Things That Define Us

We are more than our toys. Maybe. We are more than the things we have. But some of those things can help define us. We all have stuff that becomes a part of who we are; things that people associate with us; things that we come to be known for.

So I was thinking over the last week or so about the things that define me. Here's a short list.

2002 Ford F-150. I bought the above truck in 2003. It had 11,000 miles on it. 11 years later and it has 154,000. When I bought it I said I wanted to drive it for 9 to 12 years. It has been my everyday driving vehicle for 10 years, until this winter when I picked up a commuting car to burn the DC miles and give the truck a rest. It's the only vehicle our girls have ever known me to drive. It has helped us move; carried mulch, paddleboards, furniture, been to Pennsylvania, commuted to DC for four years. When loaned to friends it has carried everything from bunk beds to deer carcasses. Of all the vehicles I have owned, it is the one the best defines me: simple, blue, steady, basic, versatile. At least the truck is.

Running shoes. Not any specific kind of running shoes; I have run in Brooks, New Balance, Mizuno, Nike, Asics, Montrail, Inov-8; I have run in road shoes and trail shoes. But the common theme is running. If you read this blog or have known me since high school, when cross country first hit, or getting in shape after failing out of school, or training for the Annapolis 10-miler, or training for my first marathon or ultramarathon, you know that running is one of the activities that defines me. I feel right when I put on running shoes.

Moleskine pocket notebook. Close friends know that I always have a notebook and pen in my pocket. If we are at a bar, on a boat, at a party, if I am at the grocery store, work, or a coffee shop. Because I forget things if I don't write them down. Because I never know when a line will strike me, or something I see, or something someone says will trigger something I want to think more about later. These notebooks are filled with lists, with thoughts, with random lines, with quotes, with doodles from the girls if they get bored and ask for my notebook. It has to fit in my back pocket. I tried the hardbound versions, but the covers got destroyed because they don't like to be sat on. So this is the notebook of choice. Thankfully, even Target has them now.

Skateboard. If three activities define my life, both from the longview and different periods within it, they would be writing, running and skateboarding. I bought my first skateboard, a Sims Flagship with Venture Trucks, from the Sunshine House in Ocean City, Md. I was 13. More than anything over the next five years, skateboarding was what I did, helped shape the music I listened to, the videos I watched, the clothes and shoes I wore, what we did with acquired extra wood, where we went, how I thought. When I turned 35, I bought a skateboard after having taken some time off. I set up things to ollie over in the street and our older daughter got a kick out of it. And then a friend got bitten by the longboarding bug, infected me, and endurance, distance, and skateboarding got thrown in the gumbo of further life-defining activities. I still feel as stoked today to feel wheels on pavement as I did almost 30 years ago.

Nationals Jayson Werth jersey. Over the years, baseball has eclipsed football by far as the chosen sport for our house, and our girls. We've discussed the Nationals on here before. We've discussed Jayson Werth and his beard on here before. The Werth jersey was a birthday present to myself a couple/few years ago and has been worn to almost every Nats game we have been to, as well as Camden Yards and Citizens Bank Park in Philly. Being in the stands when he launches a WERTHQUAKE into the bleachers is fun. His Game 4 walk-off series saving home run has to be one of the best radio calls in the Nationals brief history. Our daughter Ava has a Werth shirt as well. To me, it's the symbol of a family loving a team, and baseball, together.

So there is a quick top five of things that in some way define me, now and over the years. What things define you?

The Gravy List

I don't know what I think about bucket lists. I'm not sure that life needs to be judged like a list, just checking things off and then determining happiness or success, or how good a life lived was based on check marks. But I do make lists. And my mind seems to function more efficiently when I've created and am working from a list.

I was thinking the other day about a "gravy list," a list of those things that don't determine whether you've lived a good life--let's leave that to things like character and family, legacy, satisfaction--but a list that we each create to say, you know, life is cool, but it'd be even cooler if I was able to do some of these things.

So I present, 10/11 items, in no particular order, that comprise my gravy list.

