Tiburon Mile

 To quote an old Henny Youngman joke (most of you are way too young to have ever seen Henny Youngman, but he was the king of corny jokes), “I just flew in from San Francisco and boy, are my arms tired.” Actually we did fly in from SF late last night and, from the Sunday swim, my triceps are tired.

As for the swim…I hadn’t swam in three weeks since Ironman Wisconsin, the water seemed especially cold, my left shoulder kept wanting to pop out of joint (4 times) as it did at Madison, but I thought I had a good swim. My time was 6 minutes slower than it was two years ago and so was Matt’s, but that could be a difference in currents.

They said the water was 61 degrees, but it seemed very cold in the bay on Angel Island where we started from. I could feel it getting warmer as we got out of the bay but ran in and out of cold currents all the way across. At the mouth of the harbor at Tiburon I went through an especially cold current for about 10 meters, then it turned warm (tolerably cold) again.

For what it’s worth, two years ago I was 177th out of 254 in the wetsuit division and this year I was 227th out of 281. Slightly worse in the overall standings, but I really don’t care. I’m not a swimmer and this is one of the premier open water swims in the world, so it attracts good swimmers.

I went to do the race with my son, Matt, and we had fun. I use the term “we had fun” loosely. On the way over to Tiburon, Matt didn’t seem as happy to have signed up as I was. I told him “Remember those times when you were growing up and you told me you were going somewhere, but you actually went to a different place that I wouldn’t have approved of? This is a payback, having to swim in a race you wouldn’t have signed up for if it wasn’t for dear old Dad”. You can tell Matt is a chip off the old block because we celebrated the race by going to a brewpub and afterwards bottled about nine gallons of home brewed beer.

Jean and I had fun in San Francisco going to Alcatraz for a tour and walking all over town. On the negative side, the blister that I got at Ironman Wisconsin apparently hadn’t healed completely and it caused a lot of pain the farther we walked. Most of you know that not doing something every minute with Jean along isn’t an option, so I was stuck. After Alcatraz we got lunch at a surf oriented tourist restaurant called Wipe Out at Fisherman’s Wharf where the food mimicked the name. They were out of Anchor Steam (the signature beer of San Francisco), the service was slow, the coffee (decaf) was lousy, the special pineapple cole slaw had no pineapple in it, and the fish and chips at the world famous fisherman’s wharf weren’t anything special.

I was so distraught, we went to the Buena Vista for Irish Coffee. They claim to have invented Irish Coffee, which is refuted by the Irish of course. For those who have never had Irish Coffee, in a heated glass you pour a shot of Irish Whiskey, add three cubes of sugar, fill it within a half inch of the top of the glass with coffee and top it with a layer of cream. 

You would think that with a name like Cavanaugh, Jean would love it but she doesn’t like whiskey at all. She tried hers and decided I should finish it for her and she got some Chardonnay. Our waiter was good about it. Luckily he saw that I didn’t mind finishing Jean’s, so when he had an extra Irish Coffee for another table, he gave it to me to drink the mistake. Unluckily I felt obligated to leave a five dollar tip. Luckily we were riding the bus and I wasn’t driving. Unluckily the bus stop was several blocks away. Luckily the pain in my blister miraculously disappeared for a couple of hours. Unluckily the pain in my head got worse in a couple of hours. Luckily…OK, OK. I’ll quit with the lame jokes.

It was great to see Matt and Anna again. When they live so far away the reunions aren’t often enough but I enjoyed every minute of them. They both seem to be happy with where they’re at (physically and mentally) and they both have a great group of friends.

On Saturday Matt, Tonya, Jean and I went up to Guerneville and looked over the course for the Vineman Triathlon. They have a half ironman and a full ironman on different weekends in July or August. The swim is in the Russian River at Guerneville, the bike traverses through wine country past about 30 wineries, and transitions from swim to bike in a different town a few miles away. The bike course is somewhat technical. I would feel intimidated but it’s a bike that Jean liked and Jon Anderson would love. For all the mountains around there it is just a “rolling” bike with only a couple 300 to 400 foot climbs. Is that race in our future? We’ll see.

We never get over the people we see on Haight Street. There are a number of homeless street bums. A good share of them are our age that probably burned out in the sixties, but there are quite a few young dropouts that don’t want anything more out of life than to hang out and beg for money. The vast majority of the people we see are normal but don’t dress as we do nor as young people do in Hastings. We snicker at some of their outfits, but I’m guessing there are couples sitting in Magnolias (a brew pub at Haight and Masonic) who look at us and see oddly dressed pilgrims from the Midwest.

It makes me think about what “normal” is and I guess it’s a state of mind. My normal isn’t necessarily the same as your normal or anyone else’s normal. If the world were filled with my “normal”, it would either be too dull or too “off the wall” to imagine. So I guess it’s only OK to snicker if I don’t mind having people snicker back.

Just (Getting Weird Even For Me) Jack

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