“One Size Fits Most” Safety Vest? Check.
Master the art of standing around? Check.
Ready for my Caltrans gig!
Fast and Furious
Fast and Furious. It was HOW WE RAN yesterday. Coincidentally, it was also the name of the event. There are innumerable explanations for both of us setting personal bests in the 5K, including the simple adage “some days you’ve just got it”. Bev often says that if you do enough runs, a small percentage will feel effortless as you chew up the road, an equally small percentage will feel like your legs have turned to cement-filled stumps, and all of the others, the vast majority, will fall somewhere in-between.
Today, my run felt nearly effortless. Bev didn’t have the same kind of day, never quite hitting her usual rhythmic tempo, but she still flew through the course and we were within seconds of each other at the finish line. When runners have a race where everything comes together, they immediately begin to deconstruct their effort with the hopes of replicating it. They start with all of the physical factors. Weather, rest, shoes, flexibility, training, and apparel. General health, allergies, hydration, fuel, and digestion. The list of things that can go wonderfully right or horribly wrong can be very long. I ran in new shoes, had no apparel malfunctions, and all of my body parts cooperated. That’s a good race day.
Yet, I’ve had plenty of races where all of those things have gone right and never finished close to today’s race time. I expect someone to knock on the door at any moment and tell me to pee in a cup. I wonder if my Claritin is on the list of banned substances. I also doubt that it helped me find my inner gazelle.
Do you remember the scene in Forrest Gump when young Forrest is running down a country road and he runs like the wind as the pieces of his leg braces fall off? Once he shed those braces that straightened his spine and he was no longer constrained and defined by them, he ran free. And fast. My braces haven’t been orthopedic but they’ve been just as restrictive. Divorce, work, the voice that whispers “oh, that’s not you (insert positive attribute – fast, competitive, deserving… you get the idea)”, and the real killer, defining self through the eyes of others. All of those things that keep us from reaching our fullest potential manifest themselves in the oddest ways and it takes hard work to loosen their grip. They slow you down, or worst, keep you stuck in the mud while a full, rich life passes you by. But if you keep at it, you might just wake up one day and run free. And fast. And if you’re REALLY lucky like me, you have your own Jenny right alongside you yelling “run, Forrest, run!”.
We Keep Ending Up in High Places
Another weekend, more high places. It was just a week ago we were hanging by ropes on the side of a very tall building in San Francisco and now we were hiking up Mt. Tallec, overlooking Lake Tahoe. This was our first attempt at high altitude hiking, even though the summit would “only” be 9,875′ above sea level. Our first experiment at hiking in thinner air was successful, although it was humbling when we realized that the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro is exactly twice as high. Wow.
Because of the record snowfall this winter, a portion of the trail was impassable and we found ourselves scrambling up and down treacherous scree and large jagged rocks. Other stretches of the trail required hiking through the snow. Note that we were hiking on JULY 30th.
The hike was only 9 miles round trip but it was moderately strenuous and took us 6.5 hours, including time for photographs along the way and eating lunch at the top. It was a long day with 7 hours of driving and nearly that much in hiking, but it was worth the effort. We couldn’t have asked for a better day and the photographs tell the story better than anything we could describe here.
Check out our photo gallery.
And our pal Tom took this video on the summit!
Over The Edge
Last summer, during a conference call, a co-worker from Iowa mentioned what he was doing for the weekend: rappelling down the tallest building in Des Moines after raising money for Special Olympics and being filmed by a local television station for being the top fundraiser. While others on the call were telling him how crazy he was, I wanted to know if they did it in San Francisco because I’d be the first to sign up. Six months later, in January, we signed up on the day the registration website went live. Waiting until July 23rd to “plummet to our deaths” was going to be hard.
During the week leading up to the event, neither of us tried to think much about it. One of us because he would get too excited and think of nothing else, the other because she didn’t want to think of falling to her death at such a young age. When the big day finally arrived, we drove into San Francisco on a gloriously beautiful day. We arrived in Union Square, a popular shopping and tourist area, where the Grand Hyatt towers high above. As we approached the hotel, we saw tourists pointing to the sky and shading their eyes. They were watching rappellers climbing down the side of the hotel. This would be us in about two hours.
