It’s Never Enough: Part II

By | | It's Never Enough, Uncategorized
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My season started with an email from Jakester in the middle of April, saying the first race was coming up the first weekend in May.

I wasn’t planning to go. In Middleofnowhere, Oregon, the car was in the trailer where she’d been since I’d drained water out of the block last fall. I had my racing license, but hadn’t even paid my annual dues to the club. I thought I’d be race-ready by June.

Jakester was having absolutely none of that. At age 15, he’s still crew chief and decided the season doesn’t begin when we are ready; we are … Read more… →

Shark

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A beautiful turboprop sea plane comes in to pick up passengers at Blue Lagoon Resort. It’s on the beach for maybe ten minutes, loading passengers and gear, then is off to the mainland.

I’m in no hurry and prefer the giant yellow catamaran, a huge marine triple decker transit bus that makes the island circuit once a day and is the only other passage to these north islands.

But none of the hotels where I want to stay have any rooms. I didn’t think the “high season” started for another month, but it’s also Easter Break. Manta Ray Resort, just … Read more… →

Vinaka

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There are about fifteen of us in the boat when we hit the beach to visit the village, but two of the young women have not brought scarves or anything to cover their shoulders. Another woman on board has brought extras. I’m told I’ll have to take off my hat.

It’s conservative, here.

We walk up the path to a school, where we wait in the shade for recess to be over. Boys are playing rugby on a field of packed earth and dry grass, and it’s rough and tumble. Full-on tackle, take down, no pads no helmets, no elbow … Read more… →

Mother’s Birthday

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I wrote this at the end of 2012 for one of my dearest friends. Well, honestly, I wrote it for myself. My mother died 42 years ago. I was in India. Today, St. Patricks Day, is her birthday. While I did not know her well, this is what I would have wished for her.

Her mother hovers near death, so light now she floats six inches above the bed while nestled small and frail so deeply in the sheets.

I am blessed, asked to sit in this room, asked to bring strong arms from which grief can be released. Blessed, … Read more… →

What color is your “blue?”

By | | Out My Writer's Window, Outer Limits
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Back in the early days, when the internet was trying to define itself, different web pages sometimes looked different on different brands of computer, depending on which browser was being used.

The pages would be “rendered” (drawn) differently, depending on algorithms used by both the sending and receiving machine.

For grins and giggles, let’s pretend that each “me” of us is a user, and what we think of as “what’s real” is simply the way our browsers (brains) render the input we receive from others machines that, in turn, have to render their inputs, and often do so imperfectly.

What’s drawn depends as much, or even more, … Read more… →

Thailand?

By | | Out My Writer's Window
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“More coffee?” I’m trying to prolong the conversation.

“No, really, I have to go,” you say.

“Me too,” I say. “How about we go together? Thailand?”  You give me a very strange look.

“Thailand? Thailand is half-way around the world.”

“Not quite. Halfway would be off the tip of South Africa. In the water. Not much of a vacation, but I’d probably go there with you.”

“That’s insane,” you say.

“Haven’t we covered that? I prefer crazy.”

“You prefer being crazy over being rational, maybe,” you say, almost like that’s a bad thing.

“You get it! I knew we had … Read more… →

Bocas

By | | Out My Writer's Window
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“Would you like to go to Bocas del Toro in March? Let’s stay a month. Get out of winter.  I know a great little place on the water.”

“But I don’t even know you!” you said.

“You would after a month in Bocas.” I say this with a smile, but it’s pretty much true.

“But you don’t even know me!”

“I would after a month in Bocas.” I was being flippant, I admit it.

“That’s just insane.”

“I prefer crazy.”

“You can use either word,” you say. “They’re synonyms.”

“No, I meant, I prefer crazy. Prefer it over the ordinary, … Read more… →

Kitzhaber stung by butterfly

By | | Butterflies, Out My Writer's Window
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On February 18, 2015, Dr. John Kitzhaber, former governor of Oregon, fell from a cliff 100,000 feet above the floor of the Willamette Valley. Though he was climbing with others, he fell alone. His legacy, found near the capitol in Salem, did not survive.

Many focus on the last moments of his climb, and wonder how an avid outdoorsman could succumb to such a fate.  An autopsy has shown, like many men of his age and “lone-wolfness,” Kitzhaber suffered a malfunction linked to the “Y” chromosome, leaving him vulnerable to a sting by the blind butterfly, Femme Fatale.

Femme Fatale has evolved attributes … Read more… →

Making memories

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The new book is about half done. The first ten chapters and the last three are written, so I know how it starts and I know where it goes. Weird, but now all I have to do is draw the map between them.

To wrap it up, I pulled a phrase I’d uttered many miles ago to a someone I’d just met. “I’m not ready to let you go.” Later, she and I used that moment often as a reference point for how it all began.

Yesterday, I shared with her I’d used the seminal sentence, even though she and … Read more… →

It’s Never Enough

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After a season of racing, Ceegar and I finished almost the same number of laps, but I finished two more than he did. After my engine issues in Seattle, after his dropped mirror in Spokane and flat tires and the wreck in Portland, it came down to two laps.

I’m headed north this weekend to get some sort of award for that. It doesn’t mean I’m the best driver, because I’m not, or my car is the fastest, because it’s not. It means I finished with two more laps over four or five races, and it’s a chance to get … Read more… →