A couple days back, I spied the cover of the latest Nob Hill Gazette on my neighbor’s walkway.  I couldn’t resist.  Out came the iPhone and the silent shutter setting. 

Apologies to the Gazette.  And to the artist behind the cover. But like I said, I couldn’t resist. 

I don’t know that “I couldn’t resist” is a viable legal defense to copyright infringement.  Interestingly enough, I could avoid imprisonment or the death penalty by successfully claiming that “I couldn’t resist,” say, killing my Nob Hill Gazette-subscribing neighbor.  I’m sure I could gin up some imagined wrong having to do with the neighbor’s nap nap dog constantly peeing on my front hedges.  And killing my hedges; a slow death from urine poisoning.  No such luck, though, using the same defense with respect to misusing the intellectual property of my neighbor’s Nob Hill Gazette.  Intellectually, this just seems wrong.  If I catch the nap nap dog lifting his little leg on my Box Leaf Privet, perhaps I will have a chance to resolve this particular harmonic dissonance.  

But I digress.

What I really wanted to write about is this:  The cartoonish depiction of an open water swim from Alcatraz is hurting my cause.  Or rather, my childrens’ school’s cause.  A school friend of ours is helping our school run its annual online auction, the proceeds of which help subsidize the indexed tuition program.  She conjured up the interesting idea of having a swim buddy (who is also a school mom) and I “host” a San Francisco Bay swim later this year, when the water is warmer and the days are longer.  What a creative idea for an auction item, I thought.  As I’ve written before, again, and once more, I love swimming in the Bay.  How could anyone not?!?

How could anyone not, indeed.  

One only need look at the Nob Hill Gazette cover to compile the reasons to not want to swim in the Bay.  Let’s see, there’s “The Rock” itself, ominous, foreboding, and those brothers who escaped, their bodies were never recovered, right?  Don’t particularly want to bump into the bloated Anglin brothers out there.  Then there’s the food chain concern.  The Gazette artist graciously includes only a small hint of what’s under there, with a harmless little sea lion popping up amidst the waves.  Well, I probably shouldn’t write this, since I am a fan of indexed tuition, however:  One, the sea lions are not always so friendly.  And two, the sea lions, it turns out, could be the least of a swimmer’s concerns out there.  So we’ve got that working for us.  

What else?  Well, how about nuclear-infused water?  Radiation from across the Pacific in Fukushima to our shores?  Yep, we got that too!  Well, maybe we do and maybe we don’t.  There seems to be some disagreement in the scientific community.  On the plus side, I suspect that the toxic radiation would serve to warm up the Bay’s waters a tad, normally a bit on the chilly side.  On some mornings when my pale, white, big toes require a couple hours to defrost after a swim, a little radiation seems appealing.

So in summary, it’s simply not as bad as it seems.  Who’s really afraid of territorial pinnapeds, near-sighted 20-foot sharks, and gene-bending chemicals?  After all, it’s for the kids! 

So if you are an MCDS parent (or have stolen the identity of one, I’m not going to split hairs on this), when the online auction goes “live” on April 2, click here, and bid early and often!  I hope we’re able to pack more swimmers into Aquatic Park than the ones drawn on the Gazette cover. 

On the other hand, if I receive a phone call from MCDS’ head of school about the wisdom of this morning’s blog post, I have a plan for that too:  I couldn’t resist.

Thanks for reading.

I got it bad.

This morning within 5 seconds of opening my eyes, I’d reached for my iPhone on the bedside table. The reach with my right arm can be beyond the normal range of motion that my shoulder can accommodate. It would be embarrassing to turn up at the ER with a shoulder out of socket due to reaching for my phone in bed. Still, a risk worth taking. And today turned out not to be the day I would visit the hospital.

So within 10 seconds of waking up, I’m tapping and scrolling through the various apps on my iPhone. Weather Bug to assess whether my 12 year old’s Little League game will be rained out this afternoon. Facebook to see which of my fabulous aunts read my blog post yesterday, and to see how Outside Magazine is making me feel puny today by not free soloing El Cap or not killing a moose in the wilderness with my bare hands and not sleeping overnight within its hollowed out rib cage to survive a blizzard.

