Destination: Los Angeles

So I will go to Los Angeles.

The beaches are behind me, I guess.

The aforementioned Thanksgiving weekend will involve sunshine, sand, saltwater, traffic, smog, earthquakes, taco trucks, live music, lots of pictures, some alcohol, valleys, canyons cornet  asphalt, palm trees, stereotypes, traffic, driving, running, hearing, smelling, tasting, thinking, lusting and writing.

I will find the taco stand where Q-Tip left his wallet. I will find the real "Seinfeld" apartment building. I will acquire a T-shirt that just says "The Beach." I will get judged for not being cool and detached enough. I will fall in love for a couple of minutes and ponder relocating. I will realize that I would miss the change of seasons and my pet sunflower too much. I will come home with a sunburned nose and blisters from walking barefoot on wet sand. I will be a tourist without apology, but I won't go to Universal, Disney or Hollywood. I will avoid sports. I will channel James Elroy and Mickey Spillane and Quentin Tarantino.

"Please don't leave me! I promise to return next August!"

Cabin fever

For better or worse, my parents instilled a bit of wanderlust in me. We always took trips every summer, and at least one of the end-of-year holidays we spent with extended family — Usually northern Indiana or Ohio, so no place really exotic. Once we headed to suburban DC for Thanksgiving, and that was my first time on a plane; to this day I consider air travel a treat, despite the airlines' best efforts to fuck it up.

Those summer trips often involved an International Harvester Travelall towing a small trailer, and sometimes I wonder how I still have regular contact with my sisters and how my parents didn't divorce or sell the three of us into slavery (not necessarily in that order). 

Ours was navy blue with the wood paneling
and my dad would never have tried to off-road like this chucklehead.

One summer we took about two weeks and drove to Idaho to see grandma, aunt, uncle and cousins. I was 3, so all I remember was losing my hat out the window of our car in the Badlands of South Dakota. Another summer we drove a loop around the South that included Disney World (pre-Epcot), Jekyll Island, Ga.; Smoky Mountain National Park, N.C./Tenn.; and Daytona Beach, Fla., my first time seeing the ocean (it rained that day. Piss on you, Mother Nature [juuuuust kidding]). The summer after that we made a loop around New England that included Penn State, Dartmouth, Harvard, Yale, Plymouth Rock, Acadia National Park and the National Baseball Hall of Fame (a colossal bore for my 13- and 17-year-old sisters, a massive thrill for your 9-year-old correspondent).

Long story short, by the time I got to high school I'd visited more states than most of my classmates could name. On some of those trips I was trusted with the Rand McNally Road Atlas, and thus the navigation, so I've always been a more-than-competent map reader. My 10th-grade geography teacher told my mom that I named the five boroughs of New York City before anyone else could figure out what a borough is ("Ah, the New York City Marathon goes through all five," my mom explained, my teacher nodding slowly).

About that same time, my parents got me two books that have done more for fostering my itinerant nature than any amount of childhood travel — John Steinbeck's "Travels with Charley," and William Least Heat-Moon's "Blue Highways." I guess when I first read these chronicles of long road trips I realized it's far more normal to want to see things, places, people and events than to grow roots and live in a state of inertia. OK, fine, one can also get paid for doing stuff like this, and that has weighed on my mind as well.

So it is with great disappointment that I chronicle the extent of my travels this year. I've left the city limits just 12 times for non-work reasons, and my work hasn't even taken me out of the state; not surprising given the Wyoming-centric nature of said occupation. Mostly I've had to catch up financially from a snafu a year ago today; I scheduled bills for the regular payday, forgetting that banks get Columbus Day off and that we'd get paid a day late without direct deposit. Long story short, the mistakes cost me hundreds in late/return/overdraft fees and I haven't had the capital necessary to skip town. That plus a new computer plus some medical issues equal Dave in debt and in house. And to be creative one needs frequent temporary changes of scene, be they familiar or otherwise.

March 29, The Toadies, Gothic Theater, Englewood, Colo.

Todd in the middle — just like old times.

