Zen and the Art of Speedskating

Road trips are wonderful things, everyone should drive across the country at least once every 5 years, its so easy to forget how truly different this country is from region to region, how rural Missouri just feels different in some cosmic way than Colorado.. Now of course, the interstate is a boring canvas to view this country from, but its still inspiring..

After 3 days and 2,000 miles of driving, my brain and body hurt, like I have been beaten up by a hundred ether soaked sea slugs….. I am not thinking straight, am blogging from “mugs” coffee shop in my old hometown of Ft Collins, Colorado… so I will write less, and post images from the last 72 hours…

The sky as I was leaving upstate NY, near horseheads N.Y. will I ever live in upstate NY again? I asked my magic 8-ball after taking this picture, it said “ask me again later”

Dogs are the best companions for road trips, Lilly has had a complete blast!

This storm near the Indiana/Illinois border was about 1 pickle short of a tornado.. the sky was rotating in all sorts of crazy directions..

I got off the interstate in Nebraska to try and get a picture of the church, it was abandoned, paint peeling, cracked walls, bushes growing out of busted windows, and the slogan “god is with us” was painted on the side.. There is a metaphor there somewhere. This is as close as I could get. Lilly charged off into the cornfield chasing something, her tail cutting through the stalks like a sharkfin through the ocean. I was relieved when she returned, soaking wet and satisfied…

Driving on I-29 in Missouri, near the boarder with Iowa and Nebraska, along the Missouri river valley, incredibly beautiful country, astonishingly fertile & green, crazy clouds, and everywhere evidence of thousands of years of the flooding river

Crossing into Colorado, in the Pawnee National grasslands, this is the phenomena my wife calls “godsky”… I lived in colorado for 7 years, I felt the ache of an old home driving across the rolling plains, seeing the rocky mountains again. How many “homes” does a heart have room for??

Massive thunderstorm in one direction, the sun setting in the other, this dual rainbow was an unbroken arch across the sky, too wide for my camera to grasp it all. This is in the crumbling plains town of Ault, Colorado

Self portrait with rainbow….

ok, I gotta run, the last 7 hours of this 36 hour, 2,400 mile drive await…

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Salt Lake City has experienced a wild boom of construction. And the Salt Lake City public library has risen out of this urban renaissance into truly one of the most impressive buildings I have seen in a very long time. From the outside it’s a gentle collection of curves and windows flowing together, on the inside, standing in the central open area, the glass ceiling rises 6 stories above you, staircases wind along one wall like strands of DNA, 3 glass elevators silently zip up and down with their massive counterweights exposed; on the other side of this open space tiers of shops give way to endless study nooks & reading couches. This feels more like it could be a sci-fi set from Star Trek’s deep space nine, rather than a public library. This image is from the libraries own website yet it’s a pale hint of the reality.

Joy’s deli occupies one of the business nooks on the ground floor, and I was speaking with Joy herself, a sunny Asian woman who makes simply phenomenal sandwiches (I can highly recommend the meatball sub!)

I remarked about the amazingly beautiful architecture of the Library, and how I am looking forward to bringing my laptop here to work (and yes, and to blog! free wireless in the whole city block!) when I move to salt lake in a month.

She asked me why I was coming to salt lake, and I explained I would be training at the Utah Olympic Speedskating Oval (another unique building as well), preparing for my shot at Olympic trials. Joy gushed with “wow, isn’t that wonderful”, I stopped her and said “there are so many fast guys in the US, I am 98% for sure not going to the games, this is really just me vs myself”, she gave me a funny look and said:

“it does not matter, you have a special talent, and you are using it, and that is absolutely wonderful”

I felt a surge of little kid irrational happiness coupled with a whoosh of perspective. As human beings, we all need to feel appreciated for our gifts, and sometimes it’s complete strangers behind sandwich shop counters can tell you what you yourself can miss as you look in the mirror every morning. Maybe its typically human, to feel as if you are at times a stranger looking at your own life, as David Byrne of the Talking Heads sings in “once in a lifetime”

” And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself-Well…How did I get here?…

“And you may ask yourself
What is that beautiful house?
And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right?…Am I wrong?
And you may tell yourself
MY GOD!…WHAT HAVE I DONE?”

