Running and riding for Everyman

Posted on November 17, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

In a moment of social media weakness and curiosity, I hit the Like button on a Facebook page titled For Everyman Jackson Browne Fan Group. It’s the first fan group of any kind that I have officially or unofficially ever joined.

MI0001396501It’s not the only musician I’ve followed however. Back in the 80s a group of us in the Chicago suburbs became roving fans of a band called Big Twist and the Mellow Fellows. They were a blues-based band and Big Twist was a handsomely large man with a smooth voice and Chicago Blues cred.

We drank and danced wherever they played. But like Otis Day and the Knights in the movie Animal House, Big Twist never really knew who we were. Just another bunch of manic skinny runners with their girlfriends dancing at another smokey suburban bar outside Chicago.

Connections

So there’s no claim to fame in my worship of musicians here. I didn’t join the fan club hoping to someday meet Jackson Browne or anything like that. Yet this weekend there was a photo posted of Jackson Browne that produced an instant connection with the man whose music offers some of the most lyrically sophisticated songs ever written.

988425_363554373822229_5096783641057069547_nThe photo was of Jackson Browne in track shorts and singlet. He’s probably 14 or 15 years old in the photo. He’s captured in one of those unguarded teenage moments where the camera catches you in full youthful repose. Slightly self-conscious perhaps. Yet eagerly aware of what comes next.

That photo reminds me so much of teammates from high school track days. He also reminded me of me. Those skinny arms and legs. The 60s or 70s haircut. And then there were the shoes.

Running Flats

Those gum rubber running flats on his feet were the same kind of footwear our team wore at Kaneland High School in the cornfields of Illinois. Those “flats” were black with three stripes on the side. Perhaps they were adidas. Perhaps not. The whole running shoe boom had not yet evolved. They were the only type of running shoe available.

I recall picking out a pair at a local shoe store. The salesman watched me walk around in those new flats and said, “Now don’t wear them except to run. You’ll stretch out your calves too much because they don’t have a heel like your regular shoes.”

Indeed. Those shoes were minimalist because the track world didn’t know any better, or any worse. What followed in the next 10 years or so was a gigantic experiment in shoe evolution. It reached epic and silly proportions with shoes like the Nike LDV, a huge wedge of vee-shaped rubber tacked onto a woven synthetic upper. Those were Moon Boots and the precursor in many ways of the modern-day Hoka shoes with so much cushioning your feet never know what’s under them.

Back to the Future

CudworthKanelandWe wore those shoes to run cold laps around the high school on a circle of unforgiving asphalt that circled the main building. Many teammates came down with shinsplints. They would tape their entire lower legs to contain the pain. It usually did not go away until we moved practices onto the cinder track. Too much shock reverberating up the front of the leg tore muscle from bone. To combat this problem, some runners inserted plastic heel cups into heels of the shoes in an attempt to give them more stability. Essentially that anticipated the evolution in shoe construction. Nike’s Bill Bowerman was not far behind.

Running On Empty

So the fact that Jackson Browne ran around in the same somewhat inadequate running shoes was a real connection for me. There was an absolute relationship with the earth when running in those shoes. Running that close to the ground gives you a connectedness with all of reality that those who do not run seldom experience. You know what it feels like to cover ground. You know what it means to run alone. You also know what it means to run out of energy and hope, and to survive in spite of that. Jackson captures that feeling of running through life with barely enough rubber under your feet to keep going in his lyrics from “Running On Empty…”

Gotta do what you can just to keep your love alive
Trying not to confuse it with what you do to survive
In sixty-nine I was twenty-one and I called the road my own
I don’t know when that road turned onto the road I’m on…

The Pretender

When we’re as young as Jackson Browne was in that photo above, we do everything we can to try to understand the world. We seek out the funny and grapple with the serious. We lose our virginity in many aspects of life, and yet we keep on running.

And sometimes we run head on into the realization that life is harder than we thought it might be.

The very same summer that I began to listen an album by Jackson Browne titled “The Pretender” I was commuting an hour one-way to a summer job as a janitor in a tall office building that overlooked the hazy skyline of Chicago. That entire summer was like standing in the breach between youth and adulthood. I could feel it.

New BalanceAfter college I would go live in that city with a close running friend and running buddy. We were caught between our college world and the real life we would soon lead. I spent that summer training like mad and racing 24 times in a year. I won 12 of those races. It was both a real and pretend life at the same time. Soon enough the full time running would have to stop. There was a marriage and a family on the way. Then came more commuting and finding out how the real world works. Throughout it all however, I kept running because it kept me sane…

I want to know what became of the changes
We waited for love to bring
Were they only the fitful dreams
Of some greater awakening?
I’ve been aware of the time going by
They say in the end it’s the wink of an eye
And when the morning light comes streaming in
You’ll get up and do it again, Amen

Identity

Shaved LegsBy the time I took up cycling in my 40s it was an attempt to look ahead and balance my time on the road between running and riding a bike. It was fun to explore a new identity, to see yourself from an entirely different perspective. That included shaving my legs and not feeling like it somehow undercut masculinity to do so. In fact it felt the opposite. Like preparing for your own personal battles. No different than getting a tattoo or a piercing. A form of personal expression that matters in terms of commitment to that aspect of personality most vital to your soul.

Fountain of Sorrow

It turns out it has all been a journey to conceive the mind. Who could conceive the depths of insight that would emanate from the mind of that young man in the photo above. Jackson Browne. He has written music and words that fill spaces of the mind so powerfully it is hard to conceive where they come from. That’s genius of course. We aspire to it and are drawn to it at the same time.

The saddest lyrics have at times pulled me through darkness of the soul. Wrestling with anxiety and depression and the reverberations of what those coin flips can do to your heart and mind is often difficult. But rather than wallow in the fact that we are sometimes alone in that venture, there is hope in the possibility that others share both the struggles and the joys in life. It truly is a fountain of sorrow in which we are washed clean.

But when you see through love’s illusions, there lies the danger
And your perfect lover just looks like a perfect fool
So you go running off in search of a perfect stranger
While the loneliness seems to spring from your life
Like a fountain from a pool

Fountain of sorrow, fountain of light
You’ve known that hollow sound of your own steps in flight
You’ve had to hide sometimes, but now you’re all right
And it’s good to see your smiling face tonight

For Everyman

Photo Copyright Christopher Cudworth

Photo Copyright Christopher Cudworth

See, we all need other people to help us find our way. Some of us turn to heroes such as Jackson Browne because of their ability to reveal the universal message in the madness. There’s a restlessness in all of us to find those answers. Sometimes by traveling so fast toward them we can miss opportunities along the way. Take the wrong path. Go seeking when we should just be listening. Running fast when we should be running slow. And the other way around as well.