On Thursday of this week, I heard about The Toadies touring again with sort-of the original lineup. I lamented my state of finances. On Friday, I bought a ticket anyway. On Saturday I skipped town after getting my writing done. On Sunday I woke up with my ears still ringing. Not as good as their show in Amarillo in April 2001 (after which I talked hockey with bassist Lisa Umbarger for 10 minutes and swooned the whole time), but it embodied the spirit of the spontaneous road trip I haven't indulged much during adulthood. Piss on responsibility.

April 14-20, Atlanta, family visit

Brasstown Bald, the highest point in Georgia, looking northeast. I think.

I take a week off every spring and head to Georgia to see my family, mostly because I don't want to do it in the summer, because hot weather makes me homicidal. I watched my niece destroy her regional track meet, watched my nephew come up short in his, watched older niece's younger sister groove with her school jazz band and hiked Brasstown Bald, Georgia's highest point. Adventure!

April 27, lunch with a friend, Evans, Colo.

It turns out my friend Linda lives with her family about an hour south of here. So I had dinner with her and her kids as well as a few drinks. It was nice to catch up and awesome to skip town, as always, even if I'd been there before.

June 6, Jon Butler Trio with Frank Turner, Red Rocks Amphitheater

Frank Turner opening up and raging against machines.

I saw Frank Turner at the Ogden Theatre in Denver last fall and he just blew me away. So much fun anger that I felt like a punk for the first time in my life. Anyway, when I learned he'd open for jammy up-and-comer Jon Butler at Red Rocks, I jumped on tickets. He played an acoustic set for about 45 minutes and hit some serious highlights before Butler came on — and the douchebags came out. I got spilled on and the gentry couldn't be bothered to ice their conversations when the main act was on stage. First time I've ever left a concert early because the lardass posse with pastel polo shirts, cargo shorts, flip flops, receding hairlines and a beer in each hand wouldn't shut the fuck up.

June 9, Jamie Cullum, Arvada Center

He left me hanging on high-fives, but I will forgive him. This time.

For the second time in my life I sat front-row, and the elfin British song stylist knocked my socks off. Part of it was the seats, true, but Jamie hit all the conceivable high points in his two-hour set. There was my life before this show, and my life since.

June 16, Mount Elbert

Fucking 'ell, I'm cold, hungry and sleepy.

My friend Sarah and her friend Rachel joined me for my assault on Colorado's highest point, and the second-highest point in the lower 48. I got no sleep, had very little for breakfast and commando-crawled the final 50 feet to the summit. Trust me, I'm holding on to my sign for dear life, and I think it ended up slipping away at 50 mph before we headed back down. Three high points down, 47 to go; five Colorado 14ers down, 49 or 51 to go (depending on your source).

July 6, poetry reading at Coal Creek Coffee, Laramie

My buddy Adrian Molina speaks truth via hip-hop, slam poetry and educational opportunities. He did a reading at my coffee place of choice just down the road, and uttered profundities at great speed. He's very gifted and I recommend hanging with him if you get the chance.

July 17, Happy Jack Recreation Area/Laramie; July 18, Denver International Airport

My sister Diana came to visit me for a few days before the rodeo. We ate steak and brick-oven pizza, toured the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens and got horribly lost while on a hike. We ended up walking through ankle-deep swamp just to get to a road. Then I drove her to the airport; while not a serious change of scene, I did leave the city limits.

July 31, Laramie with Jenny

I took my friend Jenny on a little date to Laramie, where we strolled around the UW campus and ate at Sweet Melissa's vegetarian restaurant before having foo-foo coffee drinks at Coal Creek downtown. Laramie is my favorite place in Wyoming, and I make it a point to take any visitors there because it's sort of the anti-Wyoming — open-minded, sophisticated, artsy, intellectual, maybe a wee bit pretentious in its backwoods way.

August 5, Cubs-Rockies at Coors Field, Denver

The thunderstorm in the background precluded seeing batting practice.

A Denver-based Cubs blogger named Matt Clapp (The Friendly Blogfines) hooked me up with a free ticket to Cubs-Rockies — aka Javier Baez's much-anticipated big-league debut — via Twitter. To that point 0-for-5 with three strikeouts, he went yard in the 12th inning to lift the Cubs to victory. I've never been this excited for unproven prospects.

