jumpingfish

It had taken months to arrange. In May they started talking. We should have lunch, they said. But time after time, their schedules didn’t mesh. So May gave way to June. And June gave way to summer. And then summer ended and fall arrived and still they had not had lunch.

How about breakfast, one of them suggested. And like that, they found a day. Amazing how empty calendars are at 7:00 in the morning.

When I drove up, Gregg was standing inside the restaurant studying the menu beside a case of pastries, their presence seemingly having no effect on him. Steve was waiting outside on the patio in the early morning darkness and held out a hand as I walked up from the parking lot.

We took trays and gazed at quiches and gallettes. Gregg ordered an omelette. I ordered a standard egg and bacon breakfast. Steve got a quiche. And we found a table in the middle of the place.

As we sat there, the sun rose. Golden light slanted in thru the eastern windows and lit our faces. A shadow of Steve’s head nodded on the far wall platonically echoing every word he said. We talked about work. We talked about not work. Steve and I held giant cups of coffee in our hands.

And when our time was up, when it was time for us to go to work, we said to each other, We need to do this again. And we committed to not taking so long to make it happen.

There was a time not so long ago when the rain that we’ve had this year would have seemed on the dry side. A time when we would have considered the half-inches here and there and a couple two-inch rains and last night’s six-inch downpour as lacking in the aggregate. But we’re in the midst of a severe, multi-year drought. So those rainier times are a forgotten memory, and this year seem like a luxury.

Six inches last night. The creeks surged. The water catchment basins filled. Some low lying areas flooded. For a time, they opened two gates on Tom Miller dam. 

There was standing water in the backyard. There was water pouring over the edges of our full (and clogged) gutters. There was water lapping at the garage door, at one point advancing in about a foot or so, only to retreat as the deluge abated.

Six inches of rain! Can you imagine?

The Apple trees must be happy, standing as they do at the margins of the low area in the back where the water stood.

And now listen at the window. There’s more. Not only that six inches last night, but now in the dark of night, a slow, luxurious drizzle.

The Apple trees aren’t the only happy ones.

The flowers are blooming outside. The Fall Asters, the Cowpen Daisies, the Widow’s Tears, the Golden Eye, the Zexmenia, the Verbena, the Salvias of many sorts. The the sky is blue and the sun is shining and the shadow of the Oaks is dancing on the ground.

I’m hearing voices. Yes, I’m hearing Al Green.

I’m… I’m so in love with you
Whatever you want to do
Is all right with me…
‘Cause you… make me feel so brand new…
And I… want to spend my life with you…

Do you hear him?

The marching band was practicing as we ran by. The director was running them thru their routine over and over again, sometimes just playing the music, sometimes playing while marching.

On the other side of the high school, a team from Austin Fit was jogging around the track and doing core exercises on the far turn. When they saw us congregate, they moved their jogging to the outer lanes.

“Today we do 3200m time trials!” Jen told us with a gleam in her eye. “Run the first 1600 meters just below comfortably hard,” she said. “Then run the next 800 just beyond comfortably hard.” And that brought us to the last two laps. “And do that last 800 meters uncomfortably hard, and finish stooping over trying to catch your breath.” 

Ok, I’m dubious. I’m not good at pushing beyond comfort. Still, this will probably be good for me, I’m thinking, trying unsuccessfully to convince myself. I have a hard time imagining that the end of 3200 meters will ever arrive. I’m picturing some kind of singularity, and I’m starting to psych myself out.

“On those last two laps, you’ll be hurting, but you can tell yourself, I can do anything for 800 meters.”

Um… no. I can pretty much guarantee that on the last two laps I won’t be telling myself that. But there’s no time to wallow in this kind of thinking, because in moments we’re all standing at the starting line. Go!

So we run. We run hard.

That fact that Greg passes me twice and the Level 2 runners also lap me doesn’t diminish from how hard I run. I’m not stooped over, but it takes a walk down and up the straightaway before rational though returns. And amazingly enough … here we are on the other side of that singularity.

As we jog back, my brain falls into some kind of reverie, some kind of la-la-land that I don’t come out of until after I pull into the driveway and clamber thru the front door and drop my stuff at the foot of our bed.

And now I lie here in the pitch black of past-midnight four hours later. The reverie is gone, but sleep won’t come. 

Is this what Tuesday nights are going to be like?

After the week’s long run which frankly was not that long.

Sitting on the floor. On a pad. Sweating. Stretching. Rolling out a sore rectus femoris. Other Rogue runners all around sitting and sweating and stretching and rolling and talking.

They’re all talking. I’m not. I’m in this post-run euphoric zone, happy to just sit and sweat and stretch and roll.

Somewhere to my right two guys are chatting about their training. One is on the floor; the other is standing. They haven’t seen each other in a while, and they’re talking about what’s been going on.

“I had a great run today,” one of them says. “I haven’t run 20 for at least four months.”

I remember a time long ago when 20 was a great run. When seven seemed like a day off. When my body was a machine, albeit a middle-pack machine. I remember that, but that’s not me now. Back of the pack Joe, I am. And quite content to be there.

Because silently sitting on a pad, sweating and stretching and rolling out sore quads is entirely sufficient.