Microcosm Societies

Before I had ever lived in a camp, I read Microserfs by Douglas Coupland. The title is far more clever than I ever gave it credit for while reading it. It is a play on Microsoft, on feudal social structures, and general computer nerd-dom, which, I suppose, is as far as I took it while reading the book. Living in camps though, the idea of microserfs, the peasants of the smallest microcosms of a society, becomes fascinating, far from the confines of computerized LEGO programming in Silicon Valley.

Like Coupland's imaginary startup, a camp has its visionaries, its leaders, its middle class and its serfs. The social structure is a rigid caste, and the only thing that keeps the society functioning is that there is the promise of life after camp. People come to a camp to pay for what they do when they go home. To pay for lives that do not include the people they spend most of their time with. It is a weird dynamic. Imagine a water cooler conversation where no one will ever know anything about anyone else, where no one did anything over the weekend, and where there are not plans for the coming weekend. One functions in this environment because they have to.

In all camps, there is a hierarchy. It is essential that people have a leader, as anarchism simply does not get a job done. These duchesses and feudal lords can be brutal or kind, just as any others. They may plan for the winter, or their fiefdoms may starve. It is impossible to know before one has been in the camp what the leadership is like. Leadership though, is strange. In the Medieval period, these microcosms worked because an army backed the leader, and the leader backed the army. A symbiosis occurred at all levels of the chain, where the over- and underlying social strata agreed where everyone was. In a camp there is no army, instead, there is the upcoming Visa bill.

We are all Visa's indentured servants in these microcosms. Maybe a person has no debt, maybe a person always pays cash, but in the end, we owe now or in the future, and we know that we must fill our role in order to make that payment. It is the army of creditors that keeps a camp in check, there is no symbiosis.

This, makes something of a leadership vacuum. The camp leaders lead only by directing the work, yet s/he who directs the work does have power. If the leader is a fan of a football team, days when that team plays may end early, the basketball enthusiasts lose out. If the leader likes to run in the mornings, the morning meeting will be later. If they like an early dinner, workers will be early to their jobs, but back at the mess when the food is served. The power comes from the little things.

Who gets the power? How do they keep it? Like in any political struggle, the key players start to show their hand, and the knights, rooks, and pawns move into position. The power positions in a camp are the same as chess, and society. The king is all powerful, but crippled by the burdens of leadership. Their second, the queen is more powerful, s/he faces the conundrum of Lady Galadriel, to be pure and good, a champion of the pawns, or to become all powerful dark sorceresses. In either case, the queen may, intentionally or not, seek to usurp the king. Lastly, are the bishops. These are the hidden players, they control the conscience of the serfs, and thus, wield power that the king and queen can only demand. Pawns are the first to choose sides.

In minerals exploration, the pawns are usually the locals. They are infinitely replaceable, yet impossible to control. They see the whole camp establishment as outsiders. Often, race or ethnicity complicate relations between the monarchy and the serfs. They have nothing to lose in their meager existence, and so they are eager to choose sides with the person who gives the most present, and often petty rewards. If the bishop offers a workday that is 10 minutes shorter, the bishop will win the pawns. Yet, the pawns are the downfall of s/he who controls them. For the locals want things that are often contrary to the desires of the more loyal, more skilled knights, who will triumph against the pawns every time.

Knights in the camp society get the work done. They have a platoon of serfs behind them, but they get samples submitted, they log core, they run the computers, they collect the data, and deliver the goods. In the camp power struggle, the knights will win the battle. Yet, an exploration campaign, like a war, is not about a battle, but the compound effect of many battles. In order for one to win the war, a strong position must be held through many skirmishes. For these, one looks to the rooks.

Rooks, in the camp society are consultants and technical experts. The knights can win the battles fought today, but the rooks win the battles that will be fought tomorrow. The rooks are motivated by entirely different things. Rooks are motivated by professional reputation, by what happens outside of camp, more than within. From the top of their battlements, a rook can see what tomorrow will bring beyond the confines of the short field campaign.

