Saturday night at the Great Park. America's biggest cross country meet raced under the lights. Arrived at 1 pm and stayed until almost midnight. Usually, the Woodbridge Invitational competes late to avoid mid-September heat. This year, the weather was cool and damp enough that I put on a sweatshirt at 3 and kept it on until the bitter end. As those who know me will attest, I will find any excuse to wear a sweatshirt.
It's been a week. Let's start backward. I was thinking this morning about the Resurrection, in particular about that first breath. The first breath. Whether you believe it happened or not, the world has not been the same since. I'm a little off my axis these days, overwhelmed with this and that, trying to keep all the balls in the air.
I'm sitting in my office on a Sunday afternoon. Rode the Peloton, went to church, Ricardo's in San Juan for crunchy tacos and refried beans, a little time re-reading The Winds of War, and now here I sit.
A little secret here: I have forever harbored the quiet notion that my body of work would one day be important enough to require a scholarly archive. So ever since 1993 and the Sports Illustrated for Kids book Over the Edge, I have saved every hard copy revision of every manuscript I've ever written (with the exception of In-line Skating Made Easy, which I knew would one day require a great deal of explanation).
I am twelve days into what I am euphemistically calling a "vacation." This is not a research trip or a short getaway, but a planned and prolonged two months of getting my mojo back. In the thirty-plus years of my writing career I've never taken downtime, always motivated by this debt or that mortgage payment. . . .
Every couple weeks, Boston Marathon champion Des Linden sends me my training plan for this year's marathon. She is a generous coach, quick to respond to texts and extremely encouraging. There are wrinkles in the training I did not foresee, but those secrets are hers and not for me to share. Suffice to say there's variety in the work.
I turn 60 in a few weeks. Fifty leveled me, making me realize that I was definitely near or past the halfway mark of this life. I spent that day in my office, a little stunned. Couldn't write. Went to get a haircut. The barber asked if I wanted a beer, which is always a great thing for any barber to suggest….
