Diamond-Cut Life

With Summer Solstice and the first day of summer coming up on Saturday June 21, my theme this week will be earth-friendly recreation, or Fun In The Time Of Global Warming.

Professional work tends to keep us up in our heads, thinking so hard we practically get divorced from our bodies. I really hate that about work.

My friends and I got out of our heads and into our bodies yesterday morning when we piled into a van at 6:15 a.m., drove to Hillsboro Stadium and did the hard but fun work of running a 10k and half-marathon along the country roads of Helvetia, Oregon. Colleen and I did the 10k (6.2 miles), leaving us free to then cheer the four guys across the half-marathon finishing line. And they deserved it — the grit that running 13 miles takes is, in my view, heroic.

All this labor-intensive, low-carbon recreation earned us a veritable party afterward in the dazzling sun with live music, beer and burgers (well, a veggie-burger for me). The delicious Hefeweizen, well-laced with lemon, felt to me like golden wheat fields and aromatic citrus groves getting married in my mouth. I never was more tickled with a beer — and all this, before noon.

To clarify: walkers as well as runners participated, about 4,000 in total, from teenagers to folks in the 70’s and 80’s. The inclusive, intergenerational nature of this kind of sporting event makes it a community-builder as well as low-carbon.

Our group’s ride back to Portland was lively, too. Have I mentioned that carpooling is much more rich in fun than driving alone, on top of saving money and emissions? The banter, joking and exchange of interesting information keeps me more entertained than most movies currently coming out of Hollywood.

The Helvetia Run and outdoor party illustrates that it’s possible to have lots of fun while using minimal amounts of fossil fuels. Our carbon footprint would have been even lower if our van had been a hybrid, or fueled with biodiesel from used restaurant oil.

Next post: the problem that the popular Hood To Coast run and jet-skiing share in common, and need to solve.

Photo courtesy of eoshea

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