Watchlist (49 page)

Placid old age or perhaps hara-kiri?

A child or a pup? IVF or adopt?

Move to Miami or pick up where you stopped?

At Second Chance, whatever you do—

You can have your cake and eat it too.

It's perfect. Seriously. Nothing cynical about it. It's a fabulous concept. I mean there aren't many inventions that actually succeed in meeting some human need. Ninety-nine percent of them are just some ugly combo of pushy marketing and spineless consumers. And Second Chance is clearly in that single significant, useful percentile. Except what does that have to do with Max?

Our Max lived his life straight as an arrow, fast as lightning, no ifs, no buts, at least until now. Max's dad—well, that's a different story altogether. Max's dad not only opted for Second Chance, he never stopped talking about it either: “If it weren't for that rotten Second Chance, I'd never—and I do mean never—have married that revolting mother of yours,” he'd tell Max at least once a day. “I swear, sometimes I feel like putting a bullet through my head, just so I can finally make it to Road-Not-Taken.” (By the way, a bullet through the head specifically is a very poor choice. Second Chance assumes absolutely no responsibility for the quality of service in case of major damage to cerebral tissue.) Max knew that his father didn't really mean it, and he hoped that his mother realized this too, but even if she did, it didn't make his dad's behavior any less upsetting. “If he'd taken the Second Chance in connection with my being born instead,” Max tried to console her, “he'd have been just as obsessive: ‘I feel like putting a bullet through my head just so I can relive my life without that egotistical kid. If I went and died tomorrow I bet he wouldn't even bother coming to the funeral.' You know how Dad is, it has nothing to do with you.”

The truth is that his mother really did opt for Second Chance in connection with having him, but she was tactful enough never to let on about it. In her case, the Road-Not-Taken would have led her to a quick divorce, a successful business venture, and a happy second marriage. No harm done, she'd get a chance to live that life too.

Max had always preferred women who were curvy, tan, with big tits and thick lips. And Shana, who was very very pretty, by the way, was the complete opposite. She was skinny, flat as a board, and her lips were about as thick as a credit card. But love, as the saying goes, is blind, and Max fell in love. Before the wedding they didn't opt for Second Chance, or before the twins either. Max was against it in principle. He said people ought to assume responsibility for their own decisions. And as for Shana, she'd already wasted hers long before that on a previous boyfriend, whose proposal she'd turned down in her regular life. The thought that after her death she'd experience marriage with someone else was pretty frustrating as far as Max was concerned, but it was also motivational. And the need to feel that he was the right choice often drove him to be a better husband.

Years later, about six months after Shana had used up her first chance and had left Max on his own, his grandchildren asked him what his Second Chance had been, and he said he hadn't had one. They didn't believe him. “Grandpa's a liar,” they shouted. “Grandpa's embarrassed.” People had almost stopped using Second Chance by then, and had moved on to Meeny Miny Mo, which gave you an intriguing third option to explore, at no extra charge.

'Cause two birds in the bush

Can't beat three—all for you.

Meeny Miny
and
Mo

Nothing different will do.

Strava is a smartphone application invented by Michael Horvath and Mark Gainey, a pair of friends who were crewmates in college and missed competing with each other after they moved to different cities. Early in 2009 they realized GPS data had become specific enough to identify climbs based on elevation and distance and that it should be possible to record people's times and compare them. This is what Strava does. It tracks your movement. It tells you how fast and how far you ride and compares you to the rest of the world. You upload your data and it takes your measure.

The application launched in early 2010 and now has about ten million users worldwide. I am one of them. My name is Tim Babcock, and I'm forty-four years old. This puts me at the very edge of the thirty-five-to-forty-four age bracket on Strava. Twenty-nine days from now I'll turn forty-five and expect to see a consequent jump in my Strava ranking.

I am not, ordinarily, a competitive person. As a child I was the sort of kid who had his nose perpetually stuck in a book. I'm an English professor by profession. I do not play football or baseball. I am a poor swimmer. But who among us cannot be swept up in something larger than ourselves? Who among us does not want to win?

S
TRAVA WAS BROUGHT
to my attention by my new physician, Smith Barnard. At the time I was sitting on the edge of an examination table in my underwear in his Colorado Springs office. It was my first appointment with him.

Colorado Springs is a city of a half-million people built into the foothills of the Front Range, an hour south of Denver. The people who live here tend to be part of two distinct though occasionally overlapping groups: they are either in the military or are ex-Olympic athletes. Smith Barnard belonged to both groups. He'd been a reserve on the 1992 Olympic volleyball team, and had spent two years training in Colorado Springs, at the Olympic Training Center in the center of the city.

Though Barnard went to Barcelona with the rest of the team he did not actually get on the court. Nor did he even get into uniform, though he appeared briefly on national television, sitting in the stands in a patriotic sweat suit, clapping in an encouraging way. This information is readily available. Anyone can view the videos on YouTube. I have not spent a lot of time watching those videos, but I have seen the evidence. Smith Barnard, no matter what he might say, is not an actual Olympic athlete.

When pressed he'll assert that the fact that he didn't see any actual volleyball action didn't bother him. He knew he was going to enlist and that while enlisted he was going to go to medical school. His army life lasted a decade, during which he was stationed at various bases around the United States, including Fort Carson in Colorado Springs. When he left the service he came back to the Springs where he planned to open a practice, get married, maybe have a couple of kids. Which is what happened, more or less, except for the getting married and having kids part. Meghan met him in Natural Grocers buying protein powder in bulk. I don't know exactly what was said but she came home telling me that she'd found me a doctor.

Meghan is my wife.

