Steve Guntli
Feature Writing
A Tour of Whatcom County Prison (Published Sep. 2, 2015)
The Whatcom County Jail was born out of date.
Built in 1983, it complied with state standards in place since the 1960s. The facility was originally built to hold 148 inmates, but remodels and retrofits over the last three decades have raised the bed count to 280. And that’s still not enough: on average, the building holds about 350 inmates, according to a report by Whatcom County Sheriff Bill Elfo. In 2013, a county jail planning task force determined the need for a new jail was “critical” due to overcrowding and unsafe conditions.
I was part of a small group of media delegates and local government officials invited to tour the facility in downtown Bellingham. A new county jail facility is in the planning stages, and voters will have a chance to approve the county’s jail plan during this November’s general election. That plan looks increasingly likely to proceed without Bellingham’s help, as the city council balked at a financing plan that proposed a 0.2 percent sales tax increase. The county has developed plan B, reducing the proposed size of the facility from 521 beds to 400, at a cost of about $75 million.
Our tour guide was Ray Baribeau. Baribeau is an associate chaplain at the jail. He’s been working with inmates for most of his adult life. He’s pleasant and unassuming, but beneath the genial surface is genuine frustration at the poor quality of the facility.
Before the tour began, Terry shared a pamphlet showing the SCORE (South Correctional Entity) regional jail in Des Moines, Washington. Whatcom County is consulting with that facility’s designers on its new facility in Ferndale. The pictures depict well-lit, wide-open spaces, top quality medical facilities and floor-to-ceiling windows in the lobbies and employee break rooms that flood the rooms with natural light. It was a stark contrast to the facility we were to walk through.
The employee break room sets the tone. Three small tables and two ratty couches are haphazardly crammed together around a small flat screen TV, jammed between a row of banged-up lockers and an oversized vending machine filled with energy drinks. The only glimpse of natural light comes through a row of tiny, opaque windows that line three of the walls near the ceiling. An officer jokes that they have the second-best view in the building, after a cell in the third floor solitary confinement. The only difference is you can see out the windows in the solitary cell.
The rest of the jail makes a similarly ignominious impression. The elevators lurch and judder uncomfortably as they slowly change floors. The fluorescent fixtures are cracked and flickering. Paint is chipped, concrete cracking; the lettering on some of the doors has worn away, and in some places was hastily redrawn with magic marker.
We visit one of the first-floor dormitories, called “tanks.” This tank has about 10 bunks and an open floor space. Inside, men gather close to the window and start making zoo animal noises.
“Y’all here to see some criminals?” one shouts. “Take a good look.”
This tank was originally designed for men’s work release but was converted to house overflow. Up to 30 people can live in each of the dorms at a time. Baribeau is critical of the dormitory system.
“Dorms like this are a recipe for trouble,” he said. “You put a bunch of guys together, and even if they’re normally well-behaved, they’ll start needling each other, and that’s when things get violent.”
The problem is especially acute when sex offenders are brought in amongst the general population. Baribeau said sex offenders tend to be well-behaved when kept on their own but are targeted when put in large groups. Now, most sex offenders are kept under heavier security on the second or third floor, as much for their protection as anything else, but sometimes there just isn’t space to segregate them.
The better method, Baribeau said, is “pod” cells, two people per room united by a large common area. The SCORE facility from the pamphlet used this design.
The kitchen is a long, narrow space on the first floor. The floor, a rust-colored rubber surface, is only about three months old. The county paid to put it in after the health department found the cracked, worn tiles too much of a slipping hazard. About a dozen inmates are working in the kitchen, music blaring. They politely turn the music down as Baribeau leads the tour through and proceed to mug for the cameras and joke with us. These are minimum risk inmates, what would once have been known as “trustees,” and they’re given a lot of leeway for their good behavior.
The kitchen facility was designed to serve 145 prisoners three meals a day. The kitchen manager tells us they now make 370 meals three times a day, including the 135 meals they send to off-site work groups. A spare room had to be converted into bulk food storage to deal with the demand. That room is located on the third floor, on the opposite end of the facility, so crews haul carts there and back a few times a day.