Seems like I’ve always been looking for some other place to get it together
Where with a few of my friends I could give up the race
Maybe find something better
But all my fine dreams well though out schemes to gain the motherland
Have all eventually come down to waiting for everyman

Waiting here for everyman
Make it on your own if you think you can
If you see somewhere to go I understand
Waiting here for everyman
Don’t ask me if he’ll show baby I don’t know

But thank you Jackson Browne for helping us comprehend that we’re never really alone, even when it feels that way.

Everybody’s just waiting to hear from the one
Who can give them the answers
Lead them back to that place in the warmth of the sun
Where sweet childhood still dances
Who’ll come along and hold out that strong and gentle father’s hand?
Long ago I heard someone say something ’bout everyman

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The secret life of Walter Mitty runs through our veins

Posted on November 14, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

Walter-Mitty2There’s a scene in the Ben Stiller movie “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” where he’s standing in the park with the character played by Kirsten Wiig and Walter completely spaces out. His mind is on something completely different than their conversation. Because Walter is a dreamer.

The James Thurber short story on whose premise the movie is based recounts the semi-heroic life of an inveterate dreamer. The point is there’s a little Walter Mitty in all of us, of course. That’s what makes the story and the movie so relevant to so many people.

Walter, please…

secret-life-of-walter-mittyAs a complete and total dreamer as a kid I especially relate to Walter Mitty. Not all the Walter Mitty has been drained out of me. Some people call what I do “attention deficit disorder.” But that doesn’t really capture the nature of what it means to be a dreamer.

Dreamers can be complete optimists or basically depressive. Dreaming can come from that anxious place where reality is concussive and dry. It can also come from a rich vein of hope and aspiration.

Mitty Marathon

I once dreamed that I ran a 2:26 marathon and it was basically effortless. When I awoke it felt as real as having actually done that race. I believed in that dream. In many ways it was as real an experience as any race I’d ever completed. All of my contemporaries from college raced about that fast. Some faster.

There was just one problem. In preparation for the only serious marathon I ever raced, back in 1985, I made a critical training mistake by running a 20-miler the week before the Twin Cities Marathon. At the starting line I felt washed out and cold. It was 30 degrees. I was wearing only a tee shirt.

mitty marathon pixYet my Walter Mitty personality was not to be deterred. I joined up with a group of marathoners running 5:30 pace. The group was led by none other than Don Kardong, 4th place Olympic marathoner and noted running humorist. He was a bit of a hero to me in other words.

So it felt good to buzz along in his company  (he’s the tall guy in the red shirt 4th from right…I’m in the red tee and white singlet) and a group of 10-15 other guys shooting to run sub-2:30. It lasted for me through 16 miles when hypothermia took me out of the race. My tongue was blue, as were my lips. I weighed 140 lbs. at 6’1″ at the time. Rail thin. And freezing.

My former college roommate pulled me off the course and my Walter Mitty experience was over. The dream slowed to a walk and a jacket was thrown over my shoulders. But until that point it all felt like a happy dream. All those miles and years of running had poured into that race in some way. Our group chatted and Don Kardong cracked jokes. It’s amazing how communities of fellow dreamers can form like that.

Happy dreams

the-secret-life-of-walter-mitty-teaser-trailer-skateboardingThere’s a little Walter Mitty in all of us who run, ride, swim or do triathlons. It’s the dream of bigger achievements that pulls us into dreamland. Living a life that is more exciting than our own. That’s what makes that scene of Ben Stiller as Walter Mitty rolling down and Icelandic road between mountains so symbolic. It’s about a release of the soul. You can view that as sad and delusional. But perhaps you should better view it as inspired.

Living like Walter

the-secret-life-of-walter-mitty-1I’ve gotten to live out a few of my dreams. Not all of them have been confined to my head. Not of all them were the product of an inattentive, distracted mind. There have been races where I emerged at the front. I have crossed the finish line first on many occasions.

You don’t have to win to accomplish your Walter Mitty dreams, and you don’t need to let others define whether those dreams are worth having or not. Granted I’ve been a critic of some forms of graceless striving. That includes my own as well as that of others. Yet when you go out to view an Ironman or other triathlon, or even a local 5K it is hard not to be inspired by what you see. Everyone in their Walter Mitty world, doing their best.

Wake up calls

walter-mitty1But from the time I was awakened in elementary school by a teacher calling my name to give an answer to a question I did not hear, I’ve know that I was a dreamer. I believe those dreams are in many ways the very fiber of who we are. They may not help us pass algebra. In fact they may make us fail. Or lose that promotion. Or cost us relationships. The world demands our attention, but sometimes we fail to give it. Timing is everything.

The long way homeIMG_6488

A few years ago I set up this long bike ride back from Dixon, Illinois to my home in Batavia. The route was well-planned and the country roads it took were awesome. Even though the ride was not spontaneous, it defied a lot of common sense in terms of what people expect from day-to-day behavior. What good was my ride going to do the world? How would it serve the cause of social justice or contribute to a better country, culture or career?

The answer is that is was something quite the opposite. Not an escape from reality, but an enhancement of the moment. There was a purpose in riding from one place to another. It served my soul to do that. That’s what dreams do. They serve your soul. They also serve it up to you for inspection. Consideration. Actualization.

I let my mind drift at times during that ride. In fact there are whole segments of the ride that I do not recall at all. Walter Mitty was steering the bike during those moments. The internal conversation was as real as the external travels in which I was engaged.

Just be still

Looking outside the kitchen window just now, the world appears still. There is no wind. The leaves have all fallen. In my yard they have been mowed into fine particles in anticipation of spring, when I will rake them up and spread them over the garden soil and throw more soil on top of them.

We make our plans, but we dream them into place first. The world turns even when all seems to be stillness and winter. A bird flits into the scene. It captures our eye. It reminds us of a thousand other birds we’ve seen. Then it flies off. Suddenly we notice our heart pulsing in our chest. It was not there just seconds before. The secret life of Walter Mitty runs through our veins. It brings us life. It stirs our brains. It calls us into dreams, and back again. We keep moving from dreamland back into reality again. It’s in our blood.

