales Bay through scraggly oak trees, but underneath there was just our own little world in a section that my mom decided that she did not need to garden, and the deer tended to avoid.
We were wise enough then to know that there would be difficulties. All relationships have those obstacles, not so much of late night shared insomnia but the questioning on the ride home on a Tuesday "is this really the right thing" as if it there could be an answer for something like that in the back of a teacher edition of life’s little handbook. Still we knew we could handle these things because we had such bravery then, and we would face together the major dilemma that we were eight years old.
She must have been the one to propose as a way of getting me to place some kind of ultimate version of the game of house. It might be fine to have little teas with stuff animals, but if you really wanted the ultimate domestic experience hold out for an actual boy.
Most change when wandering into a relationship, but there is a part of you that you want to hold onto. Not so much your soul because that is the first thing that love takes, but your desires and sometimes your toys. A friend of mine was upset that in order to get her boyfriend to move in she had to agree to DSL, a plasma screen TV, and a leather recliner. I wish that I had told her that soon after he moved in that they would start to use the “we” word consistently and spend more weekends together going to Beds, Bath and Beyond than he would get to go surfing. However, I also knew the ability to watch Sports Center is a right that we, men, are not going to relinquish whatever the odds.
On the hammock the deal that I ultimately pitched to Natalie for our great future is that if we were to be married then I got to be Spiderman.
She thought that this was a fair trade and said okay. She also wanted superpowers and I think we came up with the name Queen Spider for her. This was all before we had gone to the class where we learned that from a guy’s perspective the spider marriage is not really a great idea. But we were strong enough then to hold off on any biological urges. It would be years later before I had my first kiss.
She said we would have two kids - first a girl and then a boy.
I thought that was fantastic as long as they both were radioactive.
Of course, she insisted and we wandered off to tell our parents the good news. Mine gave me the same look that they had when I kept on insisting that we did science projects like baking mud in the oven just to see what would happen. Unfortunately, I lost interest in that after a while and the great field of microwave geology was never created.
Natalie’s parents, I think, were friends of my mom, and they were visiting from someplace like Kansas. I know that it was distant and had to be in some far off exotic world like one of those planets in Star Wars. Perhaps Nebraska or the East Bay. I never saw her again after that day.
A few years ago my mom softly told me, in the way that I learned that our goldfish were gone, that Natalie had married somebody else. I still remembered her, but less of an actual being and more as a concept of that one great afternoon when you really made a wonderful discovery even if it did not involve a nuclear reactor.
Spiderman Two is opening up across the country right now and I think of all of those children going see it. I hope it catches them in that twilight time before the reality of fractions enters in when they can believe for just a few years that the best thing in the world is to have a girl look longingly at you when you tell her your hopes for super powers.
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
Slacked Keys
My family goes to Hawaii often. Not that every trip has been flawless – there was the time we rented a motor home only to have most of us come down with diarrhea - but there is something wonderfully relaxing about being in the tropics. It meets the twin goals of vacations, a place both to rest and to explore.
On a Tuesday night we ventured to the Ritz Carlton in Kapalula for an evening of the Masters of Slack Guitar series. It cost a mere $35, but we knew someone who Hulas there who let us in for free. Behind the stage was a tapestry of a Hawaiian sunset made in the same artistic style that decorates the interiors of airplane's economy class cabins, and our chairs had little desks in case we felt the urge to take notes. A balding man went to the front to introduce the headliners, Dennis Kamakahi and his son David. "Hello, I am slack head. Five years ago I heard this style of music and it changed my life. I follow it around." Looking at the rest of the audience I realized that he was not unique.
The two musicians took the stage. The son played the Ukulele. The father played slack guitar – an ordinary guitar adjusted down to the singer. When guitars were first left on the islands, the natives did not have an idea of how to properly tune them so they made up their own scales. It has an opaque effect like a puzzle that you have assembled the edges of, but still aren't certain how it fills in the middle.
Dennis and David would introduce each song with a lengthy narrative. The father wore a wide brim hat and looked a decade older than he actually was. He began to explain his extensive mileage, "Do you remember the time I woke you up at two during New Years Eve?"
The son, young enough to not understand that he would one day have his fathers shape, replied, "I thought we were just going to play a couple of tunes. We kept going to dawn."
The father added, "We went to the best barbeque afterwards. They had rice and pork and poi. Sometime you just get what you really needed."
They launched into a breezy instrumental number called "Monterey Sunrise", which they composed that New Year's morning. Their gentle plucking had the same daydream texture as classical music that makes me mentally drift. It was tune that you could listen to in a hammock.
Dennis talked about the tour he had been to on the mainland and mentioned towns as if they were from the most remote part of the world. He started, "We had just been to Santa Cruz," and then pauses for the audience to nod their heads if they had heard of it. "And a couple of weeks we are going to a fund raiser in Petaluma for treating disabilities with horse riding." More nodding.
At some point he had been to Louisiana and fell in love with Cajun music. They played a song called "Dancez Par La Nuit" The son sang and the father added a harmonic rift that sounded like an Arlo Guthrie and plucked unfamiliar chords with the guitar. The menagerie worked. I never would have thought that Hawaiian and Cajun music could be blended, but I know afterwards the barbeque must have been amazing.
We learned about the time Dennis told his son that they were going to play at funeral because he did not want him nervous when he walked out into the Hollywood Bowl. There was the time they met Stevie Wonder and David had no idea who he was. They then launched into an improvised cover of "Sir Duke."
My family had to leave before the second set. My parents were mixed about the show – my mom went to the lobby quickly to buy an album; my father was upset they did not play "Tiny Bubbles."
I realized that we as a family didn't have any two o'clock in the morning drinking stories. I would not want to hear about my father's benders from college any more than I think he would want to hear mine. Our time together was better spent swimming in the afternoons or figuring out where to eat in the evenings. Our discussions wandered somewhere between about the war in Iraq and troubleshooting what two flashing green lights meant on the printer – I didn't solve either.
But except for the time we backed the rental car into some rocks, we had fun. Sometimes my father would spend the day at home and read a mystery novel. Sometimes my mom would get up early to play golf with three strangers. We were like most there – harmonizing at times to our own particular slacked key.
On a Tuesday night we ventured to the Ritz Carlton in Kapalula for an evening of the Masters of Slack Guitar series. It cost a mere $35, but we knew someone who Hulas there who let us in for free. Behind the stage was a tapestry of a Hawaiian sunset made in the same artistic style that decorates the interiors of airplane's economy class cabins, and our chairs had little desks in case we felt the urge to take notes. A balding man went to the front to introduce the headliners, Dennis Kamakahi and his son David. "Hello, I am slack head. Five years ago I heard this style of music and it changed my life. I follow it around." Looking at the rest of the audience I realized that he was not unique.
The two musicians took the stage. The son played the Ukulele. The father played slack guitar – an ordinary guitar adjusted down to the singer. When guitars were first left on the islands, the natives did not have an idea of how to properly tune them so they made up their own scales. It has an opaque effect like a puzzle that you have assembled the edges of, but still aren't certain how it fills in the middle.
Dennis and David would introduce each song with a lengthy narrative. The father wore a wide brim hat and looked a decade older than he actually was. He began to explain his extensive mileage, "Do you remember the time I woke you up at two during New Years Eve?"
The son, young enough to not understand that he would one day have his fathers shape, replied, "I thought we were just going to play a couple of tunes. We kept going to dawn."
The father added, "We went to the best barbeque afterwards. They had rice and pork and poi. Sometime you just get what you really needed."
They launched into a breezy instrumental number called "Monterey Sunrise", which they composed that New Year's morning. Their gentle plucking had the same daydream texture as classical music that makes me mentally drift. It was tune that you could listen to in a hammock.
Dennis talked about the tour he had been to on the mainland and mentioned towns as if they were from the most remote part of the world. He started, "We had just been to Santa Cruz," and then pauses for the audience to nod their heads if they had heard of it. "And a couple of weeks we are going to a fund raiser in Petaluma for treating disabilities with horse riding." More nodding.
At some point he had been to Louisiana and fell in love with Cajun music. They played a song called "Dancez Par La Nuit" The son sang and the father added a harmonic rift that sounded like an Arlo Guthrie and plucked unfamiliar chords with the guitar. The menagerie worked. I never would have thought that Hawaiian and Cajun music could be blended, but I know afterwards the barbeque must have been amazing.
We learned about the time Dennis told his son that they were going to play at funeral because he did not want him nervous when he walked out into the Hollywood Bowl. There was the time they met Stevie Wonder and David had no idea who he was. They then launched into an improvised cover of "Sir Duke."
My family had to leave before the second set. My parents were mixed about the show – my mom went to the lobby quickly to buy an album; my father was upset they did not play "Tiny Bubbles."
I realized that we as a family didn't have any two o'clock in the morning drinking stories. I would not want to hear about my father's benders from college any more than I think he would want to hear mine. Our time together was better spent swimming in the afternoons or figuring out where to eat in the evenings. Our discussions wandered somewhere between about the war in Iraq and troubleshooting what two flashing green lights meant on the printer – I didn't solve either.
But except for the time we backed the rental car into some rocks, we had fun. Sometimes my father would spend the day at home and read a mystery novel. Sometimes my mom would get up early to play golf with three strangers. We were like most there – harmonizing at times to our own particular slacked key.
Wednesday, May 05, 2004
The helicopter
Promises are tricky things. Having never been married, I have never have pledged "for better or for worse." The only times that I have run across this types of duality are grad school and the wildflower triathlon.
I tend to make smaller vows and promises. With some like trying to cut down on Starbucks I don't do a great job, but I do pledge that I want to do some distance event every year.
This year I wanted to warm up for the Keahou Kona triathlon by doing the wildflower triathlon. I joined team and training to keep me fit and ready, and looked forward to the day.
The swim was a scrum - a Euclidian notion held by several in my wave that sometimes the shortest distance is through another swimmer. I had my goggles kicked a couple of times; but by the time we were to the second buoy, the pack had thinned to the point I could concentrate on deep, long strokes.
I cruised through the transition area. My normal bike jersey has three pockets in the back, but the TNT singlet has only one and I did not get hammer gel to a place where I could reach it. My camel back was filled, the shades were on, and it was time to race.
The bike strategy was to spin Lynch Hill, a quick nasty climb, in a granny gear and then cruise the flats at a 165 heart rate. I drank continuously. One of the water bottles that they gave on the course tasted like bleach. I stuck to getting Gatorade from the road crew and drinking from the camel bak. Without a headwind I easily stayed within range.
When I hit the second transition area I looked at my watch and saw that the time was two hours. This is when the thought came that I could finish this race in sub three hours. I don't know why we have an obsession with round numbers - there are lists of things to before you are thirty and certainly the Ten Commandments. Race results have that same glow from sub 3-hour marathons to sub 4-minute miles.
At a 10k I would have to go less than a 10-minute mile over a hilly course in 105 heat. It was time to breakout the game face. This day was going to memorable - a chance to full test my edge. I averaged a 9-minute clip if you include the time I stopped at every water station.
There was a hill on the backside that I promised I would run up for a childhood friend who had passed away earlier in the year. Most of the crowd was smartly walking up and I passed them in blind determination.
