run | Literature and Libation

I’m a runner.

I’ve always run when I stop to think about it; across soccer fields, down back roads, through the woods away from ornery bees. My default state is up and moving, feet slapping, heart pounding, lungs huffing, but brain happy. As I’ve gotten older, running has become more of a maintenance routine; an active (and sometimes painful) caloric counter to all those beer-borne carbs.

I rarely talk about my running because there’s little in life I find as boringly self-serving as telling people how and when you plan to sweat. It’s just a thing I do and have always done, and I’m not a competitive racer nor certified trainer, so I don’t see much point in bringing it up.

But today’s story requires the background information that from time to time I peel myself away from the keyboard and the kegs, and punish myself in the name of health and vanity.

Last Tuesday, while I was running, a woman hit me with her car.

I use the verb “hit” here quite literally: she drove the hood of her Honda into the flesh of my legs (I’m relatively uninjured, if anyone is worried). I could forgive an accident, an end-of-the-workday bump caused by fatigue or distraction. I would have dusted myself off, showed her I wasn’t badly hurt, and probably just admonished her for not paying attention to her surroundings. But I didn’t even get the chance, because upon realizing she’d hit something – probably another human being – she drove off.

I sat in the thin grass median, elbow and knee bloody from their recent first date with the sidewalk, incredulous. She just drove off. Didn’t look back. Rode off into the winking evening like a bandit on the run.

I wanted to be mad, but all I could muster, covered in sweat and shock, was sadness. Faith in humanity bruised and bloodied, badly.

The rest of the week was sore and soldiered. My sister’s wedding was only a few days away, the whole family had a lot to do, and I had already pledged my help. There was a house to decorate, tables and chairs to move, photos to take, beer to tap. I did what I could without playing up the pain, resting when I could, sleeping when I needed to. We made it through; the day of the wedding all beautiful and bright. We got to be for one shining evening; be joyous, be teary, be celebratory, be there. It felt fantastic to sit and bask in a moment of pure emotional self-indulgence, where that night, that party, those people made the rest of the world disappear into the sidelines of unimportance.

Now I sit, in the wake of the wedding, happy and tired and introspective. I still haven’t fully gripped the potential seriousness of the car-hitting situation. Everyone seemed outraged enough for me, and I feel lucky that I wasn’t more severely broken. I’d been too focused on what needed to get done to dwell on what happened, too hell bent on then to devote any time to the now.

I realize that’s been my life of late – run, running, ran – forward progress or bust, almost no stopping to catch my breath or rest my legs. Sure, a woman hit me with her car and didn’t stop to see if I was OK. But her actions did at least stop me and my relentless charge against time, forced me to accept that sometimes in life you’re going to get hit by random chance, and random chance won’t pull over to the curb to swap insurance information.

In a very strange, roundabout way, I appreciate her for being oblivious and selfish; she showed me that I may have been doing the same in my tunnel visioned obsession with “what’s next?” which isn’t fair to those I love, and definitely not fair to myself.

So, thank you, random woman in her random black Honda, for hitting me. Thank you for showing me the depths of human selfishness, and how painful that selfishness can be when left unchecked, unacknowledged, unchallenged. Thank you for swinging into my life with painfully impeccable timing to allow me to put myself aside and celebrate a fresh start for my sister and her husband. Also thank you for not breaking me worse, because that would have made for an awkward hobble down the aisle.

For the rest of the world, a public service announcement: If you ever have the misfortune to strike something with your car, stop. Not just for the person or animal or fire hydrant you hit, but for yourself, too. You never know what you might find.

I couldn’t find a fitting photo, so here’s a shot of the beers I homebrewed for Becca’s wedding.

What images does your mind conjure when you hear the term, “corporate park?”

Do your thoughts jump to soulless financial machines: adult Lego bricks available only in greys and browns, photocopies of similar buildings plopped down into populated parking lots, unblinking logos like electric gargoyles perched on feckless facades?

Or do you imagine an actual “park,” a living, thriving, gathering place for a community of professionals, a bustling ecosystem of admins and executives sharing lunches and lessons on a Tuesday afternoon?

