August 26, 2017: The Bali Marathon Expo
Where to begin? I purposefully booked Clamonic House as my hotel because:
(A) it was cheap (the better to suck my blood perhaps…); and
(2) it was located not too far from both Saturday’s race expo site as well as Sunday’s shuttle bus stop to get out to the race.
This morning (Editor’s note: August 26th… this is a reconstructed, late post due to photo issues) I walked from Clamonic House to the venue, with google maps saying it was about a 45-50 minute walk.
As was the case in the other Southeastern Asia country I recently visited, I was constantly offered a motor bike ride or a taxi by people as I went. The former included “vroom-vroom” pantomime of riding a bike and the latter included the dissonant melody of a looped track on a subpar album track: “taxi, sir? Taxi?” I kept waving people off. And yet they kept persisting, taking the tact of tourism 101 and asking me repeatedly, “where you from?” When I would say, “The United States” that wouldn’t register. “The US?” I’d try. Nope. Nothing. But when I said California or Florida that always got recognition and then they knew “America!”
In any case, I much prefer hoofing it when I can… and given the traffic snarls in this town, especially closer to the expo itself, I do believe it was faster to walk it than it would’ve been to drive anyway… and that includes scooters ducking and weaving traffic and riding the curbs onto the sidewalks like they should be called “sidedrives.”
The venue itself was just along the beach proper… though I had trouble ascertaining HOW to get to the beach. Things were cordoned off or blocked by well tended foliage. But that was for later in the day – first things being first, I needed to get my bib.
Which I did.
Hilariously, all shirts were in one area… except Women’s XS. You’d think the Extra Small shirts wouldn’t have taken up that much more room, ya know?
And despite having extra time to try and prep this piece, I’m going to phone it in a bit here and just throw a bunch of photos of the day here, there, and everywhere. It’s color. It’s commentary with images and no prose. It is what it is.
I already mentioned the cashless payment system as 21st Century innovation for a race expo. But here are a few photos from the actual experience to partially document and convey the frustrations I encountered. Maybe I’m an analog guy living in a digital world; maybe I’m a luddite in a sea of Elon Musks; maybe I’m just a grumpy old man.
Giving up on buying food or beverages, I decided to stroll the avenues outside the venue and see what was what. On top of this, the heat and humidity had kinda dulled my appetite – it was just too darn hot to eat anything anyway. Maybe that’s what I need to do in the future to try and resolve the no-love handles that billow over my waistbands and the jowls of my face that make me look like I’m in a fat suit for a Hollywood comedy… only it’s no suit and it ain’t very funny.
I did eventually find a way out to the beach proper. I took off my shoes and wandered the sand, this time accosted by people saying things like, “Jet ski, sir? Jet ski?” It’s a different song I suppose but then again Ariana Grande claims to have more than one tune and I swear it’s just the same one over and over.
Q: Say what kind of events do you guys do? A: ALL the events.
At what I deemed my turn around point, I snapped a make-shift tripoded sefie outside a shrine. With memories of one of my favorite pics for Mom and me that got photobombed by a guy on a bike passing by and giving my camera a stink eye, this happened:
I sent it to my Mom with a subject heading of “Wish You Were Here.”
Figuring there was a marathon in the morning and I really should eat SOMETHING, I wound up at a nice little café/bar and had a local dish, complete with chicken satay. Tasty… albeit almost three times what I paid for a similar meal at “Shanghai” near my hotel.
To be fair, that Shanghai food cart is RIDICULOUSLY cheap, even by Bali standards. The dish costs less than a Toberlone package in the store, less than a loaf of bread. At 15,000 rupiah, that’s roughly USD $1.13!
And to be honest, though I almost went to the Ke Pizza place next to the hotel, I just wasn’t in the mood… and they were almost 5 times Shanghai’s prices (so, ya know like six bucks for a pizza or an eggplant parmigiana). But I can have Italian a lot of places… I kinda wanted local cuisine at the local level. So I Shanghai’d dinner once more.
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I’m sure I’m leaving out A LOT of material and details… this is the problem with trying to reconstruct things a bit after the fact.
These road trips I take especially are sensory and memory overload and I try and jot things down… I try and take a lot of photos… but sometimes it just is of the moment and then it’s gone. “Ephemeral” as Webster might say. Which isn’t to say these lost moments didn’t make an impression – they did. And no doubt my subconscious will bring them up in slumberland some day… assuming I ever figure out how to get actual REM sleep and not just the odd catnap resets.
As I mentioned in a teaser post, the shuttle bus for the marathon was leaving at 3 AM so I set an alarm for 1:45. There wasn’t much sleep even with an “early to bed” plan in place. Not that it matters. A marathon awaited… and that’s what’s next on this blog post recap-a-rama.