Should I have stopped or slowed down? Should I have I realized the heat had taken the most of me at this point? Courage is the well-liked twin of stupidity. I wish I had thought of it as an option.
I was at the top of the hill and still running strong. The last section of the course is gravy - a long descent that you could almost sleep walk through. I had kilometer left to go and looked at my watch that read 2:50. I started a new mantra - I can finish this in 2:55.
2:55, 2:55, 2:55, 2 ...
And then I found myself in a hospital. With cords winding around me it looked like an octopus was trying to mate with my chest.
There is a temperature to thought, and when your body is 102 there isn't much more warmth it could handle. As the IV bag dripped into my body, slowly I started to gain back memories - like whom my parents were. I had no idea about phone numbers, my brothers, what day it was, or that even I had been doing a triathlon.
Slowly details crept in from the nurses and doctors. Heat stroke. Seizure. Helicopter Evac.
My brothers are George and Edward. Still no idea about phone numbers.
The nurse came by again and told me that I had been picked up on the run part of a triathlon.
Completely ignoring the relevancy I asked my first question:
Did I finish?
* * *
First want to say that I am fine. I am deeply embarrassed and frustrated, but emotions can be healed with nice swims in cold waters.
A few IV bags later I was back to a sedated normal. . My stomach is a little queasy, and I have been told to take it easy for a week.
The hard part is that I don't know where I am going from here. I love team in training. I love triathlons. But to get hospitalized twice is foolish. The math major in me should know that if you give 110% then you are only going to make it 90% of the way.
When I am finally healed I will try a new goal, perhaps in a different direction. Still full of passion, I will try this time to be wiser. This I promise.
I tend to make smaller vows and promises. With some like trying to cut down on Starbucks I don't do a great job, but I do pledge that I want to do some distance event every year.
This year I wanted to warm up for the Keahou Kona triathlon by doing the wildflower triathlon. I joined team and training to keep me fit and ready, and looked forward to the day.
The swim was a scrum - a Euclidian notion held by several in my wave that sometimes the shortest distance is through another swimmer. I had my goggles kicked a couple of times; but by the time we were to the second buoy, the pack had thinned to the point I could concentrate on deep, long strokes.
I cruised through the transition area. My normal bike jersey has three pockets in the back, but the TNT singlet has only one and I did not get hammer gel to a place where I could reach it. My camel back was filled, the shades were on, and it was time to race.
The bike strategy was to spin Lynch Hill, a quick nasty climb, in a granny gear and then cruise the flats at a 165 heart rate. I drank continuously. One of the water bottles that they gave on the course tasted like bleach. I stuck to getting Gatorade from the road crew and drinking from the camel bak. Without a headwind I easily stayed within range.
When I hit the second transition area I looked at my watch and saw that the time was two hours. This is when the thought came that I could finish this race in sub three hours. I don't know why we have an obsession with round numbers - there are lists of things to before you are thirty and certainly the Ten Commandments. Race results have that same glow from sub 3-hour marathons to sub 4-minute miles.
At a 10k I would have to go less than a 10-minute mile over a hilly course in 105 heat. It was time to breakout the game face. This day was going to memorable - a chance to full test my edge. I averaged a 9-minute clip if you include the time I stopped at every water station.
There was a hill on the backside that I promised I would run up for a childhood friend who had passed away earlier in the year. Most of the crowd was smartly walking up and I passed them in blind determination.
Should I have stopped or slowed down? Should I have I realized the heat had taken the most of me at this point? Courage is the well-liked twin of stupidity. I wish I had thought of it as an option.
I was at the top of the hill and still running strong. The last section of the course is gravy - a long descent that you could almost sleep walk through. I had kilometer left to go and looked at my watch that read 2:50. I started a new mantra - I can finish this in 2:55.
2:55, 2:55, 2:55, 2 ...
And then I found myself in a hospital. With cords winding around me it looked like an octopus was trying to mate with my chest.
There is a temperature to thought, and when your body is 102 there isn't much more warmth it could handle. As the IV bag dripped into my body, slowly I started to gain back memories - like whom my parents were. I had no idea about phone numbers, my brothers, what day it was, or that even I had been doing a triathlon.
Slowly details crept in from the nurses and doctors. Heat stroke. Seizure. Helicopter Evac.
My brothers are George and Edward. Still no idea about phone numbers.
The nurse came by again and told me that I had been picked up on the run part of a triathlon.
Completely ignoring the relevancy I asked my first question:
Did I finish?
* * *
First want to say that I am fine. I am deeply embarrassed and frustrated, but emotions can be healed with nice swims in cold waters.
A few IV bags later I was back to a sedated normal. . My stomach is a little queasy, and I have been told to take it easy for a week.
The hard part is that I don't know where I am going from here. I love team in training. I love triathlons. But to get hospitalized twice is foolish. The math major in me should know that if you give 110% then you are only going to make it 90% of the way.
When I am finally healed I will try a new goal, perhaps in a different direction. Still full of passion, I will try this time to be wiser. This I promise.
Monday, April 12, 2004
Em's + Nathan's wedding
Perhaps all weddings should be celebrated in the fog; each has their own haze, a blurry uncertainty of both the event and the future. And yours perched on the California coastline captured nature's metaphor of being on the edge of things.
Getting married next to the ocean also felt familiar because I first met you through water. Not that the chorine swamp of the 24-fitness pool compares to the mischievous Pacific, but I will always remember first seeing you there. It was an odd match – the runner who had just tweaked his knee flapping desperately next to the natural fish with an Australian swimsuit who gracefully cruised the center lane.
The truth of life is that we don't often get to pick whom we swim next to. Sure there are classes and clubs; races and teams – but more often that not it is someone who just happens to be there. You wind up in an anonymous group paced pretty much by your same speed.
I guess what I learned is that you should from time to time say hi to the people one lane over – even if it takes three years and three completely different swim classes. That girl with the R2D2 backpack might just be nutty in a very cool way. I know that the journey afterwards has been so much more rewarding.
There is the exercise part. I have become a better swimmer having joined you for a two-mile open water swimmer over summer, and trans Tomales Bay one over winter. And you have become a better runner to the point that running 14 miles the day before your wedding made some sort of sense – if only to your new triathlon crew.
But more importantly than the miles is the friendship. Life is better when you have birthdays in Inverness, see art in the Headlands, and drink beer on houseboats. We are at our best when we celebrate by the sea.
Your wedding brought the best of that.
Life ahead will have its share of jagged rocks and powerful currents, but if there is anyone I know who can navigate that gracefully it is you. And afterwards when you come in from the daily tides, dried and perhaps still a little tired, I hope you always stand on a grassy hill and look over your shoulder at the wonderment of the horizon.
Getting married next to the ocean also felt familiar because I first met you through water. Not that the chorine swamp of the 24-fitness pool compares to the mischievous Pacific, but I will always remember first seeing you there. It was an odd match – the runner who had just tweaked his knee flapping desperately next to the natural fish with an Australian swimsuit who gracefully cruised the center lane.
The truth of life is that we don't often get to pick whom we swim next to. Sure there are classes and clubs; races and teams – but more often that not it is someone who just happens to be there. You wind up in an anonymous group paced pretty much by your same speed.
I guess what I learned is that you should from time to time say hi to the people one lane over – even if it takes three years and three completely different swim classes. That girl with the R2D2 backpack might just be nutty in a very cool way. I know that the journey afterwards has been so much more rewarding.
There is the exercise part. I have become a better swimmer having joined you for a two-mile open water swimmer over summer, and trans Tomales Bay one over winter. And you have become a better runner to the point that running 14 miles the day before your wedding made some sort of sense – if only to your new triathlon crew.
But more importantly than the miles is the friendship. Life is better when you have birthdays in Inverness, see art in the Headlands, and drink beer on houseboats. We are at our best when we celebrate by the sea.
Your wedding brought the best of that.
Life ahead will have its share of jagged rocks and powerful currents, but if there is anyone I know who can navigate that gracefully it is you. And afterwards when you come in from the daily tides, dried and perhaps still a little tired, I hope you always stand on a grassy hill and look over your shoulder at the wonderment of the horizon.
Friday, February 13, 2004
The Crissy Field Shuffle
At the base of a bridge there is a plaque
That I touch twice before heading back
And as I linger in the salty breeze
I see the city across the swelling seas.
I should make it home before it gets dark
But I rest a while before I embark
There is kid playing with shells all alone
An old man is propping up stones.
Too often the middle chapter disappoints
Not many awards given for mid points
As I return I quicken my stride
To stay with those that run by my side.
That I touch twice before heading back
And as I linger in the salty breeze
I see the city across the swelling seas.
I should make it home before it gets dark
But I rest a while before I embark
There is kid playing with shells all alone
An old man is propping up stones.
Too often the middle chapter disappoints
Not many awards given for mid points
As I return I quicken my stride
To stay with those that run by my side.
Saturday, November 15, 2003
Just Maybe, She
I met her at my birthday party as a friend of friend, which was the perfect gift for someone wandering into their mid thirties alone. I wish I could describe her better - how do you capture the way someone walks into a room or a small smile? I need something better than "a total hottie with brains."
Perhaps she has faded from memory a bit because I haven't seen her since. A pediatrician, she lives in San Diego. I boldly got her email address at the end of my party and wrote a few times. She replied once, but I haven't heard back after the last couple of letters. Just maybe, she might simply be too busy with the monster schedule of being a doctor. Just maybe.
Not long after getting that lone letter, our mutual friend asked if she could borrow my parents' place at Inverness for her birthday with the pediatrician coming up for the weekend. This once sounded like a brilliant idea in the same category of getting the cute girl in geometry class to study together. But that wound up being only about side angle side congruent triangles instead of love ones
Our friend is a swimmer on the same tri team as me. I have roped her into doing a few more runs and she lets me know about swims and openings at her boyfriend's art gallery.
She decided she wanted across Tomales Bay and back, which should be slightly less than two miles. I have heard that falling in love is taking a plunge, but I really don't think they mean that literally. I mean two miles in shark-invested, November water is something out the "Princess Bride" not "Love, Actually".
Most of falling love has changed since junior high. Its feel has gone from the instant fluff of wine coolers to the deeper passion of Guinness and the girls aren't half a foot taller than the boys. I still hold on two principles that remain - a) Rock Lobster is a great song to dance to b) the hardest voyage you will ever have to do is to cross the gym and ask someone to dance
Perhaps it was this danger that led to my odd statistic of the summer that I swam from Alcatraz more than I went on dates. But I thought she was worth it. There are people who move you deeply. They are the catalysts of both wars and art, and central to what makes us both inspired and humbled. If only she had written more than once. But maybe, just maybe her computer crashed and she couldn't email.
This is where I insert the training montage. For a few weeks the alarm clock would go off at 5:20 am and I would wonder down the hill for swim classes at the YMCA. These were taught by a nice Russian who would keep barking at me "Grab beach ball. Grab beach ball." as I stroked through the hour session. I still have no idea what this means, but I do know the perfect Christmas gift for him
I dropped eight pounds and shopped for new coats at the Republic of Banana.
I watched reality TV shows for lessons and learned that a) Never trust a shaggy blond hippie called Johnny Fairplay b) Make sure that you get the hot tub moment for your alone time, and c) Life would be much better if you had five people coordinating things for you.
