The Shot That I Didn't Get

Rhumba and I bought a new camera a few months ago. It's a genius of a camera, a Japanese digital SLR that takes impossible shots -- like pictures of moonlit clouds, shutter speed 1/10, hand-held, no tripod, and yet absolutely clear. Impossible for me, anyway.

The Japanese electronics wizards are masters of something called "fuzzy logic," which is a type of computing which looks at what you're doing, figures out what you actually meant to do, and does that instead. Our camera is stuffed to the gills with fuzzy logic. Damn, our photography's gotten better.

And I've missed sighting right through the lens instead of by a smeary LCD screen whose image washes out in bright sun. I had a good old cast-aluminum Nikkormat back in the day, a great old camera that I flew by the seat of my pants; and when I pick up our new digital SLR, "the day" is back. Only better.

It's made photography fun again. Rhumba and I look at everything around us in terms of what would make a good shot. So these days we take the camera with us nearly everywhere. So we can take a good shot when we see a good shot.

But you can't take it everywhere. And that's why I missed a great shot of the Buffalo. Maybe the greatest shot.

The Buffalo is an old-time professional bodybuilder. Before there was Arnold, there was the Buffalo. In their times, they both ruled the small universe of pro bodybuilding. After he became king, though, Arnold transitioned over to the bigger universe of show biz and the even bigger universe of politics.

But the Buffalo came to rest in Santa Cruz.

It's the middle of a Sunday afternoon at the Iron Dream, a near-deserted gym in a declining industrial district in the wrong end of Santa Cruz. Nobody comes to the Iron Dream on a Sunday afternoon; for most, there are better things to do. There's just me, the counter girl, and a bald-headed gym rat who's been around there forever. And the Buffalo.

He's sitting on a bench doing bent-over bicep curls until it hurts. And you can tell it hurts; his face muscles spasm, the veins in his temple pop out with strain and pain. The Buffalo does every exercise until it hurts; when he finishes a set he gasps, trembles, collapses in on himself and goes dark for a second until enough blood returns to his brain.

The Buffalo knows that if it doesn't hurt, he isn't doing it right. "No pain, no gain" is a glib, shallow way of saying this. The serious body builder doesn't just accept pain, he invites it in for a beer, tells it to put its feet up and stay; and no bodybuilder was ever more serious than the Buffalo.

That's why I don't say "Hello" to him right now. You don't interrupt him in the middle of a set, or even between sets. He doesn't like distraction. If you catch his eye, then you can say hello.

In his glory days down on Venice Beach, when his picture was on the cover of the big muscle magazines, the Buffalo's arms were legendary. He'd work them until he was ready to drop. His focus was legendary, too, and it was all about the weights. I read that he got his own set of keys to the gym he belonged to so he could come in at 4 am and work out in the darkness, all by himself. As I said -- no distractions.

That was 45 years ago. He's pushing 70 now. And he looks like what he is: a guy who's been lifting heavy weights for half a century: stiff, subtly twisted from old injuries, hair receding past the high-noon mark, face corded and lined with the strain of 100,000 bench presses, veins like drip-irrigation hose.

But his shoulders are broad, his chest deep, his arms corded and mighty. He never stopped training, never stopped pushing the iron or gulping egg whites and protein powder. Not a thing about him is soft. You couldn't look at him and doubt his strength for a second.

Arnold went for fame and power, and got them. But I saw a shot of him in a swimsuit not long ago; he's gone soft. You can't run a state and keep the bodybuilding discipline. That discipline is important to the Buffalo.

The Buffalo had some fame as a bodybuilding king, and for a while there were some B-movies and some Hollywood gigs, and some managers who maybe took better care of themselves than they did of the Buffalo. Things got complicated.

The Buffalo doesn't deal well with complication. He flailed around for a while. But he changed course, found a good solid woman (who lifts) and got back to basics -- to the iron. Iron is not complicated. It's just you and the iron, and you'll either lift it or you won't. And if you don't -- there's next time.

The Buffalo does his last set of curls and gets up from the bench, breathing hard. He makes eye contact with the bald guy, who cracks a joke, and the Buffalo smiles and jokes back. He heads off to another station.

The Buffalo used to own the Iron Dream; he built it from the ground up. It's a temple to iron. Other gyms have complicated weight machines, hot tubs, aerobics instructors. The Iron Dream has a fifty-foot rack of dumbbells, five bench press stations, two squat cages, a big pulley cage, endless flat benches and incline benches, big bars and stacks of 45-pound plates. There are a few machines, but the regulars don't use them. Free weights, baby: the way to go. Just you and the iron.

Me, I've been lifting on and off -- mostly on -- for 25 years. I was never in the Buffalo's league, or any league. I guess I started to get more confidence, to look better. These days, I mostly lift because I lift. Because it's who I am. It's made me strong, and I don't want to give that up.

And when you load up a bar and put it on the rack and position yourself under it and ready yourself for the effort -- well, it's just you and the iron. You'll do it or you won't. Life is simple. Everything else drops away. And you lift....

I think that's what the Buffalo knows, and why he'll lift till he dies. Maybe I will, too. I'm no Buffalo, but I'll try. I'll be better for it. I'm better for it now.

The Buffalo lumbers past my station and catches my eye. He smiles and we exchange greetings. Then he picks a six-foot bar up out of the rack and walks stiffly off to a bench-press station at the rear of the gym.

For a moment the light through the windows captures him in perfect silhouette: still muscled, still powerful, but limping, strained, old. With one shoulder drooping low and a halt to his stride. Yet hoisting a monster bar as he goes to face the iron once more. Willingly.

That's the shot I didn't get. Photographers took a million photos of the Buffalo in his prime: oiled up and pumped up and flexing muscles for the cameras, lifting starlets and bathing beauties, and promoting products. But nothing would tell you about the real reason for lifting weights better than the photo of the Buffalo that I didn't get to take.

...and he bought the t-shirt

When you travel to some far inspiring place and drink in what it's got to offer, there are a lot of things you can do to help understand it and integrate the experience into your being. You can take pictures of it, write down your impressions, discuss it with your fellow travelers, or just think about how it fits into the great scheme of things.

Or you can go to a tourist trap and buy a t-shirt with the place's name on it. To boast to other people that you've been there.

I collect t-shirts. I've seen thousands of t-shirts for Maui, Cabo San Lucas, and other tourist spots. I don't look down my nose at them; the places they represent are little artificial worlds of tourist entertainment. Taking home a t-shirt from Hawaii is no different than taking one home from Planet Hollywood or Chevy's Fresh Mex for the average tourist.

At other, more challenging types of destinations, you expect more. But...

He went to Stonehenge, an impossible monument of colossal stones built by nameless primitives for nameless reasons far, far back in the misty reaches of history....

And he bought the t-shirt.



He went to Luxor in Egypt, the ancient city of Thebes from which the old Egyptians ruled their three-thousand-year kingdom, worshipped a pantheon of animal-headed gods and built the giant temples of Karnak and Luxor which stand to this day as monuments to their skills, their industry, and their beliefs...

And he bought the t-shirt.



He went to Angkor Wat, a lost city of astonishingly sophisticated temples and palaces built in the jungles of Cambodia 1000 years as the capital of the old Khmer kingdom ...

And he bought the t-shirt.



He went to Mexicali, most treacherous of Mexican border towns, which makes an industry of under-aged drinking, sex shows, prostitutes and crime. Mexicali, the date-rape-drug capital of North America, where nobody with an ounce of sense would boast of going.

And... well....