The food storage isn’t the only space that’s been repurposed. Baribeau is constantly pointing out rooms that used to be this or were converted from that. The first-appearance courtroom on the second floor was once the commissary, where inmates could buy snacks or decks of cards. A room once designated solely for GED classes is now the multi-purpose room, hosting Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous and Bible study groups in addition to GED classes.
We come across a stack of thin mattresses resting in long plastic trays. These trays are called “boats,” and they’re used when the jail is over capacity and inmates need to sleep on the floor. The mattresses are thin, and most are torn at the seams and spewing wads of cotton.
“If you have two people in a cell and need to add a third, that third person is called the ‘rug,’” Baribeau said.
Medium- and maximum-security cells are located on the second floor. It’s after 5 p.m. when we take our tour, so most of the inmates are on lockdown, but some are left to roam the racks, if only to collect their medication from nurse Brady, a cheerful man in his 20s.
Baribeau is well liked amongst guards and inmates alike. He teaches Bible study a few times a week and knows most of the inmates by name. He chats with some of them on our tour, his tone shifting from amiable to disappointed when he sees a familiar face back behind bars.
One inmate, secluded in the sex offender’s block, kneels close to the ground to chat with Baribeau through the food tray slot. He explains to Baribeau that he’s on his way to prison.
“For the same thing?” Baribeau asks. The inmate nods.
Inmates on the second and third floors have most of their conversations with the outside world through those food slots, unless they’re using the visitation cells located on each floor. Baribeau jokes that old guys like him have learned to bring a stool to spare their knees.
Officer Tim Kiele pauses the tour and invites us to come into the control room. He’s enthusiastic and friendly, and the few times he interacts with inmates over the intercom, it seems he’s well respected by the population. The county spent $3.5 million to update the control center five years ago. Kiele said the new system is a huge improvement over the last, but he still has concerns over some of the antiquated wiring.
“As far as I’m concerned, this new system is a band-aid,” he said. “We still have to address the wiring and the floor plan. If there were ever a fire, all of these guys would be gone.”
Baribeau echoes this sentiment later in the tour.
“There are two things you pray for when you enter this building,” Baribeau said. “No earthquakes and no fires.”
The fire escape routes, which are far too narrow to easily accommodate the population, are located at the far end of the hallway. Each floor has several cracks along the surface. In one section, a small gauge used to monitor seismic activity and structural integrity has been placed over a crack like a band-aid.
While Baribeau was critical of the facility, he had nothing but praise for the jail’s employees.
“These people work so hard every day, and believe me, this is not an easy job,” he said.
We arrive on the third floor, which houses female inmates and the solitary confinement wing. “Solitary” proves to be a bit of a misnomer: most of the solitary cells, which by design are meant to keep antisocial or violent offenders away from the population, have been modified to house two or more. Only the most extreme cases are isolated. One room, the one the officer described as having the best view in the building, is meant as a shower facility for solitary inmates. When we visited, four men were sleeping on bunks in the room. Baribeau seemed perturbed by this since beds were available elsewhere.
Near the solitary wing were two tanks used to house inmates with severe mental or physical health requirements, or those in protective custody. The medical facilities are located on the second floor.
“It’s criminal that we have people with medical needs on a different floor from the medical facility,” Baribeau said.
The medical facilities have two examination rooms and a small staff of nurses. A psychologist visits the facility a few times a week. Whatcom County Council has promised more money for mental health and prevention programs in the new county jail, with 8,000 square feet earmarked for mental health facilities.
Baribeau leads us back downstairs, joking with guards on our way. Squinting at the sunlight outside, we depart, grateful to be out and that we all have better views to look forward to than the guards at the Whatcom County Jail.
News Writing
Woman sentenced for crashing stolen bus in Blaine (July 1, 2015)
An Everett woman who crashed a stolen school bus in Blaine’s Marine Park in May was sentenced to prison on June 25.
Elizabeth Jane Ray, 54, will spend one year and one day in state prison. She was charged with second degree assault on a police officer, possession of a stolen vehicle and two other felony charges, but pleaded guilty to reduced charges of third-degree assault, possession of a stolen vehicle and attempting to elude police. She must also pay $81,000 in damages.
On May 1, Ray stole a small yellow school bus from the Stanwood-Camano School District in Snohomish County and proceeded to drive north toward the Canadian border. Blaine police officer Tim Richardson spotted the bus when Ray stopped for gas in Blaine. Ray drove the bus into Richardson’s patrol car, nearly hitting Richardson in the process, and fled west along Marine Drive.
