In the Dolomites...

It’s been nearly two and a half months since returning from my first (and hopefully not last!) trip to Italy, but I thought I’d share some photos from an extraordinary hike I was fortunate enough to be able to enjoy in the magnificent-beyond-words Dolomites this past September.  I traveled to northern Italy at the generous invitation of my friend Paolo, whom Samantha and I stayed with at his family home in the resort town of Cortina d’Ampezzo.  There were nine of us staying there in all, but I couldn’t convince any of the others to do the Via Ferrata Ivano Dibona with me.  So, hiring a guide recommended by Paolo, I went alone.  The service I used was Guide Alpine di Cortina d’Ampezzo, and my guide was Andrea Piccoliori, whom I ended up having all to myself as no one else signed up with him that day.  Andrea was fantastic, and I recommend him highly if ever you find yourself in need of a mountain guide in the Dolomites!  All I had to bring with me were sufficient clothes, food, and sturdy shoes with good tread.  The equipment was provided by the guide.   

There is no technical climbing involved in this hike, and I did not find it to be nearly as daunting as some of the photos I saw beforehand suggested.  That said, I’m glad I had a guide with me who knew the route as well as Andrea did.  It’s perfectly doable as long as you don’t have a significant fear of heights and are in decent physical shape.  The long, steep downhill stretches on scree were, in my opinion, the hardest part.  There is a total elevation loss of approximately 5,000 feet - which is nothing to sneeze at -but the views and exhilaration factor make it well worth it.  The whole hike from start to finish took about six hours and forty minutes, including a lunch stop and ample time for photo taking (the scenery was so breathtaking that I was unusually snap-happy in an effort to capture it to whatever degree I could). 

One of the most striking things about the route is the abundance of World War I artifacts left in place along the way, everything from bullet shells to remnants of wartime housing.  Trying to imagine the horrors that soldiers endured amidst such stunning natural beauty was a paradox that proved a bit much for my brain, so I surrendered to the beauty more often than not.

Here is a slideshow of photos (pared down to 60!) from this exceptional hike.  Enjoy!

2.  Donate Monthly:  Find a cause that resonates with you, or an organization that does work you admire.  It could be a disaster-relief charity, a public radio or television station, a local theater company, an environmental group, an organization dedicated to curing or treating people with a particular disease, etc.  You’ll know you’ve hit upon a worthy one when it fulfills the criterion: “I’d like to see more of THIS kind of thing in the world!”  Make sure you’ve witnessed or experienced their work firsthand in some way, or have researched what they do thoroughly enough that you’re confident that your own dollars would be well spent supporting them.  Call them, thank them, and offer your stamp of approval/encouragement/support by setting up a payment plan to make automatic monthly donations to them.  Think of it as an ongoing investment in creating the world you want to live in and want for future generations, as well.  The nice thing about the monthly commitment is that you are solidifying and habituating your alignment with a cause that you value.  You’re “putting your money where your mouth is” in such a way that it happens automatically, without your even having to think about it as you go about your daily activities.  If your financial status changes you can always increase or decrease the amount of the donation at any time.  If after an exhaustive search you cannot find a single organization that is doing the work you truly believe needs to be done in the world, then start your own!

3.  Volunteer:  Another, more personal, way to contribute is to volunteer your time, energy, and/or talents to something.  Because let’s face it: without actual people doing actual things, all of the money in the world isn’t going to change anything.  I recommend finding a cause you are enthusiastic enough about supporting that you are willing to do tasks for them that you might not otherwise be moved to do, and/or finding something you already enjoy doing and offering your services for free where there is a need.   You might be surprised at how much appreciation can be thrown your way just for “showing up”.  There is endless need, so you shouldn’t have trouble finding an outlet for volunteering.  Some examples include: answering phones at a fund drive for a favorite public radio station, feeding the homeless, teaching adults who can’t read via a local literacy program, helping kids with their homework at an after-school program, handing out food/drinks to the participants in a race or charity walk, or even volunteering to babysit your grandchild.  I have personally found an amazing and gratifying avenue for volunteering thanks to my girlfriend, Samantha, who referred me to it shortly after we first met.  Cedars-Sinai Medical Center here in Los Angeles has a program called “Music for Healing” in which musicians volunteer their time to come in and literally wander from room to room, playing music for and hanging out with patients, their families and visitors, and hospital staff.  I have a blast doing it – if it’s half as therapeutic for those I play for and interact with as it is for me, then I’m doing some serious spirit-lifting!

4.  Be Kind:  Treat people kindly, even when you’re sure they don’t deserve it.  Be generous in offering smiles, which cost nothing.  Use your creativity to surprise people with unexpected treats and gestures of goodwill.  Do this for your closest loved ones as well as complete strangers.  Act as if everyone else in the world is really a part of you, and so by doing for others you’re actually doing for yourself (you are!).  Watch Groundhog Day for additional ideas!

5.  Get Happy:  Find out what makes you happy (personal caveat: without causing harm to others or their property) and do more of it.  Experiment, try new things, keep adding items/activities to your happiness repertoire until it’s overflowing, and keep this “list” with you at all times so that you can readily combat bad moods.  Cultivate the skill of being able to make yourself happy on a moment’s notice.  The world can use happier people.  Play your part in increasing the world’s happiness quotient!

Thanks for everything you do to make your immediate environment and, in turn, the world, a better place for all of us. 

“Not surprising,” was the gist of my reply, remembering my own angst as a teen and early twenty-something.  

What was surprising to me, however, was my friend’s reply when I asked her the nature, or cause, of her daughter’s angst.  She told me that her daughter lives in a world of “woulda, shoulda, coulda” – essentially second-guessing all of the decisions she has made and feeling constant discontent about her situation. 

“And she’s how old??” I asked.  One would think such regret could only be achieved with the passage of time, as one drifts further and further away from the ideals of youth – not while one is still in her youth.

Yet how many of us, regardless of age, ruminate on pointless “what if”s and “if I had only”s?  I’m guessing most (or all) of us, only to varying degrees.  So I humbly offer up a suggestion for countering such unhelpful, and potentially crippling, obsessive thoughts.  It all boils down to a four-word mantra:

 “You Can’t Screw Up!”

My friend Max introduced me to the YCSU concept years ago, specifically in reference to the early stages of dating.  Let’s say you’ve met someone new.  Someone wonderful, of course.  You really like this wonderful person and you want to make the best possible impression in the hopes of launching a bona fide relationship with him/her because, let’s face it, he/she could be The One.  What do you do???  Do you call him/her right away, or do you play it cool?  Do you call/e-mail more than once before you’ve gotten a response, even if it’s been days since your last call/e-mail?  How much interest do you show, and how soon?  How much of your guard do you let down, and when?  The list of potential worries goes on and on.

Here’s where you stop, take a deep breath, and remind yourself: You Can’t Screw Up!

“Now wait a second,” I hear you protest over the invisible highways and byways of cyberspace.  “Of course I can screw up!  I do the wrong thing, or make the wrong impression, and BAM – my window of opportunity is gone, never to return.  I miss what could be my one chance at true love, and I end up dying penniless and alone.”

But here’s the deal, as my friend Max so eloquently explained: either there is the potential for a genuine connection with this person, or there is not.  There may not be for any of myriad reasons: he/she may be unavailable, uninterested, ultimately not really compatible with you, or perhaps the timing is just plain off.  If any of these happens to be the case, nothing you do or don’t do will change that.  Similarly, if there truly is potential for a connection – i.e., the object of your affection is interested, is available, the timing is good, etc., he/she will likely forgive or overlook a little bit of clumsiness on your part.

In other words: You Can’t Screw Up!

This is liberating news.  If (when) you act imperfectly, it’s okay!  So go ahead and do what you’re moved to do (I personally would add the caveat “so long as you’re not causing harm to others or their property”, but that’s just me…).  Take the chance.  Make decisions that are congruent with what you want.  If things don’t pan out the way you had hoped, perhaps the best attitude to take is to assume that it’s for the best.  At least you strengthened the muscle of going for it, which will no doubt be of benefit in the long run.  Plus, you never know what miseries you have been spared by not getting what you thought you wanted.  As my dad once put it to me: “Be thankful for all of the people you never married.”

Am I arguing that it is absolute truth that you can’t screw up?  Of course not.  If you’re determined to prove me wrong, you will.  I am suggesting, however, that adopting this mindset may free you to follow your heart more often, and to view whatever happens as being helpful – perhaps even necessary – for your own growth and (dare I say?) fulfillment.  Maybe there really is no such thing as screwing up – only gifts and/or lessons that result from every choice you make.  By paying attention and accepting each and every gift and lesson (even, or maybe especially, the ones you keep getting over and over again!) you can learn, improve, benefit, grow, and/or contribute in some way.  You always have the option of gleaming something positive from a seemingly negative experience or result through the use of some creative observation; you can always choose to “take a sad song and make it better”.

All actions have consequences, including the lack of action.  The question is: what might you do differently if you held the belief, even just for a moment, that You Can’t Screw Up?

The more I read and heard about Ironman St. George during the course of my training for it, the more I realized that finishing that race was going to be a serious long shot for me.  So back in March, not wanting all of my hard work go to waste, I decided to sign up for the Full Vineman, as well, to give myself two chances this year to complete the iron distance (all of the Ironman brand races of the season having long since been sold out).  For me, Ironman St. George amounted to a good training day (and an awesome vacation in southern Utah!).  Twelve weeks later:

Samantha and I arrived at the transition area well before it opened at 5:30 AM, but still had a good walk from where we parked the car, and there was already a significant line of folks waiting to get in.  How lucky I was to have her with me yet again at one of these races not only for the moral support, but also for the practical support of helping me lug all of my gear!  The Vineman folks put on a perfectly good race overall, but I had been spoiled by my previous experiences with the “Ironman brand” races organized by the World Triathlon Corporation.  The difference in execution (which, make no mistake about it, you pay for in the registration fee) is noticeable in ways that I will point out – the first of which is that at Ironman races they secure your bike and related gear in the transition area overnight so there is no need to schlep these items with you along with all of your swim stuff the morning of the race.

It was good I arrived as early as I did.  The race would begin in less than an hour from the time I entered T1 and, despite the fact that the field of participants in the Full Vineman was only about half that of a typical “Ironman” event, there were also three other races starting from the same spot on this day: Barb’s Race (an all-female half iron-distance triathlon), and both a Half and Full AquaBike (swim and bike) duathlon.  I thought beforehand that I would undoubtedly see my friend Lyn before the start (he and his girlfriend Cyndia were staying at the same motel as Samantha and me, but we left for the race separately).  Now I doubted this would be the case.  The transition area seemed huge and increasingly crowded by the minute.  And unlike the Ironman races, in which each athlete is assigned a specific spot by race number to rack his/her bike, here you had to find the correct row (or part of a row) that matched both the event you were racing in as well as your age and sex category for that race, and then secure a spot for yourself within the available space.  With the aid of the list I had written on a 3 x 5 card and industriously placed inside the bag with my swim gear, I tended to the morning’s tasks with more expediency and calm than I would have otherwise, until I was all suited up.

Shortly after handing Samantha a bag over the gate with my morning clothes in it (neither of us had planned for this exchange, but I pleaded with her to take it), I realized that I had made one slight faux pas.  Despite the fact that I had a list in front of me telling me exactly what to do in the morning, step-by-step, so as not to miss anything – race morning nerves prevailed.  Within an instant I knew that the goggles I had neglected to put around my neck were sitting in the very bag I had just given to Samantha.  I looked for her, but she was gone.  I shouted out her name.  Nothing.  I made my way toward Johnson’s Beach and the swim start, thinking she must be somewhere nearby to watch the beginning of the race.  Tons of people were all around as I surveyed the area, but not she who had my goggles!

As I made my way to the corral of swimmers-in-waiting, all the while looking back and around every which way for Samantha, I noticed that I was surrounded by yellow-capped participants (designating the third swim wave, the one after mine).  All of the orange caps were already in the water, lined up at or near the start line.  I heard someone say “Five seconds!” and, with no other warning, I headed into the water myself just as my orange-headed compatriots took off, at 6:33 AM.  To my dismay, I found myself with no option but to do the swim sans goggles.  Fortunately, this was not a salt-water swim or I’d have been in trouble.

It was an inauspicious start which caused some brief psychological stress, but in the end the lack of goggles was not nearly as distracting – or downright annoying – as other aspects of the swim.  I was in the second of eight swim waves that took off within three minutes of each other and constituted all of the Full Vineman and Full AquaBike athletes.  In a mass swim start, there is typically some jostling and body-to-body contact initially as people situate themselves and find their own rhythm, pace, groove, and space, but at least in my experience (as a back-of-the-packer) this dissipates considerably after a short while when the field spreads out.  Even in the shorter-distance races I’ve done that have had wave starts, the body-to-body contact was not unreasonable due to both well-timed gaps between swim waves and the vastness of the ocean!  But here in the Russian River, under these circumstances, I got it every which way – everything from light brushes to an elbow jab to the nose – throughout the duration of the swim.  Yes, I am slow, so each time a new wave started it was only a matter of time before I had bodies swimming into (or over!) me, but the fact that it was a two-loop course, with a wave start, and in a fairly narrow section of river, meant that many others must have had similar experiences.   The upside of this, though, was that I did not have much difficulty navigation-wise: the sighting was such that it would be hard to stray too far off course (something I have struggled with in ocean swims) because a) there were so many other swimmers nearby at all times to follow, and b) there was always land to sight, both upstream and downstream.

