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.
As we unpacked in our hotel room for our training trip out in Carefree, Arizona, it struck me that so much of life is packing and unpacking things. We need our stuff. Live by our stuff. Pack and unpack our stuff. Until we ultimately leave all our stuff behind.
Which half explains why we’re out in Phoenix on a seemingly self-indulgent training trip. Sometimes to figure out the things back home you have to get away. That’s what my son originally recommended after my wife died. “Dad, you should go to the wilderness. Get away for a while. You need that.”
But the fact remains she cannot be replaced. Like all of us that have lost something precious, we pack that loss along with us whether we want it or not.
We’re going to do a triathlon training camp in the Phoenix, Arizona area this coming week. It’s been a long time since I did a dedicated training trip. This one is mapped out by Experience Triathlon. We’ll do 75 on the bike first day, followed by a brick run. Then 50 on the second day (something tells me that one will be hilly) and another brick run. Mountain biking on the third day, with beer I bet afterwards. Followed by a brick run (ha ha). And then swimming the last day.
I stop to pet dogs during my runs. I even stop to pet dogs during my rides now and then. If a dog is walking along with its owners and looks like it would appreciate a good pet, I stop and pet it. I have met many nice dogs this way.
By measures of the general population, I was once a fast runner. It doesn’t really matter how fast that was. It’s all relative anyway. There was always someone faster. Even if you’re a world-class runner, there are days when someone will beat you.
He didn’t pass me, and I wondered what he thought about my riding those few miles. Did he think I was trying to drop him? Nothing of the sort. Such is the strange etiquette of the road.
Apparently part of being mature is learning to accept that you’re nothing special after all. Just a bag of meat traipsing along with the rest of the bags of meat. That image came to mind when my girlfriend and I were looking through an anatomy book at the bike fitter’s lab. Almost every page was illustrated with photos of cadavers to show what the muscles inside our bodies really look like. And all I could think of at that point was this: “We’re nothing but bags of meat. All of us.”
Yeah. Some of us are prettier bags of meat than others. The Internet and most of Instagram is filled with photos of exceedingly comely (no pun intended) bags of meat standing proud in selfies or carefully posed in pictures with captions such as: “I’m a beautiful bag of meat!”
Years ago I was driving in Paoli, Pennsylvania on a rainy night. Cresting a hill west of town, I noticed some commotion on the road ahead. There had been an accident, and a car was crushed, and a man was stumbling across the road.
A few years after that, during a visit to a chiropractor, the x-rays he showed me demonstrated that I’d come out of that accident without much curve in my neck. The human neck normally as a bit of an arch to it. Mine didn’t.
There’s another aspect to the issue of turning my head, and in which I have neck concerns going forward. That is swimming. It is crucial not to develop a habit of raising your head out of the water in order to avoid neck problems. Initially, when you’re learning to swim, anything that works to keep you breathing is acceptable. But as the intervals have grown longer, from 100 to 200 to 400 to 800, it has become obvious that head and neck position while breathing is important.
running boom was just getting its second wind after the opening burst of Frank Shorter’s 1972 success in the Olympic Marathon. And let’s consider for a moment what that really meant. Shorter won Olympic Gold in 1972 and placed second to an East German doper (seen here in the white singlet behind the blue Finn, Lasse Viren) in 1976. So by rights, Shorter was a two-time Olympic marathon champ. Who else can say that? No other runner but Abebe Bikila has achieved such honors.
Yesterday as I stood over the pool getting ready for a workout, a head popped up from the water with a big grin on it. I recognized the face of an acquaintance named Jim. He is the same age as my younger brother, and is quite an endurance athlete.
Just yesterday we broke our a combination birthday/Easter cake all bright and thick with icing. I refused a slice of that one, but happily indulged in a chunk of delicious cheesecake slathered in caramel coating and an indulgent rip-rap of shredded dark chocolate on top. And it was wonderful.
Perhaps we need sweets and cake to force us to confront the sweet guilt we feel over our privileged, indulgent positions in this world. Those who can barely afford to feed themselves never touch the wonders of cake. And some people can’t help the temptation to deny these simple pleasures to others. They hate in others most what they hate in themselves. It happens with sex and politics. We see politicians who embark on a campaign to ban homosexuality and then turn out to be gay themselves. Their denial fuels a repression that becomes their entire public personality.
We feel for those experiencing struggles with temptation and need. Consider that unfortunate character
Because I’m Specialized.
