Cruising Town and the Cosmos

Since moving to Oxford in July, the girls have newly found the bed of the pick-up truck I have had for 12 years. When the speed limit is 25 (and you have checked with local law enforcement to make sure they are permitted to travel in the back of the truck) and the sun is shining, the bed of a pick up can feel a lot like a horse-drawn carriage. Cruising to the beach at the Strand, or to the park, or for ice cream at the Scottish Highland Creamery warrants Will Smith's "Summertime" for a soundtrack.

We've taken to different means and times for cruising the town. Longboarding to and from work has put a perma-grin on my face. Thirty years ago I rode my first skateboard down these same streets as a vagrant youth, now I wave and talk to folks skating to work. The symmetry is not lost on me.

Another new habit, rekindling an old wonder, is night walks, fully staring at the star-filled sky.

Life over the past year-plus has taken some unexpected turns. New houses, new jobs, new life in so many ways, but still connected to all that has come before and all that is still to come. Ava's return home from a month in the hospital; her return to school and seeing friends and family; life getting into a familiar, but new fall rhythm. When I walk under the sky, pondering constellations and the cosmos, the vast scale of it all and wondering how all the dots connect--what, if anything, my walk to the market for lunch has to do with the broader order of the Universe--it makes my mind both spin and sit still. So I've called in the experts, picking up Carl Sagan's "Cosmos," of which Neil deGrasse Tyson has done a documentary reboot; cultivating gratitude while walking, running, skateboarding, sitting, or going to church.

It's all a cosmic puzzle I doubt I will ever be able to put together. And I'm okay with that. Here's why...

I got off work on Wednesday and went for a run. At different points along the way, I stopped and took in the sunset, both visually and breathing it in. Taking pictures to remember it. Each scene was stretches of river and horizon I have seen countless thousands of times. But not once did any of those previous times look exactly like it did that evening, on that run. Maybe that is because those exact colors, and those exact scenes had never been assembled quite like they were just then. I think that is true. But equally true is that my eyes see differently now than they ever have before.

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?

A few of my favorite things

 
There are things you know you love before you know they exist or before you know they have names or to name them. For me these things are frequently mongrels--mixed breeds of pursuits, activities or passions that when combined reach beyond what the disparate parts can do on their own.

I write entirely to find out what I am thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see, and what it means. --Joan Didion.

I never thought of trail running as something different from distance running, just the best/coolest part of what running is. When I rekindled my running a few years back, I saw an issue of Trail Runner Magazine on the newsstand and it was instant and immersive epiphany. The first time I hit a trail with that intention in my crawl, I basically floated above the trails. I read and thought about it when I wasn't doing it. It provides an aesthetic, a rush, a peace, a calm, a connection that other ways of being don't and maybe can't. Trail running is the reduction, the distillation of what I dig most about running, kind of like fast-forwarding through the boring parts of an action movie.

Cruising the streets, surveying concrete and asphalt for hills, tools, angles, transitions, this was/is the organic, responsive part of skateboarding that tractor-beamed me into it as a teenager. A sort of nomadic zen that seemed to be created with/by the hum of polyurethane wheels in motion. When I stepped back into skating at age 35 on a 7x27 Element board with thin wheels not meant for rolling, something was amiss. Ollying objects was fun, but nothing soulful.

When a friend brought his Subsonic Pulse 40-inch longboard over and we took turns surfing the street and learned long distance pumping, the mutt offspring of long distance skateboarding took root in me. Just going out cruising, seeing what you encounter, but also pushing your own boundaries or limits.

Most recently it was the naming of the lyric essay while reading David Shields. The lyric essay is a label-shunning literary hybrid that describes what I have looked for in reading and strive to create in writing. I'm not sure when or where or who coined the genre, but the Seneca Review outed it in a 1997 issue. The editors, John D'Agata and Deborah Tall talk about it like this:

"The lyric essay partakes of the poem in its density and shapeliness, its distillation of ideas and musicality of language. It partakes of the essay in its weight, in its overt desire to engage with facts, melding its allegiance to the actual with its passion for imaginative form... As Helen Vendler says of the lyric poem, "It depends on gaps. . . . It is suggestive rather than exhaustive." ... it may meander, making use of other genres when they serve its purpose: recombinant, it samples the techniques of fiction, drama, journalism, song, and film.

