We Run and Ride

A large pile of sticks was all that remained to toss into the dumpster. We’ve been cleaning out my late father’s house for the last month. The dumpster we had ordered the second time was only an 11-yard unit. The dumpster company delivered a 20-yarder because that’s all that had. Such is God’s grace.

We needed every square inch. There were beds and frames to dispose, and old couches and chairs. Dressers to bust up with a sledgehammer. I got good at this through two big rounds of house clearing. There is not a dresser in existence that could survive my unsentimental eye. Even the dresser I recall my parents purchasing from Plastino & Owns in Lancaster, Pennsylvania more than 40 years ago. It’s still just wood, glue and hardboard. And so it’s gone.

This should perhaps have been a sentimental journey. But when you’ve been through the house of your parents and picked out the few things that mean much, the rest needs to move on. It belongs to the universe just as they do. If that seems harsh, then you have never cleaned out the house of your parents or anyone else.

At first, it is gut-wrenching. Then it’s a slog. It’s a strain on the back and the mind. But finally you make decisions based on practicality and purpose. If something is not needed, then it has to go.

Frankly it’s an overall shit job doing these tasks. And like all shit jobs you’d rather be doing something else. Early in life we learn what shit jobs are all about, and try to avoid them. As kids our parents give us chores to do, or jobs to complete. And most kids would rather play than work. My brothers and I learned early on that we loved the grace of sports over almost anything else.

That’s because sports were always an escape. A joyful world where playing and winning were the object, not just moving shit around. Between those worlds was a universe of discipline and fighting. Anyone that says the good old days were better did not grow up in a neighborhood where you either kicked the shit out of someone or got the shit kicked out of you. And when that wasn’t enough, a parent was kicking the shit out of you for being lazy or insubordinate. That world was full of shit jobs and shittier attitudes on everyone’s part.

And that’s why my brothers and I all raised our children without raising a hand at them, and without needing to yell or exasperate. We tried to break a cycle that society constructed and that some people still celebrate. A society of bullies and boors.

So we’re all liberals who found the joy of sports to be a pure and brilliant place to explore and be creative. And when I found running, it was the world where depression and anxiety whether by nature or manufacture could be rendered powerless.

All sport is useless, if you think about it, other than for those purposes. To clear the human mind. To find a purpose beyond shit jobs and the people who force them upon us. To cast joy at the feet of those who try to convince us our only purpose is to serve them, and not in the Christian sense. But to be subservient, and authoritarian, and to abide by rules and ideas handed down without examination.

And as I chopped up and tossed the last of a massive pile of sticks that I’d cut from the apple trees the previous spring and that dried out in the back yard and were hauled to the curb by my father’s caregiver last fall, yet too late to be picked up by the city during yard waste cycles, I reveled in the idea that this was the close of a very long chapter in my life.

Since 2000 I’ve managed my family’s affairs and been caregiver to my father. It has been both an honor and a pain. Such is the rhythm of all such duties. I lost my mother in 2005, leaving my father in my direct care, stroke-ridden and still difficult from the effects. But we made things work despite his unpredictable ways. I learned to converse with him though he could not form words due to the stroke. And he lived through last October in his own home. Almost every day during the last eleven years I had some contact with him, and performed a thousand duties on his behalf even while my late wife went through eight years of cancer treatment and passed away in 2013.

It’s been a heck of a journey. I’ve tried to make the right choices. And cleaning out the house where my parents lived the last 37 years was something of a final step in all that process.

I looked up the hill on our street where I used to do interval training back in college. Recalled all those runs to and from the house during cold, cold winters in the early 1980s.

Some people say there’s no place like home. But when I hear the birds sing outside my parent’s place and realize the cardinals singing are likely descendants of those birds that hung around our place thirty years ago, and how those birds are related to the cardinals I just heard singing out in Arizona a week ago, it makes me feel like home is a very much bigger place than I previously imagined.

Home is the place to which you return when you run or ride. It’s that simple.

Desert voice

Every few miles of riding in the Sonoran desert, a bee would whack my cycling helmet. THWACK. A few bounced off my face as well. That didn’t make as much sound, but of course, it hurt. Just the dull thud of one brand ephemeral flesh against another.

The desert throws things at you like that. The wind changes shape and size. It likes to hide behind you, then rush around front and slam you in the face. Lest you take it for granted.

It also makes you hoarse. Dry desert air may be good medicine for those seeking solace from mold and allergies of the Midwest. But the throat tends to parch when engaged in those first rides through a landscape of cactus and cholla. The voice deepens. This becomes your desert voice. A hoarse croak of acceptance that new terms are being delivered.

Saguaro signals

Photo credit: Jim Morrison, Tucson, Arizona.

We learned from one of our mountain biking guides that saguaro cactus seeds are distributed by bats who eat the fruit and crap the seats across the desert. The tall cactus grow slowly and long. A saguaro in front of our hotel was listed at 165 years old, dating back to 1851, when a place like Phoenix with its many roads and low-slung homes was unimaginable.

At times, the saguaro seem like they are all in one a massive inside joke. In a landscape so dry, the only way human beings can make it inhabitable is to import water. Lots of it. That means big rivers like the Colorado and aquifers far below the earth’s surface are channeled into service of the human race. It takes about a million gallons of water a day to keep a golf course green in a desert environment. There are dozens of golf courses the Valley of the Sun around Phoenix. People fly from around the world to hit little white balls around an artificially green landscape dotted by saguaros. It is in many respects a theater of the absurd.

