September 6th - The Rooster

There's a rooster in our neighborhood, across the alley from our house and a few doors west.  I heard him this morning as I got my bike out from the basement and rolled it through the backyard and into the alley, where I begin and end my bike commute.  That alley is like closure to me, I see it twice a day.  On garbage pickup days sometimes I have to wait for the truck to clear the alley first; other times the truck follows me.  It's Labor Day, but I went in to work anyway -- I get paid by the hour, and holidays aren't paid automatically, they come out of a bank of accumulated time used for vacation, sick days, and holidays.  I didn't want to waste 8 hours of paid time off on a holiday that I didn't have any big plans for.  Besides, I get paid overtime when I work holidays.  I worked on Memorial Day too.

The rooster wasn't taking the day off either; It was just me and him in the alley this morning.  It was nice to have some company.

The Triathlon, Part VI - or - Fried Chicken at Thirty Thousand Feet

I’d packed light: running shoes, bike gloves, swim goggles, athletic bra, tank top, running pants, bike glasses, a rented wetsuit, and everything else I’d need for six days were crammed into a wheeled carry-on bag and a backpack. I printed my boarding pass at an easy check-in station and went through security, unpacking my compact bags into no less than four different bins like a strand of DNA unraveling in a black hole and reassembling itself on the other side. I was hungry already when I saw the sign for BJ’s Market in concourse K. One side effect of all this training it that I’m hungry pretty much all the time, and not just for any food, but for high fat, high protein items. BJ’s makes a mean fried chicken, and the more I thought about it the hungrier I became. My flight was about to board, but I didn’t think I could make it until I landed in Logan Airport two and a half hours later before eating. I walked to the counter at BJ’s with purpose.
“Can you put it in a container that I can carry with me onto the plane?” I asked the bespectacled server. She nodded patiently with a look in her eye that let me know I wasn’t the first customer to ask this. “Great, I’ll take a quarter chicken,” I said.
“What sides would you like with that?” she asked.
“Mac and cheese, and mashed potatoes,” I said.
“You want gravy on you mashed potatoes?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, without hesitation.
“You get a corn muffin with that too,” she said. I couldn’t have been happier. I paid for my meal and rolled to gate K19, where boarding had begun.

“This is a full flight,” a woman announced, “passengers are allowed one carry on item and one personal item. If your carry on bag is too large, or you have more than two items, you may be asked to check your bag.” It dawned on me that my fried chicken might send me over the number of items allowed onto the flight. I didn’t have time to eat it before getting on the plane, but I wasn’t going to let anyone take it away from me. I stood up and arranged myself so that I was wearing my backback, pulling the rolling carry-on with my right hand, and holding the box of fried chicken in my left. I draped my sweatshirt over my left arm, concealing the fried chicken container. I approached the gate with my fried chicken-bearing arm dipped below my waist so that the man who scanned my ticket wouldn’t see it. I passed him without incident, and walked down the length of the ramp to the airplane. I found my seat and put the fried chicken container in my lap, and continued to conceal it with my sweatshirt. I was on the aisle sitting next to a pair of blonde, teenaged girls who were traveling with their mother and younger sister seated one row ahead. I was at risk of becoming part of their travel story, I could picture their father picking them up in Boston and asking about their flight.
“The woman sitting next to us came on board with a box of fried chicken," they’d say, and then maybe roll their eyes or pop their gum or put their hands on their hips, “I mean, who brings fried chicken onto an airplane anyway?” Then their father might say “really?”, or he might tell them that there’s all kinds of people in this world, or maybe he would say that if the worst thing that happened on the flight was that a woman sat next to them and ate fried chicken with beastly voracity that they should consider themselves lucky. Then the teenaged girls would sigh, and sit behind their parents in a car that would be driven to a house where they’d eat their own dinner, and forget that we ever crossed paths.

The plane took off, and once the fasten seatbelts sign dimmed a number of passengers opened containers of food that had been bought in concourse K. Sensible Caesar salads and loose meat sandwiches were being consumed throughout the cabin, but I didn’t see anyone else eating fried chicken. I glanced over at the girls on my left, they had both adjusted their seat backs into a reclining position, their eyes were closed, and they had covered themselves with Winnie-the-Pooh blankets. I released my tray table and pulled my box of fried chicken out from underneath my sweatshirt. I probably filled the entire cabin with the smell of fried chicken, but I’ve never had a more satisfying in-flight meal.

II

Muggy picked me up from the Barnstable stop on the Plymouth & Brockton bus line, and was impressed with how little I’d brought with me. We drove to Thuan Loi, a Vietnamese restaurant in South Yarmouth, and when I walked in the owner greeted me with a warm “Hiiiii, long time no see,” although it was my first visit. The owner’s son, an inquisitive boy of about seven years old, was drawn to my purse because it had an image of a bicycle stitched onto it. He stood between me and the dining room asking about it until his mother intervened.
“He asks a lot of questions,” she said. She waited on our table, and when I ordered a lime soda, she jotted something onto a pad of paper and said “number four.”
“Yes, and, um, number twenty four,” I said, reading the number next to a description of a bowl of noodles with fried tofu. Muggy ordered number eighteen, which was the same as mine only with steak, and I wished I’d ordered the same after I tasted it.

