davenighbor.com

Before you read into too much into the title, I’ll assure you that the term “check engine’ is not used as a metaphor in this article- though it would probably make a good one. One can likely draw clever comparisons between the “check engine” light in a car and evaluating training and lifestyle when feeling fatigued or unmotivated; the engine being all the physical and mental factors that go into training and the light being conscious feelings and energy levels. When the light goes on, investigate. Unfortunately though, I’m not that talented as a writer. I simply had my check engine light go on in my Jetta earlier today and have a hard time getting past it, especially knowing its haunting nickname: the “$3000 light”. So the light is on my mind and I feel the need to mention it, but I know damn well I can’t write an entire article on it. I could possibly get away with a paragraph though… we’ll see.

The truth of the matter is I don’t know what to write an article on. I lost a large amount of motivation after getting kicked off the National team and my funding cut. Blah blah blah. I felt like anything I wrote about was incredibly cliché like I was following the steps of the “Guide for the Disheartened Athlete” or something. I wrote all kinds of updates for my site but couldn’t publish any of them. I wrote positive articles and negative articles – negative articles about being annoyed with my positive articles – training relevant articles and completely irrelevant articles. The irrelevant articles were my favorite by far. I find reading about training and skiing, even if it’s about me, very boring and banal (eh Nish?), so I never finished any of ‘em.

So a few weeks went by knowing that a worthwhile idea would eventually pop into my head but I was finding out that an idea wasn’t often the hard part – it was finding the words to write about it. It wasn’t until I was on a hike with Nish two days ago, across the street from where I live, that I was finally making some progress. It was an afternoon run/hike in the heavy rain and dense cloud on a trail that would eventually lead us to a mountain’s summit. We ran along grassy logging roads adjacent to Pigeon Mountain laughing about various blogs and twitter posts. We were having a discussion about skier’s blogs and whether or not they were worth reading. We talked about our recent Haig Glacier camp and how to write about a camp we’ve experienced dozens of times along with hundreds of other Canadian skiers. We were saying, “Yes we trained a lot there. Who hasn’t? Yes we ate a lot there. Who hasn’t? So how can I sum this camp up interestingly in two sentences?” It was sounding so bland and redundant to us that we left our questions without answers. It sucked though. I knew that there were qualities and experiences in this camp that were worth extracting but we just weren’t seeing it. I also didn’t feel like describing the Haig Glacier to all the people that haven’t never been. Nothing against the people who haven’t seen it, but it would feel like describing my kitchen or living room or anything else familiar like that. So we ran along with the conversation naturally evolving into other things but I couldn’t stop thinking about what I was going to write.

In the meantime, we approached the summit but turned around before we reached it. Our time was running too long. We stopped, drank from our waterbelts and admired the view. I was telling Nish how I wished that I had my camera. He wished he had his. The view was beautiful because of the low cloud that blanketed the valley we just ran through. The cloud gave an incredible sense of depth and perspective which you don’t normally get on a sunny day. We were standing on a steep grass slope that allowed us to see anything for miles that wasn’t blocked by a mountain or cloud: a couple glaciers, meadows likely occupied by a grizzly, large mountain faces and bowls, etc. We took it all in for a minute or so then ran down.

Part way down I had to slam on my breaks because a large grouse stood in my path. My instincts were to kill it because they are so stupid and easy to kill but what’s the point? I wasn’t gonna throw it on the BBQ when I got home so I let it live. Just then, as I approached it, around 15 cheepers (baby grouse) went flying and jumping around like someone emptying a large bag of brown tennis balls. I got a real kick out of this. One cheeper was standing in my way so I nudged him off a short ledge with the end of my pole. He rolled down the path for a few seconds flapping his wings as though he expected to fly. Once he gained his stepping and balance he turned to me angry and changed. Now I didn’t know what to do – I had a little dumb bird the size of an apple running at me with all his speed. Once he got about 6 inches away I reacted with a light kick that sent him rolling down the mountain slope again. This time, once he got his stepping, he looked at me then ran again but in the opposite direction. Laughing I walked past him as he was hiding under a shrub as though he fooled me. They have to be the dumbest animals in the World.

Once we had it with those stupid birds the sure footed Nish picked up speed accelerating down the mountain slope three times faster than we went up. I followed. We didn’t say much on the way home except for the usual banter.  Once we got home I thought to myself, “Write something! Just something so the feature photo on your website isn’t a random picture of a broken doorknob.” But nothing came so I went about my evening and the next day without giving it another thought. It wasn’t until two days later when I was driving that an idea finally came to me – it was like a light bulb came on. At first I thought it was over my head then I said, “shit, check engine light”.

The Way Nish See It #263