Popcorn #1

POPCORNING – (as defined by me, meaning the rapid fire of my own ideas, just popping out of my head, random thoughts, and nonsequiturs.  Perhaps a popcorn will land in your lap and when you pick it up and eat, it will be tasty, or maybe not.)

Some of you who know me will be surprised to learn that I got rained on today during my 6-mile run. You know I am the Autzen Stadium of running. They say, with a sideways sort of grin, that it never rains on Autzen Stadium, just like it never rains on me when I run. People I run with know this about me. They have witnessed this phenomenon firsthand too. I can drive in the rain over to the river path to run, windshield wipers slamming full force, and as soon as we step out of the car, the rain will stop. We then will finish the run, and right as we get back into the car, the rain will start up again. And I do this all the time without prayer, although I can’t deny that I could be praying subconsciously or that I am hoping so bad for the rain to stop that it can be misinterpreted as a prayer and my prayer comes true. But that’s just an idea.

Today, I got wet. According to my calculations, it was a four-dog-shake run. Murphy while running forward, legs still trotting, wiggling, beginning at the head and ending in the rear, would shake off the rain about every mile and a half or so. It was at about a mile and a half, just after his first shake, that we encountered a gray squirrel. I got to thinking how beautiful they are, that massive, silver-gray tail outlined in brown, their tails being almost as big as their bodies. It’s impressive. It’s not exactly the tail of a peacock, but it is not completely dissimilar to that. Once someone told me squirrels are just rats with pretty tails. At the time I accepted that, but as I reflect on that now, I think he had it wrong. Squirrels don’t try to burrow their way into your house to live with you, steal your food, share your heat, look up your wife’s dress, and give you diseases, even though some people in recent times have contracted the bubonic plague from a squirrel bite.

We have a lot of squirrels around our house. Our squirrels are the ugly brown cousins to the gray ones. I wish we had the pretty ones, but even the brown ones are kind of cute in their own way. I’m constantly seeing them in my yard. And so does Murphy. He might be half border collie, but they’ve outsmarted him every time even though their teasing of him looks risky to me. He might catch one someday, but I doubt it.

One day I went out in my yard to pick some lettuce growing next to my fence. A squirrel was atop the fence about a foot higher than I was on the ground. He watched me cautiously as I approached. When he didn’t scamper away, I tried to shoo him. Instead, he reared up on his hind legs, baring his claws and teeth. I thought, “Oh yeah, big tough guy. Why don’t you just skedaddle!” I thought surely his bravado would fade as he looked at me--big bear of a man that I am. Now understand, I’m looking at myself through the beady eyes of a squirrel. By human standards, I’m a medium-sized, slightly built man, more accustomed to running than fighting, especially with small squirrels. I wasn’t afraid. As I bent down to pick the lettuce though, sensing he was gaining in height, I felt more vulnerable as a target for a full-on squirrel attack, as I noticed him, or possibly her, gender makes no difference, as she poised more and more for jumping on top of me. I backed off cautiously and spontaneously changed the menu. There would be no salad with dinner tonight.

I couldn’t believe I had backed down from and was actually frightened by a 1.5-pound squirrel. Typically, I’m not afraid of wild animals, although it does freak me out sometimes when I see those postings at trailheads warning of bears or cougars. I will say the bears don’t worry me so much, although my chances with a bear would be less favorable than with a mountain lion, probably. But bears seem reasonable. I think they pretty much want to be left alone, as do I. So, they go about with their bear business and I go on with mine in a human way, running upright and sweating. Sweating is handy for cooling off as is upright running. But sweating also may have some other protective qualities. We stink. No matter how successively we cover up this fact for other humans with soap, deodorant, and perfume, the animals know. They know. Under that soap and that perfume, they know who we really are. We are that definite P U animal. Not temporarily like that skunk when it raises its tail, but constantly. We are naturally an extremely malodorous animal, probably not very desirable as a meal for carnivores. We like to think animals avoid us because we are big, bad, clever, and we carry big guns that go bang bang. Really it is our scent. If we could smell it as much as other animal species can, we’d probably avoid each other as well. We might not even be the social animals we are now. We’d all live alone in our own stench, seldom venturing out to come into contact with other humans. Now I don’t think we would end as a species, gone extinct because of our stink. I think we would still sneak together for short trysts in the night, the sex drive being that strong. You’ve maybe heard that insulting idea of what a man would still do if he could just put a sack over her head. In this case, both a man and a woman would hold their noses just to experience the ecstasy, that ecstasy of sex, and as a byproduct, we would reproduce. And babies don’t smell that bad, except occasionally when they poop or burp up gross. They don’t even need to apply deodorant to their tiny armpits.

Now cougars, that’s altogether different. After all, they are cats. I mean who hasn’t noticed how crazy cats can be? If you are unaware of this because you’ve been living under a rock, then go watch some videos known as crazy cat videos. Besides who hasn’t experienced this. One minute you’re petting a cute, fluffy cat who’s enjoying the rub, rolling over, purring, and next thing you know you are contending with a whirling ball of fur, a vicious piece of flesh, mostly teeth and claws stabbing and lacerating you. But I’ve always figured if it came down to an all-out fight with a domesticated cat, I’d get the best of it. Big cats have that same characteristic as the little ones in that they are unpredictable and scary, but if it came down to hand-to-paw combat with a cougar, the end of me might be the opposite of what it would be with a little kitty, this time the cat might get the best of me, especially if it pounced unannounced from out of nowhere as cats will do.