anyway, thanks Joy!! I am pretty damm happy on this highway… wherever it leads…

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Someday, internet access from airplanes will be as commonplace as cel phones are now… then one will be able to blog successfully & email from 33,000 feet…. there is an airline testing service in flights from Japan to the US, but its still in its infancy… Someday bandwith will flow like airline pretzels, as the urge to always be in touch becomes consuming (that will strengthen the backlash to it as well) as the urge to never leave a moment unfilled with some gadget completely triumphs…

So I am just doing the best I can right now, and writing on Microsoft word…. I am flying home after my trip to salt lake.. it was really a very successful trip.. my wife had some great interviews, and has narrowed her job search down to a few vet clinics in salt lake… And I did get to meet with my 2 coaches, and get instructions on what they want me to be doing for the next 2 months until I move to Salt Lake proper (more on that later, once I start the brutal jump program they outlined…)

I am feeling better about moving now, being honest about how I feel has been important in sorting the bizarre mechanisms of my heart out.. My wife clearly outlined to me all the things that will capture my heart about Salt Lake, and in her exact analysis she is right, and she predicts that I will love it in the end as much as I did Colorado, my friend Carla commented on my last post, and really hit the nail on the head about why I was freaking out about moving.

Also I stayed in Salt lake with some dear friends, their hospitality and nutritious spirit and household was what I needed (Thanks K & B & D!! you guys are the best). A hotel would have left me feeling even more adrift…

Maybe a hurricane in the heart is normal and necessary before a move of 2,500 miles!!… Especially when you move for a reason that really speaks to your self-conception or development… The Romans had an interesting theory that I have always enjoyed, they believed that when a person travels on the horizontal plane, they also travel equally far on a spiritual plane. And when one has truly traveled far, you become wiser for it (this is also why you don’t mess with travelers, they are worthy of a spiritual respect, besides they might be a god in disguise!).

I am sure that our modern methods of movement make the travel equation different that what the Romans were talking about. Sitting in my airplane seat, I am traveling at 565mph, without expending a shred of effort. I would have certainly traveled farther on my spiritual axis if I had ridden my bicycle from Salt Lake all the way back to New York, or done the Forrest Gump cross country jog. That motion of the soul is probably more dependent on the time and effort of rhythmic travel than on pure mileage. But even with modern travel velocities. I have now been on the road for almost 2 weeks, and I cannot wait for my own bed (and high speed connection, I am such a bandwidth whore!).

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blah blah blah.. I say more and more blah to you, since you and I exchange blah on a regular basis… maybe an interesting blah??? its entertaining to me at least… the blah blah of our specific, little lives..

I am tossing these words out blindly into the dark, like hurling a stone at a lake in the pitch black of night…. I expend the effort to toss the stone/write the words, and far out in the dark, I cannot see the splash, but I know it landed in the water.. but who is reading the ripples? why did I feel compelled to toss the stone in the first place? Some collect things, some garden, some follow sports teams, I write.. I love the feel of the smooth stone of words in my hands, and I truly enjoy the effort of the throw…

So onward to today’s stone…The last 6 days has been a crazy whirlwind… I karmicly owe a lot to one of my sponsor, John Dimon of Dimon Sports, and I traveled to the Pettit center in Milwaulkee to help him sell speedskates at short track North American championships… That is john and his van here on the right.

I had a blast, but it was 5 exhausting, intense days. We had to be set up and ready before the first skaters came, and we took the stand down and packed up our booth after the last skater left.. this was lots of 14 hour days that started at 6am.

I have never lost my voice before, but these ripped my vocal chords raw, and my jaw was tired from all the talking.. it was nice though, to be back in Milwaukee, where I spent much of the last winter, I saw many of the excellent people I know there, and saw a little bit of some incredible short track skating…

This morning though, I am paying for these long days, I tried to do an easy bike workout, I could simply not turn the pedals.. I drank a ton of coffee and soda this weekend too, and so now I am at higher levels of caffeine addiction than normal… the best coffee I was able to find this morning within walking distance of where I am staying, was the el crapo BP gas station coffee…

oh well, probably its like methadone therapy for a heroin addict, maybe it will let me down easily during an enforced caffeine detox over the next few days..

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