Sport and Hitchhiking

I want to describe two things that I’ve experienced in the past couple days.

Yesterday I was sitting around the house most of the day relaxing and reading John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charlie in Search of America. It is an engaging story of Steinbeck’s travels across the US with his dog. It made me reminiscent of my travels from summers past. Perhaps it made me a little restless too. I went for a run around the neighborhood. It felt so good to stretch my legs. I cut the run short because of the intense heat and a case of insidious laziness. Instead of packing it in and taking a shower, only to be followed by more sweating, I decided to grab a ball from the house and head to the basketball court down the street. I shot hoops with a couple guys that if I were in the US would have made me nervous. They sported tattoos and one guy even smoked a cigarette mid lay-up. While we were playing a local game of Stick, which involves free-throw shots and tipping the ball, a game of baseball started in the dirt soccer field adjacent to the basketball court. My family has a running joke with our friends the Metz’ because we (namely my dad) don’t think baseball is a real sport, played by real athletes. He thinks that basketball is the height of athletic sporting games. After watching guys run around in bare feet over dirt, rocks, trash, and even some glass to play an intense game of baseball, I have to side with the Metz family. That is sport. The tattooed dudes weren’t athletes. And for myself, I shoot hoops like a marksman missing the broadside of a barn.

The second story just happened today. Everyone but Jenna, who had to work, went to Laguna de Apoyo near Granada. It was about an hour bus ride and a ten minute taxi ride down to an exceedingly beautiful volcanic lake. The breeze blew cool and the sun was warm. We spent the day relaxing, swimming, and reading. When we left the lake we started walking up toward the main road to catch a bus. A pickup truck rolled up behind us, Michael stuck out his thumb, and before I knew it I was nestled in the back of a pickup with Christine, two Nicaraguan men, a bunch of firewood, and two ratty old chairs. We breezed through the country on our way to the highway. The air was sweet and fresh as we drove through the forest, up out of the volcanic crater where the lake shimmered below us. The Nicaraguans in back along with the wood were dropped off, and the driver offered to drive us all the way to Managua. Christine and I hopped down thinking that’d we’d get into the cab with the rest of the crew for the highway stretch of the trip. I opened the front door to hop in and the driver said, “No, let the muchacha sit there. Get in the back and sit down low.” So I hopped back in the bed of the truck and settled in for a beautiful and windy trip down the highway to Managua. He drove fast. As we drove back to the city, smells of the countryside faded back to smells of the city—diesel exhaust and pollution. He dropped us off and we were left with a twenty minute walk back to our house. It was a great day, topped off with a donut from Doña Donut, a local woman who walks around selling homemade donuts, and an exquisite dinner of soy meat, beans, and rice prepared by Michael.