At one point, as I sighted ahead, I did a double take.  You expect to see a number of people walking during the run portion of a long-distance triathlon…but during the swim?  My eyes, unprotected by goggles as they were, were not deceiving me.  The water was so shallow in spots that, possibly because they had to, a large number of people were standing and walking in the water, especially as they approached the turn-around point.  I kept swimming even when my hand touched the sandy bottom during my stroke (which it did fairly frequently), thinking that surely it would still be faster to swim in the water than walk in it, but finally relented when I reached the crowd of people standing at the turn-around buoy.  We had been told that the water would be shallow (averaging between four and seven feet deep, according to the website), but this seemed ridiculous to me and cheapened the swim in my eyes.  Still, one of the challenges of triathlon is dealing with the unexpected and retaining your mental focus, so I suppose it was all par for the course.

I saw the clock for the first time on my way toward finishing the first loop and my time seemed fast.  I’ve done the full “iron” distance in the pool enough times to have a sense of it, and I wondered if this course had been measured correctly.  The second loop was much like the first (though I swam, not walked, around the turn-around buoy this time), and when I got to the Swim Finish the clock read (in hours and minutes) 1:42.  There’s no way that was 2.4 miles, I thought.  My pace is remarkably consistent in the water, and it generally takes me around 1:58 to complete this distance.  Also, though it did not occur to me then, because I was in the second swim wave (beginning three minutes after the race clock had started), I had actually finished the swim in 1:39, a full 19 minutes faster than either of my two Ironman swim times, which seems suspicious to me.  Then again, I did keep an identical pace to this in the 1.2-mile swim at the Ford Ironman 70.3 California in 2007, so who knows what other factors may have been involved?  This was a USAT-sanctioned race, so one would expect the distances to be measured precisely.  If you participated or were otherwise involved in this event and are reading this, I am curious to hear your thoughts or comments on the matter.

No doubt because of my earlier-than-expected finish, I did not see Samantha at the Swim Finish – nor did she see me.  I was prepared to take my wetsuit off on my own per the race meeting the day before, but sure enough there was a wetsuit stripper there to greet me, and I obliged him.  I retrieved the bag with my bike clothes in it from underneath my racked bike, and headed for the changing tent…as it was.  The gold standard of Ironman was most noticeably lacking here.  Whereas the Men’s Changing Tent in the Ironman races I’ve been in was spacious, had actual chairs for sitting in, featured personalized attention from volunteers, and was a separate tent from the Women’s (!), none of these things were the case at Vineman!!!  The (singular) tent was tiny, and only a white curtain separated the men’s side from the women’s.  Our space was tight and cramped – I honestly couldn’t see it accommodating more than four guys at a time – and not comfortably, per se.  I did my best to focus on the tasks at hand of changing my clothes and sorting through my gear while the others in the tent scrambled around bare-assed doing the same and we listened to the women’s chatter only inches away from us.  Inevitably a piece of gear or clothing would end up on the wrong side of the curtain and hands from the opposite side would have to reach underneath to help a guy, or gal, out.

With my swim gear stuffed in the only bag provided by the race for the safe return of personal items (Ironman races provide five such bags designated for Morning Clothes, Bike Gear, Run Gear, Special Needs Bike, and Special Needs Run respectively), I left the tent and made a beeline for my bike.  Volunteers were designated to collect the swim gear bags that athletes left behind and ensure their delivery to the finish line area, and also guided us to the Bike Start.  The start was on a hill, so I waited until I was at the top before mounting and clicking in my bike shoes, and I was off and cycling at around 8:25 AM, a wonderfully early start compared to what I was expecting (which was around 8:45 AM).  I was sure that I did not see Samantha at all up to this point for this very reason.

The weather was WON-DER-FUL…it was gloriously cool and overcast as I headed east out of Guerneville, in contrast to the blazing, unforgiving heat I experienced in both Arizona and Utah.  I could not have custom-ordered better weather, and I was thrilled about this!  I did not even see a patch of blue in the sky until I was halfway through the bike course (Mile 56), and I felt the sun on my skin for the first time at Mile 67 (yes, I took note).  I suppose if you do enough of these races, the Iron Gods will eventually smile upon you!  It seemed as if my third attempt at completing the iron distance might truly be “the charm”.

And unlike in the Ironman Arizona and Ironman St. George courses, there were no internal bike cut-off times at Vineman.  You simply had to complete the whole 112 miles by 5:30 PM.  Barring any major problems, this would not be an issue.  Realistically for me, however, I knew that if I wanted to finish the whole race (which ended at 11:00 PM), I would have to do substantially better than a 5:30 PM bike finish.  Most Ironman races give you 17 hours to complete the whole course, but Vineman only gives you between 16.25 and 16.5 hours, depending on your wave start time.  For someone like me, this could potentially mean the difference between being an official finisher…and not.

On the bike course I witnessed plenty of people on the side of the road with mechanical issues, as always seems to be the case in any race of any distance I’ve ever done (these problems really do seem to be disproportionate in races as compared to everyday riding).  I saw everything from flat tires to apparent crashes or wipeouts.  But usually I saw the people with these hardships being helped out, sometimes by fellow athletes, which was pretty heartening.   I saw only one ambulance the whole day.  What a dreaded thing to have a mechanical problem – or worse, an accident – during a race.  I take lots of precautions on the mechanical side of things, and always do my best to ride carefully, but some of it is just plain luck.

While the Vineman swim was the least enjoyable of any race I have done, the bike course was by far the highlight of the day’s events.  You spend the day riding through peaceful country roads, with acres and acres of vineyards and wineries making up much of the scenery.  Despite complaints I heard from others about the road conditions, I found them to be not bad at all.  Trouble spots were usually circled in colored chalk that called attention to them, and the potholes I saw were small, few, and far between.  There were some bumpy patches, but nothing I couldn’t either avoid altogether or get through just fine with my trusty Continental Gatorskin tires.  The cumulative gain on the course is approximately 4,000 feet, which is not insignificant, but most of this is gradual in the form of rolling hills.  The course has been described as being fairly technical in terms of having lots of curves and requiring much gear-shifting, but I felt that the degree of this was overstated and that it was very manageable.  Chalk Hill, the biggest and baddest uphill incline on the course, was nothing after having survived a loop on the Ironman St. George bike course just twelve weeks before!  Plus, there were signs that people had posted along the hill as you ascended to provide motivation and/or a laugh, with messages like: “HOW BAD DO YOU WANT IT?” and “YES PLEASE, MAY I HAVE ANOTHER!”

I felt some headwind kick in somewhere beyond Mile 80, and it hung around for much of the remainder of my ride and slowed me down a little, but that was the extent of the weather challenges I faced, so I was most grateful!  It does get tiresome riding that many miles, but when I saw Samantha and her childhood friend Anastasia, who had come up from Sacramento to watch the race and keep Sam company, I belted out a primal “YEEEEEAAAAAHHHHH!!!” at the top of my lungs in their direction which surprised even me with its volume and intensity.  I had completed most of the course at this point and just had to put my head down and do the same for the remaining miles.

Compared with my bike time in Arizona, a course with only a little more than half of the overall gain of Vineman to my understanding, I finished over 16 minutes faster (7:49:03), at least in part a testament to the difference that weather can make (although I was also better prepared in my bike training for this race, no doubt).

To the credit of the race organizers and the police officers that worked the course, I felt that the bike portion of the race for the most part did measure up to the “Ironman” standard.  In my experience, the traffic was expertly managed, and the course was populated by adequate and helpful aids throughout (in the form of volunteers, cones, markings, etc.) to help us navigate any and all tricky spots.  The aid stations, and specifically the volunteers who operated them, were extremely helpful in keeping us fueled and hydrated.  I opted not to use my Camelbak for the first time on a long-distance bike course, and managed fine with just my own bottles and the water bottles provided (had it been a very hot day, I most likely would have used it to ensure better hydration).  One important note, however, about the size of those bottles provided (Crystal Geyser Natural Alpine Spring Water by CG Roxane, 23.6 fluid ounces/.74 quart/700 mL, for those wondering): at least half a dozen times, maybe even a dozen, these bottles nearly flew out of my bottle cage while I was riding.  This would happen if I went over a bump or especially if I stood on the bike – during a hill climb, for example.  The bottle would hang to the left, leaning out of the cage about 3/4 of the way (!), and be held in place just barely at the bottom.  I would need to scoop it up the instant I realized this before a potential catastrophe occurred.  This must have been a function of the bottle shape/size, I’m thinking, so this is something the Race Director should look into for future events (anyone out there have a similar experience?).

The Bike Dismount Line was an unusually long way from T2 (the second transition area) due to the design of the final stretch of the course on the grounds of Windsor High School and some potentially dangerous curves and narrow passageways for getting there on wheels with other riders around.  I’m glad I scoped this out the day before and knew to take off my bike shoes as soon as I dismounted.  As I walked with my bike, I saw none other than my good friend Max (aka, visual effects wizard Eric Leven), whom I’ve known since nursery school and who came up from Berkeley for the express purpose of cheering me on to the finish.  It was awesome to see him there, and I don’t remember what he said to me, but he cracked me up in typical Max fashion as he followed me around the bends for as long as he could.  “I am sooooo glad to be off of this thing,” I told him sincerely.  When I made my way around the final curve that spilled into T2, I spotted none other than Meryl, Samantha’s mom, who also came up (from Marin County) to spectate and cheer me on.  It’s a huge morale boost to see a familiar friendly face out there, and I was touched by these people in my life who went out of their way to witness my effort.

T2 went smoothly.  There was a much more spacious tent for this wardrobe change for some reason, and I emerged from it in my running attire raring to go.  Max was there to entertain me with his quips as I headed out of T2, and off I went.  Now “all” I had to was a marathon.  When I had reached this point in Ironman Arizona, I had six and a half hours remaining on the clock to do the run and, as you may have gathered by now, I didn’t complete it.  Right now I had a little bit more time, about six hours and thirty-eight minutes, for this one.

To my surprise, my running legs were available to me immediately.  I had imagined this would take more time coming off of the bike, but I began my 26.2-mile journey on foot feeling great and jogging at a decent clip.  The sun was out, but wasn’t oppressive.   There were a number of spectators who lined the run start (and, in effect, the start/end of each loop) for a good distance, and their cheers were definite pick-me-ups.  I saw Cyndia at this point, who gave me a “you’re doing great!” as I passed by her.  I had not seen Lyn all day, but suspected he was somewhere ahead of me and that I was bound to see him sooner or later on the out-and-back, three-loop run.

Once the line of spectators disappeared, I found myself right up against my own thoughts again.  More than ever, this portion of the race was going to be a mental game.  It’s hard to conceive of tackling a marathon right after being on a bike for nearly eight hours (not to mention the swim beforehand).  It’s just not something a person would do, or even consider, under “normal” circumstances, and not something most people even come close to doing (as far as I am aware) while training for an Ironman, because such a session would likely be counter-productive to an optimal race performance.  Running a marathon, in and of itself, is a grueling endeavor, as I think almost anyone who has done one will attest.  Running one in the context of an iron-distance triathlon requires, I think, an entirely different sort of mindset.  For me, getting through it successfully was going to be all about strategy.  Yes, I felt good initially, but I knew better than to expect that this would last for any significant length of time.  Admittedly, I had not put too much thought into the run portion of the race.  I was pretty methodical and disciplined in the execution of my nutrition strategy on the bike and, as I had very much expected, solid food held no appeal whatsoever to me at this point.  Hopefully I would have consumed enough calories on the bike to see me through on just water, salt tablets (for electrolyte replacement), gels, and whatever else my stomach might be willing to accept during the marathon.  Even gels, as it turned out, weren’t all that appetizing.

Ever since being introduced to “walk breaks” late in my training for the 2004 L.A. Marathon (thank you, Nina!), I have sworn by them in all of my training and long-distance running.  The idea is that you find the best ratio that works for you of minutes of jogging followed by minutes of walking, and you implement this from the very beginning.  I have found that the ratio that I like best is four minutes of running followed by one minute of walking.  Then it’s just rinse, lather, repeat.  Taking the walk breaks systematically and right from the start provides wonderful relief during a long run (both physically and psychologically) and, I find, actually results in a faster overall time than I would achieve with trying to run continuously for as long as I could before stopping to walk.  It also greatly reduces the trauma to legs that are kind enough to follow such overwhelming demands in the first place and I believe reduces the risk of injuries and leads to faster recoveries.

All of that said, my four-to-one ratio approach works just fine if all I am doing is running.  But “just running” had most definitely not been today’s agenda.  I experimented with ideas about how to approach the run, but each one fell by the wayside rather quickly.  For example, as soon as I had decided on a running to walking ratio, I would come upon a hill while running and that would be the end of that.  I knew I had to conserve energy, and running up hills seemed an unwise approach (not to mention pure masochism).  I knew I had to avoid any injuries or mishaps.  I knew I had to be conservative in my exertion and keep the long-term goal in mind at all times, specifically: FINISH THIS RACE INTACT AND BEFORE THE CUT-OFF!!!!

Finally, I settled on a plan of dividing the course up into six parts (each way out and each way back for three loops).  I estimated that each of these sections was roughly 4.5 miles, and then gave myself a particular time goal for reaching the end of each one that would be realistic and reasonable.  This gave me a lot more flexibility than trying to stick to a specific ratio of running and walking.  If I averaged 65 minutes to cover each of these “sections”, I would reach the finish line in time, but obviously I wanted to also give myself some kind of a cushion to avoid cutting it too close!   I have a pretty simple wristwatch, so I was doing constant calculations in my head throughout the night based on my progress (which was actually not all that bad a way to occupy my mind).

When I saw the line of spectators as I approached the end of the first loop, I was reinvigorated.  I wanted to look good for the people out there, especially those that had come to see me!  I picked up my pace and wore my best smile as I made my way past all of the folks cheering and applauding.  I was surprised for some reason at just how much of a boost they were.  I saw Samantha, her mom, and Anastasia, and gave them a big smile and wave.  When I saw Max, I said to him (knowing full well I would eat my words, tongue-in-cheek as they were): “What’s the big deal?  This is easy!”  The volunteers and spectators were totally energizing; this cannot be overstated.  One woman held up a sign that read:  “Chuck Norris” and then underneath: “…NOT an Ironman!”   Every little gesture of support like this truly adds up when you are out there pushing yourself all day long.  This is true in life in general, but really is a heightened experience when you are exerting yourself to such an extreme.

