Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, where we will blog as often an we like. There is no limit to how many blog posts there can be in a given amount of time, so if we are sitting around, and the computer is handy, blog we will.
I am hanging out in my nearly clean house. The last of the laundry is in the washer, the bathroom is sparkling, the bed remade with clean sheets, the kitchen has only a half load of dishes left on the counter, the dishwasher door open to let the dishes inside cool off. I had to run it hot and heavy to get all the dried food off of the load that just ran. I should go to work this afternoon and find something that merits getting paid for, but B has given me permission to pretend that I am a wifely sort of person today, one who's husband comes home to a clean house, all welcoming and smelling of cooking and scented candles. I agreed to call him as soon as I was done here. I sat down for a bit of lunch, leftover beans and rice, and found myself staring at a blank screen on my blog, wanting to write, knowing I probably shouldn't.
What makes some of us feel so compelled to be known through our writing? Are we self absorbed? I don't know, but I must admit, I want to be known. I want people to see inside me, and decide to like me anyway. It's not like I think that will be so automatic, that I am so irresistibly likable, but I, myself, am drawn to those who make themselves vulnerable, who admit to the bad and own the good and are self-aware enough to make statements about themselves and their lives that most leave to others to make about them. I like transparency, even when the transparent person is so very ordinary that they think there is nothing at all noteworthy about themselves. I believe ordinary is noteworthy, that the statistical outliers, those who accomplish extraordinary things, are given all the attention when those of us who just manage to live ordinary lives, our small victories, our laughable failures, our funny quirks, our simple strengths are quietly, truly extraordinary. If I were not me, I would read my blog to see inside my head, not to know what I did, but why I did it. I read other's blogs, too, the ones that talk about feelings and hopes and dreams and moisturizing creams, all the stuff everyday life is made of. I want to know what makes us go, and where the going takes us, well, that's just an interesting side note.
When you send me your mass Christmas letters, faithful few, I open them before I even get them home, and read them, and wonder if what you are not saying is where you, beautiful, complex, ordinary you, might be found. I am interested in the facts, that you had Mr. and Mrs. Ordinary over for dinner, or that you drove to Ordinary, U.S.A. over spring break and swam in Lake Ordinary, but what I really want to know is, did you float on your back and stare at the clouds? What did they look like? Did you dig your toes in the sand? Did you stare over the water and wonder why you are here? Did you talk about deep subjects with no answers until you felt you could almost grasp the answer, but then it slipped past you and you were as confused as when you started? When you cooked that dinner, when you ate that dinner with that couple, did you feel connected to community, and did it make you feel more complete? Did life overwhelm you? Do you feel as though the past year was merely lived, or lived deeply? Who are you, the you that lives inside your skin, not just inside your house? And then I tuck your Christmas letter away, because throwing it away feels strange and disrespectful, like I have thrown away you. In a few years, during a spring clean, I might toss it because by then, I am tossing the you that was, not the you that is.
Sometimes, I click on a random archived post on my own blog and read about the me that was. I try to see the events without remembering more than what was written, and I wonder who I was, and sometimes I like that person, and sometimes not. Sometimes I sound self-absorbed. Sometimes removed from reality. Sometimes factual and distant. And rarely, like the warm and approachable person I most wish to be known as.
To know and be known. There is a lifetime of searching needed to comprehend the full meaning of that little phrase.
Right now, I am trying hard to remember, then live by, my new mantra. Joy. That's all there is to it. Live with joy. It is the root of all self-improvement. The root of unconditional love. The root of self-acceptance. The root of a life well lived. The root of mental and physical healing and well-being. When one lives their life with intentional joy, one becomes sensitive to situations in which joy withers. One cannot be joyful while gossiping, while judging others, while hating one's self, while unhappy with one's job, life, spouse, friend, whatever it is that tries one's patience. One cannot compartmentalize joy, then still allow unhappiness in one area. One cannot experience joy while making others miserable, envious, belittled. Insults, other's unhappiness rolls off like water off a duck's back. There is nothing quite like catching grasp of happiness and holding on for dear life.