The thing is a cougar might not bother you at all. It’ll just be doing cat things until suddenly the mood catches the cougar and it acts ferociously before it's even had time to think about it. Cougars, like humans, are bloodthirsty animals. They’ll kill you just for the sport of it. For no real reason at all. We humans even call our killing of other animals, hunting, a sport. I mean, we often eat the meat and then put the meat’s head on our wall, to admire we ate that thing, but it’s fun for us to kill in this way, not so necessary anymore for survival. A cougar is maybe even more bloodthirsty than we are. A cougar is probably not defending its turf necessarily and it’s probably not going to eat our disgusting flesh. It’s going to kill us just for the fun of it. 

Women, especially, can tell you what’s up with humans. Women’s biggest fear rightfully so on a trail run is not so much in encountering a bear or a cougar, as those may be the biggest fears for me. It’s encountering a man whose brain is twisting like a toad. While I might be cautious of wild animals, even a lowly rattlesnake. A woman is more afraid of me because I am a man. So, I must reassure her as I run by with a smile, perhaps a runner’s wave or a nod but not too big of a smile. I don’t want to scare her. She knows the male of the human species is especially rapacious and bloodthirsty. And “rapacious” should remind us of another word, of something else a woman must always fear when encountering an unknown and sometimes even a known man. It’s a shame. It's so wrong.

What I’m doing here is attempting to reproduce some of my thoughts during my wet 6-mile run today. Right after leaving the car at the Delta shopping area, I got on the path down to the Willamette River, the twelfth biggest river in the United States. I realized I had forgotten my earbuds. I decided not to circle back and cross the busy Delta highway to get them, even though I had planned to listen to and was so looking forward to an episode of the storytelling podcast, the Moth. Podcasts keep my mind focused on a topic and my mind off of the running., which who wants to think about running while running, although there is that too, and that can’t be helped.

Besides I thought it would be fun to run with just me and my brain. In an unfocused way, popcorning can be just as distracting from the running as the tighter focus of listening to a podcast. The problem is my mind can go all over the place. Like Murphy, I’m noticing squirrels, shiny objects, and bushes that would be fun to pee on. I like it though. My mind becomes a sort of playground,  going to the merry-go-round, the swings, the slides, and maybe even sipping from the drinking fountain. If you weren’t so understandably afraid, I’d invite you to join me in my lonely playground, to come inside and play with me in my mind. But the closest you’ll maybe get to that is reading this.

Another comparison I might make is about how fertile I think the mind can be when you take it on a run with you if you don’t leave it back in the car with the earbuds. In my case though, growing in the fertile soil, you might find a corn stalk growing next to a strawberry vine, next to a rose bush, next to poison oak. This is not a farm anyone would want to live on perhaps by choice, but somehow, I do and I survive. Corn one day. Poison oak the next, but with a rose thrown in too. And a strawberry on top. Variation is the spice.

OK. My run is over. It was far from a good run. It was definitely a wet run. Even though the rain slowed at mile three, by then I was soaking wet, so it didn’t make a hell of a difference that it slowed down. And it never stopped. Far from perfect, me and the run, I’ve started to wonder if I’m slowing down these days and will that be permanent? I keep wondering because in general, my pace is becoming slower and slower as you would expect for someone rushing on to 70 years of age. But then every once in a while, I go out to run and everything is right and I am fast again. That gives me hope. I can feel it like I’m gliding lightly, each foot barely landing before takeoff, and the world is whirring, blurring by. And Murphy beside me is galloping instead of trotting as usual. Unlike Donald Trump and his perfect phone call to Ukraine, my run is not only perfect but it is true. But that’s another day and another run. It was not this one.

I will leave you now. I left out a lot of things like seeing a single gold ornament hanging lonely from the spindly branch of a scrub oak. Hello, shiny bulb. Meet me, a lonely, dim bulb, too stupid to know to get out of the rain. Or how there was hardly anybody out on the trail except for the obligated dog walkers and one cyclist, crazier than the rest of us out there. At least we had our dogs to think about. With the rain, the dogs aren’t bothered. They just shake it off, the way we should shake off the inconveniences and stresses of life. Actually, that is one of the benefits to a solo run, to get away from it all, to strain the body so in the end it must relax and our mind will too. Today my mind got a workout, soggy but playful. It is a good way to end this now, the end of another run with a criticism of Donald Trump at the same time. It doesn’t get much better than that. . . . Can it?

Guns

Here is my list of changes we could make to reduce overall gun violence in America and specifically increase the safety of schools. I have thought long and hard about these, after considering many of the arguments from both sides. I look forward to your agreements and disagreements.

·         Ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.  I have not heard a single good reason, only childish ones, why anyone should own an assault weapon.

·         Require a background check on every gun sold.

·         Require a battery of psychological and mental tests for every gun owner, and then a quick annual checkup thereafter to make sure mental stability has not deteriorated.

