My Green Bandana

I’ll start with a disclaimer. I am not a runner. I never have been and I never will be. And yet I can never quite learn that lesson and so find myself in ridiculous running situations time and time again.

Today’s reminder came in the form of a 10K run right oustide Xela.

The first clue that this whole thing was a bad idea should have been the fact that it involved waking up at 6 in the morning on a Sunday. But I allowed KJ to drag me out of bed, without my usual five to ten minutes of whining. Then, as we were massing for the start of the race, I suddenly realized how woefully unprepared I was for this thing. 40 minutes of a treadmill on a semi-daily basis is not  comparable to a 6 mile race. I know, I’m being lame, it’s only 6 miles, but I become decidedly less logical before any kind of competition. Anyway, all of these Guatemalans are stretching and shaking out their limbs and looking otherwise very professional and ready to conquer 10 clicks at 7,655 feet above sea level.  This is the part where I started getting jittery and KJ assured me that he was going to start of slow. ”How slow?” “Slow enough for you.” How encouraging. 

Within the first three minutes KJ started to pull away and I found myself wondering “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?!?” Woof. These thoughts continued for an indeterminable amount of time, because whenever I’m running, time becomes indeterminable. But eventually I hit what some kind observers might have called a ‘stride’ or ‘pace’ and was able to take in my surroundings.

“oh hey Mayan woman clapping for me”

“oh hey 6 year old Guatemalan child running next to me/sprinting by me”

It’s like the whole town came out to cheer us on, some even tried English, which I though was very kind. And have you ever run through a Sunday market or a First Communion? Neither had I, but it’s pretty cool. 

Also, the four of us were the only white people at this whole race. And apparently, Gringos in random 10K races = celebrities. KJ and Karen gave interviews in front of a crowd that was intensely interested in our struggle to overcome our lack of oxygen. They then gave all of us a rousing round of applause. Pity? Maybe. Or maybe the people here are just super nice. As a side note, they even tried to interview me. I attempted to explain in my broken Spanish that I was indeed not fit for an interview, but the man with the mic was undeterred. After getting past delivering my name, I became rather lost in the interview, but thankfully Karen was there to save me. 

All the high-fives and mangled English congratulations made me forget all of the pre/beginning of race apprehensions. Maybe I can handle this running this after all… In this delusional state I allowed myself to be convinced by an ever enthusiastic KJ to run a half-marathon in Antigua next weekend. We’ll see how that goes

It’s been several months since my last post. Winters in Nashville can seem pretty dark for a boy from Bakersfield, even after 3 years. This winter was no exception and I probably could have used some of the lighter reflection this blog was meant to foster. Oh well.

But it’s finally summer again! And I’m back in Bako which means that it really is summer. Not ‘oh hey, it may be 65 and rainy today so grab your Northface as you walk out the door’ summer, but the ‘at least it’s a dry heat’ summer that I’m used to. I am currently coaching swimming out at Rio Bravo Greely in the afternoons (working on my coach voice/tan) and otherwise enjoying spending time with the ever energetic family.

Then, in T-minus one month, it’s off to Guatemala where I’ll be trading my lazy mornings for lazy afternoons, swim coaching for grant writing (?), and my family for some good friends.

Over the last few months I’ve discovered that those bandanna moments happen far more often in life than I originally expected. Some are tinged with loss, some with anger, some with frustration, others with laughter or with big toothy smiles. But no matter the shading, God always uses those adventures to bring me to a place of deeper reliance on him. And that’s what I’m looking forward to most about this summer.

So here’s to ‘Take Two.’ Taking life one adventure at a time and taking myself less seriously.

First, a fun fact. Vanderbilt has an 8 to 1 squirrel to student ratio. At least that is the stat that I shared with one of my tour groups. Then someone corrected me and told me it was 3 to 1. Hey obnoxious Vanderbilt applicant, this is not the SAT, this is my tour. And on my tour the squirrel to student ratio is 8 to 1.

On a different tour, one with a much more amicable crowd, I pointed out one of these squirrels. He was sitting up in a tree, noming (as in ‘nom’ in the word nominal) on something he had found in a foil wrapper. My group was enthralled. No less than five out of the twelve people whipped out their camera phones to capture the moment. And most of them were parents! By the time I had coralled the group and got them to start moving again we had already lost five minutes of valuable tour time. That’s okay, I thought to myself, we’ll just cut out the engineering building, no one likes that place anyway. And the squirrel probably had a good laugh at all of them too. I wouldn’t be surprised if the squirrels put bets on how many people they could waylay in one day.

