Following an epic countryside ride in which I joined up with much younger cyclists to whip across the Illinois landscape, I was feeling frisky and proud. I got back home and wanted to take a photo for Instagram with my fluorescent cycling combo of bright yellow shoes, helmet, shirt, socks and an all-new yellow headsweat with pirate tails tied behind the head. Yeah, baby!
So I parked the bike by the garage door, set up the iPhone on Timer for three seconds, and stepped back to pose for the photo.
That first step turned into a grandiose fall––and an instant Instagram fail. My feet both flew out from under me and I wound up landing on my right backside in a saving roll. But that required pushing my body to the side with my left hand, which happened to be holding a set of Under Armor sunglasses that I’d picked up for $19 at our local Sierra Trading Post a few months back. Such a deal. But no more.
I wasn’t hurt, and did not lay there long, only a second or two. I saw the glasses were broken in two, right at the nose piece. I picked them up and considered whether it would be worth gluing them back together, but that never works. For all the claims made by the glue companies, they always break again.
What ran through my mind was gratitude that nothing else was broken. Not a wrist or a collar bone. A hip or a bike helmet. I’ve known people that have busted some of those things simply by reaching down to adjust some part of their bike when their cleats slipped on the surface and down they went. It doesn’t matter what age you are or how well you handle a bike, stuff like this happens to just about everybody that rides a bike.
Even Chris Froome crashed into a wall during a training ride in the Tour de France. Busted his leg badly. It took him months to recover.
So while I wound up on my ass on a bright summer morning, that’s the least of my worries in this world right now. As it turned out, that photo was too good not to share. The fact that it was exactly three seconds into the grandiose fail is actually remarkable. The expression on my face…is part laughter and part anguish.
You really can’t trust cycling shoes on any surface. They’re meant for one thing, and it isn’t walking. Next time I try to take a selfie, it might pay to remember that.
Hopefully, and I mean this quite sincerely, that moment was the worst I’ll face this year. In summers past, I’ve had my share of weird moments, sudden crashes and bursts of inattention that led to other calamities. The price of being a distracted creative, I suppose.
I’ll leave you with the chagrined aftereffect of the photo taken following the ass crash. Do I look humbled enough for you? I hope so. I don’t want to have to do this all over again. But doesn’t my kit look great?
This morning we drove to Crystal Lake for an Open Water swim. It felt great to get into the water. Unfortunately, my Garmin watch seems to think I can swim on land as well as in the lake. It went a little crazy tracking my distance this morning.
As you can see, at several points along the swim route, even though I freestyled by sighting from buoy to buoy, the Garmin thinks I swam onto Lake Avenue at several points.
Crazy Garmin
I swam for 40:00 and it credited me with a pace of 1:28 per hundred. Never in my life have a swum that fast. Sadly I’d been encouraged during the swim that I was clipping along at 1:42 per 100 pace. Even that would have been super fast for me.
In truth, I probably swam about 1600 meters, just as I did a few weeks ago when my goggles fogged up and I couldn’t sight for the life of me. I wandered all over the place and I was so embarrassed by the potential look of that swim route that I didn’t even save it. I didn’t want anyone to see how badly I’d swerved around.
Goggles on
Like most swimmers, I wear goggles every time I’m in the water. It’s what you do to be able to see clear and just as importantly, protect your eyes from either chlorine or contaminants found in lake or river water. You put goggles on because it is the safe, practical and smart thing to do.
There’s no guarantee the goggles won’t leak a bit if you don’t fit them right. And without a shot of anti-fog on them, it is surely possible for swim goggles to fog up and become a problem. Nothing in this world is perfect when it comes to protection.
Masks on
Which brings us to the topic of wearing face masks to protect ourselves and others from the spread of Coronavirus. Right now the infection rates are peaking all across the country. States like Illinois that imposed Stay At Home orders and have opened up in stages are remaining relatively stable. But states like Texas, Arizona and Florida, where governors at first refused to issue orders requiring people to wear masks are seeing huge spikes in their infection rates.
Too much, too soon
Some states like Wisconsin impetuously flung open the doors of bars and restaurants, but within days saw Covid-19 cases rise like an overheated thermometer. In some of those states, including California where Shelter In Place orders worked for weeks, the cases of Coronavirus and Covid-19 have risen again as people rush back to “normal” activities.
To make matters much worse, there is a movement afoot in America that resists wearing masks at all. Anti-Maskers claim their liberties are being infringed upon by government directives to wear masks in public.
Which seems stupid. Wearing a mask to protect yourself from an infectious, airborne disease is the same as wearing swim goggles to protect your eyes when swimming. Sure, you can swim without them, but the impact on your eyes can be quite deleterious, especially out in saltwater.
The Salty Water of Covid-19
When it comes to social conditions in America right now, we’re in extremely salty water when it comes to protecting our lungs and bodies from Covid-19 infection. All the government is asking people to do to protect themselves and others is to wear a mask in places where the “salt of the earth,” that’s other people, come in contact with each other.
The rest of the time people can do what the hell they want. You don’t need to wear a mask while driving around. It’s not even necessary in the parking lot of a grocery store, or sitting around in your backyard with people you know. The risks are only increased when you go swimming in the Public Sea of People that is America.