We finished our meal and drove to Muggy’s art-filled apartment in Eastham. Muggy is an upholsterer by trade, works part time as an accountant, and has an artistic bent. Her own artwork and works by friends of hers adorn the walls of her home, she has so many that some are in storage. A fish sculpture is fixed onto the wall of her bathroom, and several canvases and prints cover the walls of her living room and bedroom. She’s part of a small population of year-round dwellers on Cape Cod, and I generally visit her off-season when we have the whole peninsula to ourselves. There’s one highway that runs the length of the Cape, Route 6. On Friday evenings in the summer it gets jammed all the way from Boston to Provincetown, and the traffic runs nonstop all night long outside Muggy’s apartment. I unpacked my things in her workroom, where she keeps a working antique sewing machine and a whiteboard to keep track of her upholstering assignments. Above the whiteboard someone had written on the wall in script: “Muggy, always remember: do your best, fuck the rest.” It made me feel good to sleep under this message on the nights leading up to the triathlon.

In the morning we biked to First Encounter Beach, named for the spot where the pilgrims and Native Americans first encountered one another in 1620, so that I could have an encounter of my own with my rented wetsuit. I’d tried it on in Chicago to make sure it fit, but hadn’t actually tried to swim in it yet. The suit is made of black neoprene, covers me from my ankles to my neck, and has sleeves that go to my wrists. It zips up the back with a zipper attached to a long strip of fabric that enables the wearer to get themselves in and out of it. I began sweating immediately under the bright morning sun, and it was a relief to immerse myself in cool, salty water. I quickly discovered that the suit made me buoyant, which was a great relief. I’ve been a little nervous about the swimming part of the race since I signed up; I can always stop biking or running if I get tired, but I can’t stop swimming. I tested what would happen if I remained motionless in the water, and skimmed the top like a waterbug moving in the current.

From there we stopped by Idle Times Bike Shop, where I’d rented a racing bike and helmet for the weekend. The shop is owned and run by a mutual friend of Muggy and mine named Peter, and he let me take the bike Friday and return it Monday even though I’d only paid him for two days. Peter’s largesse is pronounced in the summertime, when his shop is open twelve hours a day, seven days a week, and is always busy. Last summer he gave me a pair of Chrome Shins free of charge, originally he was going to sell them to me at wholesale price but when I came to the shop to pick them up he refused payment. I sent him a reproduction vintage cycling poster when I got back to Chicago as a thank you, and he had it framed and hung on a wall of his shop.

I’ve never ridden a racing bike, so I took it down to the bike path near Muggy’s apartment to test it out. It weighed less than a bag of groceries, and seemed to read my mind. If I so much as thought about turning left, it did so. I called Peter to ask about adjusting the seat, and told him how amazing it was to ride.
“It should be, that’s a two thousand dollar bike,” he said.
“Well I’m taking pictures then, because this is the only time I’ll be riding a bike like that," I said. I began to wonder how much of athleticism is a matter of having the right equipment.

We met up with my co-triathlete, MamaVee, and her family for a pasta dinner at her in-laws house in Welfleet. I’d met her in-laws once the previous summer, and was convinced that her father in law, Dan, wasn’t fond of me. He’d asked me about my job, and seemed put off by my answer to a question regarding the salary of the CEO at my organization. He seemed not to remember me and asked me what I did for a living.
“I’m unemployed at the moment,” I said.
“Are you in town on vacation?” he asked.
“I’m doing the triathlon with MamaVee,” I said.
“Oh,” he said, “you’re doing that?” It was more of a statement than a question.
“Uh-huh,” I said. In the tradition of carbo-loading before a race, he’d made spaghetti and meat sauce, and baked two loaves of bread. MamaVee’s husband Ben added to the feast with a large order of barbecued ribs and fried chicken from Marconi Beach Restaurant. I sat next to Dan at dinner, and we talked about the race.
“We signed up in February,” I told him.
“Oh,” he said, “when you were still working.”
“When I was still working?” I exclaimed, “Wow Dan, I should call you every morning for motivation.” The skin around his eyes crinkled, he reached his hand out and lightly touched my arm. It occurred to me that perhaps he didn't dislike me, that this was just his way. MamaVee confirmed this when she told me what Dan had said to her in preparation for the race: "Good luck. You'll need it."

After dinner Muggy, MamaVee, Ben, and I studied the map of the race site. It started at 7:30, and Falmouth was about an hour drive from Eastham, so Ben and MamaVee would pick up me and Muggy by 5 a.m. with their car and a rack that held four bikes. We’d have time to find parking, bike to the race site, and check in before the race.

III

I set my cell phone alarm for 4 a.m. I wanted time to stretch properly, eat something, and maybe even drink some coffee. I went to bed at 10 p.m., and woke up in the dark. I fumbled for my cell phone and read the time: 11:15 p.m. I'd only been asleep for an hour and was already waking up in anticipation of the alarm. I woke up again at 1:30, 2:15, and finally got out of bed when I woke at 3:20. Muggy was up too, I put on some coffee and started my stretching routine.

It was dark when Ben and MamaVee arrived, but already there were birds singing. Ben loaded the bikes onto the rack, and the four of us piled into the car. We flew along the near-empty highway as the sun rose, giddy with expectation and sleep deprivation. We arrived at the race site by 6:15. MamaVee and I headed to the registration table, Ben and Muggy went to find something to eat. I was assigned number 394, MamaVee was 343, and we were given corresponding chip timing devices to wear around our ankles. We parked our bikes onto numbered racks, and got our bodies numbered with black marker. Our race number was written on our right arm, and the letter E was written on our right calf, which corresponded with the 35-39 age bracket. All around us people with numbered and lettered limbs milled around, and it was strange to know just by looking at someone’s leg what age group they belonged to. Waiting in line for the ladies room I stood behind a D and an E, and later I spotted Gs, Hs and Is. It was unsettling at first, but then became an interesting point of demographic study. There were people of all ages at the race, and all body types. At first I only noticed the fit, elite athletes in skin-tight, aerodynamic clothing, but there were types of all kinds represented.