From my tower, for I fancy myself a rook, I can watch the battles ebb, and the tides turn. I see racial and ethnic tensions flare, and the knights rally around their banner. I have time to sit, and ponder, in this microcosm society, who are the allies I want to maintain when I leave this camp? Who will bring me the most benefit when I deliver my fealty? It will never be the bishop, s/he lacks the wherewithal in my networks. It may be the king or queen, or with enough ambition, I can usurp even these leaders. So I, and the other fortresses watch, listen, and wait.

All of this, requires that outside force. The creditors, whether they be from the Bank of America, or the Society of Economic Geologists, we all seek the value placed on us by those outside camp. In this way alone, we are truly a microcosm of society. The technicians are microserfs, not only because we are a microcosm, but because they are more insignificant than the feudal serf. They are nameless, and ephemeral, they are but leaves on a tree, inconsequential today, and forgotten by fall. The brave knights, who fight for the banner of their fancy, they are no more influential in society. They are not minuscule because this is a camp of 50, but because this is a country of 300,000,000. This microcosm functions not independent of society, but dependent upon society.

While I wile away hours with an iPod, and an endless cylinder of rock, I contemplate why people work. Why people live in these camps the way they do. I watch the power struggles, and I come back to the same idea again and again, they do this because they will leave here. I wonder then, what would a truly micro-society look like? What will be the dynamics of the Mars One team, when they land with no intention of returning? What will keep them going? There is no creditor, there is no army, there is no future, just today, for the rest of their lives. In this strange world, I wonder, will there be microserfs?

Living in Elbonia with DRMs

Readers of Dilbert will recognize Elbonia as the fictional mud-filled country, and its totalitarian neighbor to the north, where Dilbert's company outsources work.  Nonreaders of Dilbert now probably know enough to gather that one would not want to live in Elbonia.  Like the characters of Dilbert, I have no desire to ever visit Elbonia, let alone live there.  However, like the profit driven corporation, I send myself to deal with whatever evil stands in for the mud in whatever place stands in for Elbonia.

My current Elbonia is Tok, AK, but most of the places I have lived in the last year or so remind me of Elbonia in some way.  I dream of escape, yet My beard is getting thicker, and I am starting to fear that I will never get all this mud off.  The only hope I have in these camps are the reminders of civilization I bring with me.  Unfortunately, all of my chocolate has melted in my 90 degree tent, and DRMs are preventing me from escaping with multimedia.

Apple, for various reasons, has been frustrating me for a long time now, so one day I decided that I should cut my final tie with the company, and move on from iTunes.  Still wanting to pay for my music, I tried Google Play, and discovered that in places with limited and slow internet, it really isn't a good medium.  I then tried Amazon, which is as convenient as iTunes, perhaps more, because you can buy music, rent movies, and ship garden tools to Florida if the mood takes you.  Amazon even has less restrictive DRMs than Apple, provided you are using a Windows or Android operating systems.  Playing iTunes files outside of iTunes proved too difficult to bother with, and thus, like a Dilbertian corporate slave, I went back to the most restrictive product to have the easiest access to the products I legally own.

Then, I bought a laptop with Windows 8.  Windows 8 was buggy, difficult to use, and credited with slowing down the sale of new PCs because of its general horribleness.  When it crashed, I switched to Ubuntu.  On an open source operating system one should be able to access their music, but not their iTunes music, nor download their Amazon music (though Ubuntu is installing with a link to Amazon on the dock).  Thus, while stuck in Elbonia, I am confronted with the realization that the things that remind me of a better place, are actually just reminding me of Northern Elbonia, where instead of a totalitarian state, it is a totalitarian corporation supported by the state.  Or, it all just came full circle, and I am in the cubicle maze with Wally and Alice.

In the end, only a few things are inaccessible to me here, while I choose if I want an operating system that doesn't work (Windows 8), or one that doesn't do what I want (owing to DRMs).  While I consider this, I have often considered that if I had stolen the media I cannot access, rather than paying for it, I wouldn't have any of these problems.

