Levy Loop/First Tee

I walked the Levy Loop this morning in 31:53.

This might've been the greatest round ever played without a single decent iron shot. Playing with Jeff Krupsaw and Randall Hunhoff, I scored a 48 from the middle tees at First Tee, with 1 par, 4 bogies, and 4 doubles. I used 17 putts. It was 45 degrees when we started, with wind blowing between twenty and thirty miles an hour.

SENTENCE OF THE DAY from A Different Closet
They watched Karen trot up the steps toward the Arch, heard the click of her shoes against the white stone fade into the soft rumble of faraway traffic.

Ghetto Cat Loop

I walked the Ghetto Cat Loop this morning, through mist, in 32:46.

The DFL's Green Bay Packers defeated the Dadburn Gallinappers, 129.91-111.09, to improve to 9-3 and just about lockup a second-place finish, even if they lose next week. That means the Packers will almost certainly get a bye through the first round of the playoffs and only have to win two games to win their first Cooper Bowl.

SENTENCE OF THE DAY from A Different Closet
But it was hard, Seale knew; they were all in store for turbulence, drawn as they were to the many strands of this man’s character now gathered in such a volatile cirmcumstance.

Levy Loop

I jogged the Levy Loop tonight in 21:26, with splits of 11:04, and 10:22, my first non-stop non-walk since, fuck, a while—early October or late September, I think. I'll have to look. It felt pretty easy.

SENTENCE OF THE DAY from A Different Closet
Stories ran all week, including a long advance for Ingram’s announcement in Saturday’s edition, now lying on the kitchen table in front of him as he struggled to eat this breakfast of fruit, nuts, and whole grain.

Ghetto Cat Loop

I walked the Ghetto Cat Loop this morning in 30:44.

SENTENCE OF THE DAY from A Different Closet
Somewhere late during his conversation at Tinker’s the previous Sunday, with Seale, Green, Karen, and a couple of professional football players, right after Wilber Marshall recovered a fumble and ran fifty-two yards for a touchdown just to rub in Chicago’s dominance, Ingram remembered that Seale, his horse-racing friend, was the goddam publisher of a newspaper in a major American market, and that he had just spent nearly an hour talking to him about the political ambition he’d been brainwashed into over the previous three weeks.

Ghetto Cat Loop

Yesterday morning, at 6:30, it was 69 degrees. This morning, at 9:30, when I walked the Ghetto Cat Loop in 32:58, it was 37.

SENTENCE OF THE DAY from A Different Closet
Later that night, Karen would say she’d cringed at Seale’s question, and was likewise pleased when Carmichael treated it as it was intended—as a genuine expression of concern.

Orange Street Loop

Happy Thursday. I walked and jogged the first two miles of the Orange Street Loop this morning in 27:57.

SENTENCE OF THE DAY from A Different Closet
But when Junior was their source, all insults, all mockery and derision, were taken by veterans of Tinker’s with a pinch of salt, including this one.

Sweetheart Loop

I jogged and walked the Sweetheart Loop tonight in 33:37, with splits of 12:04, 11:06, and 10:27. It's 71 degrees at 9:09 p.m. Central on the night before the last Thursday in November. Crazy. They say it's going to turn cold tomorrow, so perhaps into a good day to watch football and fry oysters and new potatoes with yellow onions.

SENTENCE OF THE DAY from A Different Closet
Having checked the shelves and racks of his imagination for over a year, he’d found no reliable guide to dishonesty, no manuals, no set of instructions for his deceit.

Levy Loop

I walked the Levy Loop this morning in 25:54.

The Democrat Football League's Green Bay Packers defeated the Fat Chicks 130.11-73.22 and moved into second place, at 8-3, in the sixteen-team DFL behind Jeff Krupsaw's bunch of motherfuckers. There are two game's left in the regular season. Krup's Kids, the Cavemen, and the Green Bay Packers have clinched positions in the playoffs.

SENTENCE OF THE DAY from A Different Closet
Tinker’s Bar and Grill, on 21st Street, a thirty-second walk north of Locust, was the only bar Ingram knew of in St. Louis that celebrated football first; there were a handful of obligatory framed photographs of the Dean brothers and Stan the Man, of Bob Gibson, a jersey autographed by Ducky Medwick, and a smattering of felt Cardinals pennants yellowed by four generations of cigarette smoke, but Junior Tinker, the fifty-four-year-old son of the bar’s founder, the late Luke Tinker, was a four-year football letterman at Northwest Missouri State in the early 1950s when he quit school to run his father’s bar, and he switched the heart of its decorative theme to football, and the dark paneled walls and oak mantels began to sprout memorabilia heavily slanted toward the Missouri Tigers, until St. Louis acquired its professional team from Chicago in 1960.

