Beer Runners
April 2022
I’m writing about finding friendship in surprising places, about conversations I’d never expect to have anywhere, and about the North Bend Beer Runners.
Take tonight. Just one time of many that leaves me musing and moved as I drive home. Tonight I’m injured and don’t run, but when you’re a Beer Runner you’re a Beer Runner. To be a North Bend Beer Runner you don’t have to live in North Bend—some of our members come from Mercer Island or Issaquah or Seattle. You don’t have to drink beer—you can have wine, cider, water, or nothing. And you don’t have to run—we have walkers, people with baby strollers, and people who come just to hang out. It’s not a problem that I didn’t run tonight.
First I join a table with two newish dads and we talk about baby food—organic, of course—and how to test for potential food intolerances. Somehow our talk drifts to babies and TV. Mr. Rogers, Sesame Street, and the Electric Company, (and I learn that Mr. Rogers, as soothing as he is, kept Ian’s son from falling asleep one night. Seems the stimulation of the medium overcomes the message). Then Star Trek, which used to follow Sesame Street when I was a kid, and somehow we get to Black Adder. And cows. Then Gary Larson and his dog cartoons and the boneless chicken ranch, and then it’s bedtime and the dads have to go.
I switch tables, join a conversation about raising teenagers. College scholarships and how to steer kids away from drugs. These guys are both dads, too, and what they say is thoughtful and smart. Praise the girl for being willful, and encourage her to find good ways to use her energy. Smart.
How on Earth do we then move on to religion, death, and the possibility of an afterlife? No telling. We are Beer Runners and in this group everything comes up and everything is authentic. Almost never, in three and a half years here, has the talk been just about, “I ran this trail and it was really pretty.” No, tonight I’m next to one of us who was raised Mormon and we share how neither of us goes in for doctrine, but we each have our own sort of faith. A sense of goodness that’s bigger than we are. Loved ones who’ve died but they still talk to us sometimes. My friend says his grandmother joined him on the chairlift out skiing, one time. My mom still talks to me. And we hope we, too, get to live on in some form after we die.
Then I connect with my friends from Israel. They’ve been in the US how long? Less than a year, I think. They are a married couple: adventurous, confident, competent, and bright. From them I both learn new things and see old things newly. I learn that Israel will accept you as a citizen if you are even one eighth Jewish, which is the same standard the Nazis used to persecute the Jews. There’s beauty in that, I think. Poetic justice. And when I have the honor of being invited to their baby shower Ela confides that she had to Google how to address an envelope in the U.S. and where to put the stamp. Things I’d never think of, and suddenly I see the mystery in ordinary envelopes.
We have a Beer Runner recently arrived from India, too, and I was running with her one night when a flock of geese took flight, flapping and honking.
“What’s that?” she asked, alarmed.
“Oh, that’s the geese,” I told her.
“What’s geese?” she said.
I guess they don’t have geese where she comes from. That still delights me. I take too many things for granted.
Tonight my Israeli friends have a new adventure to share. They went to church on Easter, invited by a neighbor. Could be uncomfortable, boring, or stressful, I think, so I ask. How was it?
“Awesome!” he says. “I think of a church as an old building with a dome, but look at this. It was like a Britney Spears concert!”
He shows me a cell phone shot of an immense auditorium with colored lights and theater seats, a live band and a killer sound system.
“Did you convert?” I ask teasingly.
“Oh, yes!” he says.
“How long did it last? Are you still Christian?”
He smiles wryly. “No.”
The waitress is mopping the floor now, and we’ve covered the big topics in life. But as we’re gathering our jackets Dave says he read some of my blog pieces. It touches me more than I can say. It says, as if I didn’t know, that we are friends and not only fellow runners.
There’s more, too. I share my good news, that already an agent is interested in my memoir, and they get it, my runner friends. They understand that this is my big dream and they share my excitement. Ela gives me a high five and a triumphant smile. As we head down the stairs Shalev says, “I believe in you. Your writing is good.”
I did not expect this. Years ago when I hung out with runners all they talked about was mileage and injuries. The usual belief in the world says you need something obviously in common to make friends. I’m a runner, sort of, but I’m not obsessed. I’m more of a writer and a dancer. These people are twice as fast as I am and mostly half my age. Having babies, raising teenagers, working in sales or tech or moving to a foreign country. Lives unlike mine in nearly every way and yet… Here we are. And we are friends.