Twitter to learn which news events should be top-of-mind before my bare feet hit the bedroom rug. And to see how many followers have beat a hasty retreat from my Twitter feed due to one or another offensive comments that I am evidently prone to posting. LinkedIn to see who has been stalking me, in a professional way, and to do some stalking of my own. Also in a professional way, it goes without saying, I assure you.

WordPress to learn how many readers read what I wrote yesterday, and to scratch my head at who the hell I know in Singapore, Switzerland, and South Africa. I’m big in those places. Instagram for some eye candy, and to ensure that (a) a digital acquaintance has properly observed etiquette by “hearting” one of my Instagram photos after I have “hearted” one of theirs, and (b) I am properly observing the same etiquette.

FitBit to confirm that I’m still atop my totem pole, not dethroned overnight because a buddy rattled off a midnight headlamp run in a bout of insomnia whilst I slept, unmoving. Google Maps to figure out how to get to a morning coffee with a friend, despite the fact that I’ve lived here for 15 years, been to the W Hotel a half-dozen times, and should be able to rely comfortably on my own, analogue memory.

PaybyPhone to stock the parking meter on New Montgomery with enough currency to last through said coffee. And to re-stock the meter from my iPhone screen when I decide to sit and blog in the W’s hotel lobby rather than get wet in the rain outside in the real world.

I’d like to think that all of the apps on my iPhone are mission-critical to the life that I live. To reinforce this, I do go through periodic sweeps, deleting stuff I just never use or that my kids somehow managed to sneak onto my phone surreptitiously. I stare down at the colorful little icons, erasing them from my life, on a digital rampage. It must be terrifying for these little apps, wondering if they will survive the next purge. A previous iOS version showed the apps shaking uncontrollably when a big thumb pressed on them with the intention of cleaning house. I think that’s probably just about right. Shaking in their digital boots.

Well, PaybyPhone, Google Maps, and WordPress apps: Rest easy. I cannot live without you over the next 20 minutes of my life. I need you. The rest of you apps: Be afraid; be very afraid.

I’m Appy.

Thanks for reading.

>

It’s not easy being so damned good-looking. It’s a curse, really. My cross to bear. Just looking at this photo above makes me think that maybe, just maybe, there is a God after all. How else could such perfection come to be?

OK, so someone applied a face-stretching iPhone app to my face. Enhanced my jowls. Scrunched my head, Dick Tracy bad guy-like. But that squirrely, half-crossed left eye? That’s all me, baby. You can’t teach that. Or you got it, or you don’t.

Digitally-retouched or no, this photo is probably where my face is heading. Like one of those “this is your city in 50 years due to Global Warming” drawings. Only it’s my face, not the encroaching shoreline.

It’s scary, no? Not the photo; the photo is funny. Makes me giggle every time I stumble onto it, flipping through the photo albums on my phone. The getting old–or at least getting older–part, that’s what occasionally gives me a start.

I’m not complaining about my mental or emotional state, or even my physical condition. I think I’m wiser now, more thoughtful now, probably able to out-Burpee my younger self.

I do have some complaints about the state of the face that looks back at me in the mirror. Who the hell is that, and why is that dude in my bathroom?!? What happened to the fresh-faced high school kid in the maroon cap and gown? Never mind that said kid had a single eyebrow at the time of the cap and gown photo. I’d gladly trade one of my eyebrows to experience that youthful glow again. Wouldn’t I?

When I smile now, the lines that made it linger a moment or two on my face after I’ve quit smiling. The big knuckles of my big toes are bigger than they are supposed to be, and a bit cranky. Apparently their “pre-arthritic” condition a side-effect of the maybe one bazillion steps pounded into them along many miles of pavement, trails, and sand. I struggle a bit to capture my mate’s words over the din of a bustling restaurant, pragmatically resorting to cupping a hand behind my ear, the better to hear. I’m fairly certain that all these years of swimming in the frigid bay have not been kind to the inner workings of my inner ear. The business end of my teeth has been worn down a bit, polished smooth over time, bottom and top teeth grinding together while working through one or another of life’s many consternations.

