This Is My Job?!?!

Thanksgiving is typically the holiday in which we practice being thankful/grateful. I like to practice gratefulness every day. Today, as I'm traveling home for the holidays, the most obvious thing for which I am grateful is that I will see my family in another few hours. I've missed them terribly since moving to San Diego, and this will be the first time in months I will see some of them (I was able to see my mom and aunt last month). Of course I could wax poetic for an entire blog about my family, but I wanted to touch on something else--my gratefulness for the place which I'm leaving.

San Diego grew on me quickly, like some sort of sea-salt chia pet. I've enjoyed the culture, the people, my new team (the Surfers), and the "vibe." And I've enjoyed my job. I'm not talking about my new job at the UFC Gym (but let me tell you, that place is badass). I'm referring to my job as a rugby player. I'm talking about waking up, every day, and going in to the Olympic Training Center and playing the sport I love.

Often, when we apply the label "job" to something, it loses its allure. I was a scholarship athlete in college, and basketball quickly became my "job." Young, slightly less self-aware, Sam grew burnt out quickly of the job of basketball. It was a lot of work, and fraught with hardships and the added stress of having to survive on my own for the first time in my life. Young Sam often bowed to the hardships.

As an older, wiser, more self-aware Sam, I see the beauty in what I do. Sure, sometimes I don't pay attention to it, like passing by the same rose bush every day and forgetting to stop and smell. But each day I go into work, I feel a slight twinge of an undercurrent of beauty and love, and some days I can't help but think, "Dude, this is your job." I look up at the Olympic emblem on the outside of the gym and think, "This is my job?!?!"

Of course, there are still the hardships. I screw up something every day at practice. Rugby players don't get paid enough. I get sore and hurt. We get scolded for not filling out our daily Wellness Form. However, the older, wiser, more self-aware Sam doesn't bow. She looks into the wind and rain. Embraces the downpour and walks through the storm grateful for it and for the sunshine that peers through the dissipating clouds. I am grateful for my job. I love that I get to play the rugby all of the time with others who love the sport as much as I do.

Merry Christmas to all of the rugby players out there and to all of the people who love what they do. Merry Christmas to my family and my rugby family (especially the Kinsankeys).

Fish & Beets, Or France Thus Far

After 4 flights, a bus ride from Spain, donkey caravan into South France and a hike up a mountain in a blizzard, we finally arrived, at in Montpelier, ready to wind down our travel-weary bodies. Well, I may have exaggerated on the travel details—there was no mountain and no donkeys, but there were a couple of flights and a bus ride, and it certainly felt like we were on the road for days. 

France thus far has been wonderful. The food has been excellent, and I am getting spoiled by the espresso. There are a few staples at every mean—chicken, fish, beets, bread and cheese—and there is an espresso machine around every corner in our hotel and we have been helping ourselves.

We haven’t really explored much, though we practiced at a rugby club about a half hour from Montpelier that had a gorgeous facility set in the rolling hills of South France. The wonderful part has been the rugby and my lovely teammates. There are some old faces (a good number in the Over 30 club) and some new personalities, who are fitting right into our team dynamic.

On the rugby side, we’ve been having some great sessions. We all seem to be getting the system down and our defense looks solid. We’ve had some great lineout sessions in our practices, and we had the chance to scrum with the French side a bit yesterday. Our set pieces are something with which we struggled in Utah at the Super Series, and we’ve been working on them here in France.

On the team side, there have been some spirited games of Bananagrams, some great bonding time, and a player who seems to be the victim of a peanut conspiracy. Benson has been finding peanuts all around her—on her pillow, under her chair, in her sandals. Either there is a very clever prankster, or she’s hoarding peanuts—Catie Benson, Peanut Hoarder.

Today, we play our first match against the French, and we’re raring to go. This will be a great test for us against one of the top teams in the world. We’re hoping that our game plan is superior and that we can execute it well. We have been thus far, and I think today’s match will be a good one—the start of the #eaglesrevolt (and the start of me using that hashtag).  

Dipping Our Feet In The Pacific Ocean: Day 6, On Which Our Journey Comes To An End

We woke up to a clear and sunny day in Seligman. In the parking lot and around the grounds of the Deluxe Inn, a few stray cats roam. Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t get them to come and say “hi” to me. The best I could do was get within sniffing distance of the smallest before it climbed the side of the motel and disappeared into the roof.