As soon as I was out of sight of the spectators, I slowed to a brisk walk.  Back down to business.  I had to get through and finish this, and dogged determination, mixed with a strong dose of sound thinking, was what was called for.  Downhills were always the time to run.  Flat stretches would be run…sometimes.  Endless mental games were played: run from here just up to the beginning of that hill, or that sign, or that post, or whatever.

I sipped on water at every aid station.  I wasn’t consuming the gels I had brought with me.  I didn’t want them.  I eyed the assorted goodies on the tables, snacks I normally would have reached for (Oreos, chocolate chip cookies, pretzels), but was just not interested.  I finally reached for a cup of de-fizzed cola to alternate with the water for a little extra boost.  But after trying this out a couple of times, my stomach responded with uncomfortable cramping so I backed off and resumed sipping on just water.  I didn’t even want any fruit, but finally settled on some grapes, which seemed like an appropriate choice for this race (Vineman) and which my body actually welcomed.  Mostly, I just tried to keep moving at all times – continuous forward motion was the way to the finish line – and compulsively did calculations about my pacing.

To be clear, funny as this may sound, I had no interest in torturing myself out there.  As the night wore on, all kinds of aches emerged – everywhere, but most noticeably in my feet.  I was certain I had an array of blisters on both of them (although a post-race inspection proved I actually had none).  I wanted to finish, but I also wanted to take full advantage of the time I had left.  In other words, I wanted to do no more running than I absolutely had to, but I also wanted to give myself enough of a cushion time-wise that I would have the option of walking the entire third loop, as a gift of mercy to bestow on myself!  These two desires competed in a mental tug-of-war in my brain.  When there was any doubt, though, the paranoia of missing the 11:00 PM deadline won out.

When I ran through the spectator-populated area to complete the second loop and start the third, I again did my best to look strong but I’m sure I wasn’t quite as convincing this time.  Max wasn’t there (he took a break for dinner), and Samantha’s mom had already headed back home, as had Anastasia.  But Samantha was still there, cheering me on and truly being an endless source of motivation.  I can’t tell you how many times I told myself that I had to finish this for her.  Do this for HER!!!  I dedicate this all to HER!!!!!  I thought of all the Saturday mornings I left her behind to head out for a long bike ride and not return until many hours later, about all the times I had to go to sleep early in order to get up at 5:00 AM to hit the pool for a long swim before work, about the times she joined me at Sycamore Canyon and went for a solo hike while I went out for a long run, and about how much the Ironman goal in one way or another had dominated my free time.  All the while she had been accommodating and supportive, and even excited for me.  She has been such a devoted and enthusiastic cheerleader and supporter and has had to see me NOT make it to the finish line twice before.  She took time off from work again for this trip, just to be here with me for this.  She got up at four in the morning to see me to the start, and has been out here all day and night just to get brief glimpses of me throughout the day and cheer me on and SHE DESERVES TO SEE ME FINISH!!!!!!!!!!!

The third loop was dark.  Very dark.  Some well-prepared athletes were donning headlamps (they must have done this race before!).  The only other lights came from the aid stations, the glow sticks that were handed out to us so we could be seen, and the lights from those patrolling the course on a bike or in a car.  On my way outbound, I witnessed a young woman heading back my way and crying.  She was being propped up by a woman on either side of her, both of whom were offering words of consolation.  The race wasn’t over so something had clearly happened – an injury, I guessed – to keep her from continuing.  An awkward mixture of feelings brewed inside me: genuine sympathy, relief that it wasn’t me, apprehension that something bad could still happen, the desire to shut out even the thought of something bad happening, and the resolve to press on.

There weren’t all that many mile markers on the course, but the ones that were there posted the total mileage reached for whichever loop you were on and were helpful to my incessant computing of time and pace.  Whenever I hit the sign that read “Barb’s Race Turn-around”, I knew that that was roughly the halfway point toward my turn-around, so that was a helpful marker, as well.

At times it was so dark I couldn’t even see the ground in front of me, and it seemed dangerous to try and run.  What if I tripped and fell, and it somehow cost me my finish?  I proceeded carefully.  I was keeping a good enough pace and taking any chances just seemed reckless at this point.

When I finally saw the big light in the distance indicating the turn-around I picked up my pace, excited about reaching the sixth and final section of the run course!  As I circled around and ran over the timing mats, a volunteer commented that I was moving at “quite a pace!” but it was purely reactionary and would dissolve back into a determined but laborious trudge soon after.

One of the things that helped out a lot, especially on that long, lonely, and dark final loop, was finding others to keep pace with and talk to.  A number of people I found were from LA or thereabouts.  One guy I chatted with had just come down with a nasty cold a few days before and was slogging through this whole thing while sick.  He was actually very good company.  I didn’t want to hold him back, but he gladly walked with me awhile.  I think he was from El Segundo.  I told him a little about my strategy for getting through and the pacing I needed to keep to make sure I was on track and he said, “Keep moving and I’ll tell you your pace.”

“Huh?”  I was confused but obliged him.

“You’re doing 15:20 [minutes:seconds/mile] right now.”

“I am?”

“Yeah.  Now keep up with me for a moment…..now you’re doing 14:40.”

It was his handy-dandy watch, equipped with a GPS, that did all of the calculating for us.  How cool!  I totally saw the value in that, as it is very hard when you’re exhausted to have any idea of how fast you are actually going.  He kept the pace for me for a little while, before leaving me on my own when he was ready to forge ahead.

Next I came upon a pair of sisters, also from the outskirts of LA (Valencia, maybe?), who were doing the race together, so I chatted with them for a little while until the final stretch was in sight, after which I took off.  Random people on the street were offering serious kudos and congratulations, as if they truly understood what this was all about, and each comment brought a big smile to my face and all of my aches and pains vanished from consciousness.  I was really, truly, going to make it this time!!!

You’d think I would have wanted to take it all in a bit more, but when I reached the final left turn that led to the finishing chute, I instinctively picked up the pace.  THIS WAS IT!!!  Max appeared again and ran alongside me on the opposite side of the partitioned wall.  There were probably words exchanged between us but it is all a complete blur to me now.  The chute was lined with cheering spectators on either side.  I swept my hand across a bunch of hands that were laid out before me and heard my name called out by the announcer.  With my right fist held high in the air I burst through the tape that marked my official entrance into the world of IRON MEN AND WOMEN!!!!  I DID IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

One volunteer removed the ankle bracelet carrying my timing chip, another put a medal around my neck, another gave me my finisher’s shirt, and still another greeted me with a very welcome space blanket for warmth, as I was pretty cold by now in my skimpy running attire.  It was 10:35 PM and I had been racing since 6:33 AM.  I made the 11:00 PM cut-off with under 25 minutes to spare.

Samantha was totally freaking out with excitement and gave me a fierce hug when she saw me after jumping up and down and screaming and cheering.   Max stood behind her with a big grin on his face.  I think Samantha was more ecstatic than I was, having accompanied me for years now on this journey.  She told me she was so relieved to see me finish, and how anxious she had been throughout the day, especially for a two-hour stretch or so during the bike when the live updates were not registering for me due to some computer glitch and she feared the worst.

With Max’s help and hers, I retrieved my belongings from the transition area.  I hugged my old friend farewell, and then headed back with Samantha to the motel in Santa Rosa.

As an Ironman.

I am deeply indebted to a number of people for their support in helping me reach this goal, among them:

- All of the volunteers and spectators at every race I’ve ever done.

- The authors of all of the books I’ve read on the subject of Ironman triathlons, especially Ray Fauteux.

- The various Ironmen and Ironwomen I have known or met over the years that have inspired me.

- Bob Lloyd for talking me into doing my first-ever 60-mile-plus bike ride in 2005 (the MS Bike Tour), and then somehow also talking me into doing the L.A. Wheelmen’s Grand Tour Double Metric Century Ride (124 miles) in 2006.

- Masoud Golbaz for doing both of the above-mentioned rides, and a number of others, with me.  I wouldn’t have gotten through that first Grand Tour without you.  I’m serious.

- Lyn, for having the guts to sign up for this race with me having only ever done one triathlon before – a sprint-distance one, at that (and he still finished over an hour before I did!), and Cyndia.

- My good friend Paolo, who has been such a key supporter, ready ear, cheerleader, and informal coach to me in my Ironman pursuit.

- Anastasia, Max, and Meryl for showing up on race day and cheering me on.  It meant more than you can know.

- And finally, Samantha, for being my friend, my companion, my devoted partner, my love, and my “golden compass”.  I love you and am eternally grateful for you every day.  This finish is dedicated to YOU!!!!

SWIM – 1:39:10

T1 – 12:38

BIKE – 7:49:03

T2 – 8:08

RUN – 6:13:24

TOTAL – 16:02:23

Ironman St. George: May 7, 2011

Three years after my first attempt at completing an Ironman, I found myself on the beach of Sand Hollow Reservoir this past Saturday, about to get into the water to begin Ironman St. George.  More than anything, showing up for this race was an exercise in courage.

Why?

For starters, take an e-mail from the only guy I knew that had done the inaugural race in St. George last year, himself a very accomplished triathlete and multiple-Ironman finisher:

“St. George. You need to take SERIOUSLY or don’t go. The water will be 52 to 58 degrees. I did no cold water training and lasted 10 minutes a year ago there. They had to carry me out. I read the 50 year charts on the lake AFTER the event. It is cold that time of year period. There is NO warm possibility. Over 100 guys were hauled out – my guess. I plan on returning PREPARED some day.”

In blissful ignorance, I had no idea just what I was getting myself into when I signed up for this race a year ago.  Let’s face it, any race at the “iron” distance (2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike, 26.2-mile run) is plenty intimidating, but the more I read about St. George online the more I discovered its reputation, after only its first year on the circuit, as being perhaps the toughest of all of the Ironman courses in North America.  Exact figures varied among the firsthand accounts I read online, but it seemed clear that the bike course featured at least 6,000 feet of climbing and the run course over 2,000 feet!  Realistically, for me, finishing this race was a long shot.  I did plenty of wavering on whether or not to even go, but in the end Samantha and I planned a vacation around it that included visits to Bryce Canyon and Zion beforehand, so the odds were I would have a great time regardless of how the race turned out.

Amazingly, I would say that I was calmer this race morning than at any other triathlon I have done.  I suppose there is something to be said for practice (though only my second attempt at an Ironman, this was my twelfth triathlon overall).  I knew the routine, and got to the start plenty early so as not to feel at all rushed.  Once all of my tasks were completed in the transition area (filling my bike tubes with air, placing my food and drink on the bike and in my jersey, visiting the Porta-Potty, changing into my wetsuit, putting on my timing chip, etc.), I was able to make my way over to the swim start with minimal pressure or angst.

The anticipation in the days leading up to the race and especially the night before was by far the most nerve-wracking part of the whole experience.  Okay, that and the very beginning of the race: the initial plunge into the cold water as we seeded ourselves into position behind the start line, and the frenzy of the mass start right after the cannon was fired at 7:00AM!  But thankfully it wasn’t long at all before I settled into a comfortable swimming rhythm and adjusted to the water temperature.  Once you begin racing, you are faced with the immediate task at hand, and you act in accordance with whatever that is.  Nerves fall to the wayside.

To be sure, the swim was not as cold as last year’s.  The water temperature had been hovering around (a relatively balmy) 62 degrees in the mornings preceding the race, and it was announced in the transition area race morning that it was 62 degrees for the race start (I later read the official live reports online that stated that the water was, in fact, 58 degrees at the start, but either way I found it to be perfectly manageable).  I was equipped with my brand new wetsuit and two additional new products purchased specifically with a cold swim in mind: a neoprene skull cap (that also covered my ears) that I wore underneath my race cap, and “aqua socks”, which are allowed if the water temperature is 65 degrees or colder.  I will definitely use the skull cap in future open water swims.  I cannot say the same for the aqua socks, however.  Though they came in handy for navigating the rocky beach from which we entered the water and provided a certain degree of psychological comfort, the neoprene socks quickly filled with water and remained that way for the duration of my swim.  Swimming with what felt like a bloated bag of water and air on each foot did not seem helpful, and any benefit of warmth that the socks may have offered could only be justified in colder water than we were swimming in, in my opinion.

The swim went fine.  I swam at my (very slow, by Ironman standards, but comfortable and consistent) usual pace and finished in 1:58:37 (literally one second slower than my swim time in Ironman Arizona!).  I came out of the water and as I made a semi-dash for the timing mats in my excitement, those pesky aqua socks caused me to slip (but not fall, thankfully) as I headed over to the wetsuit strippers.  Two volunteers greeted me and directed me as to where to lie down.  Each one then grabbed one of my legs while I rested on my back and whoosh – off came my wetsuit and aqua socks, which were handed back to me as soon as I rose and regained my equilibrium.  I headed for the Bike Gear Bags, scooped mine up, and proceeded to the men’s changing tent, where another volunteer sat with me and offered to help in any way he could.  I dumped the contents of my bag onto the floor, found my towel and dried off, and began changing into my bike clothes.  I had come up with an idea the night before that proved very helpful to me in the changing tent: on the back of an envelope that I tucked into my gear bag on race morning I had made a list of not only all of the things I needed to remember to put on, but the sequence in which to do so.  In all of the excitement of reaching the transition area, with my heart rate likely through the roof and general feelings of disorientation after 2.4 miles of swimming, it was immensely helpful to not have to put any thought into this and just follow the directions in front of me.  You might think this detail to be incidental, but I was out of T1 in exactly nine minutes (as compared to my 14:49 T1 time in Ironman Arizona).