My face is a map of where I’ve been. A collection of experiences that have made me who I am. And I am good with who I am. I’ll just have to get used to the ever-changing dude in the mirror.

Thanks for reading. >

Has anybody not seen this video yet?

I think I am personally responsible for a dozen of the 1.1 million views this video has racked up on Vine and YouTube. I was turned on to Rachel Olson’s precocious quest for celebrity only this week by my 12 year-old. Seeing how the video was posted 7 months ago, I am apparently late to the party. But I don’t have any incentive to break the next “Charlie Bit My Finger.” I’ll happily tuck in behind my son’s digital slipstream. Let him bird dog the good stuff, separate the wheat from the chaff. I have no hound in this hunt.

And as a 45 year-old “adult,” I don’t even hunt. If I’m the one in my family introducing the latest “toddler in the backseat on laughing gas” video at the dining room table, well, that would be an issue. A red flag. A warning sign. I’m far too sophisticated and mature for that sort of thing.

So instead, like a virtual Turkey Buzzard, I will pick over the carcasses of these digital funnies until they are stripped bare of anything even remotely resembling comedy. My brain is already hard-wired for feasting on 140-character Tweets and 6-second Vines. I don’t need much provocation. If something tickles my funny-bone, I beat it to death. I can’t help myself.

Hot water burns baby. ‘Course it’s 10 minutes to Wapner. Charlie Babbitt and I share the same spectrum, at least when it comes to a comic riff that I just cannot shake.

To my credit, I rarely just repeat it over and over. I’ll change the cadence, the intonation, the facial expression with which it’s delivered. And towards the tail end of the riff’s useful life (to me, anyway), I’ll resort to layering in a foreign accent. Introducing an English accent will usually extend the riff by a week. Maybe longer. The good news is that if, by the time I get you in my tractor beam with a rendition of the Jerky Boys in brogue, we’re near the end. Hang on for a little longer. I’m just about done. Squeezing every last ounce of life out of it.

Scanning my meager memory banks right now, I realize that I am still giving currency to odd little ditties from when I was maybe 10 years old.

Yikes.

I obviously need to refresh my repertoire. Dig up some new material. Or at least cultivate some new foreign accents. A Swahili “click cluck click” rendition of “Heeeey, I Want to be famous”? Hmm, that just might work, or at least buy me more time. I just need another couple days, most likely, until my bird dog chases another social media nugget out of the hedges.

Thanks for reading.

 

This is a follow-up to an earlier post 5 or 6 weeks ago on my experiences with the Fitbit phenomenon, desperately clawing my way to the top of my Fitbit totem pole and staying there.  That was maybe 500,000 steps and 300 miles ago.  And as you can see from the screenshot above, I am still sitting atop my totem pole.  With ease.  I am THE MAN.

Only I’m not.

At some point within the last few weeks, I stupidly invited a particular buddy of mine to connect via Fitbit.  I had been fairly dominating the totems on my pole up to that point.  I had gotten Fitbit-overconfident.  Fitbit-cocky.  When Icarus brazenly flew too near the sun, his waxen wings melted and he dropped like a rock.  The Fitbit may be water-resistant, but it also “melts” when too close to the sun, I am here to report to you (metaphorically). 

I had failed to think through my casual Fitbit invite, to perform the necessary due diligence, to vet my invitee.  Stupid, stupid, stupid. 

You see, John (may or may not be his real name) commutes to work on foot every day, racking up six miles just in the ordinary course of business.  Whistling the whole way, I imagine.  And he generally leaves for work early, before I’m even awake.  That means that (a) on my first totem pole check upon rising, John has already amassed a three-mile head start, and (b) he will tally my entire day’s worth of steps without even breaking a sweat.  Add to this the fact that John is also a triathlete.  So his accelerometer is pretty much never at rest.  The bastard (I’m referring to both John and his accelerometer) is relentless.

So how is it, you may ask, that my name appears atop the totem pole pictured above, instead of John’s?

Desperate times call for desperate measures. 