I’ve spent more time than I’d care to admit sawing at the invisible fetters of McLean, Virginia, and I recognize the suit and tie mentality permeating every porous inch of the concrete towers that rise like well manicured mausoleums from the DC Metro marshlands. I’m fortunate to not have to spend all my waking hours walking that tech corridor, but I’m still a denizen of a different corporate park, one whose history I’m fascinated by, and have written about before.

I fear I’ve developed an unhealthy cathexis for Corporate and Garden City drives, come to know their presiding dryads well as I’ve built the base of my career. The “park” borders I-495 (the infamous DC Beltway), its air polluted by the sounds and smog of seven hundred and fifity thousand daily commuters, but signs of nature remain. Freshly gnawed trees betray a local group of beavers; fat, ornery Canadian geese turn the little creek into a personal nesting ground every Spring; honey suckles and several other wildflowers sneak to bloom between discarded trash from Metro riders moving from train to office.

It’s here I run, usually after work, usually in warm weather twilight. Doing some quick writer-math, I’ve run approximately 1500 miles in Sisyphean circles around this place over 6 years, giving me ample time get to know it.

And yet, it still surprises me.

On days I’m feeling particularly energetic, I’ll stop to do pull-ups on a set of bars just east of the Metro station. There is a sign there, worn white print on aging blue fiberglass, surrounded by algae stained splintering wood that I’ve noticed many times, but never really paid attention to:

The sign was planted here by the Southwood Corporation, a group that since the 1970s has made giant, custom signs for locations just like corporate parks. Fit-Trail creates an outdoor gym, where any person can move between stations, getting a full-body work out by following the nifty directions on the strategically oriented placards. Or so goes the theory.

I’ve never seen anyone else use the bars to do chin-ups, and have never seen anyone tempt fate by rubbing their back against old, weathered wood to do an isometric squat. Despite my hours pounding the local concrete, I’d never noticed another flash white and blue, anywhere. But this station is 21 and 22 of some indeterminable number; there have to be others, elsewhere, right? At least 10 more with two exercises each, and at least one more down the line, since the instructions on this one say: “Pace to next station: Jog.”

So I jogged. And jogged. And jogged. Heaved and sweated and walked after giving into my asthma. Put my hands on my knees and cursed the Eastern shore humidity. I went around the whole 1.3 mile loop two more times in my search, but didn’t see any other signs. I’d lost the Fit-Trail before I even got a chance to find it.

Returning to the chin-up bars, I was determined to learn more. Upon closer inspection, I found a date that explained a lot:

1978. The year Southwood launched the Fit-Trail line (they’re still making them today for children’s parks and retirement communities), meaning this random corporate park in the middle of Maryland had been one of their first customers. Other than the brief terror of realizing I’d been doing pretty rigorous pull-ups on a thirty six year old metal bar and wooden frame, I felt sort of sad. This piece of signage was older than me, the only reminder that its brethren had ever been here to begin with, the last bastion of a time when this corporate park was more than just a shell for contract vehicles and short-term tenants.

The New Carrollton Metro station also opened in ’78 (not a half mile from Corporate drive), and I imagine some real estate developer spending top dollar to create a vibrant place to work at the then-new (and still) end to the Orange line. An all inclusive vocational vacation with restaurants and social draws and accouterments to made working seem as unlike work as possible.

As I run on the decades old sidewalks, I picture a different, distant version of Corporate drive, one where beautiful afternoon sun showers brought people out of offices regardless of deadlines, one where many people ran this trail to stay in shape, moving from each station to the next, past coworkers who were chatting away about that new movie, Grease, or the crazy situation in Love Canal, New York. I step back into a place come to life with employees who cared and a community that teemed, thirty years before the whole place grew thick with trash and unkempt overgrowth.

But that version, if it ever existed, is gone. Replaced by nothing and instead trimmed down, personality faded and weathered by time. A few echoes do remain, tucked behind the buildings, but with no one to use or maintain them, they’ve lost their luster and appeal.

If history is a cycle, the moves by Google and other progressive companies to create corporate environments where people actually want to go to work might be a full 360 spin of the wheel, returning us to sometime near 1978. I’m too young to know what it was like then, but if these few dwindling symbols are even sort of representative, it’s a time I’d like to experience again, for the first time.

Volleyball, circa 1978.

Browsing Tags run

PSA: If you hit something with your car, stop to check on the thing you hit

Forgotten Friday: Corporate America, circa 1978