My body has accepted its 6-month old hip enough that I have resumed bicycle riding. Last week I rode to work and back two days, and yesterday I went out in rolling Maryland countryside on a glorious spring day for a 19 mile ride. That isn’t a very long ride by my previous standards, but given my recent restrictions it seemed like a hundred. I rode out near the Potomac River that has some tough hills. …
Lance Armstrong bristled. He bristled when someone implied that it’s easy for him climb steep mountains on a bicycle. And not just climbing, but climbing fast. Did they believe him when he told about his legs burning and his lungs bursting? He said what about it? It doesn’t get any easier, it just gets faster. …
Most mornings I go early to the pool and swim a mile. Where I go this means 36 laps, a lap meaning down to the far end and back. It isn’t a very social activity, and some people consider it boring. But a person whose Myers-Briggs type is INFJ can easily enjoy the solitude. This writing actually began while swimming laps. I had noticed a new sign at the entrance to the locker rooms. It warned of the wet floor.
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I learned most of what I know about trout fishing on an overnight trip in the Tellico Wildlife Management Area in East Tennessee. My buddy lived nearby and loved to follow the trout streams high up to their source. We caught them by day and cooked and ate them by the evening campfires. As you will see, the following poem both is and isn’t about trout fishing. …
Once upon a time there was a fishing village that surrounded a beautiful harbor beside the sea. The people of the village worked hard to make their living. Everyone was expected to help with the fishing, from the youngest to the oldest. …
If I could, I would slide out of bed and into the pool. Every morning at six. Then the laps. Thirty six to the mile, half an hour in the cooling flow of water, counting down the distance.
My left hand is getting better all the time. It used to start the pull too soon. The timing now is smooth and the stoke constant. It has taken years of daily swimming to accomplish this. …
I learn about life from naked men in the swimming pool locker room in the morning before work. One pool I go to has a lot of older guys, mostly retired. They talk about things the doctor told them, reasons their children are getting divorced, what their wives want them to do when they get home, or what somebody ought to do about the country. I was half listening as one guy told about taking the family to a restaurant for dinner. Until he quoted what the little girl said out loud at the table: …