John travels out of town quite a bit, to the midwest in particular.  When he is in the air, that’s “go time” for me.  I sink some serious steps into him here on earth, confident in the knowledge that his trips to the on board restroom are infrequent and requiring only a handful of steps.  I don’t wish anything tragic on him, but a little extra turbulence to keep him belted to his seat for hours on end?  Yes please.  I aim to crush his spirit when he lands, pulls up the Fitbit iPhone app, and sees me 20,000 steps ahead.  That assumes, of course, that he checks his app.  That the competitive Fitbit-fire burns in his belly as it does mine.  That he is locked in this pitched Fitbit-battle with me, his arch Fitbit-nemesis.  He is none of these things of course.  He couldn’t care less. 

But I press on.

John and I also coach a Little League team together, as we have done for years now.  I have discovered that I can aggregate maybe 2 or 3 miles of steps in the course of a 90-minute practice.  These are like “free” steps!  I haven’t shared this bit of Fitbit-wisdom with my assistant coach.  Nor will I.  Rather, I make sure that John runs a drill station where he must be sedentary, standing absolutely still.  Holding the “Powerstick,” for example, which requires him to stand in one spot with feet locked in place while one player at a time takes his stance and swings at the yellow ball at the end of the long stick in John’s hand.  No Fitbit steps gained here.  Zero.  Take your time, John, be deliberate, stand…completely…still.  Whatever you do, for the kids’ sake, don’t move! 

Meanwhile, I run alongside my players in warmup drills, lifting my knees as high as they will go and pumping my fists.  I demonstrate–repeatedly–how to sprint through first base, then how to round first base to stretch it into a double, a triple, a round-tripper, and so on.  Bring on the step count, baby.  Run it up!  I am always the coach to throw batting practice pitches to our players.  It is no coincidence that my Fitbit accelerometer gives me credit for all those small steps on and around the pitcher’s mound.  Look at John over there, standing dead still holding that stick.  Feet locked in place.  Look at me, on the other hand, I am ticking these steps off at a record rate!  And he has no idea.  That is because he couldn’t care less, and is completely oblivious to this ridiculous, faux Fitbit-cage match I’ve manufactured in my own pea-sized mind.  But I press on.

The other night, John treated me to a much-appreciated steak dinner near Union Square.  Wonderful male-bonding way to spend a Friday night.  Very generous of him.  How did I repay his generosity?  By marching home after the meal, ringing up step after step, to ensure that John would go to bed an impossible number of steps behind me.  I even warned him during dinner that I planned to walk home, and that he better think about what kind of Fitbit-hurting I would be putting on him.  Never mind that I wasn’t dressed for the 3 or 4 mile walk up and down the San Francisco hills, that I was wearing a glorified pair of flip flops, and that my feet would be bone-sore for a couple days afterwards.  I had to crush him, and I did, and that’s how I got back on top of the totem pole pictured above.

It doesn’t matter, once again, that John is perfectly oblivious to all my Fitbit-machinations, that the Fitbit iPhone app is not one that pops up on his iPhone when you push the home screen to bring to the fore the most recently-used apps.  It’s possible, I admit, that John has never even installed the Fitbit app on his iPhone.  It’s possible, in fact, that he may never even see this very blog post.  (This I can fix, as I probably won’t be able to resist emailing him the link as soon as I hit “Publish Post.) 

Like I say, he couldn’t care less. But I am undeterred. 

I am also just 240 steps ahead of him at this moment.  I literally just checked.  The good news (for me) is that we will be coaching a Little League game together tonight on Treasure Island.  Looks like John will be working the Powerstick station again….

Thanks for reading.

Note: Apologies to my group of Fitbit friends for “outing” them by publishing the totem pole screenshot.  Then again, maybe those are their real names, and maybe they’re not.  So maybe apologies are necessary, and maybe they’re not.

I attended a lecture the other day; thought-provoking on several fronts.

First, because that sentence above actually came out of my head, or fingers.  I wrote it.  Me.  Is this what I’ve become?  I “attend” things now?  “Lectures,” no less?  And I describe them as “thought-provoking”?  Whew, I am getting old, it appears.  This is a far cry from the Black Flag punk concert I attended, I mean, crashed at the Lost Horizon in Syracuse thirty years ago.  Well, in my defense, there was nothing particularly thought-provoking about the Black Flag concert.  If I even have the right band, genre and venue.  Like I said, I am getting old, it appears.

