MEMORIES OF SCHOOL

This is what they call a "classroom." The adult in the front of the room is doing what they call "teaching." The whole thing is called "school." (I'm writing this mostly to remind myself.)

My 7-year-old son used to go to one of these there "schools." But then last Sunday, a foot of snow fell on Bellingham, which was promptly followed by someone leaving the door wide open on the giant fridge that is the Arctic. Our fair city has been blasted into a block of solid ice. We've been freezing our tats off ever since.

Bellingham has no plows or sand trucks--they sold them a few years because it never snows here--so schools have been closed all week. And of course, all this comes on the heels of Thanksgiving break, not to mention this early-release day and that teacher work day, which means that my kid has gone to school maybe twice since Halloween.

But we've made the best of it. We've been sledding. We've enjoyed epic Monopoly games. We've sipped hot cocoa. We've slurped chicken soup. We've enjoyed epic Monopoly games. (Did I already mention that?)

Mount Baker has been a snow globe in permanent shake-up mode--it's been dumped on by 100 inches of powder in the last four days--so a trip to the ski area makes a capital idea. 'Cept we can't move our car. It's frozen in place under a couple feet of what looks like white cake frosting.

It's a winter wonderland out here.

But I want my Bellingham back.

SNOW DAZE

Day 2 of the snow. Or three, I guess. Snowed two days ago. Yesterday was 19 degrees. Today is ... another day off from school for my Baker, my 7-year-old, whose school is two blocks away from our house.

It's a neighborhood school with no bus service; everyone walks. So instead of going to classes, all the kids have been walking and skiing to the schoolyard. There, they build snowmen and have snowball fights, just outside the classrooms in which they should really be sitting quietly and doing their lessons, as it were.

In New Jersey, where I grew up, my school was the one that never cancelled classes. All districts on all sides of us would have three days off if the words "freezing rain" were anywhere in the forecast but not ole Hoval. Instead, we enjoyed a harrowing two-hour bus ride, skidding up and down the ice-coated hills of rural Jersey.

I should be happy for Baker. I want him to have all the things I didn't. And if snow days off from school is one of those things, so be it.

SNOW DAY

It rarely snows in Bellingham, so when it does we're all stunned and amazed. And we'll get up at 4:30 in the morning to walk the quiet neighborhood streets and take pictures, our fingers freezing since the only way we can focus and shoot is to take off our gloves.

Yesterday, we ran two hours in the stuff up in the Chuckanuts and had the time of our lives. A bunch of us winging snowballs at each other and pulling down on heavy branches that dumped buckets of snow on the person behind. I believe that's what friends are supposed to do.

NEW JERSEY TINMAN

Scanned this photo from a 1984 edition of the Hunderton County Democrat, a Central New Jersey paper. Why? Well, because it documents that I, at one time, actually led a race. (Note how they spell the word 'triathlon.')

"Garden State Tinman", as the race was called, implies that it boasted some tough competition, a race you had to earn your way into, qualify for, maybe. Hardly. Held the same day as big races in New York and Philadelphia that drew most of the hard-core racers, it was quite small.

The swim was a quarter-mile in Round Valley Reservoir near Flemington, famous for its circles (known elsewhere as rotaries) and outlet malls. (Famous to me, too, for the time when I was a kid and threw up in the movie theater there during "Planet of the Apes". I remember saying, "Dad, I don't feel so good," and then threw up all over him. Even then, I was aware of the importance of not just telling, but also, showing.)

Back to the race. Back in '84, before triathlon wet-suits were commonplace, I had a tendency to wimp out in cold water. So just to be safe, I rented the upper half of a scuba diving wet-suit for this early June race. Thing is, the water was knee-high at the deepest so we just ran the entire swim. I bet I looked pretty cool running in knee-deep water wearing a wet-suit for my upper body.

A couple miles into the 20-mile bike ride, it was me and the other guy in the picture at the front. We took turns drafting off each other. (Drafting was legal in the old New Jersey Tinman; the guy without a helmet is a race official, I think.) At some point, I asked the other lead guy what his 10K time was and he said 34-something. Rats! Mine was close to 39 minutes so I knew I had no chance of winning. But I still wanted to enter the bike-run transition with the lead so that my girlfriend at the time could at least see me in front. Which I did and that was quite thrilling for both of us. I started the run with a little lead and over the first couple miles, I kept turning and looking for the other lead guy, practically slowing to a stop and waiting for him: "Come on, when are you going to pass me, let's get it over with." (How's that for a killer competitive instinct?)

At some point he did run past me, as did one other guy, so I ended up getting third which was beyond anything I could've hoped for. The next day there was a little story about the race in the local paper and the guy who won (sorry I don't remember his name) said something to the effect that he knew he'd win because he was a much stronger runner than everyone else out there. (Actually, it wasn't even that arrogant sounding, he was just confident in his abilities; he wasn't, for instance, turning around looking for, and practically begging people to hurry up and pass him.)

My aforementioned girlfriend was really rankled by the story and called him up semi-anonymously to give him a hard time: "I guess you think you're some pretty hot stuff, fastest man in the world, huh? If you're so fast why aren't you in the Olympics?" that kind of thing.

Wonder where he is now.

Her too.

FANATIK BIKE RACING

So I've decided to become bike race boy. Or BRB. I've never raced though over the past 25 years I've done my share of triathlons (including two Ironman races), duathlons, 10Ks, 50Ks, and the like. But never bike racing, wherein you shave your legs and, from the looks of watching the Tour de France on TV, ride uncomfortably close to a large group of other men wearing tight Lycra shorts. I can't wait!

Looking forward to being part of a team too. Fanatik Bike Co., a shop here in Bellingham, Washington, is sponsoring the team and being mucho generous in doing so.

I haven't been on a team in a long time. Probably since my high school baseball team, when I broke my arm in the first game of my senior season. Batted second, singled up the middle, stole second and heard an odd crack when I slid into the base. I had a habit, I guess, of putting my left hand down when I slid and when I hit the dirt I cracked my whatever that bone is just above the wrist. Super bummer, not just because I couldn't play, but the day before I broke my arm, I'd bought a beautiful black Stratocaster that played like buttuh. Rich, creamery buttuh. No matter, I waited a couple days then cut the cast so I could finger the fretboard.

Sunday was the second team ride. In absolute pouring, the old man is snoring, close to freezing rain. We rode in a paceline--about 10 of us with me trying not to be the new guy who screws up this group of mostly experienced racers. We had two lines of five, side-by-side, with the riders rotating slow-motion like in a counter-clockwise direction the whole time. Riding this way, the group can maintain high speeds for long periods of time, blocking the wind super efficiently.

As soon as we started doing it, I realized that this is what I always see them doing on the Tour de France on those long, flat days where they’re covering lots of ground in the peleton. I'd never ridden in anything like this before and to me it was a thing of real beauty. The miles flew by which was great because with the rain and cold, we were drenched. It was nice to have something to concentrate on.

Apropos of nothing, my cell phone rings on the ride down to Lake Samish. Rachel and Kylie, two second-grade cuties, are calling to see if my seven-year-old son Baker could come out to play. Some guys just seem to have it made.