"Given its genre mingling, the lyric essay often accretes by fragments, taking shape mosaically - its import visible only when one stands back and sees it whole... It elucidates through the dance of its own delving... Loyal to that original sense of essay as a test or a quest, an attempt at making sense, the lyric essay sets off on an uncharted course through interlocking webs of idea, circumstance, and language - a pursuit with no foreknown conclusion, an arrival that might still leave the writer questioning... We turn to the lyric essay - with its malleability, ingenuity, immediacy, complexity, and use of poetic language - to give us a fresh way to make music of the world."

Yeah, that's the ticket. A test, a quest, an attempt at making sense, questioning, trying to figure the world and myself out as part of the process. Trying to learn something via writing that I didn't and wouldn't have known otherwise. That's what writing has always been about for me and why in school and outside of school, philosophy and literature and writing have always been connected, there have never been clear lines between them and the best writers, the ones that I come back to again and again, are the ones who fuse all these things together and speak them, combine them in ways that you never forget. Ways that make you see. Differently.

* image by Robert Rauschenberg

Skate to Create

"Skateboarding is not a crime." That was one of many bumper stickers on the blue Ford LTD station wagon that was my first car. From Tony Hawk to Powell Perelta, Alva, they were all skate-related, but that was the sticker that seemed to snag a worldview and spoke my truth 22 years ago. Funny how I've thought about putting that same sticker on my truck today.

I just read an article about pro skateboarder Danny Way in Men's Journal by a writer and skateboarder named Bret Anthony Johnston. As he's wrapping up the article, he throws this out there:

"Think Picasso, Hemingway, Dvorak. Think Laird Hamilton, Chuck Yeager... Consider the likelihood that these men don't possess qualities the rest of us lack, but instead have within them intense voids, empty and expansive chambers of possibility. Maybe these voids--which the men fill with what can only be called art--are innate, or maybe they're the result of damage or sacrifice or failures the artists have endured. The origin doesn't matter. Nor does the medium."

Johnston was talking about Danny Way's approach to skateboarding and life and expanding that approach to other artists; other practitioners of life who become great, distinguish themselves, separate themselves in some way through a sustained effort and focus; seeing something in their field that the rest of us haven't.

I've never given myself over to skateboarding in that way, nor have I ever been good enough to justify doing so. But skateboarding has, from the beginning at age 13, represented a worldview for me. It has been one of the few experiences, still today, where the rest of the world melts away when simply cruising or carving or pumping atop asphalt. Like trail running or writing or meditation, where I can be completely in the moment without realizing it.

At age 15 I remember thinking to myself and saying to a few others that skateboarding would be a lifelong passion and activity for me--whether skating or writing about it, etc. I doubt I would have thought about longboarding then, or  long distance longboarding, but that has been the co-evolution of the sport/art and me and where I find my stoke. In addition to writing about skating and skateboarding a few times a week, Bret Anthony Johnston is the director of the creative writing program at Harvard. He's got a book of short stories set in and around Corpus Christi, Texas, and another on creative writing. Someone who gets and shares the stoke.

Boardom: Get Up, Stand Up

Valliant and Ryan Hickey approach a beach for a quick recharge during the 7.5-mile paddle from Easton Point to Town Creek in Oxford, Md.

Count me in. If it sounds fun and/or epic, I don't want to miss it. One of the reasons I try to stay in reasonable shape running, longboarding, etc. is that I don't want to have to sit out any adventure that stacks up to be cool.

That's what happened when Joel Shilliday proposed a 7.5-mile stand-up paddleboarding (SUP) trek from Easton Point in Easton, Md., to Town Creek in Oxford. I hadn't spent much time on a SUP and can't recall the last time I paddle more than a mile in a kayak, canoe, etc. But I wasn't going to miss connecting two towns in a way almost no one has done.

Joel, Ryan Hickey, Jim Campbell, and I set off at around 6:40am with the sun coming up, boats departing for a local fishing tournament, and flat, following seas. I grew up on the Tred Avon River, making the same Oxford-to-Easton route hundreds of times in a 13' Boston Whaler.

The view from a SUP board on a scenic waterway equals the full body workout you get from paddling while standing up. And the Tred Avon River boasts creeks and cuts next to multi-million dollar estates; by water, you are able to see what's at the end of the long, wooded lanes you pass driving along Oxford Road. All you need is a Robin Leach voice-over.

