Back On The Bike

This photo is from the Marble Falls race that Joe and I talk about so often. You are all familiar with the story -- how close it was, especially on the run. You're also familiar with the speedos, and how fantastic I look in them. The speedos have stayed in the closet for a while now, and thanks to the sponsorship of an awesome bike store, they won't be making an appearance anytime in the near future. 

The blue Cannondale has stayed inside as well, though too big to fit in the closet. You know that story as well -- of why the bike, the running shoes, the goggles haven't been used. 

This week, after a quick wash and a few well-placed sprays of tri-flo and with the assistance of a bike pump, the bike was looking ready to go out again, so I obliged and took it out Sunday. 

The Sunday ride was magnificent. Joe and I left my house at 2:30 in the afternoon [a good dentist joke is begging to be told there, but I'll let it slide], and we set out for a short ride. It was a hot day, which is rare in Texas this summer. As we rolled along the familiar roads, I realized that I'd drained my aero drink and water bottle in the first few miles. Joe's water hadn't lasted much longer. And so we stopped at a grocery store and I went in and grabbed too much water and ice and gatorade and coke, and we sat in the shade and talked about football and baseball as we drained these wonderfully cold drinks.

The remainder of the ride was surreal; when I went to look at my bike computer to see how long we'd been riding, I realized I hadn't even turned my speedometer on. Joe and I talked about things that brothers should, about what we were wrestling with, what we were looking forward to, what we had overcome. It was a talk most have over a beer and we had it over the hills in the outskirts of Austin; how fitting. 

I'm excited for more days like Sunday. Far too often I worried about pace and distance instead of enjoying the sun and the road and the fact that I get to ride with my brother.

I also went out again today, this time with Ryan. Ryan, since he's been in Austin, has only done one route in Austin -- the Fitzhugh out and back. Figuring he'd appreciate a change of scenery and that I would be as good a guide as any, we set out to do the same ride Joe and I did a few days earlier. 

The clouds were out today, and it provided periods of shade which you can only appreciate when you've cooked in the sun before. I still drained all my water in the first hour or so, so we stopped at a gas station and drank the coldest water and gatorade we could find. 

Again, there was something amazing about being on the bike. Something not forced. I climbed the hills and felt strong. I was riding not because there was a race to train for, or some program to follow, but because it was nice and I could. 

At one point today Ryan called out from behind me. He said "Look, who am I? I'm drafting you." I guessed Joe, which Ryan told me was correct and we both laughed and continued riding. Those are the best kind of jokes. 

We continued to pedal and we talked about how moronic a sign that said "Noah's Ark Pre-School" was; Noah had many things on his ark, and we were both pretty sure that a pre-school wasn't one of them. As the conversation progressed, Ryan shared his belief that Noah had brought a supermodel on the ark. 

The conversation rolled along with the road, and as we neared home, Ryan asked why I was flicking off a few birds. 

-"Because birds don't do anything," I said.
-"They sustain our eco-system."
-"No they don't. They shit on cars."
-"They also make this planet livable."

-"Yeah dude. It was a few crows and an owl that started the big bang, wasn't it?"

Ryan shakes his head in disbelief. 

-"That's what I thought," I said. 

And so we pedaled home, both convinced the other was an idiot, and both right. 

It's good to be back on the bike. 

A Neighbor and Her Fucking Porch

After close to a month of looking for a new place to live, and with both of our leases either already expired or on the verge of expiring, Joe and I were running out of options to find our new residence. It was the middle of a record heat wave in Texas, and looking for apartments and houses ranked below drinking beer and reading and sleeping in between work. So we put off the search until the last minute, and surprisingly, there weren't as many options as we'd hoped. And when we finally did start looking extensively, we experienced the frustrations that accompanies house-hunting. A place looks great but it's too expensive, or the price is perfect but it's too far from your work and/or civilization. Or it's a great price, great location, but the person who lived there before you had cats and was a chain smoker. The stars need to align on price, location and the property itself. Towards the end of the month, I was beginning to doubt they ever would. 

