Hypothermia in the Santa Cruz Mountains

With the high probability that this was my last day alive, I couldn't remember if I had kissed my wife in the morning or not, and that really bummed me out.  

My two friends and I rode our motorcycles from the San Francisco Bay Area to Santa Cruz the very day after the coldest night in recent times.  Although we bundled well for the sunny day, we hadn't planned to extend the ride past sunset when the temperature fell abruptly, producing a wind chill factor in which only two types of people ride: the insane, and the walking dead.  

We ate lunch in Santa Cruz and enjoyed the sun on our faces and watched the local volleyball players on the beach.  When we finally geared up for the ride home, we had been busily talking and hadn't notice that the sun was already low in the sky.  We decided to ride north on Highway 1, to stay by the ocean because at this time of year the air near the water is typically not as chilly as that up on the hills.  Then the only section we'd have to brave would be Highway 84 which shoots us through the hills and over onto the peninsula, home.   

If you're judging the length of the day by the position of the sun in the sky, then the winter rotation of the earth can deceive you into believing that you have more daylight time; but, as the sun gets closer to the horizon, it sinks exponentially quicker.  By the time we rode past the small town of Davenport, the sun had already dipped below the ocean, leaving us to ride in twilight.  At this point the temperature had dropped at least ten degrees and we can no longer see the crest of the mountains to our right or much of the ocean to the left.  Davenport was the midway point to home.  We tucked in and rode a little faster. 

Then Jim, thinking that Pescadero Road would deliver us to Highway 84 faster, turned right and led us into the dark hills.  The temperature dropped another ten degrees within one mile.  What Jim hadn't thought about was how Pescadero Road snaked through the hills, under trees that had been blocking much of the day's sun.  These parts of the hills were naturally much, much colder, wetter and full of sharp bends in the road that made the ride much longer and more dangerous.  As soon as we turned off Highway 1 and onto Pescadero Road, I knew this was a bad mistake, but Jim led with momentum.  I took a deep breath and followed.

The moment we started climbing through the twisty hills, my visor fogged up.  This meant that, in addition to the wind chill factor, I now had to ride with the visor open.  The wind hit my face like ice water and I lost my breath.  My eyes watered and it was nearly as hard to see as when the foggy visor was down.  The gloves were beginning to fail at keeping the cold temperature from reaching my hands and within minutes my fingers were stinging numb and cramping; they were so cold I didn't even want to change gear or hit the brakes.

Drivers of automobiles cannot appreciate the visual reference received from a normal field of vision, because on a motorcycle this visual information computes in your brain to aid in balancing.  At night, in the hills with absolutely no surrounding lights, this field of vision is severely limited, so balance becomes an inherently dangerous task.  With watery eyes, a severely cold and trembling body, a loss of visual balance and diminishing judgment, the risk of crashing was high.  I tried to avoid staring at the trees whizzing by in the headlight.  But the thing that I now remember clearly was when our headlights flashed on some deer standing on the side of the road; I must admit that at that time I was too cold, tired and nearly too delusional to care about the deer.  

I was just trying to remember if I kissed my wife in the morning.     

Friends Who Were There

We had been watching a punk-rock show at the 9:30 Club in Washington DC and drinking dollar beers. But when you're slamming in the pit you tend to sweat the beer out and you never really feel the buzz, so by the time the show was over we had worked up a mad thirst for more alcohol. I can't remember how we got a hold of hard liquor, but the four of us were riding through a cold city in the back of George's pickup truck and taking swigs of cheap gin straight from the bottle. It tasted like kerosine so we squirmed and holler, and we told each other to pretend it was cold water and that we were stranded in a desert and dying of thirst. It was a desperate Jedi mind trick.

The only thing we tricked ourselves into doing was taking bigger swigs that came with a bigger kerosine burn in our nose and deep in the pit of our stomach. It was painful in a good, youthful way. By the time we reached George Town, the bottle was empty and the city lights were a zigzagging blur and we laughed at everything and nothing in particular. Christiani had been trying to light a cigarette for nearly ten minutes and we laughed at his repeated failed attempts until the wind blew the cigarette right from his numb little fingers. And then we laughed even harder. We were cold and warm at the same time, and dizzy. Time shifted and our memory became convoluted but eventually we made it home to Jim's house at 1 AM, where we sobered ourselves with chili hot-dogs from the 7/11 down the street.

Until this day I am not sure how we survived the ride from Washington, DC, into Virginia, onto I-66 and then 495, at speeds no doubt reaching 75 to 85 miles per hour, in the back of a pickup truck that had bad suspensions, in the middle of winter, drunk out of our minds.