We walked onto the rocky beach and assembled ourselves into swim waves, MamaVee was in wave number 4, I was in wave 5. A race organizer called the first wave into the water and they ran in, sending a spray of water three feet into the air. Three minutes later wave 2 was called, and three minutes after that wave 3. I looked out at the floating orange markers in Nantucket Sound, the masses of people swimming furiously through it like schools of fish, and the wet-suited, swim-capped people waiting for their turn. Standing on the beach in my green swim cap that indicated my status as a first timer, my stomach began to sit low in my body. Wave 4 was called, and MamaVee ran out into the water and started swimming like a pro. I joined wave 5 at the tide mark, and waited. I ran in when my wave was called, swam a few strokes and had to stop for air. My adrenaline was high, and I couldn’t get my breathing under control. I tread water and did a weak version of the breast stroke as I took fast breaths. I put my face back into the water and swam a few more freestyle strokes, then had to stop for air again. A woman in a white cap a few feet ahead of me spotted my green cap and asked me if this was my first triathlon.
“Yes,” I said.
“You’re doing great, keep going,” she said. I swam in this manner, starting and stopping, for the entire length of the race. At the end I saw Muggy and Ben on the platform, Muggy was jumping up and down and yelling
“Come on champ!” I climbed out of the water and ran past the timer, and a high pitched noise emitted from it. I ran to my bike, unzipped my wetsuit and wrestled my way out of it, switched my goggles for glasses, dusted the sand off my feet, put on my socks, sneakers, bike gloves and helmet, and headed for the bike race start.

I went so fast it felt dangerous. In my mind it seemed that the physics of it couldn’t possibly work - the bike was so light, how could it keep from flipping over? I passed by an injured athlete off the side of the road being tended to by a medic, and it seemed like a warning. There were hills that made me stand on the pedals and push with all my strength, something I'm not used to as a flatlander, and valleys that made me go so fast that at one point I started pumping the brakes. My experience of biking is through city streets on a commuter bike, negotiating traffic, red lights and stop signs. This was entirely different. People along the side of the road had come out to watch, some of them sitting passively in folding chairs, others on their feet clapping and cheering as we sped past. Ben and Muggy were at the finish line again, cheering me on. I crossed the timer and walked the bike back to the rack.

I unstrapped my helmet, removed my gloves, and took a few minutes to stretch. We’d been given goodie bags containing a water bottle, a t-shirt that I’ll probably never wear, and an assortment of energy bars. I grabbed a tube of something that claimed to provide instant energy. It was liquidy and sickly sweet, and tasted like raspberry yogurt. I sucked it down and went to the run start line. Ben and Muggy were at the race start, cheering me on still. The run was flat, and I began to zone out with the repetition of putting one foot in front of the other behind a long line of other people doing the same. At one point I felt like I wasn’t actually there in the moment, that I was recalling a time when I’d run down a stretch of road along a beach. I had to remind myself that I was still in it, experiencing the race as it unfolded. Halfway through I caught up to MamaVee, she’d just made the hairpin turn at the midpoint of the race and was heading back. We held out our hands and high-fived each other. During the last mile and a half the crowds of onlookers had thinned, but the few who remained were enthusiastic.
“Come on number three ninety four!” One woman yelled as I ran past, “looking good, almost there!”
“Thank you!” I said, and kept going. At the race end, I crossed the final timer, and having read my name from the information on the chip, an announcer's voice said:
“Number three ninety four, J. Palmer from Chicago, Illinois!” I clasped my hands together and threw them high above my left shoulder, and then my right in a victory dance as I ran under a digital clock readout. A staffer stationed nearby watched my dance and said:
“Okay, hand over the chip showoff .” I reached down and released the Velcro grip from my ankle, and handed her my timer. “Did you come here on vacation?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“This isn’t how to spend a vacation,” she said. I chuckled and moved on.

I found MamaVee, and we exchanged a sweaty embrace.
“How do you feel?" she asked.
“I feel good," I said.
“I feel weirdly okay," MamaVee said, and I nodded in agreement. “I would do this again."
“Yeah, so would I." I said.

After rinsing off under an outdoor shower and stopping for coffee, the four of us loaded back into the car and headed back to Eastham. It wasn’t even lunchtime, and the main event of the day was already over. We spent the afternoon at a pond with Tuber and Girlpie, Mamavee and Ben’s kids. The still, clear pond water was cool and relaxing.

The race results were posted online by Sunday night. Here’s the breakdown: I swam 1/3 of a mile in 12:23, biked 9.25 miles in 47:38, and ran 3.1 miles in 35:01. My overall time was 1:35:04. MamaVee's times were 10:39, 45:18, and 39:55, with an overall time of 1:35:53. We finished within a minute of each other.

Not bad for first timers.

The Triathlon, Part V - or - how I paid my way to Cape Cod with French

I've been busy. Running, swimming and biking take up a lot of time. I'm getting better at swimming, but it's still hard. I swam 15 laps in a row once last week and was really proud of myself; I've been doing "bricks," where I do two of the three sports in quick succession; and one day I did all three parts - with breaks, over the course of about four hours.

