STEPPING OUT BOOMERPDX STYLE

Stepping out of a comfort zone isn’t the same as throwing yourself away.

Let’s get that straight.

One has an air of optimism, the other not so much.

How can you tell the difference before it’s too late, you ask?

Let’s go.

I took a walk with a man who wanted to see things from a different perspective when he was young.

That perspective meant engaging in parts of life that aren’t available later, for good reason.

Like hitch-hiking.

His travel role model was a man named Rick Sanders, one of America’s most underrated athletes and All-World Hitch-Hiker.

Sanders had hitch-hiked a thousand miles to compete in a national champion level wrestling tournament with his shoes, his singlet, and a half-rack of Bud. He made weight, and won.

He followed that by going to the ’72 Olympics and taking a silver before hitch hiking from Germany to Yugoslavia and dying in a car crash at 27.

Like a rock star. In spite of the end, the man knew about stepping out.

Following the Olympic Games in Munich, Sanders began touring Europe. While hitch-hiking to Greece, he was killed in an automobile accident on October 18, 1972 in Skopje, Yugoslavia when the Land Rover he was riding in crashed head-on into a bus. He is buried in Forrester Cemetery, Eagle Creek, Oregon.

Hitch-Hiking While Young

My strolling companion said he started stepping out young by hitch-hiking two thousand miles to Iowa for a national champion level wrestling tournament in 1973.

He called it the first Rick Sanders Memorial Run.

The plan began with a gram of hash, a Boy Scout canteen full of cheap whiskey, and $200.

His other role model was Oregon wrestling star and famed writer Ken Kesey, which explained the hash.

He lost the hash in the car on his first ride, got stranded on a hot stretch of southern Idaho freeway with no water and a canteen full of hot whiskey that he poured out for water at first chance.

Which is why stepping out while young is a good idea.

I asked how the tournament went.

“I was cheated out of a national championship by a vengeful ref from an earlier match who didn’t like the way I wrestled.”

What was that?

“It’s not against the rules to execute a Greco-Roman throw, miss it, and fall to the mat for no points lost. I checked.

“I’d bump my guys up early, before everything got too sweaty, and throw them in a head and arm for points. After a few of those I’d play slip and slide and fall down. Opponents complained to the ref.”

The ref who cheated you in the finals?

“I put that guy on his back three times for the ‘touch pin’ and didn’t get a call from the same ref. Lost by one point. The guy went on to win open titles in college. I’m not bitter about vengeful, shitty, little refs. Not one bit. Ever.”

Would you say stepping out the way you did helped mold you into who you are today?

“My pre-travel packing is different.”

BoomerPDX Style Stepping Out

I’m not against travel, against stepping out into the world. I’m not.

In fact, I’ve made attempts to prove it to myself.

This is not me patting my own back, but I think I’ve gotten around more than most everyone I know.

That was me stepping out on East 82nd as a proud daddy of the groom; me mending fences with the tools I’ve learned all of my baby boomer years.

That’s me holding my wife’s hand for three and a half decades and telling her how glad I am it’s been just us together all these years.

On the fast train from Seville to Madrid? That was us.

In the Chunnel from France to England? Us.

At the dinner table with the gathered clans in Cambridge, in Beaverton, in Happy Valley, in Tigard? That’s us.

When you step out, look for someone who knows the steps without tripping, or tripping you.

But if that happens, you help each other up.

That’s stepping out in style, you and yours’ style.

Sometimes you can help.