So many bad things could have happened. Now, years later, my maturity conjures images of what-could-have-been, which effectively frightens and shames me of ever being a young person. How could we not know better?

But as much as I can chide myself for the stupid things we did, I must remind myself that, as a group, we never allowed each other to be harmed. If we drank, always one of us was a designated driver; this was often determined swiftly and without argument. We laughed and went crazy often, but each of us always had one foot on solid ground just incase the other didn't. We always had one eye on each other's back, ready to reach out and grab the other's arm to lead back to more sanity.

As mindless as we sometimes were, we were always mindful of each other's well-being. We were there for each other.

Lilly, Whose Lips Opened my Eyes

My slow self-revelation started on the first day of my junior year in high school, in the hallway, next to the green metal lockers. I casually watched her over my friends' shoulders while she was opening her locker. She was new to the school and I had suspected she was a transfer student. She carried that certain meloncholy that hinted she had moved and started over many times.

Everyday for a few months I saw her at her locker alone, and each of those days I wanted to say something. But I was no good at simple pleasantry and hopeless at meaningful conversation, so I avoided saying anything to her until a day before Thanksgiving when I finally approached her and blurted out something along the line of: "So are you gonna eat a turkey?"

I knew instantly I had just inserted my All-Star Converse into my mouth and had prepared to walk away and maybe go kill myself in the boys room.  But she laughed and said "only if there's enough gravy."

That was the first time I ever saw Lilly speak and probably even the first time I saw her smile. It was a comfortably contained but natural smile, and I liked it so much that my heart swelled for a moment.

That morning I walked her to her class, telling her it was on the way to mine, which of course wasn't (my next class was actually on the opposite side of the school) and I was tardy by three minutes. I remember saying to myself that it was the best three-minute tardiness of my high school career. 

As time passed I learned that Lilly was a vegetarian but not an animal right activist. She wrote poetry and sketched pictures in a composition book that she was rarely without, but into which no other eyes have fallen. By Christmas we were close friends, enough that she actually test-tasted bites of steak (yes, meat) from my fork and letting me read certain passages in her composition book, and asking for my thoughts on pictures she had sketched.  

She had strong opinions about the world and life in general but also the willingness to retract them, even unpredictably at times, and she was self-contradicting in a proud sort of way.  I wasn't used to knowing someone so worldly at that age, and Lilly, although quiet, had a depth that shamed most popular girls in school.  But I admired her most for her modesty in her beauty.  Her cheeks were prominent and low enough to nicely frame her impossibly symmetrical smile.  Her eyes were a deep hazel, an eternal window to her Egyptian and Irish ancestry.  Her face was free from makeup, possessing a natural, classic beauty; she once said that makeup should be reserved for halloween, and then quickly changed the topic because aesthetics bored her. 

I was fascinated by her. 

Around New Year she wore my leather jacket (yes, leather) for three days and to me that was a good indication we might be more than friends.  But when she handed the jacket back I didn't say anything but tried to figure out what else I owned that she could wear which would clearly define we were a couple.  Of course, I didn't have a ring then, and underwear wouldn't do, so we stopped at the jacket for the time being. 

One warm spring evening, while walking back from a friend's house where we had shared a couple of joints, Lilly and I cut across the golf course, against which her parent's home was nestled. While walking past hole number 7 the sprinklers came on and we ran and laughed and then fell in the wet grass, and it was so cool that we just lied there in the mist and stared up at the full moon, close to each other but not touching each other.

We talked, even though my head still swirled from the pot and the adrenalin. Lilly would say something and then I would say something and this went back and forth without pause, no empty spaces except for the few blades of grass between us. Then eventually she talked mostly. I just stared at the moon and listened and listened. The sprinklers in the distance chirped off. I could have listened to her all night.

She had been an army brat and moved frequently throughout her life. In 17 years she had moved over a dozen times. She did not remember half the places she lived and didn't seem to care.

While lying in the cool wet grass, with our breaths returned to normal and feeling that the world is small around us, she said, "For the first time, I want to live in one place... know one person forever."

Although I knew her comment deserved a response, I offered none. Not even something clever. Eventually we got up and I walked her home and then I went home. For several weeks everything was normal but we eventually spoke less.  

And then she started meeting and spending more time with other boys, and less with me.  I didn't say anything and pretended that I got along with these boys but secretly wished they'd leave us alone, maybe transfer to a different school or move to a different planet altogether.  