Then one day Joe called me and told me about a place that had just been listed on craigslist. He asked if I could call the number and inquire [he was too busy with work, he told me. Typical older sibling]. I did call. The woman who answered told me that she was showing the house to people at three that afternoon. I told her that I could meet her there at two-thirty, and that so long as it wasn't crawling with roaches, I'd sign the papers then and there. 

The house looked nice and wasn't expensive, it was located near the important parts of Austin, and most importantly, was in a quiet and safe neighborhood. Papers were signed. Rooms were painted. House became a home. 

One thing the owners forgot to mention when they listed the place online is that this house seems to have a firm grasp of irony. This new, supposedly safe neighborhood was the location where my car window was smashed and my stereo was ripped out. And the supposedly quiet neighborhood full of old people; it now sounds more like Tokyo in the late 1940's, when Douglas MacArthur and the Allies were rebuilding the grand city that they had firebombed into rubble and ash. 

Our next door neighbor, who I've only met once, is a sweet old lady named Ruth. She is no longer our neighbor for the time being because her entire house is under construction, or to put it more aptly, expansion; after all, nobody can live in a place where there's drilling and sawing and hammering all the time. And Ruth, bless her fucking heart, was so thoughtful and considerate of her former neighbors, that she decided to wait until everyone was at work -- 9am -- before she'd have her workers start the drilling, sawing, hammering. And then, after a long day of work, she knew that none of her neighbors would want to be disturbed by her little construction project, so she has her workers stop each day somewhere between 4 to 5 pm. 

There's just one problem. Ruth didn't realize that her next-door neighbors, the people who are a mere ten feet from all this fucking construction, work in bars. So we're actually at home the entire time they're working, and we're at work the entire time they're resting. And so each morning, Brogan and I, after working until 4 or 5 or 6 in the morning, are woken at 8 or 9 am to the sound of construction. Actually, it's not "construction" that wakes us up. It's the whine of a buzzsaw, the incessant pounding of a hammer, the "thoop...thoop" of a nail-gun. Those jolt us awake, four hours into our sleep. 

This of course means that we wake up in terrible moods.

I can't tell you the number of times Brogan and I have spoken about burning that place to the ground, but we've decided against this because it would mean that: 

a) they might start the expansion all over again [though I've proposed to keep burning it down until Ruth's funds dry up]

and

b) since the drought has killed most of the grass and turned it tinder-dry, there's a good chance the fire would spread uncontrollably and possibly burn down our house [which at 9 am, when a hammer is banging five feet from your window, doesn't sound like a bad trade-off]. 

There is an unhealthy level of spite in the peaceful neighborhood, at least in this quiet little house. We talk about renting jackhammers and turning it on at 1 am -- when we're at work. We dream of renting a crane and wiping the piddly little fucking porch off the face of the earth, and then smiling and going back to sleep. We wonder why the fuck Ruth thinks she needs a bigger house than the one she's already got -- is she really so ignorant as to think that a new porch, a new room will bring her happiness? If she's unhappy, she should talk with her husband, or go see the Colosseum. In fact, we pity Ruth; just as she thinks that all people work from 9-5, she thinks that bigger houses bring a sense of happiness, when in fact, they usually give you more room to feel empty and alone. And even worse than pity, we label her a coward. She left the neighborhood behind with a mess she fucking made. And like a cowardly general, when the porch is completed and the neighborhood once again livable, she come back to the front-lines, smiling and talking about how much work it was and how nice it looks. 

And then we think about our landlords. Did they know about this ahead of time? Were they chuckling quietly to themselves as we signed the lease, because they knew that in a month's time, we'd be living next to a fucking Home Depot? Are they sitting there, cashing our check, laughing maniacally?

We don't have answers to the questions. We just sit in our house and occasionally peer through the window. 

