John Wayne

About twenty years ago a friend and I were having a beer and talking about sports or politics or whatever and somehow the conversation drifted into the different foods that we grew up with. My family was middle America white bread and mayo, which means I can still get the same crappy food I grew up with if I just dash down to the Safeway, but my buddy grew up on the south side of Chicago and I guess they do things a little differently there. One of the foods that he had tried when he was a kid was haggis, which he said was a real treat if you hate good food. To make haggis, he told me you take a sheep liver, sheep heart and a sheep tongue and chop them up, mix in some suet and some oats, then put it in a sheep stomach and boil the whole thing for six hours. Yummy.

I don't want to make too big a deal out of it, but that conversation and the idea of eating some freshly made haggis has stayed with me all these years and it comes down to this; I need to eat some haggis. I cant stop thinking about it. My buddy said its hard to find good haggis unless you have a friend who's Grandma makes it fresh, and since I don't know anybody who has haggis for Sunday dinner, I am in sort of a bind. So I looked around and called a couple of the local restaurants and was surprised to find that haggis is something that you can't get in my zip code, so I am working on a plan to travel to Scotland to get some fresh yummy haggis. While I am there, I might wander around and see if a triathon pops up.

That whole thought process is sort of how I ended up committing to do the Kona half. They don't have haggis there, but still, a buddy and I were having a glass of wine and talking about sports or politics or whatever and somehow the conversation wandered into the best vacation places in the world. After talking it over, we agreed that the best thing we could do would be to go lay on the beach in Hawaii and drink a bunch of icy cold fruity drinks with the little umbrellas in them that were delivered by a saucy cocktail waitress on the beach in Hawaii. While we are there, if a triathlon wandered across our path, we might join in.

That is how I make the major decisions in my life. I find some small, inconsequential thing I want, like haggis, or laying on the beach and drinking icy drinks brought by a saucy cocktail waitress, then I spend five thousand dollars to make it happen. It's my haggis method.

For the past ten days, I have been having an emotional strikeout. It went like this –

Strike One - This one is job related.  Every six weeks, my employer requires I be 'oncall', which means I cant go anywhere without my phone, and that means I can't swim for a week.  I don't have a waterproof phone.

Strike Two -  I had to ship my bike to Kona, so I can't ride. No bike, no ride.

Strike Three - This was when I tried to run, I didn't make it ten feet. I had knee issues. My knee hates me and I hate it. I hate it so very,very much. My knee hurt so bad I was considering my triathlon future, or lack thereof. I know other people have a tougher road to travel than I do, but still, I was depressed. I honestly stared at the wall for an entire day. I wasn't suicidal, but you could have tempted me to go there with a twinkie.

All of that is behind me. Today I ran and I made it two miles before I had to sit and rub my knee and sniffle. Yaaaaa for me! It might seem like a junior varsity effort to you, but to me it's the world.  The swelling should go down tonight. Tomorrow at the latest.

My wife took my dog to the vet and got some pills because he is limping.  I don't know what is wrong with him, other than he is a little overweight and he runs too much and his knee hurts.  Wait,do dogs have knees?  I don't know but he is limping for the past few weeks.  His knee hurts so bad he can barely rustle up the energy to tip the garbage can over on the kitchen floor to sort the coffee grounds out from the meat scraps.  My wife took pity on the poor creature and took him to the vet and now he gets some doggy knee pills.  I get to sweep up the coffee grounds. 

I used to think John Wayne and I traveled the same path and were metaphysically bound together for eternity.  He made movies, I like movies.  I wanted to be a cowboy, he was a cowboy.  He was rich, I like money too.  We were exactly the same person.  But now he is dead so I don't want to be metaphysically bound to him any more.  As I write this, it occurs to me that my dog and I are more closely suited to each other than John Wayne and I.  And that is Strike Four.