Memories

It was a beautiful morning and the forecast for the rest of the week looks a little dicey so I took and extra long ride this morning. My ride took me down memory lane, past the house I lived in as a kid and the elementary school I went to until we moved when I was in second grade. As I rode by my mind wandered until it stumbled across some very vivid memories.

When we were young my dad was establishing his career and so that meant that he traveled some. If he went to LA then he'd come back with Lakers gear and I'd pretend I was Kareem. Not Magic, not Worthy, but Kareem. I always wanted to be the big guy. I don't know why. When other kids dreamed of being Jordan growing up I favored the man who has been mocked for being drafted ahead of him, Sam Bowie. Maybe it's just the UK fan in me but I was convinced (and still am) that if not for injuries he would have been one of the best big men of his generation. I always wanted to be one of those giants like Kareem and Bowie. I always wanted to play the five. Alas, no one ever jumped at the chance to sign the next great 6'1" center so my hoop dreams faded.

I remember one trip dad went to DC and came back with Redskins jerseys for us. We went out to the big yard by the school (odd, it was much smaller this morning when I rode by - I wonder who shrunk it) and threw a football around dreaming of playing for the Redskins. They must have been great, otherwise dad wouldn't have bothered to buy the jerseys. Dad played high school football and quit because he didn't care for the conditioning. The way he described the dictatorial coaches forcing the players to run with all of that heavy equipment on and that water was for wimps I decided that, while football may be a great sport, it is a great sport to watch. My football career was over before it had a chance to begin.

I also remembered this morning how we used to ride bikes in the old neighborhood down to the corner store to buy baseball cards. Baseball was a big deal back then. We'd play pickup games in the street with all of the kids from the neighborhood. It was a pretty quiet street, so you could do that for a while. Every once in a while the game would stop for a car to get through but we didn't mind. That was just a part of the ground rules.

Dad would take us to Cincinnati sometimes to see the Reds play, even though he hated the Reds. I never understood this. He explained that his dad was a Dodgers fan from back when they played in Brooklyn. This fandom carried over even when they moved to LA. Since the Dodgers and the Reds were in the same division, as a Dodgers fan he was obligated to hate the Reds. Division rivalries are something I don't think kids intuitively understand, so I just decided to like both teams. Besides, how could anyone hate the Reds? They had Pete Rose.

I wanted to be a baseball player. I dreamed of playing in the big leagues. That was something I wanted more than anything else. I loved baseball. But when I got to high school I found that my love of baseball was lost somewhere between wind sprints and stadium laps. Conditioning was the enemy. If conditioning was required for it then maybe baseball wasn't so great, after all. In hindsight it was no great loss for baseball. No one was jumping at the chance to sign a 150lb corner infielder with no work ethic to speak of.

It is odd that I would bike past my old home this morning given my reasons for leaving the athletic realm. As I have gotten older I have discovered a love for conditioning. I have discovered a love for running. I have discovered a love for biking. I have discovered a love for sweating profusely and breathing hard. I say that I got into running (and later biking) for existential reasons. And this morning, like most mornings, when I see the sun barely peaking up over the next hill, I see a glimpse of the face of God.

And it's smiling.