Fuck our landlords if they knew and didn't tell us. Fuck Ruth. And fuck her porch.  

The new porch, as seen from my window.  

Super Monster

Right around a week ago, I ate a burrito the size of my forearm. It took somewhere in the range of twenty to thirty minutes [in the excitement of taking this burrito head on, I forgot to set a timer], and when it was all said and done, when there was nothing left but aluminum foil and barbecue sauce stains and a memory of the 2,000 plus calories that were now a part of me -- after all that, there was a bizarre feeling of accomplishment. I had finished what I had set out to do.

There is not much else to report -- after all, eating, no matter what ESPN tries to tell you, isn't that exciting. It was by no means easy [or even pleasant towards the end], but I did finish, and even had enough room for a Shiner afterwards. 

Even the employees were excited.

You can imagine how the jokes that were made as we looked at this photo.

    

All that remained. 

A medal Ryan crafted for me, using paper napkins and some of the foil used to wrap the conquered SuperMonster.

The author, in desperate need of a shave, wearing the medal outside.  

Letters

Jim, Joe, Dad & Brogan,

Before I say anything else and get sidetracked, let me congratulate you. I still maintain that getting to the starting line of an Ironman is often tougher than the race itself. And you all have made it to that line yet again, and for that alone, you should be unashamedly proud. Each and every one of you have reasons why you shouldn't be there -- travel, the pressure of raising a family, focusing on and building a relationship, embracing retirement, too much work, a cracked bike, injury setbacks -- but still you found a way. Again, that in and of itself is a testament to what you are made of. 

Collectively, you have raced this distance close to two dozen times. That's 57.6 miles of Ironman swimming,  2,688 miles of Ironman biking, and 628.8 miles of Ironman marathons. You have battled and overcome, you have vomited, wheezed, sunburned, and climbed your way to the finish when you had to (and in one of our less proud moments, even drafted). You know how the weight of a medal feels around your neck, and how good beer tastes the next morning.You are all Ironmen and will renew your vows Sunday -- of that, I'm sure. 

I write this for a few reasons. Perhaps the most obvious one is because I'm not there. I can't raise a glass and tell you this in person, though I wish I could. More than you know, I wish I could. 

But I also share this with you because it comes from my heart. It is the only place this could come from. 

I decided to stop racing a few days before my birthday. I was planning on doing the 70.3 in Lubbock. But my heart wasn't in it. I was racing to say I was racing; to be the Ironman that everyone thought I was. The weeks leading up to it had been average training at best -- I was cutting swim workouts to sleep, shortening bike workouts to have a beer. It ate away at me; not that I wasn't training, but that I didn't want to train. In fact, I saw training as an obstacle to what I wanted in my life: a non-trainwreck relationship, a social life, to write more. So I walked away. From the training, the races, the bike and the pool. I still haven't been back.  


Not a day goes by that I don't think about this Ironman, and as the race draws closer, I think about it every hour, and probably more than that. I want to high-five you out on the course and maybe pretend to pull a hamstring the next time we see each other. I want to stand side-by-side race morning for the pictures, and then stand side-by-side somewhere in the post-race chaos for the same, yet very different photo. 


I now realize that I don't miss the race, but I miss being there with you, being one of you. 


When most of your friends and family are Ironmen, it is easy to forget how uncommon of a feat this truly is. How rarely people stare at the water, next to thousands of other men and women, and stare out at the water and think, "Holy shit, this is real... Am I ready?" 


You are there. You are ready. And you'll be in my thoughts all day. 


Enjoy it. Be strong. And say hi to the little one out on the course for me.  

And to Amelia, Liana, Lilly and Mom (and Ellie, who is as veteran of an Iron-spectator as they come, and who I know would love to be there), 

You are the heart and meaning behind this day. Your presence, not to mention your applause, your high-fives and your hugs -- they are the reasons to finish. Do not underestimate your importance. 


