It was a short break

Beach Ultimate. The words are an engraved invitation for flight. Churning legs and soft landing spots beckon the bodies to take off. Soaring after plastic, someone seems to be flying by in every direction at every moment. Had gravity gone missing at any given instant, 50 people would have floated into space. Instead, soft thuds reverberated through Wildwood, New Jersey for two hot days.

Sand comes in two flavors. There's the empty sweetness of a completed pass or a successful block and there's the grainy dryness of an effort that falls just a little short. I tasted the sweetness and the dryness. I covered myself in sand. I played in it. Bathed in it. Wore it like a suit or a hundred thousand itsy-bitsy badges of honor. I had a blast! My team played without the usual distractions and personality conflicts. That's not to say we didn't make mistakes or get beat, but we played with more trust and more peace than I've played with in quite some time. We played like we were having a good time. The teams we played seemed to share that attitude. It's been a long time since there was so much shared awe, shared spirit, shared good nature at an Ultimate Tournament. Wildwood reminded me of the good old days. It's the old man in me creeping out, but I was reminded of the good things about sport. People putting it all out there opposite one another, but not against one another. There were contentious moments, but mostly there were smiles. It was glorious and hot. When it became too much of either there was salt water and waves for a refreshing change of pace.

There were many thrilling moments in the last two days, but my vanity and my blog allow me to toot a few of my own.

-There was the swing pass I plucked from the air. The throw went up and I saw it the whole way. With a mighty step and a leap at about shoulder height, I went for the disc. Arm outsretched, body trailing behind, I flew in front of my man and ripped away a pass intended for him.

-There was the momentum shift. Tiring more easily than I would have liked, I fell behind my man as he streaked for the end zone. The throw went up and I summoned my reserves to get back on defense. The disc hovered for a moment caught by some wind. I accepted my good fortune by grabbing it away from the waiting receiver, landing, pivoting, and throwing to my open teammate at the other end of the field for a score.

-There was the crowd. I'm not sure how I ended up on top of this heap, but the disc ended up in my clutches and I ended up on their haunches.

Illuminating, isn't it?

I've had green, pink, blue, purple, and the traditional yellow. Lots of the traditional yellow. I have "1-800-Collect" and "Project CHEERS," undoubtedly an acronym long-since forgotten like the designated driver they acknowledged now sitting alone in the corner of the bar, his drunken friends wandering off with women of questionable mores. It isn't that I didn't understand their purpose or even that I had not attempted to use them to fulfill their destiny. I knew what a highlighter was. I knew why one might wield said instrument. But knowing and truly highlighting are two very different things. I don't know what the Bible says about highlighting, but in seventeen years of school, after countless thousands of dollars, through more highlighters than digits, highlighting still remained a mystery to me. Once in college, during an experimental phase, I had marked a passage of The Golden Ass in orange, but without my highlighter decoder ring, without my powers of deduction a la Sherlock Holmes, or my gritty crime-fighting wit like so many Hardy Boys, and even without that super-sleuthing boyish prowess of the one and only, the legend, Encyclopedia Brown, I was just coloring. I lacked understanding. I lacked clarity. I was inside the lines, juvenile. If I highlighted a passage in the forest and no one ever reread the passage, did it make a sound? I was a war protest on the White House lawn.

Then one night, not unlike last Thursday night, I had a revelation. Fluorescent inspiration hailed me like a taxi cab. Highlighting, the art form, is a two part process. I knew that, somewhere deep inside of me, but a quesadilla awakened that knowledge, and I perceived that not unlike the strata of said quesadilla, there are also multiple layers in highlighting. The first involves applying color to a page, of course. This part is not done willy-nilly. No, no. Selection of a passage is crucial. The highlighted must capture meaning, symbolism perhaps, or a theme, or just a quote that might later be doled out like Halloween candy to greedy little ghost-impersonators. The second step is perhaps more crucial than the first. The second step is the Aboriginal step. It's the boomerang, the return to the first step. A rebirth, if I may. This rebirth, though not as painful as the first time through, should still recall some of that early awe as meaning springs to life yet again beneath the colored lines of my handiwork.

The tingling sensation that I feel; it lets me know that my highlighting and my shampoo are working.

