It’s isn’t often that we get to spend an intimate moment with one of our kids. I got to do it with both my kids and it imprinted an indelible memory in my brain. Mind you, one was painful as hell and the other rift with poisonous snakes, lethal frogs and creepy crawlers who liked to go caving in parts of your body they shouldn’t be in. But that’s another story.
The first crash and carry story had to do with my wonderful daughter, Melanie, and the grand plans we had for running the 2014 Twin Cities Marathon together. I ‘d already done two other marathons. The first in 1982, when I was a much younger man, proved a very nice PB (personal best) for me. The second was more laborious but ultimately successful in that I finished pretty strong for a middle-aged jogger. The third would be my last. I was getting up on age and three seemed like a nice round number in which to end my distance running career.
This last twenty-six miler turned out to be an adventure neither one of
us had planned for or anticipated. Melanie and I began training in early summer
and were up to 22 miles for our last weekend when I came down (literally falling
to the ground) with a stress fracture.
That injury meant six weeks of recovery. So, by the time the marathon
came along we had only built our weekend mileage back up to sixteen miles. Undeterred,
I was determined to run the race and hope for the best.
We started out slow and easy and kept a reasonable pace for all of sixteen miles. Then everything fell apart. Back pain began to creep up and crippled my spine. My legs turned to rubber and I experienced some of the worst pain I’d ever experienced in my life. It felt as if all my systems, internal and external, were going south and taking me mentally with them. It seemed the end of the road for me.
Common sense dictated that I drop out at that point. There seemed
little reason to continue when I could hardly put one foot in front of the
other. Melanie was kind, sympathetic but realistic. “Dad, I think you should
drop out.” She said. “But if you want to continue, I’ll stay with you.”
That was all I needed to hear. Dreading another summer of hard training and trying again in 2015 was enough to convince me, even as brain dead as I was in that moment, that another summer of pounding the pavement would be worse than the pain I was experiencing at the moment.
So, we started out slowly together, walking one block, jogging another. We kept up that stumbling, staggering pace for another ten miles and finally came in at a little under six hours. Melanie had carried me home and I will be forever grateful for that. I’m done with marathons now. I finished the last one in 2014 and while my timing wasn’t the best, I finished the thing and am damn proud of my accomplishment.
Melanie gave up any PB for herself but has since gone on to run numerous other marathons, triathlons, the Afton trail race, Pikes Peak, Cactus to Clouds hike and running the Grand Canyon rim to rim. Her running portfolio hasn’t suffered from her patience and kindness shown to her old Dad as he mentally fought those last ten very painful miles beside her.
Brian, on the other hand, took me into the heart of the Amazon rain forest and left me there. Boy, am I grateful for that experience!
Send a sixteen-year-old down to South America on his own (actually part of a school field trip), leave him there alone for two weeks and you’ve got a total stranger on your hands.
Two weeks with a wealthy family in Quito, Ecuador, was enough to turn
my son Brian into a Jack London, Jack Kerouac and Tom Clancy wannabee wrapped
up behind the disguise of a high school sophomore, varsity wrestler, chess
captain, honor student and overall macho man.
Quito, formally known as San Francisco de Quito, is the capital city of Ecuador. At an elevation of 9,350, it is the highest capital city in the world. It’s a strange mixture of new buildings and old. New wealth mingling with extreme poverty. All of this surrounded by the magnificent Andes Mountains.
Once our group left Quito, transportation was quickly reduced to using the local long-range bus system. Built for stamina and very rough roads, these transportation dinosaurs could do the distance. But creature comforts were left back at the station. The buses were built for the locals, which meant that if you were over five feet tall, your head would bounce up against the roof every time the bus hit a pothole or rut in the road. It happened a lot!
Traveling down to the Amazon rain basin from mountainous Quito entailed harrowing bus rides on dirt roads that simultaneously hugged mountainous cliffs on one side of the road and sheer drop-offs on the other. Not for the faint of heart or those with altitude problems.
River crossings were always interesting, especially since this was the rainy season. If the bus driver wasn’t sure about the depth of the river crossing, we’d hop a pickup truck along with the locals and try to cross that way. We were like the preverbal canary in the mineshaft. If we made it across, the bus should be able to make it too.
River transportation in that part of the Amazon consists of mainly dugout canoes. Enormous tree trunks were hollowed out and a motor placed in back. Since it was the wet season, our pilot was always on the lookout for washed out tree trunks floating in the river. A collision with one of those battering rams could have easily turned our dugout over on its side and put bodies into the water.
The other word of caution was for us to watch out for snakes hanging from low-lying tree branches or snakes in the water. And, of course, the proverbial crocodiles, which loved to shadow our dugout canoe hoping to find a hand or two dragging alongside in the water.
Brian and I agreed that the most memorable experience of the entire trip was our vision quest in a pouring rainstorm. Each of us, student and adult alike, was marched into the jungle and then left alone (totally separated from one another) for a period of an hour or longer with only the sounds and smells and humidity of the jungle to assault your senses. It just so happened that our incubation period occurred during a very heavy rainstorm. I mean sheets of rain and visibility of about ten feet, if that, for hours on end.
The idea was to experience the Amazon rain forest in its entirety
without the distractions of other people and outside influences. There was no
way any one of us could have found our way out of there. We had to trust that
our guide would come back and find us and lead us back to camp. It was awesome.
Brian and I both thought we’d died and gone to heaven. Hard to explain if you
haven’t been there but it was a very thought-provoking experience. A true
vision quest.
Our trip to the Amazon was more than just a high school field trip. Instead, it became a journey of self-discovery for both Brian and myself. For Brian, it was his first taste of other cultures, which only wetted his appetite for greater adventures ahead and inspired him to travel around the world while still in college. For myself, it was a continuation of my desire to explore options and opportunities that might expand my own creative horizon.
So, while some other fathers might regale their buddies with father-son bonding stories of camping trips or baseball games, I came to admire and grow very proud of my son in the dangerous backwaters and jungles of the Amazon River basin. As for my daughter, my asphalt angel, well, she carried me home too…. just in a different wonderful way.
What a lucky dad am I.
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