tri-ing

Running is my forte.

Completed my first triathlon this morning, despite myself. I didn't go to bed last night til long after midnight, had trouble falling asleep, and awoke with a start a handful of times to stare at the absurdly low numbers on my bedside clock. Finally, I got up at 5:24am. I had put together most of my gear the night before, but I busied myself with gathering the sorted piles-- swimming, biking, running, afterwards.

Julie arrived, loaded everything into the car, and we were off to Blue Lake. While setting up my stuff in the transition zone (where you leave your bike and gear you'll need for each leg of the race), I was setting out my favorite running socks when I realized that I didn't have shoes. No shoes for doing the bike and the run. Wow.

Luckily we had arrived early enough that Julie zipped back to my house, grabbed my shoes, and brought them back. Since no one but participants can enter the transition zone, she was going to give them to an event volunteer who would put them with my stuff since I might be in the water by the time she got back. After she left I realized that I had set up all of my things in the wrong section, so I moved my bike, helmet, socks, sunglasses, shirt, bags, water, and everything else to the rack with the correct number range.

By that time the first wave or two of the swim had started, and while waiting in line to use the men's bathroom (the women's side was closed-- at an all-women triathlon!) I saw Julie walking up with my shoes. No doubt about it, Julie saved my ass for this event.

Moving on to the next tribulation: the shiny purple strap that comes in the race packet, with which you affix the timing chip to your ankle. I couldn't get mine to snap closed, although Sara's Ironman training buddy, John, mashed it shut for me. During the swim I could feel it coming loose, so I had to stop several times, take a deep breath, and bob in the water while making sure it was still fastened.

The swim itself was long, but not as difficult as I had feared. When I got out of the water it felt good to jog to my bike, putting nervous energy to good use. I toweled off, put on my socks, shoes and helmet, and tucked the timing chip with its strap down into my sock. The bike portion of the race was like being in a cloud-- misty rain, warm and humid. I enjoyed the ride, though, and passed quite a few people-- a big improvement from last year.

When I passed over the mat from my bike into the transition area, to prepare for the run, I didn't hear the telltale beep that lets you know your chip was registered. My chip was gone. I asked a volunteer standing in the transition zone what to do, and she said that I could still finish the race if I wanted. If I wanted! I ran off to tackle the running portion of the event.

So overall I had a great race. I enjoyed each part, I had great people cheering for me-- Fred and Shetha brought Andrew and Gabriel-- an amazing support crew with Sara, Leslie, John, Teres, and all of the other wonderful Luna Chix ladies, and I can't wait to do it again. For what it's worth, Julie said I crossed the finish line at 10:03am.

depth thursday

I know I'm nervous now because I don't feel like eating. Anyone who's ever met me would agree that's strange. I just returned from picking up the race packet for my first triathlon (short, "sprint" distances) tomorrow.

I forgot to mention the funny thing about the pool the other day. I got carded. For the pool. I guess you have to be eighteen to get in without parental supervision.

Yesterday I had acupuncture, then arrived home to discover that Erik and I had two minutes to get to Lauro to meet his family (visiting from England and New Zealand) for dinner. The chaos of many wine glasses, young children, an acoustically loud space, and hearty conversations crossing at once made the time enjoyably fly by. I left early, already late, and drove Erik's car home to pick up my own. Do things get more muddled than that?

Over at Donna's, we hung out with the cats for a while before going up to Alberta to walk around the final twilit hours of Last Thursday. We walked through the darkening crowds and it felt to me like floating along in a bubble. Talking, stopping every now and then to look at particularly interesting objects, night breezes gently ruffling our hair, the noise of other people hushed to the sound of water flowing in a shallow stream. Even in our own private world, Donna's magnetic vibe must have purred out into the night, causing her to be given a bouquet of lavender and a slew of party invitations despite her declaration of having a boyfriend.

We talked in the car for a while before I had to go home, to bed. It seems as though we could talk for hours, nonstop, sounding words back and forth off each other. I realized today during some quality alonetime in the car (listening to the Verve, of course) that friends can fall into two categories: those who seem to tap into the same subconscious as oneself, so that in spending time together you intensify your collective depths; and those who are similar enough that you get along, but nearly opposite in key ways that help you explore and broaden your boundaries. Depth friends and breadth friends.

swimtime

I never thought I'd find myself motivated enough, but yesterday after work I went for a swim at a community pool near work. I even canceled my run, although more because I forgot to bring my gear and no one had yet responded in the affirmative. Julie's presence also helped, since she actually enjoys swimming and had been to that pool before. It felt as swimming usually does: difficult, exhausting, and as though I will never catch my breath again.

