Requiem for a Felt 4C

Posted on December 9, 2015 by Christopher Cudworth

IMG_3501The autopsy by my bike mechanic is complete. My Felt 4C is officially a wall ornament.

It happened as a result of a long ride under poor physical conditions. I’d been feeling sick during the Pumpkin Ride last October on a cold, windy day. Driving home, I just wanted to be done with the whole cycling thing for the fall. The year had presented plenty of joys; long rides in Wisconsin, a couple duathlons and a triathlon. But now it felt like it was time to hang up the bike for the season.

As I pulled into the driveway in early October and hit the button for the garage door opener, I’d forgotten one thing. The Felt 4C was perched up on the roof rack. I don’t always carry it up there. It’s much easier to throw it in the back of the Subaru and get where I’m going that way.

IMG_3476.jpgWhen I’m alone, that’s what I do. But my girlfriend’s brand new Specialized was in the back earlier that morning because we had not had time to adjust the roof rack for her ride and I wasn’t about to pile my bike on top of hers in the back.

You may recall she encountered her own tarsnake in terms of a bike frame. She needed to buy a new bike in advance of her Ironman this fall because toward the end of a long ride in preparation for the race, a distracted driver turned in front of her lane causing Sue to dump the bike. It cracked the struts on the back end, making the bike unsafe to ride.

Up on the roof

So I had put my Felt 4C up there in its favorite spot. In a moment of absent-minded dopiness on my part, I drove into the garage and heard the thump above my car as the bike struck the gutters. Fortunately, my reflexes were quick and I hit the brakes pretty quickly.

Right away I saw the bike was bent and likely ruined. The front fork was pushed back and the seat was all turned on its end. I just took the thing down and set it in my garage for a few weeks. Riding season was over anyway, except for a couple jaunts on my Waterford on nice days.

Stripped down

It turns out there are hairline cracks in the front of the bike frame. Cracked carbon fiber is no friend to cyclists. Right now my mechanic is stripping off the nice components from the Felt 4c: the newish Specialized carbon seat stem, Dura Ace derailleur and Shimano crank, chain and shifters are all good parts to keep around.

So it’s with some sadness that my Felt 4C will be forcefully retired. It was the road bike I purchased back in 2005 when I converted from the Trek 400 steel frame bike I’d been schlepping around for a couple years.

Speed thrills

Chris Bike standupI raced that Felt 4C in many criteriums. Climbed many hills. Struggled through the Illinois wind and enjoyed slamming through rain storms on summer days.

It has been a good bike even for getting into duathlons and triathlons. But road bikes have their limits in those types of races. Against aero bikes you really don’t stand a chance of competing.

Invested in the bike

Amortized over 10 years, it has cost me just $170 per year. That’s less than two pairs of running shoes these days. In other words, the 4C turned out to be a good long-term investment. Of course, I’ve aged ten years in that time as well. It’s a little harder to amortize that fact.

Can’t say that I’ve ever been perfectly comfortable on the Felt, however. Even through the original fitting and a more intense fit a couple years ago with new handlebars, seat stem and other tweaks (a new seat) the Felt still wore thin after 80 miles or so.

Last summer my mechanic let me ride his Trek Madone for a bit and that felt far more smooth and comfortable than my Felt.

Moving on

So perhaps this is God’s way of moving me on. It wouldn’t be the first time in life that events of destruction or loss pushed me onto a new path. It pays to be resolute and honest with yourself in all such situations. Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.

Felt B14I’ve been to the bike shop several times to look at a new Felt B14 carbon fiber aero bike. My needs and priorities in cycling have changed a bit over the years. Last summer was the first time I did not race a single criterium. But if I choose to do that, I still have the Waterford and with some tweaking that can be my road bike forever.

But racing in a duathlon or triathlon almost demands an aero bike in terms of geometry, tri-bars, shifters and aero form. Not sure I totally want the pumped up look of a Specialized Shiv, and the Felt B14 comes with some good components. It slots as a compromise between a road bike and a true aero knife with wheels.

My mechanic warned me, “It’s not going to be a good cornering bike,” but I could never ride that machine in a criterium anyway. The rules won’t allow it.

Winter wheels

Waterford 2We’ll see what transpires. I want to do some indoor riding this winter to build my thighs into shape before the season begins outdoors. I can always do that on the Waterford for now. But the experiment with tri-bars on that bike did not turn out that well. So off they come.

In the meantime, I’ll sing a quiet requiem for the Felt 4C and never forget that first liberating ride. The feel of a carbon bike under my seat and the speeds achieved compared to the old Trek I’d been riding were revelatory. The Felt 4C opened up new worlds and I’m grateful for that.

Last Climb Horribly HillyOf course, that bike delivered quite a bit of pain and suffering too. But I’ll cherish this photo of us cresting the last climb at Horribly Hill last summer.

That’s cycling. Along with the two crashes, the Felt 4C and I have been through some real experiences together. It’s just a bike, but it has accompanied me through 10 years of life. During that time I’ve lost my mother, my father, my father-in-law and my late wife. We’re all a little bent from those experiences.

But I plan to keep on riding. That’s what we all need to do. Get back on the bike and ride. Life beckons us to do so.

werunandridelogo

 

 

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On the Road

Posted on December 8, 2015 by Christopher Cudworth

IMG_6326Coming out of college an opportunity was presented to become an Admissions Counselor for Luther College. Feeling loyal and proud of the institution I interviewed for the position and was assigned the territory of Chicago and the state of Illinois.

This was well before the age of the Internet. That meant everything was done by landline and snail mail. Invites were sent out to students for high school visits and college nights. Then you traveled around to all those schools and community colleges around the state, eagerly hoping someone would show up.

My quota for the year was 70 students. I made that quota exactly. In many respects it wasn’t easy.

For starters, I was still naive about the ways of the world. Fortunately, and at a practical level, I knew a few things about the layout of the Chicago suburbs thanks to a summer job driving for U-Haul during my college years. I did not get lost easily anyway.

“The road must eventually lead to the whole world.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

IMG_9862.jpgBut what those seemingly faraway suburbs meant in terms of college prospects was a much more subtle thing to discern. My vision of large suburban communities was all based on what I knew of high school cross country and track teams against whom I’d competed.

Understand: There was no information available about the demographics of any community. No market research on the relative affluence or lack thereof that might give indications about where prospects might live. Even at my tender age, and well before the information age, I recognized this was a problem. College admissions was, to put it mildly, a relative crap shoot.

IMG_6438There were certain towns that had pumped out prospects for years. These were “hotspots” according to the outgoing Admissions Counselor, who was moving to take over the Luther Book Shop after ten years or more in the business of recruiting students. I sensed a bit of bitterness in the transition, something that surprised me as a young man. It was the first hint that something might be wrong in Wonderland.