I was off on my bike a few minutes earlier than I was in Arizona, but I was going to need every possible advantage to make each of the four cut-off times on this bike course.  I had not done as much training volume-wise as I had for Arizona, but I had managed to ride distances of up to 100 miles in training and, unlike with Arizona, I also did some significant climbing-specific training rides, including one in which I totaled 6,700 feet of elevation gain over 56 miles (about the same amount of gain as in this course, but in half the distance).  You might think this would ensure I was adequately prepared for St. George, but I knew all too well my key limiter: speed.  I could do long rides, and even very long uphill climbs, but was I going to be fast enough?  My training rides suggested that the answer to this was no, but there was only one way to find out for sure!

In the transition area before the race, an announcement was made to this effect: “It’s going to be a hot one out there today, folks. Whatever your expected finish time may be, you’re going to need to let go of it.  Today is going to be about survival, about getting to the finish line.”  In addition, I had spoken with a number of athletes at the expo who had done the race last year, and there was one common thread to their advice: take it easy on the first loop of the bike, or you’ll have nothing left for the second!  I also knew that one of the classic mistakes people make in an Ironman in general is going out too hard on the bike in the beginning.  You MUST conserve energy for the long haul (not to mention leg power for the marathon that comes after!).  This is all fine and well in theory.  The only problem for me was I had no wiggle room.  I couldn’t afford to “take it easy” – for me, each cut-off point would be a race against the clock!

The day before the race, Samantha and I drove the 43-mile loop so that I could get a lay of the land and have a better idea of what to expect on race day (thinking this would be helpful).  The ride was beautiful – the scenery was magnificent, colorful, and majestic.  And do you know what else it was?

Loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong!!!

The drive around the canyon went on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on – it felt like it would never end.  Rather than boost my confidence, experiencing this ride in the car (it took a long time in the car!) all but crushed my morale.

We do this TWICE?  You have GOT to be kidding me.

There were numerous hills along the overall long, slow climb, some of which were even noticeable in the car.  We got to “The Wall”, a one-mile-or-so relentlessly steep stretch at something like an 11%-13% grade, where one-word signs of encouragement had been posted on the ground throughout with messages like: Strength.  Courage.  Endure.  People at the expo assured me: “Don’t worry about all of the climbing – you’ll make the time back on the downhills.”  Okay, if you say so!

Anyway, there are 21 miles to ride before you even get to the first loop.  The beginning was easy.  In fact, I was averaging about 15 mph, and I found myself inflating my goals right from the get go.  This was, of course, stupid, and I quickly came back down to earth as the course slowed down my average speed.

The volunteers and spectators were awesome.  Some were purely entertaining.  There were two guys dressed in super-hero-type tights from head to toe (one was all-blue and one was all-green, if memory serves) jumping up and down and flailing their arms about wildly as they cheered us on.  Another woman just kept screaming at the top of her lungs for every cyclist that passed by – keeping that up for who knows how long.  There were kids who, when they saw me, shouted: “Ironman!  Go, Ironman!!!” which cracked me up and brought a big smile to my face.  When I encountered spectators on my way down a hill, I felt like a superstar whizzing by (it wasn’t quite the same if they happened to be stationed on an uphill grade – but they cheered me on anyway).

The first cut-off point was at Mile 21 – you had to get there by 11:30AM.  This was not a problem.  In fact, I had set my own goal of reaching that point by 10:50AM at the latest in order to keep pace enough to make the other cut-offs.  I no doubt was working too hard too early on, but I felt I had to.  (My results confirm this instinct: we rode over the first mats at Mile 23, and as we did our times were recorded for the first bike split.  My chip time indicates that I completed the first 23 miles in exactly one hour and forty-two minutes, a 13.53-mph pace.  From my post-race vantage point I can see, based on my swim and T1 times, that in order to finish all 112 miles of the bike on time I would have needed to keep a minimum average pace of 13.38 mph overall).

As I rode the first loop, I was passed by numerous pros and some seriously capable age-groupers who flew by me at a good clip (for them, it was the second loop!).  The cool thing about triathlons is there is serious camaraderie out there, and a number of “elites” offered encouraging words to those of us struggling through our first loop.  This really does help keep your spirits up, as I experienced at Ironman Arizona, so I was always grateful for this, regardless of how I was feeling physically.

The course got a lot lonelier once we exited the residential areas and the spectators disappeared.  After that we only had each other for support as we ascended the long, long path up to Snow Canyon.  It was hot.  Not a hint of a breeze.  And not surprisingly, there were a number of people having problems.  I saw a woman get back on her bike to continue riding after an apparent stop and I offered words of encouragement to her: “Way to keep going!”  She told me she had been hit by a man from behind and, when I asked if she was okay, she said, “No, I think I may have a concussion.”  I insisted she tell me her race number as I passed her so I could ask for help at the first opportunity.  At several points I saw race personnel coming to the aid of athletes or already assisting them.  The more I rode, the more the course was strewn with casualties of one kind or another.  The most ominous moment was when an ambulance came roaring down the canyon walls in the opposite direction from us with its siren lights spinning and alarm shrieking at full blast.  I continued riding.

Finally, I looked up and saw a stream of cyclists ahead ascending a monster of a hill, looking not unlike a roller coaster slowly making its way to the top of what would be a free fall on the other side.

The Wall!!!

I put my head down with resolve and began climbing, breathing harder and moving slower but keeping the pedals moving.  I climbed and climbed and climbed.  And then I climbed some more.  Finally, I made it over the top and coasted downhill for a stretch.  Woohoo!!! 

There were not many mile markers populating the bike course (maybe only every ten miles, if that, it seemed), so I had to rely on my Garmin to keep track of my progress, and I had fumbled with getting it going at the start of the ride, so its readings were not exact.  Still, I was acutely aware of the next bike cut-off: I had to reach Mile 64 (the end of the first loop) by 2:05PM, or I was out of the race.  It wasn’t looking good.

I kept going, and finally, somewhere around Mile 46 (my memory is a little hazy here), I came upon a familiar one-word sign posted on the side of the road: Strength.    Wait…..a…..minute.   The realization began to kick in.   That last hill I did?  That-was-not-The Wall!

THIS was The Wall!!!!

A number of people were now walking their bikes up the hill.  I thought: Okay, it looks like I’m probably not going to make the cut-off.  So, I am setting a new goal for myself right here, right now.  I WILL RIDE THE WHOLE WAY UP THE WALL.  I WILL NOT GET OFF MY BIKE AND WALK!  It helped counter the disappointment I was suppressing to have this new ambition, however meager in comparison to finishing the whole bike course.  I kept true to my word.  And it really wasn’t that hard.  I had done much longer climbs than this in my training, even if The Wall was pretty damn steep.  I could climb, and I could ride for a long time – speed was my limiter!

I was just shy of the Mile 50 marker when I saw a guy standing on the shoulder of the road with his head down, holding his stopped bike. “Are you okay?” I asked.

“No,” was his reply. “Do you have any salt?”

I pulled my bike over just ahead of him and walked it down to where he was.  It was the first time I had gotten off the bike since I first mounted it at the Bike Start line.

“My legs are cramping like you wouldn’t believe,” he said.

I nodded my head.  I believed.

“How many do you need?” I asked, reaching into my jersey for my salt pills.  I was reminded at this moment how helpful these were, as I had not experienced any cramping at all.

“I don’t want to put you out,” he said, sincerely not wanting to interfere with my own race.

I smiled. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m not gonna make the cut-off”.  I poured a couple of pills into his hand, and asked him if he needed any water.  He said no, and then thanked me.  It felt good to be able to help him out, redemptive even to be of some small use to another person out there.  I got back on my bike and continued up the hill.

I looked at my watch and did more calculating and it seemed impossible, at this point, for me to make the next cut-off.  I would have to make up some incredible time on the downhill that concluded the loop, and even then it was still pretty doubtful.  With this realization, I started to let my nutrition slide.  It was really hard to motivate myself to eat my disgusting, half-melted semi-edibles as it was, but now there seemed very little point in doing so (this was a dumb move, because I still had a good bit of riding to go just to finish this loop, and I needed the calories).  Almost as soon as I passed Mile 50, I felt the first wind of the day.  Before long, it picked up in momentum, and by the time I began the descent offering views of the breathtakingly beautiful Snow Canyon, it got gusty (I later learned that these gusts reached 22 mph).  And yes, this was a headwind.  So though I was technically going downhill, there were times when it didn’t even feel like it.  So much for making up lost time.  For ten miles straight I rode into the wind.  I didn’t dare get on my aero bars, as I was already a little wobbly on my way down the mountain as it was.  Now I knew for sure I wouldn’t make the cut-off at Mile 64, and the truth of the matter is this: I was relieved.  I had promised myself I would go as far as I possibly could or until the race officials stopped me from continuing, whichever came first.  Had I made the cut-off, I’d have felt obliged to keep going and, honestly, the thought of having to do that loop a second time that day, even if I could have taken a break first…I couldn’t even imagine it.  It would have been pure punishment, like a sentence for some heinous crime.  I reached the bottom of the hill, and kept waiting for someone to stop me, but no one was there.  Soon enough I reached two sets of differently colored arrows directing us: go to the elevated path to the right to the Finish, or stay to the left to do the Second Lap.  I stayed to the left and continued riding.  Finally, there was a guy in the middle of the road waving his arms vertically up and down. “You have to stop!” he said.

I nodded and slowed down, but he said it again: “You have to stop!”

“I know,” I replied. “I just need to get off my bike safely,” I assured him.  Did he think I wanted to keep going, and was trying to trick him or something??

I dismounted, and the guy wrote down my race number on his list and retrieved the timing chip from my ankle.  I joined the assembled group of others who had been stopped – my people, so to speak.  My watch read 2:26PM, so I was a solid twenty minutes past the cut-off time.  No arguments from me!  We congregated and waited until there were enough of us to fill the shuttle so they could drive us and our bikes to the finish area.  I watched as a guy who came by about five minutes after I did was totally bewildered about having to stop.  It seemed he truly did not know about the cut-off and was visibly disappointed when it was explained to him.

There was some confusion about where exactly on the course we were.  My Garmin suggested that I had already passed Mile 64, and that this was closer to Mile 65.  There was some consensus among others that it was Mile 66.  But one thing was for sure: we had not yet gone over the second mat, so our chips did not record our times beyond Mile 23.  We would receive no official credit/recognition for finishing the first loop.  The second Bike Split was at 66 miles, so the next mat couldn’t have been very far off.  They could have at least set up shop beyond the timing mat to collect us, I thought.  But it was what it was.  Incidentally, for what it’s worth, my Garmin reports a total of 3,777 feet of elevation gain for this much of the bike course.  My best approximation based on the Garmin’s readings is that I completed roughly 65 miles of the bike course in 5 hours and 19 minutes (an overall pace of 12.22 mph).

Once in the shuttle, we chatted with each other about the day and I, for one, congratulated everyone just for showing up and making it as far as we did.  A volunteer who rode with us in the van concurred that it was “more than most people could have done” and told us he was very impressed with all of us.  It was a bittersweet moment for each of us, I’m sure.

I was treated to a massage and pizza (GLORIOUS PIZZA!!!!) back at the finish area – I can’t even begin to describe how good this was.  As the day wore on, it felt like it was just getting hotter and hotter (temps were in the low 90s).  The weather seemed to me to be identical to what I experienced at Ironman Arizona in April 2008.  I simply marveled at those who were about to start the marathon in these conditions (not to mention the first of the pros who came in at the finish!).  It was kind of beyond comprehension to me, other than the fact that I knew if I had made it to the end of the bike course in time, I’d have been one of them, and would have tapped into some previously unknown reservoir of determination, inspired by just the possibility of becoming an Ironman by day’s end.

The first thing that strikes me is how short he is – shorter than I am, even.  And that he’s really not a particularly handsome man.  In fact, he looks worse up close than in any pictures I’ve seen of him.  But it’s him, and my brain continues its attempt to explain this to me.

My number one goal at this point is simple: don’t do anything to piss him off!

“Hi, Billy, I’m Eric Teplitz.  We spoke on the phone on Monday.  It’s an honor to meet you.” Or who knows what I actually say.  It’s all so surreal.

“Why do they give guys flowers?” he says, holding a large bouquet.

I laugh.

This is my moment of truth.  My chance to convey to him, if it’s even possible, what an inspiration he has been to me.  I realize there is probably nothing I can say to him that he hasn’t already heard a million times before, so my hope is that at least the sincerity will come through.

I attempt to give him a very brief synopsis of his impact on my life: how much his music has meant to me since I was a little kid, how much it has been a part of my life, and how it was a huge inspiration for my own songwriting and my decision to pursue music as a career.  I mention how, as a student here at Penn State, I spent countless hours in the practice rooms of the Music Building trying to teach myself “Root Beer Rag” on the piano even though I’m a guitar player.

“Why’d you start with ‘Root Beer Rag’?” he asks (it being a challenging piece to tackle, particularly for a non-piano player).

“Cause it’s Root Beer Rag!” I reply, as if he had just asked why I liked sex or ice cream.

I finish my extemporaneous speech, having tried to the best of my ability without wearing his ear off to express my deep appreciation for his music and inspiration, and he is gracious without taking it all too seriously.

In the dressing room there are just two other people besides Billy and myself: Max the road manager, and Ed Sciaky, the well-known Philadelphia radio personality from WMMR who, by playing a live recording of “Captain Jack” on the air in the early ’70s, helped Billy gain the attention of Columbia Records (probably right around the time I was born).  Columbia signed him and in 1973 released his first studio album for the label, Piano Man.  And the rest, as they say, is history.  Billy and Ed have been friends ever since.

“Do you think I could get a picture with you for the article?” I ask Billy.  He agrees to it, and I withdraw from my winter coat pocket a disposable camera.  Ed Sciaky takes our picture, and before I outstay my welcome I say my thank yous and goodbyes and exit gracefully on my own initiative.