The bus eventually crashed into a log barrier, at which point Ray fled the vehicle and jumped into Semiahmoo Bay. Witnesses at the scene reported hearing Ray repeatedly yell, “God will save me!” as she attempted to swim north towards White Rock.
Blaine police commandeered a powerboat and for 20 minutes tried to convince Ray to climb aboard. Eventually, fearing Ray would become hypothermic, Blaine officers jumped in and retrieved her. At the time of her arrest, Ray gave the name “Elizabeth J. Winters,” which was later determined to be false.
Ray was previously arrested in Snohomish County in 2013. According to court records, Ray was charged with second-degree assault for breaking into her elderly mother’s Marysville home, assaulting her with mace and a wooden drawer and stealing several valuables from the house.
Ray and her public defender Maialisa Vanyo did not explain why Ray stole the school bus. A court-ordered mental health evaluation found Ray has a history of mental health issues, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and other undiagnosed problems.
Whatcom County Superior Court Judge Deborra Garrett sentenced Ray to a year and a day, slightly over the usual 9–12 month sentence that is standard for Ray’s charges. The extra day gives Ray an opportunity to serve time in the state prison system, with access to better mental health care. No charges are expected in Snohomish County.
Driver found not guilty in deaths of two teens (Published May 11, 2016)
A Bellingham man standing trial for the deaths of two Ferndale teens was found not guilty in Whatcom County Superior Court on May 4.
William Jeffrey Klein, 35, had been charged with two counts of vehicular homicide and two counts of vehicular assault after he drove his Toyota 4Runner into a class of Windward High School students walking on the sidewalk. Two teens, Shane Ormiston, 18, and Gabriel Anderson, 15, were killed in the accident, and two others were seriously injured. Klein and his 3-year-old son, who was a passenger, were unharmed.
Troopers at the scene asked Klein if he had used drugs, who replied he used cannabis frequently. A blood test showed he did not have any drugs or alcohol in his system at the time of the accident.
During his interview, Klein told troopers he had fallen asleep at the wheel. Michael Brodsky, Klein’s defense attorney, presented expert testimony to the effect that his client had an undiagnosed sleep disorder called obstructive sleep apnea that had been preventing him from getting a good night’s sleep.
Klein’s coworkers from Trader Joe’s in Bellingham testified that Klein had been looking run down in the hours before the crash.
In addition to coworkers, Brodsky and prosecutor Dave McEachran interviewed state troopers, two experts in sleep disorders and the surviving students who were struck by Klein’s car.
McEachran claimed Klein drove with disregard for the safety of others, and thus his case qualified under the state’s vehicular homicide laws. However, the jury decided Klein was not guilty of all charges.
McEachran said the case would not be appealed. Both families of the teens who were killed have filed wrongful death suits against Klein, both of which are pending.
Outdoorsman and Birch Bay advocate Wolf Bauer dies at 103 (Published January 27, 2016)
Wolf Bauer, a legendary outdoorsman, activist and engineer, has died at a care facility on San Juan Island. He was 103.
Bauer passed away on January 23, only two days after the Birch Bay Chamber of Commerce hosted a special presentation honoring his accomplishments and local impact. Bauer was the first to suggest the Birch Bay berm project, which will begin construction this fall.
Bauer was born in the Bavarian Alps on February 24, 1912. His family immigrated to Seattle when he was 13, and it was there Bauer developed a love of the outdoors. He graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in engineering, but was much more interested in a career in outdoor sports, particularly skiing and mountain climbing.
In 1935, Bauer became the first person to summit Mount Rainier from the north side. He went on to teach a highly influential series of mountaineering courses, which introduced Americans to European mountaineering techniques that have since become standard. Mountaineering historian Henry Majors would later call the courses “the single greatest, most influential and most enduring achievement in the history of Northwest climbing,” in The Northwest Mountaineering Journal. Among his pupils were Jim and Lou Whittaker, the first Americans to summit Mount Everest, and Lloyd Anderson, a founder of REI.
Bauer co-founded the Mountain Rescue Council and was president of the organization for its first six years. The council was the first organization of its kind in the United States and was responsible for dozens of daring mountain rescues.