“I didn’t know what to say. I felt like crying, Goddammit everybody in the world wants an explanation for your acts and for your very being.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

I met with the former counselor and he handed along some names of people that I’d need to know. Yet these were carefully nurtured contacts with whom he’d built long term relationships. That’s how admissions works in the real world. Even to this day, with the Internet and common applications and all the technology in the world, the choices made by 18-year-old kids are still subject to the influence of information provided by those with the knowledge to provide it.

IMG_6337So it was impossible to step in and expect to take over the territory with the snap of a finger. I met with those contacts but like anyone, they were feeling me out as to how much they could trust me to take care of the kids they were recommending to attend Luther.

The Big World

That first fall in admissions felt like sticking my hand into a big bucket of worldly water. And as much as I swirled it around, it felt as if I were in some way sinking.

Then there were the road miles necessary to do the job. I was on the road from September through late November, the recruiting season. The previous admissions counselor had worked out of his home in Palatine, Illinois. From there he could fan out and cover schools and college nights and be home in the comfort of his bed by ten at night.

IMG_9845That option was removed when I took the job. That meant I left Decorah on a Sunday night, drove the 258 miles to some hotel strategically chosen in the Chicago landscape, and traveled throughout the week to reach schools scheduled for visits.

It was an enormously inefficient dynamic on so many fronts. Downstate trips required massively long drives across the bleak Illinois landscape. Stripped of leaves and crops, there was literally nothing to look at. I’d tune in the radio to Chicago stations as long as they’d hold out, then be left to dialing up and down the radio trying to find some sort of music to enjoy.

“I had nothing to offer anybody, except my own confusion”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

IMG_6533That schedule left precious little time for running. I began to lament the difference between the previous fall, when our team had trained together all those gorgeous months in the sunshine, placing second in the national meet in Rock Island. I was in love then, and in college, and finally enjoying some personal success after a previously difficult junior year and a relative period of personal crisis.

Survival strides

By contrast, my runs that fall between admissions stops were runs of survival. I’d get to some sucky hotel in central Illinois and glance out at the cold, windswept fields and hardly feel like going for a run. But I would. Four miles one day. Perhaps six the next.

These runs kept my brain in some sort of hopeful status. The job was frankly depressing with all that alone time in the car. Then there were the hotels, including one forlorn, half-broken-down motel on the edge of Decatur, Illinois. It sat next to a massive junction of the railroad tracks, and the trains were moving all night, sending visceral slams down the entire line of cars long into the night. I slept very little as a result.

“I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was – I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I’d never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn’t scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Typically the week would wind up near Chicago somewhere and I’d leave IMG_9843on Friday afternoon to drive back to Decorah. Up through Madison and across the state of Wisconsin I’d go in that little blue Dodge Omni. It was a great little car in an era when American cars generally sucked.

Then I’d spend 46 hours or so with my girlfriend and turn around and drive back down to Chicago on another Sunday night. Sometimes I’d be crying all 40 miles to Prairie du Chien. Then I’d get out, get a Coke, suck it up and drive the rest of the way to Chicago.

“A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Results

For weeks, the grind continued, and yet the applications started coming in. But one Saturday morning during office duty, the boss pulled me aside for a hard discussion about my performance. “Is your head really in the game?” he wanted to know.

I did not know what to say. All those miles driven. All those college nights and dark long walks back to the parking lot after four hours standing at a booth with a binder full of pictures of a college six or eight or ten hours away. I was doing my best, I told him. “Well, you need to do better,” he warned.

“What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? – it’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Snow bound

Sometime in late November, I arrived for a college night in the Chicago suburb of Orland Park. It had snowed mightily the night before, but I was desperately feeling the need for a run. So, after a visit to Carl Sandburg High School, I talked with the cross country coach and asked if I could run with his kids.

We took off on a run into the hills of a local forest preserve. The varsity had left earlier so I was running with a group of sophomores. The snow was deep, but the kids were determined to run a 10-mile route they knew by heart. So we slogged and jogged and fought our way through a difficult run in deepening snow.

Chicago Pavilion7I got back to the hotel late already for the college night. Exhausted and sweaty, I showered quickly and tore out the door for the college night at a local community college. Mercifully, I was busy talking with kids the entire night. It was like God delivered a batch of prospects on a spoon. I was elated and tired and disgusted by the strain of that day all at once.

Progress

Soon the applications began to add up. I topped 30 committed kids. Then 40. By 50 I was building some confidence. When April came around and I was at 60 kids, the goal seemed in sight.

Then a father from Lincoln, Illinois arrived on campus with his football player son. We’d made what felt like a connection back in his hometown. I’d gone to their home and had a nice visit. The father was grateful because he really wanted his son to attend Luther. As they were leaving, the dad reached out to shake my hand and pressed a $20 bill into my palm. He winked and said, “Enjoy dinner.” It made me proud to have had some positive influence in someone’s life. That didn’t seem ethical, but on the other hand, that $20 felt like a small reward for all those miles On the Road.

“The best teacher is experience and not through someone’s distorted point of view”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Quotes and quotas

By the end of the year, when the quota was reached, it was clear that my welcome was worn out in the Admissions job. Somehow my methods or recruiting were not predictable enough. A few of my associates had exceeded their quotas, but not by that much. So I had not failed but I recognized their focus was perceived as somehow different and perhaps more cogent than my own. Perhaps I had a little too much Jack Kerouac and not enough Bill Gates in my makeup.

IMG_2250Meanwhile my girlfriend had completed her degree and would graduate in December. We did not know what came next, but I had admittedly taken the Admissions job to remain close to her in some way.

She took a job in the Twin Cities that would soon mark the end of our relationship. After all, that meant an additional drive on Saturday morning each week to reach the Twin Cities. 150 miles up and 150 miles back to sustain my love and hopes. There are some forms of writing on the wall that we all easily recognize.

“Sal, we gotta go and never stop going ’till we get there.’
‘Where we going, man?’
‘I don’t know but we gotta go.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

So I took another job as a graphic designer in marketing for a startup investment firm. That meant a move back to Chicago. That drive to Chicago with my car full of my belongings felt strange. Perhaps that’s the moment that I really, truly graduated from college. I’d learned the difference between the Neverland of those four years of nurturing experiences and actually working for a college. The real world was substantially different. I’d learned some valuable lessons.

“What difference does it make after all?–anonymity in the world of men is better than fame in heaven, for what’s heaven? what’s earth? All in the mind.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

The year after I stepped down from Admissions, the college allowed the next counselor to again live in the Chicago area. All the driving I’d done every week going to and from Decorah was eliminated. They also raised the salaries of all the Admissions Counselors.

Times were changing. The Admissions game was maturing and so was the college, which moved forward and modernized everything about its operations, philosophy, development, and image.

IMG_1299Sometimes we exist in a time and a void that has no real explanation. Institutions go through changes just like the individuals who serve them.

We chalk it up to experience and hold it deep within for those moments when we need to understand that we can persevere, and that we weren’t wrong when it felt like we were.

And, that we need sometimes to keep running in order to stay sane. On the Road.