Jim had to turn back about half-way to make a meeting and Ryan, Joel, and I continued on, arriving at the Oxford public ramp next to Schooners Landing at about 9am, with one brief sandy beach layover, mostly just to enjoy the trip and the morning more. That was my first stand-up paddleboarding trek of any substance. I look forward to many more.

Ted Knab, Zach Skaggs, and me Mikey V. at the western end of the Cross Island Trail, Chesapeake Bay and Bay Bridge in the background.

My primary adventures in "boardom" come on a longboard skateboard. We had a fairly recent group skate on the Cross Island Trail on Kent Island earlier this month, further details of which can be found on the Rise Up Longboarders blog. The next uber-longboarding adventure will come in mid-October as we take the RUL crew to western Maryland for 21 miles of smooth, scenic pavement (42 miles round trip if we do the whole trail) on the Western Maryland Rail Trail.

That trip is another case of something that looks way too fun to pass up. I can't imagine many folks have given the whole trail a go on longboards, as the discipline of long distance skateboarding isn't as widespread around here as it is, say, in the Seattle area. Novelty aside, though, it just looks like a blast--a windy, scenic paved trail, no traffic, as the fall foliage starts to re-color itself.

So the fall adventures are shaping up. We've got some trail running designs, both locally and beyond; some longboarding road trips; and some fall stand-up paddleboarding, not to mention a fall road marathon or half-marathon. The kind of stuff that makes me want to rise up early out of bed and cruise out into the cool, fall weather.

A Little Balance

I've never been able to pull off "balance." Not in the holistic-life-schedule sense. I tend to overload, juggle, and then try to get into some semblance of a routine. I am not there at the moment (any real routine), but I am working on it.

For me, the pieces right now are running, longboarding, yoga, and writing. Those are the practices/disciplines I am trying to keep building my free time around. That all comes with the caveat that family and work are the bedrock of any schedule.

Introspection can come from any number of outside factors. It hits me regardless, faulty wiring no doubt, but this winter, a heaping dose has come from being sick. Various crud has made its presence known more in the past six months than probably any other time in my life and certainly my adult life. Fargin' kids ;) And this on the heels of a stretch in 2008 where I didn't miss a Rise Up Runner morning run for like eight months.

Part of that has felt like a lack of real morning schedule. It's been a winter of not having an upcoming race since the Rehoboth Marathon at the end of November. It's been focusing on cross training and picking up longboarding. It's been work, it's been lack of sleep, whatever.

It's feeling good to be hitting spring and looking forward to events on the calendar. Ultra Skate is in the books. You can read Landy's take on it on the new Rise Up Longboarders team blog. I ended up with 83 miles in about 10.5 hours of actual skating time. Landy, Charlie, and Zach each broke 100 miles, having spent the morning (in accordance with the plan that I had to bail on) skating on Kent Island.

The Trail Dawgs half-marathon is only a few weeks away. Then some real distance training, with a pack, for the Rachel Carson Trail Challenge in June. The warmer weather is motivating. The balance of running and longboarding is fun and inspiring. And the return to health is coming.

Learning to Wait; Ultra Skate VI

No heatlamp-warmed boards here. The crew at Longboard Larry getting to work on the very Walkabout I am skating.

I don't like to wait. I'm not alone. The proof can be found everywhere: fast food, drive-thrus, free overnight shipping, next day air (hello Amazon Prime), lose weight instantly, feel better today, one-stop-shopping. We want what we want as long as it's now.

The skateboarding world always seemed the same: pick the board you want from these models and off it comes. Your Tony Hawk or Lance Mountain or Rob Roskopp or Tony Alva was shipping out just like anyone else's. Running shoes and gear are the same.

The world of longboarding, and in particular long distance pumping is a different world, with different rules and a vastly different time table. It's the difference between said drive-thru and a meal at the nicest restaurant around--you slow down and you wait.

There are a number of "guys" making great longboards ("guys" in that you are often dealing with the individual making the board--no go between, no customer service, but you correspond with the person making and shaping your board). Subsonic Skateboards, Galac, and Roe Racing are among the best out there when it comes to long distance pumping. Another "guy" and company working among the best is Longboard Larry.

Any of these companies start making your board when you order it. And you wait. It can take a couple weeks if business is slow, to a month or more if they are jamming. Landy was on the stealth mode when he ordered his first board from Subsonic, didn't tell any of our running crew until his board was about to show up.