It is because you stand by the side of the road, because you are there waiting at the finish, but mostly just because you are there, that it is much more than a race. 


Cheer for me out there. 

Broken Glass

I went for a walk late last night. Even the nights off work, I still can't sleep before 3. It was chilly for an Austin summer night - low 60's - and so I put on a long-sleeved shirt, grabbed a pad, a pen and a flashlight and wandered through the new neighborhood. For close to two hours I walked up and down my neighbor's streets, occasionally the lights of a passing car lighting the way for a second or two before they disappeared and went home. I walked without a destination in mind. I walked to walk, to be outside and feel the cold in my hands and on my face.  


I had hit something of a roadblock with my movie a week or so ago. I had finished the second draft and sent it out to friends. They liked it. It was funny and made them laugh out loud [which is good, since it was a comedy]. But there was a problem with the story itself. They all saw it, and I had felt it since I had started writing. The problem was my main character's motivation, or lack thereof. In a movie, the main character needs a reason for why they are doing the things they are doing. There have to be consequences if they fail, rewards if they succeed; that's what makes a reader keep turning the page. Think of any movie you like. I promise you, they all have this. Mine didn't. So I had a funny script that needed fixing. I put off working on it for days and days. I had already spent so much time crafting this story. So much time writing and re-writing single lines until I found the right one. So many cuts already. And to fix this problem, the only solution that I could find was to cut so many scenes I had fallen in love with and nearly start from the beginning. Because when you pull one thread in a story, the rest can quickly come undone (and if you pull a thread and nothing comes undone  -- maybe it shouldn't have been in the story in the first place).  


When Joe was studying for the bar, he had mentioned that he would walk for hours and hours around Town Lake with his notecards. It had made the studying somewhat bearable, not to mention more productive. The procedures and cases that needed to be memorized somehow became more digestible when looked at beneath the trees and alongside the water. I, of course, had ridiculed him for this at the time, tossing a few creative and witty barbs his way. Somehow impervious to the attacks, Joe kept walking and studying, and in the moments when I got to see him when he wasn't studying, I could tell if he'd been out walking or not. 


And so I sat in my room, staring at a 103 page script that needed changing, and then I'd look at a yellow pad full of new ideas that needed to be transplanted into my unmotivated script. It wasn't writer's block, because I knew what needed to be done. It was as though I was the unmotivated character in my script; I simply didn't want to start over again. I grew tired of staring at a screen that wouldn't write for me, so I thought about what Joe had told me and grabbed the pen, flashlight and pad, and decided that I'd rather be uncreative outside than in. 


By the time I returned home I had outlined the first half of the movie and had pages more of ideas for the second. I stayed up and typed out what I had written down, adding more ideas along the way.  


There was no point going to sleep now. It was 4 am, and I had to take Brogan to the airport in 30 minutes. So I kept writing. 


Brogan knocked on my door when he was ready to go and I grabbed my car keys and tried to detach myself from the script, which has become increasingly difficult to do, but I find I can do through a video game or good music. I thought about good songs to play on an early morning drive, and then  we walked outside and locked the front door and made our way down the path to the street where we park our cars. It was still cold, and even though I'd been out in it for hours, it was still a pleasant surprise.  


We ended up taking Brogan's car to the airport because when we got to my truck, this is what we saw:

I don't remember what I said, or what Brogan said. I think it might have been "Jesus Christ." But that was about the extent of it. We were laughing in the car a few minutes later, and then a few minutes after that we were talking about Wisconsin and in the long silences I could tell both of our minds were there, for very different reasons.

These things happen. Why is there such a shock when it happens to you?

I thought about the broken window and the missing stereo on the drive to the airport, trying to picture the person responsible. It is a sad life they lead, and I doubt a very fulfilling one. They are a thief and dishonest. And that is worse than being a victim. 

Bizarrely, I found myself trying to justify it all. See if I had done something to deserve this. I joked about this with Brogan, something to the effect of: "Maybe this is karma for breaking a heart." It may or may not be, though I'm more inclined to think of it as a random act, an event that is better left behind than continually ransacked for meaning.  