Then I got an email about getting paid to be a test subject for a French fluency exam at Northwestern University. The timing was tight - there were two days of listening comprehension last weekend, and two days of reading comprehension next weekend which I can't do because I'll be on Cape Cod. They were testing during the week too, so I could squeeze the reading test in just before departing this Thursday for my sporty journey to the east. I could sign up to do just the listening comprehension test and get paid $280, or sign up for both and get paid $560. I've been keeping a mental list of the costs associated with the triathlon, and it goes something like this:

Flight to Boston $180
Race registration fee $65
Bike and helmet rental $50
Wetsuit rental $50
Running shoes $80
Swimming lessons $120
Total: $545

The allure of covering my triathlon costs was strong, my French fluency almost never results in cash rewards, and I can't think of another time when I was offered money in exchange for taking a standardized test. I signed up for both sections.

I heard about the test through an email from the Groupe Professionnel Francophone. I attended a couple of their meetings a few years ago while on a job search, I wanted to find a job where I could use my French skills and thought it might be a good networking opportunity. I signed up to be on their email list, and have been receiving communications from them ever since. They meet on the last Thursday of the month in the restaurant of the Renaissance Hotel on Wacker Drive, and their meetings generally start with a speaker, followed by wine and hors d'oevres. The first meeting I attended went well; the speaker was from the Haitian consulate, and I managed to speak French with a number of people without slipping into English. The next time I went, a roundish man in his fifties who recognized me from an event at the Alliance Francaise sat next to me at the bar, and after talking to me for a few minutes asked me for my number, ostensibly so that we could practice speaking French with each other. I froze and submitted to his request rather than politely declining. I sat next to him, mute and powerless, as he dialed my home phone number on his cell phone. He explained that he was doing this so that he'd have the number programmed into his phone and wouldn't lose the scrap of paper that I'd written it on. My secret hopes were realized when he held the phone to his ear and said:
"Allo?" in a tone of genuine surprise. "Someone picked up," he said to me.
"Yes, my husband," I said. I haven't been back since.

Early last Saturday morning I took the #93 California/Dodge bus from the corner of Lawrence and Kimball to the campus of Northwestern University in downtown Evanston. I hitched my bike onto the rack on the front of the bus so that I could bike the nine miles home in the afternoon, fulfilling the need for continuous training. I'd never been on the Northwestern campus, so I parked my bike and asked a woman seated on a bench nearby if the building in front of us was University Hall.
"Yes, for ze French test?" she said, in a French accent.

Inside people were milling around a lecture room on the south side of the building. My friend Carla spotted me and I sat near her, we know each other from taking classes at the Alliance Francaise and I'd forwarded the information about the test to her in case she wanted to cash in too. The woman who'd emailed us the information was standing at the front of the room with a name tag hanging around her neck on a lanyard. I asked her if I could come back on Tuesday and Wednesday for the reading portion of the test.
"I don't know," she said from under a helmet of dyed, dried and sprayed blonde hair, "I am not the one administering the test." The testing hadn't even begun and already I was being subjected to French, not just the language but the bureaucracy and minimal customer service. If this had been a test for English, the woman wearing a lanyard would have distributed pencils at the door and thanked us all for taking time out of our weekends to join her for this important, final phase in creating a fluency exam. I sat down and waited for the test administrator, whoever that might be.

A slight, gray-haired man in ironed khakis and a polo shirt entered the room carrying a stack of test booklets. He placed them at a podium at the front of the room and addressed us in a calm, French accented voice. There was a problem, he said. The announcement about the tests had resulted in an overwhelming response, and while he was very happy with the turnout, there were only twenty-five test booklets and about fifty of us in the room. Would it be possible for half of us to leave and come back on Monday? A handful of people stood up and left the room. Someone asked if it was possible to make copies of the test booklets. Yes, the man said, but this would take time, and the test had to start in a few minutes. The woman seated to my left suggested that we split into two rooms, and each room take a different section of the test, since there were four sections to be administered. It took a few minutes for the ironed-pants man to consider this logic; it was out of the box thinking, and he was staying true to the French ideal of making everything more complicated than it needs to be. Eventually he acquiesced.

The booklets were distributed, along with answer sheets. The test was multiple choice, and the answer sheet had round circles to be filled in with a number 2 pencil, like the SATs. At the top of the page there was a spot for marking our name, test section, and testing location. Near that were sections asking for military rank: officer, enlisted, or civilian, and branch of service: army, navy, air force, marines, or other. I'd had a hint that this was for the Department of Defense, the email had mentioned something called the Defense Language Institute. I felt a sudden pang of discomfort, and soothed myself with the thought that at least I'd be getting some of my war tax dollars back, and since I was doing this in the name of physical fitness it couldn't be that much of a conflict of interest. I signed a confidentiality agreement stating that I won't divulge the contents of the exam, so I can't tell you what the questions were or I'll end up on a list somewhere.

I spent ten hours over the course of the weekend in that room listening to recorded questions emanating from a small CD player propped up at the podium, and filling in circles with a pencil. Although I wasn't directly interacting with anyone, by the end my fellow test takers were getting on my nerves. As time passed, the amount of sneezing, coughing, and sighing increased markedly. One person even blew their nose as the rest of the room strained to listed to an audio question.

There were more subtle annoyances too, things that ordinarily wouldn't bother me became irritating due to close proximity and time elapsed. One woman showed up to the test wearing a dress made from fabric that had the map of Paris printed on it, just in case anyone was wondering why she was in the room, and a woman in the front row did everything possible to draw attention to herself. Her hair was cut short and dyed dark red, and she wore chunky Chanel glasses frames. She sat on the far left side of the room, and adjusted her chair so that she was sitting at a jaunty angle to the rest of us. She made a grand demonstration of erasing pencil marks from her answer sheet and brushing away the eraser remains with her right hand, creating continuous background noise to our test-taking activities. During breaks she turned around in her seat and asked questions like:
"What did you put down for number twenty-seven?". On the second day of testing I arrived early to find her writing things on the blackboard and explaining the finer points of French grammar to the only other person who had shown up as early as me.

