As a little kid I used to earn 25 cents for shining my father’s dress shoes. That money bought quite a bit of candy at the Little Store a few blocks away, so it was worth the effort. I’d sit down with the cans of Kiwi shoe polish and open the flip-top lid, dip an old tee shirt into the brown or black polish and smear it all over the shoe leather. Then I’d shine them to a nice gleaming finish.
This process gave me reverence for the style of shoe called a wingtip. They didn’t make those shoes for little kids back then. Wing tips were big people shoes.
All my shoes were Buster Brown specials purchased at the downtown Lancaster, Pennsylvania shoe store where the shoe salesman stuck your foot in one of those black and silver foot measuring devices and determined your size.
I recall feeling pride as my foot grew larger. “I’m getting bigger!” I smiled to my mom throughout my elementary years. And then one day my foot measured over a size 6 or something like that, and the salesman pulled out a pair of actual wingtips and set them down by my feet. “Would you like to try these on?” he asked.
Wing tip dreams
Got I loved those shoes. I could not believe I was so suddenly old enough to wear wing tips. My friends at school were also admiring of those stylish shoes. I may have had flood pants and saggy socks on most days, but damn those wing tips looked good.
The same sense of pride happened years later when I signed up for high school cross country. Within a week of practicing it was clear that I would be one of the top runners on the squad. Then the time came to dole out spikes for the first meet.
This style of shoe from 1968 was similar to the spikes I wore in 1971
We all sat on the grass as the coaches sized up the available shoes. Then I was handed a box that contained a set of running spikes with Velcro fasteners and kangaroo leather. I’d never worn a pair of Velcro anything in my life. I pulled the tab pack and it made that weirdly scratchy noise that Velcro makes as the hooks and loops separate. “Okay,” I thought to myself. “That’s cool.”
When I think about those shoes, they were probably perfect for a 14-year-old kid with a bit of ADD going on. No laces to be tied or come untied. Just push them on and go.
The leather itself was soft as silk. That made me feel guilty in some fashion. I was already an environmentally conscious kid. The thought that someone killed and skinned a kangaroo, tanned the leather and then dyed it white was just strange. But here it was, and there was nothing I could do about it now.
The long Puma swoop on the side made me feel fast. In some respects those Pumas bore the exact opposite pattern as the wing tips I’d learned to love in sixth grade. If the wing tips were the “positive” then the Pumas were the negative space on a set of shoes.
Negative space
And speaking of negative space. I recall the hot sense that other teammates, some of them older, were a bit envious of the new shoes I’d been given. I’d eventually learn that jealousy was an inevitable result of working hard in many circumstances in life.
In any case, those Pumas did me well that first year in high school cross country. I ran Varsity for all the dual meets and helped lead the team to a Frosh-Soph conference title. The next year, we won the Varsity conference title.
I specifically recall wearing a pair of boxy shoes to the awards ceremony that year. There was something classic about wing tips, but they had gone out of fashion among the younger set.
Now when I walk the aisles at a Men’s Wearhouse and hold aloft a pair of shoes for inspection, all that life experience folds together in a shiny little memory. These feet have carried me a long way. They deserved a nice set of shoes now and then.
This morning I listened to a Radiolab program comparing the Orson Welles radio broadcast War of the Worlds with the more contemporary (though barely) Blair Witch Project movie. The common premise of the two presentations was creating an environment in which people actually want to believe in their fears.
I don’t need to see the video of Chicago Bears player Zach Miller in which he dislocated his knee on a touchdown attempt this past Sunday. 
I knew that things were changing in my body and had asked my family doctor for permission to do some physical therapy to strengthen my body. So it wasn’t like I didn’t sense some level of risk. But a torn ACL? That still wasn’t imaginable to me.
In any case, those of us here on earth are in a constant battle with gravity from the time we’re born until the time we fly away on a spaceship to have anti-gravity sex in a wormhole, otherwise known as heaven. You didn’t know that’s what happens? It’s in the Bible.
But ET started to bonk a bit in earth’s atmosphere. Elliott knew the little dude needed to get back home or it would be a DNF in the race for life. So they constructed a makeshift “phone” to send signals off to the spaceship for ET. Then they made plans to head for the hills in time for a rendezvous.
It is a little-known fact that the sport of cyclocross got its inspiration from the movie ET. After a couple years the sport dropped the baskets from the front of the bikes because they kept getting crunched in head over heels bike crashes, but man the videos from those early days of ‘cross were fantastic.
Well, it’s not really a plot-spoiler to share that ET does make it back to the spaceship. Before he goes, ET conducts a little lighted-finger ritual with Elliott, who has his first orgasm right there on the spot. Because if you think about it, ET was kind of a jerk-off for getting stranded back on earth in the first place. I’m sure they kicked his little ET ass when the rest of the aliens got him back on the spaceship. The conversation probably went like this:
ET: “I didn’t even take a selfie…”
I was six years old when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. We were running around the playground at Willow Street Elementary when the news shot through the crowds of kids playing on the macadam. I remember standing there shocked for a few moments. Then it sunk in how bad it really was that someone could shoot the president.
Like everyone I have my beliefs about the motives and methods behind the killing of JFK, RFK and MLK. I also deeply mourned the murder of John Lennon, and yes, the shooting of President Ronald Reagan. I admit that I was one who despised Reagan’s politics and everything he stood for, but gun violence is not the solution to anything. Ever. It is significant that one of his protectors, James Brady, went on to become a strong gun control advocate.
