Got It Done!

I wanted to do this for a really long time and it finally got done. It's a funny thing about endurance stuff. You just want to see if you can do it. For many years I have fished around the islands of southwest Florida and for almost as long as I have kayaked, I knew people made a big deal out of an excursion from Pine Island to the barrier island, Cayo Costa. I knew it was only about a 15 minute trip by our fishing boat, but about 4 hours by kayak. I always wanted to see if I could make it, but could find no one else foolhardy enough to come along. Then came Janne, young, fit, and ready for just about any challenge. I took him kayaking once, and he lasted 2 hours and wanted more. That was the hook. I told him about my plans, but that he probably was not ready and needed to really think about it....yup, he fell for it! We paddled 8 miles and made the island in the 4 hours and then paddled back to Cabbage key for lunch (a big cheeseburger). Finally we made the journey back to the house on Pine Island. All in all, we traveled 16.1 miles in 7 1/2 hours of travel time. We had good weather, but it was boiling hot and the water was almost as hot as the air. The lesson I learned from this trip is that the only hour that matters is the last one, the one in which you would trade your mother for an easy chair and some air conditioning...

Foxhole Faith

I sat there alone in the dark, watching one of the most dimly lit movies I can remember. The movie is Passengers, and it is full of the feeling that 'none of this is real' and the main character is going to wake up in the psycho ward, or dead. I'm thinking to myself that this has been done before, and there is no afterlife and it is all a bunch of hooey. I chuckled to myself there in the dark, knowing quite well that not more than 90 minutes before I was singing quite a different tune....
I was a mile from home when it hit hard. If life is at all like the movies, then there had been plenty of foreshadowing of this. Articles in the paper about local deaths from lightning, movies with people getting hit by lightning. But, I was sure that the storm was still a ways off and would probably just go around, and, like many people that do unhealthy things in the name of health, I found myself running full blast in a hail storm. Yes, in order to curb my weight, and prove my fitness, I was most likely going to have to purchase new $150 running shoes, new $300 cell phone, and new $250 ipod. Plus, I remembered some story about a guy's earphones burned into his ears from a lightning strike. I quickly yanked the earphones off. Running in the rain sure was fun. I kept telling myself that the lightning was still far away, until it started cracking all around me. I felt just like a soldier trying to dodge bullets while running across an empty field. The goal had been 5 miles, and I had completed a mile and a half when the storm hit. I turned for home and realized that I really had a problem. For some strange reason, I can easily remember repeatedly looking at my heartrate monitor and seeing 163 bpm, while hail bounced crazily off the watch. Was that from how fast I was running or how scared I was? I opened up the direct line to God, making promises about how I would do better, and never again even think about running when it was thundering out.
Then I got home, dried out the shoes, the phone, and the ipod. Turned on the movie and felt superior to a film about supernatural events.
...btw, seriously God, just in case you're listening. Thanks.

It Didn't Take Long

Flying in the plane, trying to hold onto that peace that came with the trip the the Northwest. Friendly people, comfortable temperatures, scenery that is too good for postcards, I wanted to keep that glow burning within me and have it act as a forcefield against the reality of the town my home has turned into. It was exciting once upon a time as the realtors and builders got excited, making money and building up apartments and condos and then it all fell apart and now it's two tons of steaming fertilizer in a one ton truck. But, for the moment, I could imagine a life of running in the sun without hardly sweating while I looked into the mountains to spot some wildlife. I would treat others as I would like to be treated and perhaps that would spread like some kind of good virus..
I was startled out of my reverie by a middle-aged, well-dressed woman saying, "Move it! I have a connection flight to catch!"
"I'm sorry, I have a flight to catch as well, but I'm getting down the overhead luggage for a couple that can't get it themselves."
"Well, I don't have any luggage, so just let me by!"
Poof...I'm in Atlanta getting pushed and shoved and got my hand on my wallet, not thinking for a moment of letting go of my backpack....I didn't even make it all the way home and the glow is a distant memory.