A spoiled and selfish populace
But too many Americans are acting like spoiled little brats when it comes to considerate living. They’ve banded together to whine and complain that being “forced” to wear a mask is a sign of tyranny by the government, or is unconstitutional. Such selfish, pathetic tactics of assuming victimhood to make some noxious claim of independence is not American in any sense of the word.
How do people even get this confused?
The interesting thing about the Anti-Maskers is that their perverse cogitations have unmasked the twisted notion of how they view freedom itself. It is likely that these people wearing tyranny masks are some of the same people Trumpeting the famous line that “freedom is not free” when referring to the sacrifices of our military in defending the nation. Our military has to wear all kinds of gear in all kinds of conditions. We don’t hear them whining to the public about their obligations, do we? Only when the equipment is insufficient do we hear our soldiers voice objections.
Lack of protection = blown up humvees
Such was the case during the last invasion of Iraq, when scrap metal had to be slapped on the bottom of Humvees. Then we did hear voices from the soldiers on the front, because their lives were at great risk from having underprotected equipment.
And what did Donald Rumsfeld tell them in reply? “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”
Where were all the concerned conservative voices when that cynical statement was made and that major debacle unfolded? Not a word was heard from the Right about any of that. They put their heads down and pretended that it never happened.
And now, when it comes to something as simple and easy as wearing a mask in public to protect against the spread of Coronavirus infection, these fake-ass patriots won’t do a single thing to protect their fellow citizens. They’re a massive pack of hypocrites, the Anti-Maskers. And now the truth about them is yet again unmasked.
Tyranny my ass
Some of the most vocal idiots have shown up at public meetings to spout conspiracy theories and repeat the same verbal detritus they read on the Internet.
In many many cases, their faces contort into masks of anger and imagined fears.
Their hero on the Anti-Masking front is none other than President Donald Trump, who refuses to wear a mask at all. But in truth, he never really goes out in public without that mask of orange makeup and a massive combover to hide insecurities about his complexion and his age. He’s the Clown King to all these Anti-Maskers.
That’s who the spoiled populace in America worships, a fraud, and by no coincidence, their behavior is equally, fraudulently, unpatriotic. Wear the mask, you stubborn and stupid people. We can see who you really are with or without one.
There are so many things we fail to notice in this world. Some of this negligence is the product of being adults. Our minds are so consumed by things to do that we cease to pay attention to the diversity of life all around us. We grow numb to the passing hours. Even days slide by. Sometimes, years. All because we miss the simple shape of a swallow on a wire.
Those of us who run and ride and swim have more opportunities than most to avoid such ambivalence. Now that the pandemic has encouraged (forced?) more people to get outside and exercise, many are finding good reasons to continue.
Mostly people go outside to keep sane and stay healthy. That contact with nature rather than each other may be keeping us all safer while changing human minds and bodies. Fresh air helps. But so does getting a little dirty.
Nature speaks to us
I once gave a series of talks titled Nature: The Ultimate Stress Reliever, whose main point was I’m now finishing up writing a book titled Nature Is My Country Club. The point of both is that the world is waiting for us. Nature speaks to us if we watch and listen. We simply need to get out and encounter it.
A place to escape
That doesn’t mean all is peaceful and serene in the natural world. A swallow on a wire seems peaceful enough. Yet they are also caught up in the swirling winds of survival. They need to eat. To breed. To move. To migrate. Summer is no less consumed with flying about as any other season. They are like us in many ways. The point isn’t that we’re missing some kind of peaceful sphere of existence by ignoring nature. It’s that the drama we already have running through our heads needs a place to escape. As every rider on a bike knows, there is nothing like hammering the pedals to let off some steam. As every runner also knows, anger and frustration melt away under the miles. And as every swimmer knows, the water washes away your immediate concerns.
Dispositions
I was driving on a country road this week when the sound of an angry kingbird caught my attention. The bird was swooping and diving at a red-tailed hawk perched on a telephone pole. (Do we still call it that?) Back and forth and up and down the kingbird went. The hawk seemed unperturbed. What an example of stolid disposition.
It’s funny how a simple scene like that can make you stop thinking about a lot of other things in life and go “Huh, that was interesting.”
When I ride my bike far west on country roads, it is the little things that start to stand out. The thin song of a meadowlark far out in a field. The tarsnakes twisting along the tarmac. The songs of chorus frogs in spring give way to grasshoppers in summer, then crickets and katydids. Suddenly it is fall again and the days grow shorter. Those rides flirt with darkness. A few blowing leaves mark the arrival of autumn.
Then come snow snakes in winter. The whirr of mountain bike tires and frost on your sunglass lenses. Nature keeps asking us questions. Begging our attention. Nothing works better to make us feel more alive.
If you’re not already taking in what nature has to offer, you should try it sometime. Being more alive is a ton more fun.
I did the unthinkable today. I wore shorts that exposed the white skin on my upper thighs.
It didn’t used to work this way. As a young runner, back when running short fashions were high, my legs were tan from toes to crotch. But with fashion changes came more modest casual clothing, and thighs are now largely hidden. It has also turned out that cycling shorts now nearly reach the knees. So my tan lines stop about eight inches above the bend in my legs.
