Introduction

It all began the day I was born. Small events, insignificant though they seemed, had been building from the day of my first breath, all leading to one climactic showdown with Fate and a vindictive guy named Murphy.
Leaving aside the crumbs of truth from my birth, formative years, and young adult life up to five months ago, the pieces really began falling into place when I took the seemingly harmless step of applying for the Marine Corps Marathon on May 31 of this the year of our Lord. It was one I took knowing the risks. Should I be accepted into the lottery, I would face a five-month training schedule that, in all honesty, I didn’t necessarily feel ready for, much less enthusiastic about. But it was a lottery, and my name did not come up in the drawing. Lucky me, I thought. But somehow, without my brain ever having made a conscious decision to do so, I signed up for the auxiliary race for the same weekend, also hosted by the Marine Corps, the 8K event for Special Olympics.
Suddenly, not only was I running an event for which I only had passing interest, but I was doing it alone! Quickly realizing I didn’t want to go to my doom solo, I recruited three of my Blacksburg buddies to run the event with me.
Already this story sounds laden with sorrow, like an ancient Greek tragedy-you just know it’s going to end badly.
Five months of sporadic (but adequate) training later, three of us embarked for Washington DC, one of our number having wisely declined to go after seeing some portent in his cereal bowl of our impending full-scale carnival of pain. We left Blacksburg at 1:45pm Saturday in a blaze of dull brown trees waving their last leafy goodbyes, expectant in our triumphant return. Stupid trees.

Bad Juju

The first disconcerting sign popped up immediately. Abe didn’t have his confirmation information printed out, which an insistent website had informed me we absolutely needed if we were to be able to pick up our race packets. No biggie, we said. They’ll have to let him race, right? At the very least our silver tongues would have to work a little extra magic. After all, I was picking up my older brother’s marathon packet and his wife’s 8K packet, since neither were able to attend. Another portent perhaps?
The drive to the capitol was uneventful. We stopped to eat at a convenience mart located right next to an abandoned and almost certainly haunted asylum, complete with boarded over windows and doors, tall steps littered with dead tree limbs and leaves, unkempt grounds and a blocked off entrance, marked with angry No Trespassing signs. We vowed to explore it and bring back digital photographic evidence of its hainted nature on the way back.
We arrived in DC at around quarter to six to pick up Abe’s sister Yahnah, who was to meet us at George Mason University. By the time we found where she was supposed to be, it was a quarter after six, and she wasn’t there. Looking back, that shouldn’t have been all that surprising. Nevertheless, we fretted and waited, trying to call her cell. Of course, no answer. We were nearly at the point of heading to Arlington to pick up our race packets without her when she finally called. She had gone shopping for a Halloween costume for a big party she was going to attend that evening but was on her way! She promised to be there within half an hour, which would have put us on the ten minute drive to Arlington by ten till seven.
Any other four girls on a shopping spree for sluttish Halloween costumes couldn’t have taken longer than they did in arriving. Meanwhile, Abe’s cell and laptop were providing us a spotty web connection, which we used to try and find the fastest way to the Hyatt Hotel from our location at GMU. At first the laptop didn’t recognize his cell, and then when it did, it decimated the laptop battery. By the time Yahnah arrived at 7:10pm, the laptop died and we were no longer able to retrieve the directions we had spirited up from the ether. I had predicted that we would arrive at the hotel at 8:15-fifteen minutes too late-and I was beginning to look downright prophetic. Mr. Murphy, it’s nice to meet you.
Route 66 was an immediate zone of confusion, and we found ourselves caught up in a traffic jam that quickly ticked the minutes down. 7:20. 7:30. 7:35. I called 411 to get directions to the hotel but my connection dropped halfway through the call. Suspiciously, my cell battery, which had been full when we left Blacksburg, was already half powered. By 7:40pm we passed the wreck that had caused the slowdown, and made our way into Crystal City, heading for the hotel. We knew it was on the main highway heading through town, so we crawled through traffic until we reached the hotel. 7:47pm. We parked in the back, but Kevin didn’t want to leave his car unattended, so I grabbed his information and mine, and Abe and Yahnah and I made our way into the maelstrom.

Hyatt Hysteria

The Hyatt Regency Hotel was labeled “Marine Corps Marathon HQ, but it really was a massive psychological test, culminating in a rat-like maze which we blithely followed to where race packets were being handed out. One man-ONE MAN-was responsible for registering all the racers. I registered myself and my brother and sister in law (they had sent a letter) but when I tried to pick up Kevin’s packet, the man turned me down, saying he needed a signed letter.
Despite the fact that I had Kevin’s license and confirmation number, he refused to give me the packet. Being in the bowels of hotel hell, we couldn’t get cell service out to Kevin, so Abe ran to find him, flip-flops and all, and we went through another nasty maze to pick up our free t-shirts commemorating our survival of the worst hotel registration experience ever devised. On our way up we passed Kevin coming down the escalator. He made it past the guard but when I turned around to follow, the guard stopped me and made me look like a pansy because I didn’t sock him in his nose for being a bossy, buff Marine standing in the way. He said he couldn’t let me through again, that everything was closed. Score one for the Marines. Hoo-wah!
Yahnah and I arrived back at the car, and two minutes later Kevin came back, packetless. He said they had just closed up shop before he got there, and you know how they are about time tables. Two nothing, Marines.

