At 42,000 Feet...

Boise, Seattle, and Portland: three cities, three days. I’ve just concluded my lecture tour out west, leaving behind tidbits of neuroscience, and the sad remnants of abandoned hotel soap. I suspect in many cases the soap may last longer than the fleeting electrical/chemical neural pathways I’ve attempted to forge among my seminar attendees.

A couple of observations about being on the road (142,000 air miles last year). An airplane is essentially a Greyhound bus with wings, although GH buses don’t include ‘doody’ pockets. The doody pocket is, of course, the little pocket attached to the seat in front of you, and with the possible exception of the men’s room at O’Hare’s concourse F, the filthiest place on earth. It is, I’ve discovered, the repository for soiled diapers, used barf bags, unwanted pets (goldfish are not particularly good flyers, especially when water has not been provided ahead of time), half-eaten omelets, and headless Ken dolls. Yep, Barbie may look innocent enough, but apparently the B has quite the temper.

This morning I’m limping home via a Delta MD90, with a pilot who looks to be about 13 years old. At least that’s my assumption, since I picked up on the Clearasil bottle protruding from the back pocket of his well worn Delta sky pants. Rumor is that he reaches the controls sitting atop a stack of defunct Gateway laptops since the Google crew (Manisha Chakravarthy, that includes you) has rendered phone books obsolete. Never-the-less at journey’s end, I look forward to seeing the charming and delightful Mary Gleason Best. 

Now, it might appear that I’ve turned into some weary sad sack traveler who delights in using too many hotel towels, and believes you can never have too much free toothpaste, even if it’s not your brand and will ultimately find its way into the black hole of a Delta MD 90 doody pocket. And, sure that’s all true, but on this trip particular trip I can happily report something momentous has occurred. I’ve conquered one of my elusive 14 goals. (William “The Marketing Genius” Mericle suggested I actually provide an update on my progress from time to time.) 

After a particularly sleepless night in the Seattle Hyatt (Seattle is what you expect Denver to look like, before you actually see Denver for the first time), I got up blurry eyed in the early morning and knocked out goal #2 with a 7.59 minute mile run, blowing my 8 minute mile goal away by a full second. This is part of my larger training goal towards the Waconia half marathon I’ll be running June 9th with Mr. Casey Gleason Best.  The last half marathon we tackled together he did what I can only describe as a slow motion moon walk around me at mile marker seven, while he recited the US president’s names backwards and made farting noises using the well established hand-to-armpit technique. (A sweaty armpit creates amplification and the kind of bold richness usually found only in Folgers Deep Roast coffee packs.) Casey claims it was all part of his effort to ‘keep me motivated’. I took it as a sign that I needed to increase my speed, thus adding a series of tempo runs to my training regime, which begot goal #2.

So the good news is I’ve knocked down my first goal. Unfortunately, now I’m confronted with the unlucky number 13. Like most of you, I’m not given to spending a lot of time twisting my mind around superstitious clap trap. Those reptilian neural pathways are as cold as D.B. Cooper’s trail. I only wish this plucky junior high pilot would land this plane, so I don’t have to mentally keep this thing aloft anymore. It’s a helluva lot of work, and I’m still tired from my 7.59 minute run.