Espiens 09-08-09

Today, I finally get a support team for a long run.  All summer I have asked my kids, nephews, nieces, guests, Odile and anyone else who cared to listen if they didn’t want to take a leisurely bike ride while I ran.  No takers.

This is my last run in France.  My son and my nephew finally agree to join me on the bikes.

A support team will be great.  They can carry my water and Gu.   I won’t need to drive around dropping re-filled Badoit bottles along the route before the run.  It will be nice to have company.  Most importantly, I can imagine that I am such an important runner-athlete that I have a support team.

Dreams like this rarely turn out as I expect.

I choose a particularly vicious 27km route for this last run.  This time I will not shy away from the hills. If I go downhill, I will go uphill, meter for meter.   Not one, but two hill climbs of about 300m each will come after the 15k mark.  This run will be a bit longer than my training scheduled prescribes.  But I can’t resist pushing the distance barrier out a bit further.  It’s my last chance to run in France.

The boys are 16 and fit.  The only problem I anticipate is that they will get bored with the running pace and cycle ahead with my water and Gu.  But they don’t know the way.  In the worst case, I figure they will have to wait for me at junctions where a turning decision has to be made. These come every 4 or 5 kilometers.

It never occurred to me that they could get bored and find strange ways to amuse themselves behind me. Twice I had to reverse course and find them.  I was at turning points that I did not want them to miss.  They were behind me.

At about 5k I point out an extravagant camouflaged palombière hunting-hide I had noted a few days earlier.  It is a three story tower-like steel affair hidden in a copse next to a small patch of vineyard tucked away in a forested area.

A palombière is used to hunt the palombe, a delicious migratory game bird that is related to the pigeon.  It’s just bigger, gamier and tastier than a pigeon.  The palombes live in northern Europe in the summers and Spain in the winter.  To get to Spain they have to cross over the Pyrenées.  I feel for the palombes.  They dislike big hills as much as I do.  Whether you are flying or running, a big hill is a big hill and gaining altitude does not come without effort.

One palombe, centuries ago, must have decided that it was best to rest in the forests of the Aquitaine and Gascogne before taking on the Pyrenées.  Very sensible, I say.  Word spread and DNA coding passed it down the generations.  Now, all palombes stop for a few weeks in the forests near here during the Fall.  I imagine they rest, enjoy the Indian summer sunsets of southwest France and exchange tips on the best places to eat, drink and pick up chicks in the Costa del Sol with anticipation and delight.  In this way, the palombes are very much like the English.

Over those same centuries the men of Gascogne have perfected another tradition.  It’s a tradition that is shared amongst male cultures all around the world.  Guys need an excuse to hang out in tribes, drink, eat, tell outrageous stories or outright lies and generally make fools of ourselves out of view of our spouses and off-spring.

The Gascons do this very well.  It’s been a tough summer.  Ankle biting kids are not in school.  Obligatory trips to the crowded beach are required.  Cold rice salad dusted with sand must be eaten.  After resisting the urge to shoot fellow travelers in grid-locked holiday traffic on the way home, they head off to their elaborately constructed palombières for a week or two in the Fall.  Now they can hang with their buddies and finally shoot something.

I dreamt with my brothers of building the ultimate tree houses, forts and command centers.  We once started digging holes in a wooded public park with a complicated bomb shelter in mind. The cold war was still going on in those days.  Progress was good until a policeman with no sense of humor shattered our grand architectural plans with threats of fines and prison.

If you ever shared such a dream you will love a palombière.  They have command posts, bunkers, camouflaged corridors with shooting ports, net traps and wires strung about on pulleys for the ‘bait’ birds.  The best palombières also have ovens, stoves, refrigerators, bunks and, I suspect, wine cellars.  In the forts of our childhood the only thing we were truly missing was an enemy.  The Gascons only have the palombes now that they can longer shoot English who are still around planning forays to the Costa del Sol.

