I no longer wonder what happened to my childhood’s lonesome highway, to the bloodied heroes and the feverishly imagined manhood where the bars are still open at a quarter to three and morning is a distant fire streaked across the sky. Where the neon in the darkness offers a drifting promise …

Simply put, whether metaphorical or literal, when it feels like the end of things maybe the best thing to be done is to sit down and wait for what comes next. In every battle, you’re required to find your way from where you are to where you want and need to be. Sometimes that works out. Sometimes not.

Not so fast, Michael. It is going to take a long while to work through what is in front of me. It is possible and indeed likely that I will one day in the distant future go out for a double-digit run and not wind up in an ER somewhere. I am looking forward to that.

Back when trail running was some thing I could do, I would sometimes go back to the trail with my camera to see what I may have not seen. I’m thinking’ I maybe ought to do that again, at least until the running returns.

Empty boat waiting

When I was little, February 12th was Abe Lincoln’s birthday, a school holiday, my parents wedding anniversary and the anniversary of my father’s discharge from the army.

Maybe it is the sense of the post, a no nonsense image of stability, as if sentinel and transect, an anchor point on a blowy summer day on the ridge-line.

Running happens in my dreams these days more often than it does on the streets. Maybe that can change. We will see. I’ll let you know.

Invisible on any street in America, Bob G is a genuine American article who has done his best to do right. I was touched by his stamina and grace. He left, we shook hands and agreed to see each other at the races.