I booked spa treatments for both the swimmer and the pediatrician for this afternoon. Tomorrow the swimmer is bringing up oysters for her birthday and I will take up red wine. I will do my best to keep my shirt tucked in and to try not to laugh through my nose
Ultimately there is a difference between Don Quixote and his squire, Sancho. Don Quixote truly believes that the windmills he charges are dragons. Sancho knows that they are just windmills and it is a lost cause, but figures it would be an adventure anyway. I know that after this weekend I won't have much except a couple of new coats and a little less weight. But on Sunday morning a couple of hours after dawn as I swim across the bay wondering how many other fish there are in the sea, I will think "maybe, just maybe."
Perhaps she has faded from memory a bit because I haven't seen her since. A pediatrician, she lives in San Diego. I boldly got her email address at the end of my party and wrote a few times. She replied once, but I haven't heard back after the last couple of letters. Just maybe, she might simply be too busy with the monster schedule of being a doctor. Just maybe.
Not long after getting that lone letter, our mutual friend asked if she could borrow my parents' place at Inverness for her birthday with the pediatrician coming up for the weekend. This once sounded like a brilliant idea in the same category of getting the cute girl in geometry class to study together. But that wound up being only about side angle side congruent triangles instead of love ones
Our friend is a swimmer on the same tri team as me. I have roped her into doing a few more runs and she lets me know about swims and openings at her boyfriend's art gallery.
She decided she wanted across Tomales Bay and back, which should be slightly less than two miles. I have heard that falling in love is taking a plunge, but I really don't think they mean that literally. I mean two miles in shark-invested, November water is something out the "Princess Bride" not "Love, Actually".
Most of falling love has changed since junior high. Its feel has gone from the instant fluff of wine coolers to the deeper passion of Guinness and the girls aren't half a foot taller than the boys. I still hold on two principles that remain - a) Rock Lobster is a great song to dance to b) the hardest voyage you will ever have to do is to cross the gym and ask someone to dance
Perhaps it was this danger that led to my odd statistic of the summer that I swam from Alcatraz more than I went on dates. But I thought she was worth it. There are people who move you deeply. They are the catalysts of both wars and art, and central to what makes us both inspired and humbled. If only she had written more than once. But maybe, just maybe her computer crashed and she couldn't email.
This is where I insert the training montage. For a few weeks the alarm clock would go off at 5:20 am and I would wonder down the hill for swim classes at the YMCA. These were taught by a nice Russian who would keep barking at me "Grab beach ball. Grab beach ball." as I stroked through the hour session. I still have no idea what this means, but I do know the perfect Christmas gift for him
I dropped eight pounds and shopped for new coats at the Republic of Banana.
I watched reality TV shows for lessons and learned that a) Never trust a shaggy blond hippie called Johnny Fairplay b) Make sure that you get the hot tub moment for your alone time, and c) Life would be much better if you had five people coordinating things for you.
I booked spa treatments for both the swimmer and the pediatrician for this afternoon. Tomorrow the swimmer is bringing up oysters for her birthday and I will take up red wine. I will do my best to keep my shirt tucked in and to try not to laugh through my nose
Ultimately there is a difference between Don Quixote and his squire, Sancho. Don Quixote truly believes that the windmills he charges are dragons. Sancho knows that they are just windmills and it is a lost cause, but figures it would be an adventure anyway. I know that after this weekend I won't have much except a couple of new coats and a little less weight. But on Sunday morning a couple of hours after dawn as I swim across the bay wondering how many other fish there are in the sea, I will think "maybe, just maybe."
Tuesday, October 28, 2003
Level Eight
I think there is a certain nuttiness in all weddings. The groom might forget that his tux is at his parents; a bridesmaid might learn that tequila is never a good a thing; or it might just be in Cleveland.
In the past for the morning of a wedding I would usually have only three questions – where did I put my keys, is there a good dry cleaner nearby, and did my family find out. But times have changed and I now I get the question "do you want to do the 10 mile guy run or the 5 mile chick run?"
The second one was billed as a level-two difficulty level and level-eight view and was a short drive from Calistoga, a town designed by Mark Twain for the straight eye. There a rows of little homes that still look like Bartles and James would come off of the porch only this time they would be selling mud bathes instead of wine coolers. It is a far more of a chick's run kind of place. When staying at the roman spa I decided to do what the Romans would and went for the five miler.
The course started near a creak and made its way up a hill on a dusty trail. Supposedly there were red woods, but as the trail continued to get stepper and steeper the only thing I wondered about was how was this exactly a two? Was the next entry in the book – Everest level four? The view was gorgeous though. The trail ended at coyote peak, a small rocky out cropping where you could see down through the valley. We sweaty few paused there for a moment perhaps releasing that after so many early morning jaunts, Sonoma bike rides, and arch rock runs, that the next time we would exercise together Lisa would have a new last name.
Then we made our way back down the hill and tried to avoid the roots and rocks on the trail that felt less sturdier than we came up it. We joked about the dangers of Lisa twisting something, but I thought she would have a matching white splint stashed away because every other detail about the wedding was so well planned.
The ceremony and reception wandered through the boundary of effortless and magical. Under a scorching sun, pre wedding lemonade just seemed to appear. We had leaf shape fans for programs, wooden umbrellas to block the light, and small stones to tell us where we would sit. It seemed to be incredibly lucky, but I know somewhere there is a very large binder with all of this stored.
The band rocked. I don't know whether they grooved off the crowd or the crowd just melted over them. I believe that life is better with a great horn section. Theirs would divide up and march down the aisles for a stereo affect that would break an audio salesman heart. The evening built and built until I found myself more drenched from dancing than I did from running. And then came Cedric's love train cigar salsa line. The place shook. I think we cheered the band into an extra set, and I know we should also do the same for our hosts.
And so I want to say thanks so much for a great weekend. My wedding hope is that you continue to find music all around you. And my wedding wish is that you go through life with great friends on a trail that is level-two difficulty and a level-eight view.
In the past for the morning of a wedding I would usually have only three questions – where did I put my keys, is there a good dry cleaner nearby, and did my family find out. But times have changed and I now I get the question "do you want to do the 10 mile guy run or the 5 mile chick run?"
The second one was billed as a level-two difficulty level and level-eight view and was a short drive from Calistoga, a town designed by Mark Twain for the straight eye. There a rows of little homes that still look like Bartles and James would come off of the porch only this time they would be selling mud bathes instead of wine coolers. It is a far more of a chick's run kind of place. When staying at the roman spa I decided to do what the Romans would and went for the five miler.
The course started near a creak and made its way up a hill on a dusty trail. Supposedly there were red woods, but as the trail continued to get stepper and steeper the only thing I wondered about was how was this exactly a two? Was the next entry in the book – Everest level four? The view was gorgeous though. The trail ended at coyote peak, a small rocky out cropping where you could see down through the valley. We sweaty few paused there for a moment perhaps releasing that after so many early morning jaunts, Sonoma bike rides, and arch rock runs, that the next time we would exercise together Lisa would have a new last name.
Then we made our way back down the hill and tried to avoid the roots and rocks on the trail that felt less sturdier than we came up it. We joked about the dangers of Lisa twisting something, but I thought she would have a matching white splint stashed away because every other detail about the wedding was so well planned.
The ceremony and reception wandered through the boundary of effortless and magical. Under a scorching sun, pre wedding lemonade just seemed to appear. We had leaf shape fans for programs, wooden umbrellas to block the light, and small stones to tell us where we would sit. It seemed to be incredibly lucky, but I know somewhere there is a very large binder with all of this stored.
The band rocked. I don't know whether they grooved off the crowd or the crowd just melted over them. I believe that life is better with a great horn section. Theirs would divide up and march down the aisles for a stereo affect that would break an audio salesman heart. The evening built and built until I found myself more drenched from dancing than I did from running. And then came Cedric's love train cigar salsa line. The place shook. I think we cheered the band into an extra set, and I know we should also do the same for our hosts.
And so I want to say thanks so much for a great weekend. My wedding hope is that you continue to find music all around you. And my wedding wish is that you go through life with great friends on a trail that is level-two difficulty and a level-eight view.
Monday, October 20, 2003
Chasing Spidey
This weekend I did another run. The official name of the event isn't the tourist shuffle, but the route does go from fisherman's wharf across the golden gate bridge and back. It is a distance that you do have to train for, but can also go to Oktoberfest the day before. In my view of hell the devil does not play the fiddle but the accordion.
The race started a few ticks after dawn as a mobile mosh pit; the narrow course barely fit the sneaker wearing hordes. After a few minutes the crowd thinned out and that was when I found myself running with a small pack that had my pace. There was a large guy wearing a belt with six goo bottles attached like he was a plumber, two cute girls with different styles of jog bras, and a guying wearing a Spiderman outfit.
Halloween is a year round celebration in California. You know you live in a nutty state when Northern Californians were the ones that didn't vote for the aging action star. I am working on the theory that Southern California must have much better weed.
We cruised along the northern edge of the city technically called the Marina but is actually affinity housing for peroxide blonds with expensive wardrobes. Most of them would still sleep for a few hours more before going to Starbucks or the Grove.
I decided that somewhere on my list of great exercise ambitions was to beat the arachnid.
Spidey wasn't backing down. I could make a little ground on him when he had to lift his mask up to get cyto max at water stops, but he kept on prancing with his spidery strength.
The thing is that if you run next to someone wearing a costume everyone along the course will point that out to you. All I heard besides sea gulls were cheers of "go Spiderman."
Throughout Spidey's career he has beaten among others Dr. Octopus, the Green Goblin, and Kingpin. But he has never encountered the obstacle that cause Lance Armstrong to quit a few laps early – San Francisco hills. New York might be great if you like baseball or Carrie Bradshaw, but San Francisco does wonders to your quads.
When we hit the last long flat I took off and never saw web crusader again. Even at the after race expo as I wondered if the booth for running massage should somehow be combined with the booth with the girls from the new Hooters, I couldn't see him. I guess he had gone back to being to Peter Parker.
I think competition can sometimes bring out the best us (unless you are giants, cubs, or red socks fan). Where would literature be with out the old man and the sea, or Ahab and his whale? Without Nobel prizes how would I hear about so many authors from around the world?
And so whether your next great event is running with the bulls in Spain or just running to video store to rent "Finding Nemo" try to pass the person next to you. Unless, of course, he is wearing a Flash costume.
The race started a few ticks after dawn as a mobile mosh pit; the narrow course barely fit the sneaker wearing hordes. After a few minutes the crowd thinned out and that was when I found myself running with a small pack that had my pace. There was a large guy wearing a belt with six goo bottles attached like he was a plumber, two cute girls with different styles of jog bras, and a guying wearing a Spiderman outfit.
Halloween is a year round celebration in California. You know you live in a nutty state when Northern Californians were the ones that didn't vote for the aging action star. I am working on the theory that Southern California must have much better weed.
We cruised along the northern edge of the city technically called the Marina but is actually affinity housing for peroxide blonds with expensive wardrobes. Most of them would still sleep for a few hours more before going to Starbucks or the Grove.
I decided that somewhere on my list of great exercise ambitions was to beat the arachnid.