August 31, Phish at Dick's Sporting Goods Park, Commerce City, Colo.

I already documented this little jaunt. I won't waste time. It ruled, though not as much as Jamie Cullum.

So with two days of vacation remaining to burn, I'm nearly at the dart-at-a-map stage, though I would dig someplace warm around Thanksgiving weekend. Money is no object because I can't place a price on my sanity. I have credit cards (and massive amounts of debt) for this very reason. Maybe I'll just lick a finger and put it to the wind on the morning of Black Friday. Who knows?

"When Black Friday comes/I'll collect everything I'm owed/Before my friends find out I'll be on the road..."

Annual Phish-ing Trip

Thanks to my mom and dad, I have a great, great appreciation for music. They met in the marching band at college, thus my sisters and I all played instruments (I played the trumpet from fifth grade through college). 

"Polishing the horn" is not a metaphor. 

That's the 19-year-old me, chillin' in Brewster Hall

 Room 706 at Syracuse.

My earliest memories of music involve my dad practicing various instruments (he played reeds, which you know what I mean if you dig jazz) and leading the local community band while my mom played organ in church. 

Not surprisingly, I don't always see eye-to-eye with my parents regarding matters of music, though my dad and I can talk Dave Brubeck, Stan Kenton, Miles Davis and Bill Evans all day. In particular, my dad bags on jam bands something fierce. "Their songs don't go anywhere, there's no complexity, it's boring" — those are his chief gripes. No, no, I say, if you have those beefs with bands like Widespread Panic, the Grateful Dead, Phish, Leftover Salmon, then you have to say the same things about John Coltrane and Miles Davis; you know they only used a couple of chords in each song on "Kind of Blue" or "Love Supreme."

A guitar player like Trey Anastasio tries to examine every single possibility of a chord; thus he takes 10- and 15-minute solos. A lot can happen in that time. He can take a crowd from strolling over to the beer stand to bouncing up and down with joy. And his vocabulary spans seemingly multiple languages let alone hundreds of thousands of words in one language. A jam-band player has to go around the world with each chord before moving on, unlike how most humans stay in one place without exploring every nook and cranny of the places we truly love. Trey knows how to play — and live.

Don't forget the repertoire — these bands play multiple shows in the same venue and won't repeat a single song over the course of nine-plus hours of performing. How many bands in the rock genre could do that? How many of them just set a playlist for a tour and do it over and over again? (Excuse me, how many of their handlers/A&R reps/record company marketers/tone-deaf suit-wearing wannabes thusly set the playlists to drive record sales while boring the paying customers to tears?)

For the second consecutive year I ventured to a nondescript soccer stadium in suburban Denver on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend for Phish's annual unofficial end-of-summer throwdown. Last year it was my 40th birthday present to myself and I loved every minute of it. When I got the email touting the 2014 shows I made the easy decision to get the ticket.

In the five months since I bought the ticket:

• Was threatened with foreclosure (thanks to a payroll issue with my employer last October) before I got my mortgage up to date again;

• Repeatedly spent every paycheck within hours of the money hitting my account, leaving me on $0 for 14 straight days with whatever groceries I managed to buy;

• Hiked two state high points and one more 14er, the peak (pun intended) of my physical accomplishments for a second straight lost year on the road to lava;

• Acquired a significant other on terms I agreed with before she changed the terms and lit me up for my lack of communication (As if you needed me to clarify, it's over);

• Told several wonderful stories in our pages to great critical acclaim before spending two of the three months of summer back on the desk and NOT writing while we searched for a new copy editor;

• Grew the greatest beard of my life in honor of the previous development;

Just came down from the mountain.

What'd I miss?

• Oddly, I bought my Phish ticket around the time of my last haircut, too. Had to match the beard.

So I was ready for a little trip and some live music, and to take another run at my goals from the previous year while escaping reality

With jam bands you have to consider the "scene." By the time Phish arrives in Denver, they've assembled a mini-city of the faithful who have followed them across the country and seen and heard everything. Notwithstanding the pavement, the parking lot resembles a Woodstock and the practice soccer fields have become lounges. I park in a neighborhood nearby in part to not pay the $15 for parking, but also to take a stroll around the grounds and take in the scene. By the end of this lost summer I was so broke and pissed off I must have given a pretty anti-social vibe because no one said hi or offered a beer or toke. Or maybe this was the show that attracted all the assholes. I'd say it's the former.