Bauer was also a pioneer in water sports. In the late 1940s, Bauer introduced foldboat kayaking to the United States. Foldboats, small kayaks that can be folded in half for easy transportation, had been popular in Germany but were all but unheard of in the U.S. In 1948, he founded the Washington Foldboat Club and, along with other club members, mapped routes along many western Washington rivers. He also created the white-water rapid classification system that is still used today, ranking rapids in intensity from I to IV.
In the 1970s, Bauer began making a name for himself as an environmental activist and shoreline engineer. He launched a successful campaign to prevent the damming of the Green River Gorge and spent years petitioning the state to preserve eroding shorelines.
In 1975, he turned his attention to Birch Bay. The Birch Bay berm project was Bauer’s suggestion. According to Roland Middleton, special projects manager for Whatcom County public works and a longtime friend of Bauer, the current design for the project is nearly identical to one of Bauer’s original drawings from the ’70s.
“Wolf is a man who has lived more than 100 years and he didn’t spend any of it sitting on the couch,” Middleton said at the chamber meeting. “Every time I see him, the first thing he says to me is, ‘Roland, have you finished Birch Bay yet?’”
Middleton said he and other project leaders had proposed naming a section of the berm Bauer Point. The state told him he couldn’t name the section of the berm after Bauer until five years after Bauer’s death.
Bauer leaves a sister, a son, a daughter in law and several nieces, nephews and grandchildren behind. He was preceded in death by his ex-wife Harriet and son Laurence. Bauer will be laid to rest with a small ceremony on San Juan Island later this week.
On Saturday, February 6, Whatcom County public works is hosting an open public forum to take feedback on the berm project. The meeting will take place from 10 a.m. to noon at the Birch Bay Bible Community Church.
Movie studio pays “Barefoot Bandit” debts (December 9, 2015)
A major motion picture studio has stepped in to help a notorious Washington criminal known as the Barefoot Bandit.
Colton Harris-Moore, 24, of Camano Island made headlines around the world for embarking on an international crime spree when he was still a teenager. After his capture and conviction, the court ordered Harris-Moore to repay the more than $1.3 million in damages he caused during his two-year spree.
Last week, movie studio 20th Century Fox assumed Harris-Moore’s debts, in exchange for his life rights for a movie about him. The studio sent a check for $900,000 to the U.S. Marshal’s Service in November. Harris-Moore has already paid $216,000 of the debt with help from his large community of fans and followers. Officials believe Fox will be paying the remainder of Harris-Moore’s debt after the details of the film deal fall into place.
A teenager fleeing from an abusive home, Harris-Moore is suspected of committing more than 100 thefts and burglaries, mostly in Washington, Idaho and parts of Canada. In the early stages, authorities said he would break into homes to use the shower and steal items necessary to survive in the woods.
As his spree continued, he developed a taste for more expensive luxury items, especially vehicles. He was eventually charged with stealing multiple bicycles, cars, speedboats and airplanes, which he learned to fly with instructions from a manual and flight simulator video games.
He earned the nickname the “Barefoot Bandit” after committing some of his crimes shoeless, and for leaving a chalk outline of his bare feet at the scene of one of his crimes.
Harris-Moore’s flight from the law ended in May 2010 after a boat chase in the Bahamas. The Bandit had flown to Nassau in a stolen airplane and later attempted to flee authorities in a stolen speedboat. Police shot out the boat’s engine and brought Harris-Moore into custody. In 2012, he was sentenced to 6.5 years in prison. He is currently serving his sentence at the Stafford Creek Corrections Center in Aberdeen.
Harris-Moore’s crimes made him something of a cult figure, earning him a large Internet following. At the peak of his popularity, he had more than 60,000 Facebook followers, as well as numerous fan sites and message boards dedicated to following his exploits.
In 2012, Bob Friel published the bestselling book “The Barefoot Bandit: The True Tale of Colton Harris-Moore, New American Outlaw,” which Fox optioned as a movie.
Details are sparse on the Barefoot Bandit movie, but The Hollywood Reporter notes Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (“Milk”) is working with Harris-Moore on the screenplay.