·         Make gun trafficking a federal crime, including real penalties for “straw purchasers,” people making purchases who have passed psychological and background checks but are purchasing weapons for people who have not been cleared.

·         Every weapon and gun owner should carry insurance, cost to be determined by the insurance industry.

·         Increased gun safety and gun-respect instruction, maybe not done by such a vested and extremist group as the NRA.  They were fine in my day when I took gun safety and was a member, but they’ve become way too political, weird, and a lobbyist for the gun industry and its profits.

·         A panel of interested parties, including some statisticians, should study whether teachers’ being deputized with access to guns would lead to only a minimal increase in or too high of a number of children and school staff fatalities from accidents, teachers snapping, guns being wrestled away from them, etc.

·         Armed guards could be helpful in middle and high schools, if they’re already in schools with other responsibilities such as drug detection, but for many schools it has not proved to be effective nor would it be cost-effective.

·         More locked doors and the use of metal detectors.

·         Trained counselors in every school.  The at-risk kids, the alienated and lonely, can almost always be identified by teachers, but without resources nothing intensive enough can currently be accomplished.

·         Mental treatment that includes humane treatment and living centers in cases where talk therapy and drugs are not enough.

·         Some kind of study should be done to figure out why America’s fascination with our gun culture is so weird, extreme, even crazy,  including looking at the impact of looking at movies, video games, etc.

·         In order to reduce an excessive number of guns floating around out there, there should be a gun buyback program, with a premium price on weapons of offense, such as assault weapons.  If the buyout price was enough, maybe some of these cat-lady-like gun fanatics would reduce their absurd arsenals of multiple weapons.

Yes we could do these things. 

To Survive We Will All Become Socialists

I challenge you to reject socialism.  There is a buzz among intellectuals about the obsolescence of workers, both blue collar and white collar, the buzz stemming from the recent publication of books such as “Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future” and “Shadow Work: The Unpaid, Unseen Jobs That Fill Your Day”.  With the greatly accelerating growth of automation, robotics, computers, software, unpaid self-service, etc., there is a decreased need for workers, but that is how most of us make our living to then become consumers.  What are we going to do when we get to a point where humans' working is almost non-existent? As expressed in “Rise of the Robots,” even intellectual endeavors can be done by software, and eventually better.  Recent sports reports as written by computer software rival that of human journalists.  It’s no longer just the tedious jobs of the assembly line as done by those without a college education that can be done better and more cheaply by technology.  This should make us see that all of our jobs are replaceable by machines.  We make our living because we work.  Without the income work generates for us and provides us with the ability to consume and then makes profits for those who own the means of production, there is no use for workers—we become obsolete—or then even a need for capitalists for that matter.  How can humanity survive this?  It seems to me that there will be only two alternatives.  We can expand democracy into the economy with all of us earning a guaranteed income as once proposed by President Richard Nixon, even though that is that all-terrifying thing called socialism, where we would find these technologies to be our friends in providing all of us with more leisure as they do all the work for all of us, or we can continue as is until there is no more use for any of us, leading to our extermination and the eventual extinction of the whole human race.  Meanwhile, our technologies could live on happily without us.  This is no longer just science fiction fantasy.  This is inevitably what is coming and we will have to make a choice: socialism of extermination.  This is why I am not afraid of Bernie Sanders.  We all need to take a forward view in predicting the coming advancement of our technologies, what that means, and what we need to do to respond.  We need to consider how to advance an economy where we can benefit from our technologies, even if that is called socialism.  Or we need to all die ourselves into extinction.  Is there any other way we can survive?  You tell me.

Why Dog Sits with People by the Fire: A Katelmac Myth

(The following story is a story within a story I am writing, a novel, a work in progress.  It is a "Native American" tale I have made up for a fictional tribe I call the Katelmacs in Southern Oregon.  The basis of the story is from the Yakima people.  I have also borrowed some ideas for this tale from the Indians of Southern Oregon.  However after my changes, embellishments, and my introduction of Dog as a character, I have created a story of my own, though this is not to ignore all the beings who have come before me, whose lives and ideas I have only built upon.)

 

Why Dog Sits with People by the Fire:

A Katelmac Myth 

By

S.A. Modée

            There was a time on earth when people did not have fire, and the only place to get it was from the sky where the Sky People lived. This is when all animals were still in their human form, so Coyote the man pondered how to get fire to earth. As he still does to this day when he is confused, he defecated and asked his poop, “Oh, what should I do?” Of course, as usual, his poop wouldn’t answer him, so he decided the next step was to call for a meeting of all the Animal People, including the Earth People. Coyote told all the Animals he was going to shoot an arrow into the sky, where it would start aflame, and fall back to the earth with fire.

          All the Animals decided this was a great idea and encouraged Coyote.

          He shot the arrow, but then fell on his ass. The arrow fell short of the top of the sky and dropped back to earth without any fire. So he tried again and again. He even stopped to defecate again and ask his poop for advice, but again all to no avail. Every time he shot, he would fall on his ass, and the arrow would never reach the top of the sky, but only fall back to earth with no fire on it.

          Old man Beaver stepped up and said, “Stand back. I will do this thing, Coyote, before your ass is a flattened thing that can pound on water.”