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Getting stoned is not what it used to be

Posted on November 13, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

stone-5None of us gets through life unscathed by health issues or other calamities. Having had my own share of bump-ups the past few years; broken collar bone, infected finger, dim-witted bike crash with stitches in my chin and a bruised lower back, I’ve come to respect that the world actually conspires with time and fate to demand a little accountability of us all.

Which made today a rather interesting adventure.

I’ve joined this productive group called BNI, a business networking organization. Part of the process of getting to know fellow members is to hold one-on-one meetings to discuss business and personal perspectives.

There was a meeting scheduled for 11 a.m. and I got myself ready after a morning of intense writing for my marketing clients. I even broke out a pair of brand new black shoes purchased last summer on a 2-for-1 deal at DSW or some other outfit.

Dressed all in black, I slid into the car and felt a strange little twinge in my left lower back. Thinking it was just the cold weather, I backed the car up and began driving to the appointment.

By the end of the block the pain had begun to emanate directly from my left kidney. It hurt like heck. And worse.

StonesHaving put myself through a considerable amount of pain over the years, including sidestitches from running that bent me in half, I know how to handle pain when it hits. This was different. My hands started to go tingly and numb. My head ached. A sheen of sweat built up on my temples. This was something weird.

So I called the woman I was supposed to meet for the appointment and grunted to her voice mail that I was not going to make it to Panera Bread at 11.

Then I turned the car around and headed for the emergency room. It took 10 minutes to get there. I sat in the driver’s seat cursing for the lights to change. I took back roads after that and finally whipped into the emergency room parking lot with the spins.

Getting out of the car I patted my back pocket and realized that I’d left my wallet at home. Earlier that morning I’d been purchasing software to run my new website and had left the wallet under some papers on the counter. Standing at the entryway to Emergency, I stood up straight and the pain began to ease. Whatever was causing it had passed.

small-kidney-stonesAnd that might be just what it was. A passing kidney stone. I’ve never had one before but there’s a first for everything. If they’re big enough I’m told they are worse than the pain of childbirth. And that comes from women I know that have gone through both.

So I went home and drink so much water today my brain is floating. You never know what’s gonna hit you next. And that’s true from the outside and the inside.

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Let’s talk about sex and the parallel pursuits of running, riding and swimming

Posted on November 12, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

You knew it was coming sooner or later. The sex talk. After all, we’ve covered all sorts of other subjects on We Run and Ride. From body parts to body functions, diet to flatulence. It’s only natural we touch occasionally on the subject of sex.

I have this friend who is a football coach. He insists that the only reason his players go out for the sport is to get laid. Seriously. All that mind-crunching, bone jarring, ligament-tearing action is designed for one thing: to get girls.

That makes sense if you’re a guy. The males of most species of animals on earth spend a considerable amount of time in elaborate displays of their fitness. Honestly, the goal there is to get laid, and lots of times if you’re lucky. For example, the Alpha male often does all the breeding in an elk herd. The rest of the elk basically gets to stand around and jerk off, which can really hurt when you have hooves.

You can’t beat fun

Chris Cudworth 3That reminds me of a phrase our college cross country coach used to yell to us during  practice, “Ah, boys, you can’t beat fun!”

And we would mutter in reply, “Yeah, it’s like a sore dick.”

To have a sore dick means you either just got laid a lot or have had to take matters into your own hand. To quote Jackson Browne: “Rosie you’re all right, you wear my ring…”Yes, we’re talking about masturbation, which is part of sex, but certainly not the whole part. Guys do it. Gals do it. Monkeys and sea otters do it too. Whacking it one way or the other is part of being alive.

I know a guy who proudly claimed to have whacked it seven times in one 24-hour period. But the real goal of sex of course is to not have to whack it. The goal is to get someone else to whack it for you. Fappy may be good when necessary, but f****** is that much better. Usually.

Biblical support

Sexual union is both a plain object and the ultimate mystery of the universe. Even the Bible can’t resist a good sex tale. Consider this excerpt from Song of Songs,

Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth—
    for your love is more delightful than wine.
3 Pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes;
    your name is like perfume poured out.
    No wonder the young women love you!
4 Take me away with you—let us hurry!
    Let the king bring me into his chambers.

Oh boy. Now things are cooking.

On being horny

We all know what it’s like to be in our prime, horny and young and eager to find someone to hump. The entire Hollywood movie industry is founded on such fare it seems. Same with the Internet. Without porn the whole thing probably would not have been successful. Our sex drive makes us hungry for content that feeds our sexual minds.

The question is whether the sex drive is tied into our mutual hunger for speed. Is it sex that makes us want to run and ride and swim faster? Are we prepping ourselves to attract a mate or simply catch up with one? Then again, we could all be running away from our own sexual needs. You can’t run a 10K with a hardon, now can you?

The gals rule

It has become evident over the last few years that women have sex drives just as valid and driving as men. This is distressing to many who view the gals daily exposing themselves on Reddit Gone Wild as a depraved sign of moral and cultural decay.

Yet one wonders if those women don’t now something about themselves. After all, how long in life will they look like that? It either takes the fortune of good genes or a lot of work to keep a body in good shape. As women move along in years and they work through having babies or simply combat the vagaries of aging, they might try to recover the body they once had. In that process there are health benefits including prevention of heart disease, one of the biggest threats to women’s health. It’s all part of a convergence of image and desire.

So the sex drive and the strength of self-perception that goes with it may perform a valuable role in women’s health just as trying to keep fit and not get out of shape and become less desirable does for men.

Speed of life

It all comes down to speed. The more we keep moving and the faster we are able to go, the more we’re prepared in some ways to play the mating game.

Then it’s often a matter of being smart enough to go slow. To revel in the moment and let the whole sex thing build to its natural climax. It really is miraculous that we spend all that time trying to go fast only to turn around and slowly screw ourselves into a state of happy exhaustion.

Uh oh

What about the perils of lust and sin? Are we all just biological humping machines or is there a higher moral standard to which we should all be held. There’s good news and bad news on the whole sin front. This bit of scripture from the book of Mark comes down on the razors edge of what lust can do, and what you should do about it.

“And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell…”

Well, the Bible is full of parables and symbols and metaphors. I guess we can take this whole thing literally and pluck out an eye when we lust after others. But that would leave another eye to lust away at will.

Or, we could consider that the “eye” as it were stands for sexual desire. Which would mean that whacking off or rubbing one out to release sexual tension might actually be a rational response to irrational desires. Of course with some people, it might take several “eyes” a day to reach a state of sexual calm. Hence the joke about the sore dick we used to make when our coach told us that we “can’t beat fun.”

