light.

christmas is like a long, hard ride: the more you put into it, the better it is.

my favorite christmas in childhood memory was one of the first in the house that my parents had built, up on a snowy white hill surrounded by leafless maples and swaying spruce. we had all gone to the local small town. we had all searched and searched for gifts that would be 'perfect' for that particular person in the family. i had never spent so much time considering what pair of wool socks would best suit my little brother. i had never considered the soap my sister might like. i was sure those patterned socks would be perfect for my mom.

i had worked for the past few weeks in the wood shop of the local school, making novelty items out of scrap lumber, routering people's names into knotty pine, painting wooden christmas tree ornaments cut crookedly with a scroll saw then painted green, putting the mirror in another 'key rack' that no one had a use for. it was glorious.

everyone got socks that christmas.

then my parents went back to bed, my brothers and i went out to play hockey in the snow with my new net and puck, my sister started reading her book, and we were to reconvene for brunch. i remember quite vividly how fluffy the snow was, like stick handling the puck over snow after a goose down pillow fight. the sun was beaming. light glinted off of everything shiny or snow-covered, which was everything out there. my new sweatpants were bright red, like the paint on the hockey net. my brothers were flashes of blue and wool grey. we were giddy with the pleasure of the moment. mom was home. dad was home. we were proud of the gifts we had given. we were covered in light.

christmas has since devolved and then evolved into a time of midnight drives and sleepy presents, pressure cooker accommodations and the constant failure of myself to meet anyone's expectations. sometimes there was bedrest. sometimes there was christmas on the road. sometimes it was on the 25th and everyone was angry. sometimes it was before and didn't feel like christmas. sometimes we showed up a day later and every conversation ached like a hangover. yesterday, yesterday was evolution. we woke up in our own beds. the girls opened their stockings and presents. there was not enough, but this is a budget year, and they get twisted expectations from their friends at school. then we ate and all was well. there was coffee and gluten free cinnamon buns. there was bacon. it was christmas, evolved back into what it should be. and then it started snowing, big, fluffy flakes, covering everything in cold, white down. i was not angry.

now it's the time for resolutions, for promising to make next year just a little bit better, to plan a little tighter, to give a little more. now it's the time to ramp everything up as we hit the road and try not to screw up christmas under other people's expectations (not that i know what any of them are, let alone how to reconcile them with the realities of weather, driving, or my own little family). not really a problem; we all know that i'll fail to meet most people's expectations so there's no need to stress about the inevitable. next year though, next year i will cover all of us in light.

merry christmas.

different.

he was tall, lean, and hungry-looking, blonde with perfect teeth, and lips that stretched over his mouth when he smiled, and he usually smiled, especially when he was telling a story. this was lying through your teeth, only better, and beautiful.

he wore sweatpants with no logo, burgundy probably, at some point, and white socks, white at some point, that vanished into dirty red converse. his t-shirt was perfectly worn: yuppies a decade later would have paid premium dollar for such 'stonewash'. his hair curled a bit, and matted a bit more. he was local.

being shorter and newer and not from around there, i rushed home and transformed myself instantly. i dug out my most faded sweatpants to replace my new creased jeans. i put on the broken converse i had already grown out of. i left my t-shirt on. i was local.

where i grew up, when i grew up, we were all just as poor as each other. we all made our own fun in the trees behind our houses. we swam in the river and dove between the little oil slicks on the surface of the waves at the public dock. we rode stripped down mountain bikes without helmets or even shorts. we perfected the staycation, traveling everywhere by bike, our stories and egos getting bigger on every mile of the three between our parents' houses. no one went to vermont to ski. no one went to mexico on march break. i wore hand-me-down skates from the doctor's son. we all had patches on our knees and hemmed-out pants that were a little too short. when i grew up, we were all too poor to know any other way of it.

later on, we found out that there were differences.

i would never be local. i wasn't born there. my parents weren't from around there. and even though my dad built local houses and drove local trucks and my mom patched up local drunks and idiot snowmobilers at the local hospital, we would never be local. maybe that's why it was so easy to leave. we got good grades and worked far away. sometimes we stayed and fell in love with local girls. we just weren't from around there. and now, when i ride local roads with people who aren't from around there, i'm proud to say that i grew up on those roads, that riding those hills was the only way to see the girl i loved.

later on, that perfect blond boy with the smile and the uncle who played in prairie oyster would grow up. we wouldn't be friends anymore, wouldn't really even say hi. maybe we would nod in the hallway at high school. he would smoke and snowboard at the hill. i would snowboard in my backyard and avoid asthma attacks. his brother got into hard drugs and was later diagnosed as schizophrenic. we were different.

my kid asks me sometimes why we don't go to mexico for march break, or why she doesn't go skiing on winter weekends, or why we don't own our house or send her to different camp in the summer, or have a cottage… she knows that there are differences. i tell her that it's because of the choices of her mama and me, that we picked certain things to do for jobs, and certain things to spend money on, and that with these jobs and those money things, there's only so much money to go around. and then i remind her that i get to see her every day and every weekend, while i'm not out making a million dollars a year. we don't own our house, but we get to send her to school that's only a short walk away, and is another short walk from the grocery store, and the park, and 'amenities'. we made choices. we spent money on school and bikes and being healthy instead of rich. and then, to sum up, to make sure that she need not worry about her rank in the neighborhood family status thing for everything, i remind her that her mama rides faster than every lady in the neighborhood, that the little girl has the nicest bike of any kid in her school, that we may drive a small car but our bikes are nicer than most people's cars, and that she's more important than a million dollars a year, and i'd rather chase her in the park than dollars on bay street.

vapor.

the wind had been so cold and literal on the downward stretch of highway, loneliness seemed to creep along the base of endless rock cuts, until i looked to the side and saw i was leading an anonymous legion of suffering fools.

we were not in the valley yet.

the wind had been so cold that i became acutely aware of every porous stretch between the woven fibers of my shirts, of the holes pushed open by the sharp ends of safety pins lashing a bib to my club shirt, of the droplets of moisture making their ways skyward after a chilling encampment on my skin.

the sun had shone but not brightly enough to warm a damn thing, so one foot turned over the other, again and again and again, barely tapping out the rhythm of a dying percussionist bent on completing a song in time. waving to the crowd did nothing to save the strength. smiles were returned with grimaces. teeth were bared not out of menace or happiness, but of struggle. this is where the skin of one's teeth renders one naked and grasping.

