They ride camels in Morocco. Or at least in Merzouga. After Fes, we started on our way, driving to the distant village of Merzouga. M and I had for the past few months perused a friend’s guide to quintessential Moroccan riads – guest houses – each, as far as we can tell with an inner courtyard oasis of date palm trees and cacti and grasses, and at our riad in Fes, a banana tree, where we could see because it has been ages since we’ve been in the tropical house at the Central Park Zoo that the fruit that cartoonist Roz Chast felt compelled to write a paen to it in The New Yorker grows upside down, so that when you grab a banana and peel it, you doing it from the bottom (stem) to the top (black hard bit).
But there are no bananas in the Sahara. Mohammed is our camel host and salad chef. The blue woven saddle
Running for Your Life: Question Period
OK, enough about me. (Is that even allowed in a personal blog?!) I know I have some readers, or at least a browser or two – Yes! Bounce Rate – so let’s kick it back to you.
My friend, Jacki, wants to know how to do it. Not just run for her life; she has been doing that, in three-mile bursts four or five times a week for a long time, but she has never run a marathon and is intrigued by the idea of doing so. However a friend and exercise expert tells her to fuhgeddaboudit; try swimming, or cycling or low-impact aerobics (shoot me now), not running; running destroys the joints, it’s an exercise-killer not an exercise-accelerant.
I could – and have done in this blog – cited my experts: the "Born to Run" camp who in my view rightly say that done the right way, as in "sitting" in a mechanically sound pace that fits your body type, you can run, not
My friend, Jacki, wants to know how to do it. Not just run for her life; she has been doing that, in three-mile bursts four or five times a week for a long time, but she has never run a marathon and is intrigued by the idea of doing so. However a friend and exercise expert tells her to fuhgeddaboudit; try swimming, or cycling or low-impact aerobics (shoot me now), not running; running destroys the joints, it’s an exercise-killer not an exercise-accelerant.
I could – and have done in this blog – cited my experts: the "Born to Run" camp who in my view rightly say that done the right way, as in "sitting" in a mechanically sound pace that fits your body type, you can run, not
Running for Your Life: 'IMUS' in Tangier
The truth is I can’t see it. Not on this first run in Morocco. Tangier. Not in the old city, the medina, it’s called, or the Casbah, or citadel, forever changed by a single song by the Clash, “Rock the Casbah,” and now Moroccan houses, really just two bedrooms, a kitchen and a sitting area (what more do you need?) are bought up, walls knocked down, and become home to the third wave of jet setters, at Manhattan prices. Nine hundred and more streets, some the narrowest of passageways but cars and small trucks can bring goods up through the tourist row, the dark rattan chairs of the Café Central that nods to Rick’s Café Americain, and another time, because M and I are here in the morning before the European ferries arrive, and can imagine how foreign the glamour of the likes of a Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman would be in Tangier 2010. Yet Tangier still bears the imprint of its artists and socialites, famously Barbara Hutton, the Poor Little Rich Girl, the Woolworth heiress who died thirty years ago, and in the cobbles, embedded, are
Running for Your Life: Skinny Man
I am wondering about The Path Man as I go. I never know what will come to mind on a long run, but The Path Man often does. Before Brooklyn became SoHo on the Gowanus, The Path Man took up residence along a dirt trail in Prospect Park. I don’t know his given name. He had a washbasin on a stump, shirt and trousers that slung from a rangy bush, a clutch of whittled spears he’d carved from the branches of fallen oaks. In those days just a handful of people would venture deep into the park, and at night only fools because what lamp standards there were had been smashed by vandals, and under trees and weedy bushes crack users nested, rapists and robbers for a score, or so our apartment super said at the time and he was born near the park so he would know. But I never saw a needle or a syringe, or even as much as a cigarette butt near The Path Man’s home. I’m thinking I was his first runner on his path; every other day for years, a
Running for Your Life: After The Race
Now what? It’s two days after Steamtown. Boston is Monday (Monday?), April 18. The earliest I can apply is Monday. And despite my aching feet, I will. Will, it seems, is the operative word.
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K found Thurber (see right!), a mahogany-colored bloodhound mix, on Petfinder.com. For as long as she can remember, she’s wanted a bloodhound. As a child, two of her favorite books were on sharks and “The Right Dog for You: Choosing a Breed That Matches Your Personality, Family and Lifestyle.” Sharks weren’t an option, and a Bichon, Snowball, adopted us at a Manhattan pet store, and he was the sweetest family dog for eighteen years. But the dog book said bloodhounds are loyal but not needy, which is just like me, little K said. I’d love to have a bloodhound.
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K found Thurber (see right!), a mahogany-colored bloodhound mix, on Petfinder.com. For as long as she can remember, she’s wanted a bloodhound. As a child, two of her favorite books were on sharks and “The Right Dog for You: Choosing a Breed That Matches Your Personality, Family and Lifestyle.” Sharks weren’t an option, and a Bichon, Snowball, adopted us at a Manhattan pet store, and he was the sweetest family dog for eighteen years. But the dog book said bloodhounds are loyal but not needy, which is just like me, little K said. I’d love to have a bloodhound.
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