The Tallest Mountain On Earth

I have no understanding of why this is, but many people do not want Mt. Everest to be the tallest mountain on Earth.  Why would it matter whether or not the highest point on the planet is also the tallest mountain, I cannot fathom.  Really, I cannot really understand why the "height" of the mountain really matters to people who are not climbing it, after all, the height of the mountain and how impressive it is are not really the same thing.

Colorado mountains, for example, are beautiful, but they do not have the jaw dropping base-to-peak elevation of many smaller mountains.  The Colorado Rockies are also, as a generalization, less rugged than other peaks.  That said, a Colorado 14er has a more rarefied atmosphere than an Alaskan peak at 12,000 feet, regardless of cold, glaciers, ruggedness, or base-to-peak, so climbing to 14,000' is harder than to 12,000', all else being equal.

What the anti-Everest crowd key into is that Mount Everest is part of a mountain range, and therefore, "cheats."  How a natural system can cheat, I am not exactly sure.  I am also not sure what is so problematic about plate tectonic created ranges versus mantle hotspot created volcano chains, but I am not inside the mind of those who wish to find obscure measurements to discredit Everest.

The first step in discussing the elevation of a summit is how one defines elevation.  The traditional method is to measure from sea level.  This is useful for humans because we can stand at sea level.  The breathable atmosphere is taken to be about 1 atmosphere of pressure at sea level.  It can be, with only minor complications (the oceans are not flat, think tides), easily measured.  Perhaps best of all, it provides a common point from which one can measure the elevation of other things.  Other points that might be useful to use would be the shore of the Dead Sea (the lowest point not covered by water, -1371'), the Bentley Subglacial Trench (the lowest point not covered by liquid water, -8,382'), and the Challenger Deep (the deepest point on the sea floor, -35,755' (or deeper)).  Choose any of these other datums, and Mt. Everest remains the tallest mountain.

Using any datum on the surface of the earth, the highest point remains Mt. Everest, and the elevation of every summit simply increases (or decreases) by the amount that the new datum lies below (or above) sea level.  The one datum that changes the highest point calculation is the center of the planet.  Owing to the fact that Earth is not spherical, Chimborazo (20,564') in Ecuador is 3967.1 miles above the center of the planet (beating out Everest by 1.3 miles).

Using a standard datum (e.g. sea level) makes surveying (and science) possible.  Some people do not think elevation should be measured from a standard point.  The most common way to measure a mountain from a non-standard datum is prominence.  The goal of prominence is that a peak with high prominence will, generally, be more impressive than a peak with low prominence (if you want the full scoop on prominence, check Wikipedia, or Peakbagger).  Mt. Everest has the most prominence of any mountain (even if disregarding sea level), but as with any moving datum, prominence does have some drawbacks, and the "tallest mountain" crowd will certainly find some nonsensical way to discount this standard method of measuring mountains.

Elevation, as measured by those seeking the "tallest mountain" is commonly the base-to-peak elevation.  I have often considered the base-to-peak issue.  The first problem is actually defining the base.  In my mind, the base of a mountain, to illustrate how impressive it is, would be the highest elevation of a col that connects it to another peak.  I seem to be alone on this, and the base seems to be the lowest point where the mountain is no longer the mountain, but the valley, or gentle slope, in the case of Denali.

Using the base-to-peak measure, there are mountains that are taller than Everest, including Denali.  Denali has a base-to-peak elevation of something like 18,400' to Everest's 13,500' (ish).  Denali's base-to-peak is, of course, much taller than Hawaii's Mauna Kea (13,796', above sea level and base-to-peak).  However, the claim goes that Mauna Kea does not begin at sea level, but rather at the sea floor.

