Moving the Body at Rest

My body at rest has become a body in motion. The rest of the time, I’m recovering. I know it may seem wrong to call me a body at rest when I am a distance runner, but it’s really true. I lie on the couch until I get up and run, and then I go back to the couch. This is not just metaphorical. I’m sedentary in my core. Hand me another book.

But not anymore. Not since I signed up to hike the Chilkoot Trail. I’m not sure whether that’s a carrot or a stick, but it’s certainly lit a fire under me. The fire of refusing to be humiliated, the fire of realizing the only way off the trail is over it. So I had to train. That led to the Zumba experiment, but now, with the weather turning glorious (and one little episode of barfing in the middle of a group weight-lifting class), I’m back outside.

A snow-less winter of no skiing meant I was entering the spring with enough flab for several people. I always start off slowly to avoid injury, and I usually run every other day. This avoids injury but also allows me to resume my inertia position of body at rest. This time, though, I have a rooting section called Tim. While I am a body at rest, Tim is a body-always-seeking-motion. So far, I have been able to resist.

But now, he whispers, “Chilkoot Trail,” and I gear up. We’ve added hiking to my days off. Not only do I have to practice steep; I have to practice walking, period. For some reason, I find it easier to run ten miles than to walk six. I think it has to do with standing on my feet that long or maybe it’s momentum, but I reach the groan-level much earlier with walking. Our friend Kris has been organizing weekly hikes for years, so now I show up, too.

One week it was Kincaid Park, hiking the bluff to the beach. I was glad to be with a group; maybe this would be the time I could actually find my way back from the beach without bushwhacking through brush. It was a glorious, sunny day – I applied my sunscreen – until we got to Kincaid, where the wind was ferocious. The first time I discovered the sand dunes at Kincaid, I thought I’d landed on a Star Wars planet. Woods, cliffs, rocks … and sand dunes?

Sand dunes + wind + sunscreen on face = a total crust of sand encasing my face.

The trail goes up and down, up and down. This is called “hill work.” It is work because it’s single-file and you don’t want to slow up the people behind you (Is there a hiking version of corridor rage called trail rage?). There was no smelling of the roses; we hustled along. Up and down. Up and down.

There were lots of tree roots and lots of dogs. I don’t do tree roots well. Not cracks in sidewalks, not uneven pavement, not broken branches or rocks, either. I must be a vigilant trail runner (and sidewalk walker) because tree roots eagerly await me. Tim says they’re like the trees in the Wizard of Oz when they see me. My toes are the usual victims, but I’ve been known to go down whole body, involving even my head in the calamity. Dogs just complicate the issue.

The good side to all this motion: I’ve discovered a lovely, nearby trail that has been here for all 31 years I’ve lived in Alaska and I’d never been on it. I walked a trail that I’ve only skied before – ski trails can be hiking trails in the non-winter! That was a good day; I found Joy, that shy spirit, on the trail, too.

In the midst of all this running and walking, my friend Connie passed on an article about “dead butt syndrome,” otherwise known as gluteus medius tendinosis. Ironically, you don’t get a dead butt from lying on the couch; you get it if you run too much and too exclusively. Your butt is connected to your hips, legs, and back so the pain is well connected, too. This problem goes beyond the sagginess issue, so now I have to add Other Things to my body in motion repertoire.

Some days, I actually do two things in one day: run in the morning and bike somewhere in the evening. Oh, yikes, what’s happening to me?!?

Gasp. Choke. Unwelcome adventures.

Oh, yikes, the wrong people have found me on the Internet. I am beyond upset. I am vibrating with agitation.

I was looking through my blog analytics, and I noticed that two of the blog visits had an extra bunch of letters in the URL. So I clicked on it.

It went to a fake version of my blog: no header, no right-hand side, just the words and drawings. I totally panicked: my computer must be crashing, I’d ruined its brains, my blog was disintegrating. So then I Googled just the extra letters, and it turned out to be on lots of other websites. Just inserted into them.

I asked Google, “What is XXXX?” but all I got was a homepage, written in Asian characters. The Chinese must be violating international copyright laws with my blog; I was a victim of cyber crime! I was also clearly out of my depth.

So then I had to figure out how to ask Blogger my questions, how to get on the “Forum.” Other people put their questions there, but I don’t even know the process.

Brief interlude for hysterical outburst:

I AM a tech dinosaur! There, I said it! I can’t get an answer to a question without negotiating another completely separate hurdle: I have to ask questions about how to post a question. And don’t even get me started on how am I supposed to receive the answers. Why does everything seem to lead to an endless trip down a technological rabbit hole?!?

Deep breath, deep breath. Remember: every hurdle is just another boost to maintain my cognitive abilities.

I figured out how to ask, and I asked. This morning, a very nice guy responded, and his little button said he was a “Google Expert.” Hooray! He said he couldn’t duplicate the result, could I tell him how I found the bad blog.