I had a beer in my little bag that contained some food, my journal and my camera. I sat on a berm overlooking the practice soccer fields and drank it while the faithful filed toward the stadium. Did I mention I got there about an hour and a half before the gates opened? No? Well, good. I like to get there early to stake out a good spot close to the stage, usually on "Page Side/Rage Side" — the crowd's left, in front of keyboardist Page McConnell. He plays five different keyboards, sometimes within the same song, a true artist. Page Side is the place to be.

All this said, I'm not about the scene. I want to hear music, and if it involves some patchouli oil and recreational narcotics, so much the better. But I'm there for the tunes. I got in about seven minutes after the gates opened and I waited with everyone else. The false floor over the soccer surface was stickier than what I remembered but I sat down anyway; I won't stand for two hours on top of the running show time. I chatted with the free-spirited girl next to me, enjoyed the Talking Heads as warmup music, attempted to write in the journal and eyed suspiciously the dark skies to the northwest of the stadium.

Phish came out promptly at 8 p.m. and played a two-song opener that took 15 minutes. They made a few abrupt switches rather than the flowing, fluid jams we've come to expect, but they kept it upbeat and rocking. 

Then they rolled into a series of ballads that sent the faithful scrambling for the johns and beer stands. At this point I actually looked at my watch. If I do that or start jacking with my phone, I know the show's getting away from the band. Believe me, I know Phish came out with a setlist in mind, but I doubt they anticipated the crowd would check out during a batch of four or five slow numbers. I felt like they were losing the crowd.

They trotted out a staple called "Funky Bitch." That's all it took for the crowd to get back into it, to rejoin them in the unofficial end of summer celebration. They played two more after that before a 30-minute break. I stopped looking at my watch or my phone and just basked in how a band seemed to know the show was going downhill and saved it. Say that for jam bands — they have a connection with their fans that few other musical artists do, enough to know when the crowd's losing interest.

Before the second set a chill set in over the stadium. Nothing huge, like a front rolling through, but the universe gently reminding us that summer had a shelf life. Then Phish came out with a funky, groovy second set that gave me neck pain from constantly nodding my head to their driving beat. Even during their grooviest parts a lighting effect superimposed points of white light on a moving black screen — like snow. I felt a chill again and moved a little more. 

The ending of Lee Dorsey's "Sneakin' Sally Through The Alley" and "Weekapaug Groove" followed by the encore of the Rolling Stones' "Loving Cup" and Phish's own "Tweezer Reprise" just destroyed everything that came before it, a fitting climax to the summer, leaving everyone wanting more. Phish ended it perfectly, and when the house lights came on, someone near me fired up their phone and it said "12:00 a.m." Those guys played for three and a half hours. What an early birthday gift.

The house music as I walked toward the exit was "Lush Life," Billy Strayhorn's sad ballad performed by John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman. When it ended I hustled up the stairs and out of the stadium in time to hear an RV blasting Stevie Wonder's "I Wish." Between the appropriate non-Phish tracks afterward and my inability to get my phone to work during the show, the universe wanted me to focus on the music. It wanted me to leave all the bullshit bullets above behind and just lose myself in music and happy smog before heading back to reality. I can see this becoming an annual pilgrimage, and who am I to defy the universe — and my true nature as a music-liver? (Yes, I live in music, I don't merely love it. The verbiage is intentional)

http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/phish/2014/dicks-sporting-goods-park-commerce-city-co-1bce652c.html

XL

That really is Phish and I do really suck as a photog.

The plan was to mark my 40th birthday a day in advance with Phish at Dick's Sporting Goods Park. Further, the plan involved:

1. Destroying my hearing with loud rock 'n' roll music;

2. Engaging in physical activity bearing mere passing resemblance to what humans consider "dancing";

3. Ingesting no small quantity of recreational narcotics;

4. Making questionable decisions regarding free-spirited, tie-dyed hippie women.

Three out of four ain't bad.