Annoyances aside, it was a satisfying experience. I got paid for using my brain, got to pretend I was a student at a prestigious university for a couple days, and the bike ride home was gorgeous. I headed west to McCormick Boulevard and followed the North Channel Trail all the way home, and even spotted a baby bunny on the way. Yesterday I went back for the first two parts of the reading comprehension test, which was easier since everyone goes at their own pace and there's no audio cues to listen for. Today I'll bike to the Y to swim my 15 laps, and then take my bike onto the #93 up to Evanston for the two remaining sections of the reading test. Then I'll come home and pack my things for the flight to Boston in the morning. Four days and counting till the triathlon...

The Triathlon, Part III -or- Sci-Fi Spectacular at the Music Box

At 9:45 a.m. for the past three Saturday mornings, I’ve gone to a swim class at the Y. I keep thinking that I’ll wake up early enough to bike to the Green City Market to buy bacon and eggs from TJ’s Free Range Poultry and back home again, then get back on the bike and head over to the Y for my swim class, and come home to a delicious breakfast of authentic bacon and eggs. Since patronizing the market, it’s the only bacon we eat, but so far I haven’t been able to wake up in time to do both.

It’s a small class, four or five students show up each week, and we share the pool with an infants' swim class that takes place at the same time. While I do laps and drills on the right side of the pool, parents sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and the Hokey Pokey to their babies on the left.

This morning a young woman staffing the front desk greeted me with:

“This is going to sound strange, but you wouldn’t happen to be a mother, would you?”
“No,” I replied.
“Okay, it’s just we’re giving something away for Mother’s Day.”
“My upstairs neighbor is a mother, does that count?” I asked.
“I’m afraid not,” she said.
“I have cats, I’m a mother to cats.”
“I wish that counted,” she said, swiping my YMCA identification card through an electronic reader.

I went downstairs to the women's locker room and suited up. Since beginning this venture, I’ve accumulated a lot of gear: goggles, earplugs, special shampoo and conditioner to keep the chlorine out of my hair and skin, and a lock and swim cap that I bought at the front desk of the Y. The cap is thin, red, and uncomfortably tight. You can see my dark hair under it, and it leaves a mark on my forehead for about an hour after I’ve removed it. It looks more like a dental dam than a swim cap, but I’m to cheap and lazy to buy a new one, at least for now.

I used ear plugs for the first time, and it was strange to hear nothing but my own heartbeat and exhalations under water. With my goggles, ear plugs, and swim cap I felt like an astronaut exploring another planet. After my class I came home and stretched for almost an hour. Between running and biking, I've gotten very tight in the legs and hips, and at my last chiropractic appointment the physical therapy staff assigned me a whole new stretching routine. Then I got ready for the Sci-Fi Spectacular at the Music Box, where seven films were being screened starting at noon with The Incredible Shrinking Man, and ending with a 1:45 a.m. screening of the 1986 remake of The Fly, starring Jeff Goldblum.

I got there in time for the end of the 1953 version of War of the Worlds. Tom Cruise has nothing on Gene Barry. At the end of the film, the earth is saved by microscopic germs that humans are immune to, but kill the alien invaders. After a ten minute break during which an enthusiastic moviegoer dressed in a monkey suit initiated something called “the ape dance”, I watched the 1968 version of Planet of the Apes in its entirety for the first time.

Visions of the future that were created in the past are almost always unintentionally hilarious, and this was no exception. In the opening scene Charlton Heston delivers a monologue while sitting at the helm of a spaceship, smoking a cigarette that he stubs out on the console, and tucks into a pocket of his coveralls before going into a deep sleep for the next couple thousand years. He goes to sleep in 1972, and when he wakes he pulls the 2,006-year-old cigarette butt from his pocket, and lights up.

“Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!”, got applause and hoots from the audience, and there were other moments that got loud laughs. While crossing the forbidden zone with his crew, a landscape that looked suspiciously like Arizona, one of Heston’s crew mates declares his willingness to die for the mission.

“He’s prepared to die,” Heston says in a mocking tone, “doesn’t that make you misty?” and then breaks in to an evil, head-tossing laugh. As he walked away from the camera, visible panty line was clearly discernible on Heston’s rear end through his space coveralls.

Later, while trapped in a steel cage across from a female human that he named Nova (played by Linda Harrison, who has no speaking lines), he soliloquized about the only female on board his ship, Lieutenant Stewart - portrayed by Dainne Stanley who went unaccredited in the film, probably because she also had no speaking lines, and her character died in the opening sequences of the film.

“Did I tell you about Stewart?” Heston asks, “Now there was a lovely girl. The most precious cargo we’d brought along. She was… to be the new Eve. With our hot and eager help, of course.” Hoots and whistles soared up from the audience at this. I couldn’t help but think about the folly of this plan: going into space with one woman and three men, not a midwife or doctor among them, with the hopes of repopulating an entire planet.

Hints of Heston’s NRA spokesmanship peeked through when he escaped to the forbidden zone with the help of Cornelius and Zira:

“Do you have any weapons? Any guns?” he asked,
“The best. But we won’t need them.”
“I’m glad to hear it. I want one anyway.”

After the credits rolled, a presenter announced that the next film would be 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the audience responded with shouts and applause.

"That’s right, we’ll be watching 'eight years ago'," he said, and then asked if anyone in the audience would be seeing the film for the first time. A few hands went up. “If anybody has acid," he said, “now is the time.”

