The first run is always hardest in Mammoth.
I arrived Saturday morning after dropping Calene at the airport. She's headed east with her sister Cate to see cousins in South Dakota. The journey from Orange County to Mammoth is an empty speedway at 6 a.m. I made it up here in five hours despite a short freeway shutdown and a stop for Starbuck's in Adelanto. The family condo is a great place for solitude and writing but I'm in a restless mood so I've spent most of the past two days running, hiking, and finding a spot in town to sit alone in the shade and read. Distant Brewing worked just fine.
The solitude ends in about six hours. This is Mammoth Week for the cross country team I coach. I've been doing Mammoth with my squads since 2006 and I look forward to the bonding that will transpire. Everyone thinks Mammoth is a training week — and it is, big miles at 7,000 feet can't help but inspire an aerobic response. But it's really more about getting the runners to work together, see each other outside the normal school and practice environment, and do a little good natured suffering.
So as I sit here alone in the condo, a perfect view of the meadow outside the sliding glass door that is cracked just enough to let in the smell of pine, I am making a list of all the things I want to do by myself before twenty teenagers show up eager for six glorious days, with all the personnel management that implies. A lot of wonderful things come out of Mammoth Camp, but I've dealt with enough crazy parents and spent a little too much time in the Mammoth Hospital ER to know that if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong.
It was yesterday when I did that first solitary workout. Navigated the meadow under crisp blue skies, barely able to breathe from the altitude. I used the time to clear my head. I'm a man who likes a schedule and I had to remind myself that it was OK to have nothing constructive planned for the day beyond a run and a matinee. A little voice inside my head said that unless I wrote a couple thousand words the day would be wasted. I'm well aware that I'm becoming something of a bore, finding time for little in life beyond writing and coaching. Too much of a good thing can lead to an unrelenting determination to do those things better. Or it can lead to restlessness.
And restlessness makes a man do extreme things. Which explains my insane desire to cram Springsteen's Europe Tour into my schedule. I did it again this week, planning a trip to Munich for the second-to-last stop. I bought an aftermarket ticket, booked a flight, reserved a hotel room. As with my previous hope of seeing a show one month ago, there were severe schedule constraints. In the case of Munich, this meant not driving straight to Mammoth Saturday morning. Instead, I would go into the airport with Calene, fly to Munich, go see the show, fly home this morning. Then drive six hours to Mammoth at 6:30 this evening (after fifteen hours of air travel) so we could start Mammoth Camp on time with the first workout tomorrow morning at 7.
Honestly, if the concert was one day earlier or Mammoth Camp was one day later, the whole thing would have worked perfectly. But there was no margin for error.
The drive to Mammoth was the only thing that concerned me. My brother Matt is an ER doc and often drives up after an all-night shift to spend a day skiing. When I told him my plans he got very serious, telling me about all the times he'd almost driven off the road falling asleep at the wheel. So I talked it over with Calene, who had her own doubts about trying to squeeze this adventure into such a tight window. So I cancelled. Bruce comes to Southern California in December and I will be there with bells on. Three shows. Can't wait.
Then I got an email from the concierge at my hotel — which I had forgotten to cancel. The ticket broker had sent my ticket to the hotel by DHL. It was a very good ticket, in the pit right in front of the stage. There was no way I could use it. What a shame for it to go unused.
I don't know the concierge. Not his age nor music preference. But I told him he had my complete permission to open the envelope and use the ticket.
I really wasn't sure how that would go over. He could have been a techno fan, or a Smiths fan, or just not into music at all. But he wrote back saying that he had actually planned to listen to the show from a hill near the stadium, not being able to get a ticket for the sold out Springsteen "gig,"' as he put it. The concierge would be more than glad to use my ticket.
He also cancelled my hotel reservation free of charge.
I woke up this morning and checked email. There was a message from the concierge. He said that the Boss was on fire last night and thanked me again for the chance to use that ticket. And he sent this amazing photo, letting me feel like I was there at the concert, too. What a kind gesture.
It made me feel, ever so slightly, less restless.
For now.