We ate, yesterday morning, at the Roadkill Café. Their breakfast sandwiches were enormous and pretty damned tasty, according to Mom and Merle. I had the chorizo plate, which I turned into a chorizo burrito that Mom said looked like a baby (Amy, if you’re reading, I ate a baby…well, half of it).

With no sightseeing planned for the day, and only about 6.5 hours left in the trip, we decided to take the scenic route to get a taste of the desert climate. Mom wanted to see cacti and not the kind you see in folks’ yards back home. I was definitely up for it, because I wanted to see a roadrunner (added that one to the list a little late in the trip). We decided to drive down to Yuma and then across to San Diego.

Cacti were something the landscape had aplenty. There were all kinds of smaller varieties and bushes at first, like the buckhorn cholla, prickly pear and pencil cholla, but we didn’t spot a saguaro until we were well into our drive. Mom had Merle pull over a couple of times to get pictures of the ones that “looked like they were supposed to look” (with arms and such). We did learn that a saguaro doesn’t grow an arm until it’s about 60-years-old.

Though we saw many, many cacti, we sadly didn’t see a roadrunner. However, we saw quite a few dust devils, which I counted as a tornado, per Mom’s suggestion, so as to tick that off my checklist. We also saw a bunch of lemon trees and a lot of cotton in Yuma. Seriously, for all of my Carolina people, Yuma was overrun with those little white balls. The Yuma Project, which takes advantage of year-round farming conditions and water from the Colorado River, makes this possible in Arizona’s desert climate.

Speaking of the desert climate, upon entering California, we finally hit that sandy-dunes-as-far-as-the-eye-can-see desert climate—no more saguaro cacti and no more tumble weed, just sand. Here, it was the hottest we’ve experienced as well, at 113 degrees. We also saw the border fence that separates the US and Mexico, and Mom said of that, “Well, we got a fence. What the hell is Trump fussing about then?”

We reached San Diego at around 6pm—just in time for ice cream cookie sandwiches at The Baked Bear and a walk on the beach at sunset. Mom said that as big as the ice cream sandwich was, we all needed to be running along the beach, but then she can’t run. “I can’t run because of my hip…unless something is after me,” she said.

We finished our trip with dinner at Coyote Café in Old Town, San Diego, and what a wonderful trip it was. We started about 200 miles from the east coast and ended dipping our feet in the Pacific Ocean. We drove across farmlands, grasslands, deserts, up mountains, and through cities. We reached a height of 14,115 feet and washed our feet in the ocean. We froze through 37 degree weather on Pike’s Peak and fried in the 113 degree heat of Arizona. By the end of the trip, we were finishing each other’s thoughts, and at times we didn’t need words to communicate:

“What kind of trees are those?”

“Looks like a cedar. I see little balls...”

“…like the ones…”

“…we saw up on…”

“Yeah.”

“Yup.”

Altogether, I can’t think of a better was to start this new chapter of my life. I’m sure San Diego has a lot of good times in store and wonderful people for me to meet, but getting here is something I’ll remember through them all—it’s one of those little jewels life has given me, and I’ll always cherish it. 

The Grand Canyon And Some Sound Bites From Mom: Day 5 Of Our Trek

We started Day 5 with a mini geology lesson. Spotting, on the horizon a dreadnought of a rock appearing out of nowhere, we learned that the rock was called Shiprock (in the town of Shiprock), and it is a monadnock or inselberg, which is a large rock formation, hill, knob or ridge that rises abruptly from a gentle slope.

Now that I’ve dropped a bit of knowledge on you, I’ll get into yesterday’s leg of the trip. Our one goal of the day was to see the Grand Canyon and spend a little time taking in the beauty of one of the world’s most visited natural sites. On the way there, we started seeing sheep and alpaca farms. In one area, a sheep dog and a sheep pup herded a flock across the road, and we had to stop and let them pass. On another farm, we saw a flock, with one smaller sheep hauling around a little plastic sled. Mom was also in rare form. Instead of explaining, I’ll give you all a few sound bites:

--On hearing a commercial for a service that allows people to adopt stray cats (my cat happens to be housed in Mom’s chicken coop, which is a large, insulated and weather resistant cat mansion, until they return home and can find her a more permanent home): “Sissy, catch that number.”