Measuring a mountain from the sea floor is tricky business.  First off, it seems meaningless because one can never gaze from the undersea "base" to the summit (or climb from base to peak).  Second, the scale changes dramatically.  The sea floor is dominated by gentle changes in elevations that would never seem related on the surface.  Mona Kea, for example, if you count all of the volcanism on Hawaii as "Mona Kea," but exclude the Mauna Loa side, stretches out for as much as 100 miles.  Above sea level, humans would never count being 100 miles away from a mountain as being "on" the mountain, yet in the world of submarine "mountains," this is a standard practice.  Using GeoMapApp to plot the bathymetry (and elevation), Mauna Kea's steepest, largest slope has the gentle rise of a slug's tail.

The elevation profile from approximately -5000 to 4000 m over nearly 80 kilometers distance of Mauna Kea's supposed base-to-peak elevation.  Note the volcanic plateau clearly visible at about sea level.  No vertical exaggeration.

Assessing Mauna Kea from other angles reveals even more unimpressive base-to-peak elevation profiles.  From the east, the volcanic plateau that Mauna Kea sits on becomes more evident.

The gentle rise of the Hawaiian volcanic plateau (from 0 to 60 km), and the gentle slopes of Mauna Kea (from 75 to 120 km), separated by the clear plateau (from 60 to 75 km).  Vertical scale from -5000 to 4000 m, no vertical exaggeration.

If Mauna Kea were a mountain above sea level, most people would judge it as having an impressive 13,000 meter base-to-peak, sitting on top of a 20,000 foot plateau.  If all of this was above sea level, plopped in Louisiana, it would be the tallest mountain on earth, and the volcanic plateau would be the highest plateau on the planet, but most of it is submarine, so, just like the off-shore base of Carstensz Pyramid (the highest island high point), it does not count.

The last problem with this measure of Mauna Kea, is that it ignores the existence of the other five volcanoes on Hawaii, like Mauna Loa, elevation 13,679' (120' lower than Mauna Kea), which is said to be the biggest in terms of basal area and volume (which may need to be considered at another time).  Looking at the broad saddle between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, the base-to-peak elevation can be measured as little as about 6500', impressive, but hardly the most impressive peak on the planet.

The 2000 m (6500') base-to-peak elevation of Mauna Kea's south side.  Vertical scale from 0 to 4000 m, no vertical exaggeration.

If measured from the lowest point on the sea floor that lava from Mauna Kea has reached, to the highest point on the mountain, Mauna Kea reaches an impressive 33,500'.  This height towers above Mt. Everest's height above sea level, and Everest's base-to-peak.  However, if submarine mountain bases are in play for largest mountain, than volcanoes will never overcome the mountain building of plate tectonics.  In the same way that the Himalaya tower above the Hawaiian volcanoes, coastal and submarine mountain belts built through plate tectonics tower over the Hawaiian seamounts.

The island nation of Tuvalu is expected to be the first nation to be destroyed by sea level rise.  Though not home to lowest country high point (a title belonging to the Maldives at just under 8'), Tuvalu's 15' high point is a sand dune that has already been over topped in a storm surge.  However, if bathymetry is taken as elevation, Tuvalu becomes not an island nation, but a mountain top nation.  It seems strange that a nations crowning a 15,000' mountain will be the first to be destroyed by a sea level rise of mere inches.

The mountain top nation of Tuvalu will likely be the first nation to be overcome by sea level rise.  Vertical scale -4000 to 0 m, no vertical exaggeration.

Tuvalu, is not a great example of the massive mountains built by plate tectonics, as it too is volcanic.  Mount Lamlam rises 1,332' above sea level, marking Guam's highest point.  This unassuming island high point does not seem like it would be a candidate for tallest mountain in the world, but the Mariana Trench runs just off Guam's coast.  From the Challenger Deep to the top of Mt. Lamlam, Guam's base-to-peak elevation is a stunning rise of up to 37,248', almost 4,000' taller than Mauna Kea.  If measuring from the Challenger Deep to the top of Mt. Lamlam is a stretch (the Mt. Lamlam massif rises above the Challenger Deep, but the peak arguably rises only out of the Mariana Trench), even conservative estimates rank Mt. Lamlam as a 10,000 m peak, putting the peak in contention for the title of tallest.