The hunting methods aren’t terribly sporting.  But I don’t think hunting is the real point of palombières.  A few unsuspecting birds are captured live in the spring loaded net traps.  These are tied to wires run through pulleys back to the command center.  As the wire is pulled the bird gets agitated.  The palombes, as a species, appear to have a bit of the Good Samaritan in them.  When seeing a fellow in distress will fly down to help.  That’s when they get shot, cleaned, cooked and eaten by grown, unshaven, unwashed men with a skin-full of Armagnac.

Its bad form to intentionally shoot the bait bird on the wire.  But I am sure that a few are executed at the end of the week.  When Armagnac and the DTs have permanently ruined your aim, you still need to come home with some profit from a week of hunting.

I am not a hunter but I wouldn’t hesitate to spend a week with the guys at a palombière.

About a kilometer (downhill) past this particularly grand palombière where I left the boys, I am waiting at the next turn. And waiting and waiting.  Finally, I run back uphill to find the boys.  We meet half the way back. The tires, spokes, chains and seats of the bikes are caked in mud. There is a fair distribution on shorts, T-shirts and behind a few ears as well.  I don’t ask what happened. Clearly it’s something between guys that is meant to take place out of view of girlfriends and parents.  Trespass laws may have been broken.  Add another kilometer to the run.

I’ve crossed the 12k mark.  I am on the canals but there is a turn.  I must cross a lock/bridge to the other side although the path on this side continues.  They will miss the turn.  So I am waiting and waiting and waiting.  It’s not good to stop running for this long.  So I start running back.  I find them casually cycling and chatting.  This time I am thirsty and a little bit angry.  I take a quick drink and demand an explanation.  It’s been flat for the last 5k after all.

Tadhg, my son, has thrown our only 10 euros into a thorn bush and could not retrieve it.  Scratches on his arms and legs and neck are proof of something.   I don’t want to know any more.  Add another kilometer plus plus to the run.

I run on, the first hill will come after another 3k.  It starts at the massive and somewhat creepy Chateau of Buzet.

18k mark. That hill was big.  Very big.  At the top is a turning decision.  And I am waiting and waiting and waiting.  There is no chance I am running back down that hill to find them only to run back up again.  I’ll walk home and call in a ‘Missing Persons Report’ before I run that hill again.  There is still one more hill to go.  So I wait.  They arrive.  This time with a good excuse.  They tell me it’s much harder to ride a bike uphill than it is to run one.  I have to believe them.  I don’t ride bikes.

We climb part of the next hill and get to another turn decision.  I am now in an area that I don’t know except from Google Earth. I know there is a 2K gentle climb to Xaintrailles from here then a nice 3k downhill to Montplaisir, our finish line.  Straight feels correct but it looks like a farming road that might dead-end.  Right could work.  It’s a bigger road and those show up on Google Earth.

This time I make the mistake.  I choose right.  It’s flat for 500m.  It looks promising.  Then with a shudder I see that it drops steeply ahead of me where my support team is racing down the hill.  For the first time all day my support team is ahead of me.  Figures. I can’t abandon them and turn around to the correct road.  But the thought does cross my mind.  So its down, turn left and start climbing again.  Add another one or two kilometers and another hill to the run.

Finally we are at Xaintrailles and we are all in familiar territory.  My ipod says; “Congratulations you have accomplished you goal”.   But there is another 3k to go to Montplaisir. At least it’s all downhill.  Arthur, my nephew, knows the way.  Off they go, with permission this time.

I wouldn’t trade that support team for any other today.  They carried my water and Gu and provided company, as well as plenty of entertainment, some good laughs and a bit of mystery.

The boys arrive to all the glory and congratulations twenty minutes before I come plodding in.  I get a cool glass of water, a pastis and the satisfaction that I have run nearly 31 kilometers, four of them by accident.

I also realize with some shock that I could easily have run the rest of the way back to Espiens.  For the very first time I feel that running a full marathon is not out of my reach.

Hoi An, Vietnam, 30-08-09

The sound of metal grinding on metal is not comforting at 30,000 ft. This is particularly true when I am sitting on the port side window above the wing (and fuel tank) of a domestic flight in the developing word. It’s even worse because I heard the loud ‘Clunk’ (not really the ‘Bang’ you would expect) that preceded these alarming grinding noises. It came from the engine that I can see a few feet away through the tiny scratched up window. As it grinds it also vibrates, visibly shaking the wing and the cabin floor beneath my feet.