Of course the fantasy is that I would say something like, “Hey, if you like buffalo wings I know the best place around here to get ‘em.”  To which Billy would reply, “Sounds great, why don’t you come with us?”  And we’d hang out and become buddies.  But as fantastical as this whole scenario has already been, I remember my promise to myself (don’t piss him off!) and leave before I am asked to.

The whole episode is as if out of a dream and, much like a dream, I have no idea how much “real” time has elapsed in Billy’s dressing room.  Ten minutes, perhaps?  It’s hard to say for sure.  I meet up with Matt in the lobby and tell him the whole story.  It is nothing short of a dream come true.

The following day I proudly march into Old Main, the building on campus that is home to the Penn State Alumni Assocation, armed with my micro-cassette (though probably unplayable here) and disposable camera (with the as-yet-undeveloped picture of Billy and myself) in hand.

These folks, of course, know nothing about any of this.  I explain that I have an article to propose for The Penn Stater, secretly believing that I am bringing to them their best story in who knows how long, and ask if I may speak to the appropriate person.  I am escorted into an office and meet with a woman, possibly the same editor to whom I initially pitched my idea for the article on Mike Reid that was rejected rather coldly.

After delivering my pitch with much enthusiasm, the woman behind the desk says, “I’m sorry, but I don’t think it’s a fit.”

What???!!!!!  Are you kidding me???!

“Are you serious?” I ask. “Why not?”

“Well…the story just isn’t ‘blue and white’ enough,” she says, referring to the Penn State school colors.

I cannot believe this response.  “Not ‘blue and white’ enough???”  I spell it out as plainly as possible: “I am a recent Penn State graduate, pursuing a music career.  BILLY JOEL comes to Penn State, and I interview him, in conjunction with his shows here on campus, about his college tour and the music business…what angle are you looking for exactly to make it ‘blue and white’ enough???”

“Well, we might be able to include a paragraph or so in the back of the magazine on this, but I’m sorry, that would be about the extent of it.”

I’m thinking this lady is crazy, that she is turning down a great story, but I don’t feel the need to bother trying to convince her of this any further, and am pretty sure it would not have any effect at all if I did.  “Okay, suit yourself,” I say, and calmly excuse myself from the office.

I am dumbfounded, but it doesn’t really matter to me in the end.  I’ve already gotten what I most wanted!  I had the opportunity of a lifetime, the fulfillment of a many years-long fantasy of interviewing and then meeting in person one of my all-time heroes.  It’s a shame they aren’t interested, but that’s rather incidental by comparison.

Meanwhile, my brother and I attend the second show together that night.  During the Q&A, someone is bold enough to ask Billy if he can play “Baby Grand” onstage with him (a duet Billy originally recorded with his own hero, Ray Charles).  The audience cheers wildly in support of this gutsy kid.  Billy asks him, “Can you play?”  The kid assures him he can, and Billy then calls him up to the stage.  The kid holds his own, playing a second piano facing Billy’s and trading verses with his hero, as Billy Joel makes another guy’s dream come true in front of the entire crowd at Eisenhower Auditorium.  The place goes nuts and gives them both a standing ovation.

When I return to Nashville, I make a halfhearted attempt to find another outlet for publishing the interview, but it does not pan out.  I feel kind of bad that Billy will never see this in print after he was so gracious with his time, but I sense somehow that this is not something he will lose any sleep over.  The wish fulfillment factor on my part trumps any guilty feelings I have about this.  I do send a thank you letter to Keith at his office and ask him to forward it on to Billy  [fifteen years later, the interview is finally published for the first time, on this very blog.  Apologies to Billy for it taking so long!!!].

I have the interview copied from my answering machine tape onto a DAT (digital audio tape) and hire a duplication service to make cassette copies I can give out to friends.  When my pictures are developed, I have the photo of Billy and me blown up to poster size and framed.  I also have postcard-size copies cut out to distribute to friends, with an inscription printed underneath:

Am I having a “Wizard of Oz”-type moment? Of course I knew it was just a man behind the (nylon) curtain.  And unlike the fictional Wizard, my hero never professed to be otherwise.  Still, I had apparently constructed a divisive curtain of my own, separating and placing him (among numerous other heroes) behind it with a booming megaphone and all kinds of special effects.  This illusion – a collaboration, perhaps, between my own mind and pop culture – has now been kind of shattered.

The upside of this disillusionment, though, is the implicit suggestion that being human – rich/famous/successful/musically talented/“important” or not – is the great equalizer.  Maybe it is the case that no matter who you are or what your circumstances, there is a spectrum of feelings and emotions that make up the human experience, and we all have more or less equal access to it.  The thing that I most wanted to know – what does it feel like to be Billy Joel? – has a both disappointing and awfully reassuring apparent answer: it feels like being anyone else.  Duh.  And yet…not duh.  Not duh at all.

********************************************************

On Wednesday, after traveling in two planes, a cab, and two Greyhound buses for a total of nine and a half hours, I finally arrive in State College, PA, where I am greeted by Matt, my old friend and junior-year college roommate, who still lives up here.  We are going together to Eisenhower Auditorium for the first of Billy Joel’s two appearances.

I arrive at the venue with a disposable camera and my answering machine tape in hand, and as I am about to enter the front doors I see a trio of young women with laminated passes.  One of them says to the others: “we’re supposed to ask for Max Loubiere.”  Uh-oh.  Not only do they know the password for getting backstage – they also have laminated legitimacy, which I do not.  I merely have Billy Joel’s voice on a micro-cassette (and no device on which to play it back on, come to think of it) granting me permission to meet him backstage. “Shit!”  I feel like my rendezvous is in jeopardy now, like my claim will appear fraudulent without the almighty pass.

As soon as Matt and I step  into the lobby of the building, I flag down a middle-aged woman wearing a “Penn State/Eisenhower Auditorium Staff” badge and plead my case to her.  She tells me to stay put and she will get right back to me.  Upon her return she informs me that “Billy doesn’t want anyone backstage before the show” (which is fair enough), and that I should ask someone about it once the show is over.  Her message does not inspire confidence, but I thank her politely and Matt and I go in and find our way to our seats.

When Billy appears onstage, he says that we can ask him any questions we want, but he reserves the right to answer as he sees fit if the questions get too personal.  He also asks that people refrain from giving him any demo tapes of their music (yes, I of course have brought one along myself).  “When I see a demo tape coming, to me it’s like someone handing me a subpoena!” he comments, explaining how litigious opportunists have, in the past, falsely accused him of plagiarizing their work and caused him lots of grief.  When he is done with his introduction and setting the ground rules for the evening, he begins taking questions from the audience.

The show is, simply put, pure magic.  I’ve heard and seen countless interviews with Billy, read everything I could get my hands on about him, and have even heard him do a previous “master class” before (which he did at the University of the Arts in Philly years ago that was broadcast on the radio, and which I recorded and listened to numerous times).  So I figure there probably aren’t many stories of his or about his songs that I haven’t already heard before.  But I am totally charmed and blown away by him throughout the evening, as is the crowd as a whole.  The show is like a free-form mixture of Q&A, storytelling, musical performance, and stand-up comedy.  Billy is hilarious, generous and down to earth with the students and their questions, insightful, engaging, and as always in his live performances, hugely entertaining and inspiring.  It is a treat beyond description, so much so that I’m already scheming how I can get tickets for the following night’s show.

When it is over Matt and I file out the auditorium exit closest to the stage at stage right, and while most folks are veering left toward the lobby to exit the building, I make my way over to the security guard standing to the right of the dispersing crowd.

“Hi,” I say.  “My name is Eric Teplitz.  I interviewed Billy two days ago, and he told me I could meet with him backstage.  He said I should ask for Max Loubiere, his road manager.”

The guard does not seem impressed.

“No one’s allowed back,” he tells me.

“I’m sure if you check with Max, it’ll be okay.” I say.

The guard, impatient, tells me to wait one moment.  He steps away and within a short amount of time, not long enough to convince me he has actually spoken with anyone, he reappears and says, “They said no.”

“Who said no?” I exclaim, trying to contain my indignation.

“They said no,” the guard repeats himself, clearly immovable on the matter.

Matt witnesses the whole interaction and offers his condolences.

I fight the disappointment now coursing through my veins.  It doesn’t make any sense.  Billy easily could have told me it would not be possible if he had not wished to allow me backstage to meet him for whatever reason, and that would have been that.  So why would he tell me yes only to refuse me now?

Despite the seeming lack of logic of this, I am powerless under the oppressive regime of Asshole Security Guy.  I hang around and wait a while longer and watch as he occasionally lets folks through who have the proper ID, but otherwise the path remains impenetrable.  As the auditorium dissolves itself of its patrons, the situation appears increasingly hopeless.  Matt hangs around and watches from a short distance away, aware of my inconsolability at this injustice, and patiently waits for me to come to a place of acceptance.

Twenty minutes or so after having done my best to rationally plead my case to utterly no avail, I give in to the stench of defeat that is engulfing me.  The gatekeeper won’t let me through, and causing a scene will likely only result in my being asked to leave, then escorted out of the building, possibly even in handcuffs depending upon the level of my resistance!  I turn towards Matt, who is standing several paces behind me and shake my head back and forth as I approach him.

“I can’t believe it,” I say.

“It’s a bum deal,” he sympathizes.

I look back towards Goliath, knowing that just beyond his station is the pathway that leads to Billy Joel.  It’s right there, and yet there is nothing I can do.  I breathe a heavy sigh and, realizing the futility of hanging around any longer, motion to Matt that I’m ready to go.

A few paces into our exit march I hear a female voice calling from behind: “Eric?”

I turn around and see a familiar face.  It’s the woman I spoke with in the lobby before the show, the one with the Eisenhower staff badge.  She motions me towards her.  “Billy is ready for you.  You can come back.”

No…fucking…way!

My face, my whole body, lights up.  I raise my eyebrows and, looking back and forth between her and Matt, I point to my friend, asking with my body language if he can join me.

“No,” she says. “Just you.”

I say a quick apology to Matt but he brushes it off and wishes me well.  “I’ll wait for you in the front lobby,” he says.

I proudly march forward and grin at the security guy.  “Billy’s ready for me now,” I say as I walk past him – escorted by this woman, this princess, my savior – all too aware that this moment easily could have never happened had I not randomly solicited her help before the show.  Talk about luck.  And timing.

I’m a little surprised that no one frisks me or anything.  I’m wearing a long winter coat (it being March in Pennsylvania) in which I easily could be concealing a weapon.  I suppose I must appear as harmless as I am.  The woman leads me down a hallway and stops just in front of a nondescript doorway.  Backstage could not be any less glamorous.  She points directly into what is apparently a dressing room and says, “He’s right in there,” motioning for me to go ahead.

To be continued….

My brother calls from Penn State to inform me that Billy Joel is coming to the campus as part of a series of college dates he is doing.  Not exactly a concert, the event is billed as: “Questions, Answers, and a Little Music with Billy Joel”.

This is my chance.

Somehow, with Billy Joel physically being on the turf of my alma mater, the possibility of meeting him face-to-face seems plausible.  I purchase tickets to the show and, to the credit of my bosses, get some time off from work approved even though I am pretty new on the job.

A week before the show, an idea occurs to me.  I dig up the number I had found years before for Joel’s business office in New York City, Maritime Music, and call it.  I get a recording saying the number has been changed, and I call the new number.  Adrenaline surges through me as the call is connected and I hear the rings through the receiver.  A voice on the other end picks up.

“Maritime, Keith speaking.”

“Yes, hello.  My name is Eric Teplitz, and I’m a freelance writer for the Penn Stater, Penn State’s alumni magazine,” I begin in as professional a tone as I can muster.  “I was hoping to interview Mr. Joel while he is in State College for his upcoming appearances at Penn State on Wednesday, the 27^th and Thursday, the 28th.  Would that be possible?”

I brace myself, anticipating one of three possible responses on the other end: a) outright laughter, b) the “click” of an instant hang-up, or c) “a)” followed by “b)”.

Instead, I hear: “What you’ll need to do is put the request in writing and fax it to us,” and then Keith gives me the fax number.  Is he simply getting me off the phone in the politest way possible?  I have nothing to lose by following up as instructed, and so I do.

The next morning, when I return to my desk after a work errand, there is a message on my chair.  I pick it up.  It says that Keith from Billy Joel’s office called!  I dial the number and get him on the line.

“Hi, Eric.  We received your request, and Billy won’t be able to do an in-person interview, but he’s agreed to a phone interview. Is that okay?”

Holy mother of-

I pause just long enough to compose myself and reply calmly, “Sure, that’d be fine.”

“Great,” Keith continues, “let me give you the number of Max Loubiere, Billy’s tour manager.  Give Max a call Monday morning at ten, and he’ll put you through to Billy for the interview.”

I’ve heard the words with my own ears, but I still cannot fully believe it.  Of course, none of this would have happened were it not for my attempt months earlier to interview Mike Reid (another story for another time).  It was only through my desire to interview him that it even occurred to me that, as a Penn State alumnus, I could even be a freelance writer for the alumni publication.  And though my proposal for that article was ultimately rejected, it set the stage for this unbelievable opportunity now to talk to one of my all-time heroes.

I am still skeptical, but in case this is for real, I spend the weekend drafting a list of questions, and set some ground rules for myself:

1. I will not ask Billy any questions about his personal life – only those relating to his career and music.
2. I will be respectful and professional, but I will have to take my reporter face off at least once and let him know how much of an inspiration he has been to me personally, because this is most likely a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do so.
3. Since this whole interview is under the guise of being for a Penn State publication, I will craft questions directly related to his tour of college speaking engagements or that are in some way relevant to the college audience.
4. I will brainstorm a list of questions I would personally love to ask him, but I will prioritize these based on the inevitable time limitation, which I presume could be in the vicinity of five to ten minutes.

