Life of Wry

So many cool fall flowers–like these red spindlies and these purple spindlies that are growing wildly next to one another in Central Park right now. I could look them up and figure out what they are, and could write about them…

… or, I could just write about swimming, because, really, that’s all I want to talk about.  [Smiles here.]

I got another personal best tonight.  (If I call it a pb from now on, you’ll know what I mean, right?)  I swam 60 laps!  That’s my new pb; previous pb was the 50 laps I swam two days ago.  Sixty laps (in a 25 yard pool) is the equivalent of 1500 yards.  If my calculations are right, that’s just 260 yards (or 10.4 laps) short of a mile. So, I think I have to go 70.4 laps in order to swim a mile.  Not nearly as numerically elegant as running four laps on a track.

But, who’s counting.  And maybe swimming people don’t think in these terms.  And maybe my calculations are off.  Who knows.  It’s all new.

The thing is, it’s hard to count. Well, it’s not hard to count so much as it is to count accurately.  I find myself swimming down the lane saying to myself, “twelve twelve twelve twelve twelve…,” and by the time I get to the other side, I think, wait, was that twelve?  Maybe that was thirteen.  Or I might question if I’m on lap thirty two or twenty two.  It’s that easy to lose track. I have some tricks, but clearly I’m going to have to get better at the counting part.

But I must say, I was made for this sport.

Not that I’m a swimmer.. far from it.  But I am a technician.  I like the challenge of learning how to execute a proper stroke and will work on it until the cows come home, or until I’ve achieved perfection…  which, at 55, may not ever happen.  But I thoroughly love studying the mechanics and working (obsessively) to get it right.  It’s always important to me–sports snob that I am–to look good (really good) doing something.  Not unlike golf, and of course tennis.  And with swimming, there are four strokes to learn, and flip turns, and probably lots of other things. This ought to keep me occupied for a very long time.

And then, again, there’s all that measuring: how far, how fast, how many.. always needing to quantify my effort. That’s me a hundred fold.

I’m really laughing at all this.  Surprised it took me this long to get around to swimming.  Certainly fought it forever (really, swimming? me? uh uh), but if I’d have given it a moment’s thought, I’d have realized that it was a sport just waiting to be mastered, and that I would find much to love about it.

It was, and I did.

Not to mention: it’s a low impact exercise, good for all that ails you, a full body workout, and as aerobic as all get out (especially if you’re a helicopter swimmer, inefficient and all).

And bloody hell, the pool is right across the street. Hoping it remains on this site for a long time to come and that my deltoids hold up.

Neither is a sure thing.

And finally, because this has been on my mind: if I’m going to swim, and write about it, I need to know how to conjugate the damn verb:

Today I swim

Yesterday I swam

I have swum now NINE times!

I would have swum before if I’d known how fun it is.

Yes.  Swum.  I can’t believe it either.

Came upon this bit of spontaneous colorature today, unexpected whimsy right there along E Street.   Also eye-pleasing was the careful, if unplanned, arrangement according to size.

Who can’t use a little order in their lives?

Have you seen this?

It’s an NPR story about the Swiss artist, Ursus Wehrli, who tidies up art and the world around him.  Here’s one example; he took this scene:

And tidied it up, like so:

There’s a lot more in his books, on his website and in this TED talk (which is pretty funny).

You know.. for the orderly among us.

Oh man…  SUCH a great movie.. I just loved every second of it; believe I sat there with a smile on my face throughout.  I love baseball.  And stats.  Both feature prominently, so I may be biased, but I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure it’s a movie you’ll like, even if not a baseball person.

Starred him:

And, thrillingly, featured 2-4 seconds of onscreen time for Peter’s coach, who served as a baseball-playing extra.

So, of course, the whole team went.  And all the team parents.  We were a significant percentage of the full theater.

It’s not a great photo, but you get the idea: young baseball players go to matinee to see a baseball movie featuring their coach in a bit part.

This is an all’s well that ends well story.

Had dinner with friends tonight…  Peter and his friend WB decided they wanted to go to the park and play football.  I’m not sure exactly how that works with only two guys, but I do know it involves a lot of running and more tackling than I really want to know about.  Tackling results in phones popping out of pockets and going missing and unnoticed until football playing guys have returned home, oh, maybe an hour later.

After everyone’s left, Peter [uncomfortably] fesses up that he’s lost his phone–a sore subject in our house because of the frequency with which this happens–but assures us that he knows where it is [uh…Central Park].  He begs and cajoles me into going with him to look for it.  In the dark (it’s about 10:30 pm at this point). I tell him I’ll go with him to find it on one condition: he cleans his room.  (I loved that one.)

He cleaned his room.  We took off for Central Park.

The field–expansive and very, very dark–is wet, as the automatic sprinklers have been on.  Not only is this a needle-in-a-haystack expedition.. but it’s also messy because the grass is quite muddy.  It’s chilly and blades of grass and mud are starting to cover my legs.  I’m using my phone to call his, but so far: nothing.

Peter’s on his hands and knees, crawling slowly in the area he thinks is most likely the spot, ear to the ground listening for the familiar ringtone.  I’m doing no such thing.  I’m hoping the phone will light up like a little beacon as I call it again and again… but so far: nothing.

Well…. more time goes on, and by and by, as the picture gives away, we find it.. Peter does.  He’s so happy about this!  So pleased with his idea and his success!

