"And where were you?"

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Will any American who was older than let’s say 8, ever forget where they were when they heard the news nine years ago? I doubt it. For those of you who haven’t heard, I was in the Adirondacks and didn’t know that anything had happened until I pulled my kayak up to the tiny town of Wanakana for a trip to their general store. I grabbed some groceries and headed for the check-out counter. The clerk took a good look at my growth of facial hair and disheveled overall appearance and concluded I’d been in the woods for awhile.

“You don’t know what happened – do you?” she asked. When I confessed I didn’t, she filled me in. I must admit that I was happy to have missed the initial shock, fear and worrying that had been a part of almost all America’s past 24 hours. I would continue to miss it since I headed back into the woods for another 5 days after calling home and checking with Holly.

John, Henry and I had plenty of time over the next five days to consider the life-altering event and its deeper meaning and impact. Of course, none of us could have envisioned the impact we continue to feel today. I can’t go into the Adirondacks, particularly at this time of the year and not again give consideration to this event and how it has affected us all.

John arrived at the house for our ride about 3:45 p.m. dressed in his ‘Lance Armstrong’ yellow jersey and anxious to get on the road. “We’ve got to get moving…it’s going to rain any second,” he whined. We had just spoken about an hour ago and I’d told him how we needed to pick Jack up from Ultimate Frisbee at 4 p.m. When I reminded him of this, expressing concern over his diminishing ability to remember things for more than 5 minutes, he acknowledged that I was right, but chattered on about the threatening gray clouds overhead.

“So…we’ll get wet if it rains. Big deal. Man up before I yank your ‘man card’ again,” I said. This quieted him immediately. He’d been struggling for years to get his ‘man card’ and didn’t want to lose it so quickly. I’m not so sure he’ll have it at the conclusion of our trip, but I’ll try to keep an open mind.

We didn’t have much time and went out hard…for us, anyway. I predicted that it would remain cloudy, but the raindrops would stay away. I was wrong and John whined loudly when they started to fall. I reminded him that there was little his whining would do to change things and he reminded me that I’d been wrong on my prediction…which brought him great pleasure.

We averaged about 18 mph for the workout, which is a little faster than I usually ride making it a tough effort even if it was just an hour. John is concerned that he hasn’t done enough training for the climbing we’re about to do, but he’s got ten years and 30 fewer pounds on me. He’ll be fine. And if he isn’t…he’ll die. I don’t suffer fools…or slackers…in the mountains.

Bike duration: 60 minutes.
Training Heart Rate: 125.
Calories burned during workout: 900.