And the wait is worth it. When I slapped trucks, risers/wedges, and wheels on my LBL Walkabout when it arrived, it all clicked. Sometimes, waiting is worth it.

This week has been a lot about waiting. Waiting for Ultra Skate VI. Staying off the board, running and working out just a little to stay loose, trying to catch up on rest. Tapering in runner's terms. Why? Starting Friday night, we'll try to see how many miles we can skate in 24 hours. We've worked on routes, on gear, we've gotten riding in. So tomorrow night, we get the show roadbound and see what happens. Look for a report after the weekend.

So how do I feel about waiting around this week for Ultra Skate? About like this...

Crossing the Island

One of many cool views along the Cross Island Trail, Kent Island, Maryland.

I'm not sure I'll ever run another 50-mile race. But I haven't ruled it out. I've always been one to test my limits in terms of endurance, rather than speed. Talking some time ago to RUR tri-guy and analyst Dan Bieber, Dan mentioned that he was working getting sprint triathlons wired as he knew he could be competitive at the shorter distances, while he built his endurance up toward the longer stuff.

For me, the question isn't generally how fast I can run a particular distance (though that can drive me, for sure), rather how far can I go? For running, my current answer was found completing the JFK 50-mile race. Not fast, but finishing.

Longboarding adds a new dimension to that line of questioning. I am now a faster longboarder than runner (which makes sense, wheels and all :). Landy, Charlie, and I can hit 15 mph on Oxford Road at a stretch. The gliding, carving, and pumping is addictive. Pavement rolls underneath and the change in surface to a glassy stretch of road is surreal and seductive. Add a small hill and the wind at your back or the windy pavement in the Easton Club in the dark, and you've got a wild ride.


So first the question of the upcoming Ultra Skate, as Landy proposed it, was to see if we could skate 100 miles in a day. As we've been hitting the roads and trails, "Dr. Longboard" is starting to sing another tune: what about 150 miles? Do you think we could go for the full 24 hours? We haven't come to a conclusion, other than to have fun, let loose, and see what happens. We're devising our route to be a combination of Easton's Rails to Trails, Oxford Road from Easton to Oxford and back, and a heavy dose of the Kent Island Cross Island Trail.

Felllow longboarders Landy, Brian Wheatley and I cruised up to the Cross Island Trail on Sunday to do some scouting. Hard to believe that less than a week before, we had a snowy Rise Up Runner jaunt through Easton. Yesterday it was shorts and t-shirt weather, climbing into the 70s.


The Cross Island Trail has a number of fans: bikers, runners, walkers, they are all out there. I didn't notice any other longboarders, and it seems there is a novelty and mild fascination for folks when they see you go past on a longboard, LDP style!

A stellar way to enjoy the trail, the day, friends, and to find a groove and move into it. I hope to bookend more weeks with an epic style run (though it needn't be snowy) and a 15-mile or longer longboarding session. The week's workouts also included an indoor treadmill day, knocking out 7:30 minute miles, or an 8 mph pace for a solid hour, covering 8 miles. I am not a hamster wheel runner, but a solo run on a windy 13 degree morning didn't sound that fun...

My weekly workouts continue to be a combination of longboarding--with eyes on Ultra Skate--and running. I have a feeling the balance part of that equation will lean differently based on upcoming race schedules, opportunities and challenges.

30-Mile Weekend

The sunrise over wetlands along Oxford Road, as seen on a longboard Saturday morning.

I got lucky. I don't normally take to the roads both mornings of a weekend. So racking up a conservative 30 miles, likely 50K, over the course of two days was a treat.

Saturday morning was cold. The Weather Channel warned something like 20 degrees, colder with wind chill. But it doesn't take long to learn that cold is not nearly so debilitating as wind on a longboard. And since the wind slept in, Charlie, Landy and I opted to head out. The plan was to meet in Easton behind Coffee East at 5 a.m.

Running early, I've often thought there's not much cooler than running to an ipod infused soundtrack to a sleeping town. The pre-sunrise morning offers the sublime to those who will go find it. But pumping and cruising up Washington Street listening to Bob Marley and Jimi Hendrix, the trek on a longboard surpassed the "coolness" of a morning run.