I rushed home, made dinner, and then Erik and I went to the Wonder Ballroom for an odd party sponsored by Mozilla, featuring free food and a set by local band Menomena. It was so nice to see geeks out, being cute and getting into music.

cave junction

Erik, Aspen, and I skipped work on Friday for a long weekend road trip to Aspen's hometown of Cave Junction, OR. Erik and I were late getting ready in the morning, of course-- I had stayed out a bit late the night before going for sushi and drinking at the airport with Donna and my brother to see the latter off on his first big international trip.

Our road trip started with breakfast at Junior's and lots of coffee, which translated into quite a few breaks at rest stops. We also stopped briefly in Grants Pass for food and supplies before leaving I-5 for small-town southern Oregon.

First stop: Bardi Gras, a party at Rosie Barty's house. We hung out in the yard with a keg of local beer, lawn games, music, and cool people from Cave Junction. I think we arrived around 3pm and left after 11. I'd never spent eight hours at a party before, but it was par for the Cave Junction course according to Aspen, and I enjoyed it more than most parties for its mellow nature and treed setting. We drove to his dad's house and slept in a tent out front. With a nearby creek, inflated sleeping pads, and a no-door, scenic outhouse, it was a great camping experience.

In the morning I stayed in the tent alone, reading for quite a while. When I joined everyone in the house, we had breakfast with Randal and Naomi, chatting around the table. We hung out for a few hours checking out lizards, gardens, and homemade houses, before going up to the Oregon Caves.

The caves were wonderfully cold and mysterious, although our guide was a bit... stick-to-the-script-ish, if you will. The twists and outcroppings and low ceilings made me enjoy my stature, certainly. But it was after the tour, when we exited the cave and hiked up the mountain that the beauty became overwhelming. Layers of those Oregon blue pine-covered hills on which the sky rests to catch its breath in tiny quick puffs, calling out for miles in the joy of upright tree silhouettes.

Our next stop was Takilma, to hang out and spend the night with the Carnahans. I can't say enough of what an amazing family they are-- all gathered for the summer at the house where the kids grew up and only the mother now lives, enjoying each others' company and caring for one another. They welcomed us with such sincerity that I really felt at home, at peace, hanging out in the cozily organic house built into a clearing into the trees. Caitlin, Lacey, and Sara, the children, made dinner and then breakfast the next day for all of us including friends who dropped by, all the while doting on each other and their parents. I could have spent weeks there, hearing their stories, chatting, drinking in their artistic souls and the simple pleasures of life in rural southern Oregon.

On the drive home I thought about the blessing of growing up in such an environment, especially compared to the depressing rows of Depression-era brick boxes and brown and greyness in which I came of age. It's at the very edge of my ability to believe that such as place as Takilma and such a family as the Carnihans even exist. Certainly life isn't always as beautiful and easy as it was this weekend, and growing up without plumbing doesn't sound like a picnic. But there's something there, in the woods or mountains or water. That density of smart, caring, creative people can't be random. Now that it's past, I wouldn't switch my hometown for the idyllic town Aspen shared with us. I'm just grateful that now I can choose this, Oregon with its wild charms, over the East Coast from whence I came.

walk which way

Bloggin from the nook.

While everything else is on hold for two weeks for swim lessons, my walk at work has been the highlight of each day. Lest that sound lame, let me tell you what I saw on Monday: three American Goldfinches pecking for bugs on the marshy mud stream bank, one silvery fish leaping into the air to catch a bug, one frog (toad?) sitting in wait with its eyes just above the water, one frog jumping with a splash away from my earthquake footsteps as I crossed the stones over the back part Japanese garden, and a family of Canadian geese with teenage kids settling down for a nap.

I didn't see much yesterday but it was rainy most of the day, which left an unfamiliar heft of damp and warm in the air-- an unusual combination for this part of the world. Walking through an oak grove over slippery cobbles was the softest whiff of childhood summers-- being out in the woods during a cloudburst, the palpable solitude in the stillness after the shower. Here, however, mosquitoes don't rise back up and call in the humidity.