Nobody can touch 2001. Captivated by its slow, saturated, visual drama, I took note of the things Stanley Kubrick got right when he pictured the future in 1968, this being one of the few films that projected into a future that has already passed.

Here’s what held up:
• Most receptionists in 2001 were women, as were most airline hosts;
• Bell is still in existence, in the form of AT&T;
• Both the Hilton and Howard Johnson’s existed in 2001 on earth, if not in space;
• Visible panty line, which afflicted most of the airline hostesses in the film, was still a problem in 2001 (this is the only thing Planet of the Apes got right);
• People drank coffee and ate ham sandwiches in 2001;
• There were flat screen TVs in 2001; and
• Somewhat unrelated to predictions of the future, HAL’s “face” looked remarkably like the front of an iPod.

I didn’t catch much in the way of unintentional humor, but the visual jokes that were inserted on purpose were great. Aboard the Aries spacecraft, Dr. Heywood Floyd paused to read the instructions on a zero gravity toilet, the only film reference to taking a shit in space that I can think of. A plaque on the wall read: PASSENGERS ARE ADVISED TO READ INSTRUCTIONS BEFORE USE, followed by at least ten paragraphs of information.

I’m not sure if the space pods with the warning “CAUTION: EXPLOSIVE BOLTS” was meant to be funny, or what Kubrick intended the letters ATM to stand for, but they both kept showing up, and there were lines that got a laugh from the audience, like:

“Look Dave, I can see you’re really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.”

Dr. Floyd’s breathing when he goes out of the ship to do repairs reminded me of my own underwater breathing earlier in the day; and my friend Christina joined me in the last moments of the film, as Dr. Bowman watched himself age, and finally turn into a fetus. Gary Lockwood, who portrayed Dr. Floyd in the movie (he's the one who gets jettisoned into outer space by HAL), clambered up after the screening and rambled on about a number of topics ranging from eating cold cuts in London to LBJ’s reaction to the film. None of the audience questions were directly answered, and they all involved namedropping and the use of foul language.

“Do you remember the time HAL reads lips?” Gary asked the audience, “that was my idea.”
“Do we remember?” Christina whispered to me, "we just saw the movie.”
“What would you do if I asked him what year the movie was released?” I whispered back.
“Oh do it, do it!” she said, both of us practically in tears restraining ourselves from laughter. After a particularly circuitous tale that ended with the phrase “a snake’s ass in a wagon rut”, Christina threatened to stand up and ask Gary if that last story was really worth repeating.

Finally, Gary left the theater to sign autographs in the lobby. I got in line, but left before my turn because The Brother From Another Planet had already started. In the opening scene Joe Morton, as the alien, lands his spacecraft at Ellis Island in 1984, before it was restored to its current museum condition. It was amazing to see shots of New York from 25 years ago, and the film was just as captivating for its time capsule quality as it was for the story it conveyed.

The Midwest made cameo appearances throughout the evening: George Taylor in Planet of the Apes was from Ft. Wayne, IN; HAL was made in Urbana, IL on January 12th, 1992; and in Brother From Another Planet, two lost Midwesterners stop into Odell’s bar looking for Columbia University, and end up drinking and talking to Joe Morton until they convince themselves that they’ve made a friend.

After the credits for Brother had rolled, Christina headed home. It was 11:45 p.m., and Aliens was just starting. The audience had thinned considerably, but what they lacked in representation they made up for with enthusiastic applause as the actors names came across the screen. I watched for about ten minutes, and then decided that eight and a half hours in a movie theater was probably enough for one day. As I biked home on near-empty streets, I felt as if I were in my own sci-fi movie; one in which permanent midnight had settled across the city, and apart from a few cars on Western Avenue, I was the only human being alive. I listened to the soft whir of my bike tires on asphalt, and the clicking of chain moving across sprocket. When I walked into my kitchen, the three small creatures that know me as their mother but are unable to speak gathered around me as much for sustenance as for company, and after feeding them I retreated into my capsule of a bedroom, where I slept for an extended period.

The Triathlon, Part I

This morning I woke from a dream that I was swimming in salt water. It reminded me of last summer on Cape Cod with Muggy and MamaVee, when, having not swum in an ocean in almost twenty years, I tasted my lips and exclaimed: "It's salty!" Muggy and MamaVee both laughed. Once out of the water I still felt the pull of the waves undulating over me, rocking my insides back and forth.

A couple months ago while instant message chatting with MamaVee, she mentioned that she was looking for a training partner for a mini triathlon this summer on the Cape.

"Wouldn't you need someone local to train with you?" I asked.

"As long as I know you'll be there on race day, that's all the motivation I need," she responded. I changed the subject for a while, but MamaVee was persistent.

"I'll ask again," she typed, "do you want to do the mini-triathlon with me?"

I asked about dates: July 19th; I asked how "mini" we were talking: 9 miles on a bike, 3 miles running, 1/3 of a mile swimming; before our conversation was over I said I'd consider it.

I bike to work about three seasons a year, so biking nine miles doesn't intimidate me - I cover eight miles each way when I commute. Running... well, I was a distance runner in high school, and although it's been twenty years I think I can work my way up to it. Swimming would be the most challenging for me, especially in open water... open, salty water.

I looked online at the results from 2008; the fastest entrant was 43 year old George Bent, who completed the race in 45 minutes, 59 seconds; the slowest was 23 year old Akayleia Frehner, who finished in 2 hours, 2 minutes, 47 seconds. 598 people between the ages of 13 and 75 had completed the race, 7 people started but did not finish. The youngest entrant was 13 year old Alison Horst, who finished in 1 hour, 19 minutes, 11 seconds; the oldest was 75 year old Lucy Duffy, who came in just ten minutes later. Give the woman her props.