Guinness and Grim Death

We were to meet Greg Piper from the fantastic blog The Smoking Room at Biddy Mulligan’s, an allegedly “authentic Irish pub” brought over piece by piece from the Old Country and reassembled right in the lounge area of Jury’s Hotel in Dupont Circle. How quaint! However, we were unsure of how long it would take to get from the hotel to DC proper; Greg guessed twenty minutes by Metro, so we tacked on ten to be sure and agreed to meet outside the pub at 8:45pm.
The Metro is one of the golden age creations of mankind, a cheeky transportation system with a mind and schedule of its own. You can guess where this leads.
To dwell upon the Metro experience is to ponder a spoiled and selfish child, whose existence and persistent aggravation is perpetuated by doting parents who never discipline or correct its behaviour. To wit, Metro customers are so unwilling to parent it that its vices now far outweigh its nicer moments, resulting in a child so outrageously wild and unmanageable that correction at this point would require several lethal doses of digitalis. Metro one, us zero.
Making a long story slightly shorter, we finally arrived at the pub at 9:15pm, having made many Metro passengers physically ill with our constant and loud repartee. Piper had been standing outside for God knows how long, but he seemed to have a fantastic sense of humour about the whole thing. We shook hands for the first time, he made the oblique comment that I looked nothing like he expected, and we all adjourned ourselves inside.
Our pub experience was a mixed bag. While the company and conversation made the evening worthwhile, the environs were disappointing. The pub was actually a barker’s lounge with delusions of the kind normally reserved for emperors who dress like paupers. With the exception of the floor, which was quite rustic, the place was hardly low-brow at all, and aspects of its faux interior grated especially hard. The wrought iron stickers upon the glass set into the doors seemed the most egregious, though our waiter’s almost inhuman demeanor and attitude throughout the night reminded me of artwork depicting Death as a caped and hooded fellow with a scythe and grim and bony smile; not especially cheerful or interested in serving. Pub one, us zero.

Dapper fellow

Nevertheless, we comported ourselves with the ease of friends long met. Greg is a handsome chap whose easygoing smile easily won over Yahnah’s impatience at having to be there instead of her party. I encourage you to check out Greg’s blog, as it is an intelligent, insightful, (now) inside-the-beltway look at politics, culture, and entertainment, from a Capitol Hill intern’s perspective. We spoke of things near to our interests, from blogging to the election to religion to drinking.

To blogging!

After enjoying a fine meal (Kevin and I had an excellent Shepherd’s Pie) and a second round of Guinness, we had to call it a night, as Yahnah was practically squirming in her chair, and we had to wake up early for the race the following morning. We took pictures outside and agreed to meet the following morning before and after the race. Fine company one, completely miserable time four.

Fine company one, completely miserable time four

The return trip back on the Metro netted us another point, this time for making a blind man, his wife, and several other passengers laugh hysterically at our witty comments about Abe’s and Yanna’s height. We crashed at Yahnah’s while she dressed as a sluttish sexy nurse, leaving us collapsed on her floor and couch.

