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As in I need one.

It is 5:56 a.m.  on a Saturday. I woke up in a cold sweat genuinely panicked that I was about to miss a crucial flight.

I was at my current employer’s private air terminal waiting with 36 other people to get on the plane. Like I often do, I was sitting in one of the desks working; trying to get a few more things done before climbing on the plane.

Now our corporate jets are not full of leather couches and rich wood paneling. But what we lack in quality in private jet accoutrements, we make up for in quantity. We have at least four jets that are flying non-stop, five days a week, between sites in the Northwest  and the Southwest, with the primary destination being right in the middle: California. HQ. Silicon Valley.

My current employer seems almost uncomfortable with the idea of having its own private airline.  Appearing lavish or flashy is decidedly counter to our culture–a culture where even the CEO sits in a cubicle. So great pains are taken to make the experience of flying on the fleet of private jets as common and egalitarian as it can be.

Unfortunately the planners took their template for running an airline from Southwest’s playbook. You are issued a boarding pass when you arrive at the “Jet Center” terminal. Chairs are lined down a long wall and passengers who arrive earliest occupy the chairs nearest the boarding area.

Once the plane arrives and the super-nerds (this is a term of endearment and I use it with the utmost respect; these are the people who are making the most complex devices mankind has ever made, after all) disembark, the call to board goes out. Like sheep being forced through a chute, nervous and cranky travelers holding a boarding pass crowd their way through the small doorway that opens to the tarmac.

No assigned seating means that there is an incredible amount of jockeying for position on the tarmac. Those who have to drop off an overnight bag or perhaps a box holding an experimental compute device are in serious jeopardy of being passed by an aggressive engineer hoping to secure one of the handful of single seats next to a window.

But I digress.

Back to the dream. I was sitting at one of the mini-cubicles trying to dash off a final email response or something, when the call to board went out. But somehow I was not checked in online yet, so I had no boarding pass.

The 36 other passengers were clamoring for their place in line and I was struggling to get online confirmation that I had a seat.

Now this is where it gets weird.

I feverishly went from doing email to the online tool to claim my seat. But they had changed the interface of the online tool! (It’s a sign you may be spending too much time online when you start to dream about interfaces changing).

The line was thinning as more people exited the terminal and made their way across the tarmac to the plane.

“Where the hell is that confirmation button!” I was thinking. But I could not find it.

Somehow just standing up and walking over to the actual, physical Jet Center people to work things out seemed less important than getting that confirmation in the virtual world first.

Sweating. Desperate to get on that plane and move on to the next thing, I clicked wildly in hopes of securing an online confirmation.

A pilot with mirrored sunglasses and a moustache from the late seventies stood at the doorway leading to the tarmac. His eyebrows raised above the rim of his dark glasses as if to say “You joining us, or what?”

But I still could not find that damn confirmation button!

That’s when I woke up.

What does it mean?

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When I was writing my master’s thesis on Edward Abbey and HD Thoreau, I prided myself on sleuthing around to find every book, every interview, even every audiotape Abbey had ever done. There is something special about hearing the unorthodox cadence and kindly nature of Ed’s voice reading “Dead Man at Grandview Point.”

A few years later, my mom bought me a signed copy of The Journey Home at a garage sale, which I cherish.

Now here’s one for the serious collector. Edward Abbey’s former home in Moab is for sale. The same home where he wrote The Monkey Wrench Gang.

The four bedroom, two bath 2,800 square foot house sits on 1.41 acres just south of town at 2240 Spanish Valley Road. You’ll need just $290,000 (hello!). Abbey bought the house for $26,000 in 1974 and later sold it for $40,000 in 1978, long before Moab was discovered by the upwardly mobile mountain biking masses.

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Saturday morning Spencer and I left early. He was off to take a practice ACT test (remember college entrance tests). And since his testing center was near the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon, I was off to Snowbird to pick up my season pass.

I got my pass quickly enough and was planning to head back down the canyon to my office, where I needed to catch up on a bunch of things. But it was one of those perfect fall mornings. The kind you know cannot last, as if fall was borrowing time from winter and the debt was coming due any day now.

I stared up at the massif of Mt. Superior in the brilliant morning sun. I thought of the many hikes I had made on that mountain in all seasons. It wouldn’t just be a shame to not linger a bit and attempt a quick sprint to the top, it would be criminal.

It was almost 10a.m. I had to pick up Spence at 12:30, so I gave myself till 11:30 to get as close to the summit as I could before starting my scramble down. I started near the base of Hellgate cliffs and scrambled up through steep but relatively easy class 5 rock climbing, enjoying the gritty feel of the cool granite and the thrill of a few hundred feet of exposure in many spots.