The second reason I say “thought-provoking” is due to where the lecture was delivered.  (There I go again, “delivered” a nod to my antiquated thinking.)

The talk was hosted by an organization called the Presidio Trust, a unique federal agency charged with transforming a former U.S. Army installation into a profitable arm of the National Park Service’s Golden Gate National Recreation Area.  Congress created the Presidio Trust in 1996 with the stern mandate of achieving financial independence from taxpayer support, else the lands would be auctioned off as excess federal property.  I suppose that had the Presidio Trust failed, we’d see parcels of the Presidio up for grabs on the U.S. General Services Administration’s website.  Right alongside aircraft, vessels, firearms, and animals.  An ornate, Civil War-era cannon pictured next to a riding lawnmower, a Surveying Ship, and an Extreme Fitness Leg Curl Machine — with a bright red “PLACE BID” button beckoning.

Fortunately, the Presidio Trust climbed into the black last year.  So instead of sitting in a virtual shopping cart belonging to a GovSales.gov bargain hunter, that cannon stays where it is.  It and all the assets making up the Presidio belong to us, the public.

The third and final reason I say “thought-provoking” is the most obvious:  The content of the talk.  If this were a lecture on annual salamander migration, I probably wouldn’t be blogging about it.  No offense intended to people who study annual salamander migration, nor to the salamanders themselves, come to think of it.

The speaker, Richard Louv, is a journalist and author who preaches the importance of preserving the connection between kids and nature.  In his most recent book, he takes on the idea of balancing technology with the natural world.  For every hour of time your son has his face buried in his iPhone playing “Flappy Bird,” he should spend another hour untethered from the iPhone, outdoors, in search of an actual bird that actually flaps, for example.  Louv is of the opinion that the world will belong to those who can both configure their DNS server using an iPad and avoid a Brown Bear attack by developing the ability to recognize the bear’s fishy scent.

A “Hybrid Mind, ” he calls it.  MacGyver meets Bear Grylls, you might say.

Amen.

In the immediate aftermath of Louv’s lecture, I admit to harboring some thoughts that were likely around the bend from what Louv had in mind.  Here’s one:

Let the boys out of the Prius at the far end of the Presidio, in the dark, and see if they can make it home a couple miles away on their own.  Without an iPhone, ClifBars, Odwalla smoothie, Petzl headlamp, or anything else smacking of modern comforts.  With only their wits to avoid being eviscerated by coyote or raccoon.  But then, I don’t think the sometimes-overzealous Park Ranger who spots them running through a Eucalyptus grove like wild animals would appreciate my parenting style.  Even if I explained to the Ranger that I got the idea from Richard Louv, whom the Presidio Trust hosted to give a talk in the Golden Gate Club just yesterday, right across Dragonfly Creek from where the Ranger took custody of my feral children.  Also, I think my boys’ pediatrician might not be amused by the Giardia parasites living in my boys’ bellies due to them drinking the water from said creek in their filthy, cupped hands.

So I have had to ratchet down my plans to avoid this whole thing careening into some mashup of Doomsday Preppers and Zombie Apocalypse.  Back away from the bug-out bags and canned spam, sir.

I have, however, upped their dosage of unstructured outdoor exposure.  Both Max and Ev run around outside, by my calculations, for 15 hours each week, give or take.  But I don’t think that counts, since those hours are spent within the confines of chalk-drawn rectangles and diamonds.  Not enough Bear Grylls.

So, since Louv’s lecture, we have hunted lizards on the Baker Beach Sand Ladder, identified bird calls and tree-types while circumventing Phoenix Lake, and studied sprouted acorns littering the trails of the Presidio itself.  Sounds bucolic, and just what the doctor ordered.  And indeed it was, so long as you can ignore the gaggle of 60 year-old nude men sunbathing at the foot of the sand ladder (conveniently cropped out of the photo at the top of this blog post), the 8 year-old’s whines whenever the Phoenix Lake trail’s pitch tilted up past perfectly flat, and the “dog poop shawl” our puppie fashioned and wore by rolling in other dogs’ poop somewhere along the trails of the Presidio.