Of course I couldn't sleep much at night because my heart was slowly breaking at the thought of her giving other boys the attention that was once mine.  In time she didn't talk much to me anymore and one day after school I even saw her showing another guy her composition book.  By Easter she had been going to lunch with several boys and probably shared meat off of their forks, too, and God knew what else.  I envisioned all kinds of things in my head and it bothered me to the point that after Easter I decided to quit talking to her altogether.  In my head I was delivering punishment.  

One day at the lockers, she asked me what was wrong and I said nothing and to leave it alone.  Then I stood there and waited for her to apologize and beg for my forgiveness and to tell me that she'll give me all of her attention again, as long as we would speak again.  Instead she said I was like a deaf, dumb and mute child.  I asked what the hell that was supposed to mean and she said I'm incapable of expressing my feelings, much less reciprocating them.  Then she said a few choice things that neatly summed me up as a great dissapointment, and then she walked away.  

As she walked away I tried really hard to convince myself that she was delusional, but every word that fell from her lips was the truth from which I could not walk away.  So there I stood, in pain and remorse, holding the best gift anyone can receive:  Opened eyes.  

       

The Things We Did That Permanently Changed Us

We rode in our friend Arthur's 1980 Ford Granada, the five of us, driving through southeast DC on a cold night looking to buy a dime bag. Except for Arthur (who typically wore a sports jacket and scarf), we all wore leather jackets that made the interior of the car smell like a leather tannery, which wasn't helped by the stale mix of cheap beer we drank earlier. A tape cassette of The Clash blared from two of the remaining four speakers, which crackled with distortion, competing with the noise of the heater that was on full blast. The windows were mostly fogged up and Arthur repeatedly wiped the condensation off the windshield with an old Journey concert t-shirt while driving and searching for a street-side peddler.

The streets were lined with old cars under harsh streetlights and occasional half-lighted billboards. This neighborhood felt warm and cold at the same time, its shadow constantly motionless yet shifting. Jim was washing down a Ho Ho cupcake with a bottle of Yoo-hoo and Christiani was lighting another cigarette when Arthur switched off the headlight and turned into a dark alley and rolled to a stop, deep in a neighborhood somewhere in the heart of Washington, DC.

Arthur was the only black student in the entire senior class, and was the only person we knew that didn't drink, smoke or curse (other than the occasional utterance of "dang it," but even that was heard and confirmed only twice). Yet somehow he allowed himself to be in the company of those who did drink, smoke and curse. He was a straight-A student with a quick smile and a strong compassion for those fallen outside the high school mainstream: If you were rejected by the jocks, or if you were not good looking, or just unpopular, or unfairly denied by the many organizations, groups and cliques, then you were his friend.

Perhaps being the only black person in his senior class made him feel that he belonged better with the outcast of the school; but, whatever the case, tonight we were glad that Arthur was with us, being that we were roaming an all-black neighborhood. But in the back of my mind this would either help us or kill us. He was just driving us to get the pot.

Within seconds a young and stocky fellow wearing a heavy jean coat and a grey hoodie over his head appeared in Arthur's window. We only saw his chin and mouth, while the rest of his face remained in the shadow of his hoodie.

"You lost?" His mouth barely moved.

"Just looking for a hit." Arthur said.

"You looking for a hit, huh?"

"Yeah."

The young man stooped and looked at everyone in the car, one by one. I looked away and I'm pretty sure the others looked away, too, out of nervousness.

"How much money ya'll got in there?"

"Enough for a dime bag."

"Pff. For a dime bag? You crackers came in from the Virginia suburbs, ain't ya? Them leather musta' cost a few of mommy's pretty coins, and you telling me you got enough for just a dime bag?"

"I mean, that's all we need." Arthur's voice crackled, which didn't settle well with me. "You know. Just a dime bag. Um, or so."

"Or so?" He stood up straight and looked down the alley, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched. "Follow me."

He turned and walked away, motioning for us to follow with a sideway throw of his head. George -- quiet George -- said "I have a bad feeling." But Arthur, loosening the scarf from around his neck, slowly rolled the car forward, following. "Yeah," Jim said, "maybe we should get out of here."

But no one else said anything and the alley became darker and deeper and smaller. I wiped the condensation from the window with my hand, one quick swipe, and immediately saw dark figures following us. My heartbeat began to race. "We need to get out. Now."

"Yeah, back it up, now," George said, controlling his panic, and the other guys added their opinions, too, which was to slam it in reverse and get the fuck out of this place.

At this point Arthur had his foot off the gas and one hand gripping the transmission lever, wrist cocked to throw it into reverse. Then all of a sudden Christiani's door swung open and a gun pressed into his collar bone. Everyone in the car murmured a barrage of curse words, mostly "oh shit, oh shit, oh my fucking God, oh shit."

