what the truck

scenes from the sun mountain 50k trail race, 2013.
photo courtesy of melody mândrean coleman.

i need a a truck.

a no-nonsense, no-frills little pickup truck.

with a shell.

it's more "want" than "need," maybe, but i can rationalize whatever difference there may be between the two.

it should be a vehicle that makes a statement by making no statement whatsoever. strictly utilitarian. something a few years old ~ 2007-ish, say. a 4-cylinder with a 5-speed-manual transmission, for the gas mileage. 

something the dogs can ride in to the vet or the park or wherever dogs need to ride. with a bed big enough to throw down an inflatable mattress and sleeping bags for weekend overnighters. out-of-town trail races. impromptu mountain excursions. like that.

sounds like fun, doesn't it? sure it does. big fun. so, how much could a simple, basic little vehicle like this possibly cost?

one million dollars.

okay, maybe not quite a million, but still. turns out a decent, won't-break-down-the-minute-we've-bought-it pickup (a toyota tacoma, for example), costs north of $20,000. even garden-variety '07 ford rangers start at nearly $20k.

what. the. hell.

that kind of coin would buy a lot of nights at some very nice bed & breakfasts. or at a four seasons hotel, for that matter. when did little banger trucks become the fabergé eggs of the automotive world? for the price of something more extravagant, say a new automatic 4x4 with an extended cab, we'd have a down payment on a nice house. or many years' supply of above-average wine.

i'll take the house, and the wine, thanks. i'll drive my seven-year-old, paid-for honda civic to the comfy B&B, like a civilized person, and run to the nearest trailhead.

the dogs can find their own ride.

zen test

photo courtesy of thetrevorproject.org

"There is a corner in every human heart made to be filled with hatred, fear, and violence. It is our common curse, and when we feed that space, it grows larger, stronger, and more vicious. Whoever you are, wherever you are from, whatever you believe, that corner exists within you. You know it because you have filled it, in one way or another, at one time or another, because it is there, and because you are human.

"The great challenge of our common humanity, and of every individual, is to make a void of that space as best we can."

~ william rivers pitt

***********

bad happens every day.

and our collective survival instinct demands that we pay attention to it, so we learn to avoid it. trouble is, fed too much attention, the bad can take on a grim, feral life of its own. it's a wild, dark energy that can turn on you and eat you alive.

this is true...and yet somehow the world is not, always or entirely, a carnivorous beast. we know this because sometimes ~ in quiet moments between the relentless waves pounding our souls ~ sometimes awesome happens.

"It's incredible. You're just trying to live an honest, genuine life and the next thing you know you have the president calling you." ~ jason collins, nba player and oh-by-the-way gay nba player

by now everyone knows why jason collins coming out is important and game-changing and perspective-altering, right? it's this: sports is the official religion of america. we worship teams and athletes and coaches far more piously than we do the guy for whom christianity is named. so when the first active player in the history of footballbaseballbasketballhockey stands up in america's church and says, "hi, i'm gay," it's a very big deal to tens of millions of parishioners who suddenly have something extra to meditate on.

it becomes a bigger deal when fellow players, star players even, look over at jason collins (and other gay players who will inevitably follow his lead), nod their heads and say, "okay, that's cool."  their example, writ large and loud enough for even the most knurled of knuckleheads to grasp, will make it more okay to be gay and less okay to subject LGBT people to discrimination, hostility, and violence. 

it makes it easier for states like minnesota to join the growing number of states (plus washington, d.c.) officially making marriage equality the law of the land.

"What a day for Minnesota," Gov. Mark Dayton told spectators at the signing ceremony on the steps of the State House in St. Paul. "What a difference a year and an election can make in our state."

continuing on this path...if you lean more toward the life-affirming and less toward the constant death-fetishizing in the "news," you might enjoy this:

On March 11 2005, Kevin Berthia wanted to end his life. He climbed over the railing of the Golden Gate Bridge and was preparing to jump into San Francisco Bay when he heard a voice calling out to him from above.

It wasn’t the voice of a spiritual presence, but that of California Highway Patrol Officer Kevin Briggs. The two talked for an hour before Berthia decided to climb back onto the bridge deck and give life another chance.