          So Beaver shot an arrow. It also did not fall back to the earth with fire or even without fire, but instead got stuck in the sky.

          All the Animals said, “Oh no! And you lost your arrow too, Beaver.”

          Beaver confidently said, “Stand back.”

          He shot another arrow of which the tip pierced the bottom of the previous arrow. So he kept doing this, thus creating a strand of arrows like a rod to the sky. All the Animals asked, “Whoever knew that Beaver was such an expert archer?”

          When the arrow rod was all the way to the earth, Coyote, still thinking he was running the meeting because he had been the one who called the meeting, but then ended up impressing no one with his archery or his ass-falling, said, “Who now will climb to the sky and steal fire from the sky?”

          All the Animals were terrified to do it, but at last Faithful Dog said, “I shall do it. I want to warm myself by a fire when it is cold.”

          Dog gracefully climbed the strand of arrows and entered a hole in the sky, but when he saw how attractive the country was there—like paradise—and he met the Sky People, he abandoned the idea of his mission to get fire for earth and decided to stay and romp in that warmth there, staying with the Sky People.

          When Dog had not returned, the Animals became even more afraid.

          After waiting a long time for Dog’s return, Brave Beaver finally stepped up again and said, “I will go into the sky on the rod of arrows I made, figure out what evil thing they did to our friend Dog, and come back with fire.” So he climbed the long arrow rod and entered through a hole.

          The Sky People were astonished when they saw him, and they laughed gleefully about how plump he was, deciding they would prepare him as a meal, right then and there. This had been Beaver’s plan all along. He knew they would be impressed with his beauty, how smooth and fat he was. Furthermore, his plan was for all the Animals from earth to climb the rod and attack when the Sky People were distracted by preparing to dine on him, and in that confusion, Beaver would grab a live coal, hide it under his toenail and return to earth with fire, or so he had told the Animals. This had been his plan.

          Dog saw what was happening and what the Sky People were doing to Beaver, “I do not like this that my new friends would do this to Beaver.” He felt betrayed by his new friends, that they would want to eat one of his dearest old friends, Beaver, so he decided to help Beaver get the fire and save Beaver if only he could.

          While the Sky People were preparing Beaver to roast over the fire, the Animals from the earth climbed to the sky and attacked. In the excitement of the melee, Dog grabbed a burning coal and hid it under his toenail. He realized he was not going to be able to save Beaver, so he left without him or the others and was the first back to earth, where he decided he would wait for all the other Animals to return and then show them fire, the fire he had brought back He also thought he would then be forgiven for his earlier betrayal of the mission and his delay, at least that was his hope.

          In the battle that ensued, the Animals were able to save Beaver from his captivity. Realizing that Dog had successfully grabbed fire, they decided to all flee back to earth, with the Sky People in pursuit. Among all the Animals, only the Earth People had advised against everyone fleeing at once. But in the other Animals’ panic, so many Animals were climbing down the rod at once, both the Animals from earth and the Sky People, the arrow rod broke with all the beings falling together toward earth. Some fell into the water and became fish. Some stopped part way in the air and became birds. Beaver fell somewhere between land and water and flattened his ass into a flat tail for swimming and pounding out warnings. Coyote fell, mashing his face, becoming the shape of an ordinary coyote. Some Animals hit so hard, they broke into pieces, becoming mice and rats and other rodents, which coyote would then be condemned to eat because of his silly indiscretions. And although Dog was rewarded for bringing fire to the people by being allowed forevermore to sit by the fire with people, he still was changed into his dog form. The Earth People were rewarded for their goodness and sound advice, and so became people, masters of the fire.

          And this is how fire came to people on earth and why dogs sit by the fire with their people even to this day when the Katelmac children, still young and spry will gather the seeds of the grasses in the morning, while their elders on the other hand have earned the privilege of becoming fat and lazy. In this way the world will be, as long as the world goes on.

 

 

2011 Cascade Lakes Relay, Chapter 8: The Finish Line

Last summer I wrote about my experience running the 2011 Cascade Lakes Relay.  I’ve felt bad ever since knowing that I never finished my story, especially with only this one chapter to go, and all the while the details are slipping away, but it had been time to go back to my teaching job (and that keeps me pretty busy), and I just wasn’t ready yet to feel any closure to these chapters of the run.  I was conflicted.  How could I conclude this story when there were certain conclusions I had not even been able to reach myself: Would I ever want to do this again, or should I strike it off as completed from something some people call a bucket list?

