Running Out of Ideas

There's a phrase "running out of your mind." In general it's come to mean when you run so well, so beyond any expectation, that the reality of it is difficult to grasp within the standard boundaries of the brain, which tends to operate on logic and limits. For me I always thought of it as those rare moments when I'd run and my body was moving independently of my mind. Mind you this doesn't happen often and perhaps it's not something every runner aspires to. I tend to think of this in race specific scenarios, meaning those races where I don't think at all for the majority of the race and just latch on, mindlessly to another runner, with hope the leader. I wait as long as possible to take action. This does happen on routine runs as well. I'm just moving, and don't have to give thought to anything as I almost can't feel my legs.

This is different from the runner's high. The runner's high I describe as an often elusive feeling of effortless perpetual motion — different than not even feeling my legs, it's a touchy and semantic training ground here. I can seemingly go forever and considerations of pace are ludicrous, just as they would be when running out of my mind. There are no limits, there is no beginning or end though you stop at an arbitrary and predefined point. I have never had the runner's high in a race, though I have run out of my mind as I said, and the distinction is likely drawn upon due to nerves. Running out of your mind, for me, is to tell yourself for the longest time that it's not a race, it's just running. Oh sure, at some point it becomes a race, but you seek to delay it.

Now I take back what I said about the runner's high in a race. It's been there. Once. In the scenario I expected to win and my opponent's attempts to be in the lead or anywhere near me were actions to which I took offense, which is a stupid and, unfortunately for me, natural occurrence. I want to be in the lead. We can be there together, but if I sense you upsetting the delicate balance, I want to get away, I want to be alone. This is what I think of as the loneliness of the long distance runner. For me I want to compete, I want to win, but it's just so that I am alone at the end of it all, until I am scared as that arbitrarily defined finish point approaches that I am truly alone, and scared as well that I am not.

But that race I spoke of was a time trial training run against three separate pairs of legs belonging to teammates. I ran away from the first and the second started when I approached. I ran away from the second and the third started when I approached. And as he took off at a speed I knew he couldn't sustain, the runner's high struck. I walked him down as the old racing phrase goes, and I was alone as I like it and I stopped, finally, where my coach was waiting, but I could have kept going.

Thoughts of this spawned from my run this morning, where I did something separate from all of this, I ran my mind out. A spike in the heat fatigued my body through dehydration, with salt depositing on my face in the wake of evaporated sweat the way it often did in the past when I felt 13-15 miles was the natural morning's activity after 13-15 drinks. This was called a weekend. And when it's through, the world appears brighter. Yes, my goddamn eyes seem to take in more light. I don't know why this happens exactly, but I do know that I like it. This is why you can believe a person when they say running is their drug.

Jer-see, Jer-do

There's a joke, a pun, some wordplay in there somewhere as I write this from nowhere, nowhere but the toilet that is. What better place? Speaking of what better place, what better place than Jersey, my home of homes, for its true that I lived there for the better (and worse) parts of 24 years. Any and all such trips to the motherland awaken within the beast a certain forlorn peering into the past, tinged with wonderment that the you that was then ever even existed. Certainly it shaped the you of now, but with how out of touch with the you of old you are, it seems strange.

Anyway, Jersey is as lush as ever. Along the Raritan towpath you wouldn't guess at the factories that surround Newark Airport, or the entities that constituted the cast of the once-relevant (and then, only in certain social circles) Jersey Shore. Alas, fitting that they've fallen victim to the almost unknowable past of my own Jersey, albeit theirs easier to access due to prodigious quantities of video, picture, and other digital content.

Jersey also brings, for me, the relaxed and easy humor of old friends. So, for whatever else, thanks for that Jersey. I'll see you again, not soon enough and too soon.

Tuned In

I'm never actually at the cutting edge of newly released, or underground, or "hip" music (I'm classifying all of these as separate items though there is inevitable crossover). As I age, it's only getting worse. I do, however, know some songs. Now it's one thing when a new song bites on an older tune that maybe we're expected to only have a vague subconscious association with, but when new songs take their cues from other popular songs not even five years out, well perhaps it just speaks to the increasingly ephemeral nature of memory and lasting impressions. After all, we're bombarded with so much content, we simply can't remember as far back as we might have -- there's only room for so much.