********************************************************

Monday morning arrives and at 10:00am precisely I put a call in to Max Loubiere, Billy Joel’s tour manager, at the phone number I was provided with (the number has a New Orleans area code, which is the same time zone as Nashville).  Max asks for a phone number where Billy can reach me, and I give it to him.  My bosses are being super cool about this whole thing.  Not only are they allowing me to conduct this interview at work, they are letting me use the business fax line for receiving the call, so that I will have a line to use that won’t be intruded upon by other calls coming in.

“OK,” Max says, “if you don’t hear from Billy within an hour, give me a call back.”

I am now situated at a desk one level up from my usual work station in my boss’s house, where the fax machine usually rests.  In its place, I have hooked up to the fax line the combination phone/answering machine that I brought from home, which I will use to both conduct and record the interview, should it actually take place.  Presumably, this phone is going to ring sometime within the next hour, and it will be BILLY JOEL on the other end…calling for me!

The time passes slowly – the anticipation is excruciating.  I am poised to receive the call, all the while unsuccessfully trying to otherwise occupy myself while I wait.  In front of me are some notes to myself on what to say (should my brain betray me), and a list of questions I have brainstormed over the weekend in preparation for this dream interview.

Finally, the phone rings.  I am alert as I’ve ever been in my life.  I pick up the receiver, anticipating the only person who it could be on the other end, and hear a deafening eeeeeeeeeeeeeeowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwiiiiiiiiiiierrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr sound in the earpiece.  It’s a fax.

I hang up the phone, my heart racing as if I have just avoided what would have been a fatal car crash with an oncoming vehicle had I not swerved out of the way.

Of course it’s a fax.  This is the fax line, after all.  How silly of me to forget this possibility!  I take a deep breath, and resume my attempt at nonchalance.

The clock strikes 11.  A full hour has passed, and no call from Billy.  I dial Max’s number once again.  He answers.

“Billy must still be doing his interview for The Daily Collegian.  Hang tight, you’re next.”

“OK, thanks, Max,” I respond as professionally as possible.  It is then I realize what a genius I am.  If I had said in my initial contact with Joel’s office that I was a freelance writer for the Collegian, my bluff would have been called instantly and that would have been the end of it.  Of course the student paper was on top of this, but the alumni folks clearly were not.  And because of this, I was green-lighted!

But truthfully, I am still not totally convinced this is really going to happen.  I wait by the phone like a starving man who hasn’t eaten in a month waiting and watching intently for promised food to arrive.  A minute seems like an hour.  The waiting is unbearable.

Twenty more minutes go by.  Thirty.  My spirit sinks.

He’s not going to call.  I don’t know why.  It all certainly sounded legit.  It sounded for real.  But apparently, for whatever reason, it’s not going to happen.

I feel defeated, as if the Universe is paying me back for all those years of mercilessly teasing my younger brother when we were kids.

And then…the phone rings.

I pick it up.

The voice on the other end says, “Hi, is Eric there?”

“This is Eric,” I say, looking at the piece of paper in front of me reminding me what to say.

“Hi, Eric, this is Billy Joel.”

Only here’s the thing.  It doesn’t sound like Billy Joel’s voice at all.  In addition to the fact that all of his recorded music is indelibly woven into my nervous system, I have heard his speaking voice on numerous radio and television interviews over the years, and this does not sound like Billy Joel.  It sounds like…one of my friends playing a practical joke on me. “This is Billy Joel.”  Yeah, and I’m Albert Einstein.

But no one I know has this number at my workplace.  It can’t be one of my friends toying with me, I am pretty certain.

Another idea quickly pops into my head.  Oh, I get it.  This is some kid who works for Billy Joel, “being” Billy for the sake of this interview, the chore having been delegated to him from up above.

“Excuse me?” I reply into the mouthpiece of the receiver.

“This is Billy Joel,” I hear again, but remain unconvinced.

“Oh, I’m sorry….” I continue. “It doesn’t sound like you.”

“Well, what did you expect me to sound like?” the voice on the other end says, not without a trace of irritation.

A voice from within, my higher intelligence if you will, suddenly grabs the microphone in my brain: “You better give him the benefit of the doubt!”

“I’m sorry,” I say.  And then, more professionally, “Do you mind if I record this for transcription purposes?”  I read somewhere that it is illegal to record a phone conversation without the consent of the other party, and I want to make sure I cover my bases.

“That’s fine,” the voice says.

“Did you hear that beep?” I ask him.

“Yep.”

“Okay that means that this is recording.”

“Okay.”

Still not at all convinced that I am talking to the “real” Billy Joel, I proceed. “Okay!” I begin.  “How did the idea of doing a tour of speaking engagements at college campuses come about?”

“Well, I’ve spoken at a number of colleges and universities for – it must be over fifteen years now. I’ve never done it in a tour situation.  I would do this from time to time, and I’ve…let’s see, I guess I looked at the beginning of this year – I made the decision to do this last year.”

His voice is calm and unhurried.  He’s clearly thinking through his answer while talking to me, and taking his time doing so.

“I’d been on a road tour which lasted two years, of concerts,” he continues, “and I got very burnt out doing that, and because – I actually enjoy doing these college speaking engagements, and I learn a lot from it myself.”

As his speech moves along, I detect the unmistakable “lawn-guyland” (Long Island) accent, and it starts to dawn on me: holy shit, this really is Billy Joel!  The longer he goes on, the more I am convinced, listening to his speech patterns.

“I decided to put together a series of them.  I really hadn’t thought of it as a tour, but you know what, you’re right.”

I’m right! Billy Joel has declared it so!!!

“I guess it is a tour of sorts.  I will be doing this until the end of the college year, which is in May.  So…it was something to do!”

HOLY MOTHER OF CHRIST. I AM TALKING TO BILLY JOEL ON THE PHONE – FOR REAL.

“How did you go about deciding which schools?” I pick up, as if I were speaking to – I don’t know – someone who isn’t Billy Joel.  “Was it based on location?”

“Well, it was partly location, although I couldn’t have picked a worse location this winter than the Northeast.  This is the worst winter in my memory and I’m 46 years old.  One hell of a winter.  I didn’t want to have to spend too much time away from home so the way it was set up was that we would go to one area for a few days and then I could go home again.  Because, as I said, over that two-year tour I did of concerts I got very homesick and I really don’t want to spend that much time away from home anymore.  We’ve pretty much limited it to colleges east of the Mississippi, for this particular leg.  We may do this again at another time.  Believe me, it’s not to enrich myself!”  He chuckles at this last statement.

I’m guessing not.  I’m guessing he doesn’t have to do anything for the money anymore.  Cause he’s Billy Joel.  And I’m talking to him!  “You mentioned that you learned a lot from the experience when you’d done it in the past,” I say, veering from my script of questions and feeling more at ease, “I was curious if you could elaborate on that.”

“Well, I’ve been finding out that people at the college age are familiar with my – or, the people who come to see me at these things, anyway – tend to be familiar with a lot of the more obscure music that I’ve written.  Not necessarily hit records like ‘Uptown Girl’ and ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’ and the ones which are, you know, commercial radio successful records.  They’re more interested and relate more to the tracks on the albums that don’t get any airplay or are obscure, which I think is good.  I happen to prefer to be known for the work which is not hits because that more represents the sum and substance of what I do than the ones that are hit records.  Because to me hit records are always sort of flukes and freak records, and even novelty songs.  They don’t really represent–”

“The whole body of work,” I say, interrupting him and finishing his sentence.

“The whole body of work,” he agrees, “or even the album that they were culled from.  If you take a song like ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’ – it doesn’t necessarily represent the Storm Front album, which is a whole other group of songs, which—”

“It’s an entity in itself, in other words,” I interject.  Who am I, Larry King here, asking Billy to move it along??

“That’s right,” he says, sounding like his point has been understood.

Taking a cue from his response, I mention to him how much his song “James” (a lesser-known track from his 1976 album Turnstiles) has meant to me personally, and how a lot of kids at the college age can identify with lyrics like “Do what’s good for you, or you’re not good for anybody.”

“One of the things that is educational for me,” Billy says, “about talking to people at this age level is – I have a theory that that person who is at the college age, the age of college graduation, say 20, 21-years old, is a person you’re gonna take with you the rest of your life.  That part of you doesn’t really change. It’s the core essence of who you are, that idealist.  The political philosophy of that person, the morality of that person, the ethics of that person, is somebody who stays with you.  And I’m 46 years old, so I’m more than twice the age of people who are graduating college and I’m still dealing with that person.  And as a matter of fact I’m becoming – I’m refamiliarizing myself with him lately more than ever because I’m beginning to write a different kind of music.”

“Yeah, I’m gonna ask you about that in just a bit.  And I wanted you to know that, by the way (here I go…) since you do relate to that age and understand that – you know, you said that that character has shaped and is still who you are, or a part of who you are…this conversation for me is like you getting a chance at my age to talk to John Lennon.  I mean, this is – I just wanted you to know that!”

“Thank you, I would very much liked to have talked to John Lennon.” He chuckles.

“Yeah, I mean this is quite a moment!” I resume my professional demeanor and proceed with the next question.  “I remember hearing a few years ago about Glenn Frey teaching a songwriting class at a college out in California, and I was wondering if you had any aspirations to someday teach at the college level.”

“Well, I feel like I’ve been doing that somewhat by doing these speaking engagements.  This started out as me talking specifically to music schools and music students.  I did a few of these at performing arts schools, at Berklee College of Music, at NYU for the music students, and gradually I expanded this to the general college population because there are people, whether they’re interested in becoming musicians or not, looking to have careers in industries which are ancillary to music: law, accounting, there’s all kinds of businesses which are possible ancillary industries to some kind of entertainment career.  And there are also people who are just generally interested in what it is I do, so rather than confining it just to talking about songwriting – although, there are questions every evening about the writing of music, about the composition of music, about the recording of it, about how lyrics get done, how notes get put together, how things get produced.  Those questions do come up even in a general college level.  So, I don’t feel like I’m going to retire to academia at this point.  I’m working on a – well, as I said, I’m working on a different type of music these days.  It’s not popular music, it’s not rock and roll.”

I take this as my cue: “Let me ask you about that.  More and more popular songwriters, it seems, have taken up the challenge of, quote, “classical composition”: Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Oratorio from a few years ago which he composed with conductor Carl Davis, Elvis Costello’s collaboration with the Brodsky Quartet, The Juliet Letters, I don’t know if you’re familiar with that-”

“Yeah, I know that album,” Billy assures me.

“And even Penn State’s very own alumnus Mike Reid who has had-”

This time Billy interrupts me: “The football opera.”

“Yeah! Different Fields, right!” I am tickled that Billy knows about this, and I would guess Mike Reid might feel similarly.

“It’s really – it’s not that far afield from what a songwriter does,” Billy says. “I have a theory – just as there’s a scientific theory that dinosaurs evolved into birds – my theory is that classical music evolved into popular songs.  If you look at a lot of the more melodic popular music, it could have been…written and arranged in the era of Mozart.  It’s just, pop music tends to be more redundant, it tends to have to have drums, it tends to have to follow certain strictures, but so did classical music in the sonata form.  If someone is good at writing melodic music and good chord structure, it’s not that different than classical composition.  Unfortunately, it’s becoming more and more a rare bird these days.”

“How is your piano concerto coming along?” I ask, having read up on his latest musical ventures.

“Well, I don’t know if it’s a piano concerto.  It changes from day to day – the more I write and the more I tinker with the thing, the less it becomes a formalized concerto or a symphony, the more it becomes a composition which is, you know, it’s flexible as to what form it will take.  I’m still working on a number of different pieces which are orchestral pieces.”

“And do you write the arrangements with a synthesizer so that you can hear what an arrangement would sound like, is that how you do it?  Or do you compose strictly at the piano and imagine voicings and instruments for particular passages?”

“I don’t really need to play the synthesizer to hear horns and woodwinds and that kind of thing.  If you’ve written a good piece of music, you can pretty much imagine what the orchestrations should be.  I mean, look, Mozart wrote, he didn’t have a synthesizer.  Neither did Beethoven.  Although they might have utilized it, hell, Beethoven couldn’t have utilized it because he was deaf, so he wouldn’t have heard it anyway!  It’s all really inside your head, but it’s really coming up with a composition that’s viable.  I have a number of different compositions as I was saying that could be done as piano concertos, they could be done as sonatas, they could be done as orchestral works, they could be done as quintets, or chamber, ensemble work.  I don’t know yet.  It hasn’t taken a big form yet.  They’re basically small pieces, but I’m writing classical music and I’m enjoying it, and I realize that’s my first love, it’ll probably always be my main love.  But I love all kinds of music, too.”

“Is it a relief to you – I read recently in The Performing Songwriter magazine that interviewed you – that you always have a complete musical piece before you begin to put words to it—”

“Most of the time I do have a completed musical idea,” Billy affirms.

“Is it a relief that you don’t have to even concern yourself with expression through words – you can do it purely through music in this context?”

“I wouldn’t call it a relief.  It doesn’t make it any easier to write a good piece of music to not put lyrics to it.  I mean, there is some opera which I think is phenomenal, and I’m not discounting the possibility of some of this music becoming song music, or music which is sung: whether it be opera, whether it be a Broadway musical or even if it ends up being popular music because – I’ve done this before, and these songs, they’ve turned out to be popular songs.  I’ll give you an example.  ‘For the Longest Time’ started out as a piano, a classical piano piece.  So did the ‘Lullabye’.  So did many pieces that I wrote.”

“That’s interesting.  I’ve heard you perform ‘The Longest Time’ in the style of Mozart and, for me that song is such a perfect marriage of words and music that it surprised me that that was the origin, the germ of the musical idea.  Because I think that the words are almost…it sounds like it was born that way.  The mood that’s created by the ’50s doo-wop thing that’s happening and the romantic sentiment of the words and music seems to be almost indivisible to me.  It’s very powerful.”