the highway levelled off and gave way to footpaths and cold bridges and walkers and walkers and waddlers in the way. one side then the other, dodging and dying, choking on fuel to maintain the pace, stick with the group, find the pace, breathe, breathe. then we were borne onto the lakeside, dodging more people, rollerbladers and sunday strollers and fellow strugglers, and children. i thought myself too bare and grotesque to be witnessed by onlookers, let alone children. no one should have to see a man turn himself inside out, only to fail.

we were in the valley. the sun came out, blaring, pushing long shadows like suspicious glances of whether or nots and possibles toward that one elusive goal. the goal skipped along like the droplets atop the waves in the lake. we were still running out from the finish. i needed the turnaround.

at 35k, i discovered every pore atop my head and shoulders, stripped off my hat and gloves, steamed my way to the finish. i was a comet, shredding myself through atmosphere to arrive with whatever remained at the end. i was vapor.

about 700m from the line, someone yelled at me that i was almost done, that the finish was just around the bend. four bends later, someone came out from the side and ran with me, yelling at me to stay on her shoulder, right to the line, to go, to finish, to bring it in. i had already lost the goal. i couldn't actually see very much or very well. the sides of the world swelled and the line loomed. i took it.

3:01:38.

Boston Qualifying time.
Marathon PR.
98 seconds past the mark.

Next time.

ready.

it being the third time in two weeks that i was having the shop do the same level-1 fix to one of only two commuter wheels in the house, the shop owner looked me in the eye at the pinnacle of our exchange and asked, 'are you ready?'

of course, we were barely talking about bikes. 

actually, we had been talking about bikes up until that point and then about how my amazingly nice custom road bike in the corner wasn't getting ridden nearly as much as it should. this is because i've been running. this is because i had the girls with me all summer. this is because it's the work year again. this is really just because i've been running. a lot.

we had been talking about bikes and then about how i haven't been riding bikes and then about how i was going to run a marathon in a few weeks. i don't look like a runner, let alone a marathoner, let alone a marathoner with audacious goals like mine, so he had to ask, 'are you ready?'

and i replied, 'yes...'

i had to think about the reply, but, once it came to me, it was certain. i was ready to run a marathon. i was ready to run 26.2 miles in under three hours. i was ready to hurt a lot. and all that, with a wheel in my hand and a bag on my back and a few hundred miles in my legs since june, that was before tomorrow. and it was before tuesday's tempo workout two days ago. 

you see, strange things are done under streetlights on lakeshore by a man who moils for goals. warm up for three kilometers. jog slowlyish past sleeping houses and ambling hipsters absorbed in their twitter self-updates and trucks that smell like diapers and the bread factory and down to the lake. as soon as the watch beeps the third kilometer done, take off. the first k in this section, under four minutes. the music is blaring. the air is perfect. the traffic zips by, unaffected by the lone figure careening through the dark, two steps per second, one hundred fifty heartbeats per minute, in and out of shadows and highlights. the path streams along underneath. the second k disappeared somewhere. a right at the light not showing the white man walk sign. somewhere into the third k, taking turns harder than usual, testing, breathing. once around the parking lot, looping back, still into the darker of the dark. running alongside a raccoon pinned between the dying man and a plywood barrier, the awkward pause caught in polaroid stillness as cars render it all a scene. the fourth k begins, agony searing all parts. the pavement bucks, coughing up gravel and cracks. a hard left. onto the service road. more barriers. traffic behind while the swollen center pushes toward the dampness of a darkened ditch. just 1200 meters to go. just a thousand more steps. just a million more beats per minute. just five more minutes. grandma always said she could do anything as long as she knew for how long. how long. how long. beep.

so yeah, i'm ready. i'm ready for tomorrow that's going to be pretty damn similar but for 33k. i'm ready for the next day when we host thanksgiving. i'm ready for the day after when i do pretty much nothing but recover. i'm ready.

walking through doors at golf clubs.

i had been pretending, feigning some fascination with what had just transpired, in order to bridge a philosophical gap between her and me, and with one pragmatic and utterly unfascinating yet incriminating statement, she burned the entire facade to the ground. so i gave up trying to please her in this nonversation, and opted instead to hold the door, and pretend to look for our children, whom, i was sure, were completely in the loving care of their other parents and warm roomful of adoring smiles. the carpet was red.

red carpets are terrible.

in having to come up with reasons to talk and then subjects about which to talk but with which there would be no drive to enter conflict, i had exhausted my present imagination and resigned myself to following some orders and filling some glasses. ice water is benign. except, of course, when it is not, there will always be condensation happening onto the table cloth and moistening and cooling one's hands before they are grasped flaccidly in failed handshakes and lips pressed together in grim attempts at warmth. 

ice water is tragic.

the sandwich i made when i thought i was rich.

some leftover hamburger buns were crowding the counter next to the unplugged and stained stainless steel electric kettle whose cord was snaking through the cornmeal crumbs discarded by earlier quests for the buns. cornmeal mixed with the condensation from the mayonnaise jar as it relented to the humidity of another, final, august morning, weeping next to the open cap crowned by a smudged butter knife, the handle of which precariously perched on a damp bamboo cutting board. cheddar was hard to come by in its hardest form but four slices later the orange dye decorated the buns and then there was the salami.

salami. salami is never purchased around here because it is meat in a vegetarian household, and it is expensive, and why would i make a salami sandwich when i have so many other things to pay for?

it was the sandwich i made when i thought i was rich.

the day before yesterday, i thought i was rich, enjoying a pay period extraneous to the usual two per month. then a bunch of expenses reared their ugly heads, and, in the interest of getting everything squared away before all hell breaks loose on tuesday, i paid for absolutely everything, all at once, and then sat in my kitchen, broke, eating salami.

at least there will be something to think about for 26k tomorrow, one foot in front of the other. easy now. this is really going to hurt...

humorless.

He was a humorless man, grey haired and semi nervous, standing with practiced nonchalance in the wake of boutique process. He had ordered the bicycle in an attempt to treat himself, or so he had himself, and others, so convinced, yet the sparkling machine before him said nothing of breezy commutes to meaningful days of noble toil and earning. It was a metal betrayal. 

And we could all see it. 

He forced an easy distance from the shopkeeper if that's what he could be called, satchel sling over one shoulder and nervous eyes of indeterminate half exotic descent flitting from one shiny component to the next, customer and carbon treated in the same dull glance. 