It started as an experiment. "Why can't we decide to be happy, and then, just...be happy?!" I don't know why. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered. Our minds have an almost unlimited power over us. Anything we choose to believe, our mind will make real- at least to us. Any good hypochondriac has experienced this. So why can we not simply choose to believe we are healthy, well-balanced individuals? Why not choose to be joyful? Why not choose to believe that we love life and everything, everyone that life brings us? Well, why not?
Don't think it is easy. And don't think I don't fail on a daily basis. But, if I use my imagination just a little, I almost begin to believe it is getting easier.
I am still in the process of filing away my Houston experience. The time I spent with my parents was precious and trying and a blessing and exhausting and hopeful and depressing. My mom and I did a lot of feeding our minds, a lot of talking and smiling and making jokes at the expense of the affected part of her anatomy. We laughed and hung out like girlfriends and prayed and prayed harder and cried over the total ridiculousness of it all. That part was okay. That part I expected. The part I did not think of in advance was the other patients. All the beautiful young mothers, rail-thin, bald and flat-chested, hunched and swallowed inside shapeless hospital gowns, still beautiful and young and with fragile hope, but with absolutely no promises for the future. I was sitting in a comfy recliner in the massive, yet somewhat zen waiting room when one such patient came shuffling by me on the arm of her significant other, and the sight of her legs below the blue and white gown draped over her slumped shoulders just about made me want to run outside and scream at God. They were as tanned, sinewy and muscular as the legs of the marathon runners and mountain bikers I see every day in Colorado, and they made me realize that she had been living a life much like mine, active and outdoorsy and healthy, and nothing could get her down...except cancer. Every one of the women there had a story of heartbreak and disappointment and being betrayed by their own bodies, of missed diagnoses and waiting for the news that would change everything. They were all so extraordinarily ordinary.
It made me determined to value life- healthy or unhealthy, life is precious. It is only ours on loan, every sunset marks the close of another day- another day closer to the day our loan gets called.
On a less introspective note, I got to celebrate being healthy with 7,000 other people day before yesterday. The Warrior Dash is a crazy 5k race over uneven terrain, over and through obstacles, dodging hundreds of competitors in all manner of costumes. As the paper reported the next day, there were more kilts than on the entire set of Braveheart. There were also more codpieces than I care to remember, and warrior princess dressed in a few pieces of faux leather, and tutu's, and, in my case, clothes I was willing to throw away afterwards- a tank top that had lain in the back of Grandpa's pickup, drenced in spilled diesel, for a week and was never the same color afterwards, a pair of B's plaid boxers, a pink polka-dot headband, and black striped kneesocks with pirate skulls and crossbones on them- a gift from two christmasses ago, with big holes in them, and a pair of trail runners that my big toes peaked through and that had been worn through beaver-pond muck. There were capes, and there were spiked helmets and helmets with horns and jedi knights and samuri warriors and warpaint. My personal favorite was a muddy turkey leg speared on top of a helmet, probably dropped on the ground when it's would-be devourer had trouble holding his beer stein and the turkey leg at the same time. There were crusaders. There was chain mail. There was initials shaved into chest hair. There was every sort of humanity and it was fun because it was not the drunk-fest one might expect from such a crowd, because everyone had to get through a 3.27 mile run. Contestants had to run two miles or so up the ski slope at Copper Mountain, climb over rusted, wrecked cars, pull themselves uphill with ropes, scale a mountain of hay, hustle through fifty yards of old tires, crawl through a mud pit over which was strung barbed wire (I emerged less bloody than some, but blood still oozed through the thick mud on my knees and ran down my shins from the gravel in the bottom), through long, black culvert tubes laid on an incline, the bottom filled with slippery mud so everyone had a hard time scrambling through without sliding backwards, up cargo nets to high platforms, then back down the other side, across 12-inch planks over a deep gully, hurdling walls a bit higher than waist-high, fording a stream, icy-cold and so muddy from the mud washing off of constestants feet and legs that it was impossible to see the rocks at the bottom, then, just before the finish line, jumping two ricks of duraflame firelogs, flames dancing higher than most could jump.
