I Sold Fruit

Twenty years ago, I had a great job.  I sold fruit overseas.  I would travel to places in South East Asia like Singapore or Thailand or a dozen other really cool places, visiting with customers, drinking too much expensive liquor, eating too much great food.  I spent quite a bit of time there and I thought I had some great stories to share, but when I told those stories to people I knew, it was like the cognitive switch in their brain just flipped off and they quickly changed the subject to something really interesting like how the girl at the haircut place spoke with improper diction or how parking the car was such a burden because they had to park so far from the front door to the grocery store. I was doing something wrong I guess because everybody did the same thing, they didn't want to hear about my travels, so I just stopped telling them. I didn't tell anybody those stories for a long time.  I just put that part of my life in a box. In the process, I forgot about those stories, and I lost a little bit of myself.

Last year, I ran in Ironman Couer d'Alene. For me, it was and still is a huge thing and I think I have a few good stories to tell, but when I tell people those stories, they get that all-too-familiar distant, bored look and change the subject. I didn't understand for a while why my Asia travel stories and my IM stories bore the hell out of people, but now I have a theory and it's this - people can't comprehend things that are beyond their own small view of the world; they can't fathom the idea that Ironman is a possibility for them; they can't believe in the idea of participation. That is what it comes down to, isn't it?   Belief?  If you believe, you are already there. Write that down.

Anyway, if it isn't possible that they could compete in Ironman, or they don't believe it is possible, then my story of Ironman must be a lie. I must be a liar right? If they can't do it, how could I?

So my word to you is this, if you tell someone about your Ironman adventure, and they get a glazed 'I would rather be anywhere but here' look in their eye, then you are dealing with a non-believer. They might muscle up and walk a mile a week, but that is it. I pity them.

I ran four miles today. I had a good run, except my knee felt like my 35 years ago imp-of-the-devil ex-girlfriend that ripped my teenage heart out of my chest was back, sticking red hot needles into my knee. She must have bought a real voodoo doll that you stick needles in. She was a freak of nature in that she was the first human born without a soul and my knee remembered her today. My lungs were good on my run, my knee needed an hour with a psychologist specializing in exorcism.  And ice and Ibuprofen.

I get asked all the time why I run Ironman, or I am asked why I train like I do to get ready for Ironman. Good questions both. I get up at o'dark thirty to swim, I run in fairly constant pain, I bike on roads that are ruled by hill-billies that throw beer bottles when they drive by in their rusted out chevy pickups. Sometimes it's hard to see the upside. I refuse to use the 'because it's there' thing because using a cliché is beneath me. Since I have no imagination, I cant think up my own answer. Its one thing to not have a ready answer for others, but I should at least know the answer for myself. I mean, why do anything if you don't know why? Until today, I felt the answer more than I understood the answer. I know, that sounds like something your nineteen year old philosophy student might have said, but its real. Until today, I didn't really know why. Today I read in a book by my favorite author, Nelson DeMille the following:

“A boat in the harbor is a safe boat, but that's not what boats are for.”

Just soak that in.

Is your boat safe in the harbor? Risking nothing, accomplishing little? Or do you risk some for great reward?

If you like the quote as much as I do, feel free to use it. Be nice and give Nelson the credit.

Some Pig

A friend of mine sent me a link to a story, it was about this guy who saw a Beaver, walked up to the Beaver and took its picture with his iphone because he thought the beaver was cute, then the beaver bit him on the leg, cut into his artery and he bled to death. Funny, right? How often does that happen? The American beaver was hunted to the brink of extinction 200 years ago by men making hats, so this beaver apparently decided to turn the tables, good for him.

I didn't think about that story for a while because my daughter and I decided to clean the fridge out. We threw out seven or ten tupperware containers full of leftovers that had gone bad. There was some mashed potatoes that nobody ate a month ago when it was fresh.  We had turkey and mashed potatoes. The turkey was gone in a flash because it tasted good. It was meaty and juicy and smokey tasting. I cooked it on the smoker, which explains why it was smokey tasting.  De-Lish!  The mashed potatoes weren't very good because my wife made them. Her mashed potatoes are lumpy. I saw Julia Child make mashed potatoes once on TV and the ones I threw away didn't look anything like Julia's.

We threw out a tupperware full of celery sticks that had turned. How long does it take for celery to go from edible to rotten? The answer is four and a half months. We put that celery in the container the day after Christmas.  

Then we threw out some chip dip. I mean, who eats chip dip the day after? I do, but there was a lot and honestly, it was a little too salty.

There was a link of chicken sausage in a baggy that we threw out. It was still in the shape of a sausage, but when I picked it up, it mooshed flat. What happens to food that makes it lose it's ability to hold it's shape? I am not sure, but you shouldn't eat it, so we threw it out.