Guam's inconsequential Mt. Lamlam, possibly the tallest mountain in the world.  Vertical scale from -10,000 to 0 m, no vertical exaggeration.

While Mauna Kea is an impressive volcano, changing the definition of "tallest" to distract from what a mountain is does not respect the peak.  Denali is not taller than Mt. Everest, nor is Mauna Kea.  Each peak is impressive for what it is.  There are plenty of unnamed peaks in Alaska, and throughout the world, that are majestic, and staggering in scale, regardless of how they compare to the other peaks of the world.  The tallest mountain on Earth is Mt. Everest by any rational measure, all the other mountains are spectacular in their own way.

Running for the Next Bend

"Anyone can run 50 miles," I said to a small group of people at breakfast.  I said it knowing that obviously not anyone can run fifty miles, but rather to illustrate a point.  My point was that my running is not amazing in the few truly long distance runs I have done, but rather they are experiences in the wilderness that are obtainable to those who want them. 

My breakfast comment met some resistance, the usual, "I can't" response is the easiest to deal with.  I told the group, "that is your first problem, you have already decided without trying."  I know I am being a bit of a smartmouth when I say these things, but the point has to be made.  "How far do you run right now," I ask? 

"Say one usually runs five miles," I continue, "when you finish that, run it again, until you have run it ten times, 50 miles."  This attitude convinces few people, but there are two points to be made.  First, thinking about 50 miles is really hard, but thinking about increments getting there, those are each manageable.  I do not think anyone can truly set off to cover a great distance, those people will probably never see that they are making progress.  Rather, the success at covering great distances comes to those who pursue the next bend in the trail.

I find road running to be drudgery.  I am not a snob about this, I just lack the motivation to plod along the pavement, in pursuit of a distance, a pace, or a time.  I run on trails to experience a new place, or something new in my own mind.  In my pursuit of running great trails though, I, at some point, had to start by forgetting everything anyone ever tried to teach me about running.

My first marathon I ran while in high school, and I did it more or less off the couch.  I do not want to gloat, some people can do things off the couch, and some cannot, I count myself among the lucky.  Regardless, no one claims that running a marathon off the couch is possible, thus my point is simply that I was apparently never very good at listening to stories about what I can and cannot, or should and should not do.  This, is the second lesson in my pursuit of running.

How most people learned to run was by doing laps around a track or gymnasium, while a whistle-weilding adult in a track suit told you to go faster.  It was about going nowhere as fast as you could.  This form of running is purified to it essential elements on the treadmill.  Pace, distance, and television show re-runs are all that matter in the fitness running of conveyor belt health.  Instead of a race to nowhere, why not an experience in going somewhere?

The runner will soon forget about pace, time, and racing.  Meet your run where your running is.  Walking hills is often sensible, not shameful, because there may be another hill just out of sight.  Stopping to enjoy the scenery, chatting with friends, or simply catching your breath is part of the journey.  Forget trite running rules, and instead dream of the best places to run.

In pursuit of the best places to run, I have compiled a list of trails and destinations.  These dreams of better runs of the future power me through painful runs of the present.  Memories of past great runs, create dreams, and a running euphoria that makes present runs better than previous runs.  Running for the journey creates a cycle of better and better runs!

Using a week of free time, Sarah and I are currently doing some reconnaissance travelling and running to investigate a long held dream destination, Switzerland.  In this land of mountains, trails, and easy to use civilization, the potential for trail running seems to exceed what I had hoped.  With just a week, I will walk away from this trip not with an understanding of Swiss culture, the secret sights of Switzerland, or really having even "been to" any place in this country.  I will walk away from this with 13 miles of sun-scorched views of the Matterhorn, trail maps to plan a proper running trip, and dreams and memories for when the next bend in the trail seems like a little too far to go.

(Pictures and stories of Switzerland soon to come!)

The Ineffectiveness of Terrorism

I spent from the 15th to the 22nd of April in Boston.  The timing of my trip has been a topic of conversation with many in- and out-side of Boston.  Most people assume that the terror attack, and subsequent events negatively affected my time in the city.  It is true that a few blocks of one street were closed, as was one subway stop, and the entire city for one day.  Yet, I got to see Boston show itself, and that is a rare time to visit.