 

 

 

As I wearily sat in the van, I felt nothing at first.  I knew everyone was around me, and yet I seemed unaware of them as people I was connected to.  Our route to the finish in Bend followed the route of the run.  We passed Tiffany.  We passed Jesse a few times, and illegally gave him some support, even though he was not part of our van.  Little by little as I rested, my elation increased.  But then we passed Jesse again.  He was running up hill, strong and smiling.  He had actually climbed in elevation so much that there were patches of snow on the side of the road.  In August!  He was cresting into the snow zone!  I thought of how I felt, drained and a bit dejected, and I looked at Jesse with that smile, running happily—uphill—and for a moment I felt like asking Kristi to stop the van, so I could get out and punch Jesse in the face, right in that smile.  But then I started thinking.  Yeah, I have felt that before, the joy of running.  Not at the moment maybe and right now it’s hard to remember that time, but I know that feeling, and I’m sure I will again.  I started to feel really happy that I was done.  I had completed something which was really challenging for me.  That’s called an accomplishment.  I was so glad to be done, I thought, thank you, Kirsten, for putting me in Van 1.  I laughed at myself thinking how just hours before, during a low point, I had hated Kirsten, thinking she had given me and my van mates the harder job.  Now I loved Kirsten, with all my heart.  Of course, there was still enough of the residual resentment that I was glad Van 2 was still running at the peak of the heat of the afternoon, and even though it’s kind of sick of me to think that, I did.  What an experience this was!  What a rollercoaster of emotions, from low to high and everything in between, and then back again.  A challenge!  Completed!  I felt contentment with a bit of elation rushing in.  Wow!  And I do love Kirsten Bartlett.  I’m so glad to be done.  There’s a beer and barbecue waiting for me somewhere at the finish line, and I’m happy with that.

We made a stop at Elk Lake, so blue and lined with forest.  Shana got out of the car.  Man, she looked like she was in a hurry.  She ran down to the lake, to the end of a dock, and dove in.  That’s my free-spirited friend for you.  Before I get into any kind of body of water, I think about it, I ponder some more, I put my toe in to test the temperature, and then I usually think, OK, where’s the hot tub?  Once in a while I’ll decide to wade in slowly.  Very rarely will I put my head into the water.  Today I had no interest in that.  I was interested in finding some coffee though.

I went to the lodge and found the café.  When I asked for coffee, they said they were done serving coffee for the day, but they had some left from the morning that they would give me and not charge me.  It was lukewarm and nasty tasting, but it was caffeine, and it was free.  I was beginning to feel this overwhelming sense of contentment.  I was beginning to look forward.  After staying that night at Seventh Mountain with Jean, Tiffany, and Danuta, and having dinner with them and the Bartletts, I would be joining my family the next day for a little much-needed R&R for a couple of days at Eagle Crest.  The coffee was bad, but life is good.

When we got back into the van, we realized that through a mix-up involving Shana, Connor, and Kristi, that Kristi’s new, expensive camera had been left unattended and had been stolen.  It had all the pictures from the relay.  It had all the pictures she had taken with it, including a wedding she had attended.  It was so new she had not even downloaded them to a computer yet.  The camera was gone, and all the photos on it were gone, too, forever.  Still feeling emotionally fragile, I just felt sick.  What is wrong with the human race?  We should be helping each other out, not ripping each other off.  That’s the job of corporate America.  At least we the people could look out for one another.  And now I would brood about this for the rest of the car ride to Bend.  And, of course, I did.

When we got to Bend, everyone scattered.  I knew Shelley went to take a shower because she’s clean like that.  I didn’t know where anybody else went, so I wandered around the finish line aimlessly, all by myself.  I had placed an order of a barbecued pulled brisket sandwich from Hole in the Wall, so I knew that was waiting for me.  And I’d felt like I’d been waiting a lifetime for a pint of beer.  When I wandered over to the food area, I ran into Sheri’s husband Chris who had not been able to connect with Sheri yet.  I knew Sheri was somewhere with pain, dragging her foot in a sideways motion.  Chris is in a wheelchair.  So I decided now I had a purpose.  My mission: to find Sheri and bring her to her husband.  So I wandered off again.  This time with a purpose.  Near the finish line I ran into Jennifer, a runner I ran with once on the McKenzie River Trail.  I sat down on the lawn and talked with her for a while.  I don’t remember what we talked about, but I remember thinking what a pleasant, nice person she is.  She puts me so at ease that I could comfortably tell her all of my most intimate secrets, if I could think of any, and I’m glad I couldn’t, because, of course, that would be weird, but that’s how she makes you feel.  I got up to go tell Chris I didn’t find Sheri.  Of course, Sheri was there, with Chris.

I went and got my beef brisket sandwich that I had pre-ordered from Hole in the Wall and a pint of Cascade Lakes IPA.  I sat down in the sun at a white, plastic picnic table with Chris, Sheri, and Shana, ate my dinner, and drank my beer.  I felt quiet, both inside and out.

Then the whole team gathered at the finish line, joined Caitlin, our last runner, even Sheri was talked into dragging her new sideways leg, and then it was forward on to the finish as a team.  We got our t-shirts, which I really love, by the way:  one of my all-time favorite running shirts.  Then we said farewell to each other, sadly happy, and then we all went our own ways to return to our real lives.

I was left wondering if I would ever want to run the Cascade Lakes Relay again.  The running was hard enough, but what really got to me, and I think it’s an age thing, was the car ride and the lack of sleep over this extended period of time.  Those were hard on me.  When I was younger, like almost all the other runners, I would have been fine with this.  But it was really hard, now that I’m over sixty.  But what would I do if Running from Badgers asked me to join them again for the 2012 relay?  Would my sense of loyalty to my teammates trump whatever rational decision I might come to during the coming months before next year?  Fortunately, as soon as October, I heard the news:  Running from Badgers was going to metamorphose, opening its wings to become an ultra-marathon team, meaning the team would only need half the people, meaning I would not be needed.  Only for a fleeting moment did I feel a hurt, and then I felt myself open up to this overwhelming feeling of complete relief.  I could stop pondering this conundrum.  The decision was made for me.  I was free.  It felt so good to be relieved of this pressure that I realized my decision would have been and should have been to never run this thing  again.  I enjoyed the experience, a lot really, but as it would turn out, once was enough.