Fortunately, I am an expert ignorer.  A pretty good maker of lemonade out of lemons, you might say. 🙂

Thanks for reading.

 

A cartoon dog made me cry the other day.  A white, bespectacled, red bowtie-wearing beagle.  Yes, Mr. Peabody and Sherman brought me to tears.  On more than one occasion over the course of 90 minutes, no less. You got me again, Dreamworks, curse you!

Or rather, thank you.

During one particularly moving scene, the filmmakers did a masterful job of reminding dads how amazing it is to be a dad, and how quickly these early years will be gone.  A montage of moments between father and young son, combined with John Lennon’s “Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy).”  I hung on every lyric, some of which I’ve pasted below —

Close your eyes
Have no fear
The monster’s gone
He’s on the run and your daddy’s here
Out on the ocean sailing away
I can hardly wait
To see you come of age
But I guess we’ll both just have to be patient
‘Cause it’s a long way to go
A hard row to hoe
Yes it’s a long way to go
But in the meantime
Before you cross the street
Take my hand
Life is what happens to you
While you’re busy making other plans
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful
Beautiful boy

It’s the coming of age part that gives me pause.  Things are moving too quickly.  My chest hurts a little when I realize that Max and Ev will share just one more school year together, then never in the same school again.  My breathing catches when I count the number of years before Max leaves for college.  On the fingers of one hand now.  And I know that I should expect the next few years to be challenging, perhaps very difficult at times. 

I know, too, that things could even go completely off the rails. 

My friend David Sheff wrote an outstanding book a few years back in which he chronicled the life of his son’s life-and-death struggles with addiction.  A bright, engaging, talented son David loves as deeply as I am in love with my own sons.  And David’s desk is no doubt littered with photos of his son Nic, that look just like the photo of my son Max at the top of this blog post.  Interestingly enough, if I remember correctly, David may have been the first to suggest that I bring Max to Bolinas.  David’s book fondly recalls his bliss watching his own son among the waves there.  I’ve experienced the same with my son.  Even more interesting is the fact that David’s book is entitled Beautiful Boy.  And it is linked forever to Jon Lennon, since David was the last journalist to conduct a major interview with Lennon before the latter’s death. 

I don’t know what the future holds for my sons.  But strangely I now feel ready, or at least more ready after seeing the movie.  

I’ve read David’s book.  I’ve probably heard the song before.  And I’ve chatted and emailed with David plenty.  But it took a talking beagle to re-introduce “Beautiful Boy” to me at exactly the right moment in my life and in the lives of my boys.  My own beautiful, beautiful, beautiful boys.

Thanks for reading.

 

How a kid who grew up in the middle of New York State ended up raising a family out here in San Francisco, I don’t know.  I mean, I know how it happened, the reasons for moving here, the reasons for staying here.  We have a good deal of family still remaining on the East Coast, and the years have not made that fact any easier. 

But we are in love with living here.  I don’t think that’s an exaggeration. 

I think a good deal of the love affair is tied to San Francisco Bay.  It has become a central part of our family’s life.  We have been lucky enough to figure out how to make our home a couple blocks from where the Bay meets Marina Green.  Close enough to allow my neighborhood swim buddies and I to stroll over from our respective flats, across the Green, down cobblestone steps, and into the brackish water.  Our ongoing inability to match the predicted tide cycle stage with what we actually see when we peer over the wall and into the Bay just adds to the mystique.  Same with the currents:  Swirly as hell, unpredictable, and a little unnerving when you find yourself “stuck on a treadmill.” Suddenly forced to pull like mad to get where you need to go. 

Like last night. 

At the end of a long day of a trip to the Farmer’s market, a seat at Mr. Peabody and Sherman, and a late afternoon Little League game on Treasure Island, I somehow managed to squeak in a swim at sundown, with a little help from my friends.  

The swim lasted a grand total of 18 minutes, my swim buddy reported at the end, glancing up surprised by the numbers across the face of his waterproof wristwatch.  Because of the odd route we took to accommodate the strong currents, rapid loss of daylight, and prospect of boats returning to the nearby yacht club harbor that probably couldn’t see our bobbing heads, it felt more like 2 hours in there.

