Sir Isaac Newton never published a theory of Kevin S. Hanna in motion.
But if he did, his first law would be that for every right decision Kevin makes, there will be an infinite, and ever increasingly worse in outcomes, series of bad decisions.
Today I’m having a day that personifies the second half of that theorem:
From a morning run, to what to eat, to what to go see “Tourist” wise, to directions to the expo, to trying to clean up a splotch on my Airbnb’s countertop, everything has been wrong, wrong, wrong.
Let’s start with the countertop. I didn’t see any paper towels so I grabbed a paper napkin from a holder… not realizing it’s floral design had inks that would transfer to the counter while picking upping making it a quicker, messier, smearier upper. So now that red rose tint on the white counter makes it look like the submarine in Operation: Petticoat.
Food wise I just keep picking the wrong things to have. Heavy stuff, some Danish pastries on top, and just general stomach churns like I were on a roller coaster that never pulls into a station. And after a lost appetite the prior week due to the damn cold I STILL haven’t shaken, I was just starting to lose some pounds. The scales dial is running the wrong way now.
I did decide to try and go for a short run this morning to try and stave off a descent into melancholy. Unfortunately, I took a bad footfall and the top of my foot hurts. What’s the top of the foot called? Is there a technical term for that? It’s the tarpal bones I know because when I was learning bone structures in elementary school my mom told me to remember we drive a car with our hands so that’s where the carpals are, but are feet get stuck in tar, so those are the tarpals. I wonder if that contributed to me being a Tar Heel years later.
In any case, it’s colder here in Odense than previous runs and my leg is acting up. I’m an old man, made all the more apparent ad last night at the visual arts museum I was astonished to see a 20-something woman fascinated by the VCR hands on demonstration in the techno-archeology wing. She had to read the instructions to see how to put a tape in and setting the recording using code numbers blew her mind. The sample recorded was LIFE OF BRIAN, which she said she had recently watched on her iPhone. I felt time’s arrow piercing my heart.
As for tourist options, everyone says I should go see Egeskov Castle. But I looked on the map and it’s about 16 miles away. The best public transport option would take me 85 minutes to get there. I immediately had PTSD Flashbacks to my “brilliant” plan for my mom and I to ride “the bus” to the Dole Pineapple Plantation in Hawaii. Yes, yes. It cost us $3 total for the trip, but I didn’t realize it would take 2.5 hours each way, with 56 stops coming and 56 stops going. And I didn’t realize riders looking to get off would press the call button and a disembodied robotic woman’s voice would sing and say “stop requested.” Hearing that voice so many times… my god. I can still hear it in my nightmares.
So the fairy tale castle is out. I thought I’d check out the Danish Railway Museum because I thought it was completely run by children. When I got there I realized I had confused it with Budapest’s Children’s Railway, which I had missed when I was there last year. I decided not to pay 80 kroner for an adult run train museum. Expectations were, as Charles Dickens once said, great (* see note below). And once those great expectations were dashed, well, gosh…
I did wander about to Pokémon Go style collect some photos of the various Hans Christian Andersen storybook statues around town. That at least I came sorta close to achieving… albeit I most definitely didn’t catch them all.
Which leads us to my quixotic quest to pick up my bib. Or if you’re not into a Cervantes reference, I was like the White Rabbit trying to get a bowl of Trix.
The English instructions I had for the race said I needed to head over to the Odense Sports Center.
When I google mapped it I had directions to the Odense Sports Centrum. I arrived to find a desolate place… like an adrift spaceship that had its crew abandon her long, long ago.
I wandered all through the empty place, occasionally hearing voices echoing through the vast emptiness but never able to locate them. I finally emailed the race director and here’s what I ultimately found out:
Ohhhh-Kay. At least the 40 minute walk to the right location was via a sylvan bike path. I only got nearly run over by a raging bicyclist twice!
Having finally arrived where I was supposed to be, ie the Odense Sports Center and not the Odense Sports Centrum…
… I wandered into the expo and was struck at how they all tend to blend together after awhile. Shoes, gu, and gear. The random race touting for business.
I skipped it all and got my bib from this guy.
He’s run every HCA Marathon… and always as a different fairy tale character. I asked what he was favorite one was. He said after the tea cup he was glad to do the emperor’s new clothes. He said it was much freedom and easier to run in. I bet. And I can only hope it was a flesh colored bodysuit.
And so as I stumble back to my AirBNB with visions of wine pouring through my brain, I’m trying to find landmarks so I’ll remember the way back for the race on Sunday.
And while I originally had planned on trying to go see a medley of sci-fi themes performed by the Odense Symphonic Orchestra tonight, the ticket prices all proved bafflingly obtuse… even with a translation.
This is for a seat in the very last row, one of the worst tickets they had, and the cheapest still available. From my translation website, the 225 price is for “loose sales.” The 175 price is for “some customers pay” (some… no specification as to how one BECOMES someone), the next one is clearly for a minimum of 10 people, and the last is for those under 27 or students. So the worst seat in the house was going to cost me USD$35, plus an additional service fee. Like the terrible Fantasy Football League trade I made the other day, it’s a trap that will only end in people saying I was stupid and robbed. I’ve frankly had enough of that, so I spent 30 kroner on this:
There are no right decisions; only Kevin decisions.
* Full Disclosure: That Expectations are Great/Charles Dickens bit? I originally used it during my short-lived newspaperman days when I was a roving (and not very good) film critic. I’m 99.99% sure it was in reference to the great opening scene of Josie and the Pussycats, and how it was so good and said the bar so high that it made the rest of the middling movie fare even worse. I mainly remember it because one of the editors said it was her second favorite line I’d written; her top pick was when I wrote about a Rodney Dangerfield straight to video comedy that I described as “Rodney pitching woo.”