Ben Wildman-Tobriner is only the second San Franciscan to win an Olympic medal and ironically he was taught by Ann Curtis, the first San Franciscan. Ann has a pool in Marin where I learned to swim during my summers and where my children now go to learn. Recently, Ben showed up at the pool during our kid’s lesson so that they could touch the Olympic Gold Medal that he won at the 2008 Beijing Olympics as part of the 4×100 meter freestyle relay team (he swam in the semifinal heats). Ben currently holds the US Record in the 50-yard freestyle in a time of 18.87 seconds. He also was the World Champion in the 50 meter free in 2007.
My other connection to Ben is that he went to the same high school I went to (years apart) and was also on my school’s swim team. Ben is a self made kid. It is very rare to see a kid like Ben from the inner city that is not made of swimming pools become an international swimming champion. Our high school (Lick-Wilmerding) is not a sports powerhouse. With only 450 kids, you usually get drafted by coaches to help fill out sports rosters. In highschool my swiumming team was a motley gang of kids who didn’t wear speedos or skin tigh swimming caps to remove resistence. We had maybe 8 kids on our team. The same was with Ben years later. Ben swam at the local boys and girl’s club in San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury district. No pristine facilities. It is like the the Rocky of swimming pools.
Ben went on to be a star in the Stanford University swimming program and is now at UCSF Medical School where my wife is currently being treated for her cancer. He is now torn between medical school and his swimming career. Ben has a great humble head on his shoulders and has given back to the pools that helped him to get where he is today. I only wish the other swimmer on the US team that won 8 gold medals has the same character as Ben.
“I have learned that there is no failure in running, or in life, as long as you keep moving. It’s not about speed and gold medals. It’s about refusing to be stopped. You might find that one particular direction proves difficult, but there are many directions on a compass. Infinite, in fact. As long as you keep searching, you’ll find your way.” – Amby Burfoot, Executive Director of Runner’s World Magazine
This has been a long week, but not as bad as one would have thought it would be. It’s amazing what you can accomplish in a week. Surgery, dentist appointments, music concerts, fundraisers, gymnastics classes, baseball clinics, shopping at Target, and of course your normal 55-60 hour work week done.
Because of my wife’s surgery I did a lot of the normal morning chauffeuring and morning herding of the kids. I am so lucky to be blessed with really cool kids who understand the gravity of some of the things their parents are trying to accomplish and were really well-behaved. My 73 year old mother told me that she thought I had the coolest 9 year old and 7 year old. Of course that is a proud grandmother speaking. This is the same lady who laughed at me early on as a parent saying I was too strict. On Tuesday, the day after my wife’s surgery, I put the kids to bed and made sure my wife was settled in and comfortable before heading out to a concert. I was feeling a bit guilty about going to a concert the night after my wife’s surgery but she told me to get out and that she was okay. It was not just any concert, but my first Country music concert. My daughter asked me where I was going and with whom. When I told her that I was going with my best friend, Dave, my children asked, “What makes a Best Friend?” These questions get harder don’t they?
I told my children that the criteria for a best friend changes with age, but in the end the best friend is always there when you need them and sometimes when you don’t even know you need them. My friend Dave has done everything friends do. We’ve gone to concerts together. We played on the highschool basketball, swimming, track, and cross country swimming teams together, we drove long roadtrips together, we were each other’s best man, we’ve seen historic sporting events together, and we helped each other out when our fathers died. But now we are heads of our households and spending time together is few and far between. Now a best friend is someone you can call after not talking to them for a month and inviting them out of the house on a school night. Dave really is the best friend a guy could have. Dave is always honest and dependable, and when I’ve made mistakles in life that I’ve regretted he essentially put his arm around my shoulder and told me it was alright and to put it behind me. I remember his telling me for his bachelor party that he didn’t want me to do anything too crazy in case his legal career took off and he ran for public office someday. I never questioned it. Dave is that trustworthy and honest. If he ever did run for public office, his background would be as squeaky clean as you could possibly imagine.
When I called Dave and asked him if he wanted to go see a country music concert, he thought I was kidding. The last concert we had seen together was for Foreigner in the 80s and we went on a double date (we rubbed our shoulders as we reminisced about our dates sitting on our shoulders for a couple hours so that they could see). I told him I couldn’t take my wife and since his wife had been egging him to get out of the house anyway, off we went. We went to see Keith Urban, who to the non-country music set is married to actress, Nicole Kidman. He hadn’t even heard of Keith Urban but I convinced him that you haven’t really lived in San Francisco until you’ve been to the famed Fillmore Theater (The Fillmore). The Fillmore was a haven for 6os rock. The Who, Cream, Santana, Jefferson Airplane, and Hendrix all played there and now it is an honor for anyone to play there. The intimate setting with chandeliers and posters commemorating all the bands who have played there make it an ambiance like no other. Dave was in awe.