***

I felt every bit of 40 a few weeks back with an immobile upper body and a potential new, sedentary reality involving constant pain setting in. Obviously, that wasn't the case but in those days before I went to the osteopath and the PT I feared the worst. So I guess my birthday present to myself (other than the Phish show and its resulting effects) was the appointment with the OD and subsequent referral to PT. Peace of mind is the gift that keeps giving, especially if it saves you from a life you don't want and allows you to keep doing what you love.

Otherwise, no. I don't notice any change from 39.

***

Most people get philosophical or indifferent about birthdays later on in life, as the burned-out, frosting-caked candles mount. I got an early start. School started on my birthday at least twice growing up, and I didn't care much for school, especially after I figured out around age 14 what I wanted to do in life.

Then I joined the Fourth Estate. Sept. 2 is nothing but another paper to get off the floor by deadline. One year I asked for the day off (a Thursday) months in advance only to be denied to accompany my boss to cover a college football game — while a similarly responsible co-worker got that night off. The Quad-City Times' parent company gives the birthday as a paid holiday, but doesn't give time-and-a-half for working it. And because my birthday falls during football/other fall sports, and because company policy required the day to be made up within a month of the actual day — and did I mention I was born during football season in the first place? — my birthday is a colossal pain in the ass.

Ironically, I come from a family that makes a big deal out of birthdays and holidays. That has its positives (cards and an occasional present) and negatives (lots of butt-hurt when such things go unacknowledged). Dec. 25 is no different than Sept. 2, which is no different than June 6 or Nov. 18 — I have a job to do. Not my fault people want their paper on Dec. 26, Sept. 3, June 7 or Nov. 19.

All the more reason to let it pass unacknowledged.

In the Shop

For the first time in 10 years, I saw a doctor. I went to the Orthopedic and Spine Center of the Rockies on the recommendation of a couple of active people and saw Dr. Anderson, an osteopathic physician, my first time seeing someone other than an M.D.

To catch you up, I've become a bit cynical about the medical profession. It seems most doctors are hell-bent on moving pharmaceuticals and dealing with the symptoms rather than the disease. As I evaluated my situation and the various courses of action, I decided I would not submit to a regimen of medication. O.D.s figure out what's wrong with the body and how to fix it rather than defaulting to medication like so many physicians.

Also, what will an M.D. tell an active person? "Stop the activity AND take two of these every 12 hours." Not acceptable. Years ago, my friend Kim told me her philosophy regarding medicine is thus: "I do stuff. Your job is to help me get back to doing stuff." Couldn't have said it better myself. I was told the aforementioned course is standard among physicians in Cheyenne, and, point blank, that I would have to drive to Colorado to find a medical professional on board with what I want to accomplish. So when I saw an osteopath working at a sports medicine clinic, I was on board.

After meeting with his assistant, I had some x-rays taken of my neck. They appeared on a  computer screen in the examination room, a massive technological step from the last time I saw a doctor. I had about 20 minutes to check them out and make some observations (I'm not a doctor myself, by the way). Based on the view from behind, I saw a very unsettling curvature in my cervical spine and I planned to ask the doc about that. The view from the side showed me nothing.

When the doc came in we chatted a bit about my problems, and then he checked mobility through my shoulders, arms, neck and spine. He noted some tightness at the base of the cervical spine (nothing new there), and then got into the x-rays. I made my observation, which he explained away by noting that the camera could have been off to the side somehow. Fair enough. He pointed at the side view, noting that my cervical spine was perfectly straight — it should be curved, but with the muscles in spasm to keep my head up, the spine sat rigid rather than a relaxed curve. Huh.

So he prescribed a couple bouts of physical therapy at Smart Sports (buggy and poorly edited website, but I had to do something for the lack of pics; consider yourself warned) in Cheyenne, and actually got after me a bit for my self-imposed exile from the land of the active. "You should've kept at it," he said. "You need to maintain a routine and keep those muscles engaged." Um, doc, I thought, let me tell you about the last time I ran. Reckon you'll understand why I sat out.