“…because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

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Nutcracker Dreams and Dancing Fools

Posted on December 7, 2015 by Christopher Cudworth

Victoria dancingLast evening I attended the Ruth Page Center for the Arts production of The Nutcracker. My niece Victoria Cudworth is already an accomplished dancer that has studied in Cuba.

Recently Victoria and my brother contacted me about the appropriate running shoes for her to wear. That’s a tough question as you can go any number of directions these days. But there was another concern as well. Dancers do not want to develop their calves too much. The physical lines of a dancer are important to maintain. I simply recommended shorter, mid-intensity runs. Raise the heart rate but don’t turn it into a slog.

I have written for a variety of publications about dancers in ballet, jazz and modern dance and hip-hop. My take was mostly about the energy and artfulness of the performance. I can’t claim to know the fundamentals of dance in any form.

That does not mean I can’t like it. The same goes for classical music, where my sister-in-law is a violist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. My own children play cello and violin, and their musical careers carried us through many joyous performances.

Victorial with dancersAll that work always comes down to performance im the end. In that regard, there is a keen similarity between running, riding and swimming. The work that goes into them resembles the practice of the performance arts, dance and music. There is a physical component to both, for sure. Dancers obviously put great stress on their bodies. Yet great musicians use their entire bodies in their playing as well. Why else would oboe players be susceptible to hemorrhoids, or drummers or guitarists blister and bleed from their fingers? It’s tough work.

Form counts on all fronts. The elegance of ballet is found in the small things. The position of the hands above the head. The delicacy of movement in the feet. I knew a massage therapist that worked exclusively on dancers. It was her job to keep them on the stage. Their feet were brutalized. Muscles and bones strained to the limits. Compared to dancers, working on runners was easy.

Then there are the glitches to deal with. At one point last night a dancer had a costume issue with a long skirt whose hem was running a few inches too low. Her forward steps were catching the edge of the skirt, yet she maintained her position and timing during the dance despite the distraction. I watched her the entire sequence and she managed to deal with the bothersome skirt with panache. One can only imagine the conversations backstage. Or perhaps, it teenage fashion, she merely wrote it off with a contemporary cliche. “Whoa, that sucked.”

Form counts not just for style, but for mental acuity. While running the New York City Marathon years ago, four-time winner Bill Rodgers took special effort to do it right. He commented that during one of his victories he became obsessed with doing everything right in his running form. The position of his hands. How his feet were landing. This is the mark of a true artist at work.

Dick Beardsley and Simonsen

Apr 1981: Dick Beardsley (left) of USA and Inge Simonsen (right) of Norway in action during the London Marathon in London, England. Mandatory Credit: Tony Duffy/Allsport

Perhaps you’ve had moments  like these in your own career, where the grace of running strikes you. Or, you feel one with the bike. Swimming is a horizontal ballet in water.

All these disciplines require work to master. There are no shortcuts to good form and clarity in your purpose. When you’ve put in the work there usually are moments of grace. Sometimes these are fleeting moments in our lives, yet they sustain us, in the same way the arts restore our spirit.

Yet like all disciplines, it is also wonderful to find a release from all that work. Like many excitable distance runners, I was one that loved to dance. With all that fitness behind me, dancing all night was no problem. I was a dancing fool just like the fellow in the Frank Zappa song:

Don’t know much about dancin’
That’s why I got this song
One of my legs is shorter than the other
N’ both my feet’s too long
‘Course now right along with ’em
I got no natural rhythm
But I go dancin’ every night
Hopin’ one day I might get it right
I’m a dancin’ fool, I’m a
Dancin’ fool
I hear that beat; I jump outa my seat,
But I can’t compete, ’cause I’m a
Dancin’ fool, I’m a
Dancin’ fool

Actually I do have rhythm, so that part’s not quite correct. But I was definitely a fool about dancing. I recall walking into a party in the company of a tall blonde in the early 1980s. America was awash in a bath of conservatism at the time, which meant the room was full of newly branded Reaganites in their stupid collared polos tipped up in the fashion of the day. The place reeked of conformity. They were all primly sitting in their places, engaged in some banal discussion of whatever Reagan Youth wanted to discuss. And my companion and I?  We started dancing. We were dancing fools.

The looks we got were priceless. To this day, I’ve remained that dancing fool on a number of fronts. Conformity and the stiff posture of the anal retentive are not for me. That’s why I run, ride and swim as well. All require discipline, but not necessarily conformity. That’s why I also flaunt and ignore The Rules on Velominati at times. Who needs that crap when you’re out to have fun and do what you want?

Nutcracker NutAs I sat watching the Nutcracker last night, considering the role of Drosselmeyer and his magic ways, it struck me that the entire ballet is about the non-conformity of Nutcracker Dreams. One description puts it this way: “It is never explained in the ballet where he comes from or why Drosselmeyer has magical powers, but one of them, apparently, is the ability to bring toys to life.”

What a wonderfully impractical skill! And yet how important it is to our understanding of human nature to study the passion and persona of Dancing Fools as presented in The Nutcracker. It releases us from normality to occupy the space of dreams and fantasy. But there’s more.

As I watched the various cultural memes of Russian and Asian and Arabic dance forms, it struck me that the Nutcracker is an eminently impractical celebration of human spirit. You can parse the world as it is now through any form of ideology, but it all comes down to human passions and cultures. Of course, some get warped by destruction and terror, while others can only imagine themselves through the barrel of a gun. These are the dances of self-loathing, the chronically fearful, and the already dead. Christian terrorists are just as manic and dangerous as Muslim terrorists. The Crusades long ago proved that, and we seem not to have learned the lesson to this day.

Instead, we need to be like Clara and her companion, calm in our study of the Nutcracker dreams we face each and every day. There is no need to panic or rush into the clash like a bunch of manic gray mice and toy soldiers trying to prove ourselves.

Tera MoodySport plays an important role in this dance of the world. It shows us that our differences are what make us so much alike. Those of us who run, ride and swim know this at heart. The varied abilities and goals of each competitor make every event unique. We derive inspiration from the plodder coming in at the last minute of an Ironman just as we do from the triumphant stride of the winner hours earlier.

So many stages. The Olympics. The World Championships. The Nutcracker. It all fits together if we focus on making it work, and don’t let the angry mice and manic tin soldiers run away with the show, or tie it down with fears of dancing in the face of life itself.

 

werunandridelogo

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Breaking sexism’s back

Posted on December 4, 2015 by Christopher Cudworth

I wrote a piece on a different blog this week titled Thus Spoke Vagina. It addresses the many ways women in this world must deal with both the control and ignorance men try to place on them.

I’ve written also about the focus on women’s breasts on this blog, and how athleticism and healthy body image is a positive trend for women who run, ride and swim.

id_134_2005ITUGamagoriEliteU23JuniorTriathlonWorldChampionshipsEliteWomen20050911_1054__mediumTests of my own objectivity and respect are not difficult to find. Yesterday in the pool I popped up from an interval to find a woman perched on the pool edge working up the will to get into the water. I said hello, and offered a bit of commiseration. “For me, the worst part is getting into the water,” I laughed.