He was a buyer. 

distracted.

i got distracted.

when we were on the streetcar, she admitted to me that she almost kind of hoped that we got 'caught' and charged for our mission just so that she could frame the ticket. i'm sure that no one would have noticed the damn thing next to the images we created on that rainy afternoon in a pre-condo wasteland off of king west.

when i finally got the prints done and perfect and brought them to her in an unruly stack of resin-coated shock-beauty, we looked them over on some sagging furniture in a dirty student house and we both realized something we hadn't seen before: she, her own beauty, strong and powerfully unabashed and flawed and perfect and outside of something she thought she owned; i, that i had gotten distracted by it, and the surroundings had hardly anything to do with what i saw and framed that day. we had hiked through cold drizzle and concrete rubble and rebar and behind doors with growling junkyard dogs and past stacks of jersey walls to some semblance of shelter. and then i took out my camera and she took off her shirt and we got to work on the first of many of the more amazing hours of my life.

we were not in love with each other.

we were working together in curiosity to find out what we could make of ourselves, in stolen 1/125ths of seconds, through sharp 5.6 f-stops, underneath decaying canopies and a light misting. we had taken the streetcar all the way out there. we would end up buying a very expensive lunch at the first warm pub we found. and she stood in front of steel doors, laughing, and looking, and always curious. i liked myself when i saw what she saw, most of me hidden behind a big black box, straining to gain focus, flexing and nervous as the shutter first opened, and then closed.

sitting on her couch, it all seemed so unreasonable.

we were students, and kinda artsy, and there were plenty of much warmer places to get naked and make photographs than an industrial heap backing onto the gardiner expressway. and there was nary a trace of this heap in any of the images. you could see, sharp focus, detail, the goosebumps on her skin, frozen forever in silver in resin on paper in light, but there was nothing of the surroundings. why had we gone through such trouble when none of the trouble even showed up in the end?

i got distracted.

there was a whole lot of beauty happening in front of me and damned if i was going to lose a second of it to something else like a background or landscape context or a cheesey press-flesh-against-industrial-material has-been motif. my jaw was permanently dropped for that afternoon, and somehow i needed the concrete around us to hold me up. you can't see it in the prints. it's not obvious that we were cold or standing in the rain or mud or in and around a bunch of rubble and clay (mortar undone). but it's there.

___________

i got distracted by a few other things too.

later on, i grew up and had a kid and got a job and had another kid and even managed to get married and start a career and all that grown-up stuff. i even manage to shoot a few frames every now and again, though nowhere near what happened underneath the shiny new condos that back onto the gardiner expressway with a down payment greater than my salary.

there is a lot of beauty to be had and seen and fostered and experienced in those other things, those moments that only happen when a baby wakes you up, or a five-year-old reads, or a small hand reaches for yours to dwarf it, tenderly. and it was in this profound beauty that i got distracted, again. i forgot to take in the surroundings and get some mortar and rebar and harvest some kind of structure to hold me up. there are other people to hold up. there are other hopes, much bigger and more important, to build.

so i've been distracted.

and now it's down to business. because i got called on it, and i reacted, and then i thought about it, and now i see: if i build my structure now, my little wonders will have a much better place to hope from. it looks utterly impossible, and that's just the kind of goal i'm built for. here we go.

8 seconds.

in 1989, greg lemond was pedaling for his life in the penultimate stage of the tour de france, and he was doing it alone.

lemond entered the last stage of the race, an individual time trial between himself, his will, and the clock, with a 50-second deficit to french leader laurent fignon. wearing a funny helmet, resting his elbows on funny padded handlebar extensions, and tucked into a downhill skiing position, lemond insisted on no time checks, and no data on his bike. he just needed to pedal. fignon, for his challenge, went bare-skulled, with only his spectacles and scraggly blond ponytail to challenge the wind. riding a classic bike with frequent updates on lemond's pacing progress, fignon pitched himself through downtown paris in pursuit of the diminutive american challenger.

lemond put 58 seconds on fignon to win the tour by the narrowest margin in history, by riding the second-fastest time trial in tour history. lemond rode 54.55 km/h to win by 8 seconds.

____________________

at the 39k mark, the original 3:05 pace bunny and group caught up to me. i knew i was flagging and faltering, but i didn't realize by how much until i tried to latch on. it felt like the group was flying. nevertheless, i saw the possibility of losing every goal of the day as those feet churned past, so i did what any self-respecting cyclist about to get dropped would do: i tucked in. there wasn't much wind to tuck out of, but i tucked in nevertheless, adding myself to the (very reduced) count of white bald guys chasing a 3:05 marathon time. we must all be about the same age. we must all be chasing boston. please god let this man with the sign and the bunny ears get us there. please. please...

at the last water station, a measly kilometer from the finish, the group somehow slipped past, and i lost touch, gatorade cup in hand, dream splashing to the pavement. and i looked up. and i squinted to find a big red finish arch. and there was nothing. there was only a heat-bedazzled stretch of pavement, runners going forward, and runners coming onward, and it was endless.

there was no finish line!

____________________

that morning, i knew i was ready. i didn't know what i was ready for, if it was just to complete this crazy distance, or to go under 3 hours, something achievable by only 1% of runners in the world, or to at least make boston qualifying: 3:05:00. my girls wished me well. i had friends at the start. it wasn't raining. the portapotties were endless. it was going to be a good day.

i lost justin and the pace bunny by 4k.

i was on a good day, and i was going to make the most of it. i was flying. i had to tone it down, get it back up to 4 minute kilometers. i didn't want to burn out. but it was fine. it was almost easy. at the halfway timing mat, i was slightly behind schedule but certainly in good form to bring it in for any of my goals. the body was starting to pipe up, letting me know what was working, and how much longer it could do it. we were on the cusp now. there was oxygen and carbon and sweat and fascia and tendon and system. there was pump. and flow. and the clock was ticking.

____________________

i got closer to the horizon, searching wildly for some saving grace, some completion, some end. i saw the girls. we waved. i must be close. but i still could not see that damn line! and then there were runners coming at me, and we were turning, and we were back in another corral and THERE WAS THE LINE! except, it was so far away, and there were so many other people semi-rushing toward it, and i needed to step on that last timing mat, get my seconds, be done with so many months and miles.

and then it was done.

and as soon as it was, i wondered if i should have, could have, gone harder. maybe i could have pushed just a little bit more in those last few kilometers. maybe i could have hurt more, driven something past its comfort zone. and then my legs locked up and alternated between collapsing and locking, and i lost the ability to steer my body. stumbling into and through the throng of finishers toward the medals and gatorade table (the one salvation of the finish), i knew that i had done it, and there was nothing left. i was done. there was no room to go harder.

