Green Mile by Karl Meiner

I was aware of the shrieking wind outside my window before I was even awake. It was one of those eastern, Gorge-fueled blasts of air that chafes your eyes. “Fuck fuck fuck FUCK!” It was seven fifteen, my bedroom was frigid, and I think the cat puked again somewhere. Early morning hours in Portland just before Christmas are dark.  Like cold, dead Stygian blackness. And I willingly signed up to do a trail run just after sun-up.

Maybe I can tell the group I got in a car accident on the way there, I mused as I lay in my comfy, warm bed. Or I could just puncture one of my tires and crawl back under the covers. The downy, downy covers.

The immediate problem was that I also promised to give two other runners a ride, and I can’t really like…talk…before nine.

Coffee. Just one big cup of coffee. The kitchen counter felt like the surface of Hoth as I groped around for a filter. That’s when I found the cat puke. Judgy Garland, my cat, barfed just under the kitchen sink where she generally leaves one of her ducky toys. “That fucking bitch,” I thought as I grabbed half a roll of paper towels.  

It’s important to poop before any long run; this is triple true heading onto the trail. And nothing fires up the bowels like a dark roast, a pre-sunrise wake-up call, and run anxiety. By seven forty-five I felt like I was going to shit out a continent.  Because I wanted to be sure, I lingered on Strava for an extra minute or two before calling it good.

My gear was laid out on the couch with military precision. No way I was getting caught out there in the cold, wet clutches of Forest Park without every piece on hand. New waterproof socks, that were really water-resistant, probably offered more emotional protection than rain protection, but they felt fluffy and soothing as I strapped them over my ankle braces. Yeah, braces. Two on the right and one on the left. I once sprained my ankle at Powell Butte before mile one. Fuuuckkkkkk that.  Not today.

I grabbed one extra protein bar, silently cursed myself again, and stepped into the biting cold. I let the windows defrost while I thanked the universe I had heated seats; I also contemplated one last time just fucking calling it there. “They’ll understand. Maybe they want an out too. Nobody wants to run in this shit,” my mind was racing faster than I would be able to move my legs.  I put the car in reverse, and kind of wept a little.

Both runners were ready much to my chagrin, and their gear bags also suggested they packed some emotional buffering as well.  One had the foresight to bring a bright puffy jacket for our post-run brunch. “Shit.  That’s a good call.  Remind me to bring mine next time,” I babbled. Runner one laughed too loudly for this time of the morning at this time of the year. But it was the first hint of enjoyment I’d experienced this morning, so my mood shifted, ever so subtly, towards calm.

Parking at the Leif gate can suck dick; you get there too late and you’re walking a quarter mile uphill in the dark. Naturally, we were on the late side as we parked. “We’re here, I guess…” No one moved. We sat there looking, each of us, like we were holding back tears.  

We were jolted awake by a cacophony of fists pounding on my hood.  “Let’s go, pussies,” one of our run crew shouted through my fogged windows.

“Fucking Greg,” I muttered. My riders responded in unison, “fucking Greg!”

Greg is the club douche. He’s fast as an ice-skating rabbit on crack, and he loves for you to know this. 

“You ready for these hills, Karl?  Huh?  HUH?”  

“God, this fucking guy…,” I thought to myself. Fortunately, one of my co-riders and our group’s founding member, lets no shit slide.

“Jesus, cover up your leggings with shorts next time, Greg!  Your wang is poking out like a chapstick tube!”

It was rewarding to see his face melt a little as he turned and bolted up the hill.

There were in the vicinity of twenty runners milling about, and their frosty breath created a haze which blurred their features.  Even so, I recognized most of their ghostly silhouettes almost immediately. There were enough of us experiencing a varying degree of being hungover that people were sharing trade secrets.

“I swear to God!  Pedialyte mixed with Emergen-C and a little Gatorade.  Swear to God.”

“Dude.  Takis and Dr. Pepper.  Sounds gross, right? It is, actually. Real fucking gross. But knocks the hangover on its ass.”