1. Complete a rim-to-rim trail run of the Grand Canyon. Running one way it's a little more than 20 miles. It's been done as an out and back run, 40+ in a day. That's great, but I'm just looking for the basic. Here are some details and helpful training tips. In my experience, the natural world, and cities for that matter, are best experienced on foot. Trail running stirs my soul as few other activities have. I'd love to cross the Grand Canyon, on foot, with some running peeps, in a day.

2. Attend Washington Nationals spring training games. I've written here a number of times about our family's fandom for the Nats. I've been following baseball since I was a kid, collecting baseball cards, pouring over statistics. Our girls don't like watching football in the least, but they love going to Nats games. I've always thought it would be cool to go to a few spring training games, warm weather, laid back, getting to see the team as they gear up for the season. I don't need to go to all the games, just a couple.

3. Complete a book-length manuscript. I'm a writer. It's what I love, it's what I spend much of my time doing, or thinking about, or working on, etc. To this point, my writing has taken the form of essays, reflections, articles, stories, aphorisms, fragments, poetry, etc. I haven't wrapped my head around a big, book-length project. I've got some ideas I'd like to explore.

4. Buy/drink a beer with a living writer whose work I dig, but who I've never met. Maybe this is a fan boy thing, but it's also wanting to talk shop, pick the brain, hear stories from someone I've read and enjoyed, someone who is doing the kind of stuff I'd like to do. A way to say thanks and to learn. There is not one particular person I have in mind, but I can think of a number of them.

5. Take a hut-to-hut family hike in the White Mountains, via the Appalachian Mountain Club. The White Mountains were a game changer for me. I've written about it on here and our hut-to-hut adventures became part of a Trail Runner Magazine feature I wrote on fastpacking. In this case, I'm not talking epic in terms of miles, but expanding the notion of epic with our girls. Something easy, starting at Pinkham or the Highland Center, going to the nearest hut for the night and heading back. Something to let them know what is out there. We live on the panoramic Eastern Shore of Maryland. It is beautiful, but flat. The girls get excited for the hills of western Pennsylvania. I'd love for our family to imbibe the whole AMC experience.

6. Attend a Liverpool Football Club game at Anfield. I've been bitten by the English Premier League soccer/football bug to be sure. I've also never left the United States--I've been from the Florida Keys to Maine to California, but never had a passport. My life won't be incomplete if I never get a passport. But hearing Reds fans singing "You'll Never Walk Alone" in unison would be a different kind of sports spectating experience. And the writer in me, and the beer drinker in me, would want to add to the trip with pub life and a day hike through the Lake District, in the footsteps of Wordsworth, maybe a stop through the Eagle and Child Tavern, a la Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams.

7. Complete a full arm tattoo sleeve of personal images and symbols. I'm on my way with my right arm sporting an elemental heron and an image form a rune with St. Patrick and snakes. My tattoos have been slower going, based on finding an image/symbol with deep, personal meaning, and time and money to get it done. But, as folks with tattoos know, the scheme digs in, the feeling, the result, walking around as a personal art gallery, yeah, sign me up.

8. Attend a Sonny Rollins concert. I prefer old school jazz to contemporary. The legends I dig listening to are mostly gone. Rollins is still touring at 82 years old. If you want some more background, Men's Journal ran a great story on Rollins in September. When Rollins was thought to be one of the top saxophone players out there, he pulled back and spent three years playing on the Williamsburg Bridge just to get even better. There is only one Saxophone Colossus.

9. Deliver a Sunday sermon. I'm not fully sure why this is on here. Part of it is an embrace what you fear approach. I'm not big on public speaking. I don't pretend to know anything profound that I could impart by means of a sermon. But I like the idea of exploring an idea, history, humor, personal experience, stories, and life with a group of folks in that way. Maybe I might even come up with something to say.