Before my writing becomes a Whedonesque take on Sun Tzu, I spent a week visiting a friend, in a historic city, at a time when the whole city was reacting to, talking about, and recovering their lives after a national event.  An event that seems to have captured the attention of the world, and mostly overshadowed an industrial explosion that any other week, would have been all that was on the American news.  Unlike the average week in Beantown, I feel like I saw the citizens of a metropolis share something, and that is a rare occurrence.

Without the marathon bombing, I would have walked away from Boston a little disappointed that Newbury Street is dominated by corporate stores, and that Dunkin' Donuts seem to outnumber Starbucks 3:1, which in turn seems to outnumber local coffeeshops 2:1, making Boston seem to have about as much character as a shopping mall where everyone wears a shirt that says the name of the mall.  (I profoundly apologize to any proud Bostonians that I am offending, but the Old Corner Bookstore is a Chipotle!)

Being in Boston during the bombing does not change the businesses that occupy the historic buildings, but it did allow the people of Boston to shine through where they may not have otherwise.  Walking around Boston with Denise, amidst a sea of "Boston Strong" signs and impromptu memorials, she asked, "does terrorism work"?  (Which she may not have actually asked, but I am definitely giving her the credit for the initial idea.)

In thinking further about this idea, I have thought about all the times that I have said, "If you do that, then the terrorists win."  I have also read myriad comments from internet users asserting that when the police put the city on "lockdown," the terrorist won.  In the case of this incident, we have charged the surviving person accused of being the terrorist, and though we do not know why (or truly if), this 19 year old kid did this, it is hard to look at his situation and argue that he won anything.  Harder still to say that his older brother, who died in his pursuit of whatever he thought he was pursuing, won anything either.  In fact, it seems that those attacked can lose, but that the attackers can never win.

In the case of the attacks in Boston, Bostonians seem to have redoubled their pride in the city, and may have even gone on some defiant runs.  I have no doubt that while there may be additional security, the 2014 Boston Marathon will not be just a city crazed about running, but a country crazed about the patriotism of a running city.  In essence, what the perpetrators did solidified Boston's and America's resolve in what ever it is that the Boston Marathon represents in this culture.

If, instead of isolated attacks, there were repeated attacks, would Bostonian's be shaken in their love of their marathon?  How many years of bombings at the finish line would it actually take before people feared Boylston Street?  Repeated attacks definitely increase the level of terror a populace experiences.  In talking to people who lived in DC during the Beltway sniper attacks, it seemed that they were actually successful at creating terror.  According to first-person accounts I have heard, people would run from their car to the grocery store out of fear.  Statistically, the incidence of a person in the affected area being killed by the sniper was about 0.018/100,000 people.  Had the people of DC run from bacon to prevent heart disease, with a national mortality rate of 268.8/100,000 people, they would have been much better off!  (An American is more than 15,000 times more likely to die of heart disease than a person in DC being killed by the sniper.  DC has a higher incidence of heart disease than the national average, making a resident of the DC area something like 50% more likely to die of heart disease than the average American (gross estimation of CDC data), or, very roughly, 23,000 times more likely than sniper fire.)

For three weeks, one city experienced terrorism caused terror, but the sniper did not win!  Using any act of terror committed in the US as an example, I would say that, in the end, life has continued, more or less, as normal.  Reacting to 11 September 2001 the US created the Patriot Act, two wars, countless dead and wounded, etcetera.  Americans certainly did not come out unscathed, and the world would be a better place had the attacks not occurred, but we are far from checkmate.  Even in places with more terror attacks, the Tamils have, or are much closer to, losing their war in Sri Lanka, despite years of terrorism directed at the Sinhalese.  Both Israelis and Palestinians have directed terrorism at each other, but after decades of violence, is one side any closer to a meaningful "victory"?

