All The Small Things
Sprint cars on dirt track speedways, Japanese letters from the Pokémon Center, and a small hand into mine
Each week, a menu of sorts, around a revolving theme. This week: the small things that matter more.
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Ingredient List
🎵: On account of the resurrection of Sturgill Simpson and his announcement of a new album and fall tour under the name Johnny Blue Skies, I went back and listened to Metamodern Sounds in Country Music for my entire drive up to Pennsylvania on Thursday. Yeah, it holds up pretty, pretty well.
This Past Week
From the launch of my first signature piece of apparel with the Fractel x Believe in the Run “Robbe Raccoon” Legionnaire to a running retreat for the ages (see below), this week was off the charts. This summer is going to be a good one, it has been already.
Against all odds, my signature Legionnaire sold out in the first evening (save for some L/XL sizes still available on the BITR shop). The weird revolution has begun.
A few other things I wrote and/or edited this week:
“Asics Magic Speed 4 (Shoe Review)” for Believe in the Run
“On Cloudrunner 2 (Shoe Review)” for Believe in the Run
“The Ultimate Father’s Day Gift Guide for Runners” for Believe in the Run
I also contribute to The Drop, a weekly email from Believe in the Run, where I round-up running news and stories in a generally sarcastic manner. You can subscribe here.
And now, onto the dinner service.
Course 1
A Word of Gratitude: Smoked Brisket & S’mores
The newsletter is a bit short this week (and sorry for the slight delay if you’re a Sunday evening reader), mainly because the past three days were spent getting away from everything.
For the past five years, I kept saying I wanted to organize a run retreat back in the mountains where I grew up. There’s a retreat center that can sleep a good amount of people, with access to the Appalachian Trail, a beautiful shaded gravel trail in Swatara State Park, and close proximity to civilization should the need arise.
I finally pulled the trigger on it in January, booked the place, and invited a couple dozen of my friends from Believe in the Run, the original Faster Bastards crew, and a few others from my everyday life.
It will probably go down as one of the best weekends of my life, and I’ve had some good ones.
The weather was absolutely sublime, from beginning to end, and we shared many miles of running together (32 miles in total), from super rough and technical terrain on the Appalachian Trail to the smoothed out green tunnels on gravel throughout the park. Campfires every evening, the crackle of the logs accompanied by the pops of Roman Candles throwing bulbs against the black sky. Maybe, occasionally, I may have set off the biggest fireworks that money can buy, because I just had to stop and grab a few hundred dollars worth on the way to the retreat (this should come as no surprise if you read “Don’t Leave Before the Fireworks”).
As a big fan of the natural world, we got a little bit of everything this week: two copperheads that all of us very nearly stepped on at an overlook, a family of turkeys, a black rat snake that I made my pet for a few minutes, a wood turtle and box turtle, a doe and a fawn together.
On Friday afternoon, we took a tubing trip down the Swatara Creek, as a slight breeze blew and the sun warmed us just enough while the water did the reverse. Country music on the speaker, beers in the cup holder, bald eagles flying in front of us. We got picked up by my cousin at the end of the float and rode in the bed of a pickup truck back to the drop-in point. To me, that is heaven.
In the evening, we went to a $5 dirt race track and watched sprint car racing under Friday night lights with a double rainbow in the background, just because God saw that it was good, I guess. We bought t-shirts from the mom of a 13-year-old driver who was selling them at the gate, and we cheered our asses off from our seats in the wooden bleachers when it was his turn to race. The smell of engine exhaust and rich carburetors mixed with the dirt and dust sprayed into the night sky. Bets were made, beers were drunk, and ears were ringing from the whine of engines as they full-on throttled before pulling hard drifts into the turns, usually gripping onto gravity, sometimes losing their hold as they smashed into the wall on the high side. It was rural America at its best, I don’t care what anyone says.
The next day, a good portion of the crew left, and while I was anxious that I didn’t have anything big planned, it turned out to be an even better kind of day. We all just sat in camp chairs out front of the cabin, a mix of people who mostly met that weekend, and we just talked for hours. Literally the entire afternoon and evening, almost until midnight. Someone would pick up a baseball glove and we’d play catch then hit some fly balls to each other. A frisbee was tossed around. We took a break to eat dinner (some 24-hour smoked brisket, homemade mac and cheese, coleslaw, and roasted potatoes). The day moved naturally, organically, nobody on phones, nobody influencing, nobody posting or checking Instagram or fretting about the news.
It was like how we used to do life, and boy, could I do that a lot more. It wasn’t a grandiose affair, a trip to a big city, a stay in a nice hotel, with elevated food and drinks at buzzy bars. It was a few days in a building used for church camp retreats, with nights on uncomfortable beds. My mom and uncle made all the food, and brought it to serve (they’re the real heroes, and honestly, it was the kind of elevated cuisine that I’m here for). The entertainment was ourselves. Also the sprint cars. And the fireworks. But even then–mostly ourselves.
Apart from food and lodging, everything was basically free. Yet somehow, it felt like we gained a fortune.
And for that, I am grateful.
Course 2
Appetizer: Peas in Pods
If you’ve been here for any amount of time, you know that the dad life is my current lived experience, so meet me in the middle and tolerate it every once in a while (just you wait for Father’s Day).
