If Oak Park, Illinois, is America’s Tree City then Park Slope, Brooklyn, is America’s Discarded Plastic Bag City; in Park Slope, Black, is, decidedly, a minority plastic.
Next: Running for Your Life: When Training Isn’t the Goal
Running for Your Life: So You Want to Live in Park Slope Dept.
If Oak Park, Illinois, is America’s Tree City then Park
Slope, Brooklyn, is America’s Discarded Black Plastic Bag City.
Overheard while walking home with two black plastic bags
filled with fresh fruit, a “mother” reading in a singsong voice to a rapt
toddler from what looks like either a fussy greeting card, the ones with multiple
hard-board pages, or a pocket children’s book, the kind that flies out the door
from the cash counter at independent bookstores, “His favorite place was
Starbucks . . .”
Next: Running for Your Life: When Training Isn’t the Goal
Running for Your Life: So You Want to Live in Park Slope Dept.
Overheard near the entrance to Fourth Avenue, Union Street
subway entrance, man dressed in beachwear, flip flops, fanny pack! cargo
shorts, casual-est T, “Tell me, what are we going to do with the outlets in
Switzerland.”
Overheard during run in Prospect Park, “state-of-the-art
barn …” (Somehow I don’t think the woman was talking about cow milking machines or
the latest in latrine technology.)
Overheard at Fifth Avenue, Eighth Street Citibank branch, Caucasian man in oversized bike helmet, frumpy athletic clothes, in a loud,
angry voice to an African-American bank clerk, “Fix it today or I’ll be handing
over my Citi gold card!”
Next: Running for Your Life: When Training Isn’t the Goal
Running for Your Life: Nova Scotia Mood, Part Four or Whirligig Wonder
Only racers go to motel breakfasts at 6 a.m. Sundays; it has
to be funny to see us all come in, skinny legs and all
It was a good thing K and I had been to the Barrington Rec
Center the day before. No way in hell we could’ve found it before race time at
8 a.m. Sunday
Oh yes, the car’s dipstick is still showing full, not a
sliver lower than at the auto show at Woodstock
Ten minutes before the 8 a.m. start no one is standing under
the banner; we are among the first to line up, the fulls, the halfs, and the
10Ks – eventually the 10Ks are told to
split up and go about a football field away where at one point the starter asks
through the public address system if anyone in the 10K group can hear her. No
one says a word in reply. She asks the question again, slightly louder, and a
man in front (there are more than one hundred of them in the group) gingerly
raises his hand
After On Your Mark, Get Set, Go! we trundle off; eighty-four
marathoners, double that for halfs. K urges me to run ahead and I do, Go Dado! she
says with a “Boston” look in her eye
It’s quite cool at the start but not at the finish, which is
still as the Bayou. Along the way, few signs are out, not a lot of roadside
cheers. “Half-Marathoners Are Only Half-Crazy,” and in front of a church beyond
the twenty-mile mark, “Remember Why You’re Out Here!” (I couldn’t and stopped
and walked for a spell)
The best bit: Under the burning sun at the 16-mile mark,
with a hard-to-fathom 10.2 miles to go, I see along the roadside a row of
handmade wooden signlets with first names printed in black block letters. There’s
a slew of them and when I see the name LARRY I tell myself that they have been
placed there by the Nova Scotia Marathon organizers to honor the runners, which
certainly helps salve the sting of the motorist who flipped me the bird at the
9-mile mark in response to my smiling wave to him
At the 12 miles I’m making good time and begin to pace
ahead of a guy I’d been running with when the fella cries to me, “See you at
the hills!” “What hills?” I reply
Finally the finish line is in sight. More than four hours, twenty-five
minutes since that 8 a.m. start. I’ll have finished six of eight marathons, but
this will be my slowest. K is there, though, as I manage a final kick. During
the last 400 meters I make my best time of the race. There’s a medal, chocolate
mile and a sweaty hug from K
She’d done OK in the half! Ran all the way, that’s my girl!
