de-escalation

 the grid consumed me a bit this year. first time burnt out in ages. burned important candles and got burned by some not so important ones, too. lots of night miles in the truck to zip codes and surf breaks, but not as many trail heads as years past. my body felt the consumption and burnout of an emotional mind and physical job and even my compartmentalized stoicism couldn't heal the torn up parts of it for a bit. running didn't feel good, so i rode bikes without a helmet and rode waves without an agenda. yoga lacked flow and the energy in the room wasn't right, so my spirit found sanctuary in meditation and my body in physical therapy my ego thought i didn't need. i let go. de-escalated. 

the baseline is now good as i am about to pass 51 years. i am in love with the process of personal shokunin and am finding the solace of a beginners mind to be freeing. knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit, but wisdom is being smart enough not to put it in a fruit salad. 

much love to you all. 

cat gap

so take me down a road that's a little bit windy

to a place where they still put sugar in their iced tea

where the women are fine and the love is fair

hey, driver, you can drop me off anywhere

zach bryan: hey driver

half centum

somewhere in the alps

"the center of gravity of life remains immutable and that, when one succeeds in understanding it, all life's activities, whether tranquil and studious or intense, may lead to a state of self-awareness which expresses itself perfectly in life and action:

-zen teaching

waldo

i am lucky to have two of the best gigs of the weekend. i love marking the course and i really love getting to announce in race updates and mc the finishes of waldo runners. i have these transactional relationships with folks i get to see every year for a weekend under a united goal of providing a world class experience for runners who choose to visit central oregon with a variety of goals that are relatable to me as a runner.

marking the course i got the see the results of the fire from last year and it's affect on the course. i have the perspective of how things used to look and it was sobering, but unsurprising. the irony was that marking was done with smoke from yet another wildfire in the air. the earth is hotter and drier and whether lightening or man made causes, the beautiful places we love will continue to evolve due to climate change. appreciate them while we have them. race day, the smoke cleared out and we were treated to beautiful weather for running. one of many years of waldo magic i have experienced when smoke and fire threatened to cancel the event. 

we've had two time winners of western states at waldo before. shit, we've had a 14 time winner, but seeing a 68 year old former champion rising to the challenge on two artificial knees to finish this year was incredible. jim howard is a waldo finisher. 

on my data sheet for this year we listed previous waldo finishes. the mix was lots of first time finishers with many multi time finishers. lots of 6, 7 and 8 timers getting one more. i believe this weekend provides some of our past finishers with the same sense of family that the races long time repeat volunteers and staff members feel, and that keeps them coming back for more. among the first timers, i met husbands who had run here back to crew wives who had crewed them running their first 100k. i saw new ultrarunners and names i recognized but were able to meet in person for the first time. the race winner this year was a woman who lived and worked in bend fresh out of college back in 2010 pursuing the professional road racing route. now she's thinking about western states. 

one of the most emotional and reflective finishes for me this year was jeff riley. bili ran the race 7 times early on in waldo's infancy and was a volunteer in other years. life has it's challenges and bili was not immune to them and we didn't see him for a long time. this was a guy we spent thousands of miles on the trails with training for States, doing speedwork, long runs, lot of laughter, brownies, etc. he was a brother and reconnecting with him last year at the finish was one of my highlights. he was running again, in a healthy place physically and emotionally and wanting to run waldo this year. looking across that field last saturday seeing that unmistakable running form emerging from the woods towards the finish and then looking to my left and seeing OD, LB, Dano, Q, T-Bag and lc the nostalgia, happiness and excitement absolutely dissolved any chance of me maintaining composure that was already hanging on by a thread. i realize now as i write this that if you could take a snapshot of what waldo is...it's moments and memories like that one. everyone has a story. it's that feeling. it's that celebration, for all of us. runners, crews, volunteers, staff. it's that love that keeps everyone coming back here and new folks coming up. there is no gatekeeper. all are welcome and we look forward to having you. see you next year. 

mayonaise

Fool enough to almost be it
Cool enough to not quite see it
Doomed
Pick your pockets full of sorrow
Run away with me tomorrow
June
Try, ease the pain
Somehow we'll feel the same
Well, no one knows
Where our secrets go
I send a heart to all my dearies
When your life is so, so dreary
Dream
I'm rumored to the straight and narrow
While the harlots of my perils
Scream
And I fail
But when I can, I will
Try to understand
That when I can, I will
Mother weep the years I'm missing
All our time can't be given
Back
Shut my mouth and strike the demons
Cursed you and your reasons
Out of hand and out of season
Out of love and out of feeling
So bad
When I can, I will
Words defy the plan
When I can, I will
Fool enough to almost be it
Cool enough to not quite see it
Old enough to always feel this
Always old, I'll always feel this
No more promise no more sorrow
No longer will I follow
Can anybody hear me
I just want to be me
When I can, I will
Try to understand
That when I can, I will

smashing pumpkins. mayonaise

tux

a little earlier today, old man tuxedo transitioned off this mortal coil. he was incredibly resilient, sweet natured, handsome, curious and idiosyncratic cat & i treasure the almost 18 years he graced my life.

rest well, tux. 

memoir

 "but memoir mocks me," i laugh, "with the very thing it requires.  memory."

memories are fallible.  they change over time.  some become recollection, some rehearsed, some recitation of something reasonably close to the original memory.  some disappear entirely.  two people can experience the exact same event, share the exact same conversation, yet have completely different recollections of it...if they remember it all.  i remember telling some of these stories long ago; i remember exactly which ones i wrote down in college, in a black moleskin journal during a very up and down time.  those memories are gone now, leaving in their wake the simple memory of having once written them down.  i remembered more then.  i also remembered less.

when i remember the rider, it happened in saguaro national park.  that’s impossible, of course, because the rider happened when i lived on campus, so it most likely was sabino canyon.  when i remember the ugly t-shirt, it happens in the warehouse with the velvet elvis poster on the bathroom door, but that’s impossible too.  my memory is not reliable.  my memory is false.  my memories themselves are real.  real enough that i remember the things i don’t remember at all.  and this is how the stories come: disjointed.  christmas in august in fiji, summer in a snowstorm in transylvania county, skateboard wheels and lollipops in a brazilian girl’s jewelry box at burning man  unbidden, unordered, uninvited.  but still they come.

some are interpreted though the lenses of fear, loss, poverty.  some are romanticized, sprinkled with sunlight and sunsets, dusted with campfire flames, sweetened with a look that cut right through me and messages i apparently only sent to myself. some are the stories i made up to trick myself, the only way i could connect the dots, get up in the morning, go to sleep at night, survive another day.  some, like the gunshot, are nothing more than scar tissue. the trauma brain, in protecting its host, destroys its memory to splice it back together into something bearable.  one is left with shreds.  fragments. gaping black holes of absolute nothingness while at the same time wishing my head could sometimes forget the years of things my eyes have seen, but are hungry to remember the feelings dulled by time.

i think its fair to say that we are left with the knowledge that our very own life has been redacted.

if I told my story exactly as i remember it, it wouldn’t be true.  it couldn’t be true.  time transforms memory.  our lens transforms memory.  trauma, joy, life experience and even love and pleasure itself transforms memory.  you remember it this way and i remember it that way.  i remember things that you don’t, and you remember things that i don’t.  true, false, falsified, lied.  what is autobiography to begin with?  aren’t we all, to some extent, figments of our own imaginations?