It is a beautiful Thursday afternoon in Austin. Mid 90's, reports calling for it to be in the mid to low 50's tonight. At this moment, a friendly enough man is fixing my window and vacuuming out all the glass from my front seat. "I was so pissed when that shit happened to me," he said. "Wanted to kill the fuckers."  

In a few hours my brother gets off work and we will go out for beers and some food and we'll chat about the window and the stereo I'm sure, and then we'll talk about Wisconsin and how he's feeling. We'll talk about the bike course, how his running's been. He'll tell me a story about Liana in a way that people who are in love talk about each other. I'm sure at some point we'll talk about dumb things that we always do. We'll figure out what time I'm picking him and Liana up for the airport tomorrow. 

And then whenever we finish eating, I'm going to drive home and park my car in the same spot. I'm going to grab the same pad, pen and flashlight, and I'm going to walk down different streets in the same neighborhood.

My stereo is gone. My window is in pieces. I will fix the window. I will buy a new stereo. If only all of life's problems were this easy to fix.

A Bit of Everything

This blog will be something of a literary Full Metal Jacket. That sentence doesn't quite make sense, I am aware, so I'll explain. Under normal circumstances, I would alter the opening sentence to make it more digestible or just axe it altogether, but it seems like a perfectly good sentence - whether it makes sense or not - and good sentences are becoming increasingly hard to come by these days. So it remains, though an explanation, especially by this point, is overdue. 

The blog will contain nothing about war and its dehumanized soldiers. If in fact the blog was centered around war and its dehumanized soldiers, the whole Full Metal Jacket thing would have been too obvious. The better way would have been to do as Hemingway did, and make subtle comparisons between dead soldiers and the wasted meat of the stock yards. 

Speaking of Hemingway, I must relate a quick story. I wanted to know where Hemingway is buried (which I have discovered is Ketchum, Idaho). I went to google and typed "Hemingway burail" and hit enter. A simple typo. Google, as it is so prone to do, asked me if I meant to type in something else. I normally take these suggestions well because they route me to what I actually was looking for, or if they don't, they're at least understandable and provide ideas for future searches. But this time, Google brazenly said "Did you mean Hemingway boring?" And so I quietly cursed at my computer, and more specifically at Google, which was asking me if I thought Hemingway was boring simply because I misspelled "burial". No, Google, I don't think Hemingway is boring. As surprising as this may be to you Google, even though I made a simple spelling error, I do have the mental capacity to enjoy books that aren't about horny vampires.  

Anyways. This blog isn't about war, though we've now spent a good paragraph talking about war and an author who wrote about it. I promise you it isn't. 

I deftly employ the Full Metal Jacket comparison because I plan on having a similar sense of structure. It's a bizarre thing to take away from something so visual as a film, let alone to try and mimic: the structure. [I can only think of one other film where I remember how it was told more than I could recall what was told. But I couldn't use that movie because the entire story was told in reverse and that wouldn't work here, or maybe it could work brilliantly but I'm just too busy being bored with Hemingway to figure out a way to do it]. 

In Full Metal Jacket, the first half hour [maybe a bit longer - I can't remember exactly] could almost be a comedy. The early scenes mainly consist of a tough-as-nails Drill Sergeant [fun fact: the actor who plays the Drill Sergeant in the movie served in the marines as an actual Drill Sergeant for years] - and this guy just berates the hell out of a crop of new marine recruits. He's vulgar in the most creative and enjoyable ways. 

Quick example: 

DS = Drill Sergeant

PJ = Private Joker

PS = Private Snowball

DS: Private Joker, do you believe in the Virgin Mary?

PJ: Sir, no sir!

DS: Well, well Private Joker, I don't believe I heard you correctly!

PJ: Sir, the private said "no, sir", sir!

