Out of Focus

R.I.P. Lou

This little corner of the internet is on the verge of returning to plenty of opinion and talk about not-very-important-to-the-proverbial-grand-scheme like movies and TV ever-so-shortly, but today, I found my thoughts interrupted once again. It’s not often that I really find myself contemplating the fragility of life. I don’t mean recognizing it, but rather, seriously considering it. Sadly, the concept hit close to home this week, and it made me not only think about capital L life but also about the strange complexities of familial relationships and especially why something like illness or death can affect each of us to such varying degrees.

Last night around 7pm in San Francisco, my grandmother’s husband Lou passed away. I specifically say “my grandmother’s husband” not out of any disrespect. Lou was a wonderful and admirable man. He was 94 years old, and while he had some health issues during the past few years, he died not from any long-term illness or simple natural causes; rather, about a week ago he was hit by a car. He suffered some broken ribs and vertebrae as well as one arm. All of these injuries, a younger person (one my age, for example) would most likely not have been life threatening. But it’s a virtual cliché, no? We all laugh at the “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up,” Life Alert commercials, but the truth is, a broken hip (or anything) to an elderly person can turn into a death sentence. When we become “elderly,” not only do our bodies no longer heal efficiently, but they also suffer infection and further illness too quickly. And that is what happened to Lou.

Moth Misses Flame Again: The Guilt Complex

Last night, I went to The Moth StorySLAM (@mothstories) at the Nuyorican, once again with a story prepared, and while my odds were better this time (apparently there were 20 total names in the hat as opposed to the 30-plus when I last went in March), I still didn't get called to the stage. It's too bad too, because while I wasn't that happy with how I had the story working in my head, halfway through the evening, even though there really wasn't one truly bad story tonight (a new experience for me), I think mine -- for all its faults -- would have probably been graded in the top two or three.

Doesn't matter. I was actually baffled by the winner again. Just like last time I was at the Nuyorican, the final person selected of the evening was slightly peculiar with a very peculiar story that had the crowd roaring but as much because of the what-the-fuck quotient as anything funny happening in the story. Also, and more importantly, the winning story arguably had very little to do with the them of the evening which was "Ambition."

To me, it seemed only natural what my story would be if only because I had no other personal stories relating to ambition immediately springing to mind. Ironically, one of my most ambitious (and unmet) goals over the past couple years was to use these storyslams as as personal deadlines and writing exercises. I've found that thoughtless free writing has been very helpful to me at times, and utilizing the themes for the Moth storyslams a a launching point could help me form a valuable writing habit and become a regular outlet. Sure, I could do that without going and signing up to tell the story, but of course, omitting that part is actually a bit of a cop-out, and having that hard deadline where I might have to stand in front of people and tell my story means that I need to focus on it at least a little bit more than simply sitting with the theme and writing a few pages at will.

But my ambitions in this arena have met total failure. I've intended to do this for a long time, and yet, I've only written and gone (including tonight) four times. The first time I went over two years ago, I was selected to tell my story, but the second time, I was among a large throng that didn't even get into the room. And then there was June at the Nuyorican where I wasn't picked.

I wasn't picked again tonight, and fair warning: I didn't write about my Moth ambitions. Of course not. I wrote about what occupied my brain most of the summer and has dominated the few posts on this blog over the past several weeks. But this is it: a slightly different (and much shorter) take on my triathlon experience. The last time I talk about the damn thing until I maybe decide to do another one. Starting tomorrow, Out of Focus will return to its more logical and organic (i.e., non-athletic endeavors usually featuring flickering images of light) state. But for now, for the last time, the story I would have told had my name been called last night at The Moth: The Guilt Complex after the jump.

Aaron’s Summer Vacation Part 4: The Conclusion--As if swimming, biking and running weren’t enough …

(Like a neverending story that finally reaches its conclusion, behold the final chapter in a series of posts that has taken too long to unveil but needed to run its course. Pt. 1 is here; Pt. 2 is here; and Pt. 3 is here. By the way, it’s currently still possible to donate to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, supporting my participation in the Westchester Triathlon in memory of my grandfather Harold. While I passed my required donation minimum, I had hoped to raise more for such a great cause. Just visit my donation page here, and if you already donated, thanks again.)

It was dark out. Not quite pitch-black, but plenty dark. Too damn early on Sept. 27, 2009. Too many people were awake and lazily shuffling around the lobby of the hotel, but that’s because like me, they were all just waiting to hop on the bus at 4:45 am in order to be at Rye Playland by 5 when the transition area officially opened. The race didn’t start until 7 am. I was “lucky”: because of my age group, I would be in the third wave to take-off at 7:06 am. Friends I had trained with would have to wait an additional 10, 15, 30 minutes … some even more before they got to start. And it wasn’t just dark: it was raining.