‘This is not good’ I say to Sam. He is by far the biggest of the three of us and somehow got the middle seat. ‘No, its not’ he says in a very flat voice. He flies a lot for work and knows the difference between turbulence and engine failure.

We tighten our seat belts and type quick good-bye text messages to our wives. Or at least that’s what I send. For all I know, Sam might be canceling a dinner reservation for later in the evening. I figure that somewhere on the way down we will pass into cell tower range and my G1 phone will have time to send out at least one message before impact. Now I wish I had bought a G1 Gulfstream instead of this trendy geek’s version of the iphone.

This is how my first experience in a triathlon begins. Work and family schedules have conspired to put us on the 9am flight to Danang for a race in nearby Hoi An that starts at 2:30pm. The flight time from Saigon is only about an hour and a half so we will have plenty of time to get to the venue, set up Sam’s new bike and let Brian, our swimmer, have a look at the ocean. But we did not factor possible engine failure into our travel schedule.

The pilot shuts down the engine and starts a gentle turn to the left. It appears that we will be heading back to Saigon. This makes sense. We are only 20 minutes into the flight and the runway at Tan Son Nhat is massive. It was built during the Vietnam War, or the ‘American War of Aggression’, as it is known in this neck of the jungle. It can handle some very big planes and a lot of traffic. I am not so sure how up to date the fire services are. The passengers and flight crew are remarkably calm. Maybe they don’t realize what is happening. After a few minutes the pilot or co-pilot officially announces that we are returning to base for ‘technical’ reasons.

We land on one engine in what must be textbook emergency landing procedure. It’s a smoother landing than most but I can feel the airframe torque as it brakes with just one engine. It has been a long time since I have witnessed passengers and flight crew clapping with genuine enthusiasm for a landing. I guess they did know what was going on. I suspect we would have seen a bit more emotion between the engine failure and the successful landing if this were a domestic flight in the US. But as we head to the exit we do notice that one clever traveler has been wearing his motorcycle helmet on board.

There are two other tri-athletes on the flight. These are the real athletes who will be doing all three legs of the event, not an over-the-hill relay team with a combined age of 142.

The five of us gather around the Vietnam Airlines desk to see if there is any chance of arriving in Hoi An before the race starts. Amazingly, the airline finds another aircraft and we are in the air by 11:30. Man with motorcycle helmet is still with us, chinstrap fastened. Quite a few other passengers have decided that today is not the day to fly. The original flight was completely full. This one, also an Airbus 320, is now one quarter empty.

Sam has arranged for a car to pick us up and after only one wrong turn that added an unnecessary 10 minutes to the journey we arrive at the venue 30 minutes before the start. Sam has arrived from Singapore yesterday with a brand new bike still in the packing carton. He has never ridden this bike before. While he frantically puts it together we find our registration kit, which a friend had picked up for us under false pretenses. The rules strictly stated that registration would be closed 1 hour before the event starts and you must pick up your kit in person.

We arrive with only 10 minutes to spare at the beach start-finish-transition stage where athletes put their bikes, running shoes and other gear for the switch between the swim, bike and run stages. Brian scopes out the buoys marking the swim course and declares, “This will be a piece of piss, mate”. This means “easy” if you are from Australia. I am glad he is doing the swim and feels this way about it. I would take a wholly different view if I were the swimmer. It’s windy and choppy. I can see a side current from left to right that even the jet skis struggle against.

Once the bike is set in its pen, we are told that we have to go to the body marking stage. Here they stamp the number 252 (Team Edge’s entry number) on our biceps. I don’t know why this is needed for the biker and runner. We also have numbered bibs to attach to our shirts. But I think it will look cool so I don’t object until I see that the girls have to roll the stamp pad around a bit to get the whole number on my skinny arms. You would have to stand in front of me and walk slowly around my side to see the whole number. Luckily my shirt has sleeves so this embarrassment will be mostly covered up.

