The birds, stairs outside and inside, Bunker Hill Day

Sunday 6/14/26

I got to Charlestown early today because there were some things I wanted to do. During some of that time there I sat on a bench facing the lodge of the Bunker Hill Monument and watched and listened to the house sparrows. They had nests on each side of the entranceway behind the columns.

That's all I did for a while. Simply (or not so simply) watched and listened to the birds. Witnessed life. Heard their songs and commentary. Tips. Ministrations. Pacifications. Verbalized notes-to-self. Meanwhile, back down the hill, the robins were singing their different tunes.

I arrived early because I've been dissatisfied with my stair-running performances. I've felt that my endurance hasn't been up to par, my legs aren't in the necessary shape, and I'm getting winded and winding down earlier than ought to be the case.

My approach when I want to do better is often a mix of severity, punishment, and privation, with verbal abuse. Self-directed verbal abuse. I'm old school. It's the New England puritan in me, perhaps, or the old salt as befits one born on a boat and believing in the discipline demanded aboard ships. I beat myself into doing better. Lash myself on.

It's the same approach I take with my work. Both to ensure a story as good as it can be in making sure I utilized every last particle of my ability to the fullest in service to that story, and in creating something new that is unlike anything that has ever existed by anyone else or myself with every single work.

What I wanted to do was run stairs outside of the Monument before heading into the Monument to run more. This weather has been awful. It is the worst time of the year--for me. The way that other people dread ten degree days in January--which I like--is how I dread these days.

On Friday, it was fifteen degrees above the average temperature for that day, then thirteen degrees above the average on Saturday, and finally eighteen degrees above the average today. It has been humid in the extreme as well.

The toll of running stairs in this heat and humidity was made apparent, I think, by me literally being on my hands and knees on the Bunker Hill grass near the top of the stairs to the Connecticut Gate on Friday after running 3000 of them there on Friday. Not a position I assume lightly or often.

Yesterday I walked six miles, did 100 push-ups, and ran five circuits of stairs in the Monument--it was, again, a struggle. I finished the five circuits in thirty minutes, but that's not amazing and I was trying to go fast and faster than that, to no avail.

Today I ran 5000 stairs outside at the Connecticut gate. I was surprised, frankly, that they opened the Monument at all. I expected them to before they did, but by the time I was done the heat index was 87--the point at which they close the doors--and they were still letting people in, though maybe those were the last to go up. I didn't stick around to find out.

Anyway, I only did three circuits today, but, again, I'd done 5000 stairs outside first and the heat index was 87. I took these slowly. There was no air in that obelisk. I was at 347 Monument circuits since 3/11 coming into today, and I wanted to get to 350. I was trying to order myself to do the proper set of five, but a voice in my head essentially said, "No, screw you, man," and I decided, yeah, okay, I'm done.

A week like this one that has just closed, stair-wise, will sound rather pedestrian and unimpressive. Not to others, sure, but by my numerical standards. Only eighteen Monument circuits. With 8000 stairs being run at the Connecticut gate, and, if you want to go back to Tuesday, 5000 more at City Hall. The temperature was quite comfortable that morning. The rest of the time it sucked.

This is actually the kind of week that's a foundational great week of stairs. You won't have the numbers to show for it, but it can be that you did more in a week like this with lower numbers and that kind of heat/humidity than in a week with the big stats.

A week like this can be why you're doing as well as you are in September when the temperature drops and having big day after big day and while it's never easy you're feeling like you're in pretty good shape and very strong.

There's a life lesson in that, as there always is with stairs, if you understand them.

I hate this time of the year, though. I really do. I detest summer. I detest the heat. I detest the brightness. I don't like anything about any of it.

I'll tell you what, though: a water fountain up on Bunker Hill would be a real game changer. I can't take any water while I'm doing any of this. There's no place to leave a water bottle. So the entire time, I'm on my own, water-wise, until I get back to the North End and can stop at a water fountain in this park before getting back home and drinking what becomes a staggering amount of water. It'll be three, four liters before all is said and done. I lose so much fluid without putting anything back in until well afterwards. If I could stop and hydrate and resume that would be huge.

Today was Bunker Hill Day. There's a parade. People already had their chairs out along the sides of the road when I was on my way back to Boston. Three men in Colonial militia garb were gathered near me as I ran the outside stairs. A woman asked to take their photo.

A new study came out about alcohol that I was reading tonight. It's so lethal. Your risk of everything goes up notably. All these different types of cancer. If you look at the data, it's just about impossible to justify any alcohol intake. One drink a day--so seven a week--really has a great shot of taking years, if not decades, off your life. It's right there in the science.

Today marks 3619 days, or 517 weeks, without a drink, which is wrong, because that means if I make it to ten years--which I'm not assuming I will--that will be in July, when I know that I stopped drinking in May 2016. I got pneumonia in August 2016. I am certain I would have died if I hadn't stopped drinking in May and had those interim months to build up health and (physically) repair my heart.

As I've said, I think about this a lot. I think about the irony of me running stairs until I'm on my knees with exhaustion in order to prolong my life when I have nothing to live for and believe there is nothing for me in this world. What am I doing? It doesn't make sense.

I had been working on the revision to "Fitty" before any of this.