Spidey wasn't backing down. I could make a little ground on him when he had to lift his mask up to get cyto max at water stops, but he kept on prancing with his spidery strength.
The thing is that if you run next to someone wearing a costume everyone along the course will point that out to you. All I heard besides sea gulls were cheers of "go Spiderman."
Throughout Spidey's career he has beaten among others Dr. Octopus, the Green Goblin, and Kingpin. But he has never encountered the obstacle that cause Lance Armstrong to quit a few laps early – San Francisco hills. New York might be great if you like baseball or Carrie Bradshaw, but San Francisco does wonders to your quads.
When we hit the last long flat I took off and never saw web crusader again. Even at the after race expo as I wondered if the booth for running massage should somehow be combined with the booth with the girls from the new Hooters, I couldn't see him. I guess he had gone back to being to Peter Parker.
I think competition can sometimes bring out the best us (unless you are giants, cubs, or red socks fan). Where would literature be with out the old man and the sea, or Ahab and his whale? Without Nobel prizes how would I hear about so many authors from around the world?
And so whether your next great event is running with the bulls in Spain or just running to video store to rent "Finding Nemo" try to pass the person next to you. Unless, of course, he is wearing a Flash costume.
Monday, August 25, 2003
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day
I had no plans for Saturday evening, but I got a last minute invite to go to an art gallery opening by my yoga instructor and her boyfriend. It sounds like urban life channeled through "Sex and the City", but the reality is far more facial hair in strange parts, patches of tattoos on the border of shirts, and cranberry juice for beverages than the HBO show has. If you aren't wearing a black t shirt then at least you have to have dark rim glasses that if Clark Kent owned he would never take off to lose his cool - speeding train be damned. The art is closer to the "heavy metal" school of design - girls with boobs spray painted on felt - than the renaissance and would be more appropriate on the ceiling than the walls. Then again Michelangelo did do the Sistine chapel.
My friends picked me up in an SUV battleship and told me that they have to make a quick stop to pick up the yoga instructors friend, Jessie. It feels like a set up. I have nothing really against these (I do need help at some level), but it is always a little disheartening to find out where your friends place you.
I *always* get the perky side kick (a bat girl to somebody's cat woman). And when Jessie hops in the car she seems just the type. She is a little larger than average from a clear lack of exercise, but at least is busty. She is a few years younger (which is a huge plus), but is powered only by cigarettes. Normally this is a deal breaker, but I have gone sort of past absolute eliminations at 34.9 and am left with tough compromises. Great girl when medicated - that kind of thing. I would love to find a girl who was born in the 70's, laughs occasionally at my jokes, and is basically normal. Where can I find a woman like that?
She bounced with the conversation and I played along with the charade. The four of us wandered through the art exhibit and then go look for a place to eat. At the restaurant which only serves warm Portuguese beer the talk drifted to how I should where tighter clothes at yoga class. I explained that might help with the yoga, but with my little belly it would not help with the fashion department. Somehow the conversation drifted how the yoga instructor could excite gay men and I babbled about how much fun it was to talk to lesbians.
This is when Jessie chimed in "Well you are talking to one right now." Either this is a great date cut off maneuver, or Jessie has a girl. And like most guys I would want to make her mine. You, know I feel so dirty when they start talking cute. I want to say "try a nice guy", but the point is probably mute. No point going through life chasing Amy.
I guess love is more like Shakespeare than hallmark cards - not the part where everyone dies in act five in Romeo and Juliet, but more like when girls are pretending to be men pretending to be interested in the duke. My whole set up bias was much ado about nothing.
If I were to compare love to a summer's day, I would have to pick a San Francisco one.
My friends picked me up in an SUV battleship and told me that they have to make a quick stop to pick up the yoga instructors friend, Jessie. It feels like a set up. I have nothing really against these (I do need help at some level), but it is always a little disheartening to find out where your friends place you.
I *always* get the perky side kick (a bat girl to somebody's cat woman). And when Jessie hops in the car she seems just the type. She is a little larger than average from a clear lack of exercise, but at least is busty. She is a few years younger (which is a huge plus), but is powered only by cigarettes. Normally this is a deal breaker, but I have gone sort of past absolute eliminations at 34.9 and am left with tough compromises. Great girl when medicated - that kind of thing. I would love to find a girl who was born in the 70's, laughs occasionally at my jokes, and is basically normal. Where can I find a woman like that?
She bounced with the conversation and I played along with the charade. The four of us wandered through the art exhibit and then go look for a place to eat. At the restaurant which only serves warm Portuguese beer the talk drifted to how I should where tighter clothes at yoga class. I explained that might help with the yoga, but with my little belly it would not help with the fashion department. Somehow the conversation drifted how the yoga instructor could excite gay men and I babbled about how much fun it was to talk to lesbians.
This is when Jessie chimed in "Well you are talking to one right now." Either this is a great date cut off maneuver, or Jessie has a girl. And like most guys I would want to make her mine. You, know I feel so dirty when they start talking cute. I want to say "try a nice guy", but the point is probably mute. No point going through life chasing Amy.
I guess love is more like Shakespeare than hallmark cards - not the part where everyone dies in act five in Romeo and Juliet, but more like when girls are pretending to be men pretending to be interested in the duke. My whole set up bias was much ado about nothing.
If I were to compare love to a summer's day, I would have to pick a San Francisco one.
Tuesday, May 27, 2003
Almost There
You can find yourself in deep, cold waters. Your face and hands are long ago numb, and your arms feel heavy. The tide pulls you sideways, and shore seems far away.
When the waves bounce you, you can sometimes see your home. Not your house. Your city. From the grey Embarcadero buildings to the red television tower you see the sourdough city melt into pointillist dots. There are splotches of green for parks, and you can make out the mission style roof of Fort Point. It is early morning, and the stillness of San Francisco contrasts against the Bay's anger.
Somewhere ahead is the ferry that had brought you to next to Alcatraz. Earlier, you walked barefoot with the rest of your pack of swimmers over cobblestones along Fisherman’s Wharf to get to the Blue and Gold pier. Two homeless guys, perhaps sober but still hungry, looked at this parade of neoprene as it wandered by Hooters. The girls there don’t wear anything as anatomically revealing as your wetsuit and still get much better tips. You tried your best not to look at your fellow well toned competition, but are left with the small hope that you will float far better than they will.
You boarded the boat and took a seat next to a grey haired husband and wife team from Seattle with shoulders the size of Mount Rainer. They casually mention how they swim in the much colder Washington waters. At the table across the aisle, a daughter with her swim cap already on twitched next to her father who stared out the window. There was a snack bar towards the stern, but no one bought anything. Finally the ship stopped, the doors opened, and the crowd started chanting “Go, go, go …” Pair by pair the swimmers launched out into bay and dipped well below the wake of the ferry. That was a half hour ago.
Your head is underwater again. You blow bubbles out your mouth even though your Russian swim instructor had barked at you to breath through your nose. You don’t understand most of what he says anyway, but he is at the YMCA every morning at 5:45 with a crew cut and red lifeguard shirt to shout at whomever paid the twenty-dollar masters fee “grab beach ball.” His daughter is sometimes there in the faster lane. You hope she can translate, but she is already starting her second set of pulling for one hundred yards. Beach balls will remain a mystery.
The Russian lets you wear fins so that you can keep up with the rest of the class. You are a genius with a kickboard for no particular reason. Everyone should get one athletic gift in life – like the tall, thin kid with bad acne and Motley Crue t-shirt from summer camp who was a master at foosball. He owned the machine in the Rec Center and only stopped to munch on the microwave bake bean burritos. You hope that for the Beijing Olympics they will have foosball as an exhibition sport and you will see him still thin but with better skin taking on the best from Australia. Everybody you knew growing up was going to be famous. You haven’t heard from most of them since.
You take a breath on the other side.
Swimming is repetition. Three strokes for each breath. Eighteen strokes for a length. Two lengths for a lap. Thirty-two laps for a mile. After a while you lose count. Perhaps it is lack of the oxygen or maybe you have your stroke number confused with your lap count, but you find yourself in a mathematical uncertainty, an aquatic déjà vu of thinking that you have already done this lap. It feels like the one you just did and the one you know you will do, but it lacks the formality of a name. Am I on twenty-one or twenty-two? You can check your watch to for the amount of time you have been swimming and estimate how many laps you should have done. But this requires math and you don't have enough oxygen for that.
This numeric uncertainty follows you. You used to laugh off still writing checks with the prior year in February, but there are times now when you forget your own age. You get used to using phrases like mid thirties. You have migrated from a specific to a demographic – a slightly less influential range but with more disposable income. Singers now wear things that you would not dare to try and everyone on American Idol looks too young. You realize that if you were on Survivor that you have crossed over from the young person camp to the "tag along" tribe and that your only hope for them to keep you around is your superior fishing skills because you learned how to swim from the crew cut Russian.
You have friends now who are been divorced and others have been to cardiologists. That belief that somehow you weren't going to make the same mistakes as your parents, that your love was different in way that they could never understand, that there wasn't going to be those compromises of keeping a job to make a mortgage - these things all have slowly faded like the soccer intramural runner up shirt that you won in college and you realize that your parents must have thrown out their own mementos from that time long ago.
Years blur. What happened in 1998? Did we know about Monica then? Had you started working at a start up or had you left one with a mound of empty options? Who got married that year? Did you have a summer vacation? Did you listen to Hansen? Are they now too old for American Idol?
You don't smell the ocean as much as you taste it. The salt water drains around your teeth and pushes against your tongue. It is a siren's kiss - sloppy and urgent. The restorative mocha after the swim will taste exceptionally sweet, and you hope that it will come soon.
In the fall there is a race called Swim of the Centurions that is run by a smallish leathery Chilean man named Pedro. He is of the sea, having been one of the first to do this swim a hundred times. Sometimes he goes out and back from the shore and every Thursday he holds a swim clinic. Swimming is repetition.
But it is also about diving in. You must take risks. Little gambles check to see if you are alive. You buy a lottery ticket when you get a bus pass in the hopes that there a few magic numbers that could change everything. You sometimes dare to get the mocha without non-fat milk. Life sometimes needs the cream.
When asked for advice about entering the chilly bay for the first time, Pedro will tell you in a slight accent "Just go for it." While it might just be a variation on a shoe company logo, you need to hear it. You can't always just wade into the water and hope that somehow it going to turn pleasant and warm. The water stings the blood vessels in your feet for five minutes and then you will feel nothing.
Forget about blowing bubbles. Forget about insurance companies. Forget about the sharks. Forget about worrying if you were invited to the right birthday party. Forget about the runoff of the dirt of the city into the bay. Forget about a writing assignment that isn't really working. Forget about the people from Seattle, the crew cut Russian, and Pedro.
Just go for it.
The shore is getting closer. One of the guides in a kayak comes over to you and suggests that you aim a little to the right. You see patches of splashes ahead. Small groups of swimmers are drafting off of each other and the opening into your landing harbor, Aquatic Park, is visible up ahead.
Swimming from Alcatraz is the easiest hard thing you can do. Marathons are much harder. Relationships are harder. Figuring out what your boss actually wants you to do is harder. But you will get a t-shirt if you finish Alcatraz and maybe that can replace the one from college.