Brian has just enough time to squirm his way to the front of the 150+ pack before the start sounds. It’s a 1.5-kilometer open ocean swim. The first swimmer comes out of the water in less than 15 minutes. I don’t know much about swimming speeds (this is the first triathlon I have ever seen) but this seems awfully fast to me. The leader doesn’t head to the transition stage as I expect. Instead, he goes back into the water for another lap. “I don’t think Brian knows he has to do two laps”, I say to Sam. We laugh.  “Oh no, this will be comically tragic”, says Sam. Brian is about the tenth guy out of the water. He’s given everything on the final leg. It’s an amazing accomplishment. He is 57 years old in an event where the oldest age category is 40+.

As we expect, Brian bursts onto the beach looking very pleased with himself and starts heading to the transition stage. An official who is also ‘calling ‘the race on PA system catches him in time and explains that Brian must complete one more lap. He tries to dismiss the official with ‘”No worries mate, we are only doing the Olympic Distance triathlon not the Iron Man version”. ‘Yes’, the official says very slowly like he is explaining this to a sick child who cant understand why his friends aren’t allowed to come over to play, “That’s why you have to do another lap. Each lap is only 750 meters”. We can hear bits of this over the PA system. It is indeed comically tragic.

Into the choppy ocean he goes again. Where he found the energy I have no idea. He still manages to finish the full 1.5K in 36 minutes and in 16^th place overall. A truly awesome performance.

Brian transfers the timing chip to Sam and promptly collapses in a corner of the transition area where he won’t be run over by bikes or wet swimmers making the transition. .

Now Sam is racing into a mild headwind up the South China Sea coast on his new bike. It’s nice to have a new vehicle. But it’s better when you read the owner’s manual.  Sam hasn’t had a chance to review the course map so he has no idea where he is going, how long he will be in a headwind, how many kilometers are left after each turn. Fortunately, he can follow at least 15 riders.  Now it’s a good thing Brian was not first out of the water.

The wind picks up to 20 knots plus and Sam finds himself struggling in a very low gear. But he can’t figure out how to get the new bike into a higher gear range. There don’t seem to be enough levers and switches. Maybe he left something in the box?  He can change the little gears on the back wheel but has no idea what shifts the big gears around the pedal crank. He’s stubborn and proud. He’s sure he can figure this out on his own. The wind just keeps getting stronger, more and more cyclists pass him and he’s moving slower and slower. Finally he breaks down and asks a competitor with a similar bike how to change gears. He gets his answer not long before its time to turn around and start heading down wind. I must admit, the mechanism is not very intuitive.

The run is the last leg. So I have had 2 hours to study the course map and worry about the heat and wind. I get very lucky. Big clouds start rolling in at the same time Sam does. This cuts the heat down measurably. We transfer the time chip and I start running. The course is fantastic. Three laps on a loop that consist of newly built open roads along the exposed shoreline followed by a winding path through a local village on the leeward side of this small peninsula. The shoreline section is against the wind now but the runners don’t get the benefit of a trailing wind on the return half of the loop. The village lies low and the buildings cut off the wind. Village children gather in packs and run alongside us from time to time. Some are amassing collections of cold sponges, water bottles and half empty sports drinks that are being passed out to runners at two aid stations on the course. They are having as much fun as the competitors.

Near the end of the last lap I pass a guy I know from Saigon. He is much bigger, fitter and generally tougher than me. Another Australian…. As I pass him, I catch my breath and put a bit of spring in my step.  “Hey mate, good to see you here!” I say as I lope past him. He is bewildered.  He can’t figure out how a guy like me can get ahead of him and still look so fresh. He has no idea that I am just the runner in a relay team. I’ve only been at this for 45 minutes or so. He’s been in the water, riding a bike in wet shorts and running for the past 3 hours. He looks tired.

The best part about being the runner in a relay team is that I get all the glory at the finish line. It’s me alone crossing the line at 3’04”which would be a very respectable time for a single athlete to complete a triathlon. It equates to 45^th place overall and 2^nd in the relay category. Imagine that: 44 guys and girls can complete the entire course on their own steam faster than the 3 of us can as a team. And we would have been even further behind if it weren’t for Brian’s amazing swim.