10. Create a recurring comic strip/series/story, working with an artist/illustrator. Through middle school, I devoured Marvel Comics, mostly Daredevil, The Avengers, The X-Men. Comic strips such as Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts and Pearls Before Swine, condense humor, wonder, compassion, hard knocks and friendship into memorable images and turns of phrase. We live in a visual age. I love the idea of visual storytelling. I've been reading graphic novels of late and digging the work of Matt Fraction, Frank Miller, Rick Remender. I'm not sure how, where I/we'd start, but I've been formulating some ideas. And we live in a digital age where many things are possible.

So there are ten. If I included 11, the next would be learning to play the piano. But let's stick with ten. This is above and beyond kids' field hockey games and days at the beach or park, making time for date nights and time with friends and family. Those things are the framework. The meat, with apologies to vegetarians. These ten things, they're the Gravy List.

Much like a Charlie in the Box, no one wants a haphazard mojo

My mornings have been usurped. Willingly, nobody stole them. But the up-while-it's-still-dark time that used to be for running, writing, meditating, is for work. Has been for a while, but I haven't figured out how to adjust my mojo. My mojo is fragmnted and haphazard. Much like a Charlie-in-the-Box, no one wants a haphazard mojo.

Rhythm is everything. Rhythm is nothing. If you are Eric B. and Rakim, you can let the rhythm hit 'em.  Maybe I mean momentum vs. rhythm, but probably both. They both invoke flow. So do rivers and diners, but the latter is another kind of Flo.

Eric B. and Rakim also advised not to sweat the technique. Solid advice. Get it working. Let it go. Look for content. And content is everywhere.

If my thinking is fragmented, blame David Foster Wallace. Part of my reading time is spread out within "Infinite Jest" at the moment. Other parts are contemplating alongside Thomas Merton, who seems to be who I pick up when I question faith, question life, want to find something to direct the questions.

In third grade, I went to the Salisbury Civic Center to my first WWF/professional wrestling match. There were four of us, as part of a friend's birthday party. Andre the Giant beat Blackjack Mulligan. Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka wrestled Ivan "The Polish Hammer" Putski. Bob Backlund retained his title against Playboy Buddy Rhodes. This past Sunday, we were in the same arena with our girls watching John Cena, Chris Jericho, Ryback and The Shield. Wrestling, the theater of the absurd, as a generational connection.

Baseball is another connection. March has been a dress rehearsal, building steam to opening day. About baseball, Walt Whitman said, "Baseball is our game, the American game. I connect it with our national character... America's game: has the snap, go, fling, of the American atmosphere." I'm a Whitman fan and a baseball fan. For our family, baseball season means Washington Nationals games in D.C., and Nats games on MASN on in the evenings.

The girls tear through packs of Topps baseball cards looking for Nationals' players the way I looked for Eddie Murray, Gary Roenicke and Jim Palmer Orioles cards when I was their age.

So this post is largely nostalgia. And looking forward. It's a cycle, circling back on itself and forward. It's renewal. It's spring.

 

On becoming a Nationals fan

"You'll be working right next door, you know you should think about becoming a Nationals fan. They could use you."

"Thanks, but I've always been an Orioles fan. I've got a team."

That was a conversation I had with my former boss at my going away party from the maritime museum where I worked. He was a DC lawyer who had been waiting for a team and then going to games since the former Montreal Expos came to Washington. I didn't see the appeal for me. I've always been a Baltimore guy, never a DC fan.

As has been documented here, I've built memories with my father going to Memorial Stadium. I can still name just about every Oriole that played in Baltimore from 1977 to 1997, and I studied up on the O's teams of the 1960s and early 1970s. Having said that, I've still been to more games at Memorial Stadium than I have at Camden Yards, which opened when I was 20. The O's left a sour taste in my mouth when they drove then manager Davey Johnson out of town. And Baltimore had re-emerged for me as a football city, with the Ravens as the team I followed most.

And then three baseball seasons ago, I started working in Washington, D.C. My work commute has me drive right in front of the Washington Nationals stadium every day. Our offices are right next door. One day a few seasons ago, a group of us took the afternoon off and went to a daytime Nationals game. And then another. And then another. I told myself it made sense to have a National League team to pull for, since they weren't in opposition to the Orioles. It's important for my own pride and honor to point out that the Nationals, at that time, were in worse shape than the O's. Mine was not the case of ditching a bad team for a good one.