The question of whether Harris-Moore can profit off the film is still open. Washington is one of 34 states to have enacted “Son of Sam” laws, named after the famous serial murderer from New York City, which prevent criminals from profiting from their crimes.
However, exceptions to these laws have been made in cases where the victims of the crimes were not killed or injured. The most notable exception was in 2000, when the court ruled Burien schoolteacher Mary Kay Letourneau could profit from books and movies made about her story.
Letourneau made headlines in the mid-90s when she was arrested for having sex with a 14-year-old student who she later married after he came of age.
Humor Writing
Uphill Battle: An Indoor Enthusiast Ventures Into the Great Outdoors
(Published December 30, 2015)
7:30 a.m.: My wife Nicole attempts to wake me up. At 7:30 a.m. On a Sunday. In these situations, I become devout, quoting whatever real-sounding scripture I can conjure that might buy me a few more minutes of sleep.
“Yea, for verily the Lord said that Sunday was a day of rest, and restliness is next to godliness, and verily thou shalt hit thine snooze button, which is holiest amongst all buttons, and thou shalt sleep for another 15 to 20 minutes.”
Nicole the Philistine doesn’t buy it and tells me to hurry up; we’ve got to get the snowshoes into the car if we’re going to meet our friends Tim and Jill by 9 a.m. She reminds me that this trip was my idea in the first place, that I’d been promising to spend more time outdoors, that we’d been living here for three years and had only been up to Mt. Baker once. I grumble and climb out of bed.
8 a.m.: I’m awake and semi-conscious, slurping down cereal and trying to remember why I pitched this story idea in the first place. It seems much more in keeping with my skill set to write a hard-hitting expose about playing “Donkey Kong” in my underwear. I’m wondering if I can convince Nicole that’s what the article is supposed to be about. No dice. I’m being particularly sulky, so Nicole pulls out the big guns: if I go on this snowshoeing trip, we will stop at the North Fork Beer Shrine on the way home. I finish my Corn Pops and get ready to go.
9 a.m.: We meet up with our friends and divvy up driving duties. Tim helpfully provides directions to Mt. Baker (turn right and keep going) and we cut through the thick Bellingham fog on our way to what must surely be a snowy bounty.
9:30 a.m.: We pass the beer shrine, and I almost drive the car into a ditch. It’s difficult to keep your eyes on the road when you have your nose pressed to the driver-side window glass like a kid drooling on a candy store window.
10 a.m.: We’re getting close to the Mount Baker Ski Area, and there’s still no snow. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen trees so green, covered in moss that dangle from their branches. I jokingly (not jokingly) suggest that the trip is off; we should go get beer and pizza now.
10:30 a.m.: We arrive at the Heather Meadows parking lot. Snow is there after all, thin and muddy though it may be. The parking lot is almost completely empty, a fact I am grateful for a few minutes later when I attempt to pull my snow pants up over my heavy boots and stumble around on the pavement.
11 a.m.: All of us are geared up and ready to head up the mountain, and I’m suddenly struck with a case of snowshoe envy. Everyone else in the group is rocking some cutting-edge shoes – futuristic diamond shapes with strong, solid bindings and little cheater bars installed on the heels to make hiking up steep slopes easier. Mine are a pair of hand-me-downs from the late ’80s that are only a few steps up the evolutionary ladder from tennis rackets. To make it worse, Nicole and I only have one set of poles, so we each take one and amble like 18th century dandies up the mountain. I vow two things before we set off on the hike: I’m never doing this again, and I’m going to buy new snowshoes.
11:30 a.m.: I grudgingly admit that I’m starting to enjoy myself. The air is crisp and clean, and it’s a perfectly pleasant 50 degrees out. Despite having to stop every five minutes to re-tighten the straps of my snowshoes, I feel like I’m getting a good amount of exercise and it’s not entirely unpleasant. Even though my cohorts assure me this isn’t the highest quality snow, it’s all about the same to me, and I’m having a good time.
11:45 a.m.: My positive attitude dissipates when I see the hill we have to climb. Everyone else approaches the hill as a moderate challenge. In my mind, it’s a sheer 90-degree trek up a flat, glassy surface with no handholds and a 100 percent probability of death. I try and fail to build my strength through the power of whining.