She laughed as well. We talked briefly and I learned that she’d taken up swimming a year ago following a serious injury to her spine. “I broke my back sledding,” she informed me.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” I responded.

Her face grew serious and she looked up the lane of the pool. “Yes, swimming has been wonderful. I used to be a runner, but I can’t do that anymore.”

I shared the fact that I was grateful to have avoided spinal injury during my bike crash a few years back. “I was grateful to only break my collar bone,” I told her.

She was sitting on the side of the pool with her swim cap on, wearing a teal swimsuit, and she wrapped her arms across her chest at that point.  I sensed a bit of self-consciousness, and took pains keep my gaze on her face as we talked. It was well past time for the start of my next interval anyway.

I know that women are too accustomed to being ogled, and did not want to be one more guy being perceived as doing that. That’s especially true at the pool, but just as true at the track or on the bike. But I’m human and we athletes do appreciate athletic bodies. It’s part of why we all go out there and try our best to be fit. We want to look good. But there are rules of respect that we all need to maintain.

 

Sure it was just an encounter at a swimming pool. The world did not change because I took pains to respect her personal space. I genuinely learned something from our conversation, and how much she now loved to swim. My girlfriend Sue loves the water too. And now so do I. Most days. It’s still a difficult process, but it’s improving.

The trick to swimming is learning balance in the water between stroke, kick and body rotation. The trick to life is learning balance too, between interest, appreciation and respect. That’s the triathlon of social interaction, in a nutshell.

werunandridelogo

 

 

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The Anthropocene Triathlon

Posted on December 1, 2015 by Christopher Cudworth

IMG_4361I recently did some simple calculations, adding up the number of hours spent outside running and riding. It totals more than 7,000 hours, approximately 40,000 miles of running over a lifetime and just as many on the bike. 80,000 or so miles.

As an avid naturalist, I’ve also spent considerable time in the field birding and studying nature. That time is impossible to quantify. But given the fact that I’ve been birding since the age of 12, and pretty much lived outdoors whenever I could as a child, it’s been more than 100,000 hours outside in nature fishing, some hunting and a lot of plain appreciation.

My love of writing and painting completes the Anthropocene Triathlon for me. Converting my experiences into paintings and stories is a great love of mine. For more than forty years I’ve published articles in newspapers, magazines and online media. I’ve served as Editorial Writer at a major newspaper and published dozens of freelance articles in publications large Chris Cudworth 7and small. That includes a fun piece I did for Runner’s World years ago that led to a contract with a running race in Texas for whom I produced a poster won the RW Cream of the Crop Award for Best Designs.

Added up, all that writing amounts to more than 5,000 articles or about 4,000,000 words. I’ve also published two books now, The Genesis Fix, A Repair Manual for Faith in the Modern Age (2007) and The Right Kind of Pride, a Chronicle of Character, Caregiving and Community.

All this running, riding and writing has been conducted during a period now titled Anthropocene Era. Here is how it is defined: “relating to or denoting the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment.”

As an environmental writer with a background in biology this phenomenon of the Anthropocene Era has been quite evident across a number of fronts. Back in the early 70s when I first began reading and writing seriously about environmental issues, environmental pollutions such as smog, acid rain, groundwater destruction, Superfund sites and health issues related to cancer agents were in the news every day. All thse issues were introduced into the environment by chemical or industrial means. Humans, in other words.

Some of this influence has been moderated thanks to human response to our own presence and harmful activities. Certain harmful chemical such as DDT were banned, allowing species of birds such as peregrine falcons, bald eagles and other creatures to rebound from near extinction. Without that action, these species would certainly have been lost.

SunriseSo the Anthropocene Era is certainly real. That includes the massive influence of carbon emissions on the atmosphere. We’ve already taken steps to reduce use of accelerants and other substances that destory the ozone layer. The Montreal Protocol of 1997 took some products off the market that were causing the ozone layer to deplete. Human beings had singlehandedly created that problem. We got together, figured out what was causing the problem, and moderated the issue.

Of course, there were people who pooh-poohed the idea that humans were the cause of any of this. A certain worldview refuses to accept that human beings can affect anything at the planetary level. This neglects the absolute evidence that our chemical pollution and habitat destruction is responsible for the loss of thousands of species of creatures. There is a massive extinction going on just as they have occurred in the past. This time, however, nature is the agent but not the cause of this extinction.

That’s us. 

Now we’re faced with the very real problem of global climate change. There are moneyed interests claiming there is no problem with global warming. They fund science to disclaim the relationship between human activity, especially carbon-based pollution, and the potential effect on overall climate.

Monarch scalesAs a person that spends considerable time outdoors, and who knows a few things about animals, plants and living things and the ecosystems on which they depend, I share concerns that human activity is responsible for this problem. I’ve seen firsthand the effects of chemical and environmental pollution on all sorts of creatures. I watched a great blue heron teeter and fall over from the effects of pesticides in its system. I’ve seen the gangrene-infested gizzards of ducks that ingested lead shot. I’ve watched fish float up on a river rife with suds, and seen cancerous boils on bass fished out of a polluted creek. I’ve seen monarch butterfly populations plummet due to destruction of habitat, loss of milkweed host plants and possible impacts from chemicals in their systems.

So I do not naively assume that human beings have no effect on the environment.

Because I’ve also run through cities thick with pollution. In China where environmental restrictions have not been as strict as here in America, people are forced to wear masks just to get to work. Health problems abound wherever anthropocentric pollution takes over. Does anyone recall how difficult it was for runners and cyclists to prepare in advance of the Beijing-pollution-4_784300aBeijing Olympics? There were absolute concerns for the health of endurance athletes. All that was the product of anthropocentric pollution. It did not happen naturally. It did not happen supernaturally. God was not involved. And God is not going to fix this thing. More likely God has shown a propensity in history to tell the human race; “You screwed this up. It’s your problem now, not mine.”

So prayers are not going to whisk away the carbon choking our atmosphere. What will fix the massive problem of anthropocentric global climate change is cooperation between nations and governments.

Yet America can’t even budge a set of stubborn politicians so selfishly absorbed in their own moneyed interests they refuse to acknowledge that climate change is a problem. Never mind the direct evidence of choking athletes in Beijing or other regions around the world. Never mind the potential desertification of the Great Plains as we already saw during the Dust Bowl, another product of human activity.

Never mind there are 7 billion people on the planet and we’re shooting up toward 9 billion. Climate change threatens to ruin millions of acres of currently fruitful agricultural zones. California is already parched and fighting over water rights.

imgres-2Meanwhile, companies such as the Nestle Corporation have intimated that access to water is not a basic human right. So we’re faced with a world in which corporate profits and human greed are taking precedence over fair use of resources and basic human rights. That is the definition of the Anthropocene Era in a nutshell.