Today my walk was less eventful, although I tried a new route and I did see a couple of men diving in the campus lake. Seemed like they were fixing plumbing in there, which was interesting. It's a wonder anything could be seen in the murky water, except at the shallow edges where tiny fish hang out and taunt the garter snakes.

While researching Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) books today I came across Which Way Secret Door books, which spoke to me so as a child that I'd stay up til midnight to knock on the back of my wardrobe three times... hoping a secret door would open to the Monster Family. Anyways, the woman who wrote them,
Rita Gelman, is pretty nifty.

I also came across this art exhibit by Brian Eno which made me physically ache for missing San Francisco. So many unique opportunities and resources there, just waiting for someone to come along-- early morning at the wave organ, wandering around the Palace of Fine Art's tidy-bowl pond, climbing down from Coit Tower to splash in Levi Fountain on an empty Sunday, walking out from between the Dutch windmills to the foggy sand of Ocean Beach. Portland doesn't have Brian Eno putting on a high-tech art exhibit, and we don't have a game of Jewel Thieves and FBI Agents going on downtown; see?

We do have a smaller echo of the clothing as performance art that happens in San Francisco, which is perhaps why Morales' proposed ban on used clothing imported to Bolivia is such a fascinating and strong statement to me. Pros and cons, good stuff.

animal calendar

It's been a busy-calendar week, with Erik's and my various Google calendars filled to the brim with things we'd do anyways (like "eat dinner") and things we'll forget to do even when we double up on reminders ("yard waste pickup" every other week).

I finally took the plunge and started two weeks of swim lessons, each weekday after work. My usual running, bike rides, errands, gardening, and other hobbies have fallen by the wayside. It's a rush to get home from work, get ready for class, swim, and get home just before 8pm, starving. After dinner, we rush off to see visiting friends and relatives, to a show, to various appointments.

On one of my afternoon walks at work, searching for the various fauna that make the campus so fascinating and alive, I realized that animals are the pattern I see everywhere. Looking up at clouds and identifying the shapes; staring at tessellations and making sense of fabric patterns; recognizing faces to go with names-- I see non-human animals. The human brain is mapped to distinguish human faces, to extrapolate emotions and thus possible actions through facial expression. Why, then, do I see geese, whales, snails, and foxes? Is it backwards, wrong, or possibly deeper and more useful? Certainly it's a useful skill to be able to recognize familiar people in different contexts, and I wonder what it means-- besides being considered unfriendly-- that I don't have it.

Bloggin from the hammock.

Another post from the hammock, which generally means I'm feeling self-indulgent and nostalgic. It was hot here today, and as with heat under clear West Coast skies, the real heat peaks late and stirs this odd hot wind, back and forth bothering the trees. It's like opening the oven to check on a cake and the wavy blast almost knocks you back. That was today, at least from when I left work until now.

I made a very indulgent dinner and burned each part of it: tomato sauce (onions left to sweat on too high a flame while I picked oregano, marjoram, and kale from the garden), white beans and kale (again, flame too high while I moved the sprinkler), and grilled polenta (turned the grill up after the first sides didn't sear well). Today was the second class in my swim lesson session, for which I've dropped my whole schedule for the next two weeks. One of my resolutions for the year was to do a triathlon, so I am finally set on that course. The lessons are remedial but the time in the water is worthwhile.

Donna arrives home to Portland tonight, and like the entire environment of the greater metro area, I feel electrified.

I've tried to think of stories in parallel, but I'm lost in pleasures of the senses tonight-- the taste of cold, spicy asparagus pickles, the firm night breeze and taut hammock rope, the smell of night flowers blooming after the burn of a triple-digit day. I don't think I experienced these things well enough in my worried childhood, and so now I delight in their depth. It's that or some commuted sense of shame when I'm the only one over 12 years old racing after soap bubbles, splashing in shallow creeks, or staring with wide eyes at a many-legged insect on the hunt.

Make up for past summers spent indoors.

fourth recap

The Fourth of July turned on summer like a switch. Julie, Kim, Erik and I went to Genie's for breakfast, and then we (minus Erik) took Kim to the airport and ran errands. I went for a short run, and even though it was hot then at 1pm, it got much hotter for the Deep Fried 4th party a coworker invited us to. I had deep fried peanutbutter & jelly sandwich, sweet potato, Walla Walla onion, zucchini, and okra. There were many more interesting items there to be battered and fried such as Scotch eggs, pretzel-covered cheese sticks, and bacon-wrapped Twinkies.

