Thursday, November 24, 2005

Back to my Roots : Part 1

I realized in the past couple of days that I have not written anything about my actual trip. Rather than making this a travel journal, I have been more just focused on particular incidents from my trip and expounded on them. I have another entry I would like to write along those lines, but I will make this entry a description of what I have actually been doing on this trip. Hopefully without heading off into too many tangents (which I have a tendency to do).

The flight out here last Friday passed without major incident. A friend of mine drove us to the airport so I didn't have to either leave my van at the airport or pay for someone to take us (either case would have added a good chunk of money to the cost of my trip). As we rode the freeway, I commented to her that I felt stressed even though we had plenty of time to reach the airport and everything was going just fine. I think that I have a tendency to expect something to happen, even though I have no reason to think that way. Perhaps the higher level of stress I feel is my way of preparing for whatever that might be. I didn't start to feel relaxed until I was sitting with my kids at the gate. It turns out that I did not need to prepare myself for anything. The only thing that happened was very minor and it was resolved quite quickly. When we went through security (yea, that dreaded area of the airport ... security), the woman that checked our boarding passes asked me for the passes for the SJ to Denver leg. She said that all that I handed to here were the passes for the Denver to Kansas City leg. I looked at the passes and yes, three of the boarding passes were missing. I thought I must have dropped them , but at the same time I thought that someone would have pointed it out (the airport was not crowded, but neither was it empty). So I told my kids to wait there and I retraced out steps. I had to keep my mind from about what would happen if they were truly lost. Instead, I just followed the path we took from the curbside checkin. I didn't see any passes on the floor, didn't see anything in the rest room, nothing on the seats where my kids waited for a bit, nothing. I finally arrived back at the curbside checkin and looked around there. The skycap asked me what I was looking for. I told him that I seemed to have lost some boarding passes and was looking for them. He looked at the desk and saw some passes sitting there. He picked them up, read off the names and asked if those were the ones I was looking for. Yes, those were ours. He gave them to me and said he couldn't figure out how they got there. I think they may not have been given to us, but I told him that it didn't really matter. I had the passes and that was what was important.

Since that was the worst that happened on the trip out, I am not going to complain. Any trip is going to have its rough spots. I think you just have to accept that, deal with them when they happened, and then move on to enjoy what you encounter next.

We arrived in Kansas City along with our luggage, picked up our rental car, and headed up the road to Des Moines. In just under 3 hours, we pulled into my brother's driveway. The trip was over. We went to the front door and went inside without knocking since my sister-in-law had told us that they might be in bed. Turns out they weren't. They had gone for dinner and arrived home as we were about to head to bed.

Not an exciting trip, but that is OK. When I travel with my kids, the less excitement, the better.

The next day was the race that I described a couple of posts ago and then a visit with some Iowa friends. I want to discuss that in another post so I will not bring that up here.

Sunday and Monday were spent at my brother and sister-in-law's house just hanging out. This, of course, is what vacations are for. Reading, drinking wine, reading some more, watching a little TV, visiting ... pretty much doing just what I wanted.

Looks like I didn't get very far into my trip with this post and I need to head to bed soon. We are having a family picture tomorrow and I don't want to stay up too late. As seems to be typical with me, I have a number of ideas for posts. Only time will tell whether or not I actually write any of them. I hope you have enjoyed what I have written.

Monday, November 21, 2005

My Journey

Free does not mean that you establish the curriculum; only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time.

A Course in Miracles
"I am on a journey." That statement can mean many different things. It can mean a physical journey like the trip I am taking right now. It can mean a spiritual journey as is laid out in many books, one of which I am reading right now. This post is about the latter.

About a year and a half ago, I discovered a book by Dan Millman called "Way of the Peaceful Warrior". I saw it in a bookstore that is oriented toward a spiritual type of customer and I wrote the title down with the intention of looking for it in used book stores. I eventually went an even less expensive route and borrowed it from my local library. It's the story of the author's journey to find himself and to find his spiritual place in the universe. I read the book at the exact time in my life where it was able to have a strong impact on me. Some of its impact has faded, but certain ideas that are expressed in the book have stuck with me. One of the most important ideas is the idea to live in the here and now. Whenever I write or speak about that concept, I have to add that I don't mean to completely forget about the past and ignore the future. My take on that concept is to focus on the here and now, but don't forget the lessons of the past and continue tol plan for the future. Since you cannot change the past, there is no need to spend energy regretting or beating yourself up over what you have done in the past. At the same time, the future will never be exactly what you expect it to be, so there is no need to tie yourself up in knots over what may happen. I have to work on that concept each and every day. Some days it is easy to do, other days it is quite difficult. I suppose the fact that it is not always easy for me shows that I am human.