It is hard enough that your friends will think you are nuts except for the ones who also do triathlons. Your family will wonder why you can't take up something a little safer like bowling. Tourists will come up to you afterwards and ask questions like "Isn't it really cold?"
“Yes,” you will tell them. “It is.”
You think you are close enough that you can stand and you drop your legs into the nothingness. You can see the race clock ahead and hear the announcer slowly call off the contestants as they stride onto the sand. You are past the last section of moored boats and the buoys that mark the swim area. You are almost there.
When the waves bounce you, you can sometimes see your home. Not your house. Your city. From the grey Embarcadero buildings to the red television tower you see the sourdough city melt into pointillist dots. There are splotches of green for parks, and you can make out the mission style roof of Fort Point. It is early morning, and the stillness of San Francisco contrasts against the Bay's anger.
Somewhere ahead is the ferry that had brought you to next to Alcatraz. Earlier, you walked barefoot with the rest of your pack of swimmers over cobblestones along Fisherman’s Wharf to get to the Blue and Gold pier. Two homeless guys, perhaps sober but still hungry, looked at this parade of neoprene as it wandered by Hooters. The girls there don’t wear anything as anatomically revealing as your wetsuit and still get much better tips. You tried your best not to look at your fellow well toned competition, but are left with the small hope that you will float far better than they will.
You boarded the boat and took a seat next to a grey haired husband and wife team from Seattle with shoulders the size of Mount Rainer. They casually mention how they swim in the much colder Washington waters. At the table across the aisle, a daughter with her swim cap already on twitched next to her father who stared out the window. There was a snack bar towards the stern, but no one bought anything. Finally the ship stopped, the doors opened, and the crowd started chanting “Go, go, go …” Pair by pair the swimmers launched out into bay and dipped well below the wake of the ferry. That was a half hour ago.
Your head is underwater again. You blow bubbles out your mouth even though your Russian swim instructor had barked at you to breath through your nose. You don’t understand most of what he says anyway, but he is at the YMCA every morning at 5:45 with a crew cut and red lifeguard shirt to shout at whomever paid the twenty-dollar masters fee “grab beach ball.” His daughter is sometimes there in the faster lane. You hope she can translate, but she is already starting her second set of pulling for one hundred yards. Beach balls will remain a mystery.
The Russian lets you wear fins so that you can keep up with the rest of the class. You are a genius with a kickboard for no particular reason. Everyone should get one athletic gift in life – like the tall, thin kid with bad acne and Motley Crue t-shirt from summer camp who was a master at foosball. He owned the machine in the Rec Center and only stopped to munch on the microwave bake bean burritos. You hope that for the Beijing Olympics they will have foosball as an exhibition sport and you will see him still thin but with better skin taking on the best from Australia. Everybody you knew growing up was going to be famous. You haven’t heard from most of them since.
You take a breath on the other side.
Swimming is repetition. Three strokes for each breath. Eighteen strokes for a length. Two lengths for a lap. Thirty-two laps for a mile. After a while you lose count. Perhaps it is lack of the oxygen or maybe you have your stroke number confused with your lap count, but you find yourself in a mathematical uncertainty, an aquatic déjà vu of thinking that you have already done this lap. It feels like the one you just did and the one you know you will do, but it lacks the formality of a name. Am I on twenty-one or twenty-two? You can check your watch to for the amount of time you have been swimming and estimate how many laps you should have done. But this requires math and you don't have enough oxygen for that.
This numeric uncertainty follows you. You used to laugh off still writing checks with the prior year in February, but there are times now when you forget your own age. You get used to using phrases like mid thirties. You have migrated from a specific to a demographic – a slightly less influential range but with more disposable income. Singers now wear things that you would not dare to try and everyone on American Idol looks too young. You realize that if you were on Survivor that you have crossed over from the young person camp to the "tag along" tribe and that your only hope for them to keep you around is your superior fishing skills because you learned how to swim from the crew cut Russian.
You have friends now who are been divorced and others have been to cardiologists. That belief that somehow you weren't going to make the same mistakes as your parents, that your love was different in way that they could never understand, that there wasn't going to be those compromises of keeping a job to make a mortgage - these things all have slowly faded like the soccer intramural runner up shirt that you won in college and you realize that your parents must have thrown out their own mementos from that time long ago.
Years blur. What happened in 1998? Did we know about Monica then? Had you started working at a start up or had you left one with a mound of empty options? Who got married that year? Did you have a summer vacation? Did you listen to Hansen? Are they now too old for American Idol?
You don't smell the ocean as much as you taste it. The salt water drains around your teeth and pushes against your tongue. It is a siren's kiss - sloppy and urgent. The restorative mocha after the swim will taste exceptionally sweet, and you hope that it will come soon.
In the fall there is a race called Swim of the Centurions that is run by a smallish leathery Chilean man named Pedro. He is of the sea, having been one of the first to do this swim a hundred times. Sometimes he goes out and back from the shore and every Thursday he holds a swim clinic. Swimming is repetition.
But it is also about diving in. You must take risks. Little gambles check to see if you are alive. You buy a lottery ticket when you get a bus pass in the hopes that there a few magic numbers that could change everything. You sometimes dare to get the mocha without non-fat milk. Life sometimes needs the cream.
When asked for advice about entering the chilly bay for the first time, Pedro will tell you in a slight accent "Just go for it." While it might just be a variation on a shoe company logo, you need to hear it. You can't always just wade into the water and hope that somehow it going to turn pleasant and warm. The water stings the blood vessels in your feet for five minutes and then you will feel nothing.
Forget about blowing bubbles. Forget about insurance companies. Forget about the sharks. Forget about worrying if you were invited to the right birthday party. Forget about the runoff of the dirt of the city into the bay. Forget about a writing assignment that isn't really working. Forget about the people from Seattle, the crew cut Russian, and Pedro.
Just go for it.
The shore is getting closer. One of the guides in a kayak comes over to you and suggests that you aim a little to the right. You see patches of splashes ahead. Small groups of swimmers are drafting off of each other and the opening into your landing harbor, Aquatic Park, is visible up ahead.
Swimming from Alcatraz is the easiest hard thing you can do. Marathons are much harder. Relationships are harder. Figuring out what your boss actually wants you to do is harder. But you will get a t-shirt if you finish Alcatraz and maybe that can replace the one from college.
It is hard enough that your friends will think you are nuts except for the ones who also do triathlons. Your family will wonder why you can't take up something a little safer like bowling. Tourists will come up to you afterwards and ask questions like "Isn't it really cold?"
“Yes,” you will tell them. “It is.”
You think you are close enough that you can stand and you drop your legs into the nothingness. You can see the race clock ahead and hear the announcer slowly call off the contestants as they stride onto the sand. You are past the last section of moored boats and the buoys that mark the swim area. You are almost there.
Tuesday, May 06, 2003
Sometimes it does rain even on weekends...
A strange thing about triathlons is that they lack narrative and theme of pure running. They are neither the four-line poem of a mile or the epic journey of a marathon (which in my mind is far tougher). I want to write about them but don't have an easy slant.
Doing them (and granted I only have two medals) I break them down into little pieces - a swim scrum, a few buoys, some hills on the bike, watching older guys and then younger women pass, and then a run/walk. It is a disjointed mix in which none of the stuff in the first act really affects the third. Most of the time I wind up paying attention to my heart rate and how many minutes I have until snack time. Like the fish at the Steinhart aquarium I need to feed every half hour.
Maybe the weather is where to begin. Wildflower was more about foreshadowing. You know that it might be a tough day when the car parked next to you is from a guy who was just voted off of surivor ). I had heard that wildflower was supposed to be the Woodstock of triathlons. And while the crazed hippies were replaces with crazed tri geeks, we did have Woodstock's rain and mud.
It rained most of Friday. That night I huddled in my Charlie Brown tent and listened to scattered squalls pound the walls. My important tri stuff was wrapped in Ziploc bags while the rest of my clothes absorbed water from a small hole in the tent that I did not cover. The low for the race was lying in the dark unable to sleep and wondering how much it was going to hurt - like a kid the night before the dentist.
The rain kept coming even as we trudged down the hill to set up our transition areas.
I don't know if the lake was choppy, because I really could not see it. Rumors started to flow around that they were going to change the course and they did. They decided to make the run hillier. Rather than have an Arch-Rock-like climb on trails we were going to do a Divasdero-street(where my parents live) uphill on concrete. Twice. We would be required to walk our bikes over steel bridge at mile forty and the race was going to go forward.
In fairness it was more of a California rain than a southern drenching. If you squinted you could gaze far enough to see the bikers ahead, but the flowers and the mountains were blurred. There were patches of dryness but these occurred more in the open flats than the white knuckled descents.
It was also windy. And then got hot in the run. I think I might be the only person dumb enough to have finished Wildflower in a turtleneck.
As stupid as the day got there was never really a moment of quitting. Sure I was going to walk up beach hill, but I was going to run after that. When you have waited over a year to do something you damn well want to make sure it gets done. I never really had the moment of despair that I got when I hit the wall at mile 18 of the Honolulu Marathon or the fifth hill of the Top Hat Classic. It was a slow, steady whittling like a boxer who is aware how many more rounds he has to go and knows how many teeth he has left. Take a few punches. Keep shuffling the feet.
Also, I knew that I wasn't having the toughest weekend. The night before we had our kick off party catered with low budget meatless pasta and salad driven in from Salinas. The coaches spoke and then a couple of honorees, cancer survivors doing the triathlon, gave talks. It is inspirational to hear someone has come back from chemo and is strong enough to do what you were about to do. A guy missing an arm passed me on the run. A blind women would do the Olympic course. In the scheme of things I travel through life blessed.
After the second honoree talked, the coordinator introduced "And now Oleg."
Oleg?
He is a tall fellow with a Clydesdale build. He is jolly, enthusiastic, has the sweetest wife, and used to work at Mellon before I arrived. I have had to actually clean up some of his spreadsheets. From time to time he joins the work crew at Aquatic Park, but has yet to come close to be able to swim as fast as his wife. He can run faster than she and they had both come down for the Olympic distance tri.
Oleg?
I had done water running with him on Tuesday as my last taper workout. (I am still a complete nut the weeks leading up to a distance event and I have tried to buy the person working next to me many burritos to apologize).
Oleg?
The day before he had felt a bump on his neck and went to the doctors to check it out. He found out he has a lymphoma but the biopsy has not specified the exact kind. Obviously unable to do the race, he had come down to support us and would wind up running the entire 10k with his wife who finished her event in a haze. She could have dehydrated through tears.
He has named his tumor Jerry and told us all he plans to get rid of Jerry as soon as possible. Standing in front of three hundred people and telling "yesterday I learned that I had cancer" is tougher than any rain on any bike. On any day.
I did talk to my boss and he asked about how you assist someone in this state. I only know the part of how to feel helpless during your senior year at boarding school when my brother was in 8th grade with ALL. His approach was getting a Nintendo and watching Divorce Court. He referred to the probabilistic approach of which treatment he would receive to as the big spin. Dark humor can help with the healing. There were plenty of dark moments without humor, but I don't want to talk about them now.
I know Oleg will keep his wit and I hope he knows that he will have a lot of us cheering for him. I will buy him beers next year when he completes the course (and help as I can in the meantime).
