Booty Call

I have been a pretty avid rollerblader for more than ten years now. I'm on my third pair now, having reduced the first two to tatters. I've had some pretty... interesting experiences while rollerblading, including the time when the giant Pepsi hot-air balloon hovered directly above me and its passengers offered me a lift (due to a scheduling conflict, I had to decline) and my all-time rollerblading highlight: the breaking of my arm (right distal radius and some assorted metacarpals), which also happened to involve the losing of my glasses, which made the hospital experience rather fuzzy and romantic, like a fade-out of a wedding scene, only with more pain and these weird-looking finger traps from which my arm hung suspended for a while. But I digress. Today's topic: my athletic infidelity.

The rollerblades and I have had shaky times in the past. I eschewed them for a good couple of months after that pesky arm incident, and they just didn't make the luggage cut when I moved to Germany. However, faced with the prospect of starting life on my own here in the East, I just knew that the time was ripe again to bring back Homer and Marge. So they made the flight across the Atlantic, nestled all snug in my suitcase next to a couple of relief sweaters engaged to ameliorate dull monotony of having alternated the SAME TWO FRICKIN' SWEATERS on every cold day for an entire year. (Aaahh! More tangent. Sorry; getting to the point now.)

And I was really faithful to the Friendly Footwear this year, until I went a little crazy a couple months ago and decided it would be fun to start running long distances sans ball bearings. So Sonny and Cher got ditched in favor of my Swedish running shoes. And then, a couple weeks ago, I sorta dissed the running for... um, my remote control? And still Anthony and Cleopatra sat on the shelf.

But yesterday dawned clear and crisp, and Ethel and Julius got the booty call they'd surely been waiting for.

My rollerblading route is fairly well established: across the bridge to the next town, under the train tracks, along the road with the cool graffitied concrete barriers, down the path that always reminds me of walking into the African sunset, through the weekend gardens, past the cornfields, across another set of train tracks, past the little frog pond, through the pine forest, past the plum trees and the streetside funeral chapel, and back again. Heathcliff and Catherine have been through this drill so often they practically steer themselves.

And there's this one spot that scares me every single time. As I enter the little town to our south and set out underneath the train tracks, the path reverts to flat, rectangular cobblestones set into each other checkerboard-style. There's a slight decline, so I have to navigate the cobblestones at an ever-increasing speed, and to be honest, every single time, I have flashbacks of the bridge on which I wiped out so spectacularly seven years ago.

Because on those cobblestones, my wheels get caught in the ruts and I lose my balance if I don't find some way to avoid blading in a straight line on that stretch. I've developed all sorts of geeky techniques: the "snowman", the "slalom", the "random pattern generator", you name it. This time as I was trying to introduce a little Latin rhythm into the game, it occurred to me that although this part of the route terrifies me a little bit, I actually look forward to it... it's become a little challenge to me to avoid the ruts in style.

And that's the little life lesson that refused to stop resonating through my head until I wrote it down: a little variety keeps you from getting caught in the ruts. I do it so gleefully when I've got John and Yoko strapped to my heels; it's probably also an attitude that would help me put a little spice in my "walking life" too.

In the meantime, Samson, Delilah and I are working out our differences. Arrrrr!