Those of us that have spent 80,000 miles and thousands of hours out in the field, on the roads, and under the sun understand the real risks of neglecting the facts before us. 97% of the world’s climate scientists agree on the fact that profound changes are taking place on our planet, and that human beings are a direct cause of these changes.

To me, it is the height of irresponsibility and selfish greed to ignore the recent and ancient history of human foible as a profound influence on this world. Both the environmental community and Christian apologists with an understanding for the call for stewardship of creation understand this.

IMG_3085But there are tons of people who interpret these signs instead as the inevitability of human sin rather than the opportunity to prevent it. In other words, they’ve given up. Quit the race just when it is beginning. They are failing the human race as a result. Throwing in the towel. They are admitting they are losers and that their worldview is defeatist and dependent on a bailout from God to solve human problems. Their only concern is that they remain flush with cash. Leave the rest of that shit for others to deal with.

Every time I run and ride and sit down to write I think about these things. This is the Anthropocene Triathlon for me. Every time I go birding and see cranes migrating through the skies and recognize their rebound as a species is the result of human efforts to protect habitat and fix the mistakes of the human race, I get the feeling there is hope.

I choose hope and collaboration. That’s the solution to the problems of the Anthropocene era, not self-centered greed and belief that money trumps all human compassion and environmental responsibility.

werunandridelogo

 

 

 

 

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25 meters of joy

Posted on November 30, 2015 by Christopher Cudworth

Swim FormLearning to swim again has taken more than a year. That’s because there’s a balance between developing form good enough to swim efficiently, and then building muscles and endurance to support the effort.

But there’s real progress happening now.

I’m writing about this because I encourage you to try it too. If you have not tried swimming in a very long while, it is an activity that you can add to and gain all sorts of benefits. It’s a whole body workout for one thing, and low impact at that. Two, you get to smell like chlorine and play in the water. Three, you can actually do a triathlon if you can swim. And that’s fun.

As noted, this has not been an easy experience. While I have not been tempted to quit, there have been moments where I stood in the pool with my face very near the water breathing hard while trying to figure out when it might get a little easier.

But there has been progress. And yesterday I had a swim lesson with Whitney, the coach with whom I’ve been working off and on the last year. Now we’re meeting every three weeks and she gives me assignments to practice between sessions.

Yesterday she asked, “Do you want to do endurance or sprints?”

Honestly, I’d never thought about it. Early on the most I could swim at one stretch was 25 meters. Then it was… stop, breathe, and start again. I wasn’t so much swimming as surviving from one end of the pool to the other.

Now, I’m up to 400 meters straight and haven’t yet tried anything longer. That’s coming this week. My relaxation in the pool is such that the idea of going long is no longer a threat. I can breathe on both sides now too, albeit still better on one side than the other. That will come with more practice.

Bu to test my stroke mechanics, Whitney gave me a workout of 8 sets of 50-meter repeats. 25 as fast as I can go, short rest, and back at a slow pace. We did sets of four and put some float swimming of 100 meters in between.

The 25-meter sprints were fun. I actually had never been given license to go as fast as I can, so I had never done it. Having the opportunity to let loose was a real joy. She asked me after the first couple, “You’re only breathing every fourth stroke. Is that feeling okay?”

“More than okay,” I told her. “It feels great!”

Fast or slow, learning to swim well is basically a task of being able to use your stroke mechanics to efficiently move through the water. If you can’t swim slower, it is very likely there is something wrong with your form or balance between kicks and strokes.

Three weeks ago, Whitney had me practice kicks with the focus of using my butt muscles to propel my legs as well. That engagement clicked in my head. I envisioned my butt making me go faster. But that’s just me. Some of us need pictures in our heads to make things work.

So it was fun to “feel the churn” on those sprint sets. I was under 20 seconds on each, so things are coming along. Each was 25 meters of joy.

On my next swim coaching session, it will be time to learn flip turns again. I did them as a kid swimmer and it should come back pretty well I hope. Once you get the feel, it’s a matter of practice.

I’m grateful to be learning something new like this. The challenges have been real, but the revelations have too.

werunandridelogo

 

 

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So many Sunday mornings

Posted on November 29, 2015 by Christopher Cudworth

I’ve been a churchgoer by choice even since I was a little kid, and even when my parents attended a church ten miles away from our home in Elburn, Illinois, I chose to be confirmed at a Congregational Church three blocks away.

That does not mean the search for God has been a straight line journey over the years. Not in any respect. During my high school years, our group of friends participating in an organization called Campus Life. There were weekly meetings in which teenagers gathered to discuss Christianity. The counselors were a committed group of Wheaton College exports with a mission to proselytize in the name of Christ.

At that age, I found issue with their brand of messaging. At one point a counselor pulled me aside for a discussion. “If you keep asking questions like that, you’ll never be a Christian,” he told me.

Chance encounter

I chanced to meet that former Campus Life Counselor in a McDonald’s restaurant ten years later. He looked away when he saw me. I walked over to find tears in his eyes. We sat down and had a very frank discussion in which I told him that my questioning manner had actually increased my faith, not reduced it. I told him that if he felt he needed forgiveness from me, he already had it. But I also told him that it was not necessary. There was nothing to forgive.

Sunday mornings

As mentioned, during college my church attendance fell by the wayside other than a few chapel talks during the week. Mainly that was due to the long runs our running teams planned every Sunday morning from September through May. So many Sunday mornings were spent piling up mileage for cross country and track.

I attended an ostensibly Christian college where taking at least one course in religion was required. I took New Testament and got a C in the course. The manner in which the subject was taught did not interest me. Everything about the course was dry and dead. I am pretty sure Jesus himself would have gotten a C in that class, and then trashed the classroom in which it was held.

Reformation

Late in my college years I met a girl who was taking religion courses and was fascinated with the Jewish faith. We began to explore those subjects together and she introduced me to a man named Richard Simon Hanson, who later in life read my book about religion and in turn gave me one of his unpublished manuscripts to use if I ever choose to do so. Currently, I am in the process of writing a book titled Sustainable Faith about reconciling Christianity to the Modern World in positive, constructive ways. His portion is titled Religion From Earth, and I need to get that work done because he is getting on in years and I want him to see how our combined hope for the Jude0-Christian world can work.