Yes, it did rain during wildflower. I had it easy.
Doing them (and granted I only have two medals) I break them down into little pieces - a swim scrum, a few buoys, some hills on the bike, watching older guys and then younger women pass, and then a run/walk. It is a disjointed mix in which none of the stuff in the first act really affects the third. Most of the time I wind up paying attention to my heart rate and how many minutes I have until snack time. Like the fish at the Steinhart aquarium I need to feed every half hour.
Maybe the weather is where to begin. Wildflower was more about foreshadowing. You know that it might be a tough day when the car parked next to you is from a guy who was just voted off of surivor ). I had heard that wildflower was supposed to be the Woodstock of triathlons. And while the crazed hippies were replaces with crazed tri geeks, we did have Woodstock's rain and mud.
It rained most of Friday. That night I huddled in my Charlie Brown tent and listened to scattered squalls pound the walls. My important tri stuff was wrapped in Ziploc bags while the rest of my clothes absorbed water from a small hole in the tent that I did not cover. The low for the race was lying in the dark unable to sleep and wondering how much it was going to hurt - like a kid the night before the dentist.
The rain kept coming even as we trudged down the hill to set up our transition areas.
I don't know if the lake was choppy, because I really could not see it. Rumors started to flow around that they were going to change the course and they did. They decided to make the run hillier. Rather than have an Arch-Rock-like climb on trails we were going to do a Divasdero-street(where my parents live) uphill on concrete. Twice. We would be required to walk our bikes over steel bridge at mile forty and the race was going to go forward.
In fairness it was more of a California rain than a southern drenching. If you squinted you could gaze far enough to see the bikers ahead, but the flowers and the mountains were blurred. There were patches of dryness but these occurred more in the open flats than the white knuckled descents.
It was also windy. And then got hot in the run. I think I might be the only person dumb enough to have finished Wildflower in a turtleneck.
As stupid as the day got there was never really a moment of quitting. Sure I was going to walk up beach hill, but I was going to run after that. When you have waited over a year to do something you damn well want to make sure it gets done. I never really had the moment of despair that I got when I hit the wall at mile 18 of the Honolulu Marathon or the fifth hill of the Top Hat Classic. It was a slow, steady whittling like a boxer who is aware how many more rounds he has to go and knows how many teeth he has left. Take a few punches. Keep shuffling the feet.
Also, I knew that I wasn't having the toughest weekend. The night before we had our kick off party catered with low budget meatless pasta and salad driven in from Salinas. The coaches spoke and then a couple of honorees, cancer survivors doing the triathlon, gave talks. It is inspirational to hear someone has come back from chemo and is strong enough to do what you were about to do. A guy missing an arm passed me on the run. A blind women would do the Olympic course. In the scheme of things I travel through life blessed.
After the second honoree talked, the coordinator introduced "And now Oleg."
Oleg?
He is a tall fellow with a Clydesdale build. He is jolly, enthusiastic, has the sweetest wife, and used to work at Mellon before I arrived. I have had to actually clean up some of his spreadsheets. From time to time he joins the work crew at Aquatic Park, but has yet to come close to be able to swim as fast as his wife. He can run faster than she and they had both come down for the Olympic distance tri.
Oleg?
I had done water running with him on Tuesday as my last taper workout. (I am still a complete nut the weeks leading up to a distance event and I have tried to buy the person working next to me many burritos to apologize).
Oleg?
The day before he had felt a bump on his neck and went to the doctors to check it out. He found out he has a lymphoma but the biopsy has not specified the exact kind. Obviously unable to do the race, he had come down to support us and would wind up running the entire 10k with his wife who finished her event in a haze. She could have dehydrated through tears.
He has named his tumor Jerry and told us all he plans to get rid of Jerry as soon as possible. Standing in front of three hundred people and telling "yesterday I learned that I had cancer" is tougher than any rain on any bike. On any day.
I did talk to my boss and he asked about how you assist someone in this state. I only know the part of how to feel helpless during your senior year at boarding school when my brother was in 8th grade with ALL. His approach was getting a Nintendo and watching Divorce Court. He referred to the probabilistic approach of which treatment he would receive to as the big spin. Dark humor can help with the healing. There were plenty of dark moments without humor, but I don't want to talk about them now.
I know Oleg will keep his wit and I hope he knows that he will have a lot of us cheering for him. I will buy him beers next year when he completes the course (and help as I can in the meantime).
Yes, it did rain during wildflower. I had it easy.
Wednesday, January 08, 2003
Staying
I think Christmas came a little late for SF this year. It seems like only last week that I was trying to plan a new years resolution clearing out my closet to make room for the new stuff - the sweaters that my parent's gave me and the 19-inch monitor I gave myself. However I had to hesitate when my brother ask me Do you want throw this hat out?
It was the red one still stained with dirt and a white V in the middle - a proud memento from my graduate school softball days from a time when a beer belly was considered to be proper sporting attire. The purpose of most PhD programs is to get the hood, but my headgear earned from those two years is that cap. In baseball you get more of a chance to run out a weak chopper down the third base line; academia only likes power hitters. Our softball team, the Viking death rats, might not have had the best record, but with the team of mostly robotics grads we probably could have quoted Monty Python better than Symington could. That hat isn't going anywhere and after dusting it off I decided to wear it yesterday.
Still that wasn't the important question from Sunday. Nope, the question I will remember for years was when I asked my brother Do you want to go? We agreed that a four-touchdown deficit was the minimum to leave a playoff football game, but I was unsure whether a three touchdown and a field goal margin was enough. The New York Giants had dominated the ball at Candlestick Park. Between the laser passes of Collins, the craftiness of Toomer, the power of Shockey, the speed of Barber and a stingy defensive, it felt like the game was rerun of some ESPN classic Giants team with Simms tossing it to Bavaro while the Big Tuna played mind games along the sidelines. Actually it looked more like the whopping that my brother gave me on a Nintendo. 38 to 14 through forty minutes is a crushing.
If you take enough math classes (and I have had way too many) you get a deeper appreciation of statistics that ruins playing blackjack because you realize you are making a losing bet. There is a point when you that you need to cut loss and move on. I have spent that last three years working with folks who are the master of hedging (although if they were better wall street guys they should have just sold). Twenty-four points is more than Steve Young ever overcame in the playoffs throwing to Jerry Rice. It is more than Joe Montana ever did going to Dwight Clark. I think it might have been bigger than David versus Goliath considering that they did not have the two-point conversion then.
San Francisco is an odd town in that it almost reveres its musicians more than its athletes. The more famous Garcia in these parts played for the Grateful Dead. And somewhere up in the sky he must have been humming Since it cost a lot to win and even more to lose. You and me bound to spend some time wondering what to choose.
A couple of other brothers wrote Should we stay or should we go?, but they probably weren't thinking about traffic on highway 101 the way that I was with mine.
We stayed.
I never was a full deadhead (certainly not at Cate), but I really did enjoy two concerts. The truly whacked out fans would be the ones dancing outside, but I always thought that the hardcore were the ones flicking lighters so that they could write down the set list. A sea of stars (not really the thousand points of light that Bush talked about) would go as soon the lyrics blared out. Trouble ahead, Trouble behind and you know that notion just crossed my mind. Or perhaps Sometimes the light's all shining on me. Other times I can barely see. Lately it occurs to me what a long strange trip it's been. There was such an incredible buzz at a dead show that I have only seen since at a republican convention and Babylon 5 show (although now I tend get both of those memories confused)
That kind of feeling wasn't there in the third quarter. There were sixty five thousand quiet niner fans that were being heckled by the ten giants fans in my section all of whom could have been named Dino. Even the women. But the crowd had did not have enough energy to whimper, much less cheer. It was a very tough day.
Garcia started to play as if he were in his backyard. The no huddle offense has pretty much gone the way of the leather helmet (and the words going both ways has gone to a different meaning in this town). But it worked. The Giants could not rest their defense, and the niners could creep down the field. It felt like Garcia was almost scratching the plays in the sand to Owens. Hook a left at the fire hydrant and I will hit you over the middle. One by one the offensive players started to step it up. Little by little the crowd began to rise and cheer. By the middle of the fourth quarter the place was on their feet and cheered as if they were going to be at a cough syrup audition on Monday.
A new question started to float around the chants of Go. Niners and D. Fence. Could this really happen?
Can you comeback from this kind of a mess? Will you one day find out that you weren't really working for the man? Is George Bush going to say Hey the UN did not find any weapons so there is no reason for a Coup in Iraq? What is wrong with the Lakers? Did Mr. Boning really know everything that happened at the mesa? Can I wear a shirt and sweater that actually match?
The truth is I don't know. But I did learn that maybe just maybe the answer to things might be better than you expect. Some days you have to stick with things even if you are down by 24 points. (Unless you are an angel's fan in which case I still don't really like you). There might just be a thing called luck and for that reason alone I am taking the hat to Vegas this weekend.
Maybe with that same little luck I will catch you soon. Here is hoping.
It was the red one still stained with dirt and a white V in the middle - a proud memento from my graduate school softball days from a time when a beer belly was considered to be proper sporting attire. The purpose of most PhD programs is to get the hood, but my headgear earned from those two years is that cap. In baseball you get more of a chance to run out a weak chopper down the third base line; academia only likes power hitters. Our softball team, the Viking death rats, might not have had the best record, but with the team of mostly robotics grads we probably could have quoted Monty Python better than Symington could. That hat isn't going anywhere and after dusting it off I decided to wear it yesterday.
Still that wasn't the important question from Sunday. Nope, the question I will remember for years was when I asked my brother Do you want to go? We agreed that a four-touchdown deficit was the minimum to leave a playoff football game, but I was unsure whether a three touchdown and a field goal margin was enough. The New York Giants had dominated the ball at Candlestick Park. Between the laser passes of Collins, the craftiness of Toomer, the power of Shockey, the speed of Barber and a stingy defensive, it felt like the game was rerun of some ESPN classic Giants team with Simms tossing it to Bavaro while the Big Tuna played mind games along the sidelines. Actually it looked more like the whopping that my brother gave me on a Nintendo. 38 to 14 through forty minutes is a crushing.
If you take enough math classes (and I have had way too many) you get a deeper appreciation of statistics that ruins playing blackjack because you realize you are making a losing bet. There is a point when you that you need to cut loss and move on. I have spent that last three years working with folks who are the master of hedging (although if they were better wall street guys they should have just sold). Twenty-four points is more than Steve Young ever overcame in the playoffs throwing to Jerry Rice. It is more than Joe Montana ever did going to Dwight Clark. I think it might have been bigger than David versus Goliath considering that they did not have the two-point conversion then.
San Francisco is an odd town in that it almost reveres its musicians more than its athletes. The more famous Garcia in these parts played for the Grateful Dead. And somewhere up in the sky he must have been humming Since it cost a lot to win and even more to lose. You and me bound to spend some time wondering what to choose.
A couple of other brothers wrote Should we stay or should we go?, but they probably weren't thinking about traffic on highway 101 the way that I was with mine.
We stayed.