The Fillmore Stage
Fillmore Balcony
We thought it was cool that here we were, two 40 somethings surrounded by hundreds of teenage girls and their mothers. We were definitely not in our element for this particular show, but we laughed at the irony of the situation as we were probably two of the older people there and needless to say we were probably the only two who didn’t know the words to every song. We did take mental notes on whether this was the kind of event we could see our children at in 10 years ( as I watched the 3 “Tweenage” girls scream in front of me and blow kisses I wondered where their parents were and envisoned my daughter begging me to go to a concert like this on a school night). Seriously though we were able to catch up with each other and check on each other’s condition, our wives, our kids, work , and our other friends. We laughed and said that we needed to start getting out more often. The concert actually wasn’t half bad and we were quite impressed by Keith Urban’s guitar play as you can see in the following videos:
The concert was part of a VIP secret concert series in intimate settings to help promote his upcoming album.Although it was a concert on a weeknight, Dave and I agreed that it was a pleasant distraction and we were both recharged and ready for the week. I even got home and went for a run to clear my thoughts. Although it was 11pm I ran longer than normal. The concert had filled my head with many thoughts and hanging with Dave brought many memories. I started to vividly remember the long talks we’d have about what we wanted out of our careers on the long drives back and forth between Northern and Southern California suring our college years. The life paths we’ve taken aren’t exactly the ones we dictated to each other but we had found different roads to get there and had pushed until we found our way. Along the way I passed my neighbor Dean Karnazes (Karno) in the darkness of the night. I didn’t acknowledge him as we passed each other as he was deep in thought as well.
Karno is one of my inspirations although he doesn’t know it directly. As one of the greatest endurance runners ever, he’ll be the one to tell you that running is his therapy and where he gets piece of mind. He says the greatest words he ever got were from his high school track teacher, “Run with heart.” His runs are not about speed but about mind over body. Tonight I did as he says he likes to do and ran past his destination just because I felt good. My mind just turned off and I ran and ran. I dedicated tonight’s 6 mile run to my wife. She continues to amaze me. More beautiful and radiant than ever, her surgery on Monday barely stopped her. She didn’t even have to take her pain fighting Vicodin pills and was already off running good deeds for others like the other mother in our class who is at home recovering from breast cancer. If you don”t believe that breast cancer can create a community, you’ve never seen this sisterhood.
Still, I’ve had to intercept her on a couple of occasions this week to have her stop exerting herself. She is learning to run with heart as well, but she can ease into it as far as I’m concerned. I have to remind her time and again that the road is still long. I think she is just now discovering what it means to give back and enjoy life but she needs to pace herself.
I wasn’t going to post this but a couple of my younger co-workers at work have been bugging me. And then I was having lunch today with some friends and they mentioned that they had been to this club in Vegas called Pure.
When we were there on Valentine’s the club was hosting a party with Heidi Montag of The Hills along with her boyfriend, Spencer Pratt. For those of you older folk like me, The Hills is a pseudo-contrived reality soap-opera. Anyway Pure is a high end club located in Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas with a white room, a red room and the Pussycat Doll Night Club. I also like the outdoor deck with sweeping views of the Vegas Strip!
Like I said, I don’t consider Heidi Montag to be much of a celebrity in my book, but here you go!
Heidi Montag of The Hills
For those of you over the age of 35, you can skip this post for sure. Pure is a nightclub to truly do some people watching. There was a QB, Carson Palmer and a WR, Houshmanzadeh (sp?) from the bengals there that evening. And like most clubs in Vegas, you have to spend coing to get the VIP tables. Also, the young attractive girls get in free or in a priority line. That’s Vegas for you.
Last year I had the opportunity to meet and have dinner with Gold Medalist Apolo Anton Ohno in New York. Apolo is an inspirational story as he was raised by a single parent father who straightened out a rebel and turned him into a world champion and 5-time Olympic Medalist.
The one thing I found interesting about Apolo was the great story about his relationship with his father. Skating set him straight and his father saw it as a way to keep him focused. Apolo told me that his continued dedication is how he pays his father back for helping to keep him straight and owes all his success to his father’s fortitude which served as a great example.
If you haven’t heard the story about how his father left him out in the remote wilderness to think about his life, you should read about Apolo’s life.
“Don’t you know I’m still standing better than I ever did. Looking like a true survivor, feeling like a little kid” – I’m Still Standing, Elton John
I’ve been waiting for Valentine’s Day for a while. I’m not a big believer in the day as like many people say, you should treat everyday like it’s Valentine’s. Well that’s easier said and done. I like to thing that I show my love everyday anyway. For me Valentine’s is that day where I show more than ever how I feel and make just that little special effort more. Of course this year was more special to me and my wife and I wanted her to know how much I appreciate her. I had been offered tickets to a show in Vegas and debated between Love – Cirque du Soleil and Elton John’s – Red Piano. I’ve always been the Carpe Diem person in the relationship and since we’d seen four different Cirque shows before and I felt like Elton John is one of those iconic performers you have to see, I chose Elton John. I was not to be disappointed. This day would be full of wonderful moments each of which would make the day special in so many ways.
