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.

I'm a Timex

I'm a Timex. Nothing fancy or newfangled. Nothing too impressive, but to those that run, those that don't throw money at watches, those that know, just right. If I won the lottery, I'd still wear a Timex and drive a simple pick up truck.

I started wearing Timex watches after I trained for and ran my first marathon with a normal watch. I've been in love with a Swiss Army Watch, have had some decent enough timepieces, still actually prefer a standard clock face to digital, but can't justify anything else. I beat watches to pieces. I don't take my watch off to shower, swim, run, dig in the garden, I don't like to have to think about it, to remember where I left it. So it stays on.

I'm not sure how many Timexes I have had. Always the Ironman, so I can have simple elapsed time for my runs, and multiple alarms set for getting up in the morning. And it doesn't seem to shy from brackish bay and river water.

My Timexes have run marathons, ultra marathons, trails, and hiked the White Mountains. They've played football and gone paddleboarding and hugged toilets after "spirited" nights. They have picked steamed blue crabs and cooked gumbo and jambalaya and cleaned fish and cannonballed off of speeding boats.

It's funny what you notice when you have one, or who else you notice wearing them. The Coast Guard admirals I have worked with/for, the runners, the ones in the best shape, all wear Timex Ironman watches. Not fancy watches and not Garmin. Just the simple go-to.

A Timex feels like an old pick up, with a dent or two, so that you don't mind or think about anything that happens to it, you are curious what it can take. And if it meets its match, even if it has been through it all with you, its spirit gets reincarnated into the next Timex.

My Timex is just a part of my arm, an extension of myself that I put on and don't think about until I need it. They are not for everyone. I am sure they would look out of place in a Range Rover, Jag, or Cadillac. But so would I.