(From left to right) Sam Fischer (not really from Brooklyn), Brian Shapland (the old man in the sea), Patrick Looram (Glory Hog)

Saigon, 19-09-09

I am running in pre-dawn darkness trying out several new things.

I’m trying out one-way routes for the first time in Vietnam.  This one will cover most of downtown Saigon, cross the river and end in the expatriate golden ghetto on the other side of the river.  I’ve tired of the loops around my house near the airport. This will be one of the longest of the long runs. In a few weeks I will begin to taper.  To run these distances on my normal Tan Son Nhat airport loop would be as boring as track running even though the circuit is 7-8km long.

I am running with my daughter Charlotte’s iPod on shuffle because something went wrong with mine as it charged last night.

And I am running the first few kilometers in the dark.

This is strange.  Visually and audibly.

I have to start this early partly because it will be at least 3 hours until I finish running.  I don’t want to catch the heat that starts building by 8am.  I also need the early start because the first stretch is down the main road that connects the airport and hinterlands of this sprawling city of 8 million to the old downtown quarter.

This road, called Nguyen Van Troi, is busy at nearly all times of day.  Road works that have persisted like an incurable case of foot fungus for the past 18 months make the congestion even worse.  But at this early hour, a runner can manage to make it through the gauntlet.

Long ago, a few months before I was born, Robert McNamara, ‘architect’ of the Vietnam War, had to run his own gauntlet on this same road during his first visit here.  In 1963, a group of Viet Cong fighters attempted to detonate a bomb as McNamara’s car crossed the small bridge that marks the beginning of Nguyen Van Troi Boulevard.  The assassination attempt failed.  Only one of the Viet Cong was caught.  His name was Nguyen Van Troi.  He was executed by firing squad some time afterward, refusing a blindfold or a priest’s absolution.  Idealistic to the end his last words were ’Long live Vietnam’.  The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army considered him an early and important martyr during the war.  His story is still held in high regard today.  So it’s appropriate that this road I am running on is named after him.

I first heard the story of Nguyen Van Troi, or a version of it, from my friend Tran Khang Thuy.  Thuy was our company’s first business partner in Vietnam.  He managed a commercial unit attached to the University of Economics.  His appointment to the University was probably due, in part or whole, to his own service as a Viet Cong guerrilla during the war years.  He never struck me as much of an academician.  But he is a one hell of a deal maker.  He has gotten me out of a few difficult predicaments over the years.  I am sure he was well-liked in whatever guerrilla cell he belonged to during the war.  He is resourceful and dependable.

Thuy says he knew Nguyen Van Troi as well as some of the others who were not caught.  When I guessed that Troi must have been the leader or at the very least just the unlucky one, Thuy just laughed and said, “No, he was just a slow runner.  That’s why he was caught. And definitely not the leader!  He was just the kid that carried the bags.”  Troi was 17 years old when he was executed. My daughter’s age today.

Remembering this, I pick up the pace and sprint across the small bridge beneath which bombs were planted 45 years ago.  Now that I think about it, this bridge probably marks the end, not the beginning of Nguyen Van Troi.

I pass a small flock of catholic nuns as I start across the bridge then a pride of Buddhists monks walking in the other direction as I come off the bridge.  I wonder what they will say to each other when they cross paths at the top of Nguyen Van Troi’s bridge.  What would he say if he saw all of us on his bridge at the same time?  Mixed emotions, I am sure.  I guess he would only be in his early sixties today.

It is light now and I am in the older streets of Saigon in what was once an area for wealthy French, Chinese and Vietnamese traders and fonctionnaires in the colonial days.  I’ve never really noticed until now how much wider and in better conditions the sidewalks are in this part of town.  Also, more trees.  Behind the walls are many grand French villas.  Some of them are nicely renovated. Ten years ago, the renovated ones would have exclusively been expat homes repaired on company expense accounts.  Today, I am more likely to find Thuy or some other successful tycoon behind these gates.

One stretch I pass through was gated and guarded by armed police until five or six years ago. This is where the local government officials live.  I am not sure why they felt the need to block their streets off from the public back then but it is evidently no longer needed.  Small changes like these make me realize that Vietnam has progressed immensely in the fifteen years that I have lived here.