About halfway up I heard rock fall and the sound of hooves on stone. I’d had a showdown with a large billy (mountain goat) ten years earlier in nearly the same spot. I knew there was a small herd of the white goats nearby, but they were just out of view in one of the steep bony canyons just below me. [I would spot three goats on my way down.]

I plodded onward and upward, drinking in the sights of High Rustler (one of the steepest in-bounds runs in America), and the Pfiefferhorn and the chutes into Peruvian basin that Spence and I had skied in almost total whiteout conditions last winter. I thought about my bachelor party, a day of backcountry skiing with close friends and two brothers on this same mountain almost 20 years ago now.

I thought about my friend, Dug Anderson, who I had to beg to join me for some backcountry hiking years ago, who is now a bona fide master backcountry skier. He probably logged more runs on this very mountain just last winter than I did in all my years of post-holing combined. Props to you Dug.

My turnaround time of 11:30 found me on the shoulder just below the final push to the summit. I sucked on handfulls of snow to stay hydrated. The view into Big Cottonwood Canyon and all the bowls that open up from the ridge that divides the two canyons was, in a word, breathtaking.

I literally sat there on the ridge and hyperventilated at the sight in front of me.

And I decided that in spite of all the major life decisions I am facing right now, and in spite of all the fear and indecision I feel over the prospect of uprooting my family to keep my job, there is at least one thing I absolutely know for sure: there is almost no place I feel more rooted, more happy, more clear than I do in Little Cottonwood Canyon.

Whatever else happens, I also know that every weekend my family and I will be at Snowbird drinking all this in for at least one more winter.

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There are some smells that are so interwoven with memories of place and people that even just a whiff can bring back vivid recollections of moments. The sweet, fermented smell of summer rain on sagebrush in August, the distinct fragrance of a cottonwood tree, the aroma of my mom’s chocolate chip cookies wafting through the house on Sunday night–all scents that are peppered with the joy and freedom from my youth, growing up half wild in Southern Utah.

Drove by my old high school last weekend and had a strange flood of memories, including some olfactory ones. I could remember exactly what it smelled like in there, particularly during Friday night dances, which were held in the lunch room, oddly enough.

Forgive me if I share a poem I wrote about those days.

 

dance

Forty years of small-town Fridays

Clog the pent-up pores of brick and lacquered dance floor

With yellow light and teenage sweat

 

Bad music, humorless chaperones and three other guys

With the same terry cloth shirt

Couldn’t ruin this night

 

“Wanna dance?”

Sure

 

I can almost see around that corner

Where mirror ball magic and drugstore cologne spill into the hall

And beckon me back

 

But I’m in the dark at my locker

Cooling off and wondering about places

That look and smell better than this

 

All my friends are in there

And I’ll join them soon enough

But let me listen from here for now

 

wake up

 

I used to dream about the future

Beyond that dim-lit hall

All those beautiful people living monogrammed marmalade lives

Somewhere far from this red dirt town

 

Just never thought I’d miss the small-town sanctuary

Of knowing everyone

And being known

And dancing

 

Now sometimes I dream of yellow light and teenage sweat

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Fifteen years ago, in the same week that my middle son, Johah, was born, a good friend of mine drove to Colorado with a combined wad of our hard-earned cash and bought us both complete whitewater kayaking setups. We loved running rivers and we had both guided professionally, but we knew precious little about how to kayak.

That friend was Ryan Ollivier, AKA, Tuna. How he got that nickname is another story entirely.

We got all of one easy run in that fall before the cold weather came. But we spent all winter in a pool at the University of Utah, learning and practicing our eskimo rolls till we both had them down cold and locked into muscle memory.

Even now, you could tip me over in a kayak and my body will automatically go through my set-up routine: tuck up against the deck, find the surface with my paddle, sweep it in a big arc across the surface while pulling myself upright with a quick snap of the hips. Just like riding a bike. In a swimming pool anyway.

 Once we had our own eskimo rolls down, lots of friends and brothers and cousins were recruited into the fold and what followed was a lot of great kayaking trips on rivers all over the West.

Tuna spent one summer guiding on the Salmon River in Idaho, then he followed that up by guiding on the two most challenging sections of the Colorado River this side of the Grand Canyon–Westwater and Cataract.

He’s a professional businessman now and has ditched the nickname, but he still considers this his favorite office.

 

It just seems appropriate to mark this 15th anniversary of learning to kayak with a simple thanks to a friend who has gotten me out to see and experience a lot of things I might never have done on my own.