My wife and I (mortal football enemies) went to a game together with friends. I started pointing out Nats players like Ryan Zimmerman and filling in some back stories. We got to where we would put the Nats on in the evenings in the summer. And I found what had been my childhood love of baseball, long dormant, waking up with a fervor. The Nats weren't winning right away, but they were exciting. I loved watching pitchers bat and the strategy that comes with when to pinch-hit.

I am a believer that with a sport like baseball, going to games gets you excited in a way that watching on TV cannot. There is something to being at a baseball game, sitting at Nationals Stadium that transported me back to Memorial Stadium. But the Nats were a team I found, or maybe that found me. A direction I was going. My father introduced me to baseball and to the Orioles. I inherited his love of the game. My father is also an accountant. Sometimes you have to go down the path, in life and in sports, that is right for you.

At the same time, two friends I have in DC, both raised Yankees fans, were going through something similar on their own. They both found, they had a hard time watching Yankees games, they would rather watch the Nats. One of them gave it some thought and put it this way:

"As Mike will attest, both of us will always have a warm place in our hearts for the hometown teams we were raised on, the O's & Yanks. This past weekend, I was sitting in Fells' Point, Baltimore wearing my Nats shirt in a sea of black & orange, trying to figure out exactly why I can't bring myself to watch a Yankees game in its entirety and I came up with this explanation: For many of us who had dads (or uncles in my case) who brought us to our 1st baseball game, the bond we formed w/our 1st team was something in the way of indoctrination. We looked up to our dads & wanted to be like them so rooting for a different team was practically unthinkable. As adults in a new city, loving the Nationals is no indoctrination - it is OUR CHOICE. There's something special about choosing to be swept up in civic pride on your own w/out anyone else's influence. The Yankees will always evoke fond memories & be in my heart forever but the Washington Nationals will always be MY TEAM."

I think that gets to it pretty directly. We recently took my dad to Nationals Stadium, for a Nats vs. O's game. I felt proud to show him the stadium and team I go to see, in the same way he must have felt proud to see me get swept up in the Orioles some 35 years ago.

But that's also where something remarkable to me comes in. Our daughters, ages ten and seven, each went to their first baseball games this year. I wasn't sure what to expect. Each of our girls can name every player on the Nationals roster. Our seven-year-old routinely asks about Chad Tracy or Roger Bernadina--the Goon Squad who come in off the bench--or if Sean Burnett, a relief pitcher, is going to pitch tonight. I never saw it coming. They both love Bryce Harper and Stephen Stasburg, yes, but the part of the game and player they get most excited about is when (now) closer Tyler Clippard comes into the game. I can get them to come in from outside by telling them Clippard is pitching. Our 10-year-old told me this week, "Some people think that baseball is boring to watch, but that's because they don't watch the Nationals."

I didn't see that coming. Their Natitude is off the charts. As we were driving to Florida to visit my wife's family a couple weeks ago, it was late and the Nats were playing the Red Sox. My wife was commentating the game from live updates on my phone, the girls cheering when the Nats scored.

Yesterday, Robin, Ava and I went with my father to Camden Yards to see the Nats play the O's. We had seen round one of the Battle of the Beltway series in Washington. There was a great turnout of O's fans in orange to go with the Nationals' sea of red. It was a great friendly rivalry, based on geography, in inter-league play. In Baltimore, it was similar. Full stadiums. Fans cheering for both teams. "Let's go Nats!" and "Let's go O's!" cheers trying to drown each other out.

I would not have imagined thinking of Camden Yards as an away game. The Orioles were the team that taught me about baseball, that taught me about being a fan. The Nationals are the team that found me when baseball wasn't a household word in our house, that picked us up and has swept up our family. Baseball is a sport for both the heart and the head. For us, the Nationals have both.

