JonRoig.com | Posted: 2009-09-21 10:10:27 | 1579 hits | View in Hi-Fi Mode
5769... undeniably a weird friggin' year. In a good way.
I've decided to try something different this year, an annual report of sorts. I was thinking about it while climbing Camelback this evening, looking back at all the crazy adventures I've had in the last 365 days and thinking about my poor, neglected blog. I decided that I should try and make some sense of it all, if only so I can look back at in my later years and go, "What the heck were you thinking?"
In a general sense, things just seem to keep getting better and better. It's kind of remarkable, actually... so much so that it's gonna be hard to top this in 5770.
That's not to say there hasn't been some ups and downs along the way -- I did, after all, begin the year by falling off a cliff on Camelback the weekend before Man Against Horse, dislocating my shoulder and consigning me to a sling for several months.
Now, that didn't necessarily stop me from running -- I got a waist leash for my dog and still took to the streets, much to the amusement of my neighbors. Rehab for that thing was a bitch, though... those PT people are evil torturers, but I've gotta say, they did a pretty good job. When I started training for the Ironman -- I committed to it way back in November -- I wasn't a hundred percent sure I'd have a full enough range of motion in my arm to swim effectively.
We'll see... I spent the last few months training in the pool and it's kind of incredible, the effect that's had on my core strength. I just feel really solid, it's tough to describe. I'm doing like 12 solid workouts a week (with two in the three+ hour range), so despite the fact that I DNF'd at the Vermont 100, I am literally in the best shape of my life. I'm kind of amazed at how casually I can throw down with a marathon or 50k... I mean, this year, I qualified for the Boston Marathon with a 3:06 at P.F. Chang's, ran a 1:25 half marathon, took first in my age group at the Pemberton 50k, and did Zane Grey in 12:30, an hour and a half faster than I did the year before.
Holy cow! Dunno if I'll be able to do that again... but that's not to say I didn't use my time off from competition well at the beginning of the year: I volunteered at a whole bunch of races, including working the transition area at the IronMan, manning a remote aid station in the middle of the night at the Javelina Jundred, helping with registration 'n' stuff at a couple 10k's, and marking a chunk of the trail for Zane Grey... Turns out, it's actually really fun to help out with these things. Looking forward to doing more of that next year...
My new job kicks ass. About a year ago, I took a new gig with GoDaddy working on the Webmail team, our version of Hotmail or Gmail or whatever. It's been great -- I have really cool, smart coworkers, the work is pretty interesting, and I'm learning a ton every day. I began the year as a PHP programmer who dabbled in Javascript, now it's pretty much flipped. All day long, I code in Javascript... the ever changing landscape and scope of the language makes it really cutting edge and the potential grows constantly. The browser differences are kind of strange, but with each release, they come closer to behaving reliably similar. Of course, it's a little odd working in a cube amidst a sea of cubes, but I like it. It's a fantastic place to practice my craft.
Let's recount some of the random places I found myself this year: watched Lil' Wayne / T-Pain at America West from really amazingly seats, ran drunkenly down the streets of downtown Phoenix dressed as a scientist and pushing a shopping cart modified into a space shuttle during the Idiotarod, got shepherded into some of the exclusive Las Vegas clubs with a Playboy makeup artist, slept under the stars in the forest in Northern Arizona, caught an amazing freak show with the best six foot Amazon transvestite hula hoop dancer I've ever seen, spent a few days camping in one of the most remote settlements in the continental USA, Havasupai. I saw friggin' Sinbad perform.
The highlight was, undoubtedly, the single Downhill from Piedmont show, my now defunct punk band. We were truly terrible. You have to write about the things you know, so we did songs about girls doing heroin in squats, doing beer runs, fighting in the streets with other gangs. You know, we were just keeping it real, talking about the Suiciety. (That's, like, "suicide" and "society" combined, man...) Obviously, I had no business being a frontman for something like that, but it was super fun. The.. uhh... talented members of the band have continued on as AP Calculus and I expect nothing but greatness from those boys.
Of course, none of this would have been possible without all my old pals and all the awesome people I've met over the last year. I hope ya'll know how amazing you've been. Thanks!
There was a great This American Life on the other day about "frenemies," and that kind of got me thinking.. someone once said that to be successful in life, you have to acquire both an arch enemy and a nemesis. Humans are competitive; you need that animosity to drive you forward. What's the difference? According to Chuck Klosterman, "You kind of like your nemesis, despite the fact that you despise him. You will always have drinks with your nemesis. You would attend the funeral of your nemesis and -- privately -- you might shed a tear over his or her passing. However, you would never choose to have a cocktail with your archenemy, unless you were attempting to spike the gin with arsenic."
This year, I'm happy to say that I met a really great nemesis. Like, a classic one. Dunno if you'll read this, but you know who you are... and I just wanted to thank you for being so horrible. In a weird way, I kind of needed that... and I'm certainly looking forward to giving you the finger the next time we run into each other. Still need to find the right arch enemy, though, so I'm totally taking applications. Despite the radio reminder, the frenemy position remains unfilled as well.
My pets, Gus and Soleil, have been great. I've had that darned cat since I was a Junior in college, and Soleil is still going strong, all these years later. And Gus, that dog is rad. He's been a fantastic running buddy and now, at age five, is finally starting to calm down. I created a twitter account for him: @thegusdog. I wanna make it clear, that I will not be posting updates on his behalf. I just think it's funny that I can reference him that way.
He's stopped sleeping at the end of the bed, though. Who will protect me from ghosts and apparitions? The cat? I don't think so...
Now, let's be clear -- I haven't had much of a poltergeist problem so far, but one can never be too careful. I am feeling pretty secure and grounded in my home, though, having lived in the same place now for over five years. That's the longest I've lived anywhere since I was a little kid. I've gotten to know a lot of the various random people around the neighborhood and I, like, actually see people I know when I'm out and about. It's very exciting. It took me awhile, but I finally found a great neighborhood bar in Papago Brewery... essential.
So... in the end, that's kind of the state of things. I'm just really grateful for the last year and everyone who was a part of it. This isn't exactly where I would have pictured myself five years ago, but as my favorite philosopher, Donald Rumsfeld, once said, "I would not say that the future is necessarily less predictable than the past. I think the past was not predictable when it started."
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