DC Spinster

A Virtual 5K

2012-01-08T00:01:00.004-05:00

The last week of December I didn't run at all; although I felt guilty about it each day I took a week off to rest and heal. When I returned to running this past week, I felt sluggish and fatigued during each run, and my first run noontime run running with coworkers in several weeks produced a shortened jaunt of four and a half miles at a 9:30 pace which my running buddies afterwards described offhandedly as feeling slow.

On Thursday noon I tried to kick it up some and we went our customary five and a half miles on the Mall at a 9:09 pace but whenever my friends from work tried to chat me up as we ran about work and life as usual I answered in guttural monosyllables and hung doggedly on the last three miles, resisting the urge to stop and walk. I didn't get enough running in, either in terms of distance or pace, those weeks I spent in Dallas and it shows.

Yesterday I started a new program as a drop-in coach in the same Walk-To-Run (WTR) training session in Arlington that I used last January to kick start me back to running after my year and a half layoff due to injury. At the introductory meeting I was introduced by the program as the "rabbit" coach (as opposed to the rest of the "penguin" coaches) to the assembled newbie walkers/runners in case any of them stick with the program and prove to be "fast."

We walked a mile after the christening lecture about layering, hydration etc. in 14:30 for our first workout which drew astonished remarks from the trainees about our fast pace but which I'm pretty sure was the product of a short mile. The goal of the program is to have the attendees run/walk a 5K in about four months time and since I have been designated to be the "fast" coach of the program I went home afterwards and cranked out a 5K route in 28:49 (9:17) around my neighborhood to see what I could do the distance in these days, although I felt extremely sluggish and winded as I did so. Obviously I have a long way to go to get back into some semblence of condition and I might even have to do some track work.

Life As A Pizza

2012-01-07T04:45:00.012-05:00

Last year I finally fulfilled my lifelong desire to visit the remote battlefield of the Little Big Horn, known when I was a child as Custer's Last Stand, where about 212 troopers perished to the last man on June 25, 1876 in Montana when five 7th Cavalry troops under General Custer attacked a huge Indian encampment of up to 10,000 Sioux and Cheyenne, of whom perhaps 3,000 were warriors who came swarming out of their village like angry bees when provoked and annihilated the soldiers in about 90 minutes. A few miles away Major Reno with the other seven troops of the regiment barely held on in a hedgehog defense atop a hill for two days before he was rescued by General Terry arriving with reinforcements. (Left: Pizza for two last winter at the Lost Dog Cafe in Westover on my youngest son's birthday. No, he didn't show up.)

It was the stuff of American lore, Remember the Maine, Send More Japs, I have not yet begun to fight, Nuts!, The Shot Heard Round the World, the Alamo. The reality, a hillside leading down to a meandering stream. impinged upon the heroic nature of the historic record, especially since it took me thirty-eight hours to drive there and back, alone, from my sister's house in St. Paul, but the memory in my mind's eye of the swirling fight, imprinted there by books, pictures and reflection, lives on. (Right: Homemade broccoli and tomato pizza last summer.)

That was my big trip last year, I thought, spending three hours wandering from the Custer site to the Reno site and back again in what is basically wasteland ranch land. Now at almost sixty, having seen almost every important thing I have wanted to see in America, I am free to cut the bonds of North America and go abroad.

But on my FB page lately I have been posting a photo each day of various izza pies I have had in the last year. The most spectacular picture shows an eighteen-inch supreme pizza pie I ordered for dinner, alone, the first night of trial in Dallas last month. (Left: An "everything" pizza in Dallas last month.)

My stay in Dallas to attend a seven-day trial was a typically intense litigation experience. Looking at the snapshot made me realize that that was my big trip last year, a work-detail of three months duration, off and on.

Looking at other pizza pie pictures taken last year showed me that the pies sort of defined my year that just passed, sort of life by pizza analogy. So I decided to post the photographs here also, for what they're worth. (Right: Neapolitan pizza at Orso's right here in Falls Church. Yes, that's an egg on top.)

