Chapter 15

Things started to settle into a routine after the party and as the summer started to wind down. Things had been cleaned up well enough after the party that my parents hadn't figured I had gotten into any trouble while they were gone. Though I did think my dad had suspected something. After all, he'd made a comment about how there seemed to be a large amount of soda cans and other garbage for it just being me and a couple friends around through the weekend. In his way though I think it was his way of pointing out he wasn't stupid, but that since I hadn't done anything to force his hand into punishing me it didn't matter.

It was just one of the things I liked about the way my dad was. As a teacher he was passionate about what he did and knew that it was what he had wanted to do, not simply something he fell back on when his real plan didn't work out. Science and geology were a passion of his, but the real passion he had was in teaching or coaching the kids. He took pride in the impact he could have on the lives of his students, whether it was from working with them in the classroom, coaching them in wrestling and track, or teaching them at skiing. That passion wasn't something that could be faked and it showed in how he taught. It was also one of the things that made his class one of the more popular ones around the junior high. Even for me it had made me want to be around. With him as an earth science teacher it was a required class for a semester in 8th grade. In 9th grade however I had chosen to be his TA so that I could both have the easy class time and also to still be able to enjoy the class environment he provided.

Sure, being the son of a teacher also had disadvantages. There were some of the stories he would tell with me being the butt of the joke. I couldn't really feel too bad about it, it went much the same way with my two sisters. There was also a picture he tormented me with from one Halloween when I was little where my mom had chosen to dress me up in a furry rabbit costume. It was definitely one of those pictures you never wanted to see the light of day. Let alone be seen by a group of kids you went to school with, most obviously not the female types you'd be potentially interested in. Overall though it was tolerable and I definitely wasn't the type that would want to trade my dad in for anyone. Granted, we had our times where we didn't get along or where I drove him crazy, but I knew he supported me in whatever I did and believed in what I did or could do.

One of the things I had decided to do with the summer winding down anyways was to ease up on the attempts at creating a dating life. If an opportunity presented itself I'd still take it, but I was going to back off a little and just see how things went. One of the interesting things to see with summer ending was the class schedules for the next year. Once the schedule was released I went in to work a little early to hang out and to compare notes. As luck would have it, Tonya and Tenille were working games that were next to each other. As it turned out aside from the obvious orchestra class that we all had together I had 'fit for life' (gym) with Tenille and algebra with Tonya. Fit for life ... that was one I would never understand. Gym class was gym class. Did they really think it got looked at any different because they gave it a fancy name?

I was starting to look forward to the scheduled workouts for cross country that were coming up. From the year before I knew that there would be a lot of people who hadn't been running during the summer, probably the majority of people unless the previous season was an anomaly. While I hadn't tried to get into race shape by any means my summer runs had kept me in fairly good shape and had my endurance base pretty good to begin with. Knowing coach's logic, most of the early workouts would be primarily focused on just getting mileage in, mixing the pace up a little bit along the way, of course. When the workout schedule was put out for the month before school started we were scheduled to run as a team three times a week: Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Thankfully coach was smart enough to spare us the heat of the day, so the start times were 10 am. It was earlier than I would want to get up sometimes, but I wanted to perform well and knew that I had to work hard to do it.

If last year was any indication I also remembered that coach had used the first group workout to issue a wake-up call to those who hadn't been running. The year before we had gone up into the mountains to run a road the locals called Trapper's Loop. The road and route itself I knew well, though most of it was just from driving. It was the road we took to go up to Powder Mountain to go skiing every weekend. It was a decent choice to run on: a wide 2-lane road with a wide shoulder on each side that we could use without having to worry about traffic. Additionally, the starting elevation for it was roughly 6,500 feet (the advantage of my having an Avocet ski watch ... it had a built in altimeter). The route itself was windy and also up and down. Over a five mile run we would cover an elevation change from approximately 6,500 to 8,500 feet.

Sure enough, once coach put out the location for the first run it was in fact Trapper's Loop. Most of us ended up car pooling, meeting as a group at the gas station at the base of the road. From there, two of the people that had driven vans drove theirs up to the stopping point and then were given a ride back so that we would have a way of getting back down after we had completed our run. There was one thing different this year, though. We had actually picked up a female coach, Coach Allen, rather than just coach Brown working with both teams like he had the previous year.

There were similarities to the physical appearance of both coaches. Each one was about average height for their respective sex and had a thin runner's build to them. Each coach at least appeared to be fairly fit, and if I had learned anything from Coach Brown the previous year it was that he was in fact fit. While Coach Brown would never tell us his exact age he had to be in his late 30's at the least if not well into his 40's, and for his age he would still run with us for any and all workouts that we did. Sure, he couldn't keep up with the top half of the school runners, but the fact that he could out do even some of the high school runners was impressive in my mind.