Sir Rick Keeps a Journal (a 30:30 report)

See Sir Rick Fluming – long-time running buddy and marksman of true friendship – see him there through the plate glass of the Sparrow. Here we are in Orleans, MA which of course you know is not only on Cape Cod but embracing all Cape Cod qualities of sweetness and salty sunny breezy days and also a bunch of good quality people and that even counts some of the tourists who we’d surely rather do without their auto and wicked bad traffic-inspired jams, all of which is a sidebar and has not a thing to do with a late Tuesday afternoon when looking from the parking lot and the sandy area next to it with a couple of picnic benches best served as butt-gatherers for those young and old enjoying a cool tasty cone of the Sparrow’s ice cream or perhaps one of their world famous chocolates, but up there on the other side of the window sits Sir Rick who has made the journey down Cape today from over the other side of the canal within the joyous and always healthy bounds of the proverbial ‘day off’.

Come way down here to Orleans and sits there in the Sparrow, on a high stool and facing out the window to picnic and lot areas previously described, and a point of information is that if you walk out the front door of the Sparrow, which faces the lot, and you swing around to the right and that’s actually the left side of the Sparrow building (seeing from the lot) and cross the street there, careful to look both ways, over on the other side of the road you’ve crossed is another parking area and just beyond that is the famous Cape Cod Rail Trail which is 25 miles of tar over the old path of a railroad track which has been long ago removed and the CCRT is a powerful example of good when folks decide that day-to-day lives and how we live them and get to live them and this thing called opportunity and the chase after joy, and not too hard if the word chase rings up struggle and sweat and hard times, nah, this is the easy-does-it follow what they call your bliss and many years back some of the smart and good people previously noted made decisions from within a whole bunch of these Cape Cod communities and small towns which won’t be named and decisions were considered and agreed upon to turn the old railroad line into this tarred path which would be available once completed for people motorvating by foot, by running shoes, by skateboard, by roller skates, by pogo stick (if that’s your thing) by bicycle (and there are many who do refer to these miles as “the bike path” which is so limiting I can only chuckle at that reference being one personally who has repeatedly logged via walking shoes so many of those 25 miles here there and all over everywhere coming and going back and forth repetition to the joy of nature and the honoring of nature and the afternoon experience of nature) when the days are warm nearly all the way to hot and those famous breezes off either the bay or the ocean or both and the overhead of pines and oaks and here a pond and there a larger pond and now you come upon a working cranberry bog (and Sir Rick is all about cranberry bogs what with growing up in a town filled with them) and yes the CCRT is just over there from the plate glass window through which we see Sir Rick Fluming and he is working on a large fresh coffee with one small measure of cream and no sugar for Sir Rick and he has brought with him, this Tuesday, a writing book, a book you can directly say to be written in and some may call this a diary, which correct me if I’m wrong conjures up a young woman at a table maybe lit by a candle or a small lamp and she has a pen and she looks up periodically to give a long clear thought as to what comes next, what’s important to recount and hold close to her body forever, and hopefully in this day and age that image is not considered politically incorrect and if you feel that way apologies are heartfelt and genuine but it seems to some that the word diary kind of makes you picture that whereas Sir Rick would tell you, when you ask him if you both have your windows down with autos side by side and you’ve slowed to do the rotary back onto the 6, that he has been writing in his journal,

And there we go, call it a journal and this title seems to work pretty equally for any sex or species and maybe even aliens write in what they’d call a journal and today Sir Rick has made an early morning decision to make the 40-mile drive to Orleans and the Sparrow and the tall stool looking out the window and set his coffee of the wide counter which is there precisely for setting things which here in this fun place could be a bowl of ice cream or a genuine Belgium stick of dark chocolate and for many, this having the rep of serving way good coffee, a cup of coffee which could be a porcelain mug and Sir Rick prefers to-go paper cups and that’s what’s there as we peek in and also what’s there is his trusty journal which, I know this because we’ve been best friends and running buddies and co-conspirators and fellow protestors and riders in autos moving at excessive speeds since elementary school so it’s a fact when I say Sir Rick makes it his business to write some of his secrets and wisdoms and plannings for future journeys and what he’d tell you is genuine bliss followings that, yes this is a daily goal and there have been days here and there when he’s missed it, that goal, in the grips of the 24-hour grip or staggering in a little too drunk from another night out with me and maybe the Irvinator and Doug Bradstreet or some combination of high school friends, but nearly every single day without one of those good reasons Sir Rick has jotted with pen important words on the paper and as you can see, since this is a late afternoon tale, any time of day will do and on the ride down the 6 Rick was considering drinking the coffee and daydreaming out the window and then going around the right of the building and crossing the street and walking onto the trail and hanging a left and walking along in the sun where it sneaks through the branches and all the way up to the state forest and back and then writing because maybe some big inspiration, some total insight about what’s the next right thing other than daily duties and vows so’d then go get another coffee and write in the Sparrow again or even put it off til just before bedtime back in Wareham, over the canal and through the woods, but – see –

Sir Rick (and I love him for this) is a go-with-the-flow young man and stepping out of his souped-up Buick Skylark (’68) which is his transporting mode this year, his foot hit’s the Sparrow tar and, bang, let me jot thoughts in this puppy here and now and so he did, which is how we see him upon entry to this once upon a time — and as a life-long writer (me) and, according to my Dad, life-long storyteller, this becomes a once upon a time because even though I’m way over here in Venice California where I call home, oh, these last eight years, I in my mind’s eye see my running buddy and best friend Sir Rick through that large glass and I wish I could look over his shoulder and maybe put my right hand on his right shoulder and look over the left and read what’s going into the journal on a late Tuesday afternoon because you would never ever go wrong using your precious time doing that very thing.