Erik and I made two pilgrimages to 7-11, making the holiday official with slurpees and delighting in the Kwiki Mart-ization to promote the new Simpsons movie. We hung out at Erik's parents' house for a while, and set off fireworks with Erik's brother, his wife, and our nephew. It was his first enjoyable fireworks experience; at four years old, he's sensitive to sudden loud noises. He was still nervous and needed to cuddle while the sparks flew, but afterwards he couldn't wait to pick out the next one to light.

We went home around 9pm, loaded a water bottle with red wine, and went down to a dock on the river to watch fireworks and use the new tripod. It was a gorgeous evening, the kind that reconfirms my suspicion that everyone on the east coast is nuts. I can walk to the river from my house here, just before the main fireworks start, find a place to sit with a view of at least three different displays. The heat of the day still sits in pockets on the cement, but insistent breezes erase sweat, insects, and cares. Sweet summer evening-- like nothing I grew up with.

Last night I made a rather elaborate four-dish dinner, ate outside, gardened, and still went out to First Thursday for a short hour to walk around with John. Walking-- it's the new reading.

night breezes

I'm outside in the hammock under the Big Dipper, distant firework rumbles, and pulsing red lights in the sky that are alien to me although I know them to be aeroplanes. It's not so late, but it is so quiet. The air is mostly still, and today was hot enough that the usual night chill is barely even present in the breeze. Outside in the hammock under the stars, on the laptop. Now that is modern.

Life is strange and cyclical, and it's either the Spanish coffee I just had at Huber's or the cool night air that takes me back, but I remember all of those summer nights twelve years ago, the end of high school and edge of something else. I worked at a video production company, my first web development job. I would get to the office in Silver Spring around 10am in my uniform of cut-short thrift store skirts, fishnets and little boy's soccer tshirts.

After work I'd go home and make plans with Matt, Grace, or Adam. Matt was difficult to get in touch with because although he was my best friend, he had fallen for a punk rock dream and the drummer of the Snark Outs. I'd leave a message with his little brother, and Matt would call me back later with the promise that we'd hang out when school started and his girlfriend went back to Beloit. That's not how it went come September, but I must've known even then.

What did I do to while away those evening hours? What I remember best is emerging when the night had coagulated and its density allowed me to pull the parking brake, roll out of the driveway and down to the end of the street before starting the car and turning on the headlights. I'd pick up Grace, go to Tastee Diner (the original one in Silver Spring until it went non-smoking, and then the one in Bethesda), maybe go to Adam's house. Or downtown to Dupont Circle via Rock Creek Park with its unmapped curves and streetlights permanently dark to conserve energy. We'd gulp down the terrible brew at Soho coffeehouse on P Street, or walk around to see what was open.

There was so much darkness, road, and dashboard glow. That's how it felt just now out in the hammock. I won't get home at dawn, though, to sneak in the back door closed just enough so that the lock doesn't engage.

After I moved out of my parents' house when I was 17, the first time I came home at dawn was a let-down. No quiet tiptoeing, headlights blazing, and costume from the Industrial night intact. The whole charm of the summer was based on darkness and secrecy. Where are the secrets that make adulthood a precious commodity? Which are the quintessential bits of experience on which I'll look fondly back? Memory is an odd bird, and its flight path is lost in the thick summer night.

philosophical mathematics

The sun is shining and I realized that if I had to choose between reading and walking as the sole activity for the rest of my life, I would choose walking. Perhaps it's because I am not enjoying the books I'm currently reading, and when I went for a walk after lunch I followed a path bounded by blinking red roses on one side and shaded by swaying cherry tree branches above. For a few moments I couldn't see or hear another person, and it was as perfect as one could hope.

I might also choose walking to escape my thoughts, which used to be systematic, circuitous, and incredibly depressing. No matter where I started, my thoughts would boil down to the unanswerable Why and the impossible boundaries of the infinite universe. If the universe is infinite, how can it grow bigger? Isn't infinite already boundless and the biggest possible? It used to make my head spin, and it started the summer I was eight years old.

Nowadays I can step out of the loop and just stop thinking, but it also means that I don't do much heavy philosophizing or have much deep conversation about the meaning of life. Sometimes I feel shallow for abandoning the difficult issues of life, but mostly I appreciate the wonder of the utter randomness around me-- movement of clouds, the motion of birds as they hop in grass, and the peaceful geometry of treetops.