Eight years later, the pair reunited in an emotional ceremony honoring Briggs and other members of the CHP whose job is to persuade suicidal men and women from jumping off the bridge.

Much of the attention at the event was on Berthia and his courage to speak about his experience. But after his introduction, it was Briggs who found himself overcome with emotion, needing to lean on the young man whose life he had helped save.

breathe that in. refreshing, isn't it? it's enough, maybe, to keep one from jumping out of bed and immediately into the fetid puddle of despair and disappointment the corporate media peddles as tragedy-porn infoganda news.

as the final bright spot du jour, we present this guy: the rev. dr. roger ray, pastor at the community christian church in springfield, mo. full disclosure: i don't care much for the jesus fan clubs that demonstrate daily they have no idea who jesus was or what he was about. but no matter who or what or if you worship, you will see that dr. ray gets it. i'm not a church guy...but i would spend time in this church.

"I've spent two decades speaking in college classrooms, church basements, from pulpits trying to explain why biblically, psychologically, philosophically, medically, socially, that we should not continue to be prejudiced against gay people and be willing to celebrate same-sex relationships with the same joy and respect that we afford to heterosexual relationships. But I'm no longer willing to pretend that there's anyone left on Earth who needs more time or more information to process that fact.

"We don't have to pretend that ignorant prejudice is not ignorant prejudice. We don't have to act like it's okay. It is no longer our responsibility to explain to conservatives why we're not prejudiced against gay people. It's up to them to explain to us why they think they should be able to preserve that prejudice." ~ rev. dr. roger ray

bad happens. but as dr. ray demonstrates, we don't have to surrender to it or wear it around like concrete sackcloth. responding to random calamity is a test we take every day. (hmm, make it worse or make it better? make it worse or make it better? what to do, what to do.) and every time we quietly get up, brush ourselves off, and get busy living ~ we pass.




on my feet and moving.

try fecta

well, that wasn't so bad.

i had built it up into something more than it was, i guess. something more intimidating than it should've been.

three weekends, three races.

4/13 squak mountain half marathon

4/20 rattler half marathon

4/27 soaring eagle 20-mile

as noted previously (i think), this little series started with one race i registered for (squak) and two i won entries for. that the three were back-to-back-to-back was entirely coincidental. but i thought it'd be interesting to see if i could do it.

turns out i could. but not the way i thought. what i thought was that the first two events would build on each other and i would peak heading into the third one. and that's what i get for thinking.

squak mountain was the most difficult course i've ever run. the ups and downs were long and steep and tougher on the legs than i realized while they were happening. i got the message in the couple days afterward, when just going down stairs hurt. but the next race was less than a week away, which meant i had to get over it and get ready to go again.

between squak and the rattler half i walked a couple miles one day, rode the stationary bike one day, and did two short, slow recovery runs. by the end of the week i felt pretty good.

the rattler course was tough, but not quite as demanding as squak, and i was able to take half an hour off my finishing time. still, early on it was clear i had less in the tank to tackle the climbs and descents in pipestone canyon. i was surprised and happy to finish in 2 hours.

the next week, my legs were not quite as trashed, and the recovery runs were not quite as difficult. which was good, because the last event was 20 miles, and oh, yeah i had never run 20 miles before.

in between the rattler and soaring eagle i walked a couple miles, and did two longer recovery runs. plus, i took two days off before race day, rather than one, which seemed to help my legs recover a just bit more.

having done several half marathons, i thought i could probably do two in a row without totally imploding. but i wasn't expecting squak to be as debilitating as it was, and for the rattler to be as tough a slog as it turned into.

therefore i was prepared for soaring eagle to be a total grind. pleasant surprise: it wasn't...mostly.

the course, by comparison, was much easier. the ups and downs were not so steep ~ more rolling, less taxing on the legs. but there was that distance thing ~ three 6.6+ mile loops around the park. 

the first two loops went well, i managed my pace (for a change), and refueled (overfueled, probably) at every aid station. starting the third loop, i knew i could finish. as i ran, i thought about finishing. i envisioned and celebrated finishing. then, the last three miles happened. 

i noticed i wasn't picking up my feet as well as i would've liked. rocks and logs and roots got bigger, mud became muddier. i tweaked my ankle a couple times. and, i started talking to myself. "let's keep going!" i said out loud, more than once. "this is awesome!" i insisted. "we love this!" i think some guys on bikes may have heard that one. i didn't care.

the last half mile, it started raining. buckets. and i started laughing. i really was gassed at that point and the fact that the rain set in so close to the end just struck me as funny. so, i laughed, and i finished. in a bit of a daze, but with a smile on my face.

standing under the aid tent i ate and waited for the rain to let up. twenty minutes later it was still raining, and i was full. i thanked all the volunteers i could see, and scurried off to my car. 

it was a slow scurry.


