Anticip ......... pation

It's goofy, I know, feeling amped up about a run.  But it's a long run.  Very long.  I'm ratcheting up the marathon training, and tomorrow will be my first 20 mile run.  21, actually.  The marathon is the Whistlestop on October 11th (www.whistlestopmarathon.com), and it goes from just east of Iron River, Wisconsin, along a rail-bed-now-recreational-trail to Ashland on Lake Superior's Chequamegon Bay.  The trail is all crushed limestone, going through mostly forest and a little farmland, and in October it's beautiful - the leaves are changing, the air is cool and dry, the trail is isolated and the race small enough that there's a marvelous quiet to run in.

But tomorrow's run is strictly urban, though it will feel like country in some spots.  I'm running from Lake Minnetonka along the LRT southwest corridor (another converted rail bed) to the north end of Lake Calhoun, then south to Lake Harriet and east along Minnehaha Parkway to Minnehaha Falls.  There I'll meet up with our running club, the Minnehaha Marathoners, for our annual Lake to Falls pizza picnic.  It used to be that many club members ran from Minnetonka to the falls, but we're all getting older and things don't work as well as they used to.  For old time's sake, I thought I'd renew the tradition at least one more year.

I run alone and without music.  There are a few of us purists out there.  Not that one way is inherently any better than the other - I've run with music and loved it.  It's sort of like heroin, I suppose, or cable TV.  Once you start, you can't stop.  I'd just rather not be dependent on something with batteries that could run out and spoil my run, and I don't like to carry stuff with me, generally.  But mostly I like running without people and tunes because I like the connection with my body and the world around me.  I like hearing the loons when they call each other around the lakes.  I like hearing the cardinals and trying to find the spot of red in the trees.  I like the sound of the wind through the tall poplars along the trail.  In the winter, I like the crunch-squeak of my shoes on the snow.

So tomorrow is 21 miles, followed by pizza at the picnic and Cliff's cookies, and a rest of the day filled with well-earned lying around.  And a cocktail at cocktail hour, of course - strictly medicinal.

Our Porch

Nearly 10 years ago we bought our humble, antiquated abode.  There are some changes going on.  And it seems those changes will keep going on until hell freezes over.  But there are a couple things about this hovel - it may be 100 years old this year, but some of that old stuff is pretty good.

Like the porch.  The porch was an add-on or a revamp of a more primitive open porch.  Somebody had a lot of mosquito bites and put screens in, and now we find ourselves enjoying the setting sun and cocktails, just like our predecessors.  We found the house by sheer luck.  There was a FSBO (for sale by owner) sign in the front yard that Steve just happened to see.  The timing was awful - Nancy had just graduated and had a major education debt with promising career prospects, but we had no money in the bank.  Fortune or rash judgment smiled on us and we got the place for what now seems like a song.

Now that the economy is going to hell in a handbasket, we still think we made a good decision, because the porch rocks.  The addition on the back may eventually turn us homicidal, but as long as we're on the porch, we're like The Buddha.  At peace.

Sound and Fury

There's nothing like a good, old-fashioned midwest thunderstorm to rattle your eardrums like no woofer ever could. We, having never actually experienced a tornado, are of the school of idiots who run outside to see what's going on when the tornado sirens go off.

They went off last weekend while we were a couple hundred miles away in Rhinelander, and the forewarned tornadoes destroyed a a huge swath of the town of Hugo east of Minneapolis.  They went off again tonight, but the storms were contained and non-rotational.  (Every Minnesotan is an amateur meteorologist, in case you didn't know.)  Nonetheless, they dumped lots of dime-sized hail, which pelted the monkeys on our welcome mat, and when they continued to produce rain after the setting sun broke through the western clouds, they created a beauteous rainbow in the eastern sky.

MacPeas

It's been a ridiculously long time since our last update. The winter was so long and relentless that any creative spark was doused by the cold and snow. Mostly we curled up and napped, went to work when we had to, and ate a lot. Now the sun is warm enough that we're crawling out of the den, squinting into the light, and thinking it's time to get busy.

So we went out and bought a MacBook. This may not help us get off the couch, but at least Steve may find it a little easier to get online. We plan to tie a rope to our old PC and use it as an anchor when we go fishing in Rhinelander next weekend.

Surviving Minnesota

I think the key to surviving winter in Minnesota is getting out and rubbing your nose in it, just like a big old stinky dog, rolling around and revelling in it – rawrrrrrr! That said, I have not been good at being a big old stinky dog this winter. No, I’ve mostly stayed inside like some kind of fat, white Persian cat with big brown eye goobers and, as the weeks of eyeball-freezing cold have marched on like our own personal glacial age, I’ve just griped. Yowled. This is not good coping. The Catch-22 is that it’s so hard to get out the door when it’s like the south col of Everest in a storm, and yet getting out there is exactly what you need to do to stop being a miserable gripe-o-maton. Then, once you get in the middle of it, you see what a beautiful place winter can be.

Today it was 37. I went out for a little run around Calhoun. It was misty and white and lovely, the lake frozen and covered with snow, the snow soft and wet from the relative warmth. One of the beautiful things about Minnesota is that when it starts to get above freezing and there’s still a good snowpack, the snow evaporates and makes thick fog and hoarfrost on all the branches. It’s magical.

Miniburgers

In this age of supersized
Of overlarge with megafries
Your cheeks they bulge
With wads of food
With greasy chunks
Of meaty crude
You stop and cry
“This is enough!
“I can’t have more
I’m full, I’m stuffed!”
When comes as if
From heav’n above
The burger small!
It’s made of love!
The size of it
It’s manageable
Barely an ounce
It’s palatable
An order has
From three to five
Small burger bombs
Sometimes with fries
I’m glad I’ve lived
This long to see
A burger sized
Just right for me

The Dentist

He had the kindest, bluest eyes. As a child in the 60's, going to the dentist was a minefield. The best tooth protection we had was fluoridated water and Crest. I remember one time having five cavities. It would've been awful, except for Dr. Dale, my next-best-thing-to-having-your-dad-be-your-dentist, dentist. It somehow wasn't quite so bad with his sparkling, friendly, winter blue sky eyes there showing his care for my dental health, and somehow for my general happiness.

Dr. Dale was my dentist from the time I had teeth until he retired in 2005. I don't know how many people have the same dentist for 40 plus years, but I learned that with Dr. Dale, it wasn't that uncommon. It was a unique relationship, mine and my dentist's - someone who knew me almost my whole life, who I saw only once a year, and who caught up with me on the whole last 12 months in the time it took to examine my mouth. He always asked about mom and dad and my brother, and when I started to travel, he always asked where I'd gone that year. As a lover of travel himself, he had his own stories to tell during the time my mouth was gaped open as the exam was going on.

Yesterday I went to Dr. Dale's funeral. I sat in the pew and cried. The large church was almost full. There were a lot of healthy white teeth, artfully created bridges and crowns, and amalgam fillings: all the work of one of the nicest dentists in the whole wide world.