Yesterday I started the sequel to that book, "Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior". It is the story of the author's continued journey "to wisdom and peace." As I read the book, I am amazed at how I am able to relate to much of what it is saying. I am not sure that I could relate to it in the same way I do now if I had read it years ago, even a couple of years ago. I often need to be taught a concept a number of times before it truly sinks in, before it actually has meaning to me. It is often that the first time I am taught something new, I don't have the experience to understand the true meaning of what is being taught. But after hearing or reading the concept a couple of times (or more), I am able to start to use it to understand something new about my life or about my work (if it is related to my profession). All of a sudden when I read about it another time, a bright light appears and I say "Oh, that is what that means". I am having some of those experiences with this new Dan Millman book (new to me even though it was written almost 15 years ago). Here are a couple of examples:

"In my life, I've learned that at precisely those times when life seems to get worse that you may actually be getting ready to make a leap. When you feel like you're getting nowhere - stagnating, even slipping backward - what you're actually doing is backing up to get a running start."

Mama Chia
from "Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior"
I'm not sure I have been taught this before, but I know I have experienced it. And I have talked about it. I can't say that I am feeling that my life is getting worse right now, but I do feel like I am in a rut. A couple of years ago (a few months before my 50th birthday) I felt a tension of sorts was building up in my life. I felt that something was going to happen, I just didn't know what. Then I had my 50th birthday and I took a spiritual leap forward. All of a sudden I felt like I was opened to a whole new world. That feeling wore off in a few months and my life went back to a more normal state. But it was at a different level than I was at before. I wonder if I am approaching something like that now. I don't know. The only thing I do know is that whatever happens, it will be something that I did not expect.

"Why would God say no?"
"Why does a loving parent say no? Sometimes children's wants run counter to their needs. People turn to God when their foundations are shaking, only to discover it is God who's shaking them. The conscience mind cannot always foresee what is for out highest good. Faith involves a basic trust in the universe - that everything is for our highest good. This is what I believe."

Mama Chia
From "Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior"

I believe this is talking about intuition, something I have a difficult time accepting. I am a left brain sort of guy and have a difficult time accepting what my right brain tells me. I am working on it, but I still don't find it an easy thing to do. However, I am noticing more and more how little things seem to work out for me. For instance, I saw that my friend's son was going to run the same race I described in the last post. I thought my friend may be watching his son run the race, so I looked for him. Didn't really expect to see him with the thousands of people at the race, but I looked anyway. I never saw him, but decided to call after the race (even though I felt guilty about not calling before my trip). There was no answer on his cell phone, so I just hung up and didn't leave a message. He saw that I had phoned and returned my call. It turns out he and his wife also ran the race. Because I didn't let my guilt stop me from calling, I was able to see them for a couple of hours when I thought I would not see them at all on this trip.

This post appears to be one of my rambling posts, but I want to write about some of what I am feeling right now. And I want to try to convince me that I am on a journey, that I am making progress, that I don't need to see what is ahead on the path because the path will take an unexpected turn.

Perhaps in time this will make more sense to me, more sense to those around me (if they are at all interested). I wonder what I will think of this particular post when I look back on it in the future.

Sunday, November 20, 2005

5000 Nuts on the trail

I ran Iowa's equivalent of San Francisco's Bay to Breakers yesterday. It is a 10K trail race at Living History Farms, a museum that shows what farm life was like during Iowa's past. It is a working farm (we ran through harvested corn and soybean fields), but the machinery and techniques that are used are from the Iowa's past. I talked with a friend yesterday that worked at the farm years ago, playing the part of a blacksmith (he was working there are part of a college course on history). It reminds me of a working historical farm in Fremont, CA called Ardenwood.

This race is billed as the largest cross country race in the country, and I can believe that it is. I have been telling people that between 3500 and 4000 people run the race and the race lived up to those expectations. As I was standing in the mass of people at the start, the announcer told the crowd that there are over 5000 people running the race today. I don't know exactly how they come up with that number. There were 4379 individual finishers (according to the results page) and there is also a team category. The team results do not have a total for the teams, so I can't add them into the total. There's also a 1 mile race that may have been included in the total. In any case, there were a lot of runners.

Along with all of the runner, there were a lot of crazies (which is why I compare it to the Bay to Breakers). OK, I know what you are thinking. How can you tell the difference between the runners and the crazies. Sometimes you can't. Some believe that all runners are crazy, but some people I saw were definitely over the top. I arrived early since the entry warns that if you arrive after 8 AM, expecting to wait in line a half hour before you are able to park. As I was walking to pick my number, a man dressed like a Native American. comes running by, And I mean 'dressed like a Native American'. The only piece of material on his body was a loincloth. No shirt, no shoes, nothing else. I can understand something like that in San Francisco where people actually run the Bay to Breakers without any clothing. But in Iowa? With the temperature in the mid 30's, I was wondering if he had any more of what he had taken that morning (a friend told me that he asked the Native American if he had any more of what he was on. "You mean some peyote?" he replied. It wouldn't have surprise me if it were true.)

