Thanksgiving is probably my favorite holiday because it reminds us to be grateful for the things we have and the people who fill our lives. Here is to kicking off a month of hills along with a month of thankful blogs. We’ve got a guest blog coming from fellow Jersey boy, Jeff Palkevich. You know Jeff as the dude who makes sure the Bowl legacy lives on through Saturday Stairs. I love Jeff because he shares the same East Coast sarcasm that I grew up with, and he also appreciates Wawa as much as I do. Take it away, Jeff.
The crazy thing about my first day of Kindergarten is that I don’t have a single memory of it. The first day of thirteen years of public school and I can’t tell you anything that happened, crazy right? The only thing from that day that I do remember is that when most kid’s parents were taking them to Friendly’s or McDonald’s to celebrate their first day of school, I took a ride with my Dad to check out the new Health and Racquetball Club in our neighborhood.
I wasn’t lucky enough to be born a natural athlete like my Dad was. We’d always hear how he held the New Jersey High School record for the most consecutive baseball games with a hit for over a decade. And we’d see the occasional feat of strength or his insane ability to throw a football almost the entire length of the field, but by the time I was starting school, he was about the age I am now and had packed on some pounds.
So we took the tour of the gym, complete with a dozen racquetball courts, the co-ed sauna and most importantly… a bar! (It must have been amazing to have been an adult in the 1980’s) He signed up and from that moment, I have a hard time remembering him not getting up at the crack of dawn to go play racquetball at least three mornings a week. My whole life I thought he was crazy. Why would someone want to get up before five AM to go workout? I didn’t know a single other kid whose dad did that!
He’d always say “you’ll understand one day” but how? Especially when he’d often come home annoyed that he lost more matches than he won. But he kept going back. Week after week. Year after year. And that wasn’t even the craziest part, we’d also traverse the Northeast on weekends for tournaments he wanted to play in, and any hotel we’d stay at on family trips was based almost solely on if there was a racquetball club near bye.
So two years ago I had just recovered from getting my new pacemaker and I wanted to see what modern technology could help me do when I read about November Project. I decided for the first time in my life that I’d go to a workout before the sun had even risen.
At first it was the workouts that kept me going back, but soon it was the new friends that got me to keep showing up. And it all made sense. It was never about whether my Dad won or lost, just like it’s not about if any of us are the fastest or slowest. It’s about finding people in this world who will give you a high-five, yell “you got this” and who are as equally crazy as you are.
Now, just like my Dad twenty-five years ago, traveling far and wide for a tournament or picking a hotel just because they had a racquetball court, I find myself driving hundreds of miles for a race or making sure a trip gives me a chance to drop in on another NP tribe’s workout. It all makes me think about this Mark Twain quote… “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”
It doesn’t exactly fit because I always found my Dad more crazy than ignorant and it took me much longer than seven years to learn, but I’m so fucking thankful that all of you helped make me as crazy as he was.
NEWS:
ECSCA
- November 18 in San Fran
- #NFECSCA aka North Face Endurance Challenge Series California. This is always an awesome time. This is part of the race series that Summit is always a part of. Consider this to be like a mini-NP Summit. Marathon relay is the most popular choice and you can race it with 3 other friends. Check it out, get a crew together, and sign up!
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Random Trivia – Why is it called an Adam’s Apple? If you think it’s called that after the story of the Garden of Eden where Adam ate a piece of the forbidden fruit that got stuck in his throat, you’re right. An Adam’s apple sometimes looks like a small, rounded apple just under the skin in the front of the throat.
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