And that was that.  End of story.

And… don’t tell him, but I thought it was fun, too.

University is now in session.

Classes began this week and students are everywhere.  Breathless gaggles of identically-dressed girls are posing for pictures in front of their sorority houses, the Aggie band’s been practicing a lot in the old stadium, and the IM fields are full of ultimate frisbee playing dudes. Had coffee this morning at the Coffee House on campus, and transacted with a clueless series of student trainees in new food service positions.

The bike racks are bulging on campus and downtown, lines are a few deep at ATMs.  Struggled to find a table for three this afternoon at Mishka’s.. all tables were taken and all electrical outlets were occupied (and it’s only the second day of the quarter).

The streets downtown tonight were overrun with helmet-less, light-less, stop-sign-running bike riders.  As I write this, emcees using an incredibly loud PA system are booming obnoxiously (what in the world?) to a gathering on the quad in the center of campus, cars are parked on both sides of our street, red cups will surely follow.

In a few weeks, everyone will settle down a little, bike laws and conventions will be observed, kids will be more confident in their jobs, and students more serious about studying.

Streets and restaurants and cafes will remain crowded, however… the students are back.

I don’t know.

My mood of the moment, I guess, thinking about the olden days, or something.

Chris sent email to the others of us this morning complaining about wood pulp as an additive in foods. Even shredded cheddar cheese from Trader Joe’s.  Turns out, it’s not uncommon and we got to talking about that. Not a conversation I thought I’d have with my brothers today.  Could have been the tragic execution of Troy Davis, or Obama’s announcement about equitable taxation, or the assassination of Afghanistan peace leader Burhanuddin Rabanni.. but today it was cellulose additives.

This is about 1963. Had they not invented color photography yet?

(From top, then left to right: Chris, Jay, Matt, and.. moi.)

Turns out, one’s 15th wedding anniversary is symbolized with crystal. I believe there is but one piece of crystal in our entire house (since I broke the crystal candlestick holders we got as a wedding gift … fifteen years ago).

This, Swedish made, is also a candle holder… wrote about it here. 

So, in honor, a picture of crystal, taken on the bridge on which we were married (in the backyard).

Happy 15th Jim!

Who needs a stairmaster, right?

This is the humanities building, corner 3rd and A.  If one lives at 6th and A, it’s a short walk to an awesome place to stretch and do stairs.  Mostly stretch.

But stairs.  Wow.  Perfect if you ever need to train for mountain climbing.

 

In the end these things matter most: How well did you love? How fully did you live? How deeply did you let go?     -Siddhartha Gautama

 

So many wise people talk about this letting go thing.  They must know something.

Anyway.. fall, turning trees, dropping leaves.  Maybe it’s the season of letting go, too.

Three weeks ago, I sent an email to Peter Hillary, son of famed Mt. Everest climber Sir Edmond Hillary of New Zealand, inquiring about a trip he leads to Mt. Kilimanjaro.  I wrote about that here. 

I was getting a little discouraged, since I’d not heard back from him.  I tried again last night, forwarding my initial email and asking how best to get information on his various trips, but specifically Kili, since we’re looking to go in August of next year.

And…. he wrote back immediately.

My first email inquiry must have gotten overlooked..  and I guess that’s because he’s still on the road: he climbed Kili in August and is now in Tibet with a National Geographic group doing something. He didn’t go into detail, other than to say he’d be back home in three weeks and he’d contact me then with info.  And jovially sent greetings from the Tibet plateau, 12,500′.

The life of an adventure traveler…

Anyway, I’m very excited.

This isn’t like getting email from Barack Obama inviting me to dinner, which he did this past week. (And which I even fantasized about… going so far as to think I’d certainly have plenty to say, running down the list of potential topics in my head, including seeking his advice on how to deal with wackadoodles, and I’d just have to get over the shyness of sitting in the company of such bigness, because it’d only be a couple hours of awkwardness afterall, and would be the experience of a lifetime and I’d just have to do it. I did go that far in my thinking, even though this was an e-blast sent to gazillions of his supporters and is part of a fundraising campaign, etc etc.)

No, the exchange with Peter Hillary was real people sending real email back and forth exactly half-way around the world from one another.  If it goes nowhere, I’ll still be smiling at having had a human conversation with the guy. Smack dab in the middle of an adventure, no less**.

Last week, I bought his book, In the Ghost Country: A Lifetime Spent on the Edge.  This is what the jacket says:

“Peter Hillary’s harrowing account of his attempt with two companions to complete Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s doomed journey to the South Pole makes for powerful reading.  A masterful story of an expedition’s precipitous collapse and a study of a life lived on the brink, this is a vivid tale of physical endurance, heartbreaking loneliness, and ultimately the triumph of a man over the cruelty of the Antarctic wastelands and the ghosts of his own past.” 

Moving it up in the stack.

The picture above: That’s the Hillary family in 1962.. Ed, Louise, Peter and his sisters Sarah and Belinda.

This is Peter now, about 57:

I borrowed both from his website, here.

** I see on the website that in September and October (now) he is leading a trip from Lhasa (Tibet) to Kathmandu, “the best road journey in the world with stunning landscapes, rich culture, wonderful people and the greatest mountain range on earth.”   

So, there’s that.