Unfortunately, that leaves a section of white man thigh exposed when I wear the lone pair of New Balance running shorts that I own. Granted, my lack of tan on the upper thighs isn’t as obvious as that sported by women runners switching from running shorts to competitive bun huggers.
But the world is still a bit hypocritical about the social acceptability of exposed tan lines among men and women. I just watched a Disney show about Olympians in Greece, and the male athletes competed naked. Guys were considered the height of beauty along with women. So we’re still working on closing the gap on tan lines in the modern age. How far we haven’t come?
Hot choices
But it was hot this morning, and humid, so I wore my shortest shorts and arrived at the Great Western Trailhead at 7:30. That’s right when most of the high school kids were heading home from their summer workouts. So I felt fairly safe that packs of high school girls would not be forced to avert their eyes at the sight of my white thighs.
And I was correct. Recreational traffic on the trail was fairly light. And yet…
One still gets the feeling that people just don’t want to see white man thigh. So I purposely avoided eye contact during my, except to wave hello to the people I already knew.
Country roads
So on the norm, I’ll go back to more modest shorts such runs, and save my short shorts for lonely country roads where it is unlikely to offend creatures such as the thirteen-lined ground squirrel. I do hate to scandalize thirty-something moms pushing strollers or mid-forties guys doing their morning 10k. EXCUSE my glaringly white thigh muscles please.
Real scandal
But I also figure…that if this is the worst way I scandalize the world when America’s soldiers are being bounty hunted and the President does nothing, and the number of Coronavirus cases continues to expand, and the President does nothing, and selfish zealots refuse to wear masks in a fit of political spite, then I’ve got nothing to worry about. My scandal will pass. The lives of people lost to greater scandals than mine are what I’m truly concerned about.
I turn around to race back down court after scoring a basket.
The summer before my senior year in high school, I worked as a coach for the St. Charles Track Club, an organization originally managed by my coach cross country and track coach Trent Richards. When he stepped down a dedicated woman named Carol Rosene stepped up, and I would up one of the assistant coaches.
So my attention was focused on that program, and that meant I didn’t attend the basketball camp run by the high school coach Ron Johnson. I liked Coach Johnson, and he had enormous success with a team on which my younger brother played, reaching the Super Sectionals. My brother went on the play college basketball on a full ride at Kent State University. He was a great player that had developed a 36″ vertical leap to go with his 6’6″ frame. He was a monster around the basket and had a nice left-handed jump shot to boot.
Launching a jump shot.
So my 6’1″, 137 lb. frame was not the raw material needed to play basketball in our conference. While I was quick as heck, an excellent ball-handler and shooter, and a starter all the up to my junior year when we moved from Kaneland High School to St. Charles, it was clear that basketball probably wasn’t my future.
Even so, I went out for hoops on a whim that winter after cross country season ended. For a couple days I was shunted to the side with another guy from my class that hadn’t attended basketball camp. Then Coach Richards came by and stood next to us. “You guys know you’re not going to play, right? You didn’t go to basketball camp.”
At some level that disappointed me. At another level it was a relief. My parents never did buy me contact lenses. I was sick of getting smacked in the face and having my glasses shatter all over the gym floor.
Blocking an opponent’s shot.
As a result I played little during my junior year. I remember being a bit jealous that our flashy forward Jeff Howard had contacts and it seemed to help his peripheral vision quite a bit. Then it happened that I got slammed by an elbow sending my wire rim glasses to the floor where they dissolved into a million pieces of glass. Practice had to stop, and I sensed the frustration of Coach Johnson at having to deal with that delay. Rather than contact lenses, my mother bought me a set of those hideously thick black horn-rimmed sports glasses that blocked peripheral vision even more.
Finally during a late-season game, with the clock ticking down to below a minute, I could see Coach Johnson looking down the bench to give some of us subs a chance to get in the game. I watched as the clock dipped down to 45 seconds, then 30. He called my named. “Cudworth, go on in.”
I sat there for a moment and thought, “This isn’t worth it. If I don’t have value during the actual game, it sure means nothing now.” So I shook my head no.
Number 34 at far right.
Years later our assistant coach Jim Parker saw me playing hoops at a local gym. I’d actually gotten even better as a player thanks to hours of open gym basketball. By then I understood the game better too, and had contact lenses to boot. He watched me for a while and came over after the contest and said, “Maybe we made a mistake with you.”
Maybe so. Or maybe not. I’d fashioned my game in high school years after the famous Pete Maravich. I liked the flashy stuff with behind-the-back and between-the-legs dribbling. But my grasp of the game conceptually at that age was a bit lacking. Plus losing out on the chance to play basketball that year was probably good. I struggled with some classes that I had to take, such as economics and government, and hated it all the more. Adding in one more sport to the fall cross country and spring track seasons might have sunk me for good.
But somehow I was given a contact sheet of basketball photos from that junior year of basketball. I remember the game quite well to this day. I scored a bunch of points, blocked a few shots and ran the offense. But the week after that, my friend Paul Morlock, also a member of the team, invited me to do a college visit out in Pennsylvania. We missed one practice as a result of the trip. But when we got back, the JV coach told me, “You’re not going to play next game. You missed a practice.”