"You guys do realize driving around here in the dark with a car like that ain't a good idea. We could cap your asses where you sit, mother fuckas."

Then the gun was slowly withdrawn from Christiani's collar bone and a dime bag dropped onto his lap. "Keep it. And consider this a gift." I was later pretty sure the gift wasn't the dime bag but was every breath of air we took from that moment on. "But when you want more reefer," he said, "next time come during the day so we don't cap your sorry asses by accident. Know what I mean?"

No one said a word until we crossed the Key Bridge and well into Virginia, at which point, Arthur, whose tongue was more sterile than surgical instruments, exploded in a hurricane of endless explicit. He had anger coming out of every orifice, but we eventually realized that he was angered not out of fright but out of bruised ego.

As for the rest of us, we rarely touched drugs of any kind after that night. But Arthur, straight-A Arthur, started peddling drugs, at first marijuana and then later PCP and crack. Sadly he dropped out of high school during finals and after that we didn't see him much. The rest of us went to different colleges and never saw much of each other after that.

In my junior year at Averett College I received a call from Jim one autumn day. Perhaps it was because I haven't heard from him in a few years but his voice sounded distant. And before the thought that I missed him left my mind he told me that Arthur was murdered three blocks from Dupont Circle, his body found faced down on a sidewalk with two bullet holes in the back of his head, his scarf soaked in blood. 17 individually wrapped crack rocks were found in the sports jacket he was wearing -- enough evidence for the police to conclude that he was another low-life scum whose death was only a blessing to society.

The Honorable Fistfight

Every Thursday after school we’d meet behind the football field between the tall chain-linked fence and the row of honeysuckle shrubs for fistfights. If anyone had a beef with someone, this is the time and place to work things out. No sticks, no knives and certainly no guns. Just two people with a disagreement.

The rules were that no spectator could intervene during the fight, and no eye gauging because we needed to be able to see the black board from the back of the room the next day in class. All else was fair, including a kick to the family jewels, which was a rare money shot that always put spectators in an uproar.

For some reason, the spring season brought more fistfights, possibly because it was time to ramp up competition for prom dates. Another possible reason was that tension tended to rise toward the second half of the school year when people grew on each other’s nerves, best friends grew tired of each other and bad rumors made full circles.

And springtime also brought the greatest number of spectators, probably because no one had to carry heavy coats and hats and gloves, and everyone was energized by the fresh scent of honeysuckle, irises and buttercup anemones in the air. Perhaps the greatest elixir of male youth is the scent of spring mixed with the smell of testosterone and the taste of blood. From the way it looked, girls liked this elixir as much as boys, and from time to time we all enjoyed fistfights between two girls.

I had never been in one of these weekly fistfights, but I was as excited about them as anyone else watching two people flailing fists and feet and rolling in the grass and dirt, until one or both fighters were too tired to continue, and we slowly picked up our backpacks and baseball caps and went home. By the end of the school year most of the fighters were either civil to each other or were friends. A lot could be said for sharing an honorable fistfight.

Years later I can still observe fistfights, though most are in the form of carefully constructed words and competitive business strategies. Adult fistfights are sophisticated, and tend to leave bruises that last longer than those given between the chain-linked fence and honeysuckle shrubs. These were no more or no less honorable than the fistfights behind the football field, and in the end we all shake hands, slowly pick up our briefcases and satchels and go home.

These days it seems all the young kids bring knives and guns to a fight. Egos are weak and no one knows how to roll up a good old-fashion fist. I wonder what kind of adult fistfights we’ll see tomorrow in the depth of relationships and behind the close doors of boardrooms.

Sweating Hope

The medical literature might be full of advice about exercise and health, warnings that a lack thereof is a cause for disease. But anyone who walks through the front doors of a gym won't readily admit that busting their tails with freeweights and treadmills is not as much for health as it is for looking good naked. I can take that a step further. As a personal trainer, I can tell you that I sell more than just the tool and instructions for looking good naked. I sell hope.

I'm selling the new mother the hope that her husband may still find her attractive and not have an affair with the assistance with the red curls and a youthful figure. I'm selling the morbidly overweight father the hope of living long enough so that his son may remember him as someone other than a fat father-figure who died three days before his 7th birthday. I'm selling the 50-year-old soon-to-be divorcee the hope that someone else will find her still desirable after her divorce is finalized. I'm selling the unhappy woman the hope that she will be thin and pretty enough so that she can confidently separate from her husband of twenty years. And to the 19-year-old college athlete I sell him the hope that his dad will for once be proud of him and that he'll pull some women after the championship game.