--On our government’s relocation of the American Indian tribes: “It’s a shame they just moved them all down here, like ‘here, ya’ll can have all this land…won’t nothing grow on it though.’”

--When looking for a place to eat lunch: “There’s a “swoosh-schwan” [Szechuan] place, but I don’t know how I feel about Chinese in Arizona.”

--On the children running around near the edges and railings at the Little Colorado River Gorge: “I don’t think I’d want to bring little kids here. I started to tell Sissy to stay in the car.”

Speaking of the Little Colorado River Gorge, we pulled over at a scenic overlook to see the gorge, before getting to the Grand Canyon. This overlook puts you right at the edge of the gorge and there is quite a fright factor in peering over the side. It literally takes your breath away—call it an adrenaline rush or vertigo.

There is a wonderful passage in “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” in which Milan Kundera speaks of vertigo. He says, “Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.” He speaks in the context of ascending—having a higher goal—but I think it applies to the physical manifestation of looking over the edge. It’s something akin to staring down the barrel of a gun and having control over the trigger. We, as humans, have a fascination with death. It is something we all have in common, the one thing we cannot escape, and yet we try to beat it in our feeble quests for immortality—our attempts to live on in our work or accomplishments. When it is staring you in the eye, right at your feet, in the form of a thousand-foot drop to the bed of a muddy brown river, it will either scare the shit out of you or give you a bit of a rush, as you wag your finger, Dikembe Mutombo style, at it.

 

As you would expect, there are places along the rim of the Grand Canyon that will give you this feeling as well. However, what you experience at this great wonder is something different. Upon approaching the rim and catching your first glimpse, you’ll start to blink. Your eyes struggle to gauge the grand depths and distances. It’s almost as if your brain needs to be convinced at the sublimity you’re experiencing. You feel as it you can extend your arm and your fingers will feel that it is only a painting you’ve seen. Of course, it’s not a painting, and a painting (photograph or this description) could never do it justice.

The view isn’t the only sight to see at the Grand Canyon, though it is, by far, the most impressive. There is also a mule barn (on the South Rim) and a village. Mom loved the mules, and Merle snapped a couple of good pics of her cheesing beside their pen. We also saw a ton of elk in the park, and one had decided that the median was the spot for the best grass.

After our Grand Canyon excursion, we set out West again, and stopped in Williams, AZ for dinner. This little town turned out to be one of my favorite stops on the trip. It seemed like the whole town was an ode to Route 66 and old Americana, with a gas station museum, dinners and honky-tonk bars, and shops with Route 66 memorabilia. We ate at a barbecue joint that featured a local musician playing some great oldies and a few original songs, and then we hit the shops for some souvenir hunting and visited the gas station museum. We ended our day in Seligman, AZ, where we stayed at the Deluxe Inn Motel, another tribute to Route 66.

Day 5 was the most enjoyable for us all. The sightseeing was phenomenal, and taking in the local culture was a lot of fun. Tomorrow, I’ll recap the last leg of our journey from my new home in Chula Vista.

Climbing A Mountain And Finding Buffalo: Day 4 Of Our Epic Journey

The fourth day in our cross-country journey started with a revelation—Mom solved the mystery of her malfunctioning eye that had plagued her the day before. “Sissy (most of my family calls me Sissy or Sis), I figured out what was wrong with my eye,” she said as soon as I was rolling out of bed. “I forgot to put my contact in my left eye.” Turns out her eye hadn’t “quit on her” after all.

We started the day with a jaunt up Pike’s Peak, which boasts a 14,115 foot elevation and the highest gift shop in the country. The drive up to the summit was as scenic as you can get, with bird’s eye views of lakes and towns, deep green forests, and smaller hills and peaks. There’s a pull off at a reservoir, with zaffre blue shimmering waters, dotted with the occasional boat, lines hung overboard luring in lunch. Signs line the roadside with pictures of the wildlife and plants you can expect to spot on your drive up. We saw a few yellow bellied marmots, and though there is a Bigfoot Crossing sign (erected due to the numerous sightings in the area), we didn’t spot the hide-and-go-seek guru.