Yes, those short pants were the fashion in those days. Normally I liked #44 for Pete Maravich.
It happened that game was against my former high school teammates. It was bitterly embarrassing to be sitting on the bench, and my heart was red with rage at the injustice. But the team turned out to need me that day, so coach tossed me into the game with a few minutes left in the first half. I played out of control with fouls and the like.
That was the same coach who years later made the statement, “Maybe we made a mistake with you.”
Again, no real regrets about any of this. Running turned out to be my thing. And I enjoyed playing basketball for decades after high school, and never felt like I’d missed any real opportunities by not finishing that scholastic career. It just wasn’t meant to be.
For those of us that ‘lived the game’ for so many years there really can’t be any regrets. Last year I met up with one of my gym rat friends and we reminisced about the all those Saturdays and evenings spent playing ball and agreed that it was living life to the fullest. And that’s what you need to fill your basket of recollections. No regrets. Just buckets of fun.
In the era of Covid-19, there aren’t as many group rides happening. But even if there were, one of my favorite things to do in early summer is to go for twilight rides on the country roads west of our home.
I started cycling fifteen years ago. Back then, proving myself worthy in group rides was a high priority. The ability to ride steady with twenty other cyclists was a prized skill to learn. One of the weekly group rides that I loved always averaged 20 mph for 37 miles each week. It was a sane and great way to build fitness. There were men and women riders, about twenty five in all, and everyone bought into the dynamic. But that ride finally fell apart when the bike shop that sponsored it switched resources to holding weekly criterium practice. That wasn’t a bad thing. Just different.
Both taught me to ride in a group because I was racing road cycling criteriums. That’s where the bunch whizzes along at 25-27 mph on short courses with tight turns and challenging pace changes. The more you ride in groups, the better you get at it. I don’t have as much appetite for that kind of racing anymore. I think you can kind of wear out on that stuff after a while. Plus I’m good enough at crashing all on my own.
Same roads, different sport
I did not ride that gravel to the south on my tri-bike. Saving that for another day.
Now that I ride more for triathlon racing, the ability to go cycling alone is more important than ever. With weekends reserved for hammering along with my wife in her Ironman training, I still get out for a few rides on weekdays. Sometimes these rides are still done on the road bike. But last night I took the tri-bike setup out for a long ride on country roads.
Riding west the wind was straight in my face. I considered going north and south to deal with it more like a crosswind, but then reconsidered. It’s good practice and a great strength-builder to ride into a steady wind.
I did that for twenty-three miles west to the corner of two country roads well into DeKalb County. There I climbed a small hill and turned south toward Perry, the smooth way back toward civilization. I figured out that I’d ridden 16 mph into that 15mph wind, not too bad for starters.
Whip it good
Coming around the east side of a county forest preserve where shade covered the road.
Coming back on Perry, the first few miles of road were a little rough. On a tri bike in aero, you have to be careful and smart not to catch a patch or real gravel and go skidding sideways or down on the road. Bridges are a danger spot too, so I’d sit up briefly to bumpity-bump over those, just in case.
But then I got rolling. And looking down, I saw that the cyclometer was clocking me at 26 mph. It always impresses me that the riders in the Tour de France average about that pace for 2000+ miles.
But for my purposes, it is good practice to dial it up to 23-26 mph and hold it. Granted, with a wind at my back it is a lot easier. But it’s also a mental game we’re playing out there on the bike. Getting used to the cadence and relaxing on the bike at a good speed is excellent practice for those days when you jump on the bike after a swim.
Sunlight serenade
It felt so good to go fast and take in the scenery along the way. The clouds all perched at a ceiling that was definable and clear. It felt like if I rode far enough, it would eventually be possible to reach up and touch them. But despite that fantasy, clouds aren’t all that fond of sinking toward the earth, lest we call them fog.
Instead, I watched my long shadow dipping and slipping along beside me. On the downhills my bike and I topped 30 mph. That’s such a fun speed to ride on smooth roads.
Humming along at 25 mph
Sunset simplicity
I’d timed the trip perfectly to coincide with the sun setting in the west. Before the final turn toward home, that bright orb dipped behind a pale purple cloud. The air cooled ever so slightly. I was freewheeling now, my legs hardly feeling the effort. But there were still two hills to climb, and I was at mile 43.
It’s possible, even healthy, to be your own hero at times. I told my wife while having dinner after the ride that it’s important to do these solo rides because they ask you to manage your own reserves while demanding your full attention to ride well.
Plus the feeling of having fully used the twilight of a summer day is a satisfaction that makes the season all that more meaningful. Country roads are calling you too, if you can find them. Reach them. Ride them. Here’s hoping you get the chance this summer.
The dumping site where people unloaded their crap at the end of an underused industrial drive.
I went for an odd run yesterday. It was windy as heck, for one thing. So my early pace of 10:00 per mile did not increase much over the first two miles. Then I turned into a neighborhood where a path through the woods leads to a forest preserve.
From there, I turned south onto the loose crushed limestone paths and kept following them into the fields beyond the preserve proper. The land is still owned by the county, but it’s nothing more than mowed scrub at this point.