So we threw all this stuff into the garbage can, then I walk to another room and I hear this noise behind me. It sounded like “chu chu shumpa shump chu chu shumpa shump”. I turned around to see what the noise was and there is my dog with his big fat thieving snout in the garbage can, eating old salty chip dip and lumpy potatoes and a formless chicken sausage in a baggy. I kicked the dog and threw him out the door, which in retrospect, was the wrong thing to do. I mean, he likes it, so why not feed it to him? Lumps don't bother the dog and really, is it any better or worse than dog food from Costco? Who knows.

Now, it occurs to me that my garbage eating dog and the man killing beaver have something in common. They are just doing what is in their nature to do. Who am I to say it is wrong? The beaver was defending himself from an iphone, the dog was eating something he found delicious that nobody else wanted.

Nobody told Charlotte not to save Wilbur. Who am I to kick my dog? Who am I to condemn a fiesty beaver? It is in their nature to do what they do.

So what does that have to do with Ironman? It's this; it is in my nature to hate running. Running sucks. I wouldn't do it but for the Ironman thing and there's the rub. It's in my nature is to sit on the couch and eat ice cream, but I choose to run, even thought it is against my nature. I choose. If you choose to sit on the couch and eat ice cream, go ahead. I choose to run. Four times a week. Tomorrow is a run day and I have four miles on the calendar.

But I am just telling you right now, if some ass with an iphone crosses my path while I am running, I might lash out and bite him on the leg.

Missed Opportunities

Some years before I was tricked into entering into a marriage contract to my current wife, I was working on a farm with my best friend Dave.  Dave and I worked off and on for different farmers in the area doing odd jobs. Sometimes we bucked hay, sometimes we drove tractor, we didn't care all that much what it was, as long as it paid. It was that or work for Don's dad at the bag factory. Don's dad was a great guy, but I didn't want to work another summer on the bag line. That bag line job was nasty-hot in the summer. Working outside in the summer on an apple farm was not all that bad.

 So one day, Dave and I finished working on a Saturday afternoon, we got paid and were driving home. Another friend of mine was having a party so Dave and I were talking about the remote possibility that one of us might convince some inebriated gal to suspend her puritan view of the human imperative.  The chances were slim, but we were maybe nineteen or twenty years old and didn't bother to calculate the odds.

Anyway, we were driving home in my truck but for some reason Dave was driving. I don't remember why. Anyway, like I said, we were headed home on I-90, listening to a cassette of Lynyrd Skynyrd, we just passed through Vantage when we saw two hitchhikers on the road. The hitchhikers were beautiful girls wearing, and I swear this is true, short shorts and bikini tops. Maybe in California it was common place to see that kind of thing, but in Eastern Washington, you just didn't see it. Girls in bikini tops looking for a ride?  Jackpot. I screamed at Dave to pull over and give them a lift. I was thinking that opportunities for worldly gentlemen such as ourselves didn't often present themselves in such a grand fashion and we needed to get those gals in the truck pronto. Charlie Bucket didn't walk away from the golden ticket, did he? Why should we?

A series of possibilities ran through my head in a millisecond, all of them culminating in some after hours activity involving myself and one or both girls. We need to stop the truck. I yell at Dave. He keeps driving. I scream 'Stop!' Dave keeps driving. I reach across and pull the wheel, Dave fights me off. Dave didn't stop. He just kept going. I started to cry. I will never forgive him.

Roll the clock forward twenty years and I am driving home from work. To get home, I have to drive past 'The Piranha Bar'. I am sure the bar has an official name but nobody knows what it is. It's just called 'The Piranha Bar' by all the locals because they used to have a sign out front that said '17 pound piranha'. I guess they had a big fish in a tank at one time. The sign isn't there anymore, I think the fish died.

Anyway, I am driving by and I see walking in the parking lot towards the front door of the bar three beautiful ladies with big hair and white one piece swimsuits and red high heels. The The swimsuits had red print on the front. The first girl had printed on her suit the word 'Bud', the second girl had 'wei' and the last 'ser'.

Either they were employed by the Budweiser company or they liked to wear swimwear in public and cause riots. In either case, the first thought that occurs to me after I see them is Dave driving past the hitch hikers.   Well, I guess it was the second thought. I had another thought first.

So what did I do? That's right, I drove home as fast as I could to tell my wife.

The lesson to be learned here might not be what you think. The lesson is this: If you get a chance to participate in an Ironman event, do it. It might not come around again. Seize the day.  Put on your big boy pants and run in an Ironman.

The weather is cruddy today so I swam this morning for an hour, then went to spin for an hour, then I came home and fell asleep on the couch.