People's beliefs are difficult to change, but hearts and minds are not won by violence, but peace and prosperity.  Every country will struggle with how to preserve quality of life, provide safety, and allow its people civil liberties in the face of hatred and violence.  In retrospect we can debate whether shelter-in-place orders, police actions, and new laws benefit life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but I think we need not look any further than Boston to know that the terrorists will never win.

The Microwave

I think it must have been about 1992, 25 years after the first microwave was released, my parents loaded the family into the car to change how life at home would run for the rest of our lives.

We headed into the darkness, and eventually turned onto the long driveway of some family friends. I have no idea what price was paid, but my dad loaded a hulking microwave oven into the back of the car. Included with the oven was a bag of microwave popcorn, and we drove back to our house, excitement about the new appliance thick in the car.

My dad carried in the giant brown box with a large window and formidable dial into the kitchen. The height of the unit slid just barely beneath the cabinetry, and was nestled into a corner, decreasing the available counter space in the small kitchen significantly. The family dog, still in her formative years, could sense the excitement, and gathered with the family in the kitchen, braving the treacherous footing of the linoleum. My mom opened the plastic of the individually wrapped flat, folded bag of popping corn, the smell of butter filling the kitchen, like a manifestation of the anticipation itself.

Instructions were diligently read from the bag, and the microwave settings were validated, the timer set, door opened, and the bag placed in the center of a serving platter-sized carousel, ensuring the correct side was down. Then the moment arrived, the chrome “push to cook” button was pushed for the first time in an Aillaud household. The oven hummed to life, and the bag began its slow rotation in the illuminated chamber.

Nothing happened.

Like kids waiting for Santa, the seconds dragged on. With tail poised to wag, the dog watched us watch the microwave.

Pop!

The shock of the noise echoed through the house. My mom exclaimed about the magic of popping corn in such a futuristic way. The time between pops decreased, until a cacophony of exploding kernels overwhelmed the house, now brimming with the chemical smell of movie theater popcorn. In a mirrored crescendo, the popping from the now bursting bag slowed. Not having realized the insignificance of pushing the start button, the true moment in which our lives forever changed rang through the house.

Ding!

With as much suspicion as excitement, the steaming bag was removed from the microwave, an intruder into our family's lives that may not be fully welcome. The popcorn was distributed into over sized plastic cups saved from stops at McDonald's on the way home from Fairbanks. Even the anxious dog was served a share in a bowl. We all agreed that it was amazing to have popcorn as a treat of near instant gratification.

My parents had it repaired over buying a new one when it faltered in the mid-90s, and it lasted into the late 2000s. A microwave has been in my kitchen ever since, but sometimes I am reminded of the excitement of the night we got that first microwave. I have attempted to share this memory with others, but I generally have to find an older generation to appreciate the memory.  I know I was not alone in my amazement at the late arrival of the microwave that evening, as until her dying day, the family dog regarded the smell of butter flavor and the ding of the microwave as an indication of shared popcorn.

Fat Kid

I do not remember the first time I was called fat as a kid. I remember in third grade, Danny, a rail thin kid calling me fat mercilessly. I complained to my mom about it, she listened, and eventually offered that I could make fun of him for being so skinny. Offering the quip, “you're so skinny you have to run around in the shower to get wet.” My mother and I laughed about that, but the reality remains that the fat kid gets made fun of, and the skinny kid doesn't.

Like the extra weight that earned my monicker, “fat kid” stuck. Eventually, I would learn to appreciate being called fat over other names, because I was not trying to hide being fat. In fact, I owned being fat. While other kids were fatter, I could comfortably hate myself publicly for not having a perfect body. Beyond the body shape, I think much of it had to do with being bad at sports. My fatness stemmed not necessarily from my body mass index, but from my inability to hit a small leather ball with a wooden rod, or to not be able to put an orange ball through an elevated orange metal ring. Could I have worked on these, my brother did, so probably, but I can think of nothing less interesting than a group of people committed to the movement of a ball on a court or field.

