Barefoot Deck Construction In My Dreams

Hey. Well, the insomnia is back. I don't understand it this time at all - I am bone-tired. Or was - just after dinner I was yawning and groaning, dragging myself to those post-dinner chores like washing the dishes and smiling at my children and acknowledging my wife and pretending to listen to people with the very last fumes of my day's worth of energy. But then Chris, Q's friend who was here for a sleepover, got sick around 10:00, and I drove out with Q to take him home. And then I tried to catch a few minutes of Keith Olbermann. And then during a commercial I switched over and found an old episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that I hadn't seen. (Lame as hell - Wesley frickin' Crusher figured prominently. If that TV hadn't cost us a week's salary I'd have thrown the remote at it.) And then Clarabelle had to go out for one more quick turn so she won't suffer in her crate tonight. And then it was 11:30, and I re-read a couple of portions of "Born to Run". And then I was all wired up, thinking about running.

Because I ran today. Four miles, in one solid loop that didn't repeat itself at all. I've been feeling so fragile lately that I do all my running on a 1.5-mile loop around the house, so that if anything does start to hurt, I can stop and be no more than half a mile's walk from ice and a sympathetic ear. But today, dammit, I was going to go four miles. So I went to Google Earth, mapped out a route exactly that long, and hit the road in the Runamocs.

It was great. I don't try to go fast anymore - I just try to go. Go easy, go light. Just go. Speed will come when my body's ready, when I have slowly built up every susceptible muscle and piece of connective tissue to be up to the job with ease. And in the meantime, I run with an easy joy that doesn't care how fast it goes. Mind you, I do fantasize as I run about the day when I'll once again be able to do six, seven, eight miles. And then about the first marathon I'll run. And beyond that; I do fantasize about going fast. But I don't actually go fast - I just revel in the complete lack of pain anywhere, especially in my feet.

I go barefoot as often as I can. I worked on the deck today (more on that below) for hours and every minute of it was barefoot. I walked the dog around the neighborhood barefoot, dropped T off at day care barefoot. And my feet love it. They love being challenged and stretched with every step, using their muscles in ways that make them interact with the ground. Tomorrow we're going onion harvesting at Caretaker Farm, and I plan to do the whole thing barefoot. Why not? It's bare earth and weeds - the most annoying thing about the dirty work at the farm is the dirt in your shoes. What if you have none? The dirt just rolls off your feet, or pleasantly between your toes. It'll be great.

Re-reading Born to Run, I came across a part where someone who agreed to run the last fifty miles of a hundred-mile race with a Tarahumara Indian runner was struck by the sound they made as they ran. Just a very gentle sort of tap, touch, stroke on the ground, made by their sandals. They didn't pound, they didn't go whap-whap-whap. They treated the ground gently so that it would treat them gently. And it struck me that I have been remarking at that very same sound lately as I run in the Runamocs. There's no scraping, no scuffing. just touch, touch, touch. My feet feel far better at the end of a run than they did at the beginning. It's very exciting and I can't wait to do it again.

Not tomorrow, though. Absolutely not tomorrow. I am not pushing too far, too fast, too soon again.

All that excited thought kept me up. And then the deck! Well, a couple of revelations, first. Here's the biggest one: The Titan Post Anchor. This thing is going to solve every single one of the problems you didn't read about in the last post. The posts are set directly into the wood of the deck, through the decking. Brilliant - I've ordered seven of them for the seven posts I have and will definitely be setting. And then I spent today getting ready to place them. Now I just have to figure out where in hell to get something called a "hole saw".

First, though, before I can set them, I had to trim the edges of the deck to be able to accurately measure where the posts will go. So I did that, with some semi-skilled slicing with my brand-new circular saw. I'm very proud of it - it's this model. I've named it Betsy, in honor of our fallen Wednesday Barefoot Soccer comrade. Not just to honor her, though - Betsy and my new saw have a lot in common. They are both treasured by me; Brad, Betsy's husband, owns an identical model, so she lives in both our hearts; she is precise and exact and causes beauty to be created everywhere she goes; and if you get in her way, she will quickly and efficiently reduce you to sawdust. While making a very strong sound. We evened out that deck nicely, Betsy and I. 'Course, before I could do that, I had to put down the last board. So I did that first.

Now, when I did that, a problem arose. Somehow, I had been hanging all the joists, or at least the ones in the middle, a little too low. Such that this last decking board, which rests on the rim joists, sits a good quarter inch higher than the boards adjacent. Meaning that the spot where I install the posts on that whole side will have one half sitting on the low board, and one half sitting on the high one. There are a number of possible solutions - the Titan Post Anchor comes with washers that you can use to shim up one side or the other to bring it into level. But I'm not going to want a quarter-inch gap on one side (the visible-from-the-picnic-table side) of the post anchor. I could also chisel out a seat for the post anchor in the higher board, but that would then look bad from the angle of the person who walks down the stairs and out into our yard, with the posts quite near eye level. Nor do I like the veeeery visible height difference between that last board and the ones adjacent. I put the board down, and set all the screws, having decided to live with the difference...but now that I think about it in my mind's eye, and picture that damn difference in height and all the problems it causes, I say to myself the following:

"Joe, you gotta pull that board up, trim down the joist a bit, and then replace the board."

I've pulled one board up already - they're made of plastic, so with a little pry bar pressure, they pop right up. Then the screws can just be unscrewed and removed.

How am I going to trim the end joists?

Betsy.

Other news...Heck, you know what? I'm tired now. I think I can go to bed again! Tell you what: If it doesn't work out, I'll come back and tell you all about the nifty parallel I found for our continuing to call Barefoot Soccer "Barefoot Soccer", even though, the next time we do it, people (except probably me) won't be barefoot.

Aw, heck, it won't take long, so I'll just tell you:

It's like people calling two-by-fours "two-by-fours". They're not actually two inches by four inches, and everybody knows it. But they still keep calling them that.

See? Isn't that clever? How I saw that? That those two things are the same? Aren't you proud?

Good night.