The Pope speaks

Recently none other than the Pope revealed a bit of scriptural wisdom that is driving conservatives crazy. He said, and I paraphrase, “We should consider that all laws that do not lead to Jesus and the love of Christ are obsolete…”

Which means that the definition of Christian love just got a whole lot broader from a sexual perspective. Seriously, it’s never really been a sin to whack off or rub one out. Not when it releases sexual tension and plucks out the eye of desire that might lead us to distraction.

More than one productive person has realized that creativity and productivity can be blocked by sexual desire. It’s a simple truth that an orgasm clears the mind. Perhaps that’s what the book of Mark was really talking about. The “eye” to which it refers is that of sexual distraction, not lust alone. God wants us to be sexual beings. We’re wired that way.

The lessons of the Bible point again and again to the fact that sexual excess is the enemy of a wholesome life. It’s not heterosexuality versus homosexuality. It’s not even sex within marriage that is the sole definition of fidelity. One of the key scriptural passages long used to indict masturbation was the story of Onan, a dude who was called to screw his brother’s wife in order to continue the family line. Here’s how it played out.

“Then Judah said to Onan, “Sleep with your brother’s wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to raise up offspring for your brother. But Onan knew that the child would not be his; so whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from providing offspring for his brother.” 

Typically, a long line of uptight people took that passage all wrong. The words “spilled his semen” were translated to mean that he jerked off. That was turned into an indictment of masturbation as a whole, called Onanism. But from the context of this passage we should actually derive that Onan committed coitus interruptus. He pulled out during intercourse,  in other words. Of course that is not that effective a form of birth control, and it was his intent to avoid conception that was the sin. In truth the story of Onan should be an indictment of the Catholic recommendation of the rhythm method as a superior and acceptable alternative for birth control. But of course that would mess with centuries of very stupid tradition on the part of the Catholic Church, which like the Pharisees has always leaned toward a control freak obsession with laws over love.

It’s not about sex

And please take notice that the lead character in the story of Onan is named “Judah.” That’s a symbolic name for the entire population of Jews. This passage is actually about Onan participating in propagation of the race of people known as Jews. Thus the story isn’t really about sex.  It is about following the orders of God to be fruitful and multiply the Jewish race.

But when it comes to sex, conservative people love to focus on how bad it is and that obsession makes them miss the real meaning of so much of what they’re reading. The same thing holds true with the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. It’s been presented as a clear case against homosexuality when in fact the real purpose of the story is to point out the injustice of abusing helpless strangers. That’s also the primary and real message of the Judeo-Christian tradition as a whole, a fact that is affirmed by the tale of the Good Samaritan who cares for an abused man when so-called religious leaders walk on by.

Freedom from unnecessary guilt

It’s important that none of us torture ourselves over sexuality or feel guilty where we need not suffer our own doubts. These attractions we’re feeling can be so affirmative, joyful and creatively constructive when we keep it all in perspective.

Yes, we’d all love to think that sex only occurs within the bonds of Christian marriage. But take a look at the story of Onan in the Bible! He’s literally pressed into service by his tradition to screw his brother’s wife! That’s adultery for hire. Traditions were strong about family life, but when rules needed to be broken, there were wholly (and holy) exceptions at work.

Levels of desire

In real life, there are millions of so-called Christian marriages where one or the other partner has a far different level of sexual desire. Some marriages become essentially sexless and the mate with sexual desire is left to fend for themselves. Literally.

Still other marriages are torn apart by sexual desires and infidelity, porn addictions and a host of other sex-related challenges. But there are constructive approaches to dealing with the full range of sexual desire. We’re not all calibrated the same. Some with uncontrollable desires aren’t  calibrated at all and need help coming to grips with their own biology. The appropriate response is to get help with those challenges, not force them into a funnel of judgement and condemnation based on really bad theological interpretations.

First do no harm

It is now clear that homosexuality falls well within the range of normal human behavior. The few indictments found in the Bible are the product of cultural aversions, not sexual perversion. We should discard these views as obsolete just as we disregard laws in Leviticus and Deuteronomy that have nothing to do with modern knowledge of medicine, science and biology.

That does not mean that harmful or abusive homosexual relationships do not exist. It is just as important that two partners respect and honor each other in homosexual relationships as it is in heterosexual relations.

Common sense

As for those of us who run and ride, there’s a certain amount of common sense to be gained involving ourselves in generally positive and physical activities such as running and riding and swimming. These can also provide a release for physical and mental tension. It’s not that we’re trying to  run away from our sexual selves. It’s more that we can form an identity of confidence and self awareness.

It happens that sometimes people going through life changes find themselves suddenly and dramatically attracted to other people who run and ride. It’s all about matching up identities. Let’s not deny this happens or pretend that marriages don’t get broken up by lust for life.

Finding our way

Way back in the early 80s I was introduced to a young married woman who began training with me on the roads. She was fast and attractive. Finally one of our runs resulted in a moment when she stood on her toes and gave me a kiss on the lips. The world began to spin and I did not know what to do. So I did nothing. She went back to her husband who frankly did not like the fact that she loved to run. He seemed jealous of her time and involvement in the sport in which she frankly excelled.

I’ve often wondered how that marriage turned out. She confessed that he was not affectionate toward her. Hence she went searching for that affection and affirmation somewhere else. These things just go together. The feed but are not constituted solely by sex. That’s just the expression of a set of deeper emotions.  Sometimes sex is just a method to find our true selves. And sometimes we run or ride a long way to find that out as well. It’s funny how similar those two pursuits really are.

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The top half of my body is blueberries, strawberries and grapes and the bottom half is cheap slices of green melon

Posted on November 11, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

Fruit CupIt has often been said that we are what we eat. And if that were true we might look pretty interesting.

Those of us who run and ride try like heck to eat well and by proxy, to look great and feel even greater. But even when you try to eat well, life can be tricky.

For example, back when I lived in Philadelphia and worked downtown, I made it a practice to buy lunch from the street vendors all over town. There was some great food out there, especially Chilly Pheasestakes. I mean Philly Cheesesteaks. Those tended to clog your arteries and your brain as you can tell.

Get your fruity on

So at least three days a week I would find a fruit vendor and order a giant fruit cup instead. You had to watch those fruit vendors carefully. There was a game you had to play with them or they would fill up the entire bottom of the cup with cheap grade melon (especially watermelon) and then top it off with a few grapes and dribs and drabs of other fruit on the top. You’d get the appearance of a fruit cup when in fact you were mostly paying for water and fiber at the bottom of the cup.