This attitude does not win prized pecking order posts within the school age community. I was picked last for every game in PE, which was almost always matball, a variation of kickball that I was no better at than the original. Even amongst my cousins I was the game loser in the group of four. Fat transcended the states, and while I was certainly the fattest of my two cousins and Jason, it was really commentary on my prowess at the games that we played.

Accordingly, I abhorred the playing of team sports, and really the existence of these sports in general. In high school, desperate to fit in, I shot rifle, a sport that is “team” only once the scores are tallied. While shooting is not easy, the ability to lay, kneel, and stand in one place for many hours fails to convince almost everyone of unfatness. To increase my marketability to my peers, I was talked into playing baseball my freshman year.

For many of the baseball games that season I was player number ten, meaning that my presence on the team ensured that we would not forfeit. The coach could not be begrudged to play me saving the one inning that another player angered him to the point that he put me in to punish him. Given our record that year, there may have been more dignity for the team if they had forfeited, but Jason got to play baseball his senior year, so wearing tight pants, and watching his games was worth going out.

I never actually played long enough to have a record, and I don't think anyone but parents and girlfriends ever came to a baseball game. Accordingly, baseball did nothing to save me from being a fat kid. What did was Landen. Landen was a smart kid with little ambition in his studies, who chose instead to apply himself to the avoidance of school. To help him and his friends, he needed the credibility of a nerdy kid who never did anything wrong. Landen got my services, in an unspoken exchange of credibility. I could give his antics the cover they needed, and in return he could give me a moniker that was not derogatory. Fat kid, fag, and nerd were nearly replaced by Bad Ass.

Bad Ass, a misnomer that fit my initials, and “BA” for short, became more commonly used than my own name. It was so pervasive in the high school that adults began calling me BA to avoid confusion with the other Brians of my small home town. While the names changed, and somehow being known as Bad Ass seemed to trick a few people into perceiving me as being bad ass, inside, I knew that I was not Bad Ass, I knew that I was still the same fat kid that had been ridiculed for his entire public life.

The fear of being found out is, in many ways, worse than the fear of actually being something. While I was never happy being the fat kid in my class, I was not afraid of losing much. I was already at the bottom of the pecking order. Once I became BA, I had something to lose. I began attempting to hide myself even more than I already was. I was no longer trying to preserve myself as fat, but as actually some sort of cool. I embraced the idea of a Chris Farley or John Belushi, certainly nerdy, certainly not athletic, but cool all the same. The problem with this is that I was not cool, and I knew it.

Belushi and Farley tried to be cool so much that they killed themselves in the process, so even my role models saw the flaw in their cover. My escape was not drugs, but college. In the later years of high school I segregated myself from the students that I had spent my life with. I worked jobs with fervor, and avoided contact with people outside of a small group of friends. I took less than a full load of courses, and graduated early to move away from the fear of being discovered. What I had not realized is that I had become accustomed to running.

In university I would restyle myself as a climber, and general outdoors enthusiast. Like today's hipster kids, I was desperate to find a group that would never think to discover my weaknesses. If everything I did was physical, no one would think that I was actually the fat kid. I started riding my bike, and in an attempt to impress a girl, started running. I was active in white water, and a bunch of clubs. I was anything but the fat kid, and I would sometimes start to trick myself into believing my own cover story, like the undercover cop in so many movies.

With time I would find mountain biking, and distance running. These days I do not climb very much, and my mountain bike sits disassembled in a storage unit in Western Washington. I keep running though. My weight fluctuates with other factors in my life, but I have been able to do some long and beautiful runs. Rationally, I doubt many of the kids who called me fat so long ago could keep up, but that does not matter. Out on the trail, running for the joy of running is never far ahead of running away from the insults of childhood. Sometimes I find myself putting a hand against my stomach, comforted and disgusted to find that my gut has not magically faded since the beginning of my run. Instead I feel an extended truffle shuffle, jiggling along the trail with me. Some days this motivates me to push a little harder, to run a little faster to stay ahead of the past, but most days, a voice inside of me says, “I know who you are, you're the fat kid,” and my run slows to a defeated walk.