I could have turned around and run back the route I normally take that loops toward home. Instead the path I followed met a dead-end and I hopped some tall grass and kept running toward the Interstate in the distance. When that field ran out I turned east and crept through even more tall grass toward the array of giant satellite disks next to the TBN production studios.
The Bullshit Network
Those satellite dishes drive at least part of the TBN network, whose network boasts,
” TBN is also a leader in using cutting-edge technology to reach more viewers around the world with programming that entertains, inspires, and changes lives through God’s message of hope and grace. From its online archive giving viewers access to tens of thousands of life-impacting programs, to its mobile app that brings more than a dozen global TBN networks to smart phones, iPads, and tablets anywhere in the world — TBN continues to be the standard bearer for faith-and-family broadcasting across the earth.”
You may not know my perspectives on most of what TBN pumps out. They’re the type of network whose supposedly grace-filled programming fuels much of what evangelical Christianity embraces as wholesome and religiously biblical content. But as we’re witnessing in real time these days, evangelical support for the prince of all garbage hawkers, Donald Trump, is fueling an authoritarian takeover of constitutional rights for millions of Americans. TBN, like so many other so-called Christian outlets are nothing more than bullshit networks designed to reap profits and control people politically and religiously. While they claim to be on God’s side, they are more like the religious authorities whom Jesus challenged for clinging so feverishly to tradition that they legalistically destroyed the lives of people rather than lifting them up.
Unholy
I’m reading a book titled Unholy (Rachel Posner) that traces the direct link between racism, segregation, and the tax status of Christian schools with the launching of the Moral Majority in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The typical narrative says that Jerry Falwell jump-started evangelical political activity around the abortion issue. But that came much later. At the beginning, it was so-called Christian objections to governmental guidelines for integration that set off waves of angry protest among the prejudiced purveyors of garbage religion at the time. It was all cloaked behind claims that their “religious freedoms” were being breached. But that’s garbage too.
Pretty much, it was Christian schools trying to block black kids from attending private institutions that started the so-called Moral Majority.
That racist core of true believers never left the movement. In fact, they’ve only increased their grip on evangelicalism, all while mastering the sophistication of technology and media promotion to propagate the poison worldview of fear and hatred for minorities and anyone else judged to be “biblically unworthy” of normal societal function.
These people excel at claiming to preach God’s love while sending religious programming around the world that baldly preach intolerance (and even death) to gay people, resistance to immigration around fears of losing a “Christian majority” (to Muslims, it is said) and of course, the fatuous obsession with banning abortion because “it kills babies.” Never mind that an organization such as Planned Parenthood tries to help women prevent unplanned pregnancies. That’s far too practical for religious zealots that hate the idea of anyone having sex other than by their approved method or at their approved time.
Garbage ideology
These three topics along with resistance to science and denial of climate change are essentially the entire platform of the Trump regime. It’s a load of politically bigoted garbage filled with hate for secular knowledge and frankly, common sense. That is Trumpism in a nutshell.
That is why I found it symbolic that not long after passing the TBN studios I turned to see the scene depicted at the top of this blog, and captured again here in closeup. Because there, at the end of an underutilized industrial drive, was a pile of garbage tossed there by irresponsible citizens refusing to pay for the right to properly dispose of their refuse. That’s a capsulized image of American wastefulness and selfishness.
What is garbage?
What is garbage anyway? It’s the outcome of anything that human beings judge to be useless to them in any way. That’s exactly how Trump and his evangelical supporters view anything that disagrees with their purported values. These of course differ from actual values of conscience and consideration, because the Trump version is ultimately subject to some aspect of prejudice on the part of those claiming insight. While hiding behind the veils of tradition and heritage, true conscience and consideration are qualities that too many evangelicals and conservatives decidedly lack.
Because here’s how it works. Trump brands immigrants garbage, and his supporters go along because it feeds their fearful narrative that a Christian white majority is at risk of being upended. He’s called entire country “shitholes,” and his supporters go along because he equates human worth and value by skin color and transactional value to his personal prejudices. And his supporters go along because “the economy is good” and therefore “shithole people” should not be allowed to affect it.
It keeps going. His administration, the Republican Party and the evangelicals who drive it clearly view gay and transgender people as garbage unworthy of basic civil rights, much less the right to marry. And his supporters love to claim that their right to discriminate against LBQBT should be protected by their religious beliefs. What a load of garbage that is. Certainly Jesus Christ never spoke against people of any sexual orientation, at least according to the Bible.
But it was stated by Paul, the former persecutors of Jews who experienced a dramatic conversation to a worshipper of Jesus who held to the legalism of his prior tradition and branded relations between two men an abomination. All that proves is that Paul never relinquished himself completely to Jesus. He remained a bigot just as Martin Luther remained an Anti-Semitic while he launched the Reformation. None of these people is perfect. Some of their views should be dumped into the garbage pit of religious ideology.
Earth as a garbage pit
It doesn’t stop with ideology. Trump and his administration view the natural resources of this country as their personal property from which they can extract whatever they like and trash the rest without penalty. Meanwhile Trump distracts the citizens of this nation by pitting them against each other over trivial issues like wearing masks to combat the Covid19 pandemic. I get so angry at times I wish there were a hell for Trump to face when he’s done with this world. But we’ll get to that in a moment.