___________________

i couldn't find the girls. we hadn't made a plan. there were no huge alpha signs designating a 'find your family with last name _______ HERE' area. there were just hundreds and thousands of faces, some weighed down with oversized medals or plain bagels or the 25th half cup of too-strong gatorade. there wasn't even any chocolate milk. all of a sudden, i got really sad. i had run so far, for so long, and all i wanted to do was be with my family, and i couldn't find them. i had semi-collapsed into a sitting position on a grassy knoll near the 1k to go mark, so i butt-scooted to the nearest tree and hauled myself to standing. walking backwards down the ridiculously small decline, i started shuffling back to the finish area. after many trips into and out of the fencing marked 'athletes only', i finally found some small plastic signs listing a few alpha ranges. and there were the girls. and then i was done.

__________________

8 seconds is a staggering margin. in my debut marathon, after months of preparation and intervals and long runs and even following a training plan for the most part, i missed the boston qualifying time by 8 seconds. it is small, so small that most people ask, 'are you SURE?' when i tell them, and others offer to help with an appeal letter. yes, i am sure. no, there is no need to appeal. i will just have to run another marathon. and i'll have to run it faster.

nicky.

nicky was wearing cargo pants that night. he came out from behind a large tent in some field that may exist only in collected, dusty, grassy memories, and he made a cowboy-in-a-duel stance while howling to the sky and grinning at anyone near enough to see it. every pocket on his person contained a bottle of unopened labatt blue. 'draw.'

the man's enthusiasm and curiosity had always been contagious. i learned more from him on guts alone than i ever would from a text book or a conversation with a well-meaning, over-intentioned instructor. he led from beside, and sometimes from behind, but he was a companion with whom you could learn a lesson, any lesson, the hard way, and still feel like you had come out on top. when it was rock climbing, he went all-in. when it was cameras, he spent paper like it was tissue, and learned faster and better than anyone else how to process and print his own film. he read books that didn't come easy to him. he made acquaintances and awed them with his prowess in black and white and every zone in between. the whole time, i learned and listened and listened and yearned. there was always a frame to be exposed. there was always a point of interest. no one was uninteresting. curiosity could make anything cool enough. and perhaps his greatest gift of all: when you were the object of his curiosity, you felt like you were something worth knowing. few people in the world can make everyone they meet, let alone a few people they know and love, feel just this way. and inevitably, you would see yourself anew, and get fascinated by the potential only picked up by nicky's light meter, and then you could maybe start to risk being better. 

being flamboyant had come naturally to me for some time. although i was naturally shy, i had learned that being 'a good kid' meant getting myself largely ignored, so i built up a persona of some kind of artsyness, and every now and again, it would come out. by the time high school rolled around, i had lost much of my flamboyance, opting instead to fly only on stage, or on trip, or when i just couldn't help it anymore. turns out, nicky taught me how to be a little more quiet. it was always his fantasy to be discovered, doing his own hardcore thing in his own hardcore way, by accident, in secret, by one person (probably a really hot girl) who would recognize, and subsequently admire, just what it took and who he was to be doing what he was doing, unbeknownst to anyone. i wanted to tell everyone. i never felt like anything i was doing was good enough or loud enough to get noticed, i still don't, and i wasn't tall or good-looking or long-haired or guitar-playing enough to be cool, in secret or out loud. and when people said, 'hey nick!', i learned to stop looking up, because they were always addressing him. flamboyance was over, so i saved it for the stage, or for words, for places where it could roam and jingle and not look as ridiculous as it was. 

nicky taught me to be quiet. he taught me to contain my desires, to use them to drive my actions. he taught me to expose film, to shoot two frames in the quest for one good one, to print the hell out of that one until i got a good enough print, and to crop before i shot. he taught me about zones, about grain, about focus, about what is important and what to let go. the sharp end of a lens. the reason to push two stops. how many fruit gummies one should not eat in the middle of the night when it's minus forty in algonquin park. and even when we were walking down carlaw, wondering how the hell we would ever 'make it', ever get paid to do what we thought we were genius at (he was the only photo genius), when we were shooting completely different things and chasing different realities, he was leading from beside. we were complementing each other, tempering the drive with two different heats. 

that night ended up with nicky happy and asleep in a big green tent, and me happy and sleepless in a big blue suburban. it was the end of an era, and i missed so much of it so terribly, and couldn't wait for the next one to begin in earnest. i find myself hearing nicky in my head these days, exposing my shots, meeting new people, maintaining curiosity. there will always be something fascinating. thanks, nicky.

100.

it had been a long time since i held a girl in my arms long enough and close enough to feel her sobs wrack through my ribcage and press against my beating heart while hers beat faster and harder.

 

usually, the pain is a scraped knee or bruised shin or scary tumble from the two-wheeler. this pain was different. and in this pain, i saw so many more such embraces, embraces that will never keep her from growing up, from learning something the hard way, from my failings and shortcomings and hopes and fears. she cried like the little girl she is, a little shocked and confused by something that hurts but not on the outside. and i held her like the father i am, a little inept and confused by how far we've come and how much this one moment could teach us both and why it had been so long since i held this crying little girl and how many more times i would do this same thing in years to come.

 

it all came down to big brown eyes flooded with the tears of a lesson learned the hard way.

 

the main problem was figuring what lesson there was to be learned. was it the lesson that she is loved, no matter what she does or does not do? was it the lesson that not everyone wins? was it the lesson that she always wins if she tries her best? was it the lesson that some things will only happen for her if she wants them badly enough and makes them happen? was it the lesson that her dada's arms will always be big enough to hold her? was it the lesson that racing is just racing, and having a family to support her is worth more than any spot on an elementary track team? maybe it was the lesson that she, as a seasoned 8-year-old 5k racer, has a different engine that is not well suited to the limits imposed by a single 100m dash with other giggling second graders...

 

i love that child more than myself and then some. i know she needs to learn things. i know that some of these things will hurt, and that she will be better for it. and i know that she is already amazing and a better human being than i will ever be. and it really cracks me up when she makes my faces on her mother's features. but when she hurts, when she falls apart in her school hoodie and soaks my shoulder with big, sad girl tears, it rips me apart and turns me upside down. i don't know what to teach her. i just want to hold her, help her up, give her something to eat, and go on. but this moment is important, so important, and it cannot be bypassed.