DS: Why you little maggot, you make me want to vomit!

[slaps Private]

DS: You Goddamn communist heathen, you had best sound off that you love the Virgin Mary, or I'm gonna stomp your guts out! Now you DO love the Virgin Mary, don't ya?

PJ:  Sir, NEGATIVE, sir!

DS: Private, are you trying to offend me?

PJ: Sir, NEGATIVE, sir! Sir, the private believes any answer he gives will be wrong and the Senior Drill Instructor will only beat him harder if he reverses himself, SIR!

DS: Who's your squad leader, scumbag?

PJ: Sir, the sqad leader is Private Snowball, sir!

DS: Private Snowball!

PS: Sir, Private Snowball reporting as ordered, sir!

DS: Private Snowball, you're fired. Private Joker's promoted to squad leader. 

PS: Sir, aya-aye, sir!

DS: Disappear, scumbag!

Well, as the boot camp comes to an end, the movie takes an abrupt and dark turn. And then they're off to war and the dark turn becomes even darker, almost horrifying. These once soft recruits are now hardened marines, and war is still war, just with new faces and names that it has claimed or will claim. It almost feels like two separate movies -- the break is that sudden, that clear. And so it will be in this blog. One story that will feel like two, though hopefully much less dark, and as we've now spent far too much time emphasizing, not about war and its dehumanized soldiers. 

That was a hell of a preamble, if I may say so. It has set the table quite nicely for what is to follow. 

Now let us eat. [A hell of a dinner analogy]. 

Being a bartender, like any other form of employment, has things about it that you love and then other aspects that you don't. [That was a hell of a truism, if I may say so]. The long nights can be a bit of a drag, but you get to sleep in [unless you open the bar the next day, in which case you get to sleep for a few hours and then re-fill ice tubs you just emptied a few hours ago]. The money is great, but often you're working so much that you rarely spend any of it on anything besides rent and caffeine. The environment is enjoyably relaxed; it's one of the few jobs where you can tell the customer to "fuck off" while your manager listens and not be disciplined. At it's core what we do is fun, or it can be. 

Like any job, the work comes at a cost. It's difficult to have a social life with non-bartenders, because people with normal jobs are at work when you're sleeping and then they're socializing when you're working. There's the unpredictable income [except the $2.13/hr], the unpredictable schedule [because of games, special events, public holidays], and the unpredictable people who come in to the bar who you make drinks for and whose generosity your income depends on. But at the end of the day, it's the hours that exact the steepest price. There is something taxing about sleeping away the days, unnatural at the very least. Especially when you've been awake at 5 am before, running along Town Lake as the city comes alive with the sun. When you've clipped in at 9 am on a lonely road on the outskirts of Austin and wonder how the hell you'll feel in six hours as you turn the pedals over for the first time. It's in moments like last night, where I look at the clock on my car radio as I'm driving home from work and see "5:12" -- and in that moment, as I look at the glowing numbers, as I get on the highway for the drive home, there's a feeling I can't explain. I should be running, I should be staring at a pool. I should be somewhere on that lunatic fringe. 

INSERT ABRUPT, BUT STILL SOMEWHAT CONNECTED TURN. 

I signed up for Ironman Wisconsin last year. It was going to be the breakout Ironman race for me. 2010 had been a breakthrough year in the short course distances. I'd finished top-5, competed with some guys who usually destroyed me. I was racing and competing with the best non-professionals in Austin and I loved it. But the promising year ended rather poorly with my second Ironman-distance race in Oklahoma City. I hadn't trained properly, and it showed for the first six or so hours of the race. I died in the swim and I faded in the bike. It was a four-loop bike course, and what had started as a five-minute gap between Joe and I on the first lap was well over 30 minutes by the final lap. As I started the run, I found something, and I ran like I've never run before. I was on pace for a 3:40 marathon. By mile 13, I had run my way into third place, still a ways off from Joe in second place. But I was running, smiling, finally. 