Before heading on to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, and the ferry to
Portland (an 11-hour trip with 5,000 Muzakian versions of “Farewell to Nova
Scotia.” Word of caution: Bring earplugs!) K and I head back for an afternoon
in Shelburne, our new favorite place, where on a fence-top I see it. The
steely-eyed lobsterman, his wooden arms wheeling a mile a minute in the
never-let-up breeze, where ten years ago the
ultimately unwatchable “Scarlett Letter” starring Demi Moore was being filmed, the locals never tire of telling us, there are two lobster pots in the
back of my hero’s whirligig skiff, and K and I are hooked, we later learn there
is a whirligig festival in Shelburne every year and standing
before the work-obsessed face of the lobsterdude we make our pledge to come
back to this place, not to run a marathon, but to conceive, design and build
our own whirligigs and fly them in the 16th annual festival in
Shelburne, Nova Scotia, in September 2015!
Next: Running for Your Life: When Training Isn’t the Goal
Running for Your Life: Nova Scotia Mood, Part Three
Just folks live with majestic Fundy Bay views above
ferryside Saint John, New Brunswick, where towheads learn to skip stones from
their pops; one father throws a sinker, then recovers, skims a seven
I try to rest on the ferry but no dice. I’ve parked the car
on an incline and have visions of the deck floor being covered with slick oil
from the diagnosed terminal leak and elder Yanks, South Asian families and
lifetime fishermen slipping and falling on the treacherous floor surface as
they try to go to their cars at the end of the trip
But no. When we go to the car as we enter the darling port
of Digby, Nova Scotia, I again check the oil. The level, mysteriously and unbelievably,
is still holding firm
We’re directed off the highway to the historic Acadia way where
we make two memorable stops
1/ At a pier walk farmers’ market, the stalls are
plank-empty and there’s nothing to buy, a toilet with paper and places to sit
along the shore wall, sights of crabs scuttling in the low tide mud, rivulets
pulling back to the sea, the power of nature in a thimble of water, and
sandpipers, not by the dozens but enough, and KILLDEER! I forget the name but
then it comes to me, like a shot to the heart
2/ Behind a
lighthouse along the coast where on a clear day you can see the spit of land
where the whales come, K and I walk down to a ledge, the wind with shards of
ice in late July, mind you, and covering the shore rocks like a wench’s hair is
massive tresses of kelp with not a seal or a sea lion or an otter in sight
Landmark churches of Acadia, French Canada, doilies on the
sofas, tea for breakfast, poutine for lunch. Even the gas bars shout stay away
The English rule in Barrington, though, where we arrive as
late as is deemed prudent, 7 p.m., credential closing time for the 44th
edition of the Nova Scotia Marathon, a manila folder with our orange-hued
public warning to be aware of morning drivers, a T-shirt that’s shriek-loud
orange, and a raffle. We put in our names, and not even a loonie is demanded,
and I wonder out loud if the medium-dog-sized rosy-red toy lobster, the
marathon mascot, is the prize, and the bored teen who is alone manning the desk
at the Barrington Recreation Center doesn’t miss a beat. “Just take it. Please.
No questions asked
In Shelburne, Nova Scotia, we put our things in the motel
room. And go to the one place where you can still get dinner at 9 p.m. on a
summer Saturday night. The Sea Dog Saloon. With a red ale they call Boxing Rock
For dinner we sit by the harbor, one of the oldest on the
eastern seaboard. There’s a skiff anchored with a Jolly Roger flying, and in
the distance a lone mansion in the woods. K smiles under the most beautiful
sunset I’ve seen outside of the Rockies and says, D, that’ll be my summer
house, indicating the skiff bobbing on the gentle waves, and beyond, the house
in the bush, my winter one.
Next: Running for Your Life: Nova Scotia Mood, Part Four
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