Be Like Mike

 

   My brother was a sort of “Jack of all Sports and Activities”, except his name was Mike.  I can’t think of one activity that he wouldn’t or didn’t try.  As a youth he took scuba lessons and hunted octopus in front of our beach home.  In high school he was detained by police for scaling the side of a building, BB rifle in hand, while filming a movie with friends.  In the late 70s he competed in several triathlons long before they were main-stream and required a ton of gear.

      Mike had a room in his house devoted entirely to gear. Open the door to see wall-to-wall crampons, sailboat gear, snow shoes, several basketballs, a snowboard, a bike trailer to pull his dog and piles of gore-tex of every weight for every part of the body.  As for the rest of his house, it was quite neglected.  Clean laundry piled up on the couch and unsorted mail cluttered every horizontal surface.  He had torn up his kitchen to raise the ceiling and put in canned lights.  Unfortunately for his house, Mike’s priorities were not focused on housework or finishing projects.  There was no reason to finish up the drywall as long as there was a better offer dangling.  These other, more desirable opportunities could range from simply playing at the dog park to preparing for a climb of Mt. Baker.  The house chores could wait.

     He was certified to summit Mt. Rainier solo, although many of his attempts failed because he refused to take the easier, widely traveled route.  All of the mountains from Hood to Baker were part of his playground.  He had a 22 Ranger sailboat that saw action on the Puget Sound all year long, no matter what season.  Mike rode the RAMROD (Ride Around Mt. Rainier in One Day) more than once as well as the STP (Seattle to Portland) and the RSVP (Ride Seattle to Vancouver and Party).  Whether he rode those races in one day at a competitive level or took the two-day option depended on who he was riding with and what they could handle.  Mike was usually up for anything!

     My big brother believed that the ultimate weekend day was The Triple –  squeezing three separate activities all into the same day.  A perfect Triple might start at a mountain trailhead at dawn for an early hike with his dog and friends, after lunch maybe a road bike ride, often with his dog Nellie in tow, and then finish up with a long evening sail on the bay.  One was good.  Two was better, but three sports completed the best kind of day.
 

     Early September of 2005, three months before my brother was taken from us by meningitis, I had asked Mike to come and run in the Padden Relays with us on a family team.  The evening before the race I had called to give him an ‘out’ if he was too busy.  His response was, “Well, I haven’t come up with a reason not to, so we’ll see.”  In other words he had not received a better offer.  No one had yet invited him to play in a basketball tournament in which to break his nose (again).  There was no wind for sailing, no group bike ride, so he might just make it to the Relays.

      At 7 a.m. the next morning he called from his car, already en route to Lake Padden for our morning race.  That day he ran his guts out for the whole 2.65 miles and was sore for a week.  Running wasn’t one of his strengths, but he would often indulge me by joining in some races no matter what kind of sorry shape he was in.

     I don’t know if he ever ran again.  He probably put his running shoes aside for the fall, in exchange for his basketball shoes, and assumed he would pull them out again to train in the spring for another Sound to Narrows – how many times had he run that race?  There was always another Running o’ the Green or Haggen to Haggen in the future for an excuse for a weekend in Bellingham with little Sis.  “Why not?” was a phrase that often rolled out of his mouth. 

     Of course he didn’t run another Bellingham race.  Though his life was cut short, I can honestly say that he would have had no regrets about how he spent his days.  Sure, he was unencumbered by a spouse or children, unlike most of us.  He wasn’t tied to a weekend schedule of driving the soccer carpool or supervising play-dates.  I do think that even the busiest of us all can take away a lesson from Mike’s philosophy of life, especially during these lazy days of summer.  We can find those fleeting, unoccupied moments in our schedules and cram a little bit more fun in there.  In fact, today when I drop my daughter off I think I will wear my running shoes, bring my dog and take a lovely twilight run along the Boulevard Waterfront.  I’m going to try to be more like Mike.

Picture at top:  Mike the very proud teenage octopus hunter, with a slightly squeamish little sister watching from the window!