The Race

Words cannot adequately describe the discomfort of sleeping on a slab of concrete covered with a thin layer of that rugging you typically see in pet shops. Perhaps the closest description might be “the molesting of every pore of your body in a manner suggesting that hell, or a Turkish prison, might be a welcome relief”, though that may a bit limited in its scope. This floor not only assaults your body, but it makes mincemeat of your mind too, causing you to wake every ten minutes with the fear of being buried alive.
I woke at 7:00am, showered and prepped for the race by eating a piece of toast with grape jelly slathered on-my morning’s sugar boost. I had a vague thought that leaving early was a good idea, but as we were staying ten minutes from the race site, felt that 7:30am, our original wake-up time, would be adequate.
Somehow, our 7:30am wake-up turned into an 8:30am leave-time, a mistake I will acknowledge right here and now as the beginning of our downfall. We drove to the Falls Church Metro station, grabbed our tickets, but just (and I do mean just) missed the train that would have taken us to our destination with time to spare. Not to worry, we thought, as the next scheduled arrival was eight minutes from the last train, which would have been 8:43am–still plenty of time for us to make the race. Still, Abe was enduring some bowel related troubles, and our growing anxiety was heightened by the fact that the scheduled arrival time kept going up. After eight minutes was up it turned to five minutes, and then five minutes later it was three minutes. A full twenty minutes after we had missed the first train (and fourteen minutes after the next scheduled arrival), our line came through, and we got off at 8:56am to change to the Blue line, which was a one stop affair. Six minutes to the next train. Metro three, us zero.
At this point our grins were mostly to keep us from becoming public enemy number one; I was feeling especially grim, though I kept it to myself. We met a couple on the train who were also late, which seemed to validate our experience to date, and we exited in a slightly better mood than when we had gotten on, at the approximate time of 9:14am. I noted on the package of our race packets that because of our electronic timing chips, we were encouraged not to “push or shove” our way through. Brilliant, I thought, we might still have a chance at this.
We were herded up one escalator by an imposing group of Marines and out into Arlington National Cemetery, where the 8K and Marathon were being held. 9:18am. Signs indicated “Runners this way”, though the vaguaries of “this way” were disconcerting. The general flow of the crowd was headed across the Arlington Memorial Bridge, where a crowd was gathered. No indications of a start or finish were present anywhere along the route, however, and we began to think that we had all but screwed the pooch.
We arrived at the giant, cheering crowd, but one look at the runners made it obvious they were no weekend warriors. These were died-in-the-wool runners, with muscles bulging more dangerously than a Japanese schoolboy after a government experiment involving psychokinetic bioengineering. We made our way to the selection of six Port-a-Johns that had been set up, where Abe attempted to wheedle his way in. The line, he discovered, stretched several leagues, and no other lu’s were in sight. At this point we had all decided that the race was right out, and that the only saving grace of this entire trip was that we were getting to leave. We were all thoroughly frustrated and diminished. I felt like a shrunken waif in my black cloak I had brought to run in. Abe had removed his tie and Kevin forlornly carried all of our paraphernalia (he was not running, as you might recall from the previous night’s snafu at the hotel).
Crossing back over the bridge and back toward the Metro stop, we spotted below us, going under the overpass, runners that looked more relaxed and loosely attired. The 8K’ers! Yet the sight made us more depressed, for we still had no idea where the race started or finished, and our map, we discovered, was for the marathon, not the 8K!
Abandoning all hope, we descended to the bottom of hell Arlington Memorial Metro stop and purchased our return tickets. It was 10:00am, a full hour after the race had begun.

The Angel

Waiting in the station for Abe to finish purchasing his ticket, Kevin and I leaned against the railing, each lost in our own thoughts. A woman tailed by a round, senior looking fellow in a Stetson walked past, and the man commented in a thick Texas accent, “This sucks.”
Kevin replied, “That about sums it up,” and the man looked around with disgust. “I can’t stand this,” he said. “I need to be back in Texas, in the Panhandle. This whole mass of humanity,” he said. “It’s like wiping your ass with a hoop–it never ends.” He did not expound upon that thought, but left, and left us both with amused, and enlightened smiles. We both understood, without speaking, that the man was some sort of oracle, or perhaps an angel. His words reached into my soul and made me realize that while our trip had ultimately been in vain, there was no sense in trying to “make the best of it.” The wisdom of that Texan seemed to say, “Revel in your crapulence. Don’t make the most of this horrible nightmarish weekend. Accept the inevitable conclusion that for this time in your life, things not only did not go your way, but they went out of their way to make the experience as excruciatingly frustrating and agonizingly disappointing as possible.”
We sat in the station waiting for the returning Blue line to take us back to our Orange line connection. I wore my cape like a robe of shame and heat, its black material collecting the sun’s rays and burning a hole in my shoulders and crotch. I looked up as the train arrived, and thought to myself, “Maybe, it’s finally over.”
We fled the city and made our way back onto the interstate that would take us back home. It was a quieter trip returning than it had been going. It wasn’t that we were too disappointed to talk, it was just the harrow of a one-day weekend of almost pure, unadulterated disgrace, disorganization, and missed opportunities had taken their toll. We slept most of the way back, including Kevin who drove, eyes open but staring out on an empty plain of disappointment.
The total cost of the trip for all of us included the cost of race registration ($35 each), gas money (undetermined, but I estimate $50), food costs (around $75), and the cost of sending back our ChampionChip electronic timers ($.49 each), not to mention the bother Greg went through to hang out with us at the pub and race (Greg was unable to make it due to the inordinate number of blocked streets and lack of any signs for the race). The tally, as I’ve kept track, was Murphy ten, us two.
Make that Murphy eleven. We forgot to stop and take pictures at the haunted asylum. Needless to say, the next race I run in will be local, and will probably involve running to the ABC store to pick up some much needed spirits. Mine are completely flagged.
As for the events that culminated in the disasters of Saturday and Sunday, Halloween weekend 2004, I hope I’ve left them behind and started a new cycle, ending in the distant future with good times, a successful bid for a high-profile contract resulting in the making of millions, or perhaps the successful debut of my first film. And perhaps I’ll see that old Texan again, repeating his memorable line regarding hoops and asses. Whatever goes around, or something to that effect. Until then, I’ll look for bright spots of light in dark places, and hope to outrun the next guy to the vodka aisle.
More photos from our trip can be found here.
UPDATE: I misspelled Yahnah’s name in the original. It has been corrected.