 

so we hugged, and she cried, and then we talked. there were snacks. the little sister took it upon herself to break down as well because she was also having a hard day and didn't want to miss out on the teary action. and then it was time to go swimming, and then talk to mama over pre-dinner frozen yogurt, to re-learn all of these lessons. dinner took so long that the little one was asleep while the big one stayed up with mama and dada and we managed to double team her, cover all points and angles we could think of, and reinforce the main point: she is loved, and wonderful, and none of this is compromised by a 100m dash on a sunny day in grade two.

boston.

in the long time between one step and the inevitable next, catastrophe and progress hang in stillness.

catastrophe is a relief, a death of a tragic hero who has already wrought so much demise that the only blessing left to end it all is to end it all. progress is going forward. and in the split second between one step and the next, we are confronted with both. stop. or continue...

i have spent the entirety of this new year, and the month before it, confronting catastrophe and progress in their staggeringly repetitive possibility. one step after another, i have taken the long run from 12 kilometers to 34. yesterday marked my last 'long' run, and it was back to 12. between me and race day, there are only 13 more kilometers to run, divided up between rest days and angst days. i do not know exactly what will happen.

i have most recently tried to describe my apprehension as something akin to baking. i've put in my mileage, like flour. i've put in my speedwork, like eggs. i've put in short runs and tempo runs and stretching and foam rolling like all the other things that bring the cake together. the mix is right. it looks right. it feels right. but i have no idea how it will all turn out until i put it into the oven on race day. the unknown is a bit of a torture device. its effectiveness is increased with the amount of risk and the volume of the investment. i have worked this steadily and this hard and with this discipline for very few things in my life. and then there's that small problem of not having a smidge of running talent.

spending the day with underachieving youth is one way to galvanize one's personal mottos regarding the notion of quitting. don't. and settling? don't. with these things in mind, i tend toward my usual modus operandi: aim much higher than even conceivable to achieve, and die trying. this said, my goal is simple.

i left work that day and pedaled quickly and safely to pick up the girls and clunk home in my dirty mountain bike shoes, yellow duct tape highlights and trails of mud. the lady whose desk faces mine had a son in boston, a son who was there to run the marathon. it wasn't until i had already picked up one girl and was on my way to the next that i got the text, and started checking in with twitter and online news. someone had bombed the finish of the boston marathon. 

my first reaction is usually anger. 

there have been times that i've frozen, not really knowing what to do or where to go, but there are many more times that my first reaction is to curse the idiot who caused the pain, and then start trying to figure out what i can do to be productive about it all. of course, there was nothing in either case. boston didn't know who did this heinous crime or why, and there was nothing some random guy in toronto could do about a bombing in a city a thousand miles away. (i need to become more important.)

it has been a couple of weeks since the main conflict of the boston marathon bombing has been mostly resolved, and much of the world, as it does, has gone on. i had running club the next night, but there was no moment of silence. i talked about it a lot with the youth at work, but it was mostly aimless ranting among people who don't even run or know where boston is. it was good, nevertheless, to engage in dialog about it all, because it was in that conversation that the goal became bigger, more solid, tempered, and sharp.

the goal is to qualify for boston. 

probably a whole lot of people want to qualify for boston. probably a whole lot of people can and will and have a lot more going for them than a few months of training, a young body cursed with a very fast qualifying cutoff, and a dream. but i think that the bombing, the audacious insanity of someone so overtly cowardly and hostile, calls up a little more inspiration to my fuel cell. i run better on emotion than any caffeinated gel or super-duper-e-load bottle. remember owen, the kid in the walker who covered 5k with a severe muscle disorder? i saw him in the last kilometer of my last half-marathon, and it was on sight of him alone that i managed to buck up and bring myself home, cheering and tearing that one brave kid. next year, boston will be nuts. chastened, perhaps, but nuts. i have a feeling it is a city not to be undone by one heartless tragedy, that it will come back even stronger, even louder, even bigger. 

and i can't wait to be there.

we put air in our tires
and blood in our veins
we were trainers and
horses
and we all wanted
the same
moment in the light
or two or seven
and for it we sold
every reserve in heaven

goal.

a lot of the long of it is about even more of the short of it, once around and once over and once around again, until the monotony becomes interesting again, but not too interesting because that would be pain, and there can only be so much of that before there is collapse.

and so it went, one foot (mostly) in front of the other a wind gusting like a strong palm into the middle of my back, headphone cord jostling wildly like an untethered lust song, whipping truths about with maladies, from underneath my red raincoat. raincoat. i went for a 33k run in a raincoat.

17k is no longer a long way to run, just like 80k is no longer a long ride, just like the end of P2A surprised me entirely, as i had not yet surrendered to the inevitability that i was bad at the sport and should just quit it all, at only 58k out. but then the wind. at 17k, exactly, promptly, somewhere between a rushing blue minivan and its silver sedan counterpart in stupidly-close-driving-to-pedestrians on aviation parkway, i turned around, and faced the wind that had been molesting me for the past hour and a half.

first, it ripped out one headphone, and lashed my insolent face with the cord. then it spat snow shards into my eyes, whistled through my empty ear, and threatened to dismember me of the member i could no longer feel, chafing compression wear be damned. the final point was a full-body shove in the direction opposite to my intended course. i actually had to brace, and almost step backward. being a short person, i am used to ducking and bracing, so i tucked in, faced the wind like a damn boxing opponent, and stepped forward in a staggering defiance, shoulders hunched and fists poised.

the wind had become a wild thing.

this spring has been anything but smooth. there are barely flowers and buds out, and most of them lie damaged in each other's arms, seeking solace from the fickly sunshine and ever-present rain. the girls wear rain boots more than running shoes. and my riding kit is always wet. my lady just asked me about yet another load of laundry, as she's done one a day since a double day before the weekend. it's wet. we're training. it's wet.

long runs combined with long nights combined with the daily stressors and detractors from downtime combined with every weekend away racing and running and running support have left us all a bit bedraggled. sleep is deep and hard and very, always, short.

and then, last night, nick told me i was running well. he hadn't seen me out last week, and i don't think he was at workout the week before, but then we did hill repeats last night, and it went well. there's a marathon in two weeks. the forecast looks (mostly) not-quite-wet. the goal is audacious. and i've left my bike to gather dust while i focus every bit of training on putting one foot in front of the other, a few thousand times, in three hours. don't tell anyone, but this goal is ridiculous.

soon.

when i get real tired sometimes, i start to think too much, and then i listen to someone speak or watch a movie or hear that song that always gets me, and i think about goodbyes.

the trouble with goodbyes is that i used to be good at them. i used to be able to sense when they were coming, and i had the energy and awareness and connection and forethought to make the most of them, to prepare, to ceremonialize them into something worth remembering, something to write down, something to hold sacred and warm. i also used to be good at kissing, and writing punchy and sometimes decent poetry, and dancing. but like my film cameras and sketchbooks, those things are remnants of a past i remember fondly, while i dust them off to replace them on the shelf next to more books or under more bills. and those goodbyes, well, i've become afraid of them.