My iPod tells me that I am now past 10k.  I am settling into a comfortable pace.  I haven’t been paying much attention to the music but I realize now that most of it is really quite good.  If it weren’t, I would have been fumbling for the forward arrow button long ago.  Do my kids have such poor taste in music that I actually like what they keep on their iPods?  Or is it just that there really are no new musical styles anymore?  It does seem increasingly the case that popular music and movies are remakes of concepts first produced 20 or 30 years ago.  Or maybe I have grown accustomed to what the kids like? It’s true that I have discovered from them some of the music I like the most today.

Something fundamental has changed in popular culture I think.  If there were a legislature where unwritten rules are debated and promulgated I would have to surmise that the rule that said each generation must despise the musical tastes of those that come immediately before and after them has been repealed.  This is good, I think.  Then I find myself reciting the words to a particularly insipid set of lyrics by Eminem and I think, “Maybe this change in rules isn’t so good”.  But I must admit that foul-mouthed skinny fuck Marshal Mathers is a clever little prick.   I admire cleverness.

Eminem is still venting when I find the big park behind Diem’s presidential palace.  I am planning to run a few loops around the park and the palace.  This is the one built after a dissident air force pilot in Diem’s own air force bombed his first palace, the former French governor-general’s residence.  Somehow Diem and his wife survived in the half demolished building.  So he built an even bigger palace by clearing a full city block and erecting a monstrous building that is now called the Re-Unification Palace.  The building has a particularly unattractive feature that attempted to pass itself off as architectural art in the 60’s. I refer to the latticed cement curtain that is fastened around the building’s exterior.  Its functional purpose is to protect the occupants from rocket propelled grenades or other projectiles.

Unlike today’s leaders, Diem had reasons to wall himself behind such protection.  It wasn’t just the Viet Cong that were after him.  In his short reign he managed to antagonize just about every faction of Vietnamese society.  He spent more time and money intriguing against his perceived political rivals amongst the Buddhist, Cao Dai, Hoa Hao, and countless other religious sects than he did worrying about the Viet Cong and the NVA.  The only person with fewer friends than Diem was said to be his wife.  Her diffidence would have put Marie Antoinette to shame.

In the end, the huge fortified palace did Diem little good.  Realizing that he was about to be overthrown by his own generals with tacit backing from my government he tried to high tail it out of Vietnam.  There are apparently lots of tunnels running under Saigon and one set of these was connected to the palace.  They led out of the palace under the park I am running through right now.  It seems there is a lot of history literally under my feet today.

Diem and his brother, who ran the secret police, apparently made it out of the palace and exited the tunnels.  But they didn’t make it much further.  They were executed in the back of a military van after being picked up in Saigon’s Chinatown, Cholon.  You can buy just about anything except friends in Cholon, then and now.  Few tears were shed for Diem.

Fortunately, I am not heading towards Chinatown.  I’ve clicked off nearly 16k and will be heading past the Opera House, the military boat works then across the river to the foreigner’s outpost in An Phu where I hope to find some friends and a cold beer.  Downtown Saigon really is magnificent today.  The Opera House marks the very center of Saigon.

I’ve spent a lot of time at the Opera House over the past 15 years.  Not to see the opera or the orchestra. Nor the occasional over-the-hill French singer that books into the grand theatre.  I’ve never even seen the infamous Elvis Cong, the Presley impersonating, Viet Kieu from Orange County who used to appear to great fanfare from time to time.  One year he was a singer. The next he was a magician.  Obviously an entrepreneur.

Truth be told, I have rarely been inside the Opera House proper.  I am not much of a culture patron.  But I have spent many hours in the Opera House basement home of the Q Bar, which is owned by close friends.  On at least one occasion I have left the Q Bar around this time in the morning.

As I pass the red brick Notre Dame cathedral, which would look at home in Toulouse on account of its bright red brick construction, I can see a crowd gathering in the distant square in front of the Opera House.  A lot of shit has gone down in this square over the years.