Resisting the urge to turn around and go home, we went inside to register for our final act on Earth.
We signed a waiver with the word DEATH interspersed throughout it, were given Special Olympics wristbands, then led to the top floor of the hotel where we met our friend Sean who checked our wristbands and marked us off on his list. Sean is a big teddy bear who made sure that the tourists who were enjoying lunch in the adjoining restaurant didn’t try to sneak in, slip into rappelling gear, and dash up to the rooftop. We waited around with Sean and took in the spectacular views from the panoramic windows before being led into another room where we were outfitted with the gear we would be buried in. After they scraped us off of the cement 400 feet below. The big orange work gloves would be a nice touch in my coffin. I should also mention that Sean is a friend who works for the coroner’s office and assured us that he’d take personal charge of our remains. It’s great to have friends in high places.
Once outfitted, there was more waiting. We could see the people ahead of us rappelling down the side of the building, adding to the excitement/terror of the moment. Finally, we were led up the maintenance stairwell to the rooftop, where we were told to walk on the “mats” along the perimeter of the roof. I had visions of stepping off of the mats and falling through the ceiling. Great. One more thing to worry about. When we popped out onto the roof, the crisp air and unobstructed views of San Francisco were spectacular and much more adrenaline pumping than the same views from inside the hermetically sealed 36th floor below.
We were led to a mock-up of the emergency brake on a rope, where we were assured that the brake would engage if we descended too fast or got tangled up. How fast is too fast, I wondered? We were shown how to release the brake (wave our arm sideways to alert the rope handlers at the bottom, wait for them to create some slack in the rope, then tap the emergency brake to go again). I wondered “how will they distinguish between arm waving for the emergency brake thing and generic panicked arm waving”? After getting the emergency brake tutorial, we were told to climb up another set of stairs onto the roof of a utility structure in the middle of the roof. Yes, we climbed ABOVE the roof. We were met by a nice Over The Edge crew member who gave us a brief rappelling lesson. Yes, our first lesson was on a roof ABOVE the roof. Great. Quick practice session rappelling twenty feet DOWN to the roof, then it was over to the corner of the building for the big show. As we waited our turn in line, we watched our fellow mental patients get hooked in and disappear over the edge of the roof. Yikes. This also gave us a chance to take in the views a little longer. We could look at the Golden Gate Bridge, Coit Tower, the Financial District, and the clock on the centerfield scoreboard inside AT&T Park. Or pretend that we were standing in the backyard on a sunny day.
Finally, it was our turn to be strapped in. We were given final instructions, much like a death row inmate being told what to expect when he walks into the chamber. Step up on the ledge, turn your back to the building, walk backwards until the arches of your feet are on the building edge, pivot back until you’re perpendicular to the building, start walking down. Stop along the way and enjoy the moment. Piece of cake.
What you notice when hanging from a rope with your feet on the side of a very tall building in the heart of a major city is how quiet it is. There’s a stillness that’s remarkably peaceful. The only sounds are the wind blowing and your heart pounding.
Crazy. Insane. Nuts. Batty. Cracked. Demented. Idiotic. Mad. Mental. Psycho. Unhinged. Awesome!
Mom’s Birthday
Today is Mom’s birthday. We’re pretty certain that she’s turning 79, but numbers don’t matter when it comes to her. She treats her age like a can just waiting to be sent sailing down the street with a swift kick. While all of their friends were dying or downsizing into retirement homes, our parents moved 2,000 miles and doubled the size of their home. That doesn’t sound like someone who cares much about “acting her age”.
Of course, the slow decaying process that our bodies begin at birth is real and there are certain things that the body can do at forty-three that it can’t do at seventy-nine. So, what do you get a 79-year-old who just moved across the country into a new home? You buy her a 43-year-old.