When I crawled back up the slick steps after navigating some barnacle-encrusted and sea-weedy rocks, I found an older woman sitting alone on the green park bench right there, enjoying what was left of the sunset.  She was understandably startled.  It was basically dark now, I was still wearing a shiny wetsuit and wet goggles, and she could not possibly have known about the steps right there.  They practically delivered me right up into her lap, seemingly from out of nowhere.  The mild post-swim euphoria made me witty, and I came up with, “Good evening.  Are you Agent Double Oh Eight?” in a clipped British accent.  She answered, in a thick Russian accent, “No, I’m sorry, I don’t speak Eeeyngleesh.”  I swear to to you I am not making this up. 

You see what I mean, though, about the Bay’s magic?  The Bay repaid my small investment of time with her by giving us a new nugget to add to the lore of swimming the steps.  Agent Double Oh Eight and her Russian accent.  Impossible. 

And I am not the only member of my family who has developed a strong appreciation for the Bay.  Our sons’ school is very progressive when it comes to the environment.  Hilary and I have become recycling and composting savants because this is integral to the school’s curriculum, and our boys have taught us what goes in which bin.  (For the high-minded purpose of this particular thread, I’ll need the reader to please ignore my own composting disaster.  For now.  But if you can’t manage that, OK, go ahead and click on “composting disaster” if you just can’t help yourself.  I forgive you.) 

A couple years back, our then-5th grader Max studied a unit on Bay ecology.  He and a classmate created a song, “Down in the Bay,” singing the praises of the Seven-Gilled Shark and the importance of the Bay more generally.  Their work was even covered in a blog post by Save the Bay–the largest regional organization working to protect, restore and celebrate the Bay for over a half-century. That’s pretty great. 

And to come full circle, back to this blog of mine, inspired by my 90 year-old grandmother’s unexpected passing a few months back. I’ve given a lot of thought to how I can ensure I stay connected to her, still feeling the unbridled optimism she represented and that I chase every day.  Later this year, Hilary, the boys and I will scatter some of my grandmother’s ashes in the Bay.  This way we can be reminded of her whenever we breath in the salty air on a late afternoon running along her shores, whenever we swim in her chilly waters after dark or before the sun comes up, and whenever we write and sing and listen to songs about protecting her for the sake of our kids’ kids’ kids.  And yes, I know I’m mixing up the pronouns in this last sentence.  For me, they are all one and the same.

Thanks for reading.

We had one of those “lucky to live here” experiences last night.

Hilary had the fabulous idea of eating dinner on the deck of Cavallo Point Lodge, since we had to drop Max and a friend off out there for a Bat Mitzvah; our end of the carpool bargain. Rather than battle traffic, let’s just stay there and have a nice meal with Everett. We don’t often spend time alone with Everett, and it’s probably a healthy thing for him to be the center of attention from time-to-time instead of his older brother holding court.

Due to sleeping in a bit instead of hopping in the Bay with a swim buddy, then coaching Max’s Little League game in Fort Scott, then stewing over our team’s loss in said game, and then gluing my eyes on the Duke-NC State hoops game while clutching the TiVo clicker in my fist for a couple hours, I hadn’t broken a sweat all day.  I need to break a sweat every day, pretty much.  And the drive over the Golden Gate Bridge to Cavallo Point was imminent.  So I got clearance from Hilary for me to run to Cavallo and rendezvous there for dinner.

The timing had to be perfect. I figured the run was about 6 miles. I figured I would run maybe 9-minute miles. And I packed a bag for Hilary to drive over with all the stuff necessary to turn a sweaty guy into a polite, non-stinky, dinner companion. I pulled on all my running gear while trying to manipulate the TiVo’d Duke game to finish so as to preserve my increasingly tight run window. I resorted to hitting the fast forward button with a single tap during free throws when the game clock stops. I despise the single click, turning games into a Charlie Chaplin flick.  But I had to break a sweat, and I had to not repay my wife’s generosity with a late dinner arrival.  Glancing at my iPhone’s digital time readout in one hand, gripping the TiVo clicker in the other, in a desperate bid to make sure I left the house at 545pm.  No matter what.