Looking Back

2012-01-02T09:53:00.007-05:00

I read thirty books last year. The best/most enlightening dozen were Archaeology, History and Custer's Last Battle by Richard Allan Fox, Jr. (1993); Custer's Last Campaign by John S. Gray (1991); Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886); Fire Lover by Joseph Wambaugh (2002); I Fought With Custer by Sergeant Charles Windolph (1947); Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger (1948-53); Hannibal's March: Alps & Elephants by Sir Gavin R. DeBeer (1956); A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Bighorn by James Donovan (2008); The Last Stand by Nathaniel Philbrick (2010); The Battle of the Little Bighorn by Mari Sandoz (1966); Canary in a Cat House by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1976); and Band of Brothers by Stephen E. Ambrose (1992).

As you can see, history predominates, and I was on a Custer kick last year, going out to Montana in July to see the site of Custer's last stand. Since I had to drive 900 miles each way from my sister's house in St. Paul for a three-hour ramble around the remote battlefield, I boned up on Custerology before I went. (Right: Custer and his men perished on this incline in 1876 trying to reach the river in the background fringed by a line of green vegetation.)

I had always wanted to see that non-descript hillside leading down to the non-descript river where in 1876 desperate men fought for their lives, with the total annihilation of the 212 troopers under Custer's command being achieved in a mere ninety minutes at the onset of the battle. I think those troopers, relying on their superior firepower, roamed the slope above the great Indian encampment at will and kept the greatly more numerous Indian warriors at bay for the first sixty minutes; then the constant subversive incursions by warriors upon their skirmish lines caused the cavalrymen's tactical stability to start to erode, and suddenly some troopers started to flee and disintegration occurred and it was all over in a final, furious half hour of fight and flight. Four miles away on an isolated hilltop overlooking the river, most of the men under the combined command of Reno and Benteen survived a two-day besiegement. The archaeological book by Fox heading the list told a fascinating forensic tale about Custer's last battle.

Two of the books on the list were books that I reread. I read the Sandoz book about the Little Bighorn battle again after 35 years; indeed, this little gem of a history book, which exonerates Reno for responsibility for Custer's demise, is what fired up my desire in the first place to go visit this remote battlefield someday. The other reread on the list contains my favorite short story of all time, a haunting, bittersweet love story by J.D. Salinger called The Laughing Man. The summer I was a camp counselor in New Jersey at age 16 for economically deprived youths from the inner New York City, I read that story at nighttime to my tough 12 year-old charges and it held them mesmerized.

I don't read much fiction but I always enjoy Robert Louis Stevenson and Kidnapped was no exception, no matter how implausible its plot was. I like his highly complex sentence structures and gorgeous descriptions. I almost drowned in a rapids in 2010 and Stevenson's description of his hero's near drowning in a surf transported me back for a few mesmerizing moments to my own struggles underwater.

Besides the two Custer books already mentioned, four other books dealt with the Custer battle, one being a personal account of the combat by Windolph that included other interesting accounts about participants culled from contemporary letters, news stories and court martial testimony. The other three books just added to the mystery of the battle of annihilation and instilled in me an appreciation for the inevitability of that day's occurrence; once disaster starts to happen it is very difficult to counter, although this can lead to the emergence of heroes.

Wambaugh's book was a gripping tale about a serial arsonist, and Ambrose's book about the Screaming Eagles fighting from Normandy to Berchtesgaden is a legendary Greatest Generation account. I thought the account of Hannibal, one of history's great captains, moving his army from Spain to Italy through the Alps (with his elephants) was an interesting exposition on the value of surprise in war and the benefits that can go to someone who thinks outside the box.

Vonnegut's book Canary in a Cat House was a hardback I bought recently on Amazon; I had tried to find it all through the seventies when I was attempting to read every single book that Vonnegut ever wrote. It was always listed in his books as a prior publication but was always unavailable. It turns out that this title contains all the same stories as those in another short story anthology of his, Welcome to the Monkey House, with one story added that was in yet another anthology of his anyway; but finding it at last gave me an opportunity to reread several of Vonnegut's older short stories, much to my enjoyment.

So what books did you read over the summer?

I hope to see you there then.

