That’s me, Max, over there on the left. I had just loaded up a 9′ Noble Fir and two 8′ Doug Firs for delivery. It was hard even getting them onto the trailer to begin with, and it only got tougher.
I moved like molasses across I-5 and into NE. I was getting rained on, the subtle but wet drops. Passing NE 20th I realized that my jacket had soaked through and my wool base-layer was soaking inside-out from sweat.
The first delivery was to a cute family that stood on the porch in amazement as I unloaded their Douglas Fir from the 300lb pile of trees strapped to my trailer. They thanked me for my efforts with a small bag of homemade cookies, tied up with a tip. The tip was a thoughtful gesture, but the cookies were what my body craved, so I scarfed a few.
The second delivery came quickly, at a mere 8 blocks away. Another family greeted me, it looked like three generations of men – all kind of chuckling at my drenched clothes and trailer loaded with tall trees. I set their 8 footer Doug Fir to dry on the porch and jumped back on my bike. It was getting cold. Everything I had on was soaked through completely. If I ran my hand along any piece of clothing it would gush and then instantly suck more rain up.
I headed to NW 22nd, across town. When I hit the Broadway Bridge, the lone 9 foot Noble Fir left in my trailer was feeling like a couple thousand pounds. About 25 blocks from my 3rd and final delivery, I told myself, “you can do this, you can have as many beers as you want later”.
The rain refused to give up. I was now more than soaked, my skin felt like it was even taking on water. In a sort of exhausted, delirious moment I began singing “Who’ll Stop the Rain” in my head. No one stopped the rain.
With 10 blocks left I remember thinking “this is so damn hard” – then suddenly for no reason I thought about a teenage friend of mine, Wayne. He died when I was about 19, after fighting juvenile lymphoma for many years. I thought about how hard it is to lose a loved one. I thought about what it felt like when I saw Wayne at his wake, and how much I wanted him to just “wake up” from some kind of nap or coma. But it wasn’t either. He was gone. I remembered that feeling intensely and it put everything in perspective.
All my thoughts swirled around The Dougy Center, the folks we’re donating our 10% to this year, around the kids and teens who will stand in my shoes – starring at their friend or family they had lost wishing they would just “wake up”.
I didn’t care about my exhaustion or tiredness or how wet I was. I just thought about how making it to this last house was going to raise a small amount to help out The Dougy Center, to help kids and teens deal with what seems like insurmountable grief. I thought about how dark the world can feel, but how my own life had become a flurry of light and beauty in surviving that darkness.
I rolled into my last delivery, hauled that giant tree up to our customers doorstep and smiled through muscle aches and shivers. In the last three years, this venture had never felt so good as it did at that moment.
I’m not a hero or anyone special because I ride Christmas Trees around Portland in the rain, as a matter of fact some folks would rightfully think I’m some kind of dummy for doing that. But we don’t do this to be heroes or special or “good”. We do this because we love it and we do this to try and fill the world with more cheer.
We ride – with blinking little lights on the front of our delivery bikes, that may just a little bit, help make the world a little less dark.