***********

epilogue: i'm ready to go 26.2. 

after staying healthy at these trail events, i'm certain i can run 26.2 on the roads.

trouble is, i'm booked solid the next several weeks. i keep scanning my calendar, trying to invent an opening...

all trained up and nowhere to go.

***********

"You are confined only by walls you build yourself." ~ anon.


on my feet and moving.

twisps and turns

panorama panacea.

it's a random, nonsensical collection of letters ~ as if a monkey had whacked the keyboard hoping to be rewarded with a banana:

twisp.

it looks kinda weird sitting on the page like that. what's a twisp, after all? old-school breakfast cereal? a fancy cookie? an uncomfortably tiny car? yeah, no.

twisp is an unexpected little town in washington state, up in the methow valley north of wenatchee, and a long way from what i imagined.

for starters, the mountain scenery ringing the town is mesmerizing, boggling. with 300 days of sunshine a year, you can soak up the views ~ and the free vitamin D ~ instead of slogging through an overkill of overcast in seattle.

then there's the creature comforts.

after driving more than four hours to get to twisp, i was hungry. i was hungry again after running the race i went there to run. come to think of it, i was hungry pretty much the entire time i was there. so, thankfully twisp had options. which is to say "good options." one was tappi, where i ate twice. it's an italian place with a wood-fired oven at which john, the owner and chef, skillfully cooks everything that needs cooking. the service was equally good. by the second evening the waitresses were calling me by name and one of them even brought me a pair of readers so i could see the menu without holding it past arm's length. she just kind of swept by and set them on the table, without a fuss. i found this very endearing.

at lunch one day i ate at the twisp river pub, which brews its own beer and serves up better-than-bar food. outside, the actual twisp river flows by, and deer wander along its banks. really. culinary note: their hefeweizen was excellent, the halibut chowder was full of halibut, and somehow the chicken quesadilla was way above average. i think it must've been the roasted pasilla peppers.

the glover street market is a health food store with an impressive selection of beer, wine, cheese, and baguettes. which really are health foods, from many a standpoint. i bought some of each there, including a goat chèvre, a bottle of locally brewed new school ESB, and an intriguing spanish red table wine. all of which i enjoyed over the next couple days on the expansive deck at the methow valley inn.

the MVI was recommended by the folks at methow endurance (which hosted the race which, as noted previously, i ran). when i wasn't running, however, i was busy being very comfortable at the MVI ~ a sprawling, homespun, turn-of-the-last-century farmhouse. terry, one of the owners, is a genial host, full of local knowledge he's happy to share...and he cooks up a mean locavore breakfast. i would recommend his place to anyone (unless i want to stay there and there aren't enough rooms, in which case i'd say, "no bueno, stay away!")

look quickly, step lively.

finally, there was the race (did i mention there was a race? yeah, there was). the rattler half marathon is set in stunning pipestone canyon, about 25 minutes northeast of twisp. the course features over 2000 feet of elevation and miles of views that would love to distract you from the trail (and the rattlesnakes).

trouble is, too much sightseeing here is a health hazard. faceplanting the trail at any one of a thousand moments is a deceptively quick-and-easy possibility. rattlesnake encounters, we were told, also are not uncommon. so, basically it was a good idea to be at defcon 5 the entire time.

note: no rattlesnakes were reported, nor any mountain lions, which also enjoy roaming these hills. hunting monkeys banging on keyboards, probably. the race was a blast, and i would love to run it again next year.

where are we going with this? nowhere, really. except to say i left twisp wistfully, wishing there were some financially feasible way to live there. it's not that it's expensive ~ houses are cheap and acreage is abundant. but unless you show up with pockets-ful o' money or can make a living online, there's not a lot going on, economy-wise.

then there's the small-but-important detail that the children would go ballistic at the prospect of small town life, and the missus likely would go stir crazy in the winter. it'd be "the shining" in reverse, with my lovely wife, axe in hand, announcing, "wendy, i'm home!" or some variation thereof.

sigh. so...while there's no likely prospect of a life in twisp, i can at least lobby for visiting more than once in a brigadoon.

it's a reasonable alternative to the random and nonsensical...