Today there are 300 or 400 people in matching t-shirts being corralled together to start a march down Dong Khoi Street to the river.  I think it might be some kind of protest, genuine or perhaps manufactured by the government to make some esoteric point as they sometimes do.

Instead, it’s an even stranger corporate event for a Swiss pharmaceutical company that sells truck-loads of ginseng based energy pills.  It’s a mystery to me how a Swiss company became the biggest seller of a supplement based on a traditional Asian medicine.  An even bigger mystery is why they want to get several hundred people together to march four blocks down Dong Khoi Street.  Who in their right mind would sign up to do this at 7am on a Sunday morning?  Bonuses must be involved.

If nothing else, the Swiss are organized.  The march starts in perfect formation at exactly 7am just as I am passing the vanguard.  Leading the way, they have a team of out-riders on motorbikes with corporate flags attached to small poles on the back of the bikes.  If the out-riders are actually off-duty policemen, I know this might mean the end of today’s run but I can’t resist this opportunity.  I move to the middle of the street and run down Saigon’s most famous boulevard with an escort.  My timing is perfect.  As I cross the first intersection where a group of out-riders are holding up traffic, the next team speeds ahead to halt traffic at the next intersection.

I tip my hat to curious pedestrians who can’t yet see the marchers.  I pretend I am finishing in the lead of the first International Ho Chi Minh City Marathon.  This is even better than having a support team!  I wish someone were here to photograph it.  Of course it wouldn’t be any more authentic than the film of that German student who came trotting through the tunnel of the Munich stadium minutes before Frank Shorter at the 1972 Olympics.  But it sure is fun.  It’s just a shame the march only goes for four short blocks.

The rest of the run is along the river and over to An Phu. It’s starting to get crowded.  Without the motorcycle escort I need to start paying attention to traffic and side step the street vendors who are setting up shop. Some of these crowded roads are probably quite unhealthy to run on.  I see and taste the traffic fumes.

In cleaner air, I cross a newly built bridge to the other side of the river.  Saigon desperately needs an infrastructure upgrade and this is part of that effort:  a very nicely made four-lane bridge with wide sidewalks for me to run on.  Traffic is light on the bridge because there is very little on the other side of the river, for now at least.

I’ve never been in this particular part of Saigon.  I know from Google Earth that a left turn will take me towards An Phu.   This small road turns into one of the most dangerous I have ever run on.  It becomes narrow and very congested .  This is one of the poorer parts of Saigon.  Overcrowded homes have illegally extended towards the street and incorporated sections of public sidewalk into their living spaces.

Certain parts of Saigon are famous for specialized types of street food.  This area seems to be known for some kind of barbecue pork dish.  Where the sidewalk isn’t being used as a delivery depot or factory floor for some small home business, there are makeshift barbecues bellowing plumes of smoke across the traffic.  The scent is a mixture of coal, exhaust from passing buses and the marinated meat, which has a faintly sweet smell.  Probably a fish sauce marinade. This part smells good and I realize I am a little bit hungry.

With all this activity, my only choice is to run on the street against the on-coming traffic.  I must trust that the drivers will make some small space for me.  This is not a sensible wager.  Vietnam has one of the highest per capita road death rates in the world.  I am tired.  I have been out here running for over two hours now. I have no phone and only about 35,000 dong (USD 1.94) left in my water fund.  I check to make sure I’ve brought my ID with Odile’s number written on a piece of masking tape attached to the back. I forgot it.  She will be angry.  It will take weeks to identify my corpse if one of these bus drivers screws up.

I finally get through to An Phu.  This is Saigon’s equivalent of the fictional SoCal suburb of Agrestic in the very funny Showtime series Weeds.  The streets are wide and safe.  I pass a friend taking his daughters to soccer practice and stop for a quick chat.  One quick 8k loop around the enclave and I’ll be done.

I pass by Sam’s house with only 2k to go and see that he just has arrived back from a bike ride.  I know he has lots of cold beer so I decide that 27km (17 miles) in just under 3 hours is enough running for today.

I would normally feel a bit guilty about drinking alcohol at 8am.  Not today.  As Homer Simpson so eloquently once said: “Beer….Mmmmmm…. Good”.