3000 Miles In A Black Charger

It's done. The guy at the car rental place shook his head in disbelief that I brought back his car with so many miles on it. 3000 miles in two weeks! A whole lot of it was back roads and climbing up mountains and seeing the things that were not on the map. I learned quite a bit about the Pacific Northwest and the people there and I do love the place. Even the darkest times seemed to not be as bad as I'm used to. I did not really find people totally demoralized by the recession, although you could see the effect of it. How are people doing with less? It seems like most of them did not want that much to start with. They just wanted to live a life that was different than what you see in the daily news on TV. A life separate from the grim reality of the big cities and too crowded feeling we have at home.
If there was one thing I'd like to hang onto, it was seeing a young Japanese couple on the top of Logan's Pass in Glacier National Park in the Visitor Center. They were all excited, reading the poster depicting the plant life that could be found in the extremely cold location. I don't understand the Japanese language, and I truly wondered if anyone within a thousand miles could have translated anything for them, but they found us! This wasn't International Drive, this wasn't Disney World or Miami Beach. This couple wasn't the only one like that either. I was so happy to see that adventurous people from other countries were finding the beauty of America in the backwoods. We don't suck! We are not just what they see on TV and they are not just the people we see on TV.
I'm beginning to think that my people are the ones on the top of that mountain.

the Best Parts Are The Wrong Turns

There had to be some disappointment somewhere on this journey. And of course, it was at the place I had the most expectations for: Hood River, OR. I have seen many magazine photos of the windsurfing there and knew that it was Mecca for the sport. I even ran into a guy about my age at a gas station in the middle of the desert and spoke with him about it. He had a big truck stuffed full of windsurfing gear, 4 or more boards and masts and just bulging with sailbags. He was from Canada and was making the trek to Hood River for some 4th of July sailing. Man, I will never complain about an hour drive to the beach again!
We finally got there about 11 in the morning after a very long drive to see this place. It turned out, as in life, that the drive there was more important than the place itself. The town was very nice, and extremely cool place to hang out with your lady, but the windsurfing spot itself was a bit of a letdown. In fact, it was much like the place where I windsurf at home, only with a lot more people. The wind was blowing, but not enough, and people were either sitting on the shore getting sun, or slogging through the cold water. As I learned in Hawaii, I am better off at home with the warm water and the once in a while wind that we get. Here, windsurfing is big, even the sports section of the newspaper has a section for the windsurfing forecast. These people spend lots of money and time to enjoy a few months in the summer. A windsurfer from Florida should never complain the rest of his life.
It turned out that the best part of the day was after I took a wrong turn near the ocean in Oregon and found myself on a lonesome back road and face to face with a deer that didn't mind me at all and even posed for photographs. After a trip of seeking wildlife in the woods, this was probably the biggest surprise...one more life lesson..

The Montana Girl

She was of that indeterminable age between 18 and 25, grown up but still carrying around some of that youthful innocence. Blond and fair, with long hair carelessly swept back from her face, she had too many curves, but most boys wouldn’t mind. She was our waitress in this log cabin restaurant just outside Glacier National Park in a very rural setting. To get an idea of how things are for residents, there are less people in Montana than in Central Florida, and you could put the whole state of Florida inside of Montana. And right then, we were in a sparsely populated section of Montana. Turns out that she had been raised on a 1000 acre farm surrounded by her whole extended family. She went to a one room school house with 30 other kids and already had ‘broke a horse’ and ‘rode a bull’, but to me she was just like one of my kids, wanting to be on her own, getting away from her mother and find a man that wasn’t just a rodeo clown. She explained that the green stuff we saw growing everywhere was alfalfa and how it was harvested and about hunting on her cousin’s 10,000 acre farm in east Montana. I said that the only deer I had seen were right in the middle of these alfalfa fields and that would have been like shooting fish in a barrel. We both laughed and then she said “Well you have to be up higher, like on a hill or it’s all over. Last year, there was one female that looked around and saw that all of the other elk were gone and she was left behind, and she probably thought that nobody cared about her. She was wrong. I put one right between her eyes and now she is in my freezer!”
Goosebumps crawled across my arm as I realized that my kids are the innocent ones…

Peaceful Solitude - Good Luck With That

Two hours alone on this old country gravel road. The temperature was in the 60's and the air actually felt scrubbed clean. I rode up and down hills and saw some scenery that made me want to just keep on going until I hit Canada. The roadside farms were all quiet, hardly a bird flew by and the only people I had seen so far were a young woman in camo-wear and her young daughter, riding on a hunting 4 wheeler. The Mom waved her coffee mug and the young girl waved both arms in abandon, having the most possible fun on this picture perfect day. I felt a million miles away from the city and 'too many rats in a cage' feeling that we live with day to day. I was sure that anyone living here, did it on purpose in order to get away from all of that.
As I finally completed the gravel road loop of 6 miles, I pulled over, wondering if there was time to do it again, or just ride back on the side of the highway to our rented condo. I heard the first car of the day pulling up behind me and I turned to give a friendly hello as I took in the blacked-out windows, large rims and coffee-can muffler on the dark green sedan. As the Mitsubishi Eclipse wound his gears out going up the hill, my lip curled from a smile to a frown and I shook my fist in the air, fruitlessly yelling at the long gone sports car. "Damned Rice-burners! Is nothing sacred in this country!?"