11:50 a.m.: About midway up the slope, I realize I can stop at any time to take photos, and no one will realize I’m out of breath and hideously out of shape. Just go ahead of me, guys. I’m a journalist. I’ve journalist-y things to do.
Noon: Finally, I make it to the top of the monster hill and have a moment to catch my breath and drink some water. I’m relieved when Tim and Jill assure me that was the worst it gets.
12:30 p.m.: Our destination is in sight. We opt to stick to the trails rather than forge our own way up the steep slope to the summit. My legs are burning, and I’m still stopping frequently to tighten my bindings, but now I also must chip awkwardly at the ice accumulating under my heels. My pole keeps falling apart, too.
1 p.m.: We finally arrive at Artist’s Point. I take a second to admire the view of gorgeous Mt. Baker and Mt. Shuksan and the verdant, fog-kissed valley stretching out below us. Then I flop over in the snow and refuse to stand up for another five minutes.
1:30 p.m.: Rested, refreshed, and fed on an essential feast of granola bars and cocoa, we strap our shoes back on and prepare to head back down. I’m feeling suddenly euphoric. I have energy to spare, and I can truly appreciate the grandeur of the view and the camaraderie I feel with my friends. Or maybe I’m just psyched about the beer and pizza. Let’s call it 50/50.
2 p.m.: The trip down is proving to be much faster than the trip up, mostly because we’re sliding down the steeper sections on our butts. John and Jill slide typically slide down first, and I achieve some fantastic speeds while riding down in their butt grooves. This goes all right until we reach the big monster slope. John veers off wildly and almost hits a tree. Jill frantically course-corrects to avoid following him. I can’t decide which route to take and go rogue, carving a third trail as I struggle to dig my snowshoes into the crumbling snow. I’m quite certain I hit about Mach 5 and got a little air before I was able to stop myself. I’m able to shake it off, and the rest of the walk down the slope is uneventful. By this point, I have more snow than feet in my shoes.
2:30 p.m.: We arrive back at the parking lot, and I learn to walk again. I’d gotten so used to Godzilla-stomping my way around the slopes that my normal stride feels anticlimactic. I’m soaked head to toe, sore and accumulating the beginnings of a sunburn, but feeling strangely accomplished. Warren Miller isn’t going to be making a short film about me anytime soon, but I’d set a goal and accomplished it with only minor physical injury. Besides, it made my wife happy.
3 p.m.: Beer. Pizza. Sweet manna from the heavens. This trip was totally worth it.
Everything Hurts
The poor fools. They have no idea what they’re about to go through. Look at them, stretching and laughing and shouting encouraging platitudes to one another like they haven’t a care in the world. But I’ve been there, man. I’ve seen things. I’ve seen legs give out from right underneath a person as they charge across the pavement. I’ve seen thick layers of crystalline salt form in a man’s hair and eyebrows as his body rapidly used up all its vital fluids. I’ve seen a man cross the finish line with huge, rusty stains on his shirt right about where his nipples used to be.
I’ve seen this man. I was this man.
Why, you may so reasonably ask, would someone put themselves through all of these terrors, and then come back and ask for seconds? The answer is complicated, but it can be summed up in one fairly simple sentence: Love is strange.
I first started running when I was dating Nicole, who would later become my wife. Before I met her, I didn’t think it was physically possible for a human being to run more than half a mile without imploding like a neutron star. She, a lifelong runner who ran track in high school and college and regularly participated in races, thought I was joking. I was not.
But because I liked her and wanted to spend time with her (and because I wanted some bargaining chips when I tried to convince her to come with me to Comicon), I started going on thrice-weekly runs with her. We started small, a 5k here, a fun-run there. Then, in 2013, as part of an ill-advised New Year’s resolution, I decided to run the Bellingham Bay Half-Marathon, and Nicole eagerly agreed to help me train. I was largely insufferable through the entire process, but Nicole is a great coach and she pushed me to do better. On race day, I clocked a finishing time of 1:57, which is pretty good for a guy who, by the time he reached the finish line, was basically a pale, disheveled head attached to bloody sinew in running shoes.
I was proud of finishing, but fairly traumatized and vowed to not do another half-marathon for the foreseeable future. It turns out “the foreseeable future” was about a year and a half, because here it is, late April 2015, and I’m in Oak Harbor for the Whidbey Island Half-Marathon.