I took off out the front door at 548pm; Duke having salted the game away with only a few ticks of the game clock remaining.  Not the most relaxing way to watch a game, but it worked.  I was out the door, pretty pleased with my multi-tasking prowess.  Big smile on my face, even running at a much quicker pace than usual.  All’s well in the world.

Until 14 minutes into my run, when I realized that I had lost track of eating and hydrating in the midst of a busy day. I hadn’t eaten anything since 8am.

I started to feel the hints of what I refer to as a “sugar crash.” Pretty predictable if running or riding late in the day, if I haven’t paid enough attention to eating and drinking, and if I have stupidly brought nothing along to eat. The result is light-headedness, sweating and shaking like someone being interrogated under a hot lightbulb, and a ridiculous craving for a Snickers bar.  Or a Coke. Or a slice of pizza.  Pretty much anything, actually.

I did manage to grab my debit card on the way out the door, tapping at it with my fingers on occasion to ensure the card was still with me and not dumped somewhere along the Crissy Field esplanade.  I patted the card again now, with shaky fingers, relieved that I could just swing into one of the new tourist-friendly shops near the Bridge’s south entrance, trade a swipe for a Snickers, and be back on my way.

No dice.  Doors shut at 6pm.  I had missed that cut off by 3 minutes.  The same 3 minutes I used up watching the tail end of the Duke game.  I shuffled my way across the bridge, starving and delirious, seriously contemplating snatching a ClifBar out of someone’s pocket if I happened to see one.  I was getting desperate.  Maybe a vending machine on the other side of the bridge?  Nope. But at least at that point, I could see Cavallo Point Lodge down off in the distance.  I figured I could stumble the rest of the way, and suffer no additional criminal urges during the home stretch.

But I wouldn’t take the well-traveled roads that wound their way serpentine between where I stood and where I needed to find something to eat.  That would take too long.  I spied a fire road winding downhill and hoped it would dump me down near the bottom.  The fire road narrowed, however, then stopped abruptly altogether.  The clear DO NOT ENTER, NO TRESPASSING and military-looking fences fairly commanding me to turn on my heels and run back up the trail.  I didn’t have enough gas in my tank to do that, and I was running out of time ’til rendezvous, to boot.  Instead I scurried down a steep “trail” of loose dirt right next to the fencing.  I used the fingers of my right hand to slow my descent using the links along the cheese grater fence, while also trying to keep my feet from skidding or stepping on broken glass or through poison oak.  The whole time I was also rehearsing my explanation for the authorities as to what the hell I was doing, fairly certain I was in someone’s binoculars by now.

A few more hops over thickets of brush, traipsing through what now resembled a homeless encampment, a leap over a WWII-era drainage ditch, and I was back on pavement, back in civilization.

And suddenly in the mix with a half-dozen other runners on a road where no one runs?

An older gentlemen, clearly exhausted, stopped in his tracks, and watched me jog past him.  “Good job, man, way to go!” he said.  Then I surmised he and the others were just finishing up some staggeringly long endurance run.  So I laughed, turned my head back towards him and offered apologetically, “Thanks, but I’m not doing your race.”  I didn’t want to be responsible for breaking his spirit given how rough he looked at that moment. I caught up with the next zombie runner.  He slowed to a shuffle, and when asked, told me the run was 50 miles and the finish line was visible at that white tent over yonder.  Wow, 50 miles.  I said, “congratulations,” and felt pretty ridiculous about bonking after running for 14 minutes, and about the half-panicked desire to rob someone of a candybar, and about the trespassing that followed.

I managed to beat Hilary and the Prius by a few minutes, I was no longer hungry, and I was energized on the heels of serendipitously falling in with these courageous runners just before they accomplished something life-changing.  Hilary, Ev and I later ate while sitting on a bench hip-to-hip-to-hip, facing the evening Bay, covered in warm blankets and enjoying a few delicious IPAs.  Somewhere along the way, unprompted, Ev announced, “I gotta be honest with you: I’m magnificent.”

He hit the nail right on the head.

Thanks for reading.