2012-01-01T02:15:00.003-05:00

Happy New Year! Johnny, it's been years since I've heard from you, please join me for dinner on your birthday later this week at the Lost Dog Cafe in Westover at 8 pm and we'll start the lifelong task of catching up again as father and son. I'll be there then, I hope to see you!

The Year Just Past

2011-12-30T04:46:00.015-05:00

This summer I finally fulfilled my long-held desire to make it out to the Custer battlefield in Montana, driving there 900 miles from Minneapolis and back again in a rented car. There is no good way to get this remote battlefield, as it is about equidistant from Seattle, Denver or Minneapolis. (Right: Driving to Montana allowed me to see the magnificent waterworks in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.)

Going the way I did allowed me to visit my sister, who lives and owns a yarn shop in St. Paul, and see a game at Target Field, the new stadium of the Minnesota Twins. I am on a quest to see a game at every major league baseball stadium, and I have two stadiums to go (Seattle and new Yankee Stadium).

In Minnesota I also paid my last respects to the Greatest Generation as my Uncle, the very last World War II veteran I personally knew, was laid to rest in a cemetery bordering on the Mississippi River in Winona, the town where he and my father grew up. My Uncle was a hero in the Pacific War (bronze star recipient), as was my father who fought at Peleliu and Okinawa.

In the spring I had stomach surgery, a whiff of mortality. I also returned to running after a year-long layoff due to a chronic injury, and shed half the extra poundage I had gained. (Left: A welcome return to running. Photo courtesy of Leah Frazier.)

In the fall I spent a week in a small town on the Pamlico Sound in North Carolina helping my college roommate clean up his property there after the storm surge of a devastating hurricane flooded the town. Talk about a hardscrabble existence, the folks in towns like that have a life that exists otherwise in John Steinbeck novels. (Right: Cleaning up after the hurricane. Photo courtesy of Jimmy Sherwood.)

This winter I attended a two-week trial in Dallas, getting to know a great bunch of folks in my agency's regional office there as a result. I have only had two other actual trials in over twenty years of Federal work as a lawyer, and as usual the trial was intense, exhausting and stimulating.

The trial allowed me to do a lot of running in a different and unknown city, Dallas, and I compared it favorably to running in the District. Running on the Katy Trail there is every bit as rewarding as running on the Capital Crescent Trail or the W&OD in the Washington area, and running through Dealey Plaza or past the first Hilton hotel or by the original Neiman Marcus store is every bit as historic and rewarding as running on the National Mall. (Left: The Dallas trial team. Lead trial counsel is on the far left, the trial expert, an economist, is on the far right. Photo courtesy of Erez Yoeli.)

It was a good year. I won't tell you my resolutions for the coming year but I hope to make the next year even better.

So Long...

2011-12-27T21:10:00.004-05:00

On the day after Christmas, 2001, I took my kids to Ollender's across the street and purchased a seven-foot artificial fir Christmas tree at half price for our future Christmas holidays together. My wife had filed a stealth divorce that spring, immediately immersing our minor children in the litigation, and things had started becoming very strange between me and my three sons.

I paid $155.74 for the tree and although my three boys enjoyed setting it up at my house in 2002, around that time their Mother filed another stealth lawsuit that named my juvenile children as parties against me in a "fiduciary" matter. My children never came over to my house again after it was thrown out of court in 2003, and the litigation finally ended years later after she was sanctioned and assessed costs of almost $50,000 for filing her "harassment petition."

I can only suppose that boys love their Mother, as well they should, but I'd just like to know how my boys have fared since 2003 and indeed, if they are still alive and well. In my opinion it is unbelievably inhumane for this woman, a first grade teacher here in Falls Church, to keep me totally uninformed about our children's very well being.

Anyway, I set up this monstrous tree every Christmas although no family member ever came over to my house to see it despite copious invitations, and it took up a lot of room to put up and also to store. I bought its replacement recently, a five-foot hardware store floor model, after deciding that I would get ten years use out of the seven-foot monstrosity to make it worthwhile.

This being the tenth year, I set the tree up on Christmas Eve, having been out of town for work until then, and tore it down on the day after Christmas. Then I hauled it over to the local thrift store and donated it.

