slowpoke

I stayed up until 1:40 last night watching the olympics.  I had to see the gymnastics.  I have been so into the olympics this year, more than ever.  Yesterday I saw Serena Williams playing tennis (amazing), I saw boxing, I saw fencing, swimming, gymnastics.  

I was on the swim team when I was little all year round, a gymnastics team, and the diving team.  My mom would pick me up from school with a change of clothes and a snack, and I would change into leotards in the car and eat cheese and crackers rainy afternoons on the way to SoKy (Southern Kentucky) Gymnastics.  A big bubble of a building that smelled like sweat and chalk.  

I would spend the night in the summer with Katherine or Margaret or Amy and be up early on our way to swim team where we would stare up at Coach Powell as he demonstrated how underwater while doing butterfly, your arms make the shape of Dolly Parton.  We rode busses to swim meets in Hopkinsville (Hoptown) and ate lots of candy while lying on our towels on the concrete, trying to absorb the heat that it gave off to our tiny, muscle-y, chlorine-smelling bodies.  At one time, Katherine’s brother never took his bathing suit off for a stretch of days.  He was just going to get up and put it on again, so he slept in it.  

Our hair was bristly and tinged green, our skin smelled of chlorine even if we didn’t get in the pool for a week. We were dolphins, on the diving team, playing Green River in the deep end in between morning practice and afternoon practice.  

I can still swim well because of those swim team days. But swimming at the Koret center or even in the bay has nothing on hanging off the side of the pool next to my friend Katherine and swimming our 8 laps so that we could meet back there and hang again and hear Coach Powell show us how you’re supposed to have your elbow up, arm in a triangle, in the free-style or how you shouldn’t take any breaths from the flags on into the end of the pool.  

Jesus hurt my back

I took care of Jesus today.  He was three years old.  When I lifted his little body onto the gurney to go down to surgery, it hurt my back.  

My back was tweaked by Jesus.  But he was cute.  He was scared when we lifted him, and when it was all over he comforted himself, settled back down into his morphine fog and whispered, “All done.  No more.”

Tuesday Mount Tam ride

Gina wanted me to ride road bikes with her on Tuesday after work.  She’s riding a double-century on Saturday (her third this summer) on her road bike and needed to dust it off.  I don’t like cars.  

Cars scare me.  They used to not.  I would ride, feeling entitled and indestructible, confident that the cars would see me and not run me down from behind.  

Then I got a mountain bike and rode without the constant din of multi-ton objects flying past me at high speeds controlled by a half-asleep society that is underhydrated, overmedicated, and lacking in coordination.  And they’re texting or dialing.  Now I realize that I am much safer on the trails even though the other night I hit a huge root with my front wheel, causing it to stop abruptly and my back wheel to leave the ground as it tried to send me over the bars.  And that was with a pretty good drop-off on my left.  That is like the baby pool compared to coming up the hill out of Sausalito with cars flying along a narrow, windy road, drivers distracted by the unfolding panorama of the Golden Gate Bridge and the bay.   

So I talked Gina into mountain biking, and we hooted and hollered up and down trails and through the woods and stood on top of Mount Tam and marveled at the smoke given off as our friends, the trees, burned down south.  Not once did I have to try and steer my bike straight while looking over my shoulder just to make sure that no one was about to kill me from behind.