Tommy Albright: Look, I'm not saying I believe all this, but just for argument's sake, suppose... suppose a stranger like ~ well, like...like me ~ came to Brigadoon and wanted to stay. Could he?

Mr. Lundie: [gives him a long look, then smiles] Aye, he could, lad. Mr. Forsythe provided for that...

you break 'em, we fix 'em

there's probably no connection.

but not far from here are two businesses, side-by-side.

DJ's Loan & Sport Pawn * Gun Shop
("We buy firearms * Loans * Guns")

HealthPoint Community Health Center
("Welcome New Patients")

***********

they should share a sign, with a different headline on each side. so, depending on which way you're driving...

"get your shots here."

"protect your family today."

something like that. i'm still finessing the details.

small truths

"We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out."

~ roger ebert

we're so busy.

we scramble around and make plans and carefully tend to our illusions of control.

things to do, places to go. more things to do. time flies by in a blur of mandatories. 

sometimes, though, life happens. and plans change. and we're reminded that control is not what we think it is.

other times, death happens. and no matter how it does ~ quickly, quietly, dramatically, dispassionately ~ we're not ready. and we're reminded that life is not what we think it is.

when last we spoke, i was going on and on about running this, that and the other race. the idea of it felt good and solid and in its way, important.

within minutes of finishing saturday's event, i learned there had been a death in my family. then, this morning, bombs devastated the boston marathon.

suddenly "this, that and the other" has to be re-evaluated. plans have to adapt. perspective is evolving on the fly. 

as often as possible, the mandatories in life should be our own, not someone else's. what's "good" and "important" is ours to decide. and it's probably worth considering if there's such a thing as "solid."

our time here will be over in the blink of an eye. move quickly.

***********

We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The "tide in the affairs of men" does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on..."

~ martin luther king, jr.

into the great wide open

ultra-something.

“Dream big by setting yourself seemingly impossible challenges. You then have to catch up with them.” 
~ sir richard branson

ultra running is loosely defined as "...anything past the marathon, or 26.2 miles. However, the shortest standard distance that is considered an ultra is the 50 kilometer distance, or 31.07 miles."

i'd add that for a less-accomplished runner, an ultra is "...anything past the distance one considers 'crazy.'"

full disclosure: based on the 50k standard, i'm "less accomplished." so this month, by my standard, i'm heading into the crazy.

starting this weekend (4/13) i'm signed up for the squak mountain half marathon, followed by the rattler half (4/20), followed by the soaring eagle 20-mile event (4/27).

these are all trail races over terrain i've not run, with about 8,000 feet of elevation between them. so there's an element of the unknown (and a degree of difficulty) ahead. perhaps more importantly, i've never run lengthy trail races on back-to-back-to-back weekends. even more importantly, i've never run 20 miles. not all at once, anyway.

so i'd argue (with myself, mostly) that the upcoming stretch of weekends is kind of ultra. also, maybe, kinda ultra-dumb. but you know what? fuck it. you don't know unless you try.

point of order: just so we're clear, i'm not grotesquely unprepared. i've run several half marathons and several long-ish (10-mile +) trail events. at least one a month for the last several months (plus lots and lots of consistent training miles). last weekend i did a 13.2 training run, and standing here today i'm feeling pretty good (except for this rib on my right side that feels like it's slightly out of place. but, i mean, it's not protruding from my flesh or anything).

so, from a training standpoint, it feels like maybe i can do this. i think i can ~ but i'm not sure i can. but if i could, it would set me up for something 26.2-ish in may. 

i'm not sure i can do that, either. but i'm willing to find out.

see what i'm doing here? literally talking myself into this as i type it.

sometimes it has to be done. dreaming big ≈ dreaming crazy.

on my feet and moving.

small tails

one question on a subject i care nothing about:

what is lindsey vonn thinking?

hooking up with tiger woods? is she merely foolish, or really stoopid?