We donned headlamps and vests and had the town to ourselves, aiming up Oxford Road. Prior to sun up, you can pretty well own the road, not relegated to only the bike lane. It makes it easy to get into a groove and hone in long distance pumping technique.

We've been running in the mornings long enough now that motorists may have become accustomed to high beams hitting reflective vests on their way to town. I can tell you, they are not accustomed to grown men on skateboards coming at them. I can guess that we have become the subject of confused cell phone discussions or what seemed a lack of caffeine-induced hallucination.

I loaded my backpack with a couple bottles of Propel, which make for tasty slushies, a Balance bar, which was too frozen to eat, and thankfully a camera for the trip. Catching a sunrise during a long trek with friends is one of the key reasons to run or skate early.

After a good out-and-back route on Oxford Road, we returned to hit a bit of Easton, ending up on Rails to Trails, a stretch unencumbered by cars, except for street crossings. Both routes (Oxford Road and Rails to Trails) will likely be incorporated into our upcoming Ultra Skate on March 21.

Landy and Charlie nearing the North Easton Sports Complex at the northern end of Rails to Trails.

The end of our trek found me at 18.5 miles, based on Landy's GPS, which marks my longest longboard session to date.

Longboarding, a cold a couple weeks ago, swimming and cross training have cut into my running time, so I was determined to get a 10 to 12-mile run in on Sunday. Rain was likely and did in fact join us for our run. I slept in, slugged back some coffee, waited for the ladies of the house to get up and get straight and ran up to the YMCA to meet RUR peeps Joel Shilliday, Dominic Szwaja, and Dan Bieber. The goal was to explore the trails of the Cooke's Hope development and see where the trails led once across the foot bridge over Peachblossom Creek.

The rain took a backseat to conversation, exploration, and taking in the newer development along Llandaff Road. Dan and Dominic are notoriously speedy, so it kept the pace honest, especially given my lack of running. Dan peeled off at the Y, Joel at his crib, and Dominic joined me for a stretch of Rails to Trails. In the end, I logged about 12.5 miles or so at roughly an average of 8:3o pace.

30+ miles in two days, on longboard and on foot, enjoying the mornings and my Rise Up Runner friends. It sets the tone for the rest of the day. It helps me test myself. And the by-product is that it gets me closer to being ready for Ultra Skate and the Trail Dawgs in March and April.

On Deck...

The "Walkabout" from Longboard Larry. A good name, concept, and metaphor for what I dig about running and longboarding. Pilgrimages don't just come around at Thanksgiving.

Between 4 and 6 a.m., it is now not uncommon to catch a few longboards covering some of our running routes. If you don't see anyone out running on a Tuesday morning, it is likely there is a pool full of Rise Up Runners at the Talbot County Y.M.C.A. With cold comes cross training.

But that's not exactly what happened with me this winter. I got shown the way back to skateboarding. Not my old ollie, rail slide skateboarding, but long distance longboarding. 20 years ago, my free time was spent doing some combination of running, skateboarding and writing. That sounds much like the last couple weeks :)

I wouldn't have thought to combine distance running with longboarding. But having gone out for 16 miles, 13 miles, 9 miles, it is a great synthesis of things that are life affirming for me.

When I run I don't care if I never see pavement. So much the better. But now I'm in the habit of scoping around for smooth stretches of road or parking lots. I enjoy the variation. And I enjoy the possibities and adventures that distance longboarding has opened up. We have several great paved rail trails on Kent Island, around Annapolis, D.C., and leading into Baltimore. You'll be reading about our treks to various places--both online and in print.

In 2009, readers of The 4-1-Run will get their fill of trail running and running; fastpacking and multi-sport events; the antics of the Rise Up Runners, and adventures in longboarding. It's a current in RUR that's caught a few of us--Landy, Charlie and shortly Derek at the outset. If you want to get an idea of what is possible and what people are doing on longboards, check out James Peters's Pavedwave website and forum. A clearinghouse for long distance pumping and skateboarding. And if you think runners have the market and media corned for being nutty, you can check out Adam Colton and the crew embarking on Long Treks on Skate Decks--skating through South America.

As my race calendar develops for 2009, you'll notice the first event on it is a brainchild of Peters and the Pavedwave: Ultra Skate 2009. We'll be shooting for 100 miles and then decide if we'll keep going to try to make 24 hours. Yep, this is right up our alley :)