More Tour

Lance who? Maybe I wasn't mature enough to truly appreciate the 7 Lance Armstrong victories or maybe dynasties aren't as fun as we think. Maybe I missed the beginning of the Lance story or maybe I just didn't have OLN, but for some reason this Tour de France has me as excited about sports as I've been in I don't know how long. I'll give you the 60 second recap, but you should really read the NY Times for more.

Floyd Landis, a favorite and a Mennonite, hid his hip injury from all but his closest friends. He walks with a limp, but rides like mad. He takes the yellow jersey early and decides he doesn't want his team to defend it. He lets this rider Oscar who no one really sees as a threat get back into contention after being down by more than 30 minutes. Oscar is in a breakaway on one stage that gets him all the way back to the front and suddenly Oscar is wearing the yellow jersey. All part of the plan they say. Then Floyd rides like a machine up the mountains, takes back the yellow jersey and Oscar is down by 10 seconds. Next day of big hills, Floyd looks solid. He goes in a breakaway with the other leaders chasing this lone man Rasmussen who is climbing like no one else. Rasmussen is gone and then Carl Sastre makes a move to break away from the group Landis is in. Landis watches him go and looks like he's on a site-seeing tour. He is dropped. He can barely pedal as all the major players pull away. He is losing 2 minutes, 4 minutes, 8 minutes when it's all said and done. With three days left, the tour is over. Even Floyd says this gap is disheartening. So what does Floyd do? He comes out today and flies. He breaks away on his own and blows the doors off the last mountain stage, with bonuses he cuts Oscar's lead to 30 seconds. What the? It now comes down to time trials. Floyd is good at time trials. This is going to be fun.

Pain in the city (and also in the mountain stages)

Last night while watching the Tour de France, that's Tour DAY France according to one commentator, though I really shouldn't judge since no one in my office could say, "au bon pain" in a way that our French-speaker could understand, it was pointed out by my watching friend that many of the competitors were about the same age- 31. One of the commentators must have picked up on her statement, because he added, "these men have put in a lot of years of pain." I think he also said something about making withdrawals from a pain bank, but the whole pain bank scenario involving deposits and withdrawals of pain was a little awkward though it did convey his sentiments. By 31, these riders have had many years of training and they know what their bodies can do. Without getting all Carrie Bradshaw, I wonder if we could pick out a similar timeline for emotions. Is there a point where emotionally we figure out how hard we can go up the mountains? We've had some nasty falls, some even over the guard rail. We're talking scraped skin and broken bones. We've had some success too, maybe even won a stage win or a smaller tour, but at that certain age we reach that emotional understanding. We know what we're capable of and so on that next hill we know just how much energy to expend.

Or

Maybe we get dropped.

That doesn't look villainous

Unless I shave the beard, I won't get to join these guys, either.

France, France, France

It is so hard to lead a successful imaginary breakaway with so many stop signs and stop lights. Do you have any idea what it feels like to know that the imaginary peloton is closing in on you while you watch the little white man blink and blink and blink? It's agony. So much agony that I decided my only recourse was to head butt Reuben in the chest. Too bad he's not here yet.

By the way, I'm not wearing the yellow jersey because it's stained and there will be no doping scandal on my tour.

Moustache: That's French for moustache

Oui. Oui. Yes, I am trying to grow a handlebar moustache. Handlebar moustaches do not, despite popular belief, form themselves. They require a little coaxing. That's where moustache wax comes in. Wax, is an interesting fluid/solid/thing. Car wax is for shining a car. Candle wax is for burning. Sex wax is for a smooth ride on surfboards and skis. One could surmise that moustache wax is for ..., but then one might then be kicked out of polite society. That's why unlike one, I have chosen to follow the French directions. "Appliquer une petite quantite de cire sur les cheveux a l'aide de la basse. " My French is a little rusty, but if I had to guess I'd say this roughly translates to "Apply a little bit to your hair to aid in catching la babes." Those French, they think of everything.

I am not overly concerned about catching la babes as I have already reaped great rewards during my handlebar growing phase. Twirling my moustache has provided me with great pleasure and I have yet to master a villainous laugh. I was accused of being dramatic, but there was nothing mellow about it.

