Flashes of Panic

After work this afternoon, I rode up to the new Sunderland Public Safety Complex for the blood drive.

I haven’t donated blood since I moved back up to Massachusetts. I had planned to in the fall of ‘01 (didn’t we all?) but then I heard that they didn’t need as much as they were getting—which was almost worse news than we had been getting, but that’s an old tale. Then I was training hard and racing well, and didn’t want to throw in the two-week speed bump that comes along with giving away a chunk of your oxygen-carrying capacity.

(For one or two days after donating, you’ve got a solid cap on your top-end speed; like a dog on an invisible fence, if you cross the effort line, you get zapped and might as well stop. But for a week or two after that, you’re still replenishing; you can do workouts and easy runs, but everything feels harder than it should. When I donated while training, before, I always thought of it as an oil change: I was giving away some used stuff and replacing it with high-test new stuff.)

So I fell out of the habit. Last week, though, someone sent an announcement of this drive around to the office, and I didn’t have any reason not to go.

Aside from the crowd (they set a goal of fifty, had fifty-three appointments, and most of the people waiting in line with me as we passed fifty for the day were walk-ins) it was uneventful. I was cracking wise with the attendants as usual (“I figured I’d give wholesale here, rather than retail to the mosquitos,”) and at some point made a comment about ten minutes spent horizontal being the best part of my day. “And we feed you, too!” they said. “It’s like a cheap date!” “Well, yes, but backwards.” I think I pumped half my packet full by laughing, which is just as well since they checked me out with a 50 bpm pulse and blood-pressure numbers that always sound low to me. I might’ve taken all day if they just let me sleep.

They were concerned about me riding all the way back to Amherst, even though I assured them I had a bus pass in my bag and the PVTA has bike racks on their buses this time of year. Still, problem solved—the guy on the table next to me was headed to Amherst for groceries, so after loading up on cookies, lemonade, and water, we slung my bike in the back of his pickup and he drove me home. Cheap date, indeed.

I probably could’ve made it on my own, but what would be the point? He’s burning the gas anyway, and it wouldn’t do me any good to get home in no shape to climb the stairs. (I did have all the gatorade dealers between Sunderland center and home mapped out in my mind…)

Now playing: Little Wings from Five Stories by Kris Delmhorst