What that introduction is getting at is quick observations on listening to a couple of new Fall Out Boy tracks. I'm more than happy to say I enjoyed a couple of their past songs, but generally they just don't do it for me. No big deal. However, in listening to "Just One Yesterday" I'd say it's rather impossible to hear the beginning of the song and not start singing "There's a fire, burning in my..." in your best Adele voice. As youtube comments show, I am neither the first nor the only person to observe this. As far as "My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark", I couldn't help but hear Kanye West's "Power." It's not identical but it sure is close.

Something much more worth noting however is the switchover occurring at the CTA to the new Ventra system. This has been going on for quite sometime, and it's pretty obvious where the real gains are. Apparently the technology was getting outdated, but the old CTA VP of Tech just happened to work for Cubic, the company that got a $454 million contract to implement this new necessary technology? Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. I mean, poor Cubic went through the trouble of creating this new technology, we couldn't just have them sink that development cost by not giving them a bloated contract, could we? The good news is they'll now cut a bunch of jobs to make up for budget shortfalls. And they'll increase the fare cost by 33% starting in 2014. I'm not an accountant, so care to tell me how the $454 million implementation works in conjunction with the apparent $10.3 million per year in losses the CTA's taking?

At the transit stops they've been giving out nifty pamphlets too, to explain how the Ventra system is better! Fewer cards to keep track of! Actually no, you only ever needed one. Whether it was the papery piece with the magnetic strip like the MTA or MBTA or the plastic Chicago Card Plus you could tap on the machine, that was it. So far I see frequent moments of the Ventra scanners going down. The more technologically advanced you make a thing, the more opportunities it has to have something go wrong. Everything Ventra'd, nothing gained.

As we said in my safety patrol days then, "Start walking."

The Future is the Second After You Read This

Though it was a little warm yesterday and a bit humid today, we're settling in on what is fall. The days are already notably shorter, though it's still a blessed eight weeks until the terrible shifting of the clocks. Wake in darkness or leave work in darkness?

But for now people are still riding their electric skateboards and wearing their cyclist's equivalent of a dashboard cam, which is just a camera on their head. In the case of the former, it was just one dude, and while the technology to have a motorized skateboard isn't new, I don't think I'd actually seen one before. If you were expecting that they guy looked and acted like a douche, you'd have been correct.

As for the cyclist with the headcam, this isn't that new either, but once again I'd never seen a person wearing one for general consumption. Also, rather than being attached to his helmet, he had it on his forehead. Nor did he appear to be a very competent cyclist, leading me to wonder just what kind of footage he'd capture on a typical ride. It might be time for me to wear one when I run to take note of cyclists being extreme assholes. This isn't anything unique to cyclists, assholes abound, but it's well-established that I have a gripe with cyclists.

It's a successive string of natural environmental enemies -- cars pose a danger to me too, especially the frequent stop sign rollers and cell phone involved Range Rover drivers (lots of drivers have pulled dumb shit, but there are a disproportionate number of Range Rovers and/or my brain recalls them with greater ease). But cars, pedestrians, and runners can universally agree on hating cyclists. It's a shame because as with any group they're not all bad. Some simple things worth remembering might be: if you want the road rights of cars, you're going to have to start observing traffic signals (things like stop signs and red lights), and moving into the blind spot of a bus or making a right turn across and in front of a bus is not really a good idea. And whatever I say, just remember that your helmet is your seatbelt.

I know what you're thinking, it's a good time for a snack.

Digitally Speaking

After thinking I had put down all that I might need to regarding observations in Central Europe, there was something else I put my finger on that I asked my traveling companion/roommate/girlfriend to corroborate, namely the decided lack of digital plug-in of the general populace. That sentence is one horribly convoluted way of saying we didn't see a lot of people staring at their cell phones. Given my general technological griping here in this interspace, it should come as no surprise I counted this a plus. People were instead actually engaging with one another or, even if they weren't, they were at the least not consulting some device but instead simply enjoying the quiet.

Sure, there were instances of it here and there, like in airports where there were business men making business calls using business terms as they went on their business travel, but even then it was using just the phone operation of the "phone," that part of the handheld device that seems to get less and less use.