I can recall only flying one other time in my life on Valentine’s. It was a snowy day in the East when I flew from Chicago to Raleigh to be with my then fiancee back in 1994 right before we got married. A 90 minute flight turned into an all day affair because of the weather and by that evening we were traumatized. This Valentine’s flight was much smoother. Ironically I finished the book “This Time’s A Charm” by Don Wilhelm, just as we landed in Vegas. As we approached Vegas I kept pointing to passages in the book and having my wife read it. Real life inspiration and all around good attitude about living life to it’s fullest in the happiest way is all I can say about the book and I will dscuss this in more detail when I host Don on this blog on March 1st.
With less than 20 hours in Vegas we took that attitude and had a blast. We walked all over the Casesar’s Palace resort and got the lay of the land. This would be the first time in a while that I did not gamble a penny. I will write a review of the hotel at a later fay, but the new Agustus wing rooms were great and we got a chance to even run into a professional basketball player that I think was shocked I knew his name ( Leon Powe is one of the more feel good stories in the NBA today). His story should be read even if you don’t follow sports. He is truly a wonderful human being and very humble despite all the accolades that he has received.
Heidi Montag of The Hills
We ate dinner at Bradley Ogden (a bit of a splurge) as I had made reservations before the show. Our waiter enjoyed our husband/wife bickering over what to order. The usual thing about changing my order because I didn’t want to order the same thing and then my getting chastised for being boring by ordering a Caesar’s Salad except when I listened and said I’d order the Foie Gras, she told me that was unhealthy. Carpe Diem I told her. We’re living life right? We’re celebrating, right? So there it was, Foie Gras, followed by Risotto accompanied by a nice LaRoache Pinot. Once dinner started we talked about our upcoming trip with the kids and how blessed we are by their presence in our lives. Sure we want them to improve their manners and learn more of life’s social graces, but they are relatively easy children to manage.
As I mentioned, Elton John’s – The Red Piano was great. Full of outrageous costumes, videos, and blow up dolls (cherries, bananas, breasts, roses, legs with garters, etc) along with balloons and confetti falling from the ceiling it was 90 minutes of toe-tapping fun from Benny and the Jets to Believe to Someone Saved my Life Tonight (my wife’s favorite) to I’m Still Standing (my favorite). The words all had special meaning as we held hands and swayed. The fact that the show’s theme was all about love made watching this on Valentine’s all the more special. The video below was the romantic encore. It set the mood just right:
That evening we lived like kids. We went to one of the hottest clubs in Las Vegas. Mind you this was Valentine’s and thus the party was crowded with pretty young people. The night was hosted by Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt of The Hills. We were probably twice the age of most people and probably one of only a handful of couples in there that have children. Either way the atmosphere was vibrant and young and we felt so alive that we stayed up until 2:30am (way past our curfew), leaving us little time to rest before getting up and checking out this morning. Most importantly my wife and I had fun giggling about the scene, amazed that us oldies were hanging out withe youngsters and a couple guys offered to buy my wife some drinks! She was so flattered and in the most round about of ways, that just made my wife let her hair down and forget about the night as her rejuvenation, but rather as her just remembering what it was like to take what life gives you and to run with it. We never have PDA, but just kissing on the dance flow while listening to house music and having some 20-somethings say that we looked so in love, was kinda nice.
In the end it was a perfect Valentine’s evening. It was a celebration of our love and the beginning of our life where we take the anxiety and worries of cancer and put them behind us as much as we can and move forward with a life we will be happy about living. The smiles on my wife’s face were so wide last night and I held onto them tight because I hadn’t seen her so lively in months. In many ways it was a zest in her look I’ve never seen before. She looked so gorgeous because of it.
So much for this Hallmark Holiday. It was really an enlightening Valentine’s and will be one of the top days in our life.
In this crazy world of social media and digital technology, I’m sometimes lucky to get caught with a camera available when I run into someone who has had their 15 minutes of fame. Some more relevant than others.
One of my favorite shows is the reality TV show Survivor. I like it for the human dynamics involved. There is teamwork, strategy, ethics, and lots of luck. Much like there is in life. Many times I wonder how I’d do on a show like that. When I first watched the show, I became mortified by the decisions people made and the people that won. Finally on Survivor, they had a guy I could relate to. It wasn’t that Yul Kwon was Asian like me (or just as good looking – Note he was once one of People Magazine’s Most eligible Bachelors), but the way he played the game was great. He was also reaised in Northern California, had an advanced professional degree and spent time in consulting.
Yul is now entering the entrepreneurial space of frozen dessert with the company Red Mango. As I own several Ben & Jerry franchises, he and his partners came to me with a few questions and I had a business proposition to discuss as well. Below is a photo of my wife, Yul and me (I took that photo 15 pounds ago) at his store in Palo Alto on University. Yep, a millionaire served me some yogurt.