Right off the bat I felt bad about this whole venture. I’m in much worse shape than I was the first time out, and I was not in great shape then (see opening paragraph). Nicole and I had trouble timing our training schedules, and the most we were able to run was an 11-mile course about three weeks before the race. So I wasn’t feeling particularly prepared as we stepped up to the starting line, and even less confident that I would be able to top my previous half-marathon time, which Nicole wanted to try to do. But like I said, love is strange, and Comicon was awesome this year, so I had to do what I had to do.
The race started out well. The weather was crisp but not cold, and the course mostly level. I’ve got a real problem with running up hills, not so much physically as spiritually and emotionally. I feel a deep existential hatred at every gentle slope. Luckily, the biggest source of my loathing was right around the one-mile mark, before I’d used up my stores of energy. We were supplementing that energy with gummy bears, which we would pop every two miles or so. I’m thinking of marketing this: “Gummy Bear Sport.” They’d be wearing little headbands and we’d replace their little potbellies with shredded abs. But I digress.
It was about the 2.5-mile mark that I started to notice some idiosyncrasies in Nicole that only real athletes display. She had decided on a nemesis. As near as I could tell, the decision was arbitrary, possibly based on the brightness of the enemy’s shirt but just as easily attributable to anything else. Nicole’s nemesis was a petite girl with curly brown hair wearing a bright pink long-sleeved running shirt. Nicole pointed her out to me when she was about 20 yards ahead of us.
“See that girl?” she whispered conspiratorially, “As long as we stay in sight of that girl, we’ll be fine.”
At first I thought this was a runner’s trick to keep pacing, but as the race wore on it started to feel personal. Even stranger, the nemesis began acting in ways that felt adversarial. She was employing a sprint-walk running style, where she would take frequent walk breaks, allowing us to catch up or even overtake her, and then hit the gas and leave us panting in her dust. Obviously, she couldn’t have known my wife had targeted her, but I started to wonder if the two were communing on some deeper level that only athletes are privy to, a kind of competitive hive-mind that develops in tandem with one’s calf muscles. For my part, I was incredulous of the whole thing, and even felt bad for this poor girl who was the unwitting foil to my competition-crazed bride.
More than halfway through the course, and I was feeling good. I hadn’t stopped to walk yet, except for brief pauses at water stations that never lasted more than a few seconds. I was feeling optimistic and motivated enough that I thought I might try to run the whole thing without walking. I could sense Nicole starting to get restless, as Pink Shirt was disappearing over the horizon, but I begged her to stay with me to keep me accountable to my goal.
At around mile seven we hit another hill, not as steep as the first one but much longer. This is where Nicole stumbled on her nemesis’ weakness; it seems Pink Shirt had as much affinity for hills as I did, and she slowed to a walk at even minor slopes. Nicole, being a psychopath with reverse biology, is extremely fast going uphill but much slower going down. She says it’s because she’s worried about losing control going downhill and falling over. Obviously, I have no regard for my body or I wouldn’t be doing this thing in the first place, so I greet every downhill slope with a frantic flailing of arms and an unbridled “woo” as sweet mother inertia takes some of the burden off my dying legs.
Mile nine of the race passes right through Windjammer Park, where the whole thing started. This seemed unduly cruel. From the mile nine signpost, you can smell hotdogs grilling. You can hear the band warming up, the crowds cheering, the announcer starting to congratulate half-marathon finishers who are somehow 4 miles ahead of me. I had to actively resist the sweet siren song of a cover of “Margaritaville” and turn away from the park, towards what would turn out to be a nightmarish 2-mile hill under the glare of direct sunlight.
This was the first moment where I honestly considered just giving up. Not slowing to a walk, just completely calling it a day. Even Nicole seemed vexed by this huge hill so close to the end of the race, but still she stuck by my side. That is, until…
We were winding our way around a narrow dirt trail, trapped behind a pack of middle-aged women who were noticeably slowing. A tough-looking guy with a military haircut came barreling down the opposite direction, and shouted in encouragement, “Great job, ladies!”
Thinking myself hilarious, I called up to Nicole, who had managed to squeeze ahead of the middle-aged women.
“Nicole!” I shouted. “I’m a lady!”
