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? 

stardust

 

“we are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. life is eternal. we have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. this is a precious moment. it is a little parenthesis in eternity.”

- paulo coelho, the alchemist

yeet

 91 days and i'm not the only one who's counting. 

loving this feeling right now. 

what a difference from 1 year ago...

2008

monkeyboy kamp. 2 weeks out. 2008

i find myself, along with one other runner i know of, in the unique position of having been on the entry list for the 2008 western states 100 and also the 2020 event that was just recently canceled due to considerations related to the global outbreak of SARS-CoV2 virus known worldwide as the coronavirus disease.

the 2008 cancellation was acute. it was due to a wildfire that affected the course that was the result of lightening strikes a week out from the race. the cancellation was due to poor air quality, safety considerations of volunteers and crew members and the potential need for fire and ems resources to be allocated away from the public need in order to support the event.

for me, personally, this was devastating at the time. the car was packed and i was minutes away from leaving eugene when both my pacer and one of my training partners called me to tell me hold tight and not leave for squaw valley just yet. like so many others that year, i was looking at clear skies, feeling fit and rested and anticipating my first 100 mile run after 3 years of buildup and setbacks to get me to the starting line. it wasn't yet real and my considerations were self centered. reality was the smoke in squaw valley was thick, the considerations listed above were too great to safely hold the event and it was canceled for the first time in the 34 years of the event.

in 2020 the sport, the event itself and the reason for cancellation have global considerations far outreaching the acute local affect of 2008. To date, the virus has killed more than 25,000 people worldwide in a very short time and globally were are a planet being guided by CDC and WHO guidelines to mitigate exposure and try to ease the strain on limited medical resources that are already overwhelmed world wide. western state will be back. as an entrant, i now can shift my running from "training" to health and wellness so i can devote more time supporting my community as a health care provider without the daily emotional strain whether or not i will have the time to get a run in...which has been a new global reality for runners that have been affected by the outbreak of this virus.

the current race director of western states was also scheduled to be a participant in the 2008 race and knows what cancellation feels like. A large representation of the current Board also was a part of that process. i feel this decision was made from a place of experience and very complete consideration on all parts and i support it, especially the timing of it.

2009, like 2014 after a post race wildfire directly affected the course, was a celebration. what is happening globally is life and death. there is a shift in our global economy, healthcare system and day to day life that far outweighs whether or not we get to run from squaw valley to auburn the last weekend in june this year. i'm looking forward to being a part of the next celebration in june 2021. be safe. look out for each other.

dewayne

dink and dewayne. mmtr 1999

my first memory of dewayne was standing off the side with a group of his Team BAD boys at the finish of the shut in ridge run, probably 95 or 96. they were a serious looking group, but dewayne broke into a smile and walked over to our local brood and started cracking jokes and introducing himself and his crew from huntsville. they were a group of guys who all trained together a few days a week and went to races trying to run fast. we all became quick friends. i think 4-5 of them were sub 2:40 guys with roland winning the race that year. those gold colored singlets. dewayne was also had crazy hair, earrings. typical rocket scientist. if you've never met a rocket scientist before, you had when you met dewayne.

next memory was waiting at the start of the grandfather mountain marathon in boone, nc in the late 90's and i see the same group of dudes roll up on harleys and running shorts. again...Team BAD with the hugs, smiles and buttermouths. they ran hard and then jumped on bikes and rode back to huntsville just like they came in. 

mountain masochist in 99 was the next encounter. Team BAD is now out of the gold kits and into the nike pro kits pictured above. dewayne was in full conversation coming into aid stations like he was out on a long run with his buddy dink. they socially put down a 3rd and 5th place finish that year. watching those two guys that year sure made trail running look a helluva lot more fun than road running.   

finally in 2000, i was standing at the foothills trail head in laurel fork creek on a random two lane road in south carolina waiting on some guy named claude to get his civil war era blunderbuss to fire and run some 35 miles unsupported to upper whitewater falls up in north carolina on a typical humid day in august. i think clark and i were the only one's i saw not wearing long trail gear. we take off and clark and i separate pretty quickly with byron backer and after about 5 miles two things happen; clark takes off, setting the course record that still stands 20 years on now and dewayne, who missed the start by 2 or 3 minutes catches us. i end up spending the next 25 miles running next to dewayne on a remote trail that transcends state lines talking about life, family, trail running and Team BAD. along the way i started to cramp about 30 miles into it and dewayne takes off. i come around a corner with dewayne at a dead stop in the middle of the trail. he had waited for me to point out a huge cottonmouth snake eating a mouse in the middle of the trail. i'll never forget the excitement on his face. "you ever seen anything like THIS in your road races?" with a huge grin. he takes off and beats me up the stairs and is humbly gracious at the finish. at that time, my marathon PR was significantly faster than his but he beat me soundly. 

next year, dewayne is the throes of his dominance at mountain mist 50k on his home course in monte sano. i was still fairly green ultrarunner, i spent all winter training to break his win streak. i tried to psyche out the Team BAD boy by painting my nails black and came up to him during the pre-race dinner and told him "i was gonna stick to him like glue tomorrow". he smiled, said he looked forward to it. sure enough, a triathlete took off early and dewayne and i settled in and picked up where we left off the previous august. he's giving me a tour of monte sano while i'm stuck in my head racing. he did share his secret bottles of sweet tea he had stashed in various hiding spots vs. using crew. we caught the early leader and i took the lead and made a break from him just past 25. shortly after, come mile 26 i was walking with cramps and dewayne tactically comes up on me at the base of waterline trail climb that is famous in the race course and says "now would be a good time to stick to me like glue" with a wry smile and precedes to run away from me again and win his umpteenth mountain mist in a row at that time. rob youngren catches me walking and asks "how the glue sticking to dewayne was working out". i took my fair share of lumps as a young, cocky newbie. the winners were very gracious. dewayne made a point post race of seeking me out to give me counsel on how to come back and break his streak the next year. even at his best...he was the best kind of human. 

few other races here and there. some night road races, a 10 miler on the redstone arsenal where dewayne worked. then...i moved west. social media allowed virtual connection here and there and when i checked my email after my first western states, dewayne had a note of congratulations on my finish at the top of my inbox and he recalled that conversation we had about the race some 9 years before. i had no idea he was watching. i don't know if he ever knew the impact he had on getting me there. 

december 2018 i'm working the lottery in auburn and i hear his name called. quick look at my phone shows me that indeed, it had been 1994 since dewayne had a finish at western states. the past three or four years i had seen dink as either a racer or spectator at states, and the re-connection always felt good. so i was looking forward to having dewayne come west. a few messages back and forth and we meet in squaw for a short catch up after 14 years of not seeing him. same old dewayne. little grey now, but that smile was the same. i missed his golden hour finish as i was up on robie but he did pause for a big hug on his way past heading towards the track. turns out, unexpectedly, that's the last memory i'll have with him and like so many others i've thought about in the last few days, i'll cherish it.  

dewayne satterfield was one of my first real ultrarunning heros along with his buddy, dink taylor. dewayne was cool. he was smart. he was sincere and he was the rug that generally tied the room together and i wanted to emulate so much about him. i thought a lot about Team BAD while training with my eugene crew some years later and i imagine the bond our crew formed was a lot like what they had going on in huntsville in the mid 90s. it was magical and it was authentic, just like dewayne. 

i'll miss you, my friend. 

dewayne 2019 western states as captured by larry gassan