I mulled it over. I've been biking to work for about a year and a half, minus winter, which accounts for quite a lot here in Chicago. I started in September 2007 in response to my unacceptably long commute time - 1 hour 15 minutes to travel 8 miles on public transportation. It's not always that bad, but you never know until you're actually on the bus or train, and then you're stuck. On good days it only takes 45 minutes, which is how long it takes me on a bike. I biked from September through late November, and once winter hit I stopped until the following April. I thought that with more experience under my belt I'd make it further into winter the following year, but as anyone will tell you, last winter was bad. Really bad. Record breaking temperatures bad. I've biked to work once since December, and I've lost all my hard earned muscle tone.

I decided that I was in, I'd do the triathlon with MamaVee. I did some searching online for a swim class, and discovered that the Y on Irving Park has a pool, and only costs $45 a month for a membership. I signed up and went to a complimentary "commit to be fit" consultation, which I thought was going to be a rudimentary check of my vital signs; height, weight, body fat percentage - but it was much more involved. I spent an hour and a half with a fit young staffer named René who asked me to fill out some paperwork stating my goals, took me on a tour of the facilities, and showed me how to safely use the weights. Halfway through my consultation we walked past a disheveled man seated at the photo ID area at the front desk, missing three front teeth, and smiling like it was Christmas. In that moment I knew that this was the gym for me; with an SRO attached to the gym, and residents clambering downstairs at all hours checking their mailboxes and enjoying complimentary coffee in Styrofoam cups, there's no chance that any overzealous fitness enthusiasts will harsh on my Y loving buzz.

Then René led me downstairs and showed me a room I couldn't have imagined in my wildest dreams. Back in the late 60's the Chicago Bears used this Y to work out, and as an homage to this glorious era in its history it now houses a room known as "The Bears Den", where upsettingly fit older men surrounded by posters of Oscar de la Hoya and framed, signed photos of 60's era Bears players lift free weights and punch heavy bags. A man who resembled a photo I'd seen recently in a Sky Mall catalog was lifting free weights rapidly, breathing in every time his arms lowered, and out when he lifted them up. His head was bald with a thin white fringe of hair, his neck ropey and muscular, and he sounded like he was practicing Lamaze breathing. Overhead, a sound system piped in Billy Idol's "White Wedding."

Next René showed me the pool, and if the old toothless man and Jack Lalanne's doppelganger hadn't already sold me, the pool stole my heart in an instant. The entire room was covered in small blue and white tiles, the words "deep" and "shallow" were spelled out in tile in the pool, and I felt certain that at any moment I would see a group of ninety year old Russian men arriving for their daily exercise.

Finally René showed me the weight machines. I hadn't used a weight machine in at least seven years, and when René asked "how does the weight feel", I kept saying "It feels good." The next day I was so sore I couldn't even bend over enough to tie my shoes, and had trouble getting in and out of the car. The soreness did nothing to dampen my sense of accomplishment, so when I saw my friend Kelly, a repeat marathon runner, I told her all about my new favorite gym. "No matter how out of shape I might be," I told her, "at least I have all my teeth." Then I told M's colleague Eric, who said a friend of his had gotten staph infection from working out there.

I haven't been back since, but I had an unexpected day off today, and was feeling vigorous. Whenever I have a day off, I imagine all the amazing things I can do with it. Years ago at the lefty, Quaker summer camp that I went to, one of our counselors was a former Amish man named Gunther who had subversively taken photos of a barn raising and showed them to us one night in a slide show presentation. After showing several images of straw hatted men hammering two by fours and raising beams, he said, in his adorable German accent: "dis vas befoe breakfast," and after showing us several more said "dis vas befoe lunch." I often hold myself to this unrealistic measurement when thinking of my daily accomplishments. It was 8am when I woke; I collected dirty dishes, put them in the dishwasher, added detergent and set it to run. This was before breakfast. Then I started cooking sausage bought from the Green City Market and eggs - over well for M, over easy for me, while listening to Flight of the Conchords, singing along and laughing as if it were the first time I'd ever heard it. This was before lunch. At 11:30 I got on my bike and headed for the Y.

I found a through street that allowed me to avoid the underpass of the Kennedy Expressway, parked the bike, and walked in. I went to the ladies room, where a faucet was running on its own. I picked a stall, pulled down my pants, and sat on a surprisingly warm toilet seat. I told myself it was from the radiator heat, not it's previous occupant, and finished my business. Then I washed my hands and managed to get the water to slow to a trickle - it wouldn't turn all the way off. Then I pondered what to do with my time here. Not wanting a repeat of last time, I decided to pick just one thing. I'd follow René's advice on how to build up to running 3 miles: walk for half an hour on a treadmill, alternating between 4 miles and 6 miles an hour in five minute increments. I went to the cardio room and started walking on a treadmill, and in a few minutes was running and sweating. For fun, I placed my hands on the pulse check bars in front of me, which prompted the message "checking your pulse while running is not recommended" to flash on the screen. According to the chart on the right side of the machine, my pulse was dangerously high for my age, but I persevered. I ran until I turned bright pink, until the aging man on my left slowed his own pace and watched me, possibly for signs of distress. After half an hour I'd run/walked 2.16 miles, and burned just over 200 calories.

I have to admit, it felt good.

