Axe throwing, duck pin bowling, and flower cutting. J says it's been my personal triathlon of the last three weeks. It hardly rivals Everest, swimming the English Channel, and riding from the Pacific to the Atlantic (shout out to Rob Lea), but, hey, it's mine.
If I've been silent on this blog recently it's because life has caught up with steps and stairs and summits. How about having graduated from high school 40 years ago? Or a visit to our almost 29 year old daughter in an old Victorian in Providence, Rhode Island, together with longtime boyfriend N and a VERY LARGE CAT who has just joined the family. I think cats can go by full names on the blog. It's Milo. Name came from the cat shelter but it seems to fit.
The 40th year reunion, of course, was part of a trip to the hometown, where the parents still live in the house I grew up in. The city, known to movie and baseball buffs as Bull Durham (yes, I originally and mistakenly posted “the home of field of dreams,” displaying my lack of knowledge of both baseball and movies, as J pointed out), has changed immeasurably from the 1970s when I was last a regular resident. I’m sure none of the rest of us have. Frankly, most of my high school classmates – about half our class showed up, rather remarkable, looked pretty darn good. I did keep thinking a lot of that may have been the fact I grew up with a privileged group of kids. Wonder what it might have been like if we’d been working minimum wage jobs.
Highlight of the event – axe throwing! This wasn’t the school sponsored activity. The lawyer in me says there could be liability concerns. It’s a more bombastic and less refined version of darts. Instead of a paltry little darts with a few tail feathers to stabilize its flight to a board filled with intricately designed segments with assigned point by point numbers – you’re given a hatchet, with a good sized handle that you simply arch back and hurl, two handed, to a plywood panel with three crudely drawn concentric circles. I loved it. If you have a high stress job it’s an excellent release.
That weekend was followed by Providence, Rhode Island, the new home of daughter A and Boyfriend N. Rhode Island has all sorts of things to offer that can fit into a triathalon of weird weekend trips.
First up – two pounds of New Bedford scallops, for free. One of the advantages, apparently, to having connections in New Bedford, home of the scallop fishing industry.
The seafood fiesta was followed by a Providence Day, loosely organized by N and friends. Doughnuts were followed by a trip to a not for profit that’s running a cutting garden out of a bombed out looking area of Providence. The flowers go loose to organizations that help people in times of stress on the theory that making arrangements is very therapeutic. They are then assembled into bouquets for those who need something to get through the day. The former factory on the site had something to do with knives, I think.
You can’t go to Providence without some time at Rhode Island School of Design. Let’s just say that their crafts fair was shoulders above your normal one.
From flowers the only next logical stop was duck pin bowling. Apparently big in Rhode Island (and I believe Maryland also), the alleys are all wood, the pins are small fat little objects, the balls are small and don’t have finger holes, and real human beings are at the end of each lane to reset the pins. I loved it. No possibility of your fingers getting ripped off if they got stuck in the bowling ball. Apparently the one we were at was the original bowling alley at a factory – management had installed it to give the workers something to do on their breaks.
We finished off with a trip down to the South Coast, a nice hike and lunch at a favorite restaurant, The Red Dory. Aside from the fact daughter A might have been bitten by a Lyme disease infected tick, a good time had by all. Plus, trees were in full autumnal garb, always a treat to us Florida folk. And that was topped off by a visit to a farmers market with its own flower cutting field.
So hardly a couple of weeks of real summits. But a good reminder that each little daily activity can have its own summit moment, if you just keep it in perspective.
FromSwamptoSummit 