 

This year as I saw many people I know and care about heading off to run the 2012 Cascade Lakes Relay, I wanted to wish them luck, and to tell any newbies that it will be an experience of a lifetime, one I would recommend to other runners. But for me last year’s 2011 Cascade Lakes Relay, participating with the Running from Badgers team, was one of my experiences of a lifetime, and I’m ready to leave it at that, to just leave it at that.

The End

 

2011 Cascade Lakes Relay, Chapter 7: My Final Leg

My third and final leg was going to be rough.  It was hot, uphill, and I was spent.  I really had no energy left for this.  Although I had already suffered through my first two legs, not that badly though, I could still see life’s little pleasures and that a lot of stuff in this world is just funny to me.  But that phase of my life was about to end.  My new life would be full of peril, and things and people just weren’t going to be as funny anymore.

I exchanged with Shelley and took off up the hill—a gradual one, remember.  I actually didn’t feel that bad.  Maybe this was going to be all right. 

A half mile later I was already struggling, and I still had seven miles left to go. 

Another half mile and I thought, I bet I’m not looking all that pretty now.  And I started remembering things, as if my life was beginning to pass before me, and I saw these things from a new humorless perspective.  I remembered how things I once thought were funny just didn’t seem funny anymore: weird dreams about missing my first two legs of the relay, my Garmin flying off my arm, my chasing an elusive cloud shadow, the man who gave us a weather report when we asked if there were showers available, almost missing my exchange with Shelley because I was waiting in the potty line, the woman who enjoys the Cascade Lake Relays more than Christmas or her own birthday, the little girl playing waitress and asking me if I wanted orange juice which comes with what I paid for, the image of Connor running with tie-dye Nip-Guards with tassels on them, etc.  Those things used to seem funny to me.  And now they don’t.

I knew I was entering some kind of danger zone when the van pulled over.  Shana got out and ran with me for a ways.  She told me, “If you want, Kristi can finish your leg for you.”  She didn’t even ask how I was doing or how I felt.  She’s just throwing me a life preserver before I was even ready to acknowledge I was drowning.  I looked that bad.  I knew I felt bad, but it’s still kind of a shock to realize it’s so apparent, just by the way I look.  And I imagined the discussion that must have taken place in the van and who was placing bets on my living and who was betting on my demise.  And then Shana—Shana, my life saver, my angel—saying, “That’s enough.  We can’t joke about this anymore.”  And I imagined her saying, panicked, “What are we going to do?”  And maybe Kristi stepped up and said, “Stand back, I’ll take his leg.”  Or maybe Shana demanded, “Kristi, I’m your mother, and you will take his leg.  I will not have a runner die on my watch.”  In the old days I would have found this imaginary conversation humorous.  But not anymore.

I told her I was fine.

I knew that I would be reevaluating that decision for the rest of the run, and I held onto the option that I could change my mind, and Kristi could run for me.  Then I remembered two years ago when I did a long run training in Mammoth Lakes, California, where a lot of famous distance runners train, because of the high altitude.  It was hot and I was out of breath, probably because of the thin air.  I had parked my car along the road and planned to run out and back.  On the way back, I did run by Ryan Hall, the marathoner.  He was running, while an SUV drove beside him.  Now don’t get me wrong here when I say I ran by Hall.  I met him going the opposite way, and we passed each other on our way in opposite directions.  I did not pass him because I’m so fast.  He was coming towards me on the other side of the road, blasting by just about the time I was slowing way down.  A few more miles and still three miles from my car, I hit a serious wall.  I actually scared myself.  I think I was entering a stage that could only be called a medical emergency.  I had no support vehicle, no cell phone, no nothing, and I had to get back to the car.  I walked a lot those last three miles and felt like I barely made it.  If I made it then, I should be able to get through this Cascade Lakes thing.

I don’t remember too much about the run after that.   I remember Kristi shooting me with a spray bottle, and that felt good.  I remember Connor ran with me a ways, and then Shana jumped out of the car and blew me away with a semi-automatic squirt gun that almost knocked me over.  I know her intentions were good and pure, and I told her I appreciated it, but the huge stream of cold was a little intense.   I did appreciate the thought though, but the actual ammo hit me hard.  I liked it better when I got by her, and she was shooting me in the back.

I think I remember Kristi running with me for a while, probably to verify that she was willing to take my leg.  This maybe didn’t happen though.  Kristi might have been a vision—a beautiful angel, volunteering to run for me.

Shana gave me this thing to wrap around my neck that was full of ice.  I think she said she got it from Sherri.  It was nice.  It might have what I needed and what got me through this.