“Thank you, I appreciate the compliment.  That’s what good songwriting is supposed to be.  It’s supposed to sound as if it was conceived all at once.  You’re not supposed to hear the nuts and bolts, you’re not supposed to be able to analyze how it got done.  It’s supposed to appear as if it were an immaculate conception.  That’s what good songwriting is.”

“That’s what brings the mystique to it, I think.”

“That’s a big part of the craft, which is what I’m trying to explain to people when I do these speaking engagements – a lot of people just assume that, you know, it’s all a matter of inspiration, it’s all just a matter of artistic eccentricity, and it’s not – a lot of it is pure sweat, and a lot of it is pure craft.  Craft has a bad word nowadays, but I happen to be a proponent of it.  I go out and talk about these things to try to encourage people to learn the fundamentals if they are interested in having a career in music.  It’s like baseball.  Look, you can’t really get to the major leagues ‘til you learn how to hit, run, and throw.  And I’m asked many times how do I explain the reasons for my longevity in an industry where the usual career span is two years and I said look I don’t think I happen to be that extraordinary.  I just think I happen to be competent.  But, in an era of incompetence, that makes me appear extraordinary!”  He laughs as he says this last line to me.

“So then, how do you see the horizon for music going on into the next century?”

“Well that I don’t know,” he admits.  “I don’t know if I see – if I can forecast a movement or a new era of art.  I think we’re in a transitional era right now.  I happen to feel that what may happen is a rediscovery of the riches of music that we have already, which has not really been fully appreciated.  There are a number of generations of people who know nothing about classical music and I have a feeling if they’re exposed to it that they’re gonna go crazy over this stuff.  I happen to believe that there is a lot of very very good American and European music that most people are unfamiliar with that they probably need to rediscover before we can move ahead.”

“It seems to be that with pop culture as it is – everything’s MTV and short attention span – it seems like it just needs an opportunity to be absorbed by people in some sort of swallowable or palatable way, whatever that is.  A lot of people learn classical music by watching Bugs Bunny, you know?”

Billy laughs at this (I made Billy Joel laugh!). “True,” he says. “I predicted – sorry, hang on one second…”

Billy is gone momentarily, apparently trying to pick up another call, but returns quickly and continues his thought.  “I knew a long time ago actually in the earlier era of rock and roll that television was gonna pretty much kill rock and roll.  Television is the antithesis of music.  Television is eye candy.  Television is pre-packaged and sanitized and unintellectualized, you know, it’s like – I call it, what you see on MTV, they call them videos, I call them musical suppositories.  They’re pretty much concocted and they’re jammed up your butt. There you go. Walk around with that for awhile.”

Now I’m the one laughing.

“That is not what music is about,” Billy contends seriously.  “Music is interpreted by the individual, not by the mass.  And, if enough individuals are moved by this music, then you have a community which understands it, but when it’s pre-packaged like they do on TV forget it, it’s killed.”

“It’s commodity before it’s anything else,” I add.

“Yeah, I mean even these newer bands, the alternative bands who don’t like the MTV stuff – I happen to agree with them – but they still gotta make these goddamn videos to help promote their albums or else they won’t get airplay.  Radio is now being driven by TV, which is absurd.  It’s the tail wagging the dog.”

“What do you suggest for musicians nowadays who are in this situation?”  I am now far off the course of the questions I’ve prepared ahead of time.  I am in the midst of a dialogue now with Billy Joel(!), and I am responding to his own comments with questions I personally wish to ask him outside of the formality of interviewing him for The Penn Stater.  “What approach do you suggest they take, because radio itself is extremely conservative now as to what it will play, the record companies are investing so much money into marketing an act that they don’t want to take a chance…”

“Well, you know what,” replies Billy Joel, who I am having a personal conversation with on the telephone at this moment, “that’s been the case for a long time now, I think since the late ’60s, radio has formatted itself very very strictly.  They don’t play things the way they used to.  The playlists are pre-ordained by some consulting firm, by some Arbitron ratings.  It’s no longer the artists driving the industry, it’s now the industry dictating to the artist.  The artists really have to reclaim the art and the art medium, but the way to do that is to be – I guess, you know, the funny thing is what the mainstream is now is essentially alternative bands.  They were first called ‘alternative’ and now they’ve become the mainstream.  They’re now the establishment.  And the funny thing is an artist like me who was sort of a mainstream artist is now an outsider…which I kind of enjoy!”  He laughs at this statement.  “It’s sort of the shoe is on the other foot.  I’m turning around and thumbing my nose at them, you know, but well who’s middle of the road now?  So, it happens, you know, that’s the way the cycles work in this business, but my advice to an artist would be: be true to yourself.  Be original, don’t cut your conscience to fit the fashions of the day.  Don’t try to follow a trend.  Just do what you think you should do.  Do what you’re good at.”

How cool is this?  How many people get to hear one of their heroes tell them in a one-on-one conversation to listen to their hearts, to “be true to yourself” and to do “what you think you should do”?

“Okay,” I say, “I have a couple of questions for you regarding the creative process itself.  This is a classic one for you: how important do you think is suffering to the creative process, and what motivates you creatively?”

“Well, I don’t think suffering is a prerequisite,” he replies.  “It’s certainly a deeply felt human emotion, and any deeply felt human emotion is something which inspires creative expression.  It’s just as important as ecstasy.  I don’t mean the drug [he clarifies], I mean the emotion!”

We both laugh.

“I think Beethoven didn’t sit around and wait to be in a happy, you know, upbeat mood to write a lot of his stuff – some of his stuff was written out of great suffering.”

“Right, that’s been the argument over the years,” I chime in, “that anything of artistic merit comes about – it’s sort of a romantic myth.  I know Sting had talked about the fact that he had completely bought into that and that it was harmful to him.  He believed, he sort of convinced himself psychologically, that he couldn’t be happy because it would destroy his muse or what have you.”

Says Billy: “No, that’s a fallacy. I think the worst enemy of creativity is the lack of any emotion at all.”

“Hmmm…” I reply, intrigued by the response.

“So anything which is passionate, anything which is deeply felt,” he continues, “anything which is moving to the human spirit is something which will motivate creative expression.  Whether it’s happy or whether it’s sad, I’ve written in both moods.  And some things I’ve tried to write when I was feeling sort of in the middle.”

“What happens then?”

“Well, you know, look – there are always subconscious forces at work…there’s a lot of scarred psyches, and a lot of deeply buried emotions in everyone’s experience which you can call on.  You know, you don’t have to be happy right at that moment or sad right at that moment to be able to recall what you were feeling like.  And you don’t necessarily have to say ‘Well, gee, I feel sad, I think I’ll write a sad song.’  It doesn’t work, for me, that way.  It’s not this immediacy of ‘Oh, I’m miserable so I’ll write a miserable piece of music.’  It motivates a person to do something.  It’s a form of therapy, I suppose.”

“Hmm…that’s interesting,” I reply, and pause for a moment to take in what he’s just said.  “Gearing this back towards mainstream college audiences, which is who you’re going to be speaking to, I think that most of us want to know what it’s really like to be Billy Joel.  You know, I’m talking to you now, it’s just a person talking to another person, but there’s definitely – anytime somebody has the type of success in the industry that you’ve had there is a certain mythic quality, you can’t help it.  And your concerts often conclude, for example, with huge numbers of people, tens of thousands sometimes, singing all the words to ‘Piano Man’ while you play the piano and – what does that feel like?  I mean, what is that like emotionally for you?”

I think this question, more than any, is the one thing I really want to ask Billy Joel.  What is it like to be him???  Imagine having the opportunity to ask this of someone you have admired since you were a kid and whom you are trying to emulate.

“Well, on one level in a way it’s a relief because I’m so tired and my voice is so strained that I’m glad to have the help singing those high notes, ‘cause they are high notes.  So there’s one level.  On another level, it’s very gratifying to know that all those people know all the words to that song.  It’s like it becomes one big pub.  Cause I enjoy a sing-along: people gather around the piano, and everybody sings.  I do that at Christmas at my house, I have these big sing-alongs and, essentially it’s like a big sing-along and that creates a sense of community and that’s always nice, a sense of family.  But on the other hand I have also a guarded – I don’t know but I think a healthy wariness about all those people doing the same thing.  Once in a while I think, Jesus, is this what Adolf Hitler felt like in Nuremberg?”

“Yeah, that’s gotta be kinda scary,” I ponder aloud.

“It is scary and it’s healthy to be scared of it, and it’s healthy-”

“Anytime that many people,” I interject, “are all doing one thing it resounds of, you know-”

“Yeah, the Nuremburg Nazi party rallies,” Billy says matter-of-factly.  “Yeah, you have to be aware of that, and you have to have a sense of humor about it, and you have to also be a little bit scared of it, and then you’ll be okay.  The problem is when you start believing it, then you end up becoming, you know, Benito Mussolini or Adolf Hitler.  And that was their problem.”

Wow, what an answer!

“Okay, after all of your success in the popular world, and you did mention your current work, your current projects, I was curious about what goals you have for your career in the future, and that includes – I mean, you have made long, rigorous concert tours a trademark, and I kind of get the feeling that that’s not gonna happen – and I also had read elsewhere that you planned on writing a Broadway musical, that Pete Townshend had spoken to you and made you consider that with some thought?”

“Well, I had always considered it.  But I never had somebody try to encourage me as much as Pete Townshend.  He said, ‘Look, Billy, if anybody could do it you could do it’ and that’s when I took it to heart, cause I’m a fan of Pete Townshend, but the problem is finding the right material, is finding the right book, because it’s very difficult to, you know, get a good book.  It’s like actors who are looking for a good script.  And I’d like to write something of my own time, of my life experience.  I don’t want to write a period piece from the 18^th century.  I’d like to utilize the music and the modalities of my own generation.  And the other thing is I have some concerns about the way they price tickets for Broadway shows.  They’re priced for people who are older.  You know, by the time you buy two Broadway show tickets, park your car and have dinner, you’re at close to a thousand dollars.  And that cuts out an entire younger audience who I’ve always been very aware of wanting to keep in the audience.  So, they’re gonna have to figure out a different way to price tickets before I commit at least two years of my life to slaving over a Broadway musical.”

I realize that the tape is about to be filled up any second now, meaning we’ve been talking for nearly thirty minutes already.

“Okay…hold on for just one second, I’m gonna flip this tape over,” I say.

But once I do, the micro-cassette starts rewinding automatically and I am totally flustered. I motion over to anyone nearby who might be able to help.  These answering machines do not operate like standard cassette players in which all one needs to do is flip the tape over and resume recording on the other side.

“I’m having some issues with the tape recorder,” I announce.  But what am I going to do, ask Billy to hold on indefinitely while I try to regain technical competence?  I decide to press on, all the while frantically trying to get the machine to resume recording without erasing what I’ve got thus far.

“If you were to go back to school now,” I ask Billy, knowing full well that he technically never finished high school, “what would your major be?”

“Hmmm….my major….” Billy is clearly tickled by the question.  I believe I have actually managed to stumble on to a question he has never been asked before, which is a great feeling!  “My major, my major…” he says, seeming to momentarily embrace the fantasy of returning to school.  “Well,” he says, “it probably should be law.  I could use some accounting, too.  Those are my weakest areas – law and finances.”  He is no doubt referring to the notoriously bad business deals he has made in the past, and how much it has cost him to not be more aware of how his income was being handled.  “But I would probably take some music courses – music theory, composition, improv…because I never had that, you know?  I’d like to learn counterpoint and theory stuff to make it easier for myself when I compose.”

“Well, you’ve done pretty well considering…” I offer.

We delve into a discussion about the pros and cons of formal musical training.  I point out that the Beatles had no such musical training, and that there might be a certain advantage to that kind of naiveté – that not knowing the “rules” to begin with may have afforded them the liberty of breaking them in ingenious ways.

“Yeah, but The Beatles had George Martin, and he knew all that stuff,” Billy points out, referring to the legendary producer often thought of as the “fifth Beatle” for his indelible contributions to their recorded work.

And suddenly I am in the midst of the most amazing part of this interview, though I am still unable to get the answering machine to resume recording.  I’m really in a groove, so much so that this feels much more like a conversation than an interview at this point.  Joel seems to be an advocate of the ‘you-can-never-learn-too-much’ school of thought.  He seems to believe that whatever benefits there may be to musical ignorance, they are overshadowed by what one has to gain through formal study.  Unfortunately, though, I’ve missed capturing this whole exchange on tape.

Knowing him to be an avid reader, I ask him what he has read of interest in the past few months and he mentions biographies of Napoleon and Abraham Lincoln, the letters of Mozart, and a book by Pete Hamill called Piecework.

When I ask him what current musical artists he likes he says that there are some good bands out there, but mentions only Pearl Jam by name.  He also acknowledges Tori Amos (whom I have a ticket to see perform in Nashville the following month), but he tells me that he really has not listened to much popular music at all for years, that he listens almost exclusively to classical music.

“Where would you suggest those who have not been exposed to much classical music begin?” I prompt him.

He recommends Beethoven’s symphonies – numbers 3, 6, and 9 – and rattles off the names of Chopin, Debussy, Schubert, and Rachmaninoff, no doubt some of his own favorite composers.  He speaks with obvious affection for the “Adagio for Strings” by Samuel Barber, which he tells me was used in the film Platoon and about which he says: “that’s the most gloriously depressing piece of music you’ll ever listen to.”

And finally, after what feels like an eternity but in reality was perhaps a ten-to fifteen-minute lapse at the most, I’ve got my answering machine recording again.

“Hey, I just got the recording to work again, so for whatever reason it’s cooperating.”

“Well you know I’m gonna have to split soon,” Billy says with a chuckle, warning me lightheartedly, but warning me nonetheless.