I never was a full deadhead (certainly not at Cate), but I really did enjoy two concerts. The truly whacked out fans would be the ones dancing outside, but I always thought that the hardcore were the ones flicking lighters so that they could write down the set list. A sea of stars (not really the thousand points of light that Bush talked about) would go as soon the lyrics blared out. Trouble ahead, Trouble behind and you know that notion just crossed my mind. Or perhaps Sometimes the light's all shining on me. Other times I can barely see. Lately it occurs to me what a long strange trip it's been. There was such an incredible buzz at a dead show that I have only seen since at a republican convention and Babylon 5 show (although now I tend get both of those memories confused)
That kind of feeling wasn't there in the third quarter. There were sixty five thousand quiet niner fans that were being heckled by the ten giants fans in my section all of whom could have been named Dino. Even the women. But the crowd had did not have enough energy to whimper, much less cheer. It was a very tough day.
Garcia started to play as if he were in his backyard. The no huddle offense has pretty much gone the way of the leather helmet (and the words going both ways has gone to a different meaning in this town). But it worked. The Giants could not rest their defense, and the niners could creep down the field. It felt like Garcia was almost scratching the plays in the sand to Owens. Hook a left at the fire hydrant and I will hit you over the middle. One by one the offensive players started to step it up. Little by little the crowd began to rise and cheer. By the middle of the fourth quarter the place was on their feet and cheered as if they were going to be at a cough syrup audition on Monday.
A new question started to float around the chants of Go. Niners and D. Fence. Could this really happen?
Can you comeback from this kind of a mess? Will you one day find out that you weren't really working for the man? Is George Bush going to say Hey the UN did not find any weapons so there is no reason for a Coup in Iraq? What is wrong with the Lakers? Did Mr. Boning really know everything that happened at the mesa? Can I wear a shirt and sweater that actually match?
The truth is I don't know. But I did learn that maybe just maybe the answer to things might be better than you expect. Some days you have to stick with things even if you are down by 24 points. (Unless you are an angel's fan in which case I still don't really like you). There might just be a thing called luck and for that reason alone I am taking the hat to Vegas this weekend.
Maybe with that same little luck I will catch you soon. Here is hoping.
Monday, October 28, 2002
Early Halloween
I know that the "holidays" are safe to send stuff to people in your distant circle - old classmates, roommates, or coworkers. And with the release of "Santa Clause: 2" on November one, maybe the season has been stretched as far as the southern California megalopolis.
Still there isn't enough space in my apartment for the bounty from seventy-five days of Christmas; there are too many golden rings, partridges or lords a leaping. However, there aren't any more baseball players a playing.
The smells from this October aren't the sweet scent of fall's foliage, but the dark stench from a car wreck world series. The 415 area code hasn't had this kind of colossal bummer, since a batch of bad acid during 1967. It was less of a "long strange trip", and far more "walking on broken glass"
We were up by five runs. Bonds was trying to one up Lou Gerhig for the best series by a player. (He didn't but he can't own *every* record).
And then came the Disney Angel's. I am not sure whether they got their name from Buffy the Vampire's ex beau, but I pretty sure that the red in their uniform comes from Dracula. Could anything kill them? Giants didn't need to bat better but could have used some wooden stakes. Garlic fries could only slow down the monster.
We were up by five runs.
Nobody calls Jason in the Friday the 13th movies scrappy. Nobody calls Goofy long suffering. Nobody should have called the Angels underdogs. This wasn't a team of jimmy crickets, but a plague of locusts.
I guess in the off-season for tri's I have been watching too much TV. (How was Sentinel?) There is a new yoga place on Fillmore between California and Bush that my hamstrings appreciate. It is a block up from where we had sushi and across the street from Argentine Ice Cream place - let me know if you want to go sometime.
I am spinning a few times a week. A former co-worker of mine is trying to land somehow after tumbling through a divorce. I suggested about healing through endorphins and she drives me to class three days a week.
I invited her and a small group of friends out drinks for my birthday. It was a tough week - I was paying for some bad karma from having worn a race jersey during an actual race. You can't cheat that kind of stuff. Most of the people there were from old TNT marathon seasons. She brought a red headed date, but he disappeared from her mind when she met my boss.
They hung out at the bar and wandered through each other stories. She hadn't met someone so interesting; he never knew someone so cute. I had a half an hour of answering machine message - reference checks from both sides. "Yes", I assured them "they were wonderful."
They grabbed dinner and movies (and thankfully not each other in my company). They saw the "Now and Zen" festival and talked about biking together.
I think the duration of magic is measured in moments. In slow motion you can see cards being shuffled, but in real time you can't guess the red queen. After an hour of guessing it stops even being precious, and starts annoying. Some relationships follow the same trajectory.
My boss had three weeks off to climb up to Everest base camp - if you outsource enough of the supplies to surpa it isn't that bad. Perhaps the hard part is coming home. After such peaks it is hard to return to the topology of everyday life. The weight is the same, but you are the only one left carrying the burden.
They are breaking up slowly. Like Livan Hernandez pitching kind of slow.
Life like baseball has more moments closer to Halloween than Christmas.
Still there isn't enough space in my apartment for the bounty from seventy-five days of Christmas; there are too many golden rings, partridges or lords a leaping. However, there aren't any more baseball players a playing.
The smells from this October aren't the sweet scent of fall's foliage, but the dark stench from a car wreck world series. The 415 area code hasn't had this kind of colossal bummer, since a batch of bad acid during 1967. It was less of a "long strange trip", and far more "walking on broken glass"
We were up by five runs. Bonds was trying to one up Lou Gerhig for the best series by a player. (He didn't but he can't own *every* record).
And then came the Disney Angel's. I am not sure whether they got their name from Buffy the Vampire's ex beau, but I pretty sure that the red in their uniform comes from Dracula. Could anything kill them? Giants didn't need to bat better but could have used some wooden stakes. Garlic fries could only slow down the monster.
We were up by five runs.
Nobody calls Jason in the Friday the 13th movies scrappy. Nobody calls Goofy long suffering. Nobody should have called the Angels underdogs. This wasn't a team of jimmy crickets, but a plague of locusts.
I guess in the off-season for tri's I have been watching too much TV. (How was Sentinel?) There is a new yoga place on Fillmore between California and Bush that my hamstrings appreciate. It is a block up from where we had sushi and across the street from Argentine Ice Cream place - let me know if you want to go sometime.
I am spinning a few times a week. A former co-worker of mine is trying to land somehow after tumbling through a divorce. I suggested about healing through endorphins and she drives me to class three days a week.
I invited her and a small group of friends out drinks for my birthday. It was a tough week - I was paying for some bad karma from having worn a race jersey during an actual race. You can't cheat that kind of stuff. Most of the people there were from old TNT marathon seasons. She brought a red headed date, but he disappeared from her mind when she met my boss.
They hung out at the bar and wandered through each other stories. She hadn't met someone so interesting; he never knew someone so cute. I had a half an hour of answering machine message - reference checks from both sides. "Yes", I assured them "they were wonderful."
They grabbed dinner and movies (and thankfully not each other in my company). They saw the "Now and Zen" festival and talked about biking together.
I think the duration of magic is measured in moments. In slow motion you can see cards being shuffled, but in real time you can't guess the red queen. After an hour of guessing it stops even being precious, and starts annoying. Some relationships follow the same trajectory.
My boss had three weeks off to climb up to Everest base camp - if you outsource enough of the supplies to surpa it isn't that bad. Perhaps the hard part is coming home. After such peaks it is hard to return to the topology of everyday life. The weight is the same, but you are the only one left carrying the burden.
They are breaking up slowly. Like Livan Hernandez pitching kind of slow.
Life like baseball has more moments closer to Halloween than Christmas.
Thursday, September 05, 2002
Tomales Bay
The town of Inverness has been around for some time, and while the trans-bay swim does not have the 98-year history of the Fourth of July road races after 28 years it has its own traditions. There is a pancake committee that creates post swim hotcakes, and the kayak escort will give you a swig of tea during the swim.
Everyone seems to know each other's first name. My mom, who invited me, was invited by her friend Nancy Jo. It was in general an earthy crowd.
Inverness did not have the traditional immigrant waves like the rest of the country, but was settled by Czechs, hippies, bikers, and John Carpenter - horror movie director. The fashion was less from Paris more of an Advance Studies in Pottery Class mode. The group looked like it could be quite happy bird watching.
There was a range of swimmers from nouveau dog paddlers to a guy who qualified for the Hawaiian Ironman. Having far more swimming gear than actual technique, I put on a full wet suit, body glide, and swim cap. I began to think that I might be over dressed for the 70-degree water, and looking around I notice a few who had a different view of their bodies.
Freedom, baby, freedom.
Apparently there was another tradition besides the pancake breakfast. A woman a few feet over from me completely shed her clothes while remarking, "I guess I forgot my suit." By the looks of things she was more Woodstock than Burning Man. A couple others joined her by going topless. Maybe it really was closer to Paris after all.
I do have to say on that list of things for which I am truly grateful, somewhere near the apartment with a hot tub and that I still have all of my teeth, is the fact that my mom and her good friends decided to wear their suits. There is only so much family history I want to know. Even now I shudder.
The nudists did go to the front of the group picture - important to keep a memento for the yearbook.
The shots were taken and we headed out across the bay. The dangers are more legendary than real - the bay is on top of the San Andreas Fault line and great white sharks breed at the northern most part, but the difficulties are more with mud and sea grass. The distance lies the vague small town scale where the fish that got away was always a yard long - the route was claimed to be a mile and a quarter but was most likely less than a mile round trip. The day had flat water, sunny skies, and the swim was soon over.
No one has ever asked me to be a godfather (I think my friends expect me to give no more guidance than "pull my finger"); I have not had a close seat at a baptism in a while. And while the event did not have a religious slant, there is something more than just exercise when a town goes down to the sea. Places have their traditions whether they are pagan or brought to you by greeting card companies. Perhaps it is that realization that when you are swimming across tectonic plates it is better to do it in the company of neighbors than to struggle at it alone.
Everyone seems to know each other's first name. My mom, who invited me, was invited by her friend Nancy Jo. It was in general an earthy crowd.
Inverness did not have the traditional immigrant waves like the rest of the country, but was settled by Czechs, hippies, bikers, and John Carpenter - horror movie director. The fashion was less from Paris more of an Advance Studies in Pottery Class mode. The group looked like it could be quite happy bird watching.
There was a range of swimmers from nouveau dog paddlers to a guy who qualified for the Hawaiian Ironman. Having far more swimming gear than actual technique, I put on a full wet suit, body glide, and swim cap. I began to think that I might be over dressed for the 70-degree water, and looking around I notice a few who had a different view of their bodies.
Freedom, baby, freedom.
Apparently there was another tradition besides the pancake breakfast. A woman a few feet over from me completely shed her clothes while remarking, "I guess I forgot my suit." By the looks of things she was more Woodstock than Burning Man. A couple others joined her by going topless. Maybe it really was closer to Paris after all.
I do have to say on that list of things for which I am truly grateful, somewhere near the apartment with a hot tub and that I still have all of my teeth, is the fact that my mom and her good friends decided to wear their suits. There is only so much family history I want to know. Even now I shudder.
The nudists did go to the front of the group picture - important to keep a memento for the yearbook.