The drive to the summit can also unnerve you a bit. With hairpin turns around the edges of the mountain and no guardrails lining the road, the thought of your vehicle tumbling miles down the face of the mountain does cross your mind. Mom, somewhat weary of heights, strongly urged Merle to keep the car straddling the yellow line when the drop-off was on her side. She also had a bit of trouble with the altitude, getting a bit woozy and light-headed. She wondered, “was it the altitude or the weed that John Denver was talking about in ‘Rocky Mountain High?’”

The best meal we’ve had on our trip came from Taco Navarro, in Pueblo, CO. A small, hole-in-the-wall restaurant, its specialty was street tacos and they were some kind of good. I also met a rugby fan there. He saw my USA Rugby tank-top and asked if we were playing nearby. He had seen 7s on TV and was hoping that the local college had a team—good news for our sport and its growing popularity.

The second half of our day was more scenic driving through the southwestern part of Colorado (the San Juan Mountains were a pleasure) and northeastern part of New Mexico. We saw an elk ranch (my dad would have enjoyed that), old steam engines, cows that roamed freely, some venturing into the road, and found out where all of the buffalo have gone, all three of them—in some lady’s yard in New Mexico.

In this part of the country, our conversation shifted to topics like the difference between a mesa and a butte, what exactly is an arroyo (another name for a wash), how the landscape was becoming more desert-like (like the “Mosabi” [Mojave] desert, in the words of Mom) and how some of the smooth rocks resembled driftwood (isn’t is funny how Nature mirrors itself).

All in all, we did more sightseeing on Day 4 than any other day thus far, and it was wonderful. The view from the summit of Pike’s Peak was breathtaking and the ever changing landscape of the drive through Colorado and New Mexico was wonderful to behold. There are some who would say that the magnificent view from Pike’s Peak proves the existence of a higher being. I say it’s proof that the Universe has wonders for us every day—that there is a hidden jewel, a bit of a miracle in each rising of the sun. Sometimes it takes a mountain to show us that, but if we look closely, we can find little miracles everywhere, even in the yard of an old lady in New Mexico, where there are three beautiful buffalo quietly grazing.

More on our awesome adventure tomorrow!

"Project 52" & The Fun In Getting Lost: Day 3 Of Our Coast To Coast Excursion

Yesterday we picked up where we left off, traveling about 700 miles by 5pm. About 90% of our drive was through Kansas, and if you’re not the curious sort, that drive can get quite boring. However, if you have an inquisitive mind, then it can be quite interesting. Mom spent a good deal of the drive looking up facts and fighting her contacts to do so (at one point she exclaimed, “I think my eyes are quitting on me.”).

Our conversations ranged from the differences in milo and sorghum, what constitutes a shelter belt versus a wind break, which state has the most tornadoes on average per year (it’s Oklahoma), what was Dorothy Gale’s hometown (Liberal, KS), and where in the world can we see buffalo. And one thing that gave me a little bit of giddy pleasure was saying, “Well, I guess we’re not in Kansas anymore,” upon entering Colorado.

The Kansas landscape is a flat, bucolic one, full of fields of milo, wheat, soybean, corn, wind turbines, and small oil rigs. The state’s nickname is the sunflower state, but I think we saw more wind turbines than sunflowers. Wind power accounts for something like 20-25% of the state’s energy. The wind turbines were quite a majestic sight, and Mom remarked that they looked like something that came out of “Project 52.”

Now, my mother is a very intelligent woman, but she has the habit of saying things and words that aren’t quite right, which makes for some colorful conversation. If you know her, it’s not hard to decipher what she’s saying, and “Project 52” was her reference to Area 51. I’m also pretty sure I heard her say that the UFO’s, in the infamous Area 51 conspiracy theory, were stored in “Doswell,” not Roswell. Maybe she just knows something we all don’t. Maybe Project 52 was a little known UFO landing in Doswell, VA, in which aliens decided to visit Kings Dominion and ride the Rebel Yell backwards. No one will ever know what secrets lie in the mind of Dawn Goolsby.