Somehow I feel that the world of endurance sports and faith go together quite well. There are famous quotations from the Bible that suggest this is true, such as:

1 Corinthians 9:24
[ The Need for Self-Discipline ] Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.
Galatians 2:2
I went in response to a revelation and, meeting privately with those esteemed as leaders, I presented to them the gospel that I preach among the Gentiles. I wanted to be sure I was not running and had not been running my race in vain.
Galatians 5:7
You were running a good race. Who cut in on you to keep you from obeying the truth?
Hebrews 12:1
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us…
Allegories and The Word
Of course, these are all allegorical references, comparisons between the race of endurance to the race of faith. The Bible is full of allegories, parables and symbolism. In fact these literary methodologies form the very foundation of all truth. Even the reference to The Word in the Book of John makes clear that The Word itself is a symbol for all truth. In actuality, the worst sin of all is to anchor The Word to some fixed notion that we’ve invented about God to own that narrative for ourselves, our religion or our politics. That’s an insult to how The Word is supposed to work in our lives…

John 1 [Full Chapter]

[ The Word Became Flesh ] In the beginning was theWord, and theWord was with God, and theWord was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. …
There is absolutely nothing literal intended about that statement. Yet there are people who anchor The Word by claiming that the Book of Genesis and its reference to “the beginning” is supposed to be interpreted as some sort of literal doctrine. That leads to all sorts of defensive, anachronistic doctrines that harm the faith and hearts of all those who abide by them.
Wearing blinders
If were are truly going to run the race of faith set out before us, then it does not pay to affix an anchor to our hopes and understanding. If you were to line up at the start of a 10K race wearing blinders over your eyes that prevented you from seeing anything in front of you, do you think you could run your best time? More likely you would stumble, be hesitant and fearful all at once. That is not what God wants for us, but it is what people who want to control others seek to do by placing literalism before all else in faith.
Bones
I have spent so many Sunday mornings pondering these issues in 58 years of faith and life. Many of those Sundays have been spent in the pews of a church. For 25 years, I was a member of a very conservative branch of Christianity. It was the synod in which my late wife was raised, and we had many close friends there. We were married in that church, and our children went through confirmation there. They dutifully memorized the doctrines of that organization and passed confirmation with flying colors. The pastor went to great lengths to compliment us on how well they did in confirmation class.
But my children were smart enough to realize the impracticality of that brand of faith. They had studied science and understood evolution as a theory that materially explains the origins and development of life on earth. That church tradition denies evolution.
So we ultimately migrated out of that church, and Sunday mornings are now spent listening to a Harvard Divinity school Ph.D who understands and preaches the reconciliation of faith and science and many other positively liberal principles that frankly hew much closer to the methods and ministry of Jesus Christ. Who would have had no problems with science, as he taught using parables deeply wrought with naturalistic principles.
Challenging beliefs
Perhaps I’ve spent too much time on the roads thinking about these things. Some people have tried to tell me that it doesn’t really matter what people believe, so long as they believe. When I challenge belief systems some people take offense, calling me mean and intolerant, and worse. People really do not like to have their faith questioned.
But I’ve spent so many Sunday mornings trying to figure out why the world is so screwed up, and quite often it comes back to the fact that people that don’t like to have their faith challenged are often the very same people telling others what to do and how to live. They try to force their beliefs into society through politics or law.
So I’ve made a practice and a indeed, a life’s work to challenge those perceptions whenever possible. This sometimes earns me enemies on Facebook and even loses me followers on this blog on occasion, but so be it. Once I had a friend give me this piece of advice: “Don’t give people a reason to hate you,” and it’s certainly not how Jesus behaved. He gave many people reasons to hate him for challenging their misguided brand of faith and authoritative claim to special providence. That willingness to challenge the status quo was what ultimately got him killed.
It takes guts to challenge perceptions
So I think that whole “don’t give people a reason to hate you” meme is a stupid, chickenshit way to live. While I don’t think I’m right about everything, I also don’t think you can really learn where you’re potentially wrong without having the guts to speak your mind.
Jesus encouraged and taught his own disciples by challenging their perceptions and asking them to answer hard questions. Sometimes they earned an admonishment or correction for their troubles.
The only times Jesus really backed them down was when his disciples asked to be granted special favor for their service to God. He appreciated their intentions but had to explain that the right to sit at the Right Hand of God was not in his power to grant.
Sadly, that method of seeking favored status in the eyes of God is how so many Christians lay claim to authority these days. It is the single most damaging feeling of entitlement that none of them likes to admit because it exposes their ulterior motives. Some of these are anchored in the love of money, others in social advantage and racial superiority.
The race of life
Chris Fun Pic TooThis is how I believe God works in our lives. God is real to me because I’ve put effort into examining how and why spiritual experiences come about. I don’t pray for specific things very often, but pray instead for the presence of mind to recognize grace as it exists and where it occurs. When I pray, I pray in acknowledgment that there is a source for that grace, one that is bigger than our material perceptions.
We cannot know for certain what (if anything) comes after this life, but we can know what a dose of heaven and help feels like on this earth. That “kingdom of God” is good enough for me. If embracing that operative and call for hope in this world somehow results in some eternal benefit well that would be lovely. But laying claim to heaven by some calculation of our own is like expecting to never run in the race of life and still be granted the prize at the end.
False promises
I also don’t need the promise of a thousand virgins in the afterlife to want to live a good life or follow the way of God. That reward-oriented brand of of faith is shallow and stupid. All Christians or Muslims andanyone that thinks they need a big gift in heaven to life a good life on earth are a greedy, selfish band of misfits who don’t deserve our fealty or respect.
That applies to the often manic protection of the image of Allah or “the prophet.” Killing people for drawing a picture proves the stupidity. If your God is that fragile and weak, they are not worth worshipping.
All desperate attempts to prove ourselves to God are foolishness. These instincts beget wars and intolerance and repression. They have also been used to perscute people whose instincts and orientations are quite natural, biological and fiercely human.
Hardly inerrant
We need to recognize that even our most holy scriptures are lost on the truth when it comes to some of these subjects. It’s a clear fact that Christians have abandoned many practices that no longer have merit in this world. Yet too many believers still cling to practices and prejudices that are borne of fears desires to repress feelings or thoughts that really do not harm anyone.
Instead, we should all seek to appreciate the organization of the universe and the grace it presents. This does, however incorporate the very real presence of evil in this world. But I believe that the call to resist evil with the power of love is our main purpose in this world. The supernatural is, to me, an absolute product of love.
Common purposes
These are commonalities we all can share, and they do not conflict with the material explanations of science despite the contentions of stubborn creationists whose science of denial does more harm to the kingdom of God here on earth than it does to honor God in any respect.
Somehow there are many of us who see no conflict between the fact that human beings descended from apes and evolved intelligence that enables us to conceive the supernatural instincts of love. What’s so hard about that? Why are people so stupid and stubborn they cannot find their way to enlightenment and appreciation about the facility of human intellect and emotion?
Evidence of absence
IMG_2250While browsing through a running journal to study my own mentions of God over the years, I found the passage below. It was written on January 1, 1983. I was living near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where I’d been transferred from Chicago in a corporate consolidation that did not pan out for the company. That meant finding my way socially in a strange city. I was far from home with a need to find all new friends, which accomplished while training with a sponsored running team. That meant all my Sunday mornings were spent doing long runs with a group of runners far more talented than me. It was a difficult yet exciting time. I was trying to make sense of being 25 years old and tossed about a bit by life.
Yet I was also on the cusp of accomplishing the best three years of running in my life. It began with those long training miles with the Runner’s Edge team in Philly. My 10K PR had finally dipped under 32:00 and it was my goal to take it all the way down to 31:00 in the next year or so. Some could say that was a bit self-absorbed.
But God was still not far from my mind.
Running Journal Entry January 1, 1983
“I ran a very relaxed but determined two hours today. Most of it was 6:30 pace with the late middle miles faster and the last three very slow, because I became light-headed again. This feeling did not hit me until probably fifteen minutes past one hour of running, when I picked up the pace on the flat shoulders of Route 252. The entire route went: Paoli Pike to Sugartown Road, Sugartown to Goshen, Goshen to Grub (Or Grubbs Mill) to intersection of Barr & Whitehorse, Whitehorse to 252–One lap around local golf course, up to Route 30 on 252 and several dizzy laps around the cemetary and park. Ran from 1:55 yto 3:54. This got me all over the stigman, somewhat, of two hours but I learned precisely at what point and what pace the ire of fatigue too over.