The shots were taken and we headed out across the bay. The dangers are more legendary than real - the bay is on top of the San Andreas Fault line and great white sharks breed at the northern most part, but the difficulties are more with mud and sea grass. The distance lies the vague small town scale where the fish that got away was always a yard long - the route was claimed to be a mile and a quarter but was most likely less than a mile round trip. The day had flat water, sunny skies, and the swim was soon over.
No one has ever asked me to be a godfather (I think my friends expect me to give no more guidance than "pull my finger"); I have not had a close seat at a baptism in a while. And while the event did not have a religious slant, there is something more than just exercise when a town goes down to the sea. Places have their traditions whether they are pagan or brought to you by greeting card companies. Perhaps it is that realization that when you are swimming across tectonic plates it is better to do it in the company of neighbors than to struggle at it alone.
Monday, September 02, 2002
Circles in the Sky
It was a story told late night in bar. The margaritas helped the telling, and I did my best to listen over noise from the pool table to a girl at a mutual friend's goodbye to San Francisco party. A blond from the Midwest she told a small cluster of us about a wedding she went to over the weekend.
For me weddings come in waves. You can go a year with no one being hitched, and then out of nowhere you are spending your Thursday's shopping at Pottery barn for gifts, Friday's traveling to wherever a college roommate grew up, Saturday's blurring through a reception, and Sunday's trying to make it back for the dry cleaners. The conversations melt. You think you have told the first time you got really drunk with the groom or bride to everyone, but you can't really remember the last time that you did anything with them that wasn't about the wedding.
There are little things that separate the events apart. One might have a "make your own sundaes" at the reception, a barbeque on an Iowa farm, or a cute bridesmaid. This wedding was held on a Sunday. The requested attire was Renaissance.
A satellite keeps in orbit by constantly falling and missing, and some relationships follow the same circle of being too attracted to leave but too uncertain to fall completely. He might have commitment problems. She might think she can do better. Their friends spend hours listening to them in coffee shops or a bar on buffalo wing night. No one is sure.
This is when entropy enters uninvited. People complain that their relationship needs a jolt but freeze when that moment comes. Six months ago she found out she had liver cancer.
I can't quite hear about the treatment process - a couple next to me is talking about a triathlon. There is something about not getting a transplant and the medication not really working. She is going to switch to a different type of treatment, but it looks like she has about three months left.
I don't know when he proposed or how she could plan for the event. Maybe the secret is to keep it simple: gather a few friends and find a good beach on a hotter than normal Indian summer day.
The crashing waves and gawking gulls served as music. A large hat hid her baldness. They wanted each of guests to bless the wedding rings during ceremony. They gathered in a circle and passed the rings around. Somebody held the ring up to the sky. Somebody held the ring close to their heart.
One by one family and friends spoke. Nobody was thinking about Pottery Barn.
The girl telling the story wandered to get another round of margaritas and the rest of the crowd went either to the restroom or to the pack playing pool. Now alone except for a coaster I watched Newtonian physics of the balls on the pool table colliding and breaking away, and then glanced up to see mingling of old friends, the flirting of new acquaintances, and the contemplating of those also alone at different tables or next to pillars. A few hugged the one leaving San Francisco and I realized the great need to celebrate in front of partings.
For me weddings come in waves. You can go a year with no one being hitched, and then out of nowhere you are spending your Thursday's shopping at Pottery barn for gifts, Friday's traveling to wherever a college roommate grew up, Saturday's blurring through a reception, and Sunday's trying to make it back for the dry cleaners. The conversations melt. You think you have told the first time you got really drunk with the groom or bride to everyone, but you can't really remember the last time that you did anything with them that wasn't about the wedding.
There are little things that separate the events apart. One might have a "make your own sundaes" at the reception, a barbeque on an Iowa farm, or a cute bridesmaid. This wedding was held on a Sunday. The requested attire was Renaissance.
A satellite keeps in orbit by constantly falling and missing, and some relationships follow the same circle of being too attracted to leave but too uncertain to fall completely. He might have commitment problems. She might think she can do better. Their friends spend hours listening to them in coffee shops or a bar on buffalo wing night. No one is sure.
This is when entropy enters uninvited. People complain that their relationship needs a jolt but freeze when that moment comes. Six months ago she found out she had liver cancer.
I can't quite hear about the treatment process - a couple next to me is talking about a triathlon. There is something about not getting a transplant and the medication not really working. She is going to switch to a different type of treatment, but it looks like she has about three months left.
I don't know when he proposed or how she could plan for the event. Maybe the secret is to keep it simple: gather a few friends and find a good beach on a hotter than normal Indian summer day.
The crashing waves and gawking gulls served as music. A large hat hid her baldness. They wanted each of guests to bless the wedding rings during ceremony. They gathered in a circle and passed the rings around. Somebody held the ring up to the sky. Somebody held the ring close to their heart.
One by one family and friends spoke. Nobody was thinking about Pottery Barn.
The girl telling the story wandered to get another round of margaritas and the rest of the crowd went either to the restroom or to the pack playing pool. Now alone except for a coaster I watched Newtonian physics of the balls on the pool table colliding and breaking away, and then glanced up to see mingling of old friends, the flirting of new acquaintances, and the contemplating of those also alone at different tables or next to pillars. A few hugged the one leaving San Francisco and I realized the great need to celebrate in front of partings.
Thursday, August 16, 2001
Alcatraz
I think I need to hang out with larger people. Spending time with the 5% body fat tri-athletes makes it tough to feel fit. I don't consider myself large. I am more like my nine-year-old Nissan Altima - a bit round the middle, low maintenance, surprising oomph, and with a few dings from misjudging distances. It just looks a little out of place in a marina parking lot full of Audis.
The journey from Alcatraz isn't as much of swimsuit contest as a wetsuit one. The sun hadn't yet risen by the time we had donned our O'Neil armor and headed over to the ferries. We must have looked like a pack of seals as we trotted over the same ground that tourists and mimes would wander later that day. The stores of fisherman's wharf sell the usual drek of personalize license plate key chains, and t-shirts that say "I escaped from the Rock." It is, however, far better to earn one.
We boarded the ship and headed across the sea. There was a Viking mystic to the voyage except our vessel had a snack bar. Little groups of friends huddled around the small tables, and talked nervously as the boat rocked in the waves.
A woman's blurred over the load speaker. "With the tides going out you are going to want to aim 200 yards to the left of the white Aquatic Park building." Nice to know that the ocean is taking you to China.
We rushed to the side of the ferry, and I came to the conclusion that pretty much all of the buildings along the shore looked white clustered around patches of park. We when close enough we were to mark according the three tall masts of a ship. Plan B was to follow the swimmer in front of me - navigation lemming style.
The doors of the ferry opened and the crowd started chanting "Go, go, go ..." Pair by pair the swimmers launched out into bay and dipped well below the wake of the ferry. I took one last look around and realized that I was the best-insulated one of the group. It was time to jump, and I flung myself out the door. The water wasn't that cold or at least not that unexpected in the way that the showers are at summer camp.
I paddled towards the starting line marked by kayaks. The horn blew and the pack splashed towards the city of hippies, sour dough bread, and ex dot comers.
There is a soothing rhythm to swimming and the waves did their best to interrupt me like techno music during a yoga class. At 40 minutes out, I wasn't that close to shore and began to wonder about that "misjudging distance" thing.
Eventually I pulled myself out of the sea, landed on the time pad at Aquatic Park, and handed my ankle bracelet to the next person in our relay team. Time for a well earned mocha.
Heavily caffeinated, I made it to the second transition area to cheer my relay bike and run partners. A few women I knew from team and training were hanging out near the finish line. They were doing their best at a separate event - the 30-yard oogle.
"It something about guys doing triathalons."
"I can't believe he is going to do the run with his shirt off."
"He kind of looks like Jesus in a Speedo." I had to comment that the trip from Alcatraz would be a great deal easier if you were allowed to run on top of the water. But that was lost in the testosterone appreciation.
I spent most of the time hanging out with the boyfriend of the running relay partner. He is a nice guy, and has sort of a John Corbet from "Sex in the City" quality. His girl friend had the tough sand ladder part, which I was very happy to out source. She had a great run certainly compared to my badly aimed swim and the gear problems that happened during the bike up Baker Beach hill.
Eventually our team finished and the girls wandered off to meet up with Jesus in a Speedo. There is no way I can compete with that any more that I run with someone who is a sub 3 hour marathon time. I need the larger Americans found at fast food restaurants and amusement parks. Ask me where I am going next. I say I am headed to Disneyland.
The journey from Alcatraz isn't as much of swimsuit contest as a wetsuit one. The sun hadn't yet risen by the time we had donned our O'Neil armor and headed over to the ferries. We must have looked like a pack of seals as we trotted over the same ground that tourists and mimes would wander later that day. The stores of fisherman's wharf sell the usual drek of personalize license plate key chains, and t-shirts that say "I escaped from the Rock." It is, however, far better to earn one.
We boarded the ship and headed across the sea. There was a Viking mystic to the voyage except our vessel had a snack bar. Little groups of friends huddled around the small tables, and talked nervously as the boat rocked in the waves.
A woman's blurred over the load speaker. "With the tides going out you are going to want to aim 200 yards to the left of the white Aquatic Park building." Nice to know that the ocean is taking you to China.
We rushed to the side of the ferry, and I came to the conclusion that pretty much all of the buildings along the shore looked white clustered around patches of park. We when close enough we were to mark according the three tall masts of a ship. Plan B was to follow the swimmer in front of me - navigation lemming style.
The doors of the ferry opened and the crowd started chanting "Go, go, go ..." Pair by pair the swimmers launched out into bay and dipped well below the wake of the ferry. I took one last look around and realized that I was the best-insulated one of the group. It was time to jump, and I flung myself out the door. The water wasn't that cold or at least not that unexpected in the way that the showers are at summer camp.
I paddled towards the starting line marked by kayaks. The horn blew and the pack splashed towards the city of hippies, sour dough bread, and ex dot comers.
There is a soothing rhythm to swimming and the waves did their best to interrupt me like techno music during a yoga class. At 40 minutes out, I wasn't that close to shore and began to wonder about that "misjudging distance" thing.
Eventually I pulled myself out of the sea, landed on the time pad at Aquatic Park, and handed my ankle bracelet to the next person in our relay team. Time for a well earned mocha.
Heavily caffeinated, I made it to the second transition area to cheer my relay bike and run partners. A few women I knew from team and training were hanging out near the finish line. They were doing their best at a separate event - the 30-yard oogle.
"It something about guys doing triathalons."
"I can't believe he is going to do the run with his shirt off."
"He kind of looks like Jesus in a Speedo." I had to comment that the trip from Alcatraz would be a great deal easier if you were allowed to run on top of the water. But that was lost in the testosterone appreciation.
I spent most of the time hanging out with the boyfriend of the running relay partner. He is a nice guy, and has sort of a John Corbet from "Sex in the City" quality. His girl friend had the tough sand ladder part, which I was very happy to out source. She had a great run certainly compared to my badly aimed swim and the gear problems that happened during the bike up Baker Beach hill.
Eventually our team finished and the girls wandered off to meet up with Jesus in a Speedo. There is no way I can compete with that any more that I run with someone who is a sub 3 hour marathon time. I need the larger Americans found at fast food restaurants and amusement parks. Ask me where I am going next. I say I am headed to Disneyland.
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