Staring at that garbage pile I was angry at our nation for allowing this trashy jerk of a con man to do this to our country. I despise what his supporters have done to enable him, because they are contributors to the trash heap of history to which I pray that Trump is soon consigned. They care not whether people’s lives are destroyed by Trump’s feckless denial of the Coronavirus threat. They don’t give a shit if Trump’s fascist support of white supremacists and dog-whistle encouragement of police brutality winds up killing people right and left.
To Trump supporters all those lives are disposable. They are collateral damage to the supposed higher purpose of Making America Great Again.
MAGA is a pile of garbage
So let’s be blunt. MAGA is the biggest pile of garbage that America has ever been fed. And I do blame religious hucksters like the soft-spoken zealots at TBN and the Moody Bible Institute and the entire spectrum of garbage theologians preaching biblical literalism and creationism. All this is designed to gain and maintain political control while real problems like climate change threaten the entire human civilization, and we’re not doing a damned thing about it. Because Jesus is coming back to fix it all. What a garbage claim for anyone to make.
Jesus himself would tell these jerks they’re the purveyors of garbage and creating a hell on earth. The original definition of “hell” was the town garbage pit where everything from human waste to dead bodies was tossed into a pit and left to rot in the sun. I quote from a Medium.com blog by Ali Kellogg explaining what the notion of hell was all about:
Gehenna was a real garbage pit. Hell on earth.
(Gehenna) was originally used by the ancient Israelites who sacrificed children and burnt their bodies to appease the pagan Canaanite god Molech. In Leviticus 18:20, God expressed his hatred of the false god Molech, and deemed the place unclean. Gehenna was eventually used as a landfill by the inhabitants of Jerusalem, where people took their trash to be burned. The place began to wreak havoc on daily life in Jerusalem. The smell of burning sewage, flesh, maggots and garbage wreaked absolute havoc on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, causing documented medical problems like nausea and breathing difficulty. Clearly, the place was unpleasant — frightening even — and thus it’s no surprise that Gehenna was used, and still is today, as a metaphor for the final place of punishment for the wicked. It was first used as a symbolic depiction of Hell in Mark 9:47. Gehenna was translated to Hell later, around 1200AD.
Yes, I’m angry as hell at Trump’s supporters. They voted in a garbage president and are trying to tell us that he’s a messenger of God. But their version of Make America Great Again is actually a reincarnation of Gehenna. A garbage pit for the terminally selfish hoping only to discard whatever they find unworthy of their own heinous worldview.
Finally I turned away from the ad hoc garbage pit at the end of the abandoned industrial drive and started my run toward home. Along the way there were other piles of junk tossed from the trunk of cars. One almost has to be on foot to notice it all. Driving past in a vehicle, it all mixes in with the landscape.
But I noticed it. I’ve been watching stuff like this accrue in the landscape for years. And it’s not the way to Make America Great Again. Far from it.
Aren’t you sick of all this garbage? I bet you are. So it’s incumbent on those of us that vote for conscience and consideration to show up at the polls in November and vote this garbage purveyor out of office. And if he won’t leave, we’ll have to send in an armored backhoe, scoop up his orange highness and dump him in whatever Gehenna we can find.
People like us run and ride for a ton of reasons. Along the way, we experience pain, even invite it into our lives.
At other times, we avoid it. Try to block it out. Leave it behind.
It’s a strange set of sports that helps us do both. Embrace the pain for progress. Dispense with pain for recovery. It’s both an active and passive dance, and we haven’t even mentioned swimming.
The road itself does not heal us. But the idea of rolling down the road can. It loosens the spirit.
We mark some points on this journey with permanent memories.
“This is where I got hit by a car.”
“This is where I broke down crying after the death of my mother.”
“This is where I picked up a $20 bill.”
“This is where I heard John Lennon died.”
“This is where I saw that girl on a horse in her bikini.”
“This is where I quit that race and was so glad to be done I did not care.”
All these moments of dark and light and points in between.
Some are stains on our life. Others are the stains we release.
I’ve always tried to be honest about everything written on this blog. Admittedly, a fair share of it is legitimately a form of therapy. My way of processing reality and dealing with challenges. And of course, pondering the aging process. I simply hope people can relate.
The photo above was taken probably ten years ago. I was in the midst of a solid year of cycling, which for me entailed riding between 2500 and 3000 miles. At the end of a long summer day, I sat down to relax on the living room sofa and noticed the July sun striking my body as it streamed through the large bay window on the west side of the house.
My legs looked strong and fit. Muscled even. They were shaved and tan, even shiny with a fitness glow. I took a photo to record that moment because I knew that youthfulness would not last forever. The purity of the moment.
I took the photo below this morning. It’s a bit more somber image. The skin of my legs has aged with time. I still shave my legs for cycling because it still feels right to do so. But it isn’t as smooth as it once was. There’s still a bit of self-adulation in the process. I’ll admit that. Vanity. Clinging to a self-image built over the years.
