Cheers to the Grateful Dead fan doing some extra stairs in the Bunker Hill Monument
- 7 days ago
- 3 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
Sunday 8/2/69
I've been doing a bad job with stairs and fitness things of late. I feel like that's been the case for a while. Definitely not where I want to be or should be. Yesterday I don't even know what I was doing and put up this weird stat line: six miles walked, seventy push-ups, and just two circuits of stairs in the Bunker Hill Monument.
I wasn't feeling it and didn't feel like it. There were a lot of people at the Monument and it was another very humid day--seventy degree dew point--and I just went to go, if you will, rather than went to do it up properly. I was at 513 circuits since March 11 so I figured I'd just bump it up a bit to a semi-round number with a Quadrophenia theme and go from there.
I'm tired of the humidity and frustrated with dealing with it. You see that number when you head out and it kind of puts this lowered ceiling in place regardless of what you may want to do. Still, I was annoyed with myself that I turned around as I was heading home and went back up the hill and into the lodge at the base of the Monument, but there was a line and I thought, "This just isn't worth it." I'll buckle down and do things right today.
It was another day of friendly people, though, so that was good. Four straight days of people just being pleasant. People of various ages. It's rare to have a stretch like this. A stretch that ought to be the baseline norm. Because, really, what's the big deal about people not being horrible and rude or, gasp, nice. And yet, there's such a paucity of those kinds of things in our world that sightings of them can feel notable.
But here's something neat. Was going up the first time yesterday pretty slowly because of the people in front of me. Eventually they stepped aside so I surged a bit to make up for what had been the dilatory pace. This fellow behind me decided to do the same. The sound of his breathing told me he was going for it. This is rather unusual. I got to the top, turned around. I passed him as I was ascending again and he gave me a firm clap on the back and said, "Great job."
I certainly wasn't doing a great job, but that's how difficult people think the Monument is, I'd say, after having done it the once. A second climb has a whiff of the significant, even the heroic. If you do this regularly, it obviously doesn't. I mean fro the lay person's point of view. And when it comes to the Monument, pretty much everyone who's ever been in it is a lay person in this capacity.
This was even more unusual, though--he got to the bottom and headed back up. I heard him breathing hard behind me. He wanted to maintain a pace. I wondered if this had something to do with the Reddit nonsense of last week. If someone saw that and thought, "You know what? I'm going to try and do that guy's Monument thing."
Alas, no, as it turned out, but that didn't make it less cool. As I'd just gotten outside the Monument, this guy came up to me from behind, having left at the same time, clapped me on the back again, repeated the good job thing, and said that I had inspired him after he saw me go up again and asked if I did this regularly.
I said that I did and told him that he'd found the sweet spot for just starting up, mentioning that you can do two and walk the next day if you're not used to it, but if you do three you'll hardly be able to move, and then asked him if he was looking to start.
He said no, that he had flown into town to attend the Phish show at Fenway the night before. Upon which I said, "You must be a Grateful Dead fan then," and he said, "Of course," prompting me to attempt to do some field research for my "Dark Star" book by asking him what his favorite "Dark Star" was. He said that he couldn't name just one, and I joked that now he had something to mull on the flight back home.
Good guy. I'm bound to think well a person like this, right? You're in Boston for a show, you like the Grateful Dead, you're smart, you're friendly, you have a nice way about you, and you make the most of your quick visit and get up on a Saturday morning and check out something like the Bunker Hill Monument and you even go up it a second time. All in all, that's a rare person.
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