I will credit the daft and blithe shallowness of Reaganism for lighting a political fire under my lifelong liberalism. I was 22 when Ronnie was elected, and saw through his reputation as the Great Communicator right from the start. I distrusted the Reagan Youth in their Polo shirts with popped collars. They were nasty conformists for the most part, desperate to get along and go along in hopes of being swept up in some promise of trickle-down riches and prosperity. Which proved that Reagan was nothing more than a Great Resonator, capable of saying things that a rabidly selfish America longed to hear. His perverse echo lives on today with the likes of Donald Trump.
But some people in society sink so low into personal isolation they cannot grip reality any more. That’s how so many turn into assassins. They find a target for their loneliness and hate, and then pull the trigger on their anger. The media wonders aloud, “What was the shooter’s motive?” the headlines cry. But there is no motive needed any more. Guns are the motive. They are the fulfillment of an isolated destiny, which is why so many shooters turn the guns on themselves. They are finishing off their anger and loneliness, their disenfranchisement with society, or their heroes.
I’ve played in enough team sports and functioned in enough professional capacities to understand how groupthink develops and how it functions. I’ve seen people quickly turn into “winner-take-all” advocates who forget that they’re supposed to play by the rules. That happens in American government quite frequently, and even the deeply conservative icon Ronald Reagan had to confess to the backroom conspiratorial works of Oliver North and G. Gordon Liddy who orchestrated highly illegal arms deals in the Iran-Contra affair.
Last Friday the scheduled MRI for my dodgy left knee got dumped when I showed up at the wrong hospital. Actually I showed up at the right hospital for the first appointment I’d made, but an opportunity to visit a different medical facility for the MRI popped up in their schedule, and I simply forgot to change my calendar to direct me to the new location.
But for several years, I spent a lot of time at that cancer treatment center. That’s where my late wife had several series of chemotherapy treatments done. Most of them took several hours to complete. Whether I was working at the time or not, I’d sit in the chair across from her while the chemo dripped down tubes into her arm. It was a slow process and usually made her sick as a dog. But the treatment cycles worked until the wear and tear became too much for any human body to take.
We’d seen the entire range of the human condition at those treatment centers over the years. Some were grateful and resolute. Others were bitchy and impatient. Most just wanted to get through the day and hope the side effects would not hit them too fast or too hard. And what can I say about the nurses who preside over all this? They are, for the most part, saintly in their duties. Humanity begs more from them than any other profession on earth.
In the weeks leading up to her Ironman Louisville event, my wife Sue was quite busy with her job. For one thing, she was out of town handling job responsibilities for a week. Then she got back with a day to spare and we rolled on down to Louisville. She performed well in the race despite some challenges from the elements, and we came back home thankful that all her training paid off.
I’m not exactly “high drama” but there are times when the drama gets going a little bit in my own head. It used to be much worse. But one of the things I find helpful in my own mental construct is to analyze the source and nature of my thoughts. That’s been part of a long developmental process going way back to when I was thirty. That’s when I first started figuring out the chemistry and behavior of my brain. I knew there were some things that could use ‘fixing,’ and took it upon myself to figure them out. Some were simple, but others took years.
Those seem like two very different things, but the commonality remains fear. To be afraid to fail means you are actually afraid to try in the event that you might not live up to the expectations of others, or yourself. 
But when my wife walked through the door last night after being away for two non-consecutive weeks, I was grateful to see her, but not to the point of false drama. She visited with her children and got her stuff put away. Finally, I stood next to her in the kitchen after she had changed out of her travel clothes. She had on a pair of jeans that I really love, and she was dining on the salmon I’d grilled while sharing photos from her phone. They were pictures of the projects on which she’d worked so hard. I loved the quiet sense of pride, because she’d sacrificed time all day and night to make it happen.
Life is so rich at times, and so simple. That’s what makes it good. I’m a silly man at times, and prone to romantic streaks that border on excessive earnestness. She puts up with me in my goofy moods, and I think she actually likes it. While she was out of town, I kidded with her about how much I missed her by throwing some of her laundry over my head and shoulders and sent her a photo. “Nah, I don’t miss you at all,” I jibed.
Don’t panic, triathletes. I’m not about to criticize Ironman as a cult or anything else. It is a brand name, effectively marketed, that many people admire. But it is also something more. And it’s worth thinking about it.
The corporate expression of a brand is necessarily possessive in this day and age. That’s how organizations survive. They need to defend their turf lest encroachment steal away the power of the brand or wick away customers.
That’s much the same problem as calling all bandages Band-Aids. There is a problem when the brand is confused with the cause or solution such as Kleenex or Xerox. The brand can be weakened in the long run.
And that’s where Ironman bears a close resemblance to what we might call a religion. And again, this is not an indictment of said designation. It is merely an observation. In an age when traditional church attendance is on the wane, it is perhaps no coincidence that Ironman races are typically conducted on Sundays. That’s a practical response to Sunday having less traffic, perhaps. But there is also a sense that a Sunday morning is sacrosanct in some other way. Not for all faiths, but for all people?
So the same principle must apply to runners and cyclists and swimmers as well. We may be wasting our time down in aero position on the bike. What we really need are a set of winglike structures attached to the side of our body that meet in the back, creating a giant fin like the truck seen above. They’re called Freight Wings, I think.
Those of us who run, ride and swim come to realize that while the big muscles that drive us forward are important, it is the little muscles, tendons and connective tissues that keep us together. There must be romance between the big and small muscles for an athlete to stay healthy.
We Run and Ride 