Locals like me knew the game well and stepped close to the fruit vendor to say, “Not too much watermelon please.” That would let the fruit vendor know you were onto their game. If you were quiet about it they appreciated your discretion and would give you more of the good stuff like blueberries and other healthy edibles. Then you could go eat your actual fruit cup in peace while watching out-of-towners loaded up with cups that were mostly filled with watermelon.

Yes it’s a food industry

The whole world works like this you see. The entire food industry is based on the dynamic that food manufacturers (and yes that is the appropriate term) try to use as few real (and more expensive) ingredients as possible in the food you buy and eat. They also slowly shrink the size of their actual products while enhancing product packaging to make it appear you’re still getting the same value. It’s a wicked game.

Which means that we think we’re buying stuff that’s healthy for us and getting good value when in fact about 60% of what we ingest each day is actually equivalent to the cheap watermelon at the bottom of a Philadelphia vendor cup rather than wholesome foods like blueberries and strawberries and other stuff that stick seeds in your teeth.

Real food will cost you

It’s a lot of work to actually eat healthy. It also tends to cost a lot more unless you have access to local food markets. Step into any Fresh Market food store and you’ll find out that a bowl of fruit alone can cost you $37. Real food will cost you.

It’s the same way with fast food restaurants. That stuff you eat on the dollar menu isn’t really food. It’s the byproducts of things that look enough like food to pass as chicken or beef or fish. The whole idea that something like Chicken McNuggets is real food, or that Doritos have any real relationship to whole grains, or that Hershey’s chocolate is really chocolate is a giant ruse. It tastes like real food and stimulates our brains. But fake food is just that: fake.

Layers of existence

Which means that if we really are what we eat, and things were to settle out in the order of our bodies like some giant pie chart of human existence, we’d all be built like one of those Philadelphia Fruit Cups served to out-of-towners. A thin layer of fruit at the top underlaid by cheap melon and perhaps some remnants of a Philly Cheesesteak.

I work hard to avoid being one of those people who falls for all that phony crap, but old habits and naive notions are hard to change. I still believe the lies on packaging even though I know better.

But at least this morning at Graham’s 318 in Geneva, Illinois, I could see the layers of fruit in the cup and estimate that about 70% of the good stuff was still in there.

And perhaps I’ll run, ride and swim a little better this week as a result of not eating like the out-of-towner I know that I am.

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Your inner runner wants to talk to you

Posted on November 10, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth
Photo Copyright Christopher Cudworth

Photo Copyright Christopher Cudworth

Whether you are new to running or have been at this most of your long life, there is a voice inside your head that travels with you everywhere you go. It is the voice of your Inner Runner.

That voice tells you how fast or slow you can go each day. Sometimes the Inner Runner is excited to be on the road with you. On other days, not so much.

Sometimes the Inner Runner does not even let you get out the door. It conspires with your bruised ego, your deflated notion of self-respect or your depressed heart to discourage you from putting one foot in front of the other.

IMG_3847But if you refuse to listen and get out the door the Inner Runner will often change its tune and start talking to you in more positive terms. “See, this isn’t so bad!” the Inner Runner will say. “I told you we should go!”

In other words, the Inner Runner is sometimes a pathetic liar. It will also tell you that you can’t run as fast as you’d like, or as far. Yet when you do increase the pace, it wants to take all the credit.

Your Inner Runner will complain about feet that hurt, knees that ache and eyes that smart from sweat. Truth be told, the Inner Runner likes things easier than they really are sometimes. You have to tell the Inner Runner to Shut the Fuck Up at times.

At other times the Inner Runner can get too enthusiastic and carried away with the thrill of actually liking this running thing. At the end of the week when you are just two miles IMG_3848short of your mileage goal, the Inner Runner can send you out the door to put in two more miles when the family is waiting and would just like to get in the car to go have pizza. You should tell your Inner Runner that those extra two miles can wait. They really can.

The Inner Runner loves all kinds of weather but is likely to complain or get a little freaked out if things drastically change within a single run. The Inner Runner craves predictability.

Yet the Inner Runner also hates boredom. That means you may need to start a conversation with the Inner Runner before you begin your daily run and say, “No, we’re not running that same loop down by the river again. We need variety.”

The Inner Runner will usually go along, but not without trying to distract you from the new plan. The Inner Runner recalls things like the cute guy or girl you saw on the trail yesterday because curiosity and the Eternal Hope of Attraction is a jealous partner when it comes to choosing running routes.

IMG_3849For much the same reason your Inner Runner can take over your brain at social occasions like the post-race gathering at Starbucks where everyone is sipping coffee and enjoying being done with their run. You’ll be pleasantly talking with someone and sounding kind of cool, calm and collected when the Inner Runner suddenly wells up in your head and you blurt out something insane like, “I’m totally freaking out about this upcoming marathon.”

But don’t worry, everyone around you will understand that the voice they just heard was your Inner Runner and not really you. So they talk to you instead of the Inner Runner and say something calming like, “Don’t worry. We all get nervous before a big event.”

To which the Inner Runner starts a parallel and distracting dialogue. “Oh, sure, those people think it’s easy. They’ve already done a marathon! I’m new at this! I haven’t even run IMG_385020 miles yet, much less 26.2! Omigod, I’ll never get one of those running ovals for my car if I don’t figure out how to do this!”

Then someone will tap you on the shoulder and say, “Hey, where’d you go? Did your Inner Runner take over your brain?”

And you’ll snap to awareness again, smiling that stupid smile that says you’re coming out of a kind of runner’s hypnosis. “Ah, yeah. I was just thinking, ” you blurt.

“We’ve all been there,” your friend will say with a degree of assurance. “Just keep thinking positive.”

Well, you desperately hope your Inner Runner can do that. Otherwise you worry that you’ll go insane from wrestling with the voice of the Inner Runner.

IMG_3851But the next time you lace on your running shoes, the Inner Runner behaves in an unusual fashion. It actually waits a few minutes to begin talking as you warm up and stretch. Then it quietly asks the question you most like to hear when you’re a runner:

“Where we going today?”

And you smile and begin to put one foot in front of the other. Thoughts start to flow and add up. It turns out the Inner Runner really is your friend after all. They were just being a little bitch or a little bastard to toughen you up for when the real tests come along.

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How soon we forget the pain of the last marathon

Posted on November 7, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

Running conversationI run and ride with people who are both conservative and liberal. Always have. Always will. Sometimes politics comes up in conversation. Sometimes it doesn’t. The run or ride is what’s important at the time.