“Hey, you should see this kid I got today, I started eating a muffin and he stood at the window in Chef James for like seven minutes watching me unwrap it and pick out the chocolate chips.”

“Gross, you ate one of those Otis Spunkmyer muffins?” (even squirrels don’t like them) “But I have one that’s even better! Today I ate fro-yo. With a spoon. I drew a crowd of fifteen. So hand over those nuts.”

The only problem is that squirrels don’t remember where they hide their nuts, so when it’s time to collect winnings my guess is that things get pretty violent. Maybe that’s why the squirrel ratio is down these days…

Several times since being home, but especially lately, I’ve had these growing up moments. And I’m not talking ‘My Dog Skip’ moments or ‘It’s the end of senior year and I’m crying because this is the last (fill in the blank)’ moment. Not that kind of growing.

These were more like moments where I realized that I was indeed, old. Or at least older. Por exemplo, after washing the dishes I went to go and pick up the kids from school. The car was full, so I dropped off one cousin and went to pick up another. Of course we found Ben (the cousin) lying on the grass near the school waiting for his ride. He piled in and then piled out a mile later. Yes, a mile later.

Can you believe that? When I was his age… nay, when I was but half of his age (I’ve been reading Lord of the Rings and it bleeds into my thoughts) I walked back to his house after school ALL THE TIME. Like the same distance. Every day. And as I drove I thought to myself, ‘kids these days, feel so entitled…

OH CRAP. THAT’S WHAT MY DAD SAYS.’

Or I went to go and get a new phone last night. Simple enough, right? Wrong. Horribly wrong. We discount shop in my family, so of course we headed over to Sam’s club. Well they weren’t helpful at all. So then we called ATT&T. Then we went back into Sam’s Club. Still not helpful. Then we try Costco. Much better, only they were closing, so we had to hurry. People were running around warning us about being runover by forklifts. Thanks Costco man in a safety vest, I probably would have jumped out in front of one if you hadn’t warned me.

So basically I tell the guy behind the counter, “I don’t want my phone to do anything to fancy, just email and text and call. I don’t need none of them fancy apps and other interweb gadgets.” (Read in an old man voice. No really, go back and read it in an old man voice.) Blah blah blah, pick out a phone, blah blah blah. Man behind the counter “that’s why I like young people, you don’t have to teach them anything about the phone.”

End Costco scene.

Today, guess what I did? I visited the ATT&T store to get help with my phone. Woof. I guess being old is sometimes an adventure itself.

Why a blog? I’m not a blogger. Even though I like to wear plaid and occasionaly visit Urban Outfitters, I’m not a trendster at heart. Even setting this thing up was challenging. The formats are so ‘I found my inspiration for this while sitting at a locally owned coffee shop that sells free trade coffee, looking at the world through my rose colored ray bans’ that I felt out of my league. But that’s more of a why not.

When a friend of mine went to Spain to study abroad he started a blog. That’s nothing in and of itself, everyone starts a blog when they go abroad… most of them you forget to follow as soon as they turn into your friends’ narrations of their European travels. Only parents love their children enough those. But I actually read this one. And it was actually worth reading. Both are unusual.  Whatever his intentions, his blogs always ended up full of humor, more of the bright side of life, if you will.

I could spend pages telling my life story, but no one wants to read that and I don’t want to write it. The point is, I take things too seriously. So what better way to practice being less serious than keeping a blog!? I know, a great idea, but one that is not totally original. Which is probably the mark of anything great. Like calculus. Or cakesters.

Why ‘mygreenbandana?’ Okay, you know in that one office episode with Michael’s casual Friday jeans? No, of course not, nobody watches the office anymore. Anyway, Michael does all kinds of crazy things in his casual Friday jeans because they are his casual Friday jeans. To me, bandanas are like casual Friday jeans. When I’m wearing a bandana I’m a little more adventurous, a little more lighthearted, a little more confident - a little more of the things that I want to be. This blog is both a recording of my effort, and part of my effort, to be a little more of all of those things.