If the wax works particularly well and my moustache cooperates, I look forward to tying damsels to the railroad tracks and copious amounts of fast-paced piano music. I will also be donning a black and red cape and mastering that laugh. Like the box says, "TENIR HORS DE LA PORTEE DES ENFANTS" or for those that didn't fake three years of French, "Protect the women and children."

I'll disappear in a cloud of smoke. Laugh. Cry. Love me. Hate me. No one ever said this relationship would be simple. Au revoir.

tales from the road

Missouri is not a fly-over state. I checked it out just to be certain. I spent three days searching for the point where deep green farmland met bright blue sky, but every time I looked up from pedaling my bike it seemed to be further away. I came across some interesting places on the ride, the Wal-Mart in Boonville comes to mind, but perhaps none as entertaining as Tebbetts. The town of Tebbetts, like a number of towns we passed through, looked like it could have been in a stage production of "Our Town." The post office was in the same building as Jim's Country Store. Jim's Country Store would turn out to be an entertaining place in it's own right, but the main reason for our stop in Tebbetts was Mrs. Turner. Not bad for a dead lady. I may be a little fuzzy on my facts, but I think I've got the gist of it. The Turner family had a store where Jim's now resides. Mrs. Turner set up a foundation and left that foundation a house to be turned into a hostel. This hostel has two stories, about 20 bunk beds, three showers, two dilapidated ping pong tables, a refrigerator, various old magazines, air conditioning units, fans, and a picnic table. For five dollars a night on the honor system, all of those luxuries were available for passers-through. In theory, the place is amazing. In practice, it was kind of neat. A little something got lost for me between the mildew of the shower curtain, the continual squeaking of the plastic cover on the mattress, and the bright red glow of the EXIT signs. A shower, a bed and a fan for five dollars is tough to beat these days though, so I need to banish my complaints. I wonder if Jim's had something for that.

Jim's Country Store was a treat. Both times we entered we found three or four regulars smoking and drinking the evening away. Except for one, they were different regulars. On our first pass, we asked the man behind the bar about finding some dinner. The man, who not surprisingly turned out to be Jim, offered us "Five-star pizza." He then added, "It's frozen."
We finished our liquid refreshment with the promise to return for the pizza. Before we left a woman tugged on my father's sleeve and launched into a lengthy diatribe that seemed to contain details about her many dogs and about their propensity for barking. I don't recall seeing or hearing the dogs during our stay in Tebbetts. Good dogs. We actually only encountered good dogs on our trip. I was a little nervous at one point when I spotted a dog just outside of a junkyard. Fortunately, the dog redeemed the late Leroy Brown.

After we settled into the expansive hostel, we returned to Jim's for some of that five-star pizza. As we waited at the bar for Jim to heat our pizza, my cousin spied an electric guitar propped up against the wall. Displaying a confidence that would continually surprise me, he asked Jim if he could play. Jim wasn't keen on hooking up an amp, but asked as he pulled another guitar from under the bar if acoustic would be ok. My cousin quietly strummed for a few minutes and refused requests to play loud enough for other folks to hear. It seems the store's whistle was whetted for some music, because another gentleman proceeded to pick up the guitar and serenade us all through dinner and beyond. Most of the songs I didn't recognize, but could still enjoy. I'm not sure if Jim recognized the tunes either, but he proceeded to pull out spoons and play them for at least thirty seconds. Not a minute later he pulled out his harmonica for another rousing thirty seconds of accompaniment. Jim also offered up a mandolin, but unfortunately none of us could play. I'm still not clear if Jim could play. My dad wanted me to ask for a banjo, but I was fearful that Jim would have one. I wasn't sure this crowd wanted to hear one of my four songs.

We left Tebbetts quietly the next morning. Jim wasn't up yet to serve breakfast. Left to our own singing, we went spinning on to the east. The skies had not even spit in our general direction until we neared our final destination, the sprawling metropolis of Washington, Missouri.

Another year

Another mile. 4:49. Last place. The good hurt.

On mortality

Do you ever worry that your kids may not have a Vanna White? Who will turn their letters? Who will blind them with her white smile?

Happy 4th!

There's something special and worldy about watching the thrilling finish of the Italy v. Germany World Cup game and then immediately flipping between the Nathan's Hot Dog eating contest and Le Tour de France.