Here’s the interesting aspect of all this however. It was once said by Olympic marathon champ Frank Shorter, and I paraphrase, that the only reason you would ever do another marathon is because you’ve forgotten how badly the last one hurt.

Of course there are people who are gluttons for punishment. Who run marathons every weekend and live happily ever after to tell about it. But I doubt they race at the level at which Frank Shorter competed.

Marathoning has become commodified, part of a cult of accomplishment that in many ways confuses completion with quality.

70s-era marathoner Bill Rodgers once branded much of what he saw in the burgeoning marathon boom “graceless striving.” He later walked that statement back a bit because it was perceived as elitist. Perhaps he even changed his mind upon realizing marathoning benefited people in ways that at first seemed useless to a man capable of winning. I was with Bill Rodgers one day when a man ran up to the vehicle in which we were riding and asked him for a bit of advice for a 4-hour marathoner. “You can run for four hours?” Rodgers asked incredulously. He makes an interesting point. It takes more guts to be slow (or even stupid) sometimes than it does to win.

That reminds me that our current electoral process has become a similarly protracted process for choosing public officials. Two years out from the 2016 Presidential election we are already debating the candidates and outcome. American politics has become one long, stupid marathon. It hurts everyone to proceed this way.

Let’s call it for what it really is. Graceless striving. Here we sit with the results of the 2014 election in which millions of Americans voted for a party that absolutely trashed the nation’s economy by 2008 and six years later they have forgotten the pain and suffering the nation felt due to unbudgeted wars, unregulated financial shenanigans and corporate and religious zealotry driving the party in power. But people are all too happy to sign up for another run with the Republicans. It makes no sense. But neither does marathoning if you think about it.

Apparently they used the last six years to forget painful recovery it took to get over the marathon of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in office. It’s a comedy, really, in which the real people who control the nation’s destiny never really show their faces at all. The moneyed few and the CIA pull the strings. The rest is just theater.

My conservative friends are crowing at the supposed triumph. But one wonders what they’ll think when America inevitably hits the wall again at 20 miles. The incoming party wants America to run on nothing. They’ll slash budgets and even shut down the government to get their way. It’s happened before. It will happen again.

It will hurt to run the nation on nothing. We haven’t even completely recovered from the last race. In cycling we call it a bonk when someone runs out of energy during a ride. Often you feel great up to that moment when the juice runs out.

Those of us who run and ride should be smarter than this. We know how it works. Yet we watch in wonder as the politicians keep on running away with our hopes and dreams.

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It’s time for all people of good conscience to take “the treatment”

Posted on November 6, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

My father was never one to harbor much in the way of complaint from my mother. Whenever she would bitch of some ache or pain of any nature, dad would wave a hand at her and tell her, “Go out and take the treatment.”

See, “the treatment” was my father’s way of telling my mother to go outside, get ready to run and head smack into a tree.

“That way,” he’d tell her. “Whatever was hurting before won’t hurt by comparison to the pain you feel when you’ve just run into a tree.”

Was this the act of revenge by chipmunks for my long ago crimes?

Which perhaps explains why I did just that this past summer. I ran my bike smack into a fallen tree. And let’s be honest. I should have seen it there. There was no real curve concealing it’s presence. Just a big, fat tree lying across the trail. It was a thick tree. With bark and leaves and branches sticking up so that I could sufficiently scrape the skin off my chin resulting in four badly sewn stitches by a doctor who frankly seemed grossed out by the entire experience of treating me.

The dude never even looked at the side of my body, which turned out to have far more damage inside than my bloody chin. I’m still going to a massage therapist who grinds on the thick lump of scar tissue hiding underneath the skin. It hurts like hell.

Bruises t00So the treatment continues for me. First I ran smack into a tree and now the pain is still echoing through the fiber of my flesh. My dad would be proud of me. I took the treatment well.

But now that the results of the November 2014 election are in, I’m very much considering a new dose of “the treatment” to make the pain of all this blind idiocy go away. There are plenty of trees in my yard. I don’t even need to ride my bike to find one. There’s a big maple out back with a sign that says MIRACLES HAPPEN on it. That one would work just fine for “the treatment.”

Perhaps I’ll watch 5 minutes of Fox News this morning and head out for my collision with the tree. See, Fox News is to news what an enema is to rivers of shit. You always know what the outcome will be. Tarsnakes wait to take you down. So even though the election of November 2014 was decided on the Big Lie of corporate money, Citizens United and a whole bunch of people who bought the Fox Lie that Obama is a failure, Fox News will not let up with their river of dark-hearted shit. Oh no. They’ll spend even more time jamming political suppositories (also known as Talking Points) up their own asses to celebrate the thrilling results of what comes after. You can’t really blame them. It’s what they do. 

Vomitorium

Drawing by Ralph Steadman

Drawing by Ralph Steadman

Actually, it’s far worse than that. Even while they’re jamming shit-generating suppositories up their political asses (and there are plenty of them employed by Fox) they are simultaneously dining on the political corpses of their most hated opponents. The rotting flesh of their enemies as it does down their gullets both thrills and terrifies them. It’s like Romans in the vomitorium. They can’t eat enough of the flesh of their victims so they keep sticking their hands down their collective throats in order to make room for more.

The great political writer Hunter S. Thompson literally couldn’t take any more of their kind of bullshit. He took the ultimate treatment by blowing his own brains out. That was a preferable option to listening to the furied bullshit of idiots with more money than brains, and less brains than a hamster running on a razor wheel. They know it’s killing them, but they keep on running because it’s what they do.

Taking the treatment

So I’ll take my treatment like a man. I can admit the Democrats lost in a violent shitstorm. But actually I’m rather proud of the fact that by taking the high road, the Democrats perpetually lose important elections big time. Of course I’m a bit disappointed when liberals like me stay home from the voting booth. They only come out to vote when the IMG_8648Presidency is on the line. Here’s the problem: liberals can’t bothered when the arguments about politics center on whether humans came from monkeys or not. Arguing about anachronisms and backwards-looking politics just doesn’t motivate them like it does conservatives, who can always find an excuse to be happy even sometime in the future it will kill their own children. They’re always ready to whack Isaac if political or religious duty calls. That’s why they don’t give a shit about you or me. By comparison to killing their own kids, the rest of us hardly matter.

Shit rivers abound

That’s the level of debate we get in this modern era, and people of good intellectual conscience simply can’t be bothered with it. It’s like people say about the weather. “Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it.”

Hence, the debate as well over climate change. That’s how callow our society has become.