Boy, do I feel great that it's outta here. And Jimmy, Johnny and Danny, I love you and miss you.

Dallas

2011-12-20T10:15:00.008-05:00

I've been in Dallas for the last 12 days on assignment and there's no better way to see a city than to run through it. Every other morning I leave the Magnolia Hotel where I'm staying and go for a short run, usually down Main Street to Dealey Plaza and back.

Dallas has a lot of homeless people and they are moving around early in the morning when I run. I feel like I'm on the set of a zombie movie with a multitude of shambling, shuffling people moving around on the sidewalks as I run by.

This morning I ran with a co-worker down to the Cattle Drive statue in a park outside the convention center, then we stopped at a diner on Elm Street where we ate a breakfast of eggs, sausage, home fries and toast (and coffee) for less than $4 each. The patron next to us at the counter looked incredulously (disgustedly?) at the two of us sitting there in sweaty clothes and asked, "You been running?" (Right: Round 'em up.)

My friend is from Israel and on our run I took him past the Confederate war memorial also, which is near the convention center as well. As we inspected this towering monument to the Lost Cause, with five life-size figures each on their own column (Jeff Davis, Lee, Stonewall, A.S. Johnston and an ordinary Rebel soldier), I was able to give him the Yankee version of the Civil War as I explained each historical figure in turn. (Left: Guess who won?)

Associations, forty years later.

2011-12-10T21:58:00.005-05:00

Facebook is quite a phenomenon, now I spill short drivel onto my FB page every day while I neglect any reflective writing I might do in my blog. But through facebook in the last year, I have been contacted by three of my best friends growing up, after decades of non-contact.

None of them are old female friends. How much better a friend I could be now for them.

We were young then, we're old now and either wrinkled or fat or wrinkled and fat. The Republicans inadvertently coined a motto for us when they advanced a health care plan for folks like us to Just Die.

My BFF in ninth grade reached out to me this past summer and I eagerly accepted his Friend-Me bid. It had been 40 years since I last heard from him.

How does that happen to BFFs? Very easily, at least up until the advent of the electronic age, which is very recent. (I'm the fat & wrinkled one on the left.)

We spent a lunch hour catching up recently at a restaurant in Minnesota, of all places. He told me about his alienated child (divorce situation) whom he had just recently heard from and then seen for thirty minutes for the first time in almost a decade, and I told him about my three alienated children (divorce situation) whom I have not seen nor heard from in almost a decade.

Once we were past our mutual modern male-parent maudlin stories, I told him about my very last memory of him. Sitting around the kitchen table of my parents' house on Staten Island, he was regaling my family with his first-year-in-college tales of life in the frat house at a college in the south.

You see, I chose to go to school in Boulder in 1970, and I had a much different attitude from him about schools and classmates. I said I remembered chiding him for his affinity for having 40 close frat brothers by asking, when he said that if you needed to go somewhere that 40 car keys would be tossed at you, if all 40 brothers would also put on blue shirts if he donned one before going out in the borrowed car.

Forty years later I still remembered how clear it had been to me how ridiculous his portrayal of frat life was. Although he had forgotten until then our last encounter, forty years later he remembered how merciless I had been in my chiding and how silly he had felt.

Life sucks sometimes. I suck sometimes.

My Mile

2011-11-14T09:12:00.005-05:00

I'm about to embark upon two weeks of travel with only one night's return to home so I'm kind of busy preparing for that. No time today for my customary Monday noontime run on the Mall.

So I ran a mile this morning in my neighborhood, to save time, get a run in and see where I'm at. In August I ran my neighborhood mile in 8:01 and I was satisfied with that then.

Today it was hard, as I think my ninety minutes of Bikram (hot) Yoga yesterday still has me wiped out. I brought my run home in 7:55, which I'm happy with since I wanted to do it in under eight.

That's not much progress since August as I return from my year's layoff due to injury and it's almost a minute off my old standard (break seven) but it's where I'm at. As I close in fast on 60, at least I'm out there, sucking the cool morning air into my aching lungs, legs burning, chest heaving, body alive and pushing, watching the canopy of autumn leaves with their brilliant fall colors pass by overhead.