At some point I remember hearing footsteps coming up behind me.  That didn’t surprise me because I was definitely shuffling along at this point.  But what did surprise me was that the footfalls sounded like shuffling as well.  Was it actually possible that there was another gear for shuffling?  I decided I’d let him pass.  I waited for him to pass.  I kept waiting for him to pass.  What the hell?  He was riding me, staying half a pace behind.  In my youth that used to be my position before I would outkick the competition to win.  I didn’t like him back there.  It felt threatening.  It felt like pressure, too much pressure.  He was going to make me set the pace, and all I wanted to do was to be left alone to suffer in my own misery.  So I walked.  And it worked; he passed me.  Man, what has become of me that I just buckle so willingly under the pressure? 

I was glad to be rid of him, so I started moving my feet again in a motion that resembled running, and then, oh no, he walked.  I was in no mood to play this slow-motion cat and mouse game with him, but I wanted to keep running so I could get this done, really done, my last leg.  So, dreadfully, I passed him.  This went back and forth, and I’ll have to admit I lost track of who was where, so I don’t know who finally won in this competition.  I don’t care if he was behind me or ahead of me.  I just wanted him away from me.

I don’t know how, but somehow I finished.  I handed off to Sheri.  This leg could have been my moment in the sun.  Maybe I didn’t reach any moment of glory, but my moment in the sun came to an end, and it was hot!

Shana led me a short distance away to the Deschutes Bridge, then down to the riverside, down to the riverside for some kind of baptism.  She told me to put my feet into the river, and as much of my legs as I felt comfortable with.  First of all, I hate cold water, and isn’t this the woman who just blasted a hole through my chest with cold water?  Second, I didn’t want to put the effort into taking my shoes off and then walking on sharp rocks.  Just as I’m thinking this, Shana tells me to just go into it with my shoes on.  I didn’t want to put any effort into thinking about why this seemed like a bad idea or in arguing with her.  It did occur to me that I would never do this in my right mind, but here was this free-spirited woman telling me to do this, and it just seemed easier to follow her command, so I walked into the river with my shoes still on my feet.  And it felt great!  It was the best decision I never made for myself.  I might call Shana next time I have a big decision to make.

I stood in the water of the Deschutes River, and let the cold water soothe my legs.  I was finished—something to cheer, if only I had the energy.

So it was time to feel pity for Van 2.  I was done feeling sorry for myself and how hard our legs were compared to Van 2.  I’ve got it easy now.  They all had a leg still left to go, while I, along with my van mates, soon would be at the finish line, eating food, drinking beer, and just relaxing in the comfort of knowing I did this.  I did this thing, and it was not easy, but I’m done, and there’s some consolation in that.

(To be continued.)

2011 Cascade Lakes Relay, Chapter 6: Sleep

Van 1 was done with our second round of relay legs, one more round and one more leg for me.  We drove to La Pine High School to get some rest, maybe even a little sleep, which is what I got.  I had to shower before trying to sleep.  I know I have to feel like my pores are clean if there’s any chance of my sleeping.  After my shower, I didn’t know where any of my teammates had ended up.  I knew they were somewhere sleeping or trying to sleep. I donated five dollars for a cot to sleep on in the gym.    I set up my cot alongside a hundred other cots with people I didn’t know and noticed anytime someone moved on one of these things, it made some huge scraping, popping sound that reverberated all over the gym.  I tried to lie down on mine without making noise.  I wasn’t perfect, but I kept it pretty quiet.  It was still dark outside, but morning was coming.  I had maybe somewhere between an hour or two hours to rest.  I looked at my watch, and surprised myself by falling asleep to the echoing hum of the gym’s air conditioning.  I actually fell asleep.

Suddenly I awoke with a start.  What time is it?  The sun was out and bright.  I could see it through the door.  I imagined the birds were singing or were already done with that.  How long had I slept, and why am I still here?  Why didn’t my teammates wake me up?  They must have left without me. This was no dream this time.  This was real.  I looked at my watch, and my fear gave way to disgust and amusement.  I had slept for less than fifteen minutes.  But I was awake now.  My panic had taken care of totally waking me up. 

So I got up and bought breakfast from some little girl, maybe eight years old, who was really overly-enthusiastic about her role as a waitress.  She was like, “Well good morning, sir, and what can I get for you this morning?”  I looked at the posted menu again.  There was really only one thing on the menu. 

“I guess I’ll have the five dollar breakfast.”

I expected her to tell me, “That one’s been real popular this morning.”  But she asked me, “Do you want orange juice?  It comes with it.”

Well, I was sort of hoping I got everything that came with it if that’s what I’m paying five dollars for, so I said, “Yes.  Thank you.”  And besides, asking me if I want orange juice in the morning is like asking me if I would run from a badger if it bared its gleaming teeth and chased me in the middle of the night.  Anybody who knows me well knows I drink orange juice every morning, and I have for as long as I can remember, so nearly sixty years, if not sixty.  On the rare occasions that I don’t get orange juice in the morning, I am condemned to think about it for the rest of the day like an obsession.  The first thing I will then do when I can is go buy orange juice, and I sigh and close my eyes contentedly when I take my first swallow.  Sometimes I’ll even say, almost to myself, slowly, “Hah . . . cha, cha, cha.”  And take another swig.