Of Icons and Idols

A baseball player, a skateboarder and an ultra runner walk into a bar... stop me if you've heard this one... that would actually be a conversation I'd love to sit in on. Over the course of my life, these three figures have represented the sports idols/icons that have most shaped my life.

Eddie Murray was my first sports hero. The Baltimore Orioles first baseman with his iconic hat-tamed afro. We've talked about him here before--going to your first baseball game at Memorial Stadium and being swept up in the crowd chanting, "Ed-die! Ed-die! Ed-die!" The pursuit of his Topps baseball card and even my own wanting to play first base came after. After the Colts departed Baltimore, baseball was all we had to follow.

At age 13, and a broken arm from baseball later I had moved on to lacrosse, I discovered a sport/lifestyle much more formative and transformative for me: skateboarding. This was during the time that Powell Peralta's Bones Brigade was taking shape and a tall, skinny kid was spinning 720 degree airs on half-pipes and starting to dominate professional skateboarding. I was a not-as-tall skinny kid and Tony Hawk became the guy to emulate. Never mind that we skated street, not ramps around Easton and Oxford.

Skateboarding and running have been the two physical pursuits that have shaped and defined my life probably more than any others. It's funny to think that Tony Hawk is still the singular name in skateboarding, transforming the sport and turning himself into a worldwide brand and a household name. Maybe I should have stuck with skating.

I have stepped away from both sports at different times. When I stepped back into running, at around age 30 and started reading about it, not just doing it, Dean Karnazes was making headlines and magazine covers for unthinkable pursuits. Meanwhile, another skinny kid was quietly dominating trail ultra running, winning seven consecutive Western States 100 mile races. Scott Jurek seemed to love running for running. It would take the book "Born to Run," to spread the gospel of Jurek beyond the ears of the ultra running faithful.

While I haven't skimmed the surface of the commitment or accomplishments of a Hawk or a Jurek, if you asked someone who knew me in my teenage years, the first thing they'd remember is that I was a skateboarder. If you ask someone about me over the past ten years, they'd say I was a runner. We take cues and inspiration from the icons of the sports and pursuits we love. We may try to emulate their training or tricks or style.

I have held Murray, Hawk and Jurek up, and still do, as emblems of sports I love. Our various icons shape our lives. I've been riffing on and thinking about icons a lot lately as Adam Yauch, MCA of the Beastie Boys died of cancer at age 47. And Maurice Sendak, author of "Where the Wild Things Are," which was THE iconic book from my childhood--my mom decorated my room after the book--died a few days later.

The Beastie Boys have been the band I have most consistently listened to since I was 14. I have previously listed their album "Paul's Boutique" as one of the major touchstones in my life. I guess we reach an age when our touchstones, our icons, start to disappear. We're all ephemeral.

I don't have a point here, or a neat bow to tie everything up with. I guess it's just a matter of acknowledging and appreciating the icons, the people, who I have held up; who have dedicated their lives to pursuits that are important to me. Of giving props to the people who have brought joy and inspiration to me over the years.

Hey, beer man!

I'm not prone to hallucinate about baseball beer guys. So I'm pretty sure I saw him. He wasn't carrying, or hawking beer. And he was in the wrong city. He might be a two-timer, like me.

Yesterday, walking down Half Street from work, there was Howard the beer guy from Camden Yards. In D.C.

Howard's probably the only beer guy I can identify by sight, anywhere in the world. He's got a timeless mullet, pulled into a ponytail. And for a while, he had a shtick that no one could touch.

Whenever he poured your beer, he would ask you a baseball trivia question. If you got it right, he gave you your beer, for free. He was a walking baseball encyclopedia. It was awesome.

Howard stopped asking my dad questions when he got his second answer right during one game. He shut dad down, smartly. My dad can hang on the baseball trivia.

My crowning beer-buying accomplishment was the time I knew "Walter Johnson" was the right answer to Howard's question about a fantastic pitcher who pitched for sub-par teams near Baltimore, but the Nationals hadn't moved to D.C. yet. He probably thought I was too young to remember that the Senators were a team in D.C. (I am too young, but my baseball knowledge runs historical at times). I got my free beer from Howard.