it all started when i fell in love with a girl who left all the time.

she had spent her life saying goodbye, had gotten used to it, had a well-worn hug and promise to call when she got in. then i found her, gave her my poems and tears and big, bleeding heart, and it was too heavy to take with her, so she stayed.

we kept moving, at least twice a year, in and out of student shanties, living the dream and making love out of the rest of it, and there were fewer and fewer goodbyes. i spent last week away from her, with our two little dreams, and it was a very hard place to be. now i'm tired, i saw my brother off at the airport this morning, then i watched a movie about brothers, and it's the end of the day, and i'm worried about the next goodbye.

my life is not in danger. no matter how many people pride themselves on risking it during my thirty minute commute in the morning, my life is pretty solid. fragile, indeed, but all parts point forth, and so it goes. i'm struggling though, these days, to figure out a grand goodbye, because to admit that it needs to be said would be to admit that something will end. there is a life in danger, maybe even ending, and this deserves a good hard talk, a true finale, a celebration of the good that was had. and from there, i don't even know where we go.

jeni.

jeni is dead. long live jeni.

the girls were dressed and matching and well-behaved and standing interspersed among the more serious adults in the congregation. the building was almost full. the sun streamed through several windows as the ceiling vaulted, albeit humbly and amid a few stains from incense or other offerings, toward something no one could explain, whether the sky, or heaven, or god, or a reason why jeni was no longer here.

i never really knew jeni.

but that's how things can go, sometimes, when you have 52 first cousins from 10 aunts and uncles, under a strong patriarch and matriarch, and then you move to another country before you turn nine, turn into a teenager, have your first kiss, fail your first date, pass your first football, learn what 'cancer' really is.

jeni had that special thing, that ability to disarm others with a genuine interest in what those others were about, and a seemingly boundless generosity that defied reason. when we had our first baby, two young kids out of wedlock (whatever that is) with a lot of ideals and not a lot of other stuff figured out, jeni was the first to send a matching knitted outfit for the little beast. she knew just what we needed, and, with whatever she had, she made it happen for us. i hadn't seen her in years.

jeni had another special thing: cancer. hers was leukemia, usually in her blood, usually fought off after many hospital stays and near-misses. ten days ago, her hospital stay was her last, the near was not a miss. jeni died at 4:48 in the morning, in the company of loved ones, at johns hopkins hospital in baltimore.

everything was fine in that half-beaten church in the middle of nowhere, maryland. loaded trucks rumbled by a few steps from the door. a cold wind refreshed the landscape. many people were smiling at the sight of loved ones they had not seen in so long.

and then the music started.

we cried. we cried so hard we shook ourselves and soaked our lapels and dripped onto the floor the salty proof that were were nothing but children against these things so unfair. others, perhaps those of greater constitution or those that didn't know her so well or those with their eyes not on the sons and brothers and mother of jeni, they could sing. and the music brought it all down. the girls were dressed in their matching black dresses, looking around at all of these dissolving adults, wondering at it all. what had happened? we had lost.

we had lost a strong, beautiful woman more giving than one could ever ask, stubborn and driven and unwilling to let things be anything other than right. we had lost jeni, the first of us, the oldest grandchild.

i had been in this church not long before, a year or two, dissolving in just the same way, about jake. jeni was jake's big sister. this is too much. too much for one family. too much in one go. too many times in one church for the same reason in the same suit stained by the same tears. the music started again as we followed jeni's casket outside, and i couldn't see through the tears to zip up my little girl's coat. it would be cold out by the grave. why did her own son have to carry her casket alongside her own brothers and husband? why was it so cold? why was everything so unfair? i could zip up my little girl's coat, tears or not, but jeni couldn't put a coat on her son. he was carrying her body to the cemetery. nothing made sense. nothing.

we made it outside, and i tried to sing, and i even made it through a few notes, and then i remembered that jeni wasn't here, and i squeezed my little girl's hand and pulled her along, little feet dappling the pavement among the trudging of older, grown-up, devastated children. you should have seen the nephews.

the monseigneur bumbled through further ramblings that had little to do with the pertinence or panache or power of jeni and her life and death, but all was not lost as a young pastor in love with his own words got up and made a lot more sense of it all. i could only wish for her husband to speak. of course, it would have ripped the rest of us apart completely. we laid her low. we sang. i dissolved and was, again, held up by my brother in the same cemetery where we'd stood just a year or so before. and now she is asleep, never to be hurt again.

as much as it is completely inadequate, the one thing that comforts me and my outlook on it all is the fact that wherever jeni may be, she is not somewhere where she can be touched by pain or cancer. she is warm. she is free.

long live jeni.

athlete.

there was a survey out among students that spring, the usual class survey in which the graduates get named, alongside fan favorite teachers, as winners of the 'craziest hair award' or 'most likely to become a millionaire'. i was making my way through some final drawings in art class, the room transient amid the bustling preparations of our upcoming show, and a paper blew across the table. there were snickers. there were hushed glances and lookaways. i looked down at the paper, and saw that it was a creased, yellow photocopy so ubiquitous that week at school. it was the class survey.

i glanced at it because something about it caught my eye. and then there it was, my name, neatly printed and (ironically) spelled mostly correctly, next to the 'least favorite athlete' designation.

i was elated.

it is highly unlikely that heather mcleod had ever meant to make my day with the inclusion of my name on the survey, but she probably didn't know that i had never been called an 'athlete' before she did it. i smiled. i left the piece of paper where it was. and i walked through the door into the blinding pollen-thick sunshine just a step in the springtime blackflies. it felt like my birthday.

as these days go on and the sun makes more promises and keeps some of them too, nostalgia comes rushing back, and i get a bit stuck in it, trying to figure out how i've ever gotten here from there, and whether i've been good for it.

i would not call myself an athlete. kids ask me if i do sports. i respond with a perfunctory, 'sometimes'. they ask which ones. i tell them running and riding bikes. i'm not really good at either one, but i love them. i'm not a runner. runners consider themselves runners, pride themselves in it, look like it. i am also not much of a rider. for all of my time in the saddle and on the pedals over the last two decades, i have not gone very far. i know enough to know i don't know enough, and i love the way spokes ping after a wheel is fully tensioned or the way a top tube feels in my hand as i hoist a bike by its frame, but i don't go fast, i don't have any watts to speak of, and i think about bikes for more hours than i ride them.