TarsnakesIt is and was a beautiful, warm winter day with a cool breeze from the northwest. Wore GoreTex top, two t’s and a pair of Luther sweats. Oregon’s (adidas) felt good. Strangely, my knee problem, tendinitis around the outside of the joint, is eradicated. Knee felt quite fluid going up stairs. I was locked out when I got home! Climbed the house to get back in.

God gave me a helluva an illustration today. Some guy walked into a door today while staring at me. ‘Don’t let the fascination with life occupy your better senses.’ He seemed to be acting the fool, or needing sympathy or something. But his eyes were so fixated, and with all those people watching. “He comes in here quite often,” the manager says. “And he seems like a sedate guy.” There you only resolution, Christopher, on this, the beginning of a New Year, and you’d already begun in the Old Year. Let or make the balance of activity come and you won’t walk into any closed doors. Happy New Year! Artist • Painter • Writer • Runner • Lover. Believer in a God who gave you joy and love on Earth.”
And so it has gone throughout my life. Always trying to assess my own intelligence and attention against the demands of life and the expectations of God. So many Sunday mornings have been spent in consideration of these ideals. Perhaps you’ve spent a few Sundays thinking about these types of things as well.
And if not, such is the pity, for Sunday mornings are excellent for such endeavors.
werunandridelogo

 

 

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Four miles and counting turkeys

Posted on November 27, 2015 by Christopher Cudworth

CrowdThe ability to download results almost immediately after a race these days is a remarkable feature of modern competitions. You can walk from the finish line of a triathlon over to a guy sitting under a canopy and get a printout of your time splits, transitions and your credit report if you ask nicely enough.

TurkeyThat last part might be a stretch, but it is entirely likely that races these days can access your credit report if they would like. With entry fees topping $100 for most triathlons and Ironman basically seeking to take over the world along with Google and Facebook, your private information surely isn’t as private as you might think. We’re all just data turkeys waiting to be cooked in the Thanksgiving of life. And remember, the day after Thanksgiving is always Black Friday for the turkey, even if it does have nice legs.

Checking in

ResultsSo it’s a little creepy in some respects to check your times the day of a race such as yesterday’s Fox and the Turkey Four Mile and find out you’re a cog in a great big data wheel.

There were 2251 runners in the race, of which only 991 were male. “Four miles and counting,”you might say.

There were 1260 female runners. That’s 269 more women than men. And that says a lot about the distance, the timing and the state of modern running. Women are taking over.

As it stands, I would not have finished in the top five among women with my 7:06-mile pace yesterday. The women’s winner was Nicole Lopez-Villegas in 24:07. That’s a good time of course. I was a four minutes behind.

Legging it

The men’s winner was Ryan Giuliano in 20:58. I met Ryan at last winter’s Sno-Fun Run in Lake Geneva where he won the five-mile race over snow-covered roads. He’s the real deal as a runner, competing also at a top flight level in triathlons.

Legs

My own best at four miles was 19:49, run in a four-mile Turkey Trot many years ago. Ryan is capable of running that fast, and probably faster, on the right course.

However, the Fox and the Turkey Four-Mile ascends a steep hill at the start that in my case added 20 seconds to the opening mile time at 7:00 flat. There was also a noticeable wind in the third mile, where I ran a 7:20 mile. The second and fourth miles were both below 7:00 pace. I closed in a 6:52. Yay! So I was pleased with the effort. It was a fun and positive experience. That’s all I ask from my running these days.

Data mining

But I wonder, if in some digital universe divided by two I’s and O’s for the number of legs in the race, some data mining companies are not already finished downloading the names and times of everyone in the race. That’s how it all works in the Data Era. Absolutely verything you do is a measure of your value as information through which companies can assess your worth as a target in the marketing puzzle.

Turkey Dudes.jpgAs a result, I’m fairly certain some new and running or age-related products will pop up in my Facebook, Instagram and Twitter feeds in the next two weeks. It happens with uncanny predictability.

The ads will most likely it will feature winter training shoes or fur-lined Equipo bikini underwear. When that happens, I’ll spare you the photos of me modeling such gear. My girlfriend thinks I’ve shared more than enough photos of myself in underwear for one year. And for a lifetime, for that matter.

So I’ll just shared this photo of two guys who were pretty darn proud of their crotch turkeys at the race. Perhaps it was their way of telling the data mining companies to “Eat Me.” We can only hope.

Runoverthetarsnakes2

 

 

 

 

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Tapering for a Turkey Trot

Posted on November 25, 2015 by Christopher Cudworth
20151025_083853

The last time we raced I ran so fast the pumpkin face I’d taped to my shirt flew off. 

I’m running four miles tomorrow and you know, that’s a long, long way. I mean, four miles is 21,120 feet. That’s about 7,040 steps if every stride is three feet.

So in order to prepare for this race I started tapering back in January, 2015. Never did I run more than 30 miles in one week. In fact, I only did 30 miles in one week one time, and that was quite a load. For me.

That means my taper is nearly complete. I did not run at all yesterday, or the day before that actually. Saturday we ran six miles in a driving snowstorm, and I actually had to take a nap after that. Something about the weight of the snowflakes on my eyelashes really tired me out.

The challenge when you’re tapering for a four-miler is that just about anything can tire you out. For example, right now I’m typing at a rate of probably 70 wpm. I’ll probably have to lie down for three hours to recover that energy.

See, there’s this hill at the start of the race that goes up the very banks of the Fox River Valley. It lasts about sixty yards and a hill that size in Illinois has been known to cause people to implode on the spot. It is no more than four degrees of incline, but even at that angle, if you run fast enough you could launch off and plop down in the cornfields a couple miles west.

HandSo I’m being cautious just in case. A few years ago I missed this race because of a surgical procedure on an infected finger. The cause was a sliver, and that means you can’t be careful enough in protecting yourself before the race. It’s often said by Ironman athletes they wish they could wrap themselves in bubble wrap the last couple weeks before competition. With all that training under your belt it would be tragic to fall on your bike and miss the Big Day.

And tomorrow’s a Big Day here in America! It’s the day we actually celebrate a tradition where a bunch of immigrants came to America and were saved from starving by the people who already lived here. The rest of the story isn’t that pretty to talk about, so we won’t get into that. But it’s always good to celebrate our traditions.