The pace of development in Phoenix was only slowed by the economic crash of 2008, so housing prices dropped and the saguaro raised their arms in fits of hilarity. “See, we told you so! It’s not as easy to live here as you think.”

Phoenix gets it

There are accommodations that make a bit more sense. One of these is a commitment to provide clearly marked bike lanes on roads throughout the Phoenix/Scottsdale region. These bike lanes extend well into the country, but their greatest value is in town where cars and bikes are each given due respect. In more than 100 miles of riding over two days, there were no shouts or yells at our train of cyclists on the road. The roads were smooth, lacking the frost-buckled cracks so common to road in Illinois.

That meant great riding. But it was the climb over a mountain pass a winding road that turned out to be a highlight of the trip for me. I’ve written about “peak experiences” before, those moments when a place and an activity come together in ways that take you out of the humdrums. As I pedaled the long incline into the foothills over a distance of six miles, my legs actually felt better the further the road climbed. We passed a promontory made of large boulders. My cadence was high and I made contact with the other two lead riders. The sun shone brightly. There was a cool breeze. We chatted as we rode higher and higher. And that was a peak experience.

Breakthroughs

The final day of camp consisted of an hour run, the 2-hour mountain bike ride and an hour swim session. Our arms were mush from the mountain biking, but they warmed up with a few laps and us “nutters” who are just a year into swimming managed about 1200 yards of outdoor pool action.

Then we headed back to the hotel for some rest before dinner. Those four days of training had not wiped us out, but it was a great way to start the year. Back home in Chicago the weather was cold (23 degrees) and snowing. There was not one among us that did not appreciate the warm (but not hot) training atmosphere we’d enjoyed. It was our goal to “break through” the difficulties of early season training by jump-starting it with an intensive training camp.

There was one other thing I wanted to do during camp. It would come about during dinner on Saturday night. Leading up to the trip I’d made a decision to move some things ahead in life. And riding and running in a new environment, along with discovery of some new bird species had pushed my mind into new and challenging spaces. All my life I’ve used running and riding to manage breakthroughs. Some of these were work-related. Some were in response to work and its challenges.

This new breakthrough was to be relational. I’d made some plans in collaboration with a business back home to provide the catalyst for a moment that seemed right. And so, during dinner that our Saturday evening dinner, I pulled a ring out of my pocket that Sue had selected more than a month ago. It is a sign of commitment to a relationship of almost three years. I asked her to marry me.

She said yes.

It was fun to share this breakthrough moment. And granted, it came as a bit of a surprise to some, but not all. As tired as I was in having lost a little sleep to some caffeine-induced insomnia the night before, the moment was right. Our little tribe of triathletes shared in a moment of commitment to something bigger than the running, or the biking, or the swimming.

Departures

As we piled into the van for the ride to the airport, I was feeling a little sad. Transitions from getaways are not always easy. This was compounded by the fact that I’d previously booked a couple extension days of birding with a friend in Tucson. But I was tired. And a bit emotionally fragile. At that point I just wanted to go back home. To put it plainly, I was getting homesick. As a young kid, that used to happen quite a bit. But I hadn’t had that feeling in quite a well.

My goal was extending the trip a couple days to do some hiking and birding. But I was overtired more than enthusiastic. As it worked out, Sue and I did not even get to say goodbye at the airport. The rental car shuttle scooped her up while I was renting a car for my extended stay.

So the drive to Phoenix was a tearful one. The winds blew and the dust kicked up from the Arizona desert. Then the rains came. Mountains huddled on their haunches as rain soaked their backs. I stopped for a Coke at a rest stop and it did not taste good.

And at some point between Phoenix and Tucson I pulled over to the side of the road and I burst into tears and aching sobs. I even pulled the car over. Then I realized there was more to these tears than a bit of homesickness. There were years of pent-up grief behind them. There were days and nights of caregiving, uncertainty and fears about how I had managed things. Worries about how my kids. There were financial challenges and the anxiety they invariably create. All these fears. These needed to be confronted.

So I called my son Evan and we talked. We agreed to some extent that my behavior of late has been a bit “off-brand.” So I explained that it was with a purpose in some ways. Perhaps only pain can served as a true release from pressures, self-inflicted and otherwise.And talking to my son helped.

Tucson

That afternoon the rain continued. My host in Tucson and I sat for coffee in a cafe overlooking the Catalina mountain range. And by 4:00 the rain stopped. So we went to the park with a line of clouds still rustling the mountaintops.

She’s been going through life changes as well. We talked about that and our shared history. We’ve known each other more than 20 years and once worked for the same employer. Now she’s making changes and as part of that process, parked herself by an apartment overlooking the Catalina mountains where she hikes almost daily. Her photography skills are now pumped through a cell phone, and she laments the distortions it creates. But it is restoring her soul, it seems.

By day’s end, I’d gotten happily tired from walking. We saw quite a few species of birds given the time of day. Then I glanced back behind me to see a roadrunner on the path. It paused, gave a curious look, and took off again.

If there is such a thing as a spirit animal, I think I just found it. As a kid, I’d drawn roadrunners with spinning legs below their feathered body and head. This was the fulfillment of a lifelong wish to see one in person. A spirit animal indeed.