Anyway, the eastern part of Colorado is very similar to Kansas and it was there we started seeing fields of sunflowers, both the large and dwarf varieties. The fields of dwarf sunflowers have been one of my favorite sights thus far, their yellow heads stretched out, for what seemed like miles, peering toward the sun

In Denver, we stopped by Glazed and Confused, a donut shop I had visited twice while in the Denver area for 7s Nationals and the Atavus Academy tournament. The owner, who had asked myself and two of my teammates, on our first visit, “What are you guys up to today? Out killing people?” (and then said that we “just had that look”), recognized me and told us to wait on hitting Pike’s Peak, because it had snowed up there the day before. We thanked him and then headed out to Colorado Springs, where we got a bit lost.

Getting lost actually turned out to be our collective favorite part of the day. We wound up heading up Cheyenne Mountain and then stopping for a little hike at sunset. The enormous blood-orange rocks and evergreen trees loomed over us as we followed a trail that snaked down the mountain alongside a creek. Speaking of snakes, Mom kept warning us to look out for rattlesnakes, and I think she got herself a little worked up about it and was a little skittish on our little hike. Half-way into it, she let out a guttural holler when her phone’s GPS started giving directions. That made for a good laugh to wind down our day.

Stay tuned for Day Four’s adventures, which include a drive up Pike’s Peak and discovering the mystery of Mom’s eye malfunction. 

950 Miles In The Books: Day 2 Of Our Cross-Country Adventure

We went from traveling 100 miles on day one to about 900 on day two—started in Fincastle, blew right through Bristol and wound up about an hour outside of Kansas City, MO. Besides the driving, we were able to do some sightseeing in Nashville, and we got to try some St. Louis ribs, of which my mom remarked, “I believe yours are better, Merle” (the man does make some damned good ribs).

In Nashville, we saw the Ryman Theater (OG Grand Ole Opry), the Johnny Cash Museum, and had lunch while listening to live music on Broadway Street. Spending only two hours in a place only gives one a taste of its flavor. However, I’d say I quite like the vibe in Nashville—a juxtaposition of lively glitz and laid back southern comfort, with flashing signs advertising bars and music venues interlard with homemade candy shops, denim and boots stores, and ice cream parlors. If it were a person, it would be Conway Twitty, in his best embroidered, rhinestone pants suit singing “Hello Darlin’.”

We ate at a bar called Rippy’s. We were hungry, and it was the first place we stumbled upon that had live music. Had we walked a bit further down Broadway, we would’ve discovered that nearly every establishment on that street had live music—mostly covers of well-known country songs. The food was decent bar food and the singers good bar singers, though one of the fellas had a bit more spunk in his performance, which we all enjoyed. I also enjoyed the people watching, which included a middle-aged gentleman drinking beer and sketching other patrons, and then giving them his sketches.

With so many live performers on this one street alone, we all wondered how these establishments could afford to pay artists to play at all hours of the day. Well, it’s because they don’t really pay them, or they pay them minimally. All of these singers have tip buckets and they make their money when patrons toss in a few bucks—seemingly only a step up from street performers (which I happen to enjoy, so there is no judgement here). Of course, the patrons aren’t paying a cover to see the live music, so it only makes sense that one would pay the artist directly, and of course, being a “paid by tips” performer in Nashville, the place where country music lives and breathes, is pretty special.

So that was my two hours in Nashville…in a nutshell. Ha. The rest of the day mostly consisted of driving. We made a brief pit stop in St. Louis to get ribs, at Spare No Rib, which were “good but not great,” according to rib-expert Dawn Goolsby. Finding the place was no cake walk either, and at one point we found ourselves down a dead end alley, with the enforcer, Mrs. Goolsby, poised to get her pocketknife. I will say that despite the difficulty in hunting the place down and the ribs not being heaven in the form of pig bones, I liked it. They also served tacos, and their Chorizo taco was one of the best I’ve ever had. Their baked beans were pretty damned good as well.

Not wanting to spend a ton of money on a hotel in the city, we continued the drive, with the goal of making Kansas City, however fatigue got the best of us and we wound up stopping in a sort-of Midwest ghost town, about an hour from Kansas City, and staying at a Super 8 that, in the words of my free spirited, non-judgmental mother, “smelled like pee in some spots,” but had surprisingly clean rooms and amazingly comfy beds.

More to come of our adventures tomorrow!