Next up is the holiday where we essentially traded one bearded, Middle Eastern guy who prayed for the poor for a fat white guy who disappoints when he does not come through with the goods.

Yes, we’ve got our priorities straight and we’re headed for bear into the Holiday Season. But first I’ve got to negotiate the only hill in our town and eat some turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes in recovery. We Americans have it tough, and we’re willing to run four whole miles to prove it.

werunandridelogo

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Sharing a pup named Chuck

Posted on November 24, 2015 by Christopher Cudworth

IMG_3847In a few weeks, my life will change once again. That’s when our dog Chuck will begin living with my daughter Emily. She’s been working toward this goal for some time, and is finally getting out on her own with a condo where she can have Chuck move in.

Our dog Chuck has been a shared part of all our lives for six years now. He was originally discovered on the streets of Chicago by my son Evan and some friends at a very late hour. They brought him back to their fraternity house and cleaned him up. Reportedly he was covered in white paint, cold and shivering from the cold spring air.

IMG_4297They held a beer bash to raise funds for his vet bills and Chuck lived in the fraternity house with my son for several months. He got the name Chuck because the guy who owned the frat house was named Chuck. My politically savvy son named the Dog after the frat house owner who said, “Well, I can’t kick him out if he’s named after me.”

When my son began traveling for his work in admissions for the University of Chicago, Emily asked if we could keep Chuck at our house. My late wife Linda was not keen on the idea. In fact she’d long discussed a book she’d like to write titled 1001 Reasons Not To Own A Dog. She’d had family pets as a kid and some of them were rather interesting, to say the least.

Yet the first night Chuck came to stay, he won her heart with an attentive little mind and a propensity to snuggle. Those two built a bond, and Chuck IMG_4445was there for her through countless days of chemo and surgery recovery as well as bright sunny days sitting together in the garden. Through health and through challenges, Chuck was a stalwart buddy.

I was worried he’d be devastated on her passing. In fact, he did sit at the front window quite a bit wondering when and if she might come home. I kept up our routine of walking him twice a day as I’d done since he came to live with us. My daughter was living at home at that time following graduation from college, and Chuck was an important partner in helping her process grief.

When my son Evan came back home for visits from New York City, Chuck was always ecstatic. Their original bond has never dissipated. That dog is full of love and he shows it, sometimes too much. We’ve never trained him not to jump up when greeting family, friends or strangers. It’s a bit obnoxious, but it only lasts about 30 seconds. His loving character is revealed in a rather enthusiastic way.

Chuck yin and yangWith all the comings and goings in our lives these past six years, it has remained my responsibility to walk and feed the dog. There’s a rhythm to all that, and it has helped on many occasions to have to walk the dog when dealing with change or difficulty in life. More than once during my wife’s health challenges there were times when the world could find me bent down and crying at the side of the dog, stroking his fur as he looked at me with his deep, dark eyes. He seemed to understand, and by the time I’d get home the tears would be dried and Chuck would pile back into his couch routine.

My caregiving responsibilities did not end with her passing, however, as my father was still in my care. For thirteen years since he’d had a stroke in 2002, and my mother passed away in 2005 I took care of my father. He died several weeks ago of fairly natural causes. We’re having a Memorial Service in his honor tomorrow. Even he grew to love Chuck, who would hop up into his lap on the wheelchair or beg to be placed on my dad’s lap when he visited in his Volkswagon van.

IMG_4407It strikes me that when Chuck leaves my home there will certainly be a void in my life. Yet the bond would never have taken place had my son not helped save Chuck that night, and Emily had not wanted to bring him home. To me, this next step is a natural extension of both their love and their character.

So sharing the pup is what we do. And it’s time for Emily to have her well-earned time with the dog she so loves. He’ll still come for visits pretty frequently I bet. She’s a busy gal with her boyfriend Kyle, whose dog Dozer is a pit mix with a heart of gold and the voice of a UFC announcer. So Chuck will have some weekend visits now and then, and that will be fun.

First we’ll all be celebrating Thanksgiving as a family. Chuck loves when tons of people come over to visit. I tell him in the morning, “All your people are coming today. Then when the first car pulls up I ask, “Who’s here?” He piles up onto the sofa back to look outside and paw the big window. His nose marks cover the glass in a wide swath. He’ll whimper and whine a bit when he sees who it is. He even recognizes the sound of certain trucks.

Changing times

IMG_2928On Thanksgiving morning my companion Sue and I will rise early to race in a Turkey Trot. We rise early to do quite a few things actually. This past
summer during training for her Ironman triathlon there were many weekend trips to Wisconsin and early bike rides. Always that means finding someone to look out for Chuck or take care of him overnight. A neighbor across the street can help once in a while, and family members have taken him in when we’re on one of our athletic junkets. But honestly, there might be a touch of relief not having that obligation. It will be the first time since 2000 that I’m not directly responsible for the caregiving of another. I can’t really tell you how that will feel. Good or bad, it is what it is.

As for Chuck, I’m sure I’ll miss his little face and snuggling with him when he climbs under my covers once he eases out of his crate with a long stretch in the morning. Then he takes a couple steps and jumps up onto the bed. That little dog has been a big part of my life for a long time. Longer than the years I spent in college or other ostensibly significant periods of time. Our pets are a big part of our lives. Fortunately Sue has some really great cats that live with her. Fur Friends are important.

Chuck and I have also walked an estimated 1000 miles together over the years. When we get near home I give his leash a nudge and say, “Let’s run!” For fifty or so yards we sprint full tilt toward the house. He has three modes of locomotion. Walk. TripTrot. And bounding run. He’s just a touch faster than me at a full sprint. But I can still motor too.

IMG_2585It’s that last bit of speed that I really enjoy seeing in him. He’s still a healthy pup and not too old to really motor. His ears fly back and his paws swing forward and back with speed. We’re flying home and I almost always start laughing and tell him “Good Boy!” when we cut across the yard and head back inside.

Usually, he goes and takes a long drink from the plant watering can. That’s what he prefers over a boring little bowl. Then he often sacks out on a chair or the couch for a good long nap. He loves it if someone sits next to him to quietly scratch his ears or stroke his fur. He also loves his “brush,” and he’ll sit up and look back at you to encourage you to use it if you say the word.

He’s got all kinds of funny little quirks like that. From his crooked smile with a snaggle tooth on one side to the foxlike arc of his face, he’s a IMG_4175Schnoodle with character, caregiving and community all built into one little dog.

It’s time to Share the Pup however. Which means I’ll engage in my long time practice of petting other people’s dogs. A few weeks back after Run Club in Naperville, it was a nice day outside and that’s what I did. I wandered around downtown after running and did some shopping while stopping to pet the dogs I met along the way. They are all souls like us. Perhaps not gifted with the same brand of intelligence, but they all have their unique and valuable qualities. It’s a nice thing to share in this world.

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