But things are clearly changing. The skin of my legs is getting that crepey look. They’ve absorbed a ton of sun over the years. That’s understandable given the 50,000 miles of running I’ve done in a forty year career. Add in tens of thousands of miles of cycling, and I can’t blame my legs for looking a bit older than they did at 52 years old versus now, within a month of my sixty-third birthday.
The funny thing about those legs is that they haven’t necessarily slowed down or weakened all that much from ten years ago. This past weekend I rode 63 miles with my wife Suzanne. We averaged 19.5 mph for the distance. Some of it was in strong crosswinds and headwinds, and that long bit at the end was flying along with a tailwind. It still takes pedal power to make your bike go 30 mph even with the wind behind you. Just lake week I also dropped my run pace to 7:00 per mile to close out a four-miler.
And my brain actually works better than eve. I can promise you that. Some aspects of aging actually clear the senses.
Granted, there are some things you can’t change about aging. The years catch with your body eventually. I see it most in my face on a daily basis. The hollows and wattles and wrinkles and crow’s feet surprise (even depress) me sometimes. So I try to smile a ton in public and social situations. A smile at least makes you feel younger. And no one likes a dour old man.
It is a battle for everyone against time when it comes to body image. For me, the rim of pudge on my belly bothers me deeply. Yet I still like my body now as much as any point in my life. That’s a healthy thing in general, an idea celebrated in Walt Whitman’s epic poem Song of Myself:
Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes age, Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself.
Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean, Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be less familiar than the rest.
Why should we not continue this sensuous journey through all of life? Why should we deny ourselves the thrill of going fast, or other things, if we feel it good to do so? Or to go slow, limbs wrapped around limbs, and loving so?
I’ve always been known for quoting my favorite line from the book Ambiguous Adventure by Cheik Hamidou Kane.
The purity of the moment is made from the absence of time.
Perhaps you’ve experienced a few encounters online the past year or so in which people openly defy practical truth in favor of their closely embraced ideology. Much of the world, it seems, is quite busy manufacturing their own version of reality, clinging to it with all their might, or trying to force it on others to affirm their own sense of worth.
The pandemic and political climate in America (and probably the whole world) is making people more determined than ever to make the latter come true. Just this morning I was forced to block a guy on Linkedin whose frequent posts are full of delusional political and religious ravings. Then he went on the attack through Messages.
I first met him back in the late 1980s while working at a newspaper. We were both a little disturbed by the policies and behavior of management at the time, so we commiserated and sought ways to bring about positive change. Apparently he went down a tough road after that.
Prison chaplain
As he described it, he’s been through financial and work issues, plus the loss of his father to problems caused by service in the Vietnam War. He also made it a point to tell me that his family tree has served in the military for three hundred years…and what had I done to serve my country? He also demanded to know what sacrifices had I experienced and what hardships in life have I ever had to suffer?
It’s hard to put all that anger into perspective without actually talking to him. These days he’s a prison chaplain who worships a sect based on an ancient priest and martyr that he explains as something “Christians like you have long forgotten about.” I explained that I’ve read quite a bit about Christian history. But that didn’t satisfy him.
Blasts from the past
Lacking progress in his attacks, he tried to close his point by stating that he thought I’ve always had too high of an opinion of myself, and that the “secretaries” at the newspaper secretly complained that I showed up in the office in the afternoon with sleep lines on my face from taking naps away from the office during the afternoon.
That I found both revealing and funny. There were indeed salespeople who took breaks during the day to take naps, but it wasn’t me. I knew this for a fact because I was invited to one of their homes on a workday, only to find three of them lying around with their ties and shoes off, watching Andy Griffith, Dick Van Dyke and I Dream of Jeannie to pass the morning away. I was aghast, but they were friends, so I let it pass and went on my way. To each their own. I had a job to do in providing for my family.
Working it out
Far from taking naps during the day, my preference was to grab a workout if time permitted. That worked off stress and kept me focused on the day. If I went home during lunch it was typically to go for a four-mile run, grab a shower and get back out there selling or promoting the paper once I moved up to that position.
So his recollections might be accurate about people showing up with nap lines on their face, but it generally wasn’t me. That might have happened one time.
Yet he is projecting that memory on me for his own angry benefit. Granted, his view that I had a high opinion of myself was probably accurate in some sense. It takes every bit of confidence one can muster to go out there and sell ads or sponsorships in a competitive market. Once I had moved over to marketing, it took guts and creativity to conceive and execute programs to increase circulation, drive value-added sales and create collaborative programs with community partners, NGOs and municipal partners.
By example, I developed a program with ten local banks to use subscriptions as an incentive for opening new accounts. It happened that the $10 base value required as a bank incentive matched well with what the circulation manager needed to gain in compensation to qualify as paid circulation for a set period of weeks. We launched the program and it drove more than 100 new paid subscriptions in a week. The promotion was so successful it drove the circulation manager into closing it down because it scared him. He didn’t like things that weren’t under his direct control, you see.
Conflicted natures
Behind all the bravado and drive it took to implement programs such as those, I was an admittedly insecure guy simply trying to make a living for his family. I had anxiety, for one thing, that sometimes bordered on depression. Over the years, I learned healthy strategies to address both of those. But during that period, my self-opinion was typically more critical than “having a high opinion of myself.”