Thanks Tuna. Sorry we missed the Westwater trip this year.

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Heads up, friends. The deadline to purchase your Snowbird season passes at significant discount is TODAY. Get ‘em while the getting is good.

My two oldest boys got their passes and I got mine. Join us for another epic season.

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Having not played soccer in four years, my oldest son, Spencer, signed up on his own for local city league “recreational” soccer.

On Saturday, his team played its fourth game. They are a mix of kids, several of whom took several years off like Spencer, and several of whom appear to be playing on a team for the first time–none of whom are likely to compete for a spot on the hyper-competitive high school team.

Not a good sign if all the boys wanted out of this was to taste victory with some frequency. But with the help of a great coach who loves the game, they are improving every week. And getting in shape and learning about competition and having fun–I hope.

Apparently not many other kids signed up for the city league because my son’s team was meeting the very same team they had played mid-week. Let’s call them the “Blue Team.”

Not only did they lose that first game badly, they lost their best forward when a player on the Blue Team kicked him hard right below the kneecap, hyperextending his knee.

Our injured player also happens to be our coach’s son. As the game began, the young man was limping on his crutches back and forth along the sidelines near me, alleging (and not quietly) that his injury was perpetrated intentionally by an overzealous member of the Blue Team in the previous game.

The Blue Team parents far outnumbered the rest of us where I was sitting because I started hearing editorial comments all around me about how the injured player was blowing the knee incident way out of proportion.

Somehow that set a contentious tone for the game that ended up spiraling way out of control.

First there were the refs. One boy and one girl; both were physically smaller and appeared younger than any of the players they were there to officiate. Size and age matter not for a referee if they know the rules of the game and how to use their whistles with authority. But neither was the case.

In the first 10 minutes, the Blue Team scored three goals, all of which were accomplished through blatant offsides violations. No calls made.

When my son’s coach called the young refs over to calmly explain what offsides looks like, the coach from the Blue Team ran across the field to inquire about the stoppage of play. My son’s coach has a disability that requires him to wear an oxygen tank at all times.

He’s a good man who has just the right touch with the boys and I feel fortunate that he is willing to volunteer his time and passion for soccer on behalf of my boy and his team. 

As the Blue Team coach walked back to the side where his team and all the parents, including me, were sitting, someone asked what was going on. He replied, “I think their coach has his oxygen turned up too high.”

Now he didn’t yell that out, but parents of Blue Team kids passed his comment down the sideline with a good chuckle till it got to me.

Problem is, I didn’t find it funny. In fact I was appalled. But strangely I was the only one.

I gathered up my wife and youngest son and we walked 70 yards down the sideline where I didn’t have to overhear muffled taunts about our disabled coach and his faker son.

Instead I got to overhear the Blue Team coach yelling taunts across the field. Now granted, when they scored their fifth unanswered goal our coach yelled, “Go ahead and pour it on while our best player is injured!” 

To which the Blue Team coach yelled back, “These are my second-string players. If you want, I’ll put my first string back in and really run it up against your boys!”

Other yelling continued as the game progressed so that by the time my son jumped up after being tackled and gave his Blue Team tackler a push back, the flashpoint was pretty close.

The young refs puffed softly on the whistle, but I was unable to hear what they said because the Blue Team coach was yelling to my boy that if he does that again, he will come out there and throw him out of the game.

At which point I introduced myself as Spencer’s father and asked if he was the referee. “No, I’m the coach!” he said indignantly, genuinely puzzled as to why I would be confused.

“Then why don’t you just worry about coaching your team and leave the ref’ing to the refs?” I asked. After which he told me that my son took a cheap shot and he was not going to simply stand by and watch it. And then he asked me if I saw what my son did, as if he had brandished a handgun on the field or something.

 That kind of aggression is so rare to Spencer’s nature, believe me when I say, I noticed the push. I also noticed that he had been taken down himself several times during the game and that there was a lot of taunting going on between these “recreational” players.

Blue Team coach went back to his area and I went back to mine. Both of us a little fired up.

Then in the waning moments of the game, their star player got another breakaway. “Get him” was all I yelled. My son went into a full sprint and caught the kid just as he was getting ready to bend it like Beckham.

Problem is, my son blatantly used his hands to pull the kid down from behind. Now he knew full well that was going to draw a penalty, but he apparently wanted to be absolutely certain they would not score yet another unanswered point.

He succeeded.

