Emotional Regulation Through Athletic Isolation
My second essay from Write of Passage
Clunk.
I turned around from the kitchen sink to see my wife’s mug horizontal on the living room coffee table.
“What the fuck!” I said from the far end of our long, narrow row home. “How are you so careless? Why are you always dropping and spilling shit?”
Chels was standing over the table holding her laptop and charger with the chord dangling to the floor as a light brown puddle engulfed every crevice of the table’s wooden slats.
“I don’t know, Ryan,” she said, as she tossed her laptop and charger onto the couch cushion and reached to pick up the mug. “Who the fuck cares? Stop yelling at me.”
“I seriously don’t get it,” I said, shaking my head with my back to her as I returned to loading dishes into the dishwasher. “You are so careless.”
She made the five step journey from our living room to the kitchen cabinet, grabbed a tattered rag to wipe up the spill, then walked back into the kitchen to pour another cup of coffee.
~
It was the kind of November day people hide from in the northeast.
I wanted to be competing for space on our two cushion couch with Chels, and our 75lb chocolate lab, Jameson, cupping a warm bowl of butternut squash soup in my hands with a Harry Potter marathon on the TV.
Instead, I was going on the longest bike ride of my life.
“I have to train if I want to finish this half Ironman,” I thought, as I click-clacked around the kitchen in my bike shoes, ignoring the final suggestions from my mind to skip the ride.
The sky was one gray sheet of despair and the wind swirled in surges that tried to sweep me back inside.
I was doing an out-and-back on the “SRT”, an 8 foot wide rail trail that winds west along the Schuylkill River for 30 miles from Philly to the suburbs.
I was on my return trip when I heard it. First a pop, then flapping and rumbling, like a whoopie cushion farting open.
“Fuuuuuck”, I groaned as I pulled to the side of the path and rolled to a stop.
I looked over the handlebars and down at my front tire.
”Are you kidding me?” I said, staring at a half inch of crumpled rubber bulging out from beneath the wheel. I tossed my bike into the grass beside the trail. “The trail should be paved better.”
I looked behind me on the trail, then turned to look up ahead.
“I need someone to fix this.”
There was nothing but barren trees, brown river water that flushed like a toilet bowl and brisk air that felt 10 degrees colder now that my legs weren’t powering the pedals.
I was 20 miles from home.
The whole point of doing this half Ironman was to figure out how to stop quitting on myself. I thought if I did this really hard thing, I'd have more control over my life.
“A flat tire? How fucking annoying” I thought, as I unzipped my saddle bag for the first time, took out my flat repair kit and pulled up YouTube on my phone.
“How to fix a flat tire”, I said out loud as I typed.
After 15 minutes of pinching, prying and pumping, I was back on the road.
My legs felt spring-loaded, each pedal stroke a burst of energy, like a rabbit leaping freely across an open field.
I cruised through the final leg of the rail trail and put my head on a swivel as I weaved from the west edge of the city all the way over to the east side, timing traffic lights, dodging potholes and avoiding broken bottles.
To steer clear of cars, I rode straight toward the industrial district, scooted under the elevated subway line and along a collection of abandoned factories that were a few new windows away from becoming rustic apartments.
I was just a mile from home when I heard it again. This time it was more subtle. Tssssssss.
Another flat??? I didn’t have another tube or C02 to fix it…
I saw a bench on the sidewalk to my right, rolled to a stop, leaned my bike against the arm of the bench and took a seat.
“I gotta call Chels to come get me,” I thought.
“Hey!”, she said after the second ring.
“Hey, I’m close to home, but I got a flat. Can you come get me?”, I said as I loosened my shoes and unbuckled my helmet. “I’m on Front Street by the Spring Garden stop.”
“Oh, no! Are you ok??”, Chels asked back.
“Oh, ya. I’m fine. I just don’t have any more flat repair stuff”, I said as I looked down and pressed save on my Garmin. “I got another one at mile 40 that I had to fix.”
“Two flats??? Oh I’m sorry babe.”
“It’s all good. I had a really solid ride.”
~
A few weeks later, I was standing over the stove scrambling eggs when I heard a bang in the living room.
I turned my head and saw Chels standing over the coffee table with a book in one hand, her Yeti water bottle in the other, and her coffee mug back in the horizontal position.
A light brown puddle flooded the coffee table as she lifted her head and turned her attention to me.
We locked eyes for a moment before both glancing back down at the spill.
I took a leaping step toward our junk towel drawer and opened it to grab a rag.
“Here you go,” I said as I tossed it to her.
As she patted the puddle dry, I walked over to pick up her mug and poured her another cup of coffee.
P.S. I am in Week 4 of Write of Passage, a 5-week instructional writing cohort.
This is the second of three essays that will be published during the course.
You can read my first essay, The Struggle and Glory of Dad Duty, HERE.