And then it fell apart. My left ankle went from a dull pain to a steady ache to a pulsating throb to an unbearable flash. The best I could muster was a limp-walk. It was after I started walking that I saw Dad, who was not doing well. His stomach had betrayed him again leaving his body drained of all the strength that it normally had. I saw him as he sat in the front seat of a golf cart, head wobbling with the bumps of the road, as he was being monitored by the medical staff. I stopped the cart and gave him a hug and asked how he was. Then the cart drove off and I nearly cried. It was one of those feelings you can't explain. I was walking while my Dad was being carted off.

Be an Ironman, I told myself. Do you think he would be walking?... Look at your arm. What do those words mean if you walk right now? Are you a quitter? Come on. Just keep on running. It's that fucking simple... And so I started running for a few hundred yards before I stopped again. I turned around to make sure Dad wasn't watching. 

That race came as close to breaking me as anything ever has. There were so many questions, so many holes that had been exposed. Anyone who knows me is aware that I can be prone to extremes. And so as I looked back on the race, tried to make sense of it all, I had internal dialogues.  

-"If someone had told you that if you walked during the race, they'd shoot Mom, would you have walked?"
No. I would have found a way to keep going.
-"Then why didn't you?"

I couldn't answer that, or at least I didn't want to. The answer lay entwined with words like quitting and compromise. Words that I battled daily to keep out of life. Why would you walk when you could run?

Would it have been tough to keep on running? You better fucking believe it. To this day -- and I've played football with a partially dislocated shoulder, I've broken my wrist, I've been knocked out cold -- that pain in my left ankle is close to the top. But the question still lingers. "Why didn't you?" The answer isn't that I physically couldn't run. We've established that if there was enough on the line, I would have kept on running. Death wasn't imminent. Then why didn't you?  (I found out later that the cause of the pain was severe ligament inflammation and damage, which took physical therapy before I could run pain-free again.)

Sometime after the tough race, after tossing around the questions I didn't want to answer, I signed up for Wisconsin. It was the race where I'd qualify for Hawaii, where I'd cross the line in under 10 hours as my family looked on. Where I wouldn't break. That was the plan. 

Well, Ironman Wisconsin is this Sunday, and I won't be racing, or even be there. My brother, my father, my friend and my brother-in-law (who all signed up the same time as me), they will be there.  They will be Ironmen again Sunday night. And I won't. And so I look at those electric-green numbers on my car clock as they tell me it's early in the morning and I think about what they're doing -- the soon-to-be Ironmen -- and about what I'm doing, what I've done. 

-"Quitter."

I could be out there. I'm just focusing on other things right now. 

-"They don't have other things to focus on?"
Of course they do.

-"You want to "enjoy life" -- that's what you're telling people, right?"

Something like that. 

-"I hope those beers and conversations were worth an Ironman finish."
I'll be back there again.
-"Will you?"
Yeah... I could have done the training, put in the miles.

-"Then why didn't you?"

We are of course prone to be hard on ourselves. And so the selfish part of me thinks of Ironman Wisconsin and I blush, almost ashamed that I was the one who didn't make it to the starting line. That I limped yet again on the big stage of the Ironman. 

But the other part is excited as hell for everyone who will be there, who are only a few hundred hours away from conquering those 140.6 miles. I wish I could be there, standing on a hill, cheering, offering a joke and a high-five. I so badly want to be there to hold bikes while they're having wheels and cassettes put on, to be around the dinner table for the hours and hours of conversations. I wish I could be there for the hug at the finish line. I wish I could hear Lilly as a spectator. 

Instead, I will be following neurotically from a computer and when I can, ducking out of the bar to call Amelia and get updates. I will be hounding everyone to take photos, to write race reports. 

And on Monday morning, as I drive home from a long and busy night of work, my thoughts will be off in Madison, Wisconsin, wondering what the water temperature was like, how the wind was, how smooth the roads were, and what the finish was like.