But in fact the Fox News Shitstorm is much like the Polar Vortex, only a lot stinkier and a lot more shallow compared to the layers of snow we got here in Chicago last winter.

Or, Fox News and the conservative movement in America is like the Platte River in Nebraska when the hog farms upriver all release their shit slop at the same time. Then it runs a mile wide and an inch deep. Then they tell you it’s the natural course of things.

The Koch Brothers got rich using hog slop politics and greenwashing their evil intentions. Now they grease the country with dark money that fuels their corporate interests.

Well, it’s only shit after all

dscn9203.jpgPeople in America seem to loooove the thrill of it all. When the shit waves come rolling their way, they like to take the long board out on the shit surf rolling across the continent because, as the Beach Boys once sang, it makes them feeling like they’re sitting on top of the world. Catch a wave.

There are plenty of shit waves to go around. That’s why people watch pro football even through it destroys the minds of the very athletes who play it. That’s why people tune into pro wrestling even though it is absolutely fake. People want to be stimulated by power and a sense of good and evil, right and wrong, black and white and Democrat versus Republican. Catch a wave and you’re sitting on top of the world. As Mark Twain once said, “All it takes is ignorance and confidence, and success is sure.”

No shit

That about describes what just happened in America. Which is why all people of good conscience should go outside and run straight into the nearest tree. The pain you feel will make you wake up to the fact that what just happened was bad, but not fatal. And if the lump on your head does not go down before the 2016 election, perhaps you’ll wade through the next shitstorm and actually go to the voting booth and put sane people back in office rather than the shitmeisters about to shove a suppository of radical conservatism up your ass and tell you that it’s for your own good.

Is that clear enough for you? Now go take the treatment. You earned it.

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Did the 2014 election reveal a holy road or a road that’s holey?

Posted on November 5, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

It all starts with an appreciation for the forces that drive the world.

It all starts with an appreciation for the forces that drive the world.

Those of us who run and ride hundreds if not thousands of miles on America’s roads know the difference between a good road and a bad road. We’re intimately connected to the earth. Grounded you might say in contact with the manufactured surfaces of the various roads we ride and run.

No one knows the roads better than us. Not even the people who asphalt and pave and pour concrete. Nor the folks who come back later pouring tar into cracks to create tarsnakes. Much less the people who return even later to pour even more tar on the road and spread pebbly gravel over it in those horrendous patch and seal operations.

Cyclists and runners traverse it all. We see how roads work and how they slowly decompose. It starts the very day the road crews finish their job and drive away. Rain falls. Heat comes. Cold heaves and cracks the surface. The weight of traffic bends and stretches the road surface. Cracks form. Grooves deepen. A road is not a static thing. It is a living thing. It requires care and attention.IMG_7142The worst result of road neglect is potholes. They start small and can expand into gaping depths that vex everyone who approaches. Some roads get so badly potholed there is not much road left to travel. One must slow and steer around the deepest problems or risk a flat or a soaking wet running shoe. Among cyclists there is much bitter joking about roads such as these. “Watch out for the good road,” I’ve heard my companions jest.

The good road. It’s all so symbolic isn’t it? Truth be told there are people who seem unable to decipher good road from bad. Worse, they simply don’t care whether a road is good or bad as long as they can drive around it somehow. They’ve got other things to do than worry day to day about whether the roads we travel are good or bad.

Yet they’re the first to bitch when something bad happens to them on the road. They love to blame others for the problems. Yet they’re so busy moralizing over the fact that they have to pay for the roads and actually have to share the road with someone riding a bike that they can’t seem to understand what causes cracks and potholes in the first place.

It’s them, you see. But they seem themselves as too holy for that cause and effect.

I met one such man on a rural road who got out of his truck to yell at our group for slowing him down. “I pay taxes!” he yelled at us. As if that were reason enough for him to disobey the call to yield to cyclists signaling and turning left. He’s in a car. We’re on bikes. Somehow we’re breaking the American social contract by not acting exactly like him.

photo-120See, people can’t be expected to focus on good roads or bad when they’re convinced they have a better idea about how to use a road than you. It’s become normal in American political life to deny and ridicule people who need or want to travel roads for purposes other than those defined by selfish reasons. God Forbid a poor person should actually walk to work along one of America’s roads. You can hear the voices inside those luxury vehicles castigating the pedestrian carrying a plastic grocery bag with their lunch on the way to work.

“Get a car! Jesus, I hate poor people!”

Hence the election results of 2014. The selfish have won again. Now they’ll want to tell us the road ahead is holy, when in fact it is only holey.

Into the potholes of life will be cast the rights of those whose gender or orientation do not match their idea of a straight road. The tarsnakes of religion will vex the wheels of all those who do not abide by conservative Rules of the Road. They will even attempt to dictate the flow of traffic when it comes to who deserves to use the apocryphal roads. We’ve seen this literally happen in New Jersey with so-called Governor Chris Christie, who shut down roads to punish his political detractors. Like so many of his ilk, he thinks he’s King of the Roads. So you see how this works.

That literal event carries so much symbolism for what it will be like now that Republicans control both the House and the Senate. We’ll now be led by the likes of Mitch McConnell who swore, against his true oath of office, to undermine President Obama any way he could. Obstructionism. Blocking the road to progress.

john-boehner-cryingWe’ll see the heavy truck of John Boehner now whining down the road and trying to push the President into the political ditch.

We’ll all have to move aside for the likes of Paul Ryan who on one hand claims religious foundations for his worldview while bragging about the fiscally existential philosophy of Ayn Rand on the other.

They’re a confused, desperate and zealous lot. They hate the road you choose to travel if you disagree with them. They’ll run you over if you get in their way. They’ll cry foul if you don’t jump out of the way. They will not Share the Road.

In fact they will ignore the nation’s infrastructure needs as they have done for decades by refusing to pass legislation to repair our nation’s bridges and roads.  To them, every social or political problem that does not match up their road map of corporatism and favors for friends is a patch and seal deal. They do the bare minimum because they while they serve in government, they don’t believe in it. Essentially they’re always, eternally driving down the wrong side of the road, playing chicken with all those who dare oppose them.

Then they put up traffic signs. You had better obey them. “Let’s move on to abortion, and gay marriage. And let’s keep busy telling women they already earn enough money. Those are the real problems of society.”