anyway, it's about connotation more than denotation these days, and that's all about context. i just want to be physical. maybe that's what athletes want. maybe they just need to be in one moment and the next, as fully and quickly as possible, maximizing their presence in context, breathing through their skin, seeing through their movements. let's move.

shine.

i know her, inside and out, for better or for worse, while this life pushes us through our parts.

when riding bikes in a group of people, personalities mix with physical attributes and get imposed upon the collective ranking categories to result in a hierarchical setting in which momentum runs its course and the rest of us do our jobs. there is the big guy who hammers and provides a great draft for the skinny guy who will come round on the next slight rise and bring tempo that will be easily be matched by the woman in high socks who watches her watts and worries about the handling skills of a jittery accountant in matching team kit on a matching team bike that refuses to match his team drive when it's interrupted by the out of tune chatter of a chain about to be dropped after the next rider in line finally figures out his new shifter combo and tries, then fails, to calculate his effort and its relationship to gear inches. riding. it's complicated.

when i get on the bike, or get off the bike, or go out to just ride, or come in to refuel or put on my helmet or unbuckle my shoes on smear on the chamois creme or rinse off the searing embrocation or lather my calves or dispose of another dull razor or fill my bottles or tuck another wrapper into my pocket or put my bike in the trainer or wash all that grime off of my legs or put it all into words, i am alone. the lady i love does all of these things too, some of them better than i, and she does them alone. somehow, we signed up for all of this. somehow, we spent the best parts of ourselves making a life together, making little dreams come true together, living a big dream come true, outlining the outcomes and plans and necessities, only to do our parts in it all, alone. 

i'm not sure if anyone else gets it this way, but there are a few things i don't like to do unless i know that i will do them well. i don't like to run unless i know i will be able to keep up. i don't like to dance unless i know that it won't matter that i don't know how. writing this is almost nauseating in the knowing that i may not get it right, the first time, for good. i know that i will not ride well with my lady. to begin with, she has twice the fitness that i have on the bike. i suffered through thirty minutes on the trainer with very low outputs the other night; she put in an hour and a half of zone five intervals then got up in the morning to do it again. we have different riding styles. i like short and punchy climbs; she savours long hauls. i hate time trialling; she pines for aero bars and disc wheels and the simplicity of punching the pedals against seconds and minutes. i handle like a mountain biker on a road bike; she prefers to keep things smooth, and only started tucking her descents three seasons ago. my bike is the heaviest metal bikes are made out of, welded by one man in america, a tube at a time, to my measurements; her bike comes from taiwanese factories, a layer of carbon at a time, to be painted in italy, assembled in canada. she sweats and goes harder; i've had salt lines on my kit since kilometer three. of all the sports i do (there are two), riding bikes is the one i do the worst, by far. individually, it's fine enough. in a group, i'm average or below. in a race, i'm subpar. in the grand scheme of things, my name is not listed. the lady is a star, an exemplar. she is part of the industry. she advocates and has the skill and fitness to back it all up. she is in the top 5 in a race. she is in the fast group, or leading it, on a club ride. there is no way i could ride well with her.

we were made for each other. 

i remember a time, a long long time ago, when she was a climber and i was a rider and we did each other's sports because we loved each other so much. i dropped a couple hundred bucks on climbing kit; she made me a chalk bag and dropped a grand on a fancy mountain bike. we tried to go out for a ride on the root-infested trails of lowland squamish, b.c. we got lost. i tried to help her with some handling tips. it sucked. we didn't fight then, but we both smouldered silently, me wanting to help and her wanting to not need help. 

these days i train to be able to keep up. i have no idea what it's like to train to win. but i think that if i can do it, if i can pull it off, one trainer session at a time, it will make all the difference. if we could get a babysitter and leave the dishes and have an extra ten spot for some espresso and a brownie and get some gas and just go, just ride, just be, together, we'd be set. i could keep up or let her go and catch her on the descent the way my dad used to catch me on rockingham road. we could spin and laugh and let momentum take its course. we could shine. 

snow.

this is the first time i've been able to lean back in my seat today, and most other days in the week.

it snowed today. it snowed so much that in the few minutes it took me to shovel our miniscule front walk and portion of the sidewalk, the first areas i had cleared were already white again, yielding not to the ground-in salt or the wind that brought it and threatened to take it away on the next gust.

in these kinds of conditions, riding a studded-tire mountain bike in goggles and blinking lights is an excellent idea for getting to work. fresh snow is usually easier to ride in than the packed-until-it-gives-way snow usually found on uncleared roads frequented by four-wheeled commuters come hell or high snowbanks. of course, fresh snow covers 85% of my bike route, and is perfectly good and safe. it's the 7.5% at the beginning and the other 7.5% at the end that truly worry me: that's where the cars are. and cars can't stop. they don't know this, of course, until it's too late, and all lessons are learned the hard way on days like today.

all this, to say: i took the subway.

this blog was founded on the notion of riding bikes, and how that practice links to human pursuits of all other dimensions, so it's odd to break a dry spell on the one day i'm not actually riding bikes. the fact of the matter is, this break from churning pedals through salt-crusted tracks has given me pause. i don't like being able to lean back in my seat.

most other days, i arrive at work well before the main rush, and i am soaked in sweat and covered in road grime, usually salt. having no showers available to the lone bike commuter, and no area in which i may drape my clothes in the hopes of drying them before my return trip in the afternoon, i work all day in the residue of the morning's effort, and my kit hangs in evidence all over the collective office space. i kinda feel bad for that; i kinda can't bother to fix it.

not having ridden today, the back of my chair is covered in dry outerwear that was not soaked in the sweat of an honest commute. i took the subway, stood next to all kinds of people i don't know in a rumbling embrace punctuated by squeals of metal on metal, and that kid's headphones screeching some poorly done remix of a 'classic' that came out before 'vintage' even existed. goodness, i'm old. i think this, and type this, as i lean back against the dry liner of a thick parka that is so warm i had to take it off and hold it after the subway cleared out, trembling on toward the next wintry station. i'm typing on a computer i could bring in because i wasn't afraid of falling on hidden ice and smashing it along with all the other contents of my backpack. i'm full from the lunch i just ate, and i'll have to work it off tonight because i haven't done anything other than trudge through snowbanks for minutes at a time. commuting sucks. riding bikes is beautiful.

expectations.

in my line of work, there is a list of 'overall expectations' outlined at the onset of any interaction. and then we get a set period of time to make sure that all participants are able to exhibit skills and knowledge that meet those expectations.

for some reason, people seem to have unrealistic expectations of the wrong kind, of the wrong people.

