Zen and the Art of Speedskating

After 9 days of feeling weak and sick with moving and driving, I finally feel like an athlete again, I went out for a nice hard ride up one of the canyons, and climbed for an 45 minutes straight at a nice hammerhead pace. The pain was good pain, fast pain, and my mind & body felt cleansed. In this super dry air, one does not feel buckets of sweat like back east, even though you lose more water. Taking the long way back home, I came across this view. It was so heart stopping that I just about went off the road looking at it.

now that is not a satisfying image to see, O gentle reader, so…

Click here and go directly to a larger image, you will have to use the scroll bar on your browser to move to the right and see all of it. You are looking directly south in this view. On the left/east is the 11,000 foot Wasatch Range; all the ski areas are back there, several are still open. Salt lake city fills the Valley edge to edge. You are maybe looking 40+ miles in this view down the valley. To the right is Downtown Salt lake, the 10,000 foot Oquirrh mountains above it (say “ochre”) . On the farthest right you can see a hint of the Great Salt Lake, and Antelope Island in the middle of it. See those 4 weird poles sticking out of the trees; imagine them as an arrow, pointing a half-mile farther down the road at my house. I live on 7th & H in the avenues, this elevation is just above 11th.

And yeah, Jess and I can roughly see this same view from our bedroom window, with trees 70% in the way, but I saw the sunrise on the Oquirrh’s this morning, and the lights of downtown at night. I am blogging to you from the upper floor of the Salt Lake City Public library this morning, and I can see 100% of this view.

Riding home, I felt this weird shiver of recognition, realizing I could live here forever. Family will probably pull me back east someday, so I will mentally pause for every view, and fill my soul with it.

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Filed under: sweat

SALT LAKE CITY!!! Driving to dinner with our friends, the outlines of the Wasatch Range to our left, the Oquirrh range to our right, rain clouds swirling between them & the highway wet & full of buzzing traffic… so much going on… We unload the moving truck & begin to move into our new place tomorrow, I will start training hard again in a few days (I have had 7 days off!!! 3 days packing 4 days driving! I feel terrible physically after my cross country trip).. Our conversation ambled from happy anticipation of a new town, to the stress of moving, to where we will buy a new mop bucket… The endless etc etc etc…

During the mop bucket conversation, I looked at the beautiful mountains, dim outlines majestic in the clouds and rain…. In the background my mind was rolling around ideas of myth, what were the myths of these mountains to the Indians living here before the Mormons settled?

Then the cel phone rang, it was my uncle… Grandma has just died…

Its been expected for a long time, she has mentally been 95% gone for some time, her heart has been failing for years, but the actuality and finality of death is still a shock. She was 91, she hated being old, she did not “go gently into that good night”, and she is at peace now…

When I think of her, I don’t think of how sick she has been, my mind reverts back 20 years, I took this picture during a visit to their place in Florida around that time… This is the grandma I hold in my heart…. The woman who built towering bonfires of driftwood on the shores of Canandaigua lake, The samurai master of perfect grilled cheese sandwiches. At 70, she would swim about a kilometer out into the lake and back every day, even as a 15 year old fit hockey player, I had a hard time keeping up with her….

I don’t believe in God, I don’t believe in any afterlife or other metaphorical happy hunting grounds/valhalla/heaven/sheol/karmic soul recycler. Neither did grandma, but there is a place for myth and symbolism within every human heart. So maybe Grandma is with the mountains now… hmm….. no, in her mythology she is happily swimming onwward in Canandaigua lake, in her flower embossed rubber swimming hat & 1950’s swimsuit. Somehow that thought gives me comfort…….

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Filed under: on the road

I have admired this blog, the daily dose of imagery, for quite a while. Is a picture worth a thousand words? Yes and no, it’s apples and oranges, and there are always fine & rotten fruits out there, depending where you look/what tree you browse. The the daily dose of imagery is always exceptional mental eating & nourishing browsing. Someday I will find myself in Toronto with my father, and I want to buy this blogger dinner, and watch him and my dad talk photography, they could have a lot to say to each other…

Anyway, I am currently driving across the country, and I will most likely retreat somewhat to the visual tree of art, instead of the word orchards I usually harvest from, and try to share some pictures I will see along the way…. Diving across the country (this must be time 20+, as I used to live in Colorado) has always been primarily a visual experience for me, whole journeys only recollected in a flash of image or two; Pennsylvania interstates like a tunnel of trees, glimpses of endless freshwater lakes near Cleveland & Chicago, Dawn over Iowa, Illinois flatness with farm silos sinking into the visible curve of the earth like masts of ships, crumbling buildings surrounding the Kansas City Royals stadium, depleated faces in Nebraska highway rest stops at 4am, sunlight splattering across the book cliffs near moab, utah, etc, etc, etc, the endless visual etc of America… What pictures & moments are in your hearts from your drives?

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Filed under: on the road

“What do you mean no training at Christmas!? While my opponents are eating turkey, I train twice as hard.”
-Daley Thompson, Olympic Champion Decathlon 1980 & 1984

I get no satisfaction out of looking at my five gold medals. My satisfaction comes from looking back at the hard work I put in and the sacrifices I made to get those five gold medals.
-Eric Heiden

The first quote makes me smile, I have missed the last 3 thanksgivings in a row because of skating (its one thing to say that, its another to be alone in a hotel in Calgary with a Wendy’s cheeseburger in your hand as 3,000 miles away, your family is eating dinner). As for the second quote, there is some essential truth in the idea that if you make your journey the reason you do something, then you are often a happier person. Enjoy skating & training, that is the reward!

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Filed under: from the coffee shop