With the diagnosis of a compressed cervical vertebrae and resulting muscle spasms (hell, I coulda told you the latter), as well as the aforementioned bouts of PT, scheduled for the end of the week. I went home relieved beyond the telling, and actually went running the next — 17 minutes, 30 seconds plodding through my neighborhood. Not even my first marathon or any PR was as symbolic as the sweaty and breathy jog around my sketchy 'hood. I even went out the next day and the day after that.

Friday that week I rode my bike to PT. The therapist asked me a shitload of questions, which I suppose I answered well, did some mobility tests but sent me forth with no exercises to do, which I found a little puzzling. Like the doc, she ordered (!!!) me to get back to work. "I want you to come back next week," she said. "But in the meantime I want you to exercise as normal."

Well, who am I to ignore medical professionals?

Not normal

For three weeks I did nothing. 

OK, that's not entirely true. I cleaned about 90 percent of my house, getting down on my hands and knees to scrub spots on my kitchen floor or dust off the crown molding in my living room, getting up on a stool to clean nearly two years of dust off the ceiling fans, moving furniture around to vacuum, discovering cat hair seven months after Lucy left this mortal coil. I'd call that something.

I wrote places other than here, filling an old college notebook while revisiting my 2011 job search that landed me back where I belong (mom said I should keep a job search journal, but she never said when precisely to write in it). I wrote in another notebook, musing on my failures at love and pondering in my training journal what was next physically after figuring out what was wrong with me physically.

I didn't shower very much because I had no reason to, not when I felt paralyzed by my own body. In three weeks I showered maybe three times (and can document each one); my co-workers never complained, not to my face anyway. I didn't shave, either, but that's not news because I constantly work on about two weeks' worth of scruff.

I read a few issues of five years of Sports Illustrated and three years of Esquire magazines, but back issues of Inside Triathlon and Lava remain unread; in my state I couldn't bear to read about those pursuits on hold.

I ate like shit, when I bothered to eat. After checking out the Monsanto shit list I decided to make some changes, though I'll finish off the GMO-laden crap I already bought. The changes went out the window that day in July. Breakfast was no more than one bowl of cereal and a couple swigs of apple juice to wash down my multivitamin and my ecinacea. A Starbuck's foo-foo drink often constituted lunch or dinner, and when it didn't I ate the minimum. What was the point, I figured, when I wasn't burning calories anyway?

One night, in a span of three hours I talked myself into and out of climbing Mount Evans. I decided I would make the hike, started assembling the minuscule supplies required for one of the easiest of Colorado's 14ers, but then assessed my mental state and figured I'd fuck it up somehow, ending up a cautionary tale meriting a brief in the print media and 20 seconds on the evening news.

Just for the record, I decided on my own to take time off. Fresh in my mind, that feeling of an ice pick jabbing my back kept me from running, my travails with the bike — which include a wreck — kept me away from my two-wheeled implement (though I did my share of around-town work on my mountain bike, which affords a relatively comfortable upright position), and the prospect of rotating and lifting my head kept me out of the water. So mere fear kept me away from those things I loved.

Now I have an idea of what junkies on the nod feel like, walls closing in, heightened senses,  muscles twitching involuntarily. It was some of the worst sleep I've ever had, and I can't remember a single dream in that time. I laid my head on the pillow, feeling some electric jolts through the jumbled and frayed nerves in my neck, and woke up to some of the same sensations. I felt like my heart and lungs had been amputated. I never cried and I never thought about hurting myself, but I found myself with even less patience than normal and in the kind of funk that scares the crap out of a truly mindful person. 

The few things I did remotely construed as social meant nothing. I was a zombie, sitting there on the patio at the brewery and trying to crack wise with my friends. I didn't talk to my parents for about three weeks, and I normally call once a week. I didn't really go out, except to fill one of my two beer growlers. Twice I drank 64 ounces of beer in one sitting (good microbrew, lest you think I go for the cheap stuff in times of trouble. I just didn't feel like talking to anyone. I felt as vacant inside as I-80 across Nebraska. Yet I just had to deal with this on my own, without my normal coping mechanisms and with a lot of thoughts swirling around in the vast recesses of my mind.

The light at the end of the tunnel was the green scrawl on my refrigerator greaseboard: a doctor's appointment at 11:30 a.m. Monday, August 19. 