Levy Loop

I walked the Levy Loop this evening in 27:15.

SENTENCE OF THE DAY from A Different Closet
Her effort appeared magical as she flashed her hands between the reins and the filly’s mane and then pulled the cords taught, all in an urgent and furious and passionate blur, until calm flowed through her grip, and her filly’s panic turned to the poise of a confident athlete.

Maple Street Loop

I walked the Maple Street Loop this evening in 28:55.

SENTENCE OF THE DAY from A Different Closet
By the time he turned north on McDonnell Boulevard off I-270, three miles from home, his thoughts had coalesced into something like driftwood, able at least to hold a current until one more powerful took control.

Orange Street Loop

I alternated two-minute jogs with three-minute walks to complete the Orange Street Loop this evening in 33:54, with splits of 11:37, 11:34, and 10:43.

SENTENCE OF THE DAY from A Different Closet
Post-it Notes and recipes and snap shots, secured by magnets and tape, scattered in a quiet cascade, and her sweater snagged on a hinge to produce a progessive exposure of white flesh and pink brassiere as momentum carried her to an inevitable landing, comfortably padded by a pair of old cotton corduroys and the eight beers she’d drunk.

Levy Loop

I walked the Levy Loop this morning in 27:14.

SENTENCE OF THE DAY from A Different Closet
She salted the mass of seafood and starch and placed it on her tongue, and then smiled as she chewed, with submerged laughter eager to erupt.

Ghetto Cat Loop/Levy Loop

This morning, at about nine Central, I walked the Ghetto Cat Loop in 33:40. I walked the Levy Loop this evening in 28:20.

SENTENCE OF THE DAY from A Different Closet
He watched Karen squeeze lemons over blackened shrimp and fish resting on small beds of pasta, as vapor from the buttered okra and carrots danced above their plates; she then juggled a pan from the oven, used a spatula to scoop from it steaming slices of tomato separated by flows of Swiss cheese and grated mushrooms bubbling and popping in dashes of olive oil, and let them slide beside the seafood.

Sweetheart Loop/First Tee

I walked the Sweetheart Loop this morning in 43:30.

I played First Tee this afternoon with Randall Hunhoff, from the middle tees, in 54, with 1 par, 2 bogies, 3 doubles, 2 triples, and 1 quadruple. I used 21 putts.

And, oh, by the way, the DFL's Green Bay Packers defeated Shanny'nMcNabb (don't ask me), 101.58-65.55 to move to 7-3 and into third place in our sixteen-team league. It was a comfortable, easy victory, though my team underperformed. The team we beat sucks dicks. We have three weeks left in the regular season. Jeff Krupsaw's team is loaded and will be hard to beat, though lots can happen, including a large sum of money being wired to Erin Vratil in an attempt to motivate her to fly to Philadelphia and arrange to have Michael Vick placed in a Motel Six bathroom with two and a half dozen rabid and hungry pit bulldogs.

SENTENCE OF THE DAY from A Different Closet
Karen did this to him sometimes, but each time it felt like the first, without precedent; he felt something packed away in his core that was almost but not quite painful, a restriction in his chest, and it was literally hard to breathe, all in an instant, and Ingram remembered the feeling, with Karen and with Cam Luru and his ex-wife and with a girl from the second grade whose name he’d forgotten three decades ago.

38th Street Loop

It's 45 degrees, dark gray, windy, with an intermittent drizzle. I walked the 38th Street Loop in 30:21.

Early this afternoon, Mom and I walked the 1.1-mile Lakewood Lake No. 3 Loop in 19:44, thus trimming our PR by sixteen seconds.

SENTENCE OF THE DAY from A Different Closet
He pulled in, parked, and noticed his favorite clerk, the tall skinny kid...shit...oh yeah, Seth, behind a cash register, and it occured to him as he pushed through the door that this is what he needed, a breath of regular air with Seth, the All-American clerk, no cologne, no freshly-ground coffee, no date nut cake, no gay kingpins, just the damp floor of this mini-mart mopped with week-old, cold brown water, with cold beer waiting on the other side.

Chandler Street Loop

I walked the Chandler Street Loop this morning in 40:04, with splits of 13:51, 13:54, and 12:19.