We arrived at the transition area, i.e., one of the Playland parking lots, and it was still pretty empty. My bike had been moved since the night before because the triathlon organizers had miscalculated the number of racks and spaces they needed. I began to set-up up my roughly three square feet of ground space next to my bike. Generally, you would just lay out your bike gear and run gear on a towel or on the ground, next to your bike so it would be ready to go. But it was still raining out, and the weather reports indicated it wouldn't stop any time soon. So instead, I put my bike gear into one garbage bag and my running stuff into another. The transition area was slowly filling up with people, but I felt like I was done. I wasn’t set-up near any of my teammates, so I wandered around a little. I decided it was probably a good idea to try going to the bathroom again meaning waiting in line for the scary porta-potties. Still raining, still dark, with just the illumination of the parking lot lights overhead.

Around 6 am, i started getting myself ready. I was already wearing my trishorts and top. I put on my heart rate monitor and started putting body glide lubricant in the necessary places, especially important when wearing a wetsuit in salt water. Around 6:30, I went with a bunch of other people down to the beach. It was starting to get light, but it was so overcast and grey, it wasn’t that great. We got in the water and started to warm up a little, let the wetsuits fill with water. The water temperature wasn’t that bad, and in the wetsuit, it was almost balmy.

People started moving towards the beach for the start. Suddenly, it was a mob. Hundreds of people, all wearing the swim cap colored to identify their respective waves. It was kind of chaotic. Couldn’t hear the PA announcer. Standing around. And then suddenly … off they went. The male pros go first. I was hoping to finish the whole race in 3 ½ hours if I was lucky. These guys sprinting and dolphin leaping through the water were likely going to finish in a vicinity closer to two hours. But if they were starting, that meant I was too in just six more minutes.

I’m not sure what happened next. I was excited and scared and saying to myself, “What the fuck am I doing here.” We were standing around, shuffling near the shoreline and then suddenly, a horn, and we were off.

Aaron’s Summer Vacation, Part 3: The day before crawls by in a flash

(This is the continuation and penultimate chapter of the Douglas Adams style-trilogy of posts I started more than a month ago. Pt. 1 is here; Pt. 2 is here. Just pretend those weeks never happened. I’ve been trying to do the same.)

I hadn’t had the best luck when it came to weather and endurance athletic events. In fact, 100% of the endurance athletic events in which I had ever participated were negatively affected by the weather. Now, to be fair, that 100% figure results from two out of two, so we’re not looking at the biggest sample here, and to call it a trend would surely be overstating the situation. But the fact remained: first was the AIDSRide meets Hurricane Floyd. And then, just weeks before the Westchester Triathlon, my warm-up and the only chance to actually experience swim-bike-run all together in a row at the Staten Island Triathlon (a “sprint” race), New York City had closed its beaches because of the weather the day before, and the swim portion was canceled.

So when I took a look at the weather for the coming weekend and saw rain … RAIN … are you fucking kidding me with the rain? We had finally had beautiful weather for most of the weeks leading up to the event. It was almost like Autumn had decided to return us to a world of four seasons instead of the newer global warming reality of two: Hot and Cold. Meanwhile, a whole bunch of the TNT people with whom I had trained had already completed their Nations Triathlon on Sept. 13 in Washington D.C. The weather in D.C. on Sept. 13 was gorgeous. Sunny. Not too hot nor cold. Not humid. And they had a flat course. Sure, I had two extra weeks to train and a weather forecast telling me to go fuck myself.

Rain? I mean really? Wasn’t four months of training enough? Dozens of cumulative miles in the pool? Hundreds of miles on my bike? Over 120 miles logged in my running shoes? Swimming 1500 meters, biking 40 kilometers and running 10 kilometers? Back-to-back-to-back? The same morning? Having to wake up at 4 AM and be swimming shortly after 7 AM? Really? None of that was challenging enough? The powers that be had to make it RAIN ON ME!!!!!

I mean seriously. What. The. Fuck?

The next several days – which were quite lovely and sunny, by the way – I was obsessed with checking the forecast. And not just one forecast: which was better? Weather.com or Accuweather.com? (Generally, it’s the latter? Although in this case the latter was more optimistic … and more wrong.)

On Friday evening Sept. 25, we had to drop-off our bikes on the Upper East Side for transport to Westchester. From that moment on, the rest of the weekend was this oxymoronic slow-moving blur. All triathlon, all the time.