"Gossip Cop checked in with a close Lindsey Vonn insider, who tells us it’s absolutely NOT TRUE that the skier has any suspicions about Woods and Nordegren."

tiger woods. i mean, you could see why eldrick would be interested in her. but she...she does know where that junk has been, right?

while we're at it, what is nike thinking? (okay, that's two questions on a subject i care nothing about.)

"just do her."

celebrating tiger woods? are they merely vile, or completely corrupt? they should add a new tag line to their tarnished logo: just do her.

note to nike: winning most definitely does not take care of everything. isn't that right, joe paterno/lance armstrong/oscar pistorius/michael vick?

nike doesn't get it. yet another reason not to buy their lousy gear.

sporting life

what would he have to do to get a four-game suspension?

the basketball coach at rutgers university was fired this week.

seems he wasn't very good at coaching basketball.

there was his win-loss record, of course: 44-51 in three years. but that's not why coach mike rice was fired.

he was fired because a video of him "coaching" in practice went viral, and suddenly a lot of people decided they didn't like mike rice very much.

the video shows him shoving and hitting and kicking his players. it shows him hurling basketballs at them from point-blank range.

and it records him calling players "faggot" and "cunt."

administrators at rutgers, including the university president, were aware of rice's behavior for months. after reviewing tape of the practices in december 2012, athletic director tim pernetti suspended rice for three games and fined him $75,000.

but it wasn't until the video hit the internet that pernetti decided, "oops, now i have to fire this guy."

rice was making $700,000 a year to coach a division-1 ncaa basketball program. you might think a person who has risen to that kind of position would be smart enough to know it's not okay to commit serial assault on your players. or to call them "faggot." any more than you'd call a black person "nigger" or a woman a "cunt."

not okay. under any circumstances. and not just because it doesn't get the results you want. but because the players you're responsible for might get the idea that such misconduct is acceptable. and go on to do the same thing themselves. because that's what you taught them.

too far-fetched? here's what a couple of his players said:

Mike Coburn, whose last season at Rutgers was Rice's first in 2010-11, said he had no issues with the coach's treatment of players, and because he was a team captain, he took the brunt of it. He said Rice was challenging them to excel and, though he acknowledged how Rice's coaching style may look to outsiders, he said players understood it.

"No, I'm not personally offended by it," Tyree Graham said in a telephone interview. "I backed what Coach Rice did for the most part. But I can't say it got results," he said. "It didn't work. If those tactics don't work, it should stop."

shorter graham: a better record would've justified his coach's actions. and the fact is, a few more wins and there's no telling how long they might have gone on. just like at, say, the penn state football program.

mike rice is gone as head coach at rutgers. not because he did something abhorrent.

but because he didn't win enough basketball games.

***********

update: as of this morning, one of the rutgers assistant coaches, jimmy martelli, has resigned. martelli can be seen on the video exhibiting the exact same behaviors as his former boss. 

athletic director tim pernetti has been cut loose as well.

it takes a vigilance

"editorial vigilance is the price of zombie-free copy."

this post is not about zombies. 

i don't like zombies. i don't watch "the walking dead" or anything else zombie-related, even though zombies are the new vampires and therefore very popular with the popular kids.

my theory is that zombies are hollywood's stand-in for political conservatives, which is why so many people love watching them get whacked in so many creative ways.

"you peddle your guns and dump your oil and force your religion into places it was never meant to go. well, you've gone too far, right-wing brain-eater. eat this!"

cue ironic fusillade SFX and fade to white.

as noted previously, this post is not about zombies. it's about people who demonstrate an excellent grasp of the mindless, soulless, joyless behavior characteristic of zombies ~ and  are stubbornly ungrateful even as they're dragged kicking and screaming into the light.

case in point, this: an exxon pipeline burst this week in arkansas, flooding a suburban little rock neighborhood with more than 10,000 barrels of heavy crude.

with oil literally flowing down the streets of this tidy burb, rep. tim griffin (R-Bigoil) told residents ~ his constituents~ to get over it. "you want to drive cars? cars run on oil. oil comes from pipelines. speaking of which, i have to go cash this check from exxon." tim could have oil gushing from his mouth and he would still be telling people how safe pipelines are, and how terrible it would be if the keystoneXL project were not built. he'd probably have dead eyes and a creepy little smile on his face while he said it (but that doesn't make him a zombie, necessarily).