Needless to say, Copper Mountain got trashed. There was mud everywhere. Inside the conference center, mud was smeared along the walls wherever people bumped, glops of mud littered the floors of the bathrooms. Hoses were provided to hose everyone off. The mud was so thick it was cemented on by the time I got to a Warrior washing station, so I stood while a volunteer turned a garden hose on my bare skin, high-pressure ice picks of water, and scrubbed my skin with my hands until it felt as though my skin might just come off with the mud. He finished with me from the neck down, then announced that my face was still covered in mud. I took a deep breath, said, "Okay, then," squeezed my eyes shut and held my breath and waited for the icy blast. It didn't come. He started laughing. "You really ARE a warrior!" and pointed to a bucket of water sitting nearby. I dabbed at the mud on my cace and neck, then sloshed into the bathroom to change into dry clothes, adding to the muck on the floor.
Yesterday, 3,000 more people competed in waves of 350, bringing the total to 10,000 warriors, plus all of their families. People came from miles around. I am curious whether Copper Mountain thought the revenue from that many summer guests was worth all the gallons of mud in their condos, plaza, and conference center.
I donated my shoes to Green Sneakers, via a very wobbly girl who sat down rather unceremoniously while waiting for me to pull out my arch supports. Drunk as she was, she was determined to gather all the shoes she could for a good cause. As she weaved away, she held the dripping shoes up triumphantly, announcing to no one in particular, "Cheggit out! I got another pair!"
I did not expect B to have fun. He surprised me. He thought it was a good time. He even said he would like to do it himself next year, if it came back. I am pretty sure every single person who did not run wished they had. B is usually pretty anti-crazy, uninhibited people. When we first got there, he turned to me, rolling his eyes, and whispered, "This is just your scene, isn't it?" but after waiting for me to finish, he was into it, too. He just had to realize that there were more sober people there than drunk ones, and it really was all about the sport and having fun sober and being an idiot in your own right, not because of a consumed substance.
That's me at the finish line, and my friend Ginta, who came to cheer me on. Oh, come on...you know you wish you could have done it, too.
That night, we stopped at a friend's house after the race and the guys sat and made intelligent conversation as my girlfriend and I polished off several glasses of red wine, which soon had us speed-talking with big hand gestures about topics way too deep for us until our boys finally just had to shut up. We stayed until fairly late, then went home to sleep, and the next morning, the same girlfriend met me at Keystone and we shuttled up to A-Basin and rode to the top, dehydrated and slightly hungover and not feeling well at all as we pedalled up to 12,500 feet over loose rocks and grades that reach nearly 20% and swore off alcohol again. We flew down the backside of the mountain, throgh scree fields and pristine meadows and I cut my sidewall and had bad visions of walking down, but in the end, the goo in my tubeless tire sealed off the impossibly big cut and we made it down to Keystone where my car was parked...and realized the keys were in her car, five miles and several thousand feet above us. She was cradling her face in her hand because a bee had collided with her lip at 30 mph on the way down and somehow managed to sting her and her jaw and gums were swollen and throbbing, and my tire was still hissing out air occasionally, and my legs were heavy and burning and sore from the jumping and sprinting the day before and the thought of riding up Loveland pass was just too much. I called and called B until he answered, and asked that he come rescue us. 20 minutes later, he showed up and drove us up to her car at A-Basin.
I went home by way of the bike shop and picked up a patch kit for my tire, then came home, sat down on the couch and leaned my throbbing head back and didn't move until B announced he was going on a bike ride with Andy. I don't not go when B goes on a bike ride. I get to ride with him so seldom, I would have to be almost dead to not at least try to go with him. I pumped my tire back up, the leak slow enough to get me back home before it was too low to ride, chugged some water that sat heavy and cold in my upset stomach, and climbed back on my bike. B and Andy and I had a good ride, in spite of the headache, and when we got back, I got unusually dolled up and he took me out for Mexican food. We sat on a shady patio, I drank two tall glasses of ice water, and we couldn't help but feel like we were on vacation. That is, until I asked B some petty, rhetorical question that I really didn't want him to answer, something about was he happy with me, and he started to say something, then stopped, and I pushed, and he squirmed a bit and admitted he had been a bit envious of our friend's nice, clean house and neat-freak significant other. Which led to a discussion about my priorities, not that he does not understand my manic drive to be outdoors every single minute, because winter and cabin fever is looming. We ended the discussion still friends, but it did lead to this morning, when I got up early and have been cleaning ever since. Until now. But now, I must get back to it. If only it would stay this way...