Forget health and toning. I sell hope, $90 an hour. Unfortunately, there's a wait list.

Kicking and Screaming into the Forties

In aging, I tend to put more faith in biology than chronology. It's not how old you are, but how old you feel. But how I'm feeling reveals that I'm fighting an uphill battle the very day I turned 40.

I don't recover from a glass of wine as well as I did 20 years ago from a bottle of vodka. Looking in the mirror first thing in the morning can ruin the rest of the day, so now I avoid the mirror until at least after lunch, when I check for broccoli in my teeth. Food no longer takes the same route through my body anymore, going to mostly the wrong places. And I now require several triple espressos to make it to lunch. Exercise is not as easy and recovery not as quick.

I still try to take care of my body in the hopes that my biological age doesn't reflect my chronological age, but diet and exercise are a bear when I already have a full-time job, a marriage and a mortgage. Still I pinch my love handle every morning and am reminded that it can easily grow if I'm not careful, so I eat a breakfast of egg whites and fresh strawberries and wash it down with a triple espresso with a splash of low-fat milk. Then I head to the gym and inevitably pull a muscle in my neck so for two days I look decrepit every time I turn my head to the left.

But, what can I do? I keep at it, eating healthfully for the body, lift some iron for the muscles, and do some cycling for the heart.

I workout hard, lifting weight mostly. In fact, lifting weight is now my sport -- particularly Olympic-style Weightlifting. The snatch, and the clean and jerk. These two lifts have been around as an Olympic sport for over one hundred years. It's not terribly popular in America and doesn't bring its athletes much money, fame or clout. But it's a fun sport for those who, one way or another, gravitate toward it. It is nearly a cult, which sounds bad but really isn't; it's just that, compared to more popular American sports, Olympic-style weightlifting has so few participants that those involved tend to feel a greater level of familial understanding and camaraderie.

But I don't really care about that shit because I just like the lifts: The snatch is considered the world's fastest lift and the clean and jerk the world's most powerful. The snatch is so lightning fast that, if you blink, you'd miss the artistic and skillful interplay of body and barbell. The clean and jerk is so powerful that you'd think every major bone in the body is one quiver away from shattering.

And so I started training at the age of 39 for my first weightlifting competition that would fall on the same month as my 40th birthday. I was fully aware of the psychological hang-up behind my effort with this competition. It wasn't so much an effort to hang onto the quickly disappearing 30s as it was to deny the fast-approaching 40s.

When I first became conscious of my parents' age, they were in their 40s. That, to a child, was old. Now the 40s are staring at me in my own face. How had this happened? I can at any instance conjure glimpses of memories, replay bits of childhood, youth and young-adult life, but it all seems to fit too neatly into a little jar that can't possibly hold four decades of life. I know that a lot has happened to me, but there is a sense that not enough has happened and I haven't really lived. Of course, this is where the insidious symptoms of middle-age crisis emerge and I should want to bunjee-rope jump off a cliff in Brazil with my new Brazilian girlfriend who would be 20 years my junior, while blowing what little savings I have on exotic drinks and a rental Ferarri. Red.

But even a middle-age crisis cannot battle reality and a wife and mortgage.

So, when the weightlifting meet came around, I had been fiercely prepared, to the point that one more minute of training would have destroyed my body. I was on the brink. My only wish then was to beat those younger than me. I would have broken every bone and tear every tendon to beat those half my age.

And I beat everyone in my body weight category, without injury. I went home with a first-place medal, my badge for surviving my first middle-age crisis. Since then I have not trained consistently, not because I lost motivation but because my body just couldn't keep up. The competition was my Hail Mary. And that, physically, was all I had. I was left with tendonitis in both knees and left elbow from the desperately intense training.

But it hasn't escaped me the physical feat that I had achieved at an age when most people began to face health issues far worse than tendonitis. Also I have not been lost to the blessings of my life. I am married to a wonderful wife, I have a decent steady profession, possess a higher education, and I have basic health and fitness. I cannot say the same of the batch of friends from which I sprung. My friend back on the East Coast, who graduated high school one year in front of me, had died of a massive heart attack at the age of 41. Another friend, 3 years my senior, is preparing for a double by-pass. Most of the rest of my friends are sedentary and barely have room to breathe because their children are taking every breath and minute of their time. These people have no room for a middle-age crisis. At least I do, and at least I have the luxury to do something about it. And the weightlifting competition marks my response to my first and, hopefully, my last middle-age crisis.