“Okay, just a couple more questions if you don’t mind.  Tell me a little bit about your relationship with Elton John,” I say, at this point more than comfortable in my role as interviewer. “You’ve toured with him and I understand that you were doing some studio work with him.  Any projects on the horizon?”

“We may do another tour internationally,” Billy says.  “We haven’t begun overseas and played.  We pretty much just did the States.  So it’s a possibility we may do that in the future.  We wrote a song together, we haven’t recorded it.  And we may figure out a way where we can do a simultaneous release.  He’s on a different record company, you get two different labels and man it’s a pain in the ass, so maybe we can work something out about that.  I liked working with him.  He’s a real professional musician, he’s a good piano player.  Very kind and warmhearted human being, very funny man, and a great show, it was a lot of fun.  We both respect each other.”

“And the crowds loved it,” I say, master of the obvious.

“Yeah, we did, too.  We had as good a time as the audience did, that’s how much fun we had.”

“Okay, just a couple more questions if you don’t mind,” I say, plunging ahead.  “This one is actually inspired by a quote from ‘Allentown’ in which you sing ‘Every child had a pretty good shot to get at least as far as their old man got.’  How do you think the situation for today’s college-aged Americans compares to the baby boomers’ situation at the same age?

“Oh, well it’s totally changed,” Billy says with conviction.  “Matter of fact, when I wrote that album [The Nylon Curtain] it was 1982, and I realized that the whole game had changed.  The unemployed steel workers, the gas crisis – the way the whole economic structure of America was changing.  You can’t do as well as your parents.  You can’t assume automatically that you’re gonna do better than them.”

“Should you, though?” I respond.

“You’re lucky if you get anywhere near as well as they did.”

Ouch!

He continues: “The opportunities aren’t there, the financial growth isn’t the same.  The endless expanse of the American horizon is diminished, and that started happening in the early ’80s.  People don’t have the same expectations, nor should they, because the game’s changed and it’s different.  When we were boomers, it was the big fat ’50s and we had nothing but prosperity to look forward to.  But it even started to change in the early ’60s.  When Kennedy was assassinated, it soured everything.  That one act changed everyone’s perspective drastically.  That paved the way for the Beatles.  If you look at the time context, Kennedy was shot in November of ’63, and the Beatles hit America in February of ’64.  And this country had the blues and rather than turning to another leader, rather than turning to the traditional expectations, we turned to four guys with long hair who came from England who played instruments and who seemed to be saying ‘Screw the establishment.  Screw the whole thing.  Let’s just rock and roll.’”

“Was that the moment when you knew that you wanted to make music your profession, when you saw that that could be done? Was that the instant-”

“Well I knew I always wanted to be involved with making music – I didn’t know exactly how.  I knew I loved music, I loved playing the piano, I liked listening to music and I didn’t really think it was viable for me to be a rock and roller because prior to the Beatles all the rock and roll artists that I liked were black.  The only guys I thought made any good music were, you know, Chuck Berry and Little Richard and James Brown, you know, all the soul singers.  Here I was a little white kid from Levitown – how could I aspire to sound like those guys?  And then the only white artists that they were shoving down our throats were the TV-generated guys like Fabian, Frankie Avalon, Bobby Rydell – and I couldn’t stand those guys.”

“What’s that?” he says, not to me, but in response to someone on his end of the line. He then replies to the other voice, “No, Elvis was great,” and then back to me, “Carolyn here was saying Elvis.”

He mentioned his girlfriend to me – by name, even!  She’s apparently in the room with him.  Still, I decide to adhere to my decision not to ask him any questions about his personal life.

“But Elvis went into the army,” he continues, “and that was the end of that, you never heard from him again.”

“Until the comeback, right?  The comeback special?” I throw in.

“Well, he came back, you know how he came back?” Billy says, flaring up.  “Doing those shit-ass Hollywood movies that they stuck him in – and they made him a joke!”

“But the comeback special, ’68, do you remember that?” I try again, though I wasn’t even born at that time.

“No, I didn’t see that. I was really too young for Elvis Presley, I missed that whole era.”

So did I!

“Can you hang on one second?” Billy asks politely, apparently receiving another call and putting me on hold.

“Hi, sorry,” he says when he returns.

Not wanting to outstay my welcome, I tell him when he returns, “You’ve been very generous with your time.” He truly has – I never imagined he’d talk to me for this long.

“What was the last question you had asked?” he says, clearly not in a hurry to leave the interview, to my surprise and delight.

“The last question I asked…” I ponder, not even remembering myself.

“About expectations…?” Billy prompts me, while trying to recall himself as if he had been in the middle of a thought when he had been interrupted.

“Oh oh,” I say, “yeah, regarding comparing young people now-“

“Oh, no, then it was ‘did I know then that’s when I was going to be a musician?’” Billy corrects me.  He is obviously into this!

“Right, right…” I say.

“Yeah, I knew I was gonna be a musician since I was four, but I didn’t know what form it would take.  Then I saw that there were all these white artists that TV and Hollywood was trying to promote on us who were awful – Pat Boone, and all that crap.  And then I saw the Beatles.  The Beatles redeemed rock and roll music.  Really, the early stuff they were doing was R&B – they were just reintroducing us to our own music.  A lot of that music had never been heard by a white audience because white radio stations wouldn’t play black music.  So the Beatles came out and, cause they were white, all of a sudden – hey, it was okay to do that stuff.  But that’s what made me realize that maybe it was possible – these were working class guys, they played their own instruments, they wrote their own songs, they grew their hair long – they didn’t look like Hollywood stars, they looked like you and me, and I thought ‘Well, why can’t I do that?’”

“And you certainly have,” I declare. “You have become such an institution (okay, I’m playing the fan now)…I know there’s a lot that you don’t see, a lot of the effect that you’ve had you don’t see, and I wish that you could because – I think of my high school years and hanging out in the music room and literally everybody going over to the piano trying to play ‘Angry Young Man’ better than the next guy or the last guy, you know-”

He chuckles at this and says, “I’m still trying to do it myself!”

“And, I mean, my father teaches at the high school that I attended, and so I grew up looking at the yearbooks from, you know, the past fifteen years or whatever.  And every year, without fail, you were quoted in them and your quotes were meaningful to students starting from, you know, the mid-’70s and going all the way up to the present day.  Actually, I used a quote from ‘Getting Closer’ [a song from Billy’s 1986 album, The Bridge] as my high school yearbook quote: ‘If I see it as experience, it hasn’t gone to waste’ – which was my way of rationalizing high school,” I say with a laugh.

Billy laughs at this comment, and it is an incredibly cool feeling to have made Billy Joel laugh!

“Yeah, me too!” he says.

“But really,” I say, “your impact is so significant, and I’ve been deeply touched by your music, and many people that I know that I grew up with and many people now in Nashville – fellow songwriters that I’ve met, you know – we all share that sort of, that bond that you have created with your music and that’s incredibly meaningful.”  I’m not sure how well I am articulating this, but hopefully the sincerity is at least coming through.  “I still don’t feel like I’ve communicated it to you properly and I really wish that you could feel that.”

“Well, you know, I’ve been told this by a number of people and I guess I understand that I’m supposed to be this big cheese, but see personally, I don’t feel it and I don’t even know if I want to really understand it, because that’s an awesome responsibility!  I don’t know if I could handle it, to tell you the truth.  I think, in some ways it’s better that musicians remain a little bit insular about their own success.”

“Egoistically, at least,” I say, as if I could possibly relate.

“Well, I was watching – what was that movie the other night? – Immortal Beloved, about Beethoven,”

“Right, I saw that,” I say.

“And, okay, Gary Oldman’s playing it over the top as usual” (I laugh) – “he loves playin’ over the top. But there was a scene in which Beethoven was seen as being such a huge influence on his time and that he was still alive and his time had come and gone and now he was perceived to be a has-been, over the hill, because another group of composers had come along and were starting to write in a different style-”

“The Romantic movement,” I chime in, as if to prove myself.

“And then of course he came and reclaimed it supposedly with the Ninth Symphony, but I don’t necessarily think that that’s how musicians should perceive themselves.  I think we should just work in our little laboratories with our little musical chemicals and mix things and concoct different things and not be so aware of what we’re doing.  I think once you start, it’s sort of like dissecting a living thing, that’s just my theory.  But I do appreciate that I’ve had an impact on people’s lives, and I remember when I was looking at John Lennon or the people that I admired, thinking ‘My God, they’ve had such a profound impact on me, I wish they knew’ – maybe it’s good that I never met them.  Maybe [he starts chucking over this words] if I had the chance to meet Ludwig van Beethoven and said, ‘Man, I think you’re great!’ he would have turned around and said, ‘Who gives a shit!’ [we both laugh at this] and my heart would be broken.  So who knows?”

********************************************************

“Maybe if I had the chance to meet Ludwig van Beethoven and said, ‘Man, I think you’re great!’ he would have turned around and said, ‘Who gives a shit!’ and my heart would be broken.  So who knows?”

My friend Jody laughs and maintains a dumbfounded expression as he listens to the tape of my interview with our mutual hero.  We are sitting in the dining room of his house.  I had brought the answering machine over a little while earlier without telling him why, saying simply when he answered the door, “I have something I want you to hear.”

My voice emerges once again from the tape:

“Well I’m very much looking forward to seeing you in State College – you’re doing Wednesday night and Thursday night – and so far I’m going to be at the Wednesday night show, at least.  And my last question would just be if, um – would you mind if I introduced myself to you personally after the show?”

“Not at all. You have to make a point of asking for the guy who is my road manager to be able to do that.  His name is Max Loubiere.”

“Yeah, he’s the one that I called to get this confirmed and set up…”

“No way!!!!!!” shouts Jody, and I laugh heartily at his reaction and do a little victory dance as the tape continues:

“I’ve noticed that doing these college gigs that the security guys tend to be way over-enthusiastic about security.”

“Okay.”

(Billy lets out a little laugh): “Everybody tends to be a little bit too tense, and I try to get everybody to relax.  But Max is the guy who can make the backstage thing happen.”

“So I should just contact him?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.  Again, you’ve been incredibly generous.  Thank you so much, and thank you for all the great music you’ve made, it’s enhanced my life more than I can even explain.  And – what address should I send a copy of The Penn Stater to?  I don’t know which issue…the magazine is published bi-monthly, and I don’t know when the article will appear.  Is there an address that I should send it to?”

“Uh, let’s see,” (fumbling through some papers).  “You can send it to my office, which is…called…if I can find the damn address, I just moved…”

He recites the address for me, and I repeat it back to him.

“And my bosses who have been so kind as to let me hold the interview here at work, would like to send you a copy of their M Street Directory, which is the publication – they do an annual radio directory.”

“OK.”

“So we’ll get that to you, too, okay?”

“Great,” (he sounds genuinely pleased).

“And thank you again so much, (I laugh here at my own astoundingly good fortune) and I look forward to seeing you on Wednesday.”

“OK, Eric, we’ll see you there.” (That’s Billy Joel, of BILLY JOEL fame, addressing me by name).

“OK, take care.”

The tape beeps once the conversation has ended.

“You have balls of steel,” says Jody.

It is a thrill to be able to share this incredible personal victory with someone who fully appreciates it and who is as much a fan as I am.

“You’ve got to get a picture with him,” Jody tells me before I leave.

Note:  The quotes above attributed to Billy Joel were transcribed verbatim, with the exception of the portion of the interview during which I had technical difficulties with the recording equipment.  That portion was recreated from memory to the best of my ability shortly after the interview was conducted.

The story continues in the next blog post.  Stay tuned!

Ruins

 

 

Temple II in the Gran Plaza

part of the Acrópolis Central

one of the twin pyramids of Complejo Q

view of Gran Jaguar in the early morning from atop Temple II

Temples I, II, and III as seen from the top of Temple IV

Samantha and me on Temple IV

A face only a Mayan could love...found in the Mundo Perdido (Lost World)

Acrópolis Norte: the perfect setting for a Spinal Tap concert!

Temple V popping out of the jungle

Birds

 

lineated woodpecker

 

toucan (or surveillance robot? you decide...)

wood thrush

squirrel cuckoo

brown jay

chestnut-colored woodpecker

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ocellated turkey

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

rebellious ocellated turkey

Los Monos!

I fell in love with the monkeys. I could have watched them all day long (and just about did, at every opportunity).  There are two types in Tikal: the spider monkey (mono araña) and howler monkey (mono aullador).  The spider monkeys are aptly named – the way they maneuver themselves in the trees is mesmerizing.  Incredibly graceful, and seemingly very peaceful creatures – they were oblivious to us hominids who watched them with mouths agape.  The howlers make a sound that is otherworldly.  We heard them at various hours in the night, and especially in the early morning and at around sundown.  If you didn’t know what that sound was, and were, say, alone in the jungle at night, I’d be willing to wager you’d quickly need a change of underwear.

Except where otherwise noted, the shots below are of spider monkeys:

first monkey sighting

 

young howler monkey

 

 

 

howler silhouettes

 

This photo does not even remotely do justice to how precious the sighting was of this mother and her baby, but it's the only shot I managed to get.

Misc.

Roger and me in Acrópolis Norte

Samantha and a Ceiba tree near the park entrance

 

zooming out…

the Medusa-like top of the same tree

coatis

hominid

After two false starts in my twenties, it took me until the age of 38 to finally travel outside of the U.S. for the first time.  To my long-standing excuses for postponing international travel, I now have this to say:

1)  Cost:  There’s no doubt that traveling costs money, but this can be mitigated with some research, resourcefulness, flexibility, and perhaps a bit of good luck (i.e., an invitation along the lines of the one I received from Samantha’s parents).  Over the years, I could have chosen on numerous occasions to travel, but opted not to make it a priority.  In the end, one must weigh the financial cost of travel with the intangible cost of missing out on potentially worthwhile and broadening experiences.

2)  With so many places in the world to choose from, where to even begin?

Answer:  Somewhere!