The women around me weren’t amused, and Nicole didn’t even hear me, because without warning, she was sprinting ahead like a dog that saw a squirrel. It wasn’t until I came off the dirt trail and onto the wide, paved stretch of hill that I saw why: Pink Shirt, back in sight for the first time in miles. And Nicole was already well ahead of her.
Feeling dejected, I trudged along as people I’d left behind miles ago started to overtake me. The hill seemed to stretch on into infinity, and every inch of me burned. Watching how easily Nicole crushed her nemesis, I started to feel guilty, like I was some sweaty burden keeping my wife from reaching her full potential.
I was feeling ready to collapse when I spotted Nicole waiting for me at the next water station. It seems she felt guilty for letting her competitive spirit get the better of her, and was resolved to run the rest of the track with me, even as Pink Shirt overtook us once again.
The hill finally leveled out at the 11-mile marker. I was exhausted and hurting and feeling largely defeated, but I also knew that I’d run 11 miles, so what’s two measly miles by myself?
“Honey,” I said, tapping Nicole on her sweat-drenched shoulder. “Go get her.”
With a grateful smile, Nicole was off like a shot. In the distance, I could see her easily overtake her nemesis and disappear around the corner. I knew I wouldn’t see her again until the finish line.
So now it was just me, dragging deadened limbs across an unforgiving blacktop towards a glory I could no longer conceptualize. Clichés like “runner’s high” and “hitting the wall” were turning to ash on my tongue. I didn’t feel high and I didn’t feel defeated. I was just a lone soul forcing myself onward down a road I was no longer convinced had an end.
And then, a curious thing happened.
From out of a cluster of runners about 100 yards ahead of me, I saw a flash of bright pink. She was slowing down again, anticipating a slight crest that would lead to a 2-mile slope towards the finish line. Maybe it was the crazed machinations of my fevered mind, but I felt a sudden urge of competitive spirit. I felt the last well of strength within me burn as I focused my energy forward. I no longer cared about winning any medals or finishing with a good time. I didn’t even care about the food and water and beer waiting for me at the end. The race narrowed down to just two people: my nemesis and me.
I surged forward, Pink Shirt responding with her taunting sprint-walk gait, letting me gain ground before pulling ahead. She was well ahead of me as we came out of a small valley and started on what would be the final uphill battle of the race. Pink Shirt slowed to a walk. If there was ever a time for me to clinch this, it was now. Focusing every ounce of my hatred for all things hill-y into an engine, I charged the hill. Every part of me screamed in protest, including, possibly, my voice. I can’t be sure about that, but I was getting some weird looks.
By the time I was heading back downhill, I was coasting. I could no longer sweat because there was nothing left in my body to secrete. I could no longer feel any pain because all the nerve endings were dead. I let my momentum carry me back down the hill, back to the narrow dirt path where Nicole had first left me, back towards the vibrant, thumping music and white noise of cheering voices that gradually pulled into focus. I thought of looking back, of seeing if my nemesis was still nipping at my heels, but I knew that she wasn’t.
Finally, the finish line was in sight. Brightly colored banners festooned the long alley that had been built on the lawn. I tried to ignore the big, red LED timer that revealed I was clocking in at around 2:05, and instead scanned the crowd for my wife. I saw her near the finish line, medal glinting around her neck, cheering wildly for me as I finally barreled across the finish line. My nemesis was long forgotten. I’d won the day. My stomach began to churn as my body struggled to reorient itself to a relatively stationary mode. A pre-teen boy draped a medal around my neck, handed me a plastic bag dripping with condensation and shuttled me down the line to make room for other finishers. A photographer snapped my photo. I’m sure it’s one for the Christmas card.
Nicole found me soon after, bent over a picnic table and wondering why the roof of my mouth felt like it was cultivating mold. She had finished about three minutes before me, but she still looked and behaved like a human being, while I was more jellyfish than man by this point. In time, I would feel the pride of completing something challenging, of setting goals and sticking to them even when the going got tough. For now, all I wanted to do was fall over into the grass.
As for the pink-shirted nemesis, we never saw her again. I didn’t notice when she finished, and she spent so much time running ahead of me that I never noted her name or her number. Maybe she never really existed, but was a mental construct we’d designed to keep us going. Or you know, maybe she just left. There were a lot of people there.