They were all wrong. The absolute best fucking way to slay that hangover dragon is edibles. I mean, to  be honest I’m on a first name basis with the entire staff of three local dispensaries.  I had, in fact, eaten two gummies and one quarter of a 1:1 thc to cbd chocolate bar. That shit was just settling in, so just as we were all gearing up to trot off…I could do little more than giggle and grin like a circus chimp.

This meant that I had to focus hard on the ground. Like, I’m fairly prone towards tripping, stumbling, or falling when I’m as straight as an accountant on tax day. High like this? I could go splat all too easily!

Fortunately, this was a relatively short and easy day. Straight up Leif five miles, turn back.  That’s it.  As far as trail running in Forest Park goes, that’s a fairly vanilla trot.

We grouped together like a school of Gortex-clad fish heading upstream. But as people broke into their pace groups, I slowly began to find myself alone. 

By itself, this fact was not terribly concerning; I was pretty square in the middle of the herd. Plenty of folk behind to find my prone carcass if I managed to slip downhill.

I began to let my mind wander a bit. I had my earphones on now, and Prince Caspian by Phish began to echo loudly across my brain, and I really started getting into it.  You know when you just get absolutely lost in a song? Like you’re screaming the lyrics and shaking your head and just feeling it!  I was right there.

You should know that the average length of a Phish Caspian jam is seven minutes.  But this was the Commerce City, Colorado 2012 Caspian.  Eleven minutes fourteen seconds long.  Look it up.

By the time the song ended, I started to take stock of my surroundings a bit.  That feeling when it’s the minute before you realize you seriously don’t know where the fuck you are.  That’s suddenly where I found myself.

I was standing on a narrow trail arching slowly up into the dense overhang of Forest Park.  “This is not Leif,” was the first non-Phish related thought I’d had in some time.  “Oh shit.  Shiiiiiit.  Shit.” This was not ideal.  I certainly wasn’t under the grip of panic or anything. Yet.  I mean, it’s fucking Forest Park and not the Hood National Forest.

The problem was I had recently had an…incident…getting lost. The club had a relay race on Powell Butte.  Simple fucking loop.  Guess who took a wrong turn and landed in the middle of the fucking butte?  I somehow ended up finishing by coming back to the start from the exact opposite direction I should have. On a loop.

I wish I could say that this was the only time in recent memory I had been victim of absurdist circumstance while engaged in run club activities. Of late, the group has taken advantage of Portland’s lakes and rivers by forming a fleet of stand-up paddle boards and other water craft. I was so excited to join in that I got myself a Costco membership and purchased one of their inflatable two-seater canoes.

It worked well enough at first.  But slowly, inexorably, it became clear that the canoe was losing air. Eventually I could feel my butt sinking below the water level as I found myself fighting the wind in an increasingly vain effort to reach shore.  Most of the club were well out of ear-shot.  

Fortunately for me, one of our crew noticed me floundering with the grace of a drowning cow and hurried out to meet me. She shook her head with a mixture of amusement and pity.  “You need a tow.”  With that, she tossed me the ankle cord and began pulling me behind her SUP board.  It took us a long ass time to get to shore.

So here at the park, my biggest problem wasn’t dying of exposure there in the icy grips of early winter. It was the absolute metric ton of shit I was about to take. It was deserved, no doubt. But the sheer volume of stoner jokes I was about to experience had me face-palming myself.

I had no choice.  I was going to be late. There was still service.  Like a guilty teenager about to report that they crashed mom’s car, I pulled out my phone.  “Got lost. Be a little late,”  I texted the aforementioned club founder.

Adrenaline and a pounding heart sobered me rapidly. About a quarter-mile into retracing my steps, I heard the ping of a text come through my ear buds.

“You got lost.  On Leif.”

There was a heartbeat pause before the next text.

“Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha”

Yeah. It was going to be that kind of ride home.