After locating my teammates, kind of one by one, we loaded up and departed.  This was going to be the hard one, but then we’d be done, and there was some pleasure in knowing when we were done, Van 2 would just be starting their last legs.  And we’d be done, finished, completed.  We’d be somewhere celebrating with a beer, maybe a wedge of lime, and probably under a palm tree—paradise.  And I took pleasure in that thought.  You have to understand, there had been some discussion, maybe you’d call it bitching, about how we always got the worst times to run compared to Van 2, and our legs were hotter or darker or more remote, ours were like more dirty and made of gravel, and we had worse hills, and our rest breaks were shorter, and somebody had done some math and figured out that each of us ran an average of four miles more than the average of the runners in Van 2, saying which means each of us will be running for almost an hour more than them, even though all of us run faster than 15 minute miles.  Rounding in math can be a wonderful thing. And I thought, “Yeah, and in the other van, Jesse has all the girls to himself, and I have to share my girls with Connor. . . .  Well, at least Jesse’s girlfriend is in our van, and I’m sitting right next to her.  Ha!”  In other words, I was really getting into this complaining.  And don’t forget, we were the ones who survived a plague of locusts, even though it was really only Shelley.

Now I will tell you.  It was pretty hard to be mad at all of Van 2 for the punishment being inflicted on us.  Jesse had a “Very Hard” leg coming up.  He might even need rock climbing gear; he would have such a climb.  Because of this, I even called him, “an honorary member of Van 1.”  So he’s OK.  And who could be mad at Jean, or Tiffany, or Danuta?  Who could even be mad at Caitlin, even though she is Kirsten’s daughter?  They’re all so nice.  But Kirsten Bartlett!  That’s a whole other matter!  We were all innocent newbies to this relay.  We didn’t know.  But Kirsten Bartlett, our team leader, had run in this thing the year before.  She knew.  And isn’t it interesting to note that last year she ran in Van 1?  Now look at what van she assigned herself to this year: Van 2.  Because she knew.  She knew and she did this to us.  She did this thing to us.  Later she would claim she wanted to do Van 2 so she could experience the whole course.  She had done Van 1 last year, and so now she’s covered the whole course.  I just smiled when she said that.  It sounds true, but I’m still going to have to think about this for a while.

In the midst of all this complaining, I was feeling sorry for myself.  My bruised chest was hurting.  My legs were really tired and nowhere near recovery.  And my sleep-deprived body was shot.  I looked at the map.  My last one, Leg 27, was on pavement, which would be better traction, but it was going to be hot and uphill.  There was nothing steep on my leg, it was gradual, but uphill all the way, which I knew would grind me down at this point.  Leg 27 was going to be my longest leg at 7.5 miles, and it is classified “Hard.”  Some legs are classified as “Very Hard.”  But I knew by the way I felt that I was going to have to classify this leg for me with a whole new name: “Extremely Hard—should not be attempted without seeing a doctor first and then second a psychiatrist.” 

Before my leg, I’d sit in the van and watch Connor run his “Easy” 6.0 mile leg, as if any six mile at this point could be easy.  And in fact it made him bleed.  The heat, the sweating, the mileage, and the rubbing of his shirt had added up.  Kristi got back in the van after rendering her support to him with water and maybe GU or something and announced, “His nipples are bleeding.”  I suggested that I could give him some Nip Guards, which I had some in my running grab bag, if he wouldn’t be too embarrassed to wear them.  I mean I don’t know, do some guys think of them as some abbreviated form of a bra?  I guess I do.  But I knew they would help right away.  No more pain.  No one in the van had ever heard of Nip Guards, and Kristi was pretty sure Connor didn’t know about them either.  So I described them as decently as I could as a sort of round, raised band aid.  Then I added that he might like them better if we attached little tassels to them.  This got a round of laughter, and then all the women started talking about how they were going to start a fashionable line of these things in different colors and different designs, and even novelty versions.  And I thought with some discomfort, now I know what girls feel like sometimes.  For God’s sake, I feel like they’re talking about guys’ nipples, my nipples.  Connor refused the Nip Guards.  I'm guessing he looked at them and thought I'm not wearing those girlie things; I'd rather bleed to death from my nipples.

And before my run I knew I’d be feeling really sorry and kind of worried about Shelley because her run of 7.2 miles was classified as “Hard,” with four miles having no van support, and the map showed that ominous picture about an inch in height of a mosquito, which some of the legs show on the map as a warning; in this case, because she’d be running alongside the waters of Crane Prairie Reservoir.  Poor girl!  If she’s not fighting off locusts, she’s a target for mosquito swarms.  I don’t know how Shelley feels about bugs, but her experiences with them are accumulating.

After we met up with Shelley again, my leg was only a mile ahead.  We gave her water, and she looked so red, so hot in complexion.  I thought how red I was going to look.  It seemed like we were now driving uphill, approaching some mountain.  I thought it might be Bachelor.  It occurred to me—is that mountain my leg?  But I relaxed, knowing it was too far ahead to be mine.  That must be Jesse’s—Jesse, earning his honorary membership through the hardship of running a very Van-1-type leg, somewhere up a mountain slope.

(To be continued.)