when i was better disciplined at riding a bike, and i was much slower and infrequently a runner, i used to ritualize my time in the kitchen. i would do the dishes so that i didn't have to look at them while i suffered enough as it was. i would clear the counter so that i could put my laptop in front of me in hopes of staving off the boredom. and on that laptop, i would play movies of people riding bikes faster than i ever will. those movies would remind me to go fast. and usually, i would have headphones in, with some kind of music rattling through my mind instead of race coverage in flemish or whatever. one of my favorite movies was lance big six.

i used to love the panache that lance brought to his riding. when i was younger, i had no idea that it had to do with drugs, that it could even be through anything other than all the training and pain i was too afraid to execute. i just thought he was an absolutely amazing rider doing amazing things and it was really fun to be proud of an american doing something i loved to do, and doing it better than the whole wide world. (being american was a hard thing for a lot of my younger days, surrounded as i was by prejudice and small-town mentalities amid chip trucks and ski-doos.)

as i got older, i realized that lance was likely doing a bunch of drugs. he was likely doing the same drugs as everyone else next to whom he was riding, so even though it wasn't just pure hard work and genetic gift, it wasn't like he was racing people who were any different in the drug sense. he was a race horse among race horses, and he was still the best one.

these days, i wonder what it is with all of the lance disappointment. anyone who was into bikes at all already knew/figured/had to admit that lance had probably doped. anyone who grew up and got his/her heart broken, saw a rock star get fat, stopped believing in santa claus, or went to a funeral would share the same mindset. folks, the world is full of humans, and we are flawed, and we are unrealistic, and we love to create myths and burn them down.

i just don't understand why the expectations for lance were different.

yeah, the guy seems like a hypocrite for lying so vehemently and specifically destroying people he knew to be truth-tellers and leading a cause about cancer and basing parts of his character on things he thought to be righteous and holy. but, so what? what do the kardashians think? what about people who have actually done truly bad things to entire national economies? where is bernie madoff? speaking of people who effected massive change in drastically horrible ways, whether celebrity or idol or whatever, how many people felt ripped off by the honesty of (insert name of your preferred war crimes leader here)? why does the sports world purport to be so fed up or put off or tired of or shocked by the admissions of a formerly-great athlete who cheated among a culture and a roster of cheaters? what were the overall expectations?

when i watch things on tv, i expect that they are heavily filtered. there are theatrics in every type of medium (production, is, after all, what makes something available to an audience from an author), and as cognizant adults in a reality of mass participation, we should understand that we are being fed all kinds of stuff, much of it crap. the question is what we make of what we get.

so i watched lance do those things on his bike. he accelerated away from the front of the field and never got caught. he said obnoxious things and backed them up with stomping wins up mountains too steep for cars. i watched fans scream and cheer and get in his way and clap him on the back. i watched him win and win and win. he loved winning. and, as someone who has never won a damn thing, i made a lot for myself out of what i got, watching him win. i made inspirational scenarios in my head to get me through those last few minutes on the trainer. i made better comebacks for any excuse as to why i didn't have to train that day. i made anger turn into power. and i did this watching lance.

i was surprised to hear about lance's interview, and that he admitted to his doping past, but i wasn't devastated. i cared a little more than the headline about the kardashian baby dramas, but not as much as this cool new app for my daughter's typing skills. i expect that famous people are flawed and crazy and mean to other people and subject to the whims and sway of much larger bodies of opinion than i will ever know. i expect that we, as adults, already know this and aren't hold our collective breath for the next round of admissions of faults inherent to our superstars. nobody died. maybe we should remember what's important here.

And the moral is...

Don't be a dick.

No, we are not mincing words here. The moral of the story really is: Don't be a dick. Don't be an asshole. Do not, in any uncertain terms, make your time on this earth a detriment to the rest of us who have to suffer through our time here. Honestly, man, there's so much else out there.

Of course, I was riding my bike. I wasn't even flying along. I was steadily making my way, within all speed limits imposed on users of a multi-use path, to the place where I live, in order that I might pick up my offspring along the way. They are the best part of my day. And the other best part of that day is the quick ride to pick them up; it's like riding a bike towards Christmas.

And it's terrible when you get in my damn way.

I postulated some time ago on the correlation between wearing khakis while riding and motorists being much more considerate. Seems all that considerateness has been exhausted and all that's left are the trembling tendrils of knee-jerk-reaction nerves. No one's waving me through or even seeing my excessively fluorescent yellow jacket until just before the moment of ABS brakes. Nice. And then there are the pedestrians. In the upper part of the commute home, most of these pedestrians are wondering teenagers, very self-absorbed, and completely oblivious to anything, let alone truly hazardous things that are quickly approaching in a possible threat to the teenagers' physical well-being. Nothing has changed, of course; we've always been this way. But now I'm not the teenager. I'm the brightly-colored hazardous thing moving briskly, on my side of the path (of destruction), getting by and trying very hard not to hit anything.

Today, this idiot kid blew smoke in my face.

Now, if you want to be dumb enough to smoke, go for it. It's not my problem. You can do whatever you like with your own body and your mom's money. But when you blow that stupidity in my face, trying to make your scrawny pseudo-gangsta self all threat'nin and shit, well damn man, that's just rude.

I debated for several pedal revolutions as to whether and go back and make a big deal out of it or not. I have kids to pick up. I have professional relations with teenagers all day and I really look forward to the end of the day when I can stop relating with them. And then there's the problem of kids being rude, stupid, dumb, whatever, and getting away with it until they do it to the wrong person and get themselves in jail or the morgue. Ugh. So I turned around and approached him.

He didn't expect me to come back.

He also didn't expect me to try to reason with him, so he kept his headphones on and acted like he didn't know what was going on. Then his buddy mumbled something and spat in my direction, though, thankfully, it was on the ground before it was actually anywhere near me. I became increasingly incensed, and asked if he had something to say. I invited him to come on over and clarify. He considered. He and his buddy, the original smoke-blower, were probably quickly calculating whether or not they could confront me successfully, physically or whatever, and they must have come up with a good answer: no. No way. So I asked if they had a problem, and they claimed ignorance, and I said fine, and wished them luck. I meant it with all my heart. Assholes like that really will need all the luck they can get.

So the moral of the story? Don't be a dick. And its corollary? Don't waste time on teaching ignorant fools about not being ignorant fools. The world will teach them. It will hurt. And in the meantime, I've got kids to pick up. I do still toy with the idea of bring those idiots doughnuts or something though. Doughnuts make everyone happy...