I've Grown...

Tomorrow morning, I'm waking up at 4 to eat oatmeal and almonds before spitting a few thousand words of what will one day become the second novel in a series of three that will define my generation before heading off to CWC with something like 5000 Philippine pesos in my pocket. Along the 7 or so miles it takes to run between my hotel in Naga and this joint in Pili, I'm going to try and find a place that'll let me pay to stay for 4 nights because the place I'm staying now is throwing me out after 11 days because I didn't do something ludicrous like "book in advance with the race organizers." Everything in town is sold out through the gestapo I'm going to refer to as the Philippine 70.3. They wrote me an e-mail yesterday in response to my e-mail thanking them for letting me extend my stay, which they earlier said they would do, saying something like ooh...sorry...we were mistaken...you're shit out...regards...and by the way we are just going to leave it like that...without even the slightest suggestion as what to do...because we care...the Philippine 70.3. I can tell you that my initial reaction was to write a quite colorful e-mail, which by the end, I deleted, knowing I would have to face these people at some point, not wanting to worry, again, about the possibility of my own prosecution in a foreign country.

I'm starting to wonder why I titled this post the way I did, considering everything I have now written serves as an exact contradiction to my self-promotion. I think I started on the theme of growth because I knew the eventual direction of the post, which was going to steer towards a chance encounter I had with some guy named Rallay who told me he had a friend from Manila who was going to be driving down on the 19th in a pickup truck with another friend and their two bikes, and that he might have a smaller size bike I could use for the race, and that maybe he could fit it into the truck. I gave Rallay my e-mail and heard nothing for 2 days until I saw him running laps at CWC. He flagged me down, calling me Mr. Reilly and enthusiastically before telling me he didn't have any more updates but that he would know by the 19th or 20th and that he would send me an e-mail to either confirm or deny. In the meantime, I let all my other hopefuls fall away because they either involved a drive up to Manila or a purchase from some guy trying to make a buck through unloading some dead steel.

So I'm sitting here on wednesday night, about to pretend like I am going to be able to go to sleep early in prep for tomorrow's trying morning. I'm running a half-Ironman in 3 days. I don't have a place to stay. And I don't have a bike. But you know what, If there were a mirror in front of me, I think I would look at myself and think something like, that guy's got it all under control...that guy can handle anything. In the past, I'm pretty sure that entire last sentence would have been my punchline...and it sort of still is. But inside of me, it's not, and I'm really not trying to be that funny. Everything was starting to feel pretty clean around here, comfortable around here. Tomorrow, my life turns to chaos and I can feel it and the potential approaching disaster coming, and hard, really fucking hard. I want it to try and find me. I want hotels to refuse me at every turn. I want everyone to fall through. I want to have to sleep in some poor Philippine family's creekside tent in the country. I want them to make me work their land in exchange for my stay. I want them to send me off before supper on the last night with a live chicken I became friendly with, the patriarch of the family handing me a butcher knife and saying something like now you become a man. I want to wake up the morning of race day and eat oatmeal and almonds with the family, borrow the youngest boy's tireless BMX and his plastic army helmet. I want them to see me off with no understanding as to why I came to the Philippines in the first place. I want to ride up to that starting line, sparks kicking off my rims, fuck you all in my eyes, before I drop blood across the lengths of CamSur.

Naga & Pili...

Raining here. Usually rains here at the same time every day, and hard, so predictable, the organizers of an international event like the half-Ironman can pick a date in the middle of the rainy season and not think twice about it...although I bet they do sometimes. I'm taking the day off today, which today meant getting up, eating, working, sleeping, working, eating, working, sleeping, working, working, eating and sleeping. My body needs all of it, I can feel it, so I'm letting it be okay, before tomorrow, Sunday, a big Sunday to tear back through it all. Such is the life.

Philippines...

I'm sitting in the lobby of my hotel, a fine place on Magsaysay called Caceres. There are two gentlemen sitting across from me holding shotguns. I think they're hotel security. There are a lot of guns in this country and I don't understand why. Everything about this place seems warm and friendly and compassionate. They gave me a room without a window in the corner and I'm finding truth here, if I may rob from geniuses come and gone.

Somehow, there's a gym here, state of the art, with bikes like the ones I teach on at home. In the mornings, I go out running on the roads. The traffic is careful and I can be in the country after 4 minutes. People smile and cheer at me like I'm Rocky. Of course I love this. I'm here for the next two weeks and I am settling and bleeding beautifully, several times over the course of the day. I feel like life is charging forward again. I am writing e-mails all over the Philippines, begging for help in getting a bike, noting "I am strong enough that I will be able to compete in my age group and would be happy to be a part of team (insert their variable) in exchange for a little help."

I am very much looking forward to finding out if anyone gives a shit about me, my plight, my desperate self-promotion. I am very much looking forward to my fully-realized existence in this country.