I had not entered Barnard's office that day with a specific complaint. The appointment had been made at Meghan's insistence. She had become worried about my
inertia
—that's her word for it, not depression—and I appeased her by going for a physical. She had been impressed by Smith Barnard and said I should give him a chance. My current doctor didn't seem to be having much success improving my condition, she pointed out, and it was clear I needed to do something. The week before I'd come in to have my blood taken, and now Barnard had my file open in front of him.

It was not, I could tell, good news. In person Barnard is imposing. Six foot four, square jaw, blue eyes, shaved head. With his white coat on, he looks like Mr. Clean, only cleaner.

“These are not good numbers,” he told me.

I was unsurprised. I am the sort of person who has long ceased to possess good numbers and I am at peace with that. Once upon a time my numbers were okay, but even then my good numbers were of the temporary variety. I have a memory of my childhood pediatrician remarking to my mother that perhaps I should ease up on the waffles. Matters have not improved, but I have ceased to be cowed by the dismayed look that passes over a doctor's face—something involving the eyebrows, a sort of facial throwing up of the hands—when confronted by my medical records for the first time.

But Smith Barnard did something different. “See for yourself,” he said, and held the file open for me to see.

I found myself staring at a chart delineating four categories: underweight, normal, obese, and morbidly obese.

I nodded gravely, though the chart made no sense to me.

“This is you,” said Smith Barnard. His finger lay atop an oversized dot firmly in the middle of the quadrant labeled “morbidly obese.”

Despite a lifetime of humiliation in doctors' offices, I was momentarily speechless. How does one gracefully respond to the news that one is morbidly obese? Is it appropriate to weep inconsolably? Fall on one's knees and beg forgiveness?

I did neither; I argued the point. The process of arriving at morbid obesity, I observed, should be more gradual, more in keeping with the manner in which the weight has been accumulated: skinny, not so skinny,
not
skinny, perfect,
maybe
a little heavy, a
little
heavy,
heavy
,
quite
heavy, quite heavy
indeed
, obese, and then, a condition almost impossible to contemplate,
morbidly
obese.

I said this to Smith Barnard.

“Is that a joke?” he asked.

I confirmed it was a joke.

“I'm glad you can joke about this,” he said.

I couldn't tell if he meant it or not.

“Give me your phone,” he said. I unstuck my legs from the examination table and got down on the cold floor. The phone was in the front pocket of my pants. When I gave it to him he handed it back immediately. “Unlock it,” he said.

I did as I was told.

“This is Strava,” he said, banging away at the screen with his index finger.

I watched him install the application. When he was finished he handed the phone back to me and there descended into the office an awkward silence that I recognized immediately as the same silence that descends at the end of Chekhov plays as the characters contemplate their impossible future. It is the sound of a way of life ending.

“It's not just about getting into shape,” he said. “It's about getting moving. That's what you need right now. Motion.”

“Were you ever actually in the Olympics?” I asked him.

“I was on the team, if that's what you mean,” he said. “But we're talking about other things.”

I nodded in the direction of a large photograph of him spiking the ball. “Is that a picture from the Olympics?” I asked him.

He closed my chart. Then he said: “You're going to love Strava, Meghan does.”

I stared at him.

“It's all she talks about,” he said, then laughed.

I laughed back, but the fact is that until that moment I'd never heard of Strava.

C
ARL
“K
IP
” F
ILMORE
was a forty-one-year-old project manager from Piedmont, California. He was married with two children, a steady job at Assurant Health, and was well liked by his friends and coworkers. He died suddenly after a gruesome cycling accident that occurred while he was descending a road near Mount Davidson in the San Francisco area. As awful as the accident was, the events leading up to it were unremarkable, even mundane. He hit the brakes with slightly too much force and lost control. Though it is difficult to know what exactly happened, police determined that he had not been hit by any car, nor had the crash been the result of some obstruction in the roadway. A car had pulled out and stopped. That was it. It distracted him, momentarily, caused him to brake a little too vigorously and that was all it took.

According to Strava, Filmore was doing at least twenty miles above the thirty-mph limit. Previous to that afternoon he had been the KOM record holder for that descent and, earlier that afternoon, had learned that someone had clocked a better time.

KOM stands for King of the Mountain. In Strava language it means that you're winning. Not the winner. There are no winners in Strava because the race does not end. Someone can always show up to unseat you. Clock a better time.

Strava
is a Swedish word. It is a verb meaning “to strive.”

After leaving Smith Barnard's office I considered going by the college, but thought better of it. I was still on a leave of absence and knew that my presence might be disconcerting to some. The details behind my decision to take a leave need not detain us here. Suffice it to say I was under a great deal of stress and I do not respond well to stress.

Instead, I went home and dug my bike out of the back of the garage. It was a steel-framed ten-speed that lacked even toe clips. I couldn't remember the last time I'd ridden it. Miraculously, the tires inflated and the pedals turned. I decided to ride it to the park at the end of the street. Some part of me felt certain that Smith Barnard had installed Strava on my phone because he was sure I wouldn't use it. He'd sounded encouraging, like he was trying to help, but there was something about the way he pushed at my phone, prodded it with his index finger like he'd have preferred to knife into it, that made me think otherwise. The house Meghan and I live in is located halfway up a long hill. That means it takes about a minute to get to the park—it's downhill the whole way—and much longer to get back.

This is what it's like to own a bike in Colorado Springs. You're either going up or down a mountain. The fact is I couldn't make it home. Eventually I got off and walked my bike up the hill. When I got to the house I uploaded my data to Strava and it was then that I noticed that Smith Barnard had sent a request to “follow” me.

This is the verb. On Facebook you “friend” someone; on LinkedIn you “connect.” Follow is what it is people on Strava do to one another.