moving on...if the answer to petroleum disasters is "more oil," then shirley the solution to tens of thousands of gun deaths every year must be ~ more guns!

that is the conclusion of the NRA, purveyors of fine excrement for more than 140 years. in its recent report on preventing gun violence in schools, the NRA recommended ~ spoiler alert ~ more guns in schools.

the report (straight-facedly titled the "National School Shield Emergency Response Program") proposed "armed security officers in every school to increase school safety."

unstated in the report is the fact that more guns in a gun-sodden america will make us safer the same way more water will keep us from drowning.

random sidebar: who would benefit most from arming tens of thousands of "security officers" in every school in america? if you said "gun manufacturers" you win a stuffed likeness of nra zombie wayne lapierre (how you'll tell the difference between it and the actual wayne lapierre is still under review).

if you're interested, you may be able to find lapierre in nelson, georgia. there, he's likely licking the lapels of the the town's gun-lovin' city council, which voted this week to make firearm ownership mandatory.

america. land of the free, home of the government-mandated heat.

random sidebar II: i'll carry a gun when you force it into my cold, dead hand. but i get the first shot with my new nuke from north korea!

it says here that the adorable north korean military "has been cleared to attack the u.s. with nuclear weapons." most experts believe the north korean military is no threat to anyone but itself, but then again, neither was saddam hussein, and look how that turned out.

north korea's closest ally, china, reportedly is rolling its eyes at the hostile rhetoric. "we're swimming in american money right now, and will continue to do so for a long time ~ unless these clowns do something stupid," said no highly placed source in the chinese government. "we really wish they'd just shut up," the source did not go on to say.

with all this tension clogging up the aura-sphere, the good people of the GOP caucus in north carolina decided to propose something unexpected: a resolution declaring an official state religion.

"A resolution filed by Republican lawmakers would allow North Carolina to declare an official religion, in violation of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Bill of Rights, and seeks to nullify any federal ruling against Christian prayer by public bodies statewide."

that's nice. isn't that nice? making north carolina safe for everyone to be a state sanctioned christian. government doesn't get to be more christian than that, does it? not without issuing mandatory gun permits, anyway. jesus would be so proud.

unlikely as it seems, there's a common thread weaving through these little anecdotes tying them together in a tapestry of...

...zombies. mindless, soulless, joyless creatures with little common sense and even less fashion sense. they slog through dark, dreary, desperate days, simultaneously wishing for and dreading their inevitable end. which, in the interest of all things light and lucid and healthy, can't come soon enough.

epilogue: there's a slight but measurable possibility that this post may have been about zombies after all.

mental gymnastics

up 'til now, the girl's foray into gymnastics has been fun. and games. and mostly stress-free.

but this season things have been changing. incrementally, imperceptably, until suddenly, today, it occurred to me that this sport eats its own.

the past several weeks there have been injuries on the team. there has been crying and no-fun-having. there has been concern by the parents for the health of these still very young girls.

the risk has been there all along, of course. earlier this year a girl from another gym innocuously fell from the uneven bars and broke her neck. she's now a quadriplegic.

anything can happen to anyone, any time. we all accept this, or deny it, every day. but throw a vault or a beam or uneven parallel bars into the mix and a gymnastics parent either learns to tolerate risk or raises compartmentalization to an art form.

during a meet when a child, obviously hurt, stands crying on the other side of the gym, things get complicated. which is worse, the injury, or the embarrassment of a parent rushing over to render aid?

so you stand there, on a hair-trigger. watching as the coach does what she does ("are you okay? shake it off.") and teammates do what they do (hug. encourage. hug some more). the crying slows, and, improbably, two runs at the vault follow. it's not kerri strug at the olympics, but it's courageous just the same.

the girl is fine. at the end of the day, all the girls walked away no worse for the wear. heading to the car, smiles were everywhere, and tired girls complained they were "starving."

everything was good.

also, everything was different.