But his aggressive move cleared not only the Blue Team bench but the bleachers as well. At least five parents immediately sprinted onto the field with the Blue Team coach leading the crazy train. The Blue Team players ran from downfield toward the action too, one of them cursing like a trucker the whole way.

My son who has never had enough interest in anything athletic to watch an entire game of any sort, including the Super Bowl, stood there dumbfounded by the reign of fury that was charging toward him with a blood lust more characteristic of lynch mob than of suburban soccer moms (yes, half the mob was women).

Soccer is a physical sport. People get tackled and hurt occasionally. Sometimes it is incidental and sometimes it is by design. Why this tackle from a team that did not score a single goal in two meetings brought out all kinds of crazy in the Blue Team parents is a mystery to me. But it did.

As the crowd of kooks sprinted toward my son, he turned toward them, squared up his shoulders and stood his ground as if to say, “okay then, bring it!” It was a proud moment for me.

For my own part, I too stood my ground on the sideline. Spencer is 16 now and I figured this would be a great lesson in consequences. However, when the Blue Team coach reached my son and his star player on the field, who were both standing now and not having so much as a discussion, he immediately grabbed my boy’s shirt and started screaming at him like a raving lunatic.

A dad can only be expected to endure so much. Apparently my line is somewhere around when a half-wit, who thinks making jokes about a person’s disability is funny, lays his hands on my boy and starts to yell at him in a threatening way.

I bolted onto the field and yelled “Get your hands off my son” in a way that Blue Coach and everyone else understood clearly that I was way past the joking stage and I meant right now.

He unhanded my boy but I was immediately swarmed by other parents, including the mother of the boy my son tackled–all of them confessing my son’s sins and telling me what a bunch of sore losers our team is.

Finally the young refs found their whistle and blew it like they really meant it. “Game over!” (We had at least 5 minutes left to play.)

This scene was almost unreal as it happened in slow motion. Yet it’s even more surreal as I write about it now. I never wanted to be that crazy Little League Dad. But there I was, acting like I was ready to rumble with the rest of blooming idiot parents, over nothing.

I personally regret running onto the field and raising my voice, even though I feel justified. My wife has let me know I could have handled things better, and I’m working on that.

I would never encourage Spencer to do it again, but I was happy to see my son process everything that had happened during the course of those two games and make the split-second decision that no matter what else goes down, he was going to prevent that final goal.

And he did.

Good luck in your next game, son. I unfortunately will not be there. The commissioner of Brown family sports has given me a two-game suspension.

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Apparently it’s not enough that Utah has turned a blind eye to the 30,000 polygamist families that live here and provide fodder for HBO and the national news on a weekly basis. Nor that we are the second reddest state in the Union. (If we’ve dropped in our ranking, please tell me! I’ll throw a party for the 17 other Democrats in the state.)

Now we’ve got a bunch of half-brained zealots who apparently think Glenn Beck is the new voice of God on earth and radio alike, and they’ve raised an almighty stink over an upcoming back to school speech the President of these United States plans to give to students.

I GOT THIS MESSAGE FROM MY SON’S ELEMENTARY SCHOOL.

From: David Stephenson [mailto:alpineinfo@alpine.k12.ut.us]
Sent: Thursday, September 03, 2009 4:37 PM
To: alpineinfo
Subject: President Obama Speech

 Alpine Elementary School

School Update

Thursday, September 3, 2009

 Dear Parents,

 As many of you may have heard, President Obama will be giving a Back-to-School Speech on Tuesday, September 8, 2009. It will air live at 10:00 AM mountain time. Alpine Elementary School has had a previous art assembly planned at that time. Therefore, we will provide time for our 4th through 6th graders to view the speech at approximately 11:15 AM after our art assembly. 

 According to the US Department of Education, “the president will speak directly to the nation’s children and youth about persisting and succeeding in school. The president will challenge students to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning.” Further details can be found by going to the following link: http://www.ed.gov/admins/lead/academic/bts.html

 Since some parents have indicated that they prefer not to have their child watch the speech, we will provide another educational option for the 4th through 6th grade students back in class during the 15-20 minute speech. 

 Please send a note to your child’s teacher (4th through 6th grades only) if you prefer that your child work in class on another educational option rather than watching the speech. 

On another note, it’s popcorn day tomorrow! Popcorn will be available for $.50 during lunchtime.

Have a wonderful Labor Day Weekend,

David Stephenson, Principal

* * * * * * * * TO WHICH I RESPONDED (WITH CONSIDERABLE RESTRAINT OVER WHAT I WANTED TO SAY…) * * * * * * * **

Dear Principal Stephenson,

Public school is supposed to be an apolitical environment.

