I think I post to this blog maybe 2x/year. So they'd better be memorable posts :) Well this one is going to be good, or at least memorable. it's January 2017 and in this alternate reality Donald Trump won the general election. Holy fuck. No, really, holy fuck. His first week in office he signed executive orders to:
- Ban Muslims from all Muslim majority countries he doesn't do business with
- Build the south border wall and get Mexico to pay for it
- Start dismantling Obamacare and uninsure up to 20 million people
- Structure the National Security Council so that his Neo Nazi strategic advisor gets to sit on it, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff do not.
This is heavy, pre-apocalyptic, post democratic shit, and so tonight, instead of happily coding my 'spray GPS Data into Google' side project, or planning out my week like I do when I'm on my 'uber work achiever' game, I'm writing stuff down so I hopefully wont wake up at 2AM in a silent scream like I have for the past week wondering when shit is really going to go sideways, or if it already has and 5 years from now I'll be living in a cave, reminiscing about how it went sideways and I had no clue and didn't even appreciate the fact that we had internet and central heating and I was such a fucking punk.
There is only really so much one person can do -- and before you get all judgmental, let me just say that I went to my first protest, unless you count the one where I was walking around in a daze the day after the election and just happened to get swept into a protest march on the way to the bus stop. I really enjoyed it, and have decided I'm all about peaceful protesting. I was even overcome with emotion in the middle of it when I started to think about my parents and how they came here with $9 between them and built an amazing life. I'm planning on making a regular thing out of protests, apparently there will be plenty of reasons to keep protesting. One nice thing to come out of all of this is that I'm pretty sure the next generation is going to be very involved in keeping America a Democracy, assuming we get it back to being one.
Right now the situation is completely sideways pear shaped and when it's like that I sometimes just need to get the hell away from other people and sort my shit out. Really, it's my shit, I'm the one having the bad reaction to an authoritarian regime, and I've got to sort out what to do next, and I cant do that glued to facebook watching the fellow members of my bubble have a collective meltdown.
I decided to get up to the mountain and go skate skiing. This wasn't a monumental decision - I mean I had done it a couple of weeks back, between Leela's soccer tournament weekends. But last time I went up it was purely for physical fitness. This time it was purely for mental fitness.
The Mt Catherine Loop is easy. If you have a VO2 Max above 60 and the legs and back of a Norwegian ski champion. I'm clocking in at between 45 and 50 on a good day in the middle of summer, and have weak legs, a gimpy back, and a belly I can't seem to lose. So the Mt Catherine Loop is a fucking crucible to me. Today I decided to tackle the hard part, the grind up to the pass, and then head back home. The last time I did the pass it was about 5 degrees above zero and everything was numb. Sweat froze on my eyelashes and I got slightly hypothermic on the long downhill home.
So it was a mix of dread both real and imagined that I rolled my ass out of bed and started pulling my stuff together. I had just gone out paddling for the first time in long time the day before, and my back, lats, and hips -- all very much needed for skate skiing -- were achy in a way that Advil couldn't help. Fuck this getting old shit. I used to be able to go for weeks and now I can't even string 2 days together.
I find that for the most part 'going through the motions' is about 80% of success for efforts like this. So I did that, even though I fell into reading about Donald Fucktron Trump and ended up rolling out about an hour later than planned in a foul mood.
The start of the loop is a straight uphill slog to the trail, right under the chair of the main ski area. The snow had melt-thawed into a series of jumbled mini slabs that made gliding a distant fantasy. I lurched my way up the hill under the watchful and confused eyes of skiers and boarders, then caught my breath a bit before starting the prelude to the climb.
The first section of the climb is actually a descent, where the biggest hurdle is navigating the throngs of snowshoers who don't really understand the concept of staying to the side of the trail. I usually alternate weaving through them with v2 practice, which is usually pretty shaky because of the suspect snow quality (those snowshoers know how to churn up a nicely groomed track).
The second section does go uphill, but gently, in a way that builds false confidence. I usually drop into a rhythm, alternating sides in v1 and even picking it back up to v2 when I get up enough speed.
That all ends in a hairpin turn that has me picking up the cadence a bit to negotiate the corner. Then it's solid left v1 to the next hairpin. I suck at left v1. I have no idea why. It feels like I'm falling off of a step every time I plant and step on my left side. I can sense squirrels and rabbits laughing at my pathetic left v1. It especially sucks when real skaters pass me, doing beautiful left v1 that looks like they're dancing the tango. I mean it looks that good. Fortunately these people are always nice, and always encouraging, even if it's actually very discouraging to get passed at speed by a guy that is flying uphill and not even breathing hard and can, in fact, toss out an encouraging sentence or two while I can only grunt-wheeze in response. Must be one of those 60+ VO2 Max guys on an easy day.
The next hairpin is the last, and that's not a good thing, because past that hairpin is where the shit gets real. From there it's about 2.5 miles of straight up grind. I can't do this without stopping. Lots. This time, in between stops, I remembered my favorite part of Captain America, before the Cap gets turned into himself and he's a puny little geek and getting the snot knocked out of him by some jackass behind a movie theater. Cap takes a solid punch to the face, flies back about 5 feet, then gets up and says "I could do this all day".
Thats what I think when I'm in endurance pain. I think "I could do this all day" and the pain doesn't go away, it just gets a little easier to deal with. I thought "I could do this all day" a lot today. I also just focused on stepping and committing to each stride, and really pushing with my legs and not my triceps. And I lost myself in all of that focus.
I also lost a lot of the anxiety I've been carrying around all week. The thing about the mountains (and the waves, and the lake) is that they're just there. They don't have an opinion, they don't 'like' anything, they aren't pissed off about the latest fucked up bullshit. They just take it all in and go...."Whatever". After getting all that angst translated into upward motion worked out on the way up to the pass, I got to the top and I looked at Mt Catherine, and she looked back at me just like she always has for the past 10 years and I knew that even if I am living out of a cave next year and missing central heating and the internet because, you now, Apocalypse/End of Days, that basically life goes on until it doesn't. I also realized for the 90th time that the mountain is going to outlive me, like she should.
My dad used to say stuff like this all of the time and I'd look at him and think "that's really stupid" and maybe it is. But I find it comforting that I can go outside and let go of lot of baggage and basically get right-sized.
So I'm feeling better. Not physically. Physically I feel like someone took a bat to my quads and back and lats. But mentally, I just wrung all that crap out of my head.