The other thing about the bulk of Euros we encountered: they love t-shirts with any and all American words. Phrases that don't make any sense? No big deal, it's got English on it! I think I know where to start out selling my t-shirt line called something like "American Word." It was endearing and disturbing at the same time.

Lord knows I could keep on going on about things such as this, but instead here's just one more American word for you: later.

The Language of Disappearance

Whenever I travel to a place where they speak a language other than English -- a rarity -- the trouble is that the inhabitants of this place speak English. Sure this is in a lot of ways great for me, one not very adept at other languages, but I can't help but think it's also a shame in what it tells us about alternative cultural appreciation here. After all, we don't provide all these other peoples the benefit of speaking their language when they travel to the old US of A. Then again, they wouldn't be learning English if it weren't a business and lifestyle necessity. Alas, such is the cost of globalization, progression, unfication, quotation marks wherever you think I intended them.

At any rate, it's easy for the visitor to cast the wistful eye at foreign places without a full grasp of what it is to actually live there. What I can tell you in my latest visits is that in the Central European cities of Prague, Budapest, and Vienna, people do not run without shirts on. Even sizeable tourist groups from Italy (granted they happened to be teenagers), land of fashion that would attract a skeptical eye in America, do not understand the shirtless runner donning short shorts. I'm still on my quest to discover what it is about this situation that sets so many ill at ease. After all, in Budapest for instance there is no shortage of baths, where same-sex nudity is unquestioned, and in Prague there are ample banners for escort service sex.cz -- not to mention the city being well-known for its technically illegal, but blind eye more than turned and in fact approving of services to improve tourism. Hell in Prague I'm pretty certain I encountered a Brit taking good advantage of such access (I took his photo with a barely obliging woman at 6 in the morning) and in Vienna another Brit seemed to have brought an escort to 9:00am breakfast. But look, by no means should you run without your shirt on. A shame that Freud's no longer over at Berggasse 19 to help come to a precise psychoanalytical conclusion

And now, at this point, it's natural to wonder if the likes of Mozart and Beethoven went without wigs when they were out on long walks (maybe not Beethoven since he was blind) composing the classical music we still listen to today and, if so, whether they were looked upon strangely by peers. After all, "wiggin' out" is derived from the situation of one entering society without one's wig on, hence exposing the true self. Witnessing a person wig out makes people uncomfortable precisely because it exposes true nature and innately we fear the dark inner self.

On that note (a b-flat according to Wolfgang Amadeus), I'm going to head back to reality.

A Summery

Well shit, it looks as if the summer is nearly through, even if fall technically doesn't begin until late September. Calendars aside, the weather has been decidedly fall for some weeks now round these parts. It's a shame because while I'm quite the sweaty beast, one of the benefits of living in a climatic zone that has notable seasonal differences, is those notable seasonal differences. If it's going to be cold as monkey nuts (assuming those are always served chilled, or right out of the freezer), it'd be great to have summer last at least its usual length.

The kind of summer I'm talking about is the kind of summer going on here. Sure it's doofy britpop selling teenage sex but that's not a new phenomenon and at least they're obvious about it with the giant inflatable banana and all. Come to think of it though, the people in that video are primarily wearing slacks and there is many a long sleeve present, so that's not quite the summery heat I'd meant. What a video like that really drives home is that I've been missing one heck of a beach party for probably 17 years now.

The last thing I'll say about the weather is that it allows for those bringing about the return of dressing like these lads not having to worry about looking a slobbery mess.

The boutonnieres, I admit, haven't actually hit yet for regular daily consumption, but I can only imagine it's just a matter of time.

But young folk have reason to dress sharp. After all, they are surely applying to jobs like these. And rather than be discouraged by reviews like this one,  I would think they might be excited by the prospect of a trusted colleague "pour[ing] feces down their throat." I suppose that is what they mean by shit job. It's great to see Bob Bland, CEO respond directly. Honestly though, for being Mr. Bland, it sure sounds like an exciting place to be.

Speaking of exciting places to be, I'm sure we've all got one. Well, at least more exciting than this dark corner of the Internet. Perhaps those Mods above could head to 1996 and drive the limos for Blackstreet. Play on playas.