Many other people were dressed in costume, although no one quite as crazy as the Native American. I saw quite a few runners dressed in suits and ties, one runner in a cow costume, and a number of teams dressed in costume (one of which was a number of young mean dressed in only running shorts and shoes. Close to what the Native American had on, but their feet were covered). Not the usual running crowd at all.

Besides the news about the number of runners, the announcer told the crowd that channel of the creek at one of the crossing ad been dug out earlier this year. This made the drop into the creek even steeper and the creek itself even deeper. I thought that this race could be even more interesting than I thought it would.

After we listened to the national anthem and a prayer (another indication I am in Iowa), the starting gun goes off and we start to run. OK, the people in the front are running. I am walking. And walking. And walking. It takes me a minute to cross the start line (not as much as the one Bay to Breakers race I ran, but still one of the longest times it has ever taken). The race proceeded through a pasture and on to a paved road that took us past some of the parking lots and to an underpass that takes us to the west side of the freeway (Actually freeway isn't really used in Iowa. It's called an interstate here). The race proceeded across the edge of a cornfield and then across the edge of a soybean field. Fortunately, there is enough room so that I can get on the edge of the road and pass people. Soon we come to our first creek. There are multiple ways to get across and I quickly make an evaluation of where I want to cross. I look at one spot and see people up to their thighs in water. Another spot has some rocks that can be used to get across. I choose the latter, even though it is a longer run and more crowded. I eventually get across and we soon come to another crossing. There were enough creek crossings (8 in all) that they have tended to run together in my mind. By the second or third crossing, there was no way to cross without stepping into the water. So I stepped into water and was immediately over my knees into the water. And that was just the half of the fun. The other half was getting up the hill on the other side of the creek after over a 1000 people have already climbed out and smoothed out the soil, making for a slippery mess. There were a couple of steep hills thrown in that were also tough climbs, but the creek banks were the worst.. Most of the hills (and a couple of the creek banks) had ropes that you could use to pull yourself up, but even that was difficult.

We finally crossed the last creek, another deep water crossing with probably the steepest climb out. I tried to help a woman beside me by pushing on her rear to lift her up. But she didn't make it out with my push, so I left her and crawled out (using my hands to pull myself up as I kept my weight as close to the ground as I could). Soon after the last creek, I passed the 5 mile mark. I was glad to see that since I am feeling very exhausted at this point. The running was easy now (we were running through a pasture), but I found it very difficult to push myself because of how tired I was feeling. The race soon passed the start line and continued on to a set of buildings that replicated an Iowa town in the late 1800's. At the end of the dirt road that ran between the buildings was the finish line. I pushed myself as much as I could and finally crossed the line. Done at last!

After I turned in the tag from my number, I walked over to get some water from a table that was manned by some Boy Scouts (or should that be 'boyed by some ....'). I noticed that a lot of people were walking around with doughnuts. Can't say that I have ever been to a race where the after race food was doughnuts. It seems so midwestern.

I picked up a cup of water and looked down the hill (a small hill, remember, this is Iowa) towards the runners approaching the finish line and I thought about all that I have been through. I ran this race a couple of times back in the 1980's but I didn't remember how tough the race is. I recall the creeks and the sections where we run through the wood, but I certainly didn't remember how deep the creeks were and the steepness of the creek banks.

Will I run this race again? Yes, of course. I am not only a runner, but a little crazy. I figure I can probably beat my time in two years when I am back in Iowa for Thanksgiving again. Just need to run a bit faster, take the creek crossings a bit smarter and be in better shape. Yea, easy to say right now. Lets see where things are at in two years.

Update: The Des Moines Register has an article on the race along with a link to a photo gallery (hopefully, the link was be valid for a while).

Update 2: I see that a number of people have found their way here via the Living History Farms race site. Welcome! If you are at all interested in reading about one of our California races, a friend of mine wrote an entry about a race called the Quad Dipsea which is run a week after the Living History Farms 10K. If you ever make your way out to Northern California, bring your running gear and check out our trails. Pacific Coast Trail Races runs a number of trail races with a variety of distances. They are a good source of low key trails races around the SF Bay Area.

Oh yea .... leave me a comment and tell me what you thought of the race, my blog entry, or whatever comes to mind.