Being Chased By Shadows

I was up for a long run yesterday. It was to be a five miler on a really nice winter Florida day. The temperature was in the 50's and the sky was as blue as it gets. I had finished over 3 miles of the run at my own leisurely pace, just taking in the day and feeling happy about having a day off from work, when I saw it.
If you knew much about me, you'd know that I'm known more as a soul surfer than as a competitive type, but a number of times lately I had felt challenged when another runner passed me by on the sidewalk. One time it was two ladies that were much older than me and promised myself it would not happen again.
So, there I was just doing my thing, when I saw the shadow of someone behind me, catching up quick. I thought to myself, "Not today, buddy!" and poured on the speed. I was running about as fast as I could and watching my heartrate monitor showing me numbers that I usually never see. I was coming up to the footbridge and knew he could not pass me there, so I ran just a little harder to keep ahead. I passed the bridge and was feeling like I could lay off a bit, but the shadow was creeping up again. The next section was uphill and I started thinking that if this guy was young and in really good shape I could not keep the lead, but I could at least make him wish he had never smoked a day in his life, and then gave it everything I had. I stretched my legs out wide and killed that hill. I knew that I had used up whatever extra energy I had, and was going to have to stop and let this guy take over. At least I wanted to turn around and see him red in the face and burning with the effort it took to pass the bald-headed old guy. I stopped and turned with hands on hips to watch an old man on a bicycle turn and cross the road....

Do As I Say..

Do you ever have one of those moments where confusion crosses your mind like fast-moving clouds in the sky? The phrase for this on Fark.com is "wait a minute...." and that is what happened to me yesterday.

While taking a leisurely cruise up the coast of Florida, my wife and decided to stop at Marineland, a place of excitement in our youth. A place that stood up there with Silver Springs and WeekeeWachie, entertainment meccas that are either gone or reduced to almost nothing. The arrival of Disney, Universal Studios and Sea World in Orlando back in the 70's really killed these small-town places. Now Marineland is a place to go have a session in the water with dolphins for a few hundred bucks...and there is no big line of customers waiting to do that. We paid the $8 general admission fee to come in and look around and it was more fun than I would have thought. I watched the dolphins playing and getting trained by the young women and asked one of the women about dolphin behavior in the wild. Specifically, I was asking about dolphins mostly ignoring me altogether when I was surfing or kayaking, but occasionally seeing a couple in south Florida come up to the boat looking for handouts. She then started off on a lecture about how it's illegal to feed dolphins and that some fishermen caused all this and are disrupting the environment. I questioned that a bit, because everywhere I go I see pelicans coming around docks for fish scraps. If someone is teaching a few pelicans how to do that, then we need to learn that process for our own school system. As she went on about how delicate the dolphins are in the wild, my eyes wandered back to the pools behind her, watching the trainer holding a small bait fish up in the air for the dolphin to jump up and catch. I remembered that a bird trainer once told me that the way to train animals with food is to keep them hungry, and then it occurred to me that the dolphins I saw in south Florida at least had a choice about where their food came from....

I'd Rather You Think I'm a Moron

Boy have I been here before. I can still remember clearly, being somewhere in my 30's, standing in a music store trying to trade in a piece of gear for something new that I thought I needed. The young sales guy took a look at my old junk stuff I wanted to trade and earnestly suggested that I might try taking an ad out in the classified section of the newspaper. I looked up sharply, hoping to spot a trace of sarcasm crossing his face, but his expression was total deadpan. Did he truly think that I had never seen a newspaper, never looked at the used gear ads, got to my 30's without ever selling one thing in the newspaper? I realized then that either he was a idiot, or he thought I was.
Flash forward to the present. I'm now in my mid-fifties and this young hotshot shows me how quickly he could answer my tough question with a google search. I was taken aback once again. Does he really think I could have survived over 15 years in IT without having used google? I can't even think of a day when I didn't do at least one search on it. Continuing in that vein, if you send somebody a link from a google search and pronounce, TA DA!, problem solved....it's probably a good idea if you look at the link and make sure it really does what you think.
On the other hand, I much prefer my adversaries to believe that I am a moron....it comes in handy later.

The Kindling Wood

It's time again for the office shuffle, and myself and some others will get packed up and moved to another location. Why? Man, we could not take Why.. We just know it is for the good of somebody, not sure who. I think about how I've gotten used to the current spot and what I will be giving up, and spend way too much time worrying about that. My brain is way too powerful for this kind of thinking, and then I finally start to get it..
This is the kindling wood for my brain. This is the time I spend on Craigslist looking at gear I don't need, the time I spend worrying about politics that I can't change, the time I spend worrying about futures that are out of my control. It's like some big fire in my head that sometimes goes low, and perhaps almost goes out when I watch too much television. It's building back up now, the thought of change and the possibility of losing some part of me that is important, and my mind resists, stoking that fire and then looking for the big cordwood, the big tough problems in life and family. It comes to me then that I am surrounded by great people and life is full and the fire is burning as high and as hot as ever. Christmas is coming, surfing is going great, and music is full of possibilities. The desk, the cube, the office life, well that is just a place to sit down and rest from the big important things. Besides, I already got the best words from a country song: it ain't like I've never been here before, I'm just here again...

Chillin' With The Boys

I finally ended up driving to the campground Saturday morning, cold and rainy the whole way, wondering what good could come of this. My brother and Dad were hanging out there already, most likely huddling around the heater in my Dad's old camper trailer. It looked like the whole weekend was a wipe and then it cleared up around noon. Then four of us went for a long hike around the park and during that time we found that my Dad had been just about any place in Florida that you could imagine. It turned out to be the perfect weekend to sit around the campfire and we did a whole lot of that. It's interesting how things change when there is no television, no internet and nothing much else to do. Of course, the one difference was that everyone had smartphones and even while having the old-fashioned fireside political talks, each of us was checking our email, so perhaps it was not quite like the good old days, but it was close enough!

The Next Adventure - Tomoka

Today I'm heading on another adventure after working a short day. My brother and I are heading up to Tomoka State Park, which is right on the salt water, near the ocean, but in the woods. It's definitely a Florida kind of spot, not at all pretending to be up in the mountains. We're meeting up with the guys in the extended family, or at least the ones that are still going after seeing the weather report. The weather this weekend is not for sissies, at least Florida sissies. Cold and rainy is the expectation and I think most of the guys have less than fond memories of our last trip, early on this year when it went into the 20 degree area. Yes sir, I should certainly find something to write about this weekend! But, hanging with the boys and being the voice of reason while I hear all about how Obama has messed it all up, that should be worth the price of admission alone...

Spending the Holidays in Florida

Even after a lifetime, Florida seems like a strange place in the wintertime. I went surfing last weekend and while the air was cold enough for a sweatshirt, the water was still 72 degrees, which felt like it was helping keep me warm.
This morning I went out for the paper and the air temp is in the 70's, almost muggy warm. That is supposed to change as I'm heading out on a camping trip in what might be cold, rainy weather.
I look around at the Christmas decorations and think I'm really going to need that Charlie Brown Christmas music to get things going. One year I bought that album with the Jazz piano group playing that song that they must really get sick of being asked to play. It's really odd that I love that whole package, the song and the little cartoon special. It seems so minimalist now, but the idea that I sat as a kid and watched a show about a kid being depressed at Christmas, makes me feel that even way back then we knew that we needed to get back to the spirit of things.
Charlie Brown had the snow and the ice skating, but even in Florida, without all those trappings, Florida, the land of the Christmas Palm tree, we still know what the celebration is really about.