SENTENCE OF THE DAY from A Different Closet
Lardner, heretofore contemptuous of Hardman, felt himself start to warm to his simplicity—a commodity, thanks to Ingram, he was beginning to recognize as an earmark of nothing, certainly not of idiocy as he had always suspected.

Ghetto Cat Loop/Levy Loop

I walked the Ghetto Cat Loop this morning in 26:32.

This evening, starting at about eight o'clock Central, I walked the Levy Loop in 24:17.

SENTENCE OF THE DAY from A Different Closet
Lardner knew the whole concept was a sham, Ingram an imposter, and that Green had invited Dornfeld and his fortune to facilitate it; he had no doubt that Ingram’s heterosexuality was hidden in a different closet, at first for the sake of a salary doubled, but now, by the unlikely happenstance of an uppercut televised across the county, kept there to serve Green’s ambition once reserved for him.

Maple Street Loop

I walked the Maple Street Loop this evening in 29:42. Around 10:30 this morning, Mom and I walked the Lakewood Lake No. 3 circle, which Elaine Gimblet says is 1.1 miles, in 20:00. I think that was about ninety seconds faster than our previous best.

SENTENCE OF THE DAY from A Different Closet
Still, he recognized the legitimacy of weather comlaints from St. Louis citizens; their city was climatically unfair, its boiling summers uncompensated, rather counterbalanced by frigid winters featuring bitterly cold days like this one.

Levy Loop/38th Street Loop

I walked the Levy Loop this morning in 32:58.

This evening, starting at about 5:30 Central, I walked the 38th Street Loop in 24:44.

SENTENCE OF THE DAY from A Different Closet
St. Louis always appealed to Lance Dornfeld, staged as it was on the western edge of America’s first act of greatness, when urban factories and smokestacks and black-and-white photographs of a thousand men wearing gray suits and felt fedoras and black leather gloves, marching to run the world, combined to represent the essence of American might; it was like Manhattan's other midwestern and northern satellites—Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, Detroit and Milwaukee, Cleveland and Cincinnati—now poised with their significance in varying degrees of decay, but hinged so firmly to the past that romance and sentimentality, nostalgia, secured for them present and future roles.

Ghetto Cat Loop

I walked the Ghetto Cat Loop this morning in 25:54.

SENTENCE OF THE DAY from A Different Closet
Ingram had never before owned an alarm with a snooze function, and learned early it overwhelmed his discipline; it wasn’t uncommon for him to engage it for an hour or more before getting up, so he moved the clock ten feet away, and now walked across layers of unwashed clothes, newspapers, and magazines to mute the noise.

Old Center Point Road/York Gary Loop/Levy Loop/First Tee

Monday evening in Nashville I jogged and walked, for a total of about five minutes, four miles out and back on Old Center Point Road in 42:58, with splits of 11:12, 11:02, 10:40, and 10:04. I walked the York Gary Loop on Tuesday morning in 29:20. I walked the Levy Loop in 27:30 this morning.

Starting this afternoon at two o'clock Central, I played First Tee from the back with Randall Hunhoff in 46, with 2 pars, 4 bogeys, and 3 doubles. I used 17 putts.

SENTENCE OF THE DAY from A Different Closet
Hardman wore a smile as a disguise, betrayed for Ingram by its wryness.

SENTENCE OF THE DAY (for Tuesday) from A Different Closet
Ingram was capable now, he knew, as he launched from his left leg, with the ball tucked in his right palm reaching the height of the rim three feet away, and then rising above his target with six inches of clearance, all this ingrained to feel instinctive as his shoulder and elbow and wrist pronated in order, with the ball launched down at an angle to stroke the back of the shiny new nylon net.

SENTENCE OF THE DAY (for Monday) from A Different Closet
He remembered similar experiences, when he seemed to transcend what he perceived as his physiological limit; athletes know about them, those rare, easily recallable instances when they ran faster or jumped higher or pushed harder than before, feats they never considered until they were upon them and became inevitable.

First Tee/Levy Loop

I played First Tee with Zach and Lacey, from the middle tees, in 44 this afternoon, with 4 pars, 3 bogies, 1 double, and 1 triple. I used 18 putts.

Starting at about 6:30 p.m. Central, I walked the Levy Loop in 29:18.

I haven't reported on the Democrat Football League's Green Bay Packers in a while; we're 5-3, and probably 6-3 after tonight. We're kicking the Subdivision's butt, and currently in fourth place in our sixteen-team league.

SENTENCE OF THE DAY from A Different Closet
Ingram knew Shoemaker and he had earned high degrees of noteworthiness in their youth, but figured odds were slight the same could be said of any of the other seven men with them.

