But unlike Ralph, I never liked going downhill. It was too scary. I didn't enjoy the out-of-control feeling that I might flip over handlebars, crash into trees, wrap myself around telephone poles, rappel too fast down a cliff or get buried in an avalanche. Ralph never worried about such things. When I skied, bicycled, ran and climbed with friends, I was often the first up a hill or crag, but I was always the last down. I was too cautious and timid, or maybe, I thought, I was just the smart one.

My friend Patrick nicknamed me the Most Determined Woman in the World. He said it sarcastically. I got on his nerves with my uphillness. He called me the Energizer Bunny. I kept chugging along, he claimed. I had 10 years on him and most of our companions, but I wouldn't stop. I couldn't quit. I had to keep moving. Ralph was the same way.

At work I received the Whirling Dervish Award. It was custom-made for me: a certificate with a tornado sketched in the center of the paper. Around the fearsome storm, buildings, people and animals swirled helter-skelter in the air. The tornado had eyes and a semblance of facial expression. It was supposed to resemble me.

A former supervisor once recommended me to a future employer. "She's a real sparkplug," he said. "A regular firecracker.'' It was supposed to be a compliment, but it hurt my feelings. I got the definition of sparkplug and fire hydrant confused.

I think Ralph fell in love with the uphillness in me. I could keep up with him on windy passes and minor climbing peaks. But I never stayed with him on the downhill. He was always too fast. He'd wait patiently for me at the bottom of a black diamond run, at the end of a long, winding mountain road, or at the foot of a crag. He was happy when I could get to the bottom of anything.

I wasn’t with him the day he had the accident that left him a C-4 quadriplegic. I was at a gym in the city, working on my upper-body muscles so that we could go on a big wall climb together. Maybe if I had been with Ralph his accident wouldn't have happened. Maybe he would have slowed down to wait for me. Maybe if he had been three-quarters of an inch to the right or to the left on Claremont Avenue his front bicycle tire would not have gone flat from a tiny sliver of glass, a sharp hidden pebble or an upward-facing thorn.

Perhaps it’s the uphillness in me that is keeping me with him now: The Energizer Bunny, the whirling dervish, the little sparkplug. It's all uphill from here. No more downhills to carve through gracefully or sail down safely; only up, up, up.

I'm good at it. Ralph is good at it too. He's an uphill man all the way. It seems to work. We'll just keep at it, I suppose, until we get tired or run out of batteries and sparkplugs, or a whirling dervish blows into town and carries us away.


First published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Friday, April 9, 1999.