They’ll also attempt to defund the good roads of Medicare and Social Security, insurance programs that provide for the health and welfare of the elderly. They’ll be casting millions of everyday people to the side of the road as well. Because when it comes to health care, they answer to only one constituency: The people who pay for their election. They’ll vote to defund the Affordable Care Act. They’ve already done it about 50 times.

dscf2275sIt’s like they’re a mad trucker going coast to coast with a load of manure they’re eager to dump on the President’s desk. “Pass this or we’ll bring you even more of this shit,” they’ll say. The President will of course veto all their crap. Then they’ll blame him for raising a political stink in Washington.

During all this they’ll claim they’re on the right side of the road because their “tradition” tells them they are “doing the right thing” by slashing budgets and ignoring those in need. They’ll remain beholden to freaks who think guns are the law of the land. They do not care if thousands and thousands of people have been killed on American soil by gun violence. More Americans have been killed by gun violence than all the American soldiers killed in wars on foreign soil. Yet they’ll tell you that guns are the source of peace in America. That’s the same as running you over with a truck and then backing up to make sure the tire tracks show.

It should be clear that their so-called traditions are not on the right or holy side of the road. But in order to remind these “holier than thou” Republicans that they do a shit job of real morality, let us consider this parable from the Bible that shows us how and why it is right to act in good conscience. And how to treat others down the road.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan

25 On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

26 “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

27 He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’[c]; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[d]”

28 “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

29 But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

30 In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. 31 A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32 So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two denarii[e] and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’

36 “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

37 The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”

Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

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Don’t blame Obamacare if the current state of health care makes you sick

Posted on November 4, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

IMG_3668Walking into Cadence Hospital was something of a brain rush. For years I strolled those halls between the hospital walls and the cafeteria. There were surgeries and treatments. Chemotherapies and patient recoveries. It was all part of the picture of being a caregiver.

There were also many trips to the cashier and the hospital financial office to figure out bills. Some of them piled up. Others were written off thanks to the charitable arm of Cadence. Over the years we worked with HMOs, PPOs and more than a few I Don’t Knows. COBRA and finally Obamacare. Somehow most of those bills got paid one way or another.

It struck us for years how strange it was to hear people complaining about the politics of health care. Until you’ve sat there getting treatment while knowing the next bill alone might add up to $45,000, none of it really makes much sense politically. We heard stories of people bankrupted by their medical bills, and people who could not get coverage at all.

So we were thankful that somehow, someway we paid our share and insurance covered the rest.

IMG_3673It almost broke us a few times. When I lost my job the day after I informed a company that my wife had cancer it came to pass that we owed $2000 a month just in premiums to remain coverage. We turned in our certificate of “creditable coverage” whatever that means and then scraped and scrambled to earn the money to make those payments. At one point we had to take money from unemployment insurance to pay for health insurance.

It was not my wife’s “fault” that she got cancer. She ate well. Never smoked. Only drank moderately. Ovarian cancer takes women at random just like so many other types of cancer. We’re all walking around with potentially cancerous cells in our bodies. It’s our “job” you might say to try to keep cancer away. But in the end, it’s a product of chance.

As a lifelong runner and endurance athlete I like to think that I’ve put some insurance in the health bank. I realize that’s a ruse in many ways. You can protect yourself from cancer and get heart disease. You can avoid or get a flu shot and the flu comes anyway.

I used to work out so hard I’d make myself sick. There were long, deep bouts with the common cold because my resistance was so low. One time it put me in the hospital with a numb arm because I’d take Tylenol with codeine that affected the nerves in my shoulder.

IMG_3675But until I crashed my bike a couple years ago, and then picked up a sliver in my finger that led to an infection, my journeys to the hospital were pretty limited, other than to care for my late wife. Believe me, that was plenty of time spent in the hospital.

So I walked those halls thinking of the fact that last summer my companion Sue also earned a trip through the surgery room with her bike crash. Then I had surgery at a different hospital on my infected finger.

What I’m saying is that I never take my health for granted. Ever. As we age new challenges arise. My group of Friday Night Dinner friends from church have to be careful not to let conversation devolve into a medical bitch session. They all kid me the most, however. For a while last summer I was always scraping my bald scalp a day or two before dinner, or cutting my hand or picking up some other visible wound for which I get a good teasing.

IMG_8648Maybe I secretly desire the attention. But that’s not it, I know. Sometimes a good scrape or two with pain or blood or even death is a good reminder that we should all be grateful for our basic, good old health.

And if not, we should be grateful for the hospitals and physicians that know how to treat us. And hopefully fix us.

Despite all the vagaries of modern health insurance, it still strikes me that we should be grateful there are people trying to figure out how to make it all work better than it used to do. You can criticize the initial iterations of the Affordable Health Care Act all you want, but the facts show that more people have health care and that insurance premiums are only scheduled to rise by an estimated 5% next year. That’s far better than the 12% per year they increased on average during the recent Bush years.

Yes there are doctors pulling away from the program because the negotiations can be ugly. And yes physicians already have a ton to deal with given regulations over insurance, liability and other medical practice standards. But that’s not strictly the fault of Obamacare. HMOs started that swing years ago, so it’s all part of the arc.

IMG_3676What really needs to take place is grand negotiation in good faith over how and what the American health system should and can do. Is it strictly the responsibility of each individual to care for their own health and pay for it? Is personal health a free market issue or is it part of the social good to provide equal access to health care for every citizen? Are there  group dynamics necessary to evolve a better overall system of providing Americans consistent, quality health care. Or is it group dynamics that got us into trouble in the first place? Is corporatized health care causing a ‘health gap’ in the American population by playing favorites with people who work for larger companies?

Ask any small company about their biggest headaches and often they pertain to providing employee benefits such as health care. What if the American system removed this burden from the backs of small business and big business alike, and made it possible for people to shop at will in a truly free market of health care plans without enrollment periods or giant groups that shrink the cost of health care for a selected few while raising the rates for those most at risk?

What if indeed? The public option for health care is necessary to make this happen. Some people who claim to be ‘free market’ advocates don’t have the courage to admit that such an approach would mess with the gravy train they already have.

But what’s the goal, to provide adequate and equal health care opportunities or to sustain a status quo that was getting so out of balance costs were skyrocketing out of control?

Those of us who run and ride and swim might wryly grin that if left to our own devices, we might have an advantage over those who smoke, drink or abuse their bodies and minds with drugs. But we don’t have a pure democracy in America where majority always rules.  Our system is based on creating and delivering equal representation, not simply power plays.

In the long run, that’s a better system even if you’re the healthiest person in the world. Because it’s fair that despite circumstance or even bad choices, all people should have equal opportunity to quality health care.

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