But my sense of social justice was a far more powerful instinct. So was my notion that a fair workplace was important. About that I was always deliberately an advocate. I may have been confused at times by office politics, but my native sense of right and wrong was unwavering. Over the years I helped co-workers find legal representation when they experienced sexual harassment, and stuck up for direct reports assigned insane extra work for which they were not being compensated. The latter cost me considerable personal political capital, and I wound up leaving the company. But I have no regrets about that. Doing the right thing often requires sacrifice.
Some of those ardently “socialistic” tendencies came from aspects of my upbringing related to the exasperations of a demanding father. But it also had to do with personal values instilled in me by a lifelong involvement in Christianity.
Yet rather than inquire about anything along those lines, this “friend” on Linkedin instead accused me of being a hopeless liberal and Leftist whose “commie” ideals were ignorant and impractical in this world. In this era of political and cultural conflict, he is not the only “friend” that has gone wholeheartedly ballistic about such issues or told me I was fucked in the head.
I find it ironic that some call me arrogant for thinking I’m so smart while others brand me stupid for failing to recognize the genius of their typically shallow mirth at “winning” in some aspect of the culture wars.
Performance matters
To me it is performance that matters. When that Linkedin accuser questioned whether I’d ever had to suffer or persevere in life, he presumed or imagined that I was a namby-pamby commentator whose life was easy and/or consumed with complicity with liberal ideals, and nothing else. He doesn’t know about the prolonged period of simultaneous caregiving I sustained for a mother who died from cancer, a father who was a stroke victim and a wife who died from cancer after eight years of treatment. All while ushering kids through high school and college, and trying to remain gainfully employed even after companies fired me the day after they learned my wife was sick.
Rather than respond, I probably should have just unfollowed and blocked the Linkedin tormentor who turned into a Blast from the Past. Chalk that one up to Lessons Learned Again. But if we all give in to this insane brand of fascist aggression consuming our culture today, it is clear that repression and oppression will win the day. That’s where things are headed.
If I’ve learned anything from forty years as a competitive athlete, it’s that the most aggressive among us are often the most fearful and insecure. I’ve seen it happen time and again in the competitive arena. It takes place everywhere from pickup basketball games to the highest level of competitive sports. People often try to cajole and bluster their way to victory.
Rage vs fear
I think of the musclebound softball team that had long intimidated the Sunday league until our hit and run crew came along with the fundamental game of good defense to finally beat them. You could hear their voices go from bluster to rage to fear in the course of a couple innings as our runs piled up and their control of the game slipped away. Their voices passed from triumphal taunts to near pitiful complaint. But they never dominated us again. We owned them for eight straight years in both league and championship play. They won a game or two, but never a series, and certainly not the overall title. Their days of triumphal reign were over.
I recognize the same angry triumphalism in the tactics of the Linkedin despot and the cult-like worship of religio-fascist dominating America today. The false compliments hiding personal taunts, followed by insults. The desperate ploys to undercut and undermine other––especially with personal insults and inaccurate information ––while claiming victimhood for themselves. It seems so many lives are now spent obsessing about the persecution the world imposes on their carefully concocted worldview. “Life’s not fair for people like me!” goes the rave. “And it’s people like you that make it unfair.”
Willful misinformation
But in reality, it is people who willfully get their information wrong and choose for heroes the forceful icons of religious anachronism and political brutality that for millennia have turned this world into a hell on earth. That is the blast from the past that has emerged to impact the present. It is the classic tactic of advancing self-profiting lies in order to dominate the dialogue and try to make others give up. Much of it is disguised as “tradition,” just as the religious authorities who conspired against Jesus chose to do. Their self-righteousness is wrapped either in robes or flags, but it’s the same shitty fabric either way.
Covering yourself in a garment of patriotism or religious fervor (or both) is a shallow trick, but it often works. Until it doesn’t.
Race day clarity
I recall the day that I started a five-mile race and was half a mile into the course when a guy next to me turned and said, “How fast are you running today?” He was trying to broker a victory for himself.
Without looking over at him, I stated, “Faster than you.” Then I took off with determination, gapped him by an immediate 150 yards and went on to win the race in 24:49. I never saw him again.
Accurate truths
Now I ask you: Was that because, as my Linkedin tormenter suggested, that I had a “high opinion of myself?” Or was it simply because I was prepared to do the right thing and carried it out? If we’re going to talk about liberalism, or being a “liberal,” then let’s define it accurately:
Liberal: favorable to or in accord with concepts of maximum individual freedom possible, especially as guaranteed by law and secured by governmental protection of civil liberties.
Not a word in there about oppressing the rights of others, or for that matter, as a construct of the culture wars today, not taking away religious freedoms. A liberal believes that its equally fair to provide freedom from religion, just like it was fair of me to exercise freedom from the constraints of that runner trying to manipulate me to run his brand of race.
The world is a confusing place when so many people are trying to manipulate the outcome by turning races of every kind into a brokered venture of purpose and values in order to come out looking like a (the) winner. That vicarious collapse of values opens a void into which the false heroics of fraud and deception so easily come marching in.