My youngest son, Jonas, is for sure the firecracker of my two boys, the one who takes the risks, who goes to the edge, whose smile will get him out of a lot of trouble he deserves to be in. At times he can seem distant, I think just because he’s thinking about a lot of things. At least, that’s how I am. So many things going on, sometimes it’s hard to focus on the things in front of you.
But there’s this thing he does and it absolutely demolishes me every time.
We’ll be walking to school, or somewhere else, but mostly to school, and we’ll be in the middle of talking and out of nowhere he just slips his hand into mine. No announcement, no real reason, just two pieces of a puzzle that are differently shaped but somehow fit perfectly. A pea inside its pod. Mostly this is because I have baby hands, but still.
The last time I came home from a real trip, I didn’t get an “I missed you!” or a relentless hug the way my older son does. But that day and the one after and another one after that, he held my hand everywhere we went, as if I would slip straight down the gutter drain and float away to the Chesapeake if I stepped off the curb before him.
It’s so subtle, such a small thing, really, and yet it’s everything. I don’t know when it’s going to end, but I know it’s probably sometime soon. Being my youngest son, when it is the last time, it’ll be gone for actually ever. So I try to take each one as a gift, hoping that those ten minutes can last a lifetime.
Course 3
The Main: 7-Eleven Egg Salad Sandwich
The best way that I can describe Japan (Tokyo in particular) is that it’s real life, but it’s as if you’re viewing everything through a lens that’s tilted just a few degrees to the left. You can grasp how things work– the buildings and subway and layout of streets make sense, generally– but it’s all slightly askew, as if you’re retelling a dream to someone. You walk into a 7-Eleven and it’s still a corner market, but touched by some magic as to provide you with actual, edible food and necessities that whole families could thrive and survive on. It’s orderly and beautiful which is a reflection of the place it’s in. Meanwhile, in America, it’s bulletproof glass, Amazon lockers filled with overnighted junk, fifteen rows of chips and candy, and cheap, coagulated cheese pizza under oppressive heat lamps. Again, a reflection of its people.
America deals in excesses and frivolity, while Japan practices restraint and intentionality.
Even within the Times-Square-on-steroids atmosphere of Shinjuku or Shibuya, you notice the little things, the threads that hold the fabric together. The perfectly positioned soda machine in a spotless side street, all right angles like a soldier at attention, still saluting the next customer thirty years after the great age of vending machines. The tidy and constrained piles of belongings and perfectly square blankets of the homeless men under a bridge, as if their drill sergeant should appear at any moment. Even the back alley bars, despite the flow of alcohol and the haze of cigarettes, has its constraints– here are six seats and a tiny yakitori grill– that’s it.
Among all those details, there is one that stood out to me the most, and it’s still one of my favorite things that happened to me in Japan because it’s absolutely poetic.
I was in the Pokémon Center in Shibuya, which is like ground zero for someone looking to drain their bank account on Japanese Pokémon memorabilia. In no world should a store exist where you can buy both a Snorlax keychain and a Charizard wedding ring in the same place, but it does, and it’s essentially the equivalent of the Disney or Lego store in Times Square/Manhattan. An absolute madhouse, even at 11 a.m. on a Monday.
At the store, you can create custom shirts in the Design Lab that they’ll make on the spot, which I thought would be a pretty cool souvenir for my 7-year-old son (confirmed: it was a big hit). I selected my options on the touch screen menus and ordered the shirt, which I was told would be ready in two hours. I got my receipt and left.
Sometime over the next couple hours of walking around and getting a Uobei sushi lunch in Shibuya, I lost my receipt. This should come as a surprise to no one, as that is one of my greatest talents in life (I later lost my wallet in a pachinko parlor as well, that’s a story for another time). When I came back to the store, I attempted to explain my situation to one of the workers, which was basically me just saying ‘sumimasen’ (i.e. sorry) like forty-two times. She retrieved an English-speaking employee.
I explained my situation again, and she understood what I was trying to say, at which point she pulled out a small notepad, the pocket kind with 3” x 5” pages. On the very top of the page, in the large header margin, she wrote out my order number and directions for the front-of-house cashier in the smallest, most crisp, most beautiful Japanese handwriting. Japanese or not, it was the kind of penmanship that no longer exists in the Western world; the ink strokes themselves are on the North American endangered species list.
After writing in that top margin, she then did something that I loved and cherished, an unintentional, gift-wrapped poeticism that distilled the entirety of Japanese culture into its simplest component.
Instead of tearing the entire page out of the notebook and handing it to me, she first gently separated the page from its binding before carefully folding the written header section on the line below. Then, she carefully made a precision tear, separating that piece from the remainder of the unused white space below. She then handed me the tiny strip of directions, then tucked the unused portion of the page back into the notebook.
Simple, efficient, aesthetically clean, and nothing gone to waste.
I took the note to the counter at the front, picked up my t-shirt, then made sure to grab a few packs of cards, a cookie tin, and a stuffed animal. I mean, after all, I am an American– those Goodwill shelves aren’t going to stock themselves.
Course 4
Dessert: Chocolate Ice Cream, Probably
I’ll be honest, I’m not going to write this last part this week. Instead, I’m gonna go eat some ice cream, probably with sprinkles, and then go to bed, and not get up to run in the morning, much to the dismay of my running coach. It’s all the small things for this week.
End of Menu
Thank you for dining with me this evening, I hope the service was acceptable. Tips (whether monetary or recommendations to others) are appreciated, but not expected.
Hold that wee hand 👬💕
I'm mad because this isn't longer. "Gabewad"