All paths lead to Whole Foods

Why is it that all paths lead to Whole Foods? I got on my bike today to yet again search for the elusive trail that I’ve heard exists on Lawrence, just north of my house. My husband called me at 1:50pm to tell me that it was beautiful outside, and that if I didn’t go out and enjoy it I’d regret it. Good weather is hard to come by in Chicago, and I’d already spent the entire morning playing online scrabble. A friend of mine introduced me to scrabble a few months ago, and I’ve quickly become an addict, sometimes playing as many as half a dozen online games at a time. I’m not that good, but that doesn’t stop me.

On the "Host" and "Join" tables people post their stats, and their preferred dictionary (TWL, the standard American dictionary; SOPWODS, the standard British dictionary; French, or Italian). Your stats get posted automatically – I’m currently 1294, and I can’t tell you what that means. When you request a game, you must ask for either a regular or challenge game, and dictate the speed – fast, moderate, or slow. You also have to chose “yes” or “no” to the question “Is this request for Adult users only?”, because, amazingly, people troll the scrabble boards looking for someone to talk dirty with. At any given moment you can read game requests like:

“**** PLZ READ **** scrabulous is 1st & foremost but open 2 NAUGHTY CHAT (women only). no cheats or i will delete. similar ratings. *** TYPE 2625 TO LET ME KNOW THAT U'VE READ THIS OR I WILL DELETE.*** thx”

I’ve lost as many games as I’ve won, partly because I’m foolish enough to try playing French games occasionally. Judging from the comments on the Join Table, people must accidentally start games with French speakers all the time before realizing their mistake, typical French requests read like this:

“Partie RAPIDE et EN FRANÇAIS SEULEMENT avec joueur +1600 SVP **************** FRENCH FRENCH FRENCH *”

The trouble with playing scrabble in French, besides the fact that it’s not my native language, is that people communicate with their opponents via instant messaging, and I don’t understand French texting. I sweat it out, trying to look up incomprehensible abbreviations on wordreference.com, only to reply with meek statements like “Jai trop de voyelles” (I have too many vowels), or “je suis encore vivant” (I’m still alive). I never fess up that it’s not my langue maternelle, but I have a feeling they figure it out – I typically lose by about a hundred points. So far on the French boards I’ve lost to Richard D. 250 to 338, Sylvie D. 221 to 333, and to Marc G. 267 to 356 – even after scoring 43 points for EX, and, inexplicably, 45 points for FREAK – who knew it was a French word?

Panicked by my husband’s warning that I would regret it if I didn’t get outside to enjoy the weather, I stopped what I was doing on the scrabble boards, and jumped on my bike without any real destination in mind. I headed north a bit, looking for the elusive trail I mentioned earlier, and ended up at Granville, then headed east to the bike path along the lake. The bike path is great, but on sunny Saturdays it can be treacherous – everyone was out: rollerbladers, bikers, and couples strolling hand in hand, it makes for some of the most dangerous biking in the city. I navigated my way south to Belmont, and turned off into boys town because the wind was getting to me, and I was feeling a bit peckish. I biked up Broadway looking for a suitable spot; the neighborhood was teeming with Saturday traffic. Outdoor seating had sprouted up everywhere, but I didn’t want to stop at any of the bustling cafes – an unshowered 37 year old woman seated alone at a cafe in boys town is a tragedy; but at Whole Foods its par for the course.

I worked at Whole Foods years ago as a cashier, and as a result the grocery chain has created in me a sense of familiarity and safety that I’ll never shake – like a grown bird might find comfort in its fledgling nest. And so I found myself perusing the salad bar at the Whole Foods in boys town on a Saturday afternoon. I chose my greens, and proceeded to the front end, where the cashiers are located. My cashier was a young man with spiky dyed black hair, copious amounts of black eyeliner, and black nail polish. He had a pallid complexion, and was reedy as a bamboo stalk. Next to him was a copy of Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood”, one of my all time favorite reads. As a former Whole Foods cashier, I feel compelled to make conversation with others of my ilk. I once went shopping at the Whole Foods in Cambridge with my mother, and after observing the exchange between me and the cashier, she asked:

“did you know him?”

“No,” I explained, “I’m just nice to cashiers.”

There’s an understanding between cashiers, an understanding that you too have had to memorize long lists of PLU codes for fruits and vegetables – both organic and conventional, numbers that mean nothing to the customer but are vital to charging them correctly. After a few months I had the entire produce inventory memorized; it was like learning the vocabulary of a language that had no grammar, no native speakers, and no practical application in the outside world, and yet it adhered to my brain quicker than any other language I’ve studied.

“Reading ‘In Cold Blood’?” I asked my new friend, stating the obvious.

“Yeah, it’s going pretty slowly,” he said, opening the book and fanning through the pages to where he’d inserted a bookmark, “but it’s starting to pick up.”

“Once it gets going you won’t be able to put it down,” I said.

“Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard. This is the first true crime novel I’ve read.”

“Have you seen the movie starring Philip Seymour Hoffman?” I asked, hoping to engage in mutual admiration of PSH.

“You know,” the cashier said, cocking his head slightly and putting the book down, “that movie was like white noise to me.”

“Really?” I asked as flatly as possible.

“Yeah, it just – I watched it, but I was like… it just…”

“It just wasn’t for you?” I interjected helpfully.

“Yeah, it just wasn’t for me.”

“Catherine Keener was in it,” I said, hoping that this would salvage the movie in my new friend’s kohl-rimmed eyes.

“Yeah, you know, she’s great. I loved her in ‘John Malkovich’. Have you seen the original ‘In Cold Blood’?”

“No,” I replied.

“It’s from the 50’s, Robert Blake is in it, it’s great.”

“Wow,” I said. “I’ll have to check that out.” He told me what I owed him for the salad, and I paid him.

“Enjoy the book,” I said.

“Okay, thanks, enjoy your lunch.”