Blow the Conch Shell

I don't often review my bank statement so a couple weeks ago I was sort of surprised to find I am suffering from what can be described as a small financial discontinuity.   The pile under the mattress is shrinking like the polar icecap. The nice lady at the bank called, I think she said her name was Druzilla, she called and said something about a possible legal action. Her call was a pretty big surprise since I still have a small box full of blank checks wedged in the big box with mattress money.

Now, you have to understand that I do have a plan to resolve it, but it isn't a great plan.  Druzilla told me I needed to spend less or make more so I thought about it and the only thing I can cut out of my monthly spend is my wine delivery bill or my “ice cream of the month” club fee and that just seems unreasonable, so I am thinking of augmenting my income stream.

I sort of glanced through the help wanteds and have winnowed the search down to a short list. I am thinking professional golfer or maybe I can land a slot at NASA.  I heard you can do OK in rocket surgery.  Basically, I will take anything that pays seven spots to the left of the decimal.  

I told my roommate about the call from Druzilla and my income augmentation plan but she had other ideas. My roommate says I am only good for one thing and if I play my cards right, I can work my debt off if I perform a "personal service".  I didn't understand what she was talking about so I asked her to explain and apparently, I can carry groceries in from the car like no other. I literally can't be replaced when it comes to packing groceries around. I am the franchise player when it comes to toting groceries from the car to the kitchen. As these things go, it isn't a great thing to be great at. The pay isn't union scale and the last time I checked, I was out of sick leave. You can only play that sick leave card so many times before the management gets wise and you end up toting a fifty pound bag of Purina up two flights of stairs to keep the eviction police at arms length.

I just got back from Hawaii, where I was conducting business.  I was wearing my journalist hat, gathering content for my blog, interviewing the Ironman World Championship race winners, posing for photographs, shopping for some Ironman swag and other business tasks. I wasn't there for recreation, I was there for business purposes. I just looked up publication 463-B, the authoritative IRS document on the subject and as long as I was there for business, I can write off the airfare.  So, I repeat, my trip to Hawaii was for business purposes.

Being a fully accredited member of the American Sports Bloggers Association of America(ASBAA), I feel qualified to offer the following race report.

It was a great event. There was some swimming, some bike riding and some running. It was pretty exciting.  I am pretty sure somebody won the race and if you want to know who, ask around.  I didn't stay for the end.  I got tangled up with a small contingent of Bloody Mary racers, drowning themselves in tomato juice and vodka without regard for personal well being. Those people are amazing athletes. I tried to pace them and found my skills to be amateurish at best. The quantity of juice and vodka was daunting, the salty rim of the glass was an unexpected challenge and the two olives? Forget about it.

As for the weather, I can tell you it was hot. Cyclists were melting. It was way hot. Runners were wilting. It was crazy, psycho hot. It was hot enough to absolve me of any responsibility for that small misunderstanding between myself and the authorities in a certain South East Asian country in 1997 that I can't name on pain of extradition.  Those guys have no sense of humor.

Sunrise at Ironman is different, depending on the venue. The landscape defines the moment.  Be it in the mountains, the desert or the islands, sunrise is unique to each.   I have seen all three and they are as different as such things can be.

Sunrise at Ironman must be felt.  You have to stand there and feel it for yourself. You have to let it wash over you.   You have to feel the rising sun brush against your skin, you have to experience the moment in your chest.  Sunrise is cathartic.  In that brief instant of sunrise, the primary colors reflected off of the mountain are different from the pastel hues that bleed together in the desert, the fresh floral smells of the island are different from the astringent scents of desert rock, the air of the snow capped peak tastes different from the air of cactus and sage.

The blade-sharp edge that is the dividing line between night and day in the desert advances at a military slow-march pace, flaring bright across the sanded flats and hills.  Conversely, the line of light that is sunrise in the mountains advances in fits and spurts.  The sun ever-so-slowly exposes a mountain cliff, then as it clears the peaks, the furthest valley is lit in an instant, erasing the night as quickly as a newborn fills it's lungs with first breath. Sunrise fills the valleys of the mountains like an echo quick. One minute, the heather covered meadows are dark, the next they are lit like a Rockwell Christmas tree.

Sunrise in the desert of Phoenix is like an invading army, advancing and unwilling to yield.   Sunrise in the mountains of Whistler is an eager embrace of lovers, joining light and shadow in ecstatic consent.

Island sunrise is a chanted prayer, a war cry uttered by a warrior from legend, a primal definition of the meaning of his life, and yours.  If you are lucky, and you look straight into the first ray of the rising ocean sun, you might see a canoe cutting through wavetops, charging out of centuries past, filled with men powering bladed oar.

If sunrise finds you standing on the sands of Kona, look into the rising furnace on the horizon and see those men coming for you, committing their bodies and their souls to each oar stroke, flying over blue bright wave.  Sunrise in the islands can be that, if you only look for it.

The thing that I realize now is how personal sunrise at an Ironman event can be. My expression of sunrise belongs only to me so it may fall short for you, but it is the world I know.

Sunrise in Kona is an affirmation of truth, it is an echo of the grace and elegance as it must have been on that first day, a promise of future days, of memories not yet born, of experiences I believe wait for those who choose them.