So yesterday, Howard was walking in D.C., in a red shirt, carrying a bag to the Nationals vs. Phillies game (the Nats won 10-2, by the way). I'm not sure whether he was going just to catch the game, or if he is two-timing Camden Yards with Nationals Stadium. I don't blame him if he is. I do that too.

But I hope he was just going to enjoy the game. Reading the Baltimore Style Magazine piece on the people at Camden Yards (link above, look for Howard Hart), you can tell he still digs baseball and taking in a live game. He's a guy I'd like to buy a beer.

I'd bet he's walked more steps at Camden Yards than anyone could count. He probably turns to "hey beer man!" anywhere, at any time, purely on reflex. But there are those of us that know his name is Howard. And he knows his baseball.

Doug DeCinces had an indestructible mustache

It was probably my most prized possession from childhood. The 1980 Topps Eddie Murray card (from the 1979 season). It was the first year I really dialed in on collecting baseball cards. Being my favorite player, he wound up being the most elusive.

Billy, the kid that lived two doors down from my grandparents in Towson, was the first person I knew that had the card. No matter how I reasoned with him, he wouldn't take a two-for-one trade for Mark Belanger and Rich Dauer, the Orioles shortstop and second baseman. He really didn't understand how much more I wanted the Murray card than he did.

I remember sitting down in McCrory's Five and Dime on Washington Street in Easton, in the baseball card section, pouring over the clear three-packs of cards, looking to see which packs had the most visible Orioles. Mike Flanagan, Lee May, Doug DeCinces. It felt like by having their baseball cards and going to games or watching on TV, you somehow knew the players. DeCinces had an indestructible mustache in his earlier Orioles days. It was Magnum P.I. cool. I remember when he shaved it off.

Josh Wilker gets all this and then some. His book Cardboard Gods: An All-American Tale Told Through Baseball Cards took me instantly back to McCrorys; back to organizing baseball cards; to going to games at Memorial Stadium; to watching on TV as Rickey Henderson break Lou Brock's single season stolen base record of 118 stolen bases in 1982, and then looking for his card that proved that fact the next year. I wasn't an Oakland A's fan, but for some reason watching that game on TV stands out in my head.

Wilker's book is as much about life-existence-childhood and throwing himself headlong into baseball cards as a normalizing force. I give Cardboard Gods and its reconnecting me to that place and time, part of the credit for getting me so amped for the upcoming baseball season. Wilker, along with Buck Showalter and the Orioles front office, and 105.7FM "The Fan" and driving by Nationals Stadium every day, as we've mentioned before.

That and it seems as if the O's are bringing back facial hair to some degree. And this bearded guy says, "Play ball!" And wipe your chin off, for crissakes...

Something About the Sun

Something about the sun, about how it feels different on your face come spring. About how it means baseball season and free Cokes for foul balls and practice after school. And games at Memorial Stadium where, as a son, I remember the chants, "Ed-die! Ed-die!"

Something about the sun and how, mixed with sky blue it makes spring green and brings swimming in cold water at the ferry dock.

Something about the sun and how it warms memories out--a great fiery reminder of the bright beautiful memories it has given us.

Something about the sun and running as it stretches its arms over the horizon, can't help but smile back on a sunrise run.

And Sun Salutations--mountain, upward salute, standing forward bend--and how, like running the postures and movements are the same each day, but each day different, like the sun, and how each gives us a conversation, a greeting with our movement in the morning, each bowing and stretching and smiling toward the other.

Something about the sun and how it means wisdom and understanding and warmth and light and waking and day, and what we might say to it, if we thought it would answer, which, of course, it does.

The eternal, earth, air, heaven
That glory, that resplendence of the sun
May we contemplate the brilliance of that light
May the sun inspire our minds.

Gayatari mantra, from the Rig Veda, translated by Douglas Brooks