Under construction

Appropriately enough, orange cones, barrels and temporary traffic signs surround my city. As I turn the corner from Third Street on to Parsley Boulevard, orange and white fencing blocks the bridge over I-80. Turns out a truck hit the bridge at speed in April, prompting the appearance of cones and barrels the past four months. Now a crane towers over the bridge; I assume WYDOT wants to finish it before snow flies next month.

I take a different way, then, to get west of town; Parsley Boulevard to College Drive to Southwest Drive spares me Lincolnway, the main east-west drag through town, and without that option I now have to go north out of my subdivision with a left on Lincolnway. Most of the time that route occurs without incident, though I know the punk in the dually next to me would love to flatten me. Once I get under I-80 and I-25 on Lincolnway, it becomes Otto Road, a nice out-and-back that terminates under I-80 again. But now the road is covered with gravel; it was chip-sealed a couple of weeks ago and gravel does not hold up 7/8-inch-wide tires cranked to 115 psi.

That leaves east of town, the perils of which I documented here, and north of town, which is all right when traveling perpendicular to the wind. Otherwise, another nearby road under construction hems in my little neighborhood as well, making south of town nearly impossible (packed with traffic past the Safeway plaza).

So it seems as good a time as any to pull the plug on my season. Come on, right? A little construction shouldn't stop a determined enough athlete. No, not until the athlete is under construction.



For the fourth consecutive year I had to bail on my final race of the season. Last year I strained the soleus muscle in my left calf one week after finishing Ironman Lake Placid. In 2011 a job change and general malaise forced me out of the Harvest Moon Half-Ironman. In 2010, I got sick four days before that same race, sick enough that a Half-Ironman in my weakened condition would have led to some bad shit down the road.

This time, I thought I had things turned around through July. I had solid if unspectacular workouts that would have gotten me to the start line unscathed and fairly psyched. On Friday, July 26, I did a short run followed by a 1h15 ride, during which I noticed a little pain in my neck. For months since my bike wreck I figured a couple bolts got loosened and something got out of adjustment, which affects the fit of my bike by even a minuscule amount. No problem, I thought, I can get through the Boulder Half-Ironman on this fit, then I won't ride my bike the rest of the year. On Saturday, July 27, I woke up and headed out for a 1-hour run. I lasted three minutes before a point just right of my left shoulder blade tightened up, feeling like a stab from an ice pick every stride. Within hours, the pain in that spot radiated across my entire upper back, and within hours after that immobilized my neck as well. I dealt with this through the end of Saturday and all of Sunday before the pain subsided a bit early on in the week, but not enough to allow me to race. I figured the worst thing I could do would involve folding myself into a praying mantis position for three hours followed by two hours (or more) of ground-pounding on an unshaded course.

I've spent much of the past couple of weeks in consultation and research for the next step. It's clear I've done little enough maintenance on my body over nearly 40 years that it's time to prepare for the next 40 years. Do I want to spend that time in traction or in action? I've chosen the latter, because I hear what others my age complain about — my back, my sciatica, my this, my that — and I don't want that quality of life. So I'm surrounded by cones and barrels. I have an appointment with an osteopath in a week-and-a-half, partially to pinpoint (ouch) the root of my neck spasms but mostly to establish some kind of routine maintenance for my body as I continue to challenge it to do more and be better.

The sign above describes the next several months. Once I get myself to where I can get out on the roads again (that's a "when," not an "if," I don't care how many medical professionals I have to see), it'll be time to get to work. For now it's a different kind of work, this business of saving my career as an athlete. It's also a matter of saving my sanity; I haven't done anything in nine days, and while I've taken time off before this limbo is particularly maddening. I don't know precisely what's wrong with me, so I have to abstain to save any further damage. And I will take as much time off as I need for the short term to preserve my chances in the long term.

Physically, it sometimes hurts when I train. Mentally and spiritually, it ALWAYS hurts when I don't train. Right now I can't do anything but stew over stuff I need to really think through — stuff I think about on the roads.

All of which are now under construction.

"Runners run. It's how we deal with stress. It's where we talk with God. Whenever something goes wrong, runners run."

Chris Jons, former University of Wyoming runner.