Why are you pandering so publicly to a vocal minority? I don’t recall getting a similar note when the school showed content from the previous Administration. (That may have something to do with the fact the previous Administration didn’t pay this level of direct attention to our students and the importance of their actual education.)

This is the democratically elected President of the United States of America we’re talking about.

If a handful of close-minded zealots don’t want their kids to hear from our President—who actually has something to say about the value of a good education—then tell them one by one that they can extract their kids from school during that time. Better yet, tell them that perhaps home schooling is the better option for them if they are afraid of ideas that come from an educated black man who also happens to be the President.

To actively create an alternative plan to appease the anti-Obama parents and then to publish this message so broadly is to encourage and condone the simpleminded stupidity, religious zealotry, sore-loser-itis, and possibly even racism that is at the very heart of the local fury.

You and the whole Alpine School District should be ashamed for sullying your hands with politics in a way that is so thoroughly antithetical to what educators should be willing to take a stand for.

My kids will be attending the President’s speech. And they would have attended if the message were being delivered by a President from another party, or by a President of another race, religion or ideology to my own.

I’ve now just received a similar message from Lone Peak High School, so it is clear that this is a popular movement, perhaps even driven by the school district. If so, feel free to send my disgust along to whoever drove this embarrassing decision.

Regards,

Gary T. Brown

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What is it about the end of the summer. The sun starts moving around in the sky, looking for just the right angle to increase its intensity for those dog days. The nights start to feel cooler, portending fall. Vegetables ripen faster than you can enjoy them and start to decompose where they fall, when only weeks earlier you’d have given 10 bucks for one ripe tomato or cucumber from your own garden. 

And oddly, the floodgates at work open up as if they’d been holding back a wave of hard problems all summer long.

I’ve been looking for 13 or maybe 14 spare minutes to give some thought to what I might write about a great trip with friends to Leadville, Colorado. But since I only have eight minutes, and since Dug gave me permission on his own blog, I’m going to resort to a photo-fest while it’s still somewhat relevant.

 This was the moment I decided I needed to join my friends on their annual pilgrimage of suffering they call the Leadville 100 mountain bike race, if only as a gimpy pit crew member.

 

For those of you with great vision, yes that is a creepy mannequin in the background. We never did figure out why it, or rather, she, is there.

Elden had mentioned on his blog that he and some friends would be doing a simple ride around the lake the day before the race. It was pretty moving to me to find folks from the local newspaper, a father and son from Denver, and several riders from back East who are loyal readers of the Fat Cyclist, all there waiting to meet Elden. Several had no desire to ride with us, but simply wanted to express their sympathies for his recent loss and to wish him well on his race the following day.

That’s Rick Maddox on the left and Dug Anderson on the right. Both of them have raced and finished well in the Leadville 100 in previous years. But both decided to run the pit crews with me this year. Problem is, they are two of the funniest guys I know. Normally that is a breath of fresh air. But their constant wisecracks and snarky commentary had me first cracking up uncrollably, then nearly crying in pain from the busted ribs. They set my recovery back a good week, and I am considering legal action.

For years I led a double life. I had my Core Team mountain biking friends, many of whom I also worked with at various tech companies. Then I had my rock climbing and kayaking friends. But rarely did the two ever come together. I knew Vince Adams from the climbing and kayaking circles I ran in. He was the guy everybody wanted to climb and kayak with back in the day when we were doing a lot of it. There were climbing and especially kayaking trips my wife never would have let me go on, until I told her Vince Adams was going. That changed everything.  Nothing really bad could happen if Vince was there.

Now, lo and behold, Vince sold his kayak and is totally into mountain biking. If we could just lure a few more old river running and kayaking buddies over to the two-wheel habit, it would be a reunion every weekend. Or at least at the annual Fall Moab trip.

 More later. My eight minutes are apparently up.

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It has been two weeks as of yesterday since I fractured two ribs. By 5:30 a.m. tomorrow, it will be two full weeks since those fractured ribs became totally broken ribs. The fractures were caused by a slow speed but awkward get-off of my motorcycle. The breaks came a day and a half later, from a seemingly innocent deep breath while simultaneously trying to sit up in bed.

The ribs cracked so loud it woke my wife up from a deep sleep.

Ever since then I reach back every hour or so to discover if the bones are protruding, as they feel, out of my back. And every time I am surprised to find a little swelling, but alas, no bones poking out.

I’m hoping tomorrow is the day I stop feeling  back there every 60 minutes or so, because the pain when I breathe, cough or laugh diminishes substantially.

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