38th Street Loop/Orange Street Loop

I walked the 38th Street Loop this morning in 29:11. Last I looked, it was 32 degrees in Levy, and 63 in Port Hawkesbury, Nova Scotia.

Starting at about 645 p.m. Central, I walked the Orange Street Loop in 36:58, with splits of 12:46, 12:25, and 11:47. The key swing thoughts in this race-walk business are putting your feet down to the inside, as if you were trying to walk a tight rope (this is what makes race walkers' hips go from side to side in that very funny looking way), bending your toes up toward your shins as far as you can as you step forward, and really getting your arms into it. It takes a lot of concentration, but got easier as I went tonight. A few times, when it was all clicking, I felt almost as if I were running. This could be a good cross-training exercise. I think I might feel less self-conscious on the River Trail than in Levy.

SENTENCE OF THE DAY from A Different Closet
Six weeks in a cast was a new experience, and his right hand felt odd, weak perhaps, with numbness where the plaster had pinched the base of his thumb, but after a moment of dribbling and taking a handful of shots and layups he became unconscious of it.

Orange Street Loop/Ghetto Cat Loop

I walked a 12:58 mile this morning. Crazy. For some reason I decided after about two miles to see if I could walk the Orange Street Loop under 43 minutes. With a little more than a half mile to go, I changed my target to a sub-42. I got it in 41:51, with splits of 14:40, 14:13, and 12:58. No kidding, I think I started to look a little like a race walker toward the finish. Maybe I'll run a bit next week.

I spent about thirty minutes this afternoon reading an Internet entry on race-walk technique, and then ten minutes practicing. I'm not sure I could ever get it down. This evening, I race-walked the Ghetto Cat Loop in 25:44, with splits of 12:55 and 12:49. Whenever I passed anyone, or saw or heard a car, I just walked kind of fast.

SENTENCE OF THE DAY from A Different Closet
He sensed camaraderie so strongly he was certain of its presence; it was something he had first recognized as an eight-year-old playing touch football, and thereafter at dozens of gyms and golf courses and on brown, dusty fields, where men—and a rare, perfect woman or two—gathered to play, where acceptance was based on a willingness to embrace the game and its participants, where the stakes were low, where the differences between success and failure were separated by such a fine, thin line that emotional responses were nearly identical either way, where the only thing that truly mattered was being there, like being here mattered to him and these eight men.

Ghetto Cat Loop

I walked the Ghetto Cat Loop this morning in 29:52.

I played First Tee with Randall Hunhoff from the back tees this afternoon in 48, with 1 birdie, 3 bogies, and 5 doubles. I used 17 putts.

SENTENCE OF THE DAY from A Different Closet
There was only one tier of seating, limited to two-thousand, wooden, fold-out chairs painted dark green, but their brass trim and hinges, polished to emit the spill from lights focused on players and the parquet floor, combined with all the rest to reflect almost exactly what Ingram had imagined when he watched the Celtics televised from Boston.

Sweetheart Loop

I walked the Sweetheart Loop this evening in 46:08.

SENTENCE OF THE DAY from A Different Closet
Karen stopped to pretend interest in a large Pyrex dish of shrimp souffle; she heard Ingram say, “Can I tell you something off the record?” and Seale: “Well, sure, so long as it ain’t somethin crazy, like, you know, you ‘bout to kill the president or set off an A-bomb in Moscow. But, sure, within some framework of reason, anything you tell me’s off the record, Keith.”

Levy Loop

I walked the Levy Loop this morning through a 50-degree light drizzle in 30:01, perfect conditions for my cold.

SENTENCE OF THE DAY from A Different Closet
The crowd remained loud enough to offer privacy; Ingram did not bother to whisper.

Ghetto Cat Loop/Levy Loop

I walked the Ghetto Cat Loop this morning, starting at about 9 a.m. Central, in 30:32.

This evening, at about 6:30, I ran a little bit for the first time, other than on a Hash run, since the '80s, when I jogged one minute of every four to complete the Levy Loop in 26:45. I have a cold, my first in a couple of years. Nothing severe. Sniffles, sneezes, a slight sore throat this morning.

SENTENCE OF THE DAY from A Different Closet
He had spoken briefly with Bill and Elsie Seale a few minutes earlier, and hoped for a chance to broach the matter with Bill, but instead listened to their detailed description of Elsie’s Peking duck; he would attempt to isolate them again before the evening was complete, but for the moment his thoughts centered on food.