Wind in My Face
My father tore up his driver’s licence and disposed of his car the day he turned 75 (a long story for another day!!). Shortly after that he sold his house in Pennsylvania and moved to our little town in suburban Boston. Being car-less and license-less, he became a walker. And he walked everywhere. He walked to the grocery store, the doctor, restaurants and the liquor store. He walked to to the school for meetings and plays and to the fields to watch his grandchildren play ball. And, of course, he walked to our house — in theory, to see his family, but, in fact, to tend his garden. And sometimes he just walked because he enjoyed it. In time, he knew the roads in our little town of Acton, Massachusetts better than almost anyone.
One day, after several years of walking, he said to us that he had come to a surprising, and somewhat odd, conclusion. He said that Massachusetts is all uphill. He claimed that no matter where he walked, he had to to walk uphill. He would walk to the library and back, on the same roads to and fro, and he stated, with absolute, unwavering certainty, that he had walked uphill in both directions. He said, that this was the case regardless of where he walked, anywhere in town — uphill all the time, in all directions. There was no arguing with him about the issue. He was profoundly convinced that the laws of geography and physics had been suspended in the great state of Massachusetts.
Wendy and I smiled at my father’s assertion, silently attributing it to the strange things that go on in the complicated mind of an imaginative 80 year old. And then we started to play golf.
For those of you who don’t golf, it’s a pretty simple ‘sport.’ You swat at a little ball with a stick as you walk down a well-manicured lawn until the little ball goes into a hole that is marginally larger than the ball. Theoretically, you hit the little ball 3 or 4 times (sometimes 5 )on each of the 18, 150 to 500 yard holes on a course. But, in reality, most of us hit the ball several (many?) more times than that. And while serious golfers will be horrified by this description, it’s a pretty accurate description of what happens.
A couple of times on each hole, one endeavors to hit the ball into the air. And no matter where you are on the course, no matter which direction you are hitting, the wind is in your face, and it always slows the progress of the ball. How is that possible you ask. If you are heading north and the wind is in your face, then it must be at your back if you are heading south. But it’s not. If you aren’t a golfer, it’s easy to understand why you might think that it is. But if you have ever held a 5 iron in your hands and tried to reach the green in regulation, you know exactly what I mean! The wind is always in your face.
So the more we golfed, the more my father’s conclusion about Massachusetts roads began to make sense. And then I bought bicycle.
The theory when biking is that it’s harder to peddle into the wind than to peddle with the wind at your back. It’s a nice theory. On a recent ride with a friend — around 15 miles — our route took us southwest, then west, then north, then northeast, then north again, at which point we turned around. For the entire outbound trip, we struggled with a headwind. We pushed ourselves to ride at our desired speed (~12 miles per hour). We discussed how much easier our ride would be when we turned around. After all, we concluded, if we faced a strong headwind on the way out, the wind would be at our backs on the way home. But when we turned around, nothing changed. The wind had, magically, changed direction, and our struggle with the strong headwind continued. It was golf all over again! No matter which direction we rode, the wind was always in our face. And just like with golfers, if you ask experienced bikers about this phenomenon, they just shrug their shoulders and smile. Clearly, it’s not news to them.
I recently took up kayaking, and the plot thickened. As with golf and biking, there is wind. And it should come as no surprise that no matter which direction I paddle, the wind is always in my face. The boost I expected to get from changing directions never seems to materialize. It’s okay, because I have come to terms with this climatological anomaly. But now, it appears, I have discovered a nautical anomaly, as well. The tide, it seems, is always against me. No matter which direction I paddle, the wind’s in my face and and the tide is against me. I guess I just can’t win! Sounds a little like today’s political climate. But that is a topic for another day!