 

vertigo bay

a hill.

greetings from san francisco.

i wonder what the earthquake forecast is today? i mean, i can't find a word about it on weather.com or earthquake.com or anythingelse.com. regardless, i'm hoping to increase my survivability by being outside, running.

turns out san francisco is a great place to run.

i wish i had known this when i lived here, back in the day. unfortunately, i didn't run much back then, except on a basketball court. i can tell you anything you want to know about some of the local basketball courts, if you want: they look like basketball courts.

you're welcome.

breaking news: seeing a place on foot is a richer, more nuanced, more viscerally profound experience than blankly watching it go by through a car window. and you can tell someone, "dude, i just had a rich, viscerally profound experience running around san francisco," but they won't get it. 

unless they've done something similar themselves, what they're likely to say is, "oh. good for you." then, when you're not making eye contact they'll think, "whatever," or roll their eyes, or they'll roll their eyes and think, "whatever" simultaneously.

most of the time they won't roll their eyes and say "whatever" to your face, but if they do you should probably change the subject. or look at your watch and say, "oh, wow, i've got to go talk to someone who's alive."

huge digression. sorry.

for anyone still reading, i'd like to report that my run through san francisco included a climb up lombard street. do you know this street? bill cosby did a bit on it back in the day... it's so steep, he said, that it's the only time he'd ever had a head-on collision with a hill.

the stairs on either side of lombard street are of a similar steepness, but i slogged up, took a look around at spectacular views to the north and south, then slowly ran down the other side. i wanted to run faster, but i was afraid i wouldn't be able to stop. or that i'd trip and do a faceplant in front of the golden gate bridge. i can't have that.

as mentioned earlier, i used to live in san francisco. plus, i've visited the city on business many times since then. but business trips being what they are (busy-ness), i never had time to revisit any of the old familiar places ~ a circumstance i lamented every time. this trip, due to recent events at spaceneedl sprockets, i was inspired to, shall we say, find some spare time.

where was i? right, heading north on lombard street toward the marina district, where the missus and i lived before the earthquake in '89. this was so long ago, she wasn't even "the missus" yet. which means we were living together. in sin. which is probably why there was an earthquake. god reportedly looks down on such arrangements and sends natural disasters to remind everyone to shape up or shake up. in fact, some megachurch preachers say He has that very bumper sticker on his car:

Shape up or shake up.

yeah, probably not.

heading into the marina, i stopped briefly at a couple basketball courts i used to run on. yup, these are those, i noted, with some affection. they still look like basketball courts.

i continued on to the very apartment building we loved so much (except for the loud, nonstop tour buses, of course, and the loud-swearing homeless guy and the loud gunshots from a car ~ we didn't love those things).

moved by the moment, i put my hand on the bricks, closed my eyes, and listened with my heart...nothing. they were just bricks, and they felt like bricks. still, i felt them...rough and solid and scratchy. i would not like to have felt them from a moving car, i can tell you that.

moving on, i ran toward the marina green, with its stunning views of the golden gate bridge, the marin headlands, and fog. usually when you have one (the fog) you don't have the others, but this day was splendid in that all three were present in equal measure. the effect was viscerally profound. no, seriously. i just stood there, smiling, trying to memorize every detail, every nuance of the bridge towers obscured by moving tendrils of gray one moment, illuminated by impossibly bright sunlight the next. the ageless, rolling slopes of the headlands rose above the north end of the span. the opaque green water of san francisco bay lapped against the seawall. it was glorious.

i gladly would have stood there past sunset, but there was an afternoon appointment that i couldn't quite bring myself to ignore. so i moved on to the south, where alcatraz pulled itself up out of the fog like an iguana climbing a desert rock.

fort mason followed, then a bigger-than-life sculpture of a formerly alive congressman, then a very steep stretch of hyde street. truthfully, i didn't want the fun part of this day to end, and now i noticed it was going by too quickly (full disclosure: hyde street went by much slower, and was slightly less enjoyable). left on sutter, back to the hotel. done. eight miles in all. 

but wait! there's more! there was the next day, with a whole 'nother serving of run-a-roni ~ seven warm, sunny miles along the embarcadero. when we lived there, this corridor was part of the 480 freeway, blighted by an elevated double-decker traffic monster. now it's a wide, open avenue along the waterfront, a great place for human traffic.

to sum up: two exquisite days, 15.2 miles, deep satisfaction. no earthquakes.

also, much-needed therapy for the soul: no extra charge.

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i'm on my feet and moving...