So I did my Google thing, and they were gone! Everything with that bunch of letters in it was gone except for the home page. So I checked my analytics again, and there was a third person going to that bad site! From Google! Oh, yikes, this was a mess. (Afterwards, I did figure out that was my Expert looking it up, but by this point, I was so freaked out, I felt like every incident was a cyber threat.)

I explained everything to my Google Expert, and he said “It looks like that site is taking content and hosting it on their server. You might want to contact the website owner to remove your content from their servers.”

Cyber thieves taking my stories and pictures! I was furious, but I worried that contacting them was like trying to unsubscribe from spam, that it confirmed to the bad guys that you were alive and then you’d never get rid of them. Not to mention that everything was in Asian characters. But my Expert told me to, so I went to their home page and clicked “Translate.”

Gasp. I’m even afraid to tell you what I found, that it will add me to their list again. Can I say they called themselves “erotic images” without the word “erotic” showing up in Google searches? (Too late.) And they’re sending people to a fake version of my blog! (Deep breath, deep breath.) I even feel icky touching my keyboard.

Immediately, I thought of the butt lineup from Costco, but that was a while ago. Why would I first hit their radar now? Oh, no! It must have been my butt peeing outside, hiding from the bus. Look here: is that an erotic image to you?

So I quickly replied to my Google Expert, asking him what I should do now, but he’s not responding! Maybe he’s checking my blog and Google will remove me! Already, “3rd Thirds” is only yielding searches about Third Graders. Here I am, in my Third Third, and I’m a Japanese porn attraction.

(sob)

No butts about it

I know I’ve mentioned that public radio used to introduce my commentaries by saying, “Barbara Brown, whose daily collisions with life leave her with great stories and a grateful heart.” Boy, did I collide Wednesday!

It started with a doctor’s appointment. After 1½ hours in the waiting room, I walked out. I’d missed a Literacy Program training so you could say I was a tinderbox, alive with fuel. I was bristling and pissed. Then, I remembered I had to go to Costco so that would set me behind even more.

I needed plastic wrap, way back in the corner I barely ever go to. I was just noticing hey, they have school supplies back here, when there was a loud human roar. The two guys next to me were suddenly grappling, wrestling, throwing each other around. It was a major fight. It’s the one you heard about on the news, the one where the shoplifter pistol-whipped the undercover security guy.

Now, if you’re friends of mine, you will tell me that my fuel could have sparked the negativity that exploded. That I had so much fury in me that it spontaneously combusted and blew up the guy in Costco. You’ll laugh uproariously over the image of people exploding as I walked the aisles of Costco.

I’d laugh, too, except that the only image stuck in my brain is of the guy’s butt.

The two guys fighting it out next to me were HUGE. I had a mental thought of Sumo wrestlers. And they were FURIOUS. One guy’s face was pure rage. But then his sweat pants started falling down. At first, it was just a plumber’s butt crack, but then it was his WHOLE BUTT. If you’re my friend Linda, you’ll ask, “Wasn’t he wearing underpants?” and I’d say no. I remember thinking he wouldn’t be able to run away with his pants down around his knees, but I decided it was time to depart before he turned around and I was exposed to frontal nudity. Not to mention all this thrashing was happening about a foot away and it was just me and them.

So I raced to move north, looking for a Costco employee. A red-vested woman was already in the aisle on a walkie-talkie, and she said he’d pulled out a pistol. Costco employees were racing to the corner, and I thought, Look at that, they’re all going towards the danger. I kept moving away, gathering others to get them out of the area. We ended up at the food ladies, who already knew what was happening and were passing out food samples and saying “stay here.”

This was only about four minutes into the action. So I’m supposing that even the food ladies are on some sort of walkie-talkie thing. And then, when it was all clear, the food ladies told us we could go back. Other customers started streaming in from the frozen food area and the outside; I guess employees had mustered them there.

All in all, Costco had done a superlative job of handling the situation. Obviously they had a plan, were well trained, and remained calm. When I went back over to get my plastic wrap, it was cordoned off with yellow tape. Costco employees were at the perimeter, asking what we wanted and then fetching it for us. Kudos to all of them.

They asked if I should talk to the police, and I thought of all the police shows I watch and what an unreliable eye witness I’d be. What would I say, that the only thing I could really pick out of a line-up was the guy’s butt?

At this point, I still thought it was two customers with anger-management issues. It wasn’t till I heard the news that I discovered one of them was the undercover security guy who’d spotted the guy (allegedly) shoplifting. They both looked pretty rasty to me so I have no idea which was which. That’s what undercover is all about, I guess.

And now, if you’re my friend Connie, you’ll say, “The one without the underpants is not the Costco employee. They have to wear underpants.”

I’m going to leave you with that bit of wisdom.