Pandas, Joey, & Peaches
I have “every day is a gift” engraved on the inside of my wedding ring, and I truly believe that… The world is a beautiful place. It’s a great loss is to be so wrapped inside one’s own worries & furies that you blind yourself to what IS..
for example -here is the sky this morning.
I hate waking up, and do it badly. However, after the caffeine hits the bloodstream, early mornings have their charm. From a very young age on weekends my parents drove me to play hockey at dawn. Then I drove myself in pre-dawn hours to bike races for a decade. Now I am on the way to the Utah oval at sunrise, preparing for a whole winter’s worth of freakishly early morning racing.
This proves that the world has a sense of humor & irony. Another example is here: on the way to the oval I saw that the “Drunken Panda” of my earlier post had been out for some late night partying, and one of Salt Lake’s Finest had corralled his fuzzy ways…
At the oval, it was almost busy! The club ice time had a ton of people participating. This picture was taken at 8 in the morning. I was just starting my warm-up, and the club skaters were already an hour into their workout & drills! This is loving your skating!
As I was doing my own workout, who should I see step onto the ice for a few laps but JOEY CHEEK!! I honestly never thought I would see him again. He was there with a professional photographer, pretending these borrowed skates were his own.
When he was done, we chatted for a while, he is deferring going to Princeton for a year, as he has speaking gigs lined up through March! Fantastic!! His 15 minutes of fame has become a little bit longer, and it could not have happened to a nicer guy. Check out Joey’s journal from his recent trip to Zambia at Right to Play.
During the Olympi-gasm, it was fascinating to watch folks I know, like Joey, passed through the digestive tract of the mass-media. This grinding gut of video & print captured some of the people I know accurately, and did a disservice to others.
Joey has quadrupled his freckle-collection since I saw him last, and is truly at peace with the whirlwind of how his life has turned out. He knew he would retire from skating long before the Olympics, and he thinks this allowed him to relax, enjoy his final season more, and go faster.
Even though his skating days are over, he said “Its good to be back here, this is my community, the oval feels like home.” Joey, you are a member of the skate tribe for life!
On the way home, wearing a Joey-induced smile, I stopped at the Farmers Market, and wandered among the crowds, devouring free samples & buying produce. It’s “acceptable” for people in America to have all sorts of nasty stereotypes about Salt Lake City.
Maybe at times some are true: but I wish I could counterweight them with these images from the farmers market; Beatniks playing doo-wop on xylophones, young Latinas with tsunamis of ringlets selling corn, the lively-eyed NPR crowd buying salad greens from old farmers with tractor tire hands, a drum circle thumping away off in the distance, a grandmother fragile as a paper moth sharing jokes with a black man sporting waist length dreadlocks.
I wish I had a video camera embedded in my soul, and could replay it here. But all I have is my words, and my digital camera, and so I will share that, and an image of possibly the most perfect peach I have ever eaten. Or maybe in my exhaustion from 17+ hours of training this week, I was just perfectly ready for this peach…
As I was leaving, I passed two teenagers playing guitars with more spirit than skill, Their liberal-cause bumper sticker slathered open guitar cases brimming with tips. Paul McCartney’s lyrics rang across the crowded market isles.
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
You were only waiting for this moment to arise.
I am trying, I am trying… On skates and off…
Filed under: from home
Hey Andrew, I love this post and the pictures. The peach, the skating, the panda…. And it takes some guts to take a picture of the back of a police car from your car!
I also had a very delicious peach recently during hard week so like you said it could just be the training. I enjoied seeing all the people on the ice and wish the atmosphere was more like that throughout the season. When you’re at club ice the people don’t spend as much time with each other as you guys do in the F.A.S.T. program and I wish I could have that kind of connection with the people I skate with. I would also like to skate with someone more my speed. Joey is one of the most awesome people I know, next to me;). He has inspired me almost every season I have skated. Last year the coolest thing I remember is I would never feel like I would bother him if I had a question and I could go right up to him and ask him if he could look at my down start and tell me what he thinks. He is a man who gets it. I would compare him to David Beckham. He is becoming one of the most marketable skaters, like Beckham with soccer. He would spend time away from friends and family just to make sure he could help somebody. He always has time for fans and people have great respect for him. Oh and did I mention that he is one of the best skaters.
It was especially nuts to take a picture of that police car, as there was another one right beside me at the time (panda’s are dangerous, after all) and I had this huge smile on my face, the other car had a fuzzy parrot in it’s back window……
Good comparison Paul, Joey has suddenly jumped into a level of recognition that is outside of merely his sport, like David Beckham, and for other reasons than him just being insanely GOOD at his sport……
Again, the Joey that appears on TV, is the real Joey, and that is hard to pull off, but he is so genuine and well spoken, he does it well…
the writing has been HAPPENNING this month, and its just been a joy to write… thanks all for reading…
The reading has been HAPPENNING this month, and it’s been a joy to read thanks for all the writing.
Every day is truly a gift thanks Andrew for the reminder. For me every moment on skates is a bonus. Reading your posts reminds me why I love this city so much. I was in Idaho when I read your rainbow post you made me home sick for the one week I left Utah this year. Thanks man eat a peach for me!
Thank you Andrew for capturing a slice of life. I’m sitting here crying with the why those police cars have the stuffed animals and smiling at the sheer joy of a farmers market.
I agree with all the sentiments mentioned above! This post also put a smile on my face! I meant to post this previously - I expect that after our first indoor inline practice of the season coming up in a couple weeks, a number of our team will look like “drunken pandas” when we try to walk the next day after doing our first seasonal dryland workout.
On a semi-related note to this post, but definitely to a past post, it was pup up on a popular inline forum today that Joey had posted his own video footage from Indoor Inline Nationals on his website. It is awesome! Lots of great action footage, both of Joey’s brother and the pros, as well as some kids and the Masters relays. On a personal note, while Joey gives his open remarks to the video, I see my husband Kevin roll by in the background with his Veteran 2-mix partner. They were on record pace in that final and lost by a half a wheel at the line. Also, the person shown taking “a face dive” is a fellow teammate, close friend and one of my coaches….
Keep up the good work Andrew!
HI Andrew
This is how i remember the oval, you captured it.
Great reading.
How is Scott these days……..do you have any photos from his wedding?
See you all in a month.
Carolyn
That top photo is beautiful. Salt Lake police must have a sense of humor, w/all the stuffed animals in their cars.
I like farmers markets; they can be a lot of fun.
>Salt Lake police must have a sense of humor, w/all the stuffed animals in their cars.
Police and Firefighters normally have stuffed animals on hand in case the respond to an incident where children are involved…It is cool that they have them but the implications are saddening, which is why I cried when I first read the post.
Are you sure that’s a panda? ‘Cause it kinda resembles a penguin I saw outside Port O’ Call around 2 A.M., stumbling around, smacking itself upside the head and muttering something about selling its soul…
I hope the penguin mascot is not someone’s result of a cold sense of humor.