Eleven Eleven Eleven.

2011-11-11T06:53:00.015-05:00

Today at 11:00 am, the WWI Memorial on the National Mall honoring the 499 DC residents killed in World War One will be re-dedicated after being restored (it literally lay in the weeds and brush unnoticed for decades). Almost a century ago The Greatest War ended, presaging an even greater war the sons of its participants fought which would catapult America out of the depression and usher in a half-century of American dominance. Paul Fussell's great 1975 book, The Great War and Modern Memory, describes how World War I still resonates today. My grandfather fought in that conflict. (Left: The DC WWI Memorial.)

The greatest novel of the First World War is All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (the basis for the 1930 Academy Award winning film by Lewis Milestone) and the greatest film is Paths of Glory by Stanley Kubrick (based upon Humphrey Cobb's 1935 novel). The greatest explanation of the complex run-up to the war is Laurence Lafore's The Long Fuse (1971), the greatest military history is B.H. Liddell Hart's The Real War (1930), the greatest short work is A Short History of World War I (1981) by James Stokesbury and the greatest battle depiction is The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916 (1962) by Alastair Horne. The greatest anti-war novel is Johnny Got His Gun (1939) by Dalton Trumbo. (Right: Grandfather Lamberton.)

Some fine also-rans, reflective of the Great War's relegation to mere second place disaster of the 20th Century by the Second World War, are One of Ours (novel) by Willa Cather, winner of the 1923 Pulitzer Prize, The Blue Max (1966 film), The Guns of August (also called August 1914, Pulitzer Prize winner for 1963) by Barbara Tuchman, The Great War (1959) by Cyril Falls, A Concise History of World War I (1964) by Ernest Esposito, In Flanders Field: Passchendaele 1917 (1958) by Leon Wolff and The Good Soldier Schweik (1930) by Jaroslav Hasek.

As an aside, Ladislas Farago's 1963 biography of World War Two's old blood and guts general, Patton: Ordeal and Triumph, has a great section on this legendary warrior's baptism in battle in World War One. Also great at showing how the impersonal nature of war destroys individuality are Ernest Hemingway's 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms and its 1932 film adaptation starring Gary Cooper.

There's a lot to learn about and from The War to End All Wars. As British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey said on the eve of the destructive European self-conflagration, "The lamps are going out all over Europe and I doubt we shall see them lit again in our lifetime." England was the world's premier economic power in 1914, by 1918 London had been replaced as the world's financial center by New York, where the tail still wags the dog.

The opening stanza of John McCrae's 1915 poem In Flanders Field is portentous:

In Flanders Field the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard among the guns below

The New Norm

2011-11-06T02:26:00.004-05:00

While having lunch at a restaurant yesterday with my running buddy John, he asked me how my business trip was to Dallas. I told him it went fine, except that I'd had a lifetime moment that was truly startling to me.

"You know my three sons haven't communicated with me for years," I said. "In the office late one night preparing for a hearing the next day, a co-worker asked if I had any kids and I just said, 'No.'"

John knows of my heartache for the last decade due to the estrangement that came out of my divorce, when my three precious then-adolescent boys had their malleable young wills overborne by a willing cadre of "professionals" headed by their Mother and they were turned against me. It's called Parental Alienation Syndrome, or PAS, and it's thriving in the West.

"Yep," I went on, "I just said 'Nope, I don't have any children.'" Telling me that I was finally truly healing, John extended his knuckles across the table for a fist bump.

The Encounter, Part 3

2011-10-26T05:09:00.017-04:00

Running with John last weekend in Rosslyn, I saw the bright future of my old running club. I was president of the club in 2009 before I was forced out in a coup engineered by the head of the IT department along with his hi-tek posse (all grossly disruptive grotesquely disrespectful 20-something board members) in collusion with a diminutive rogue VP.

Last month I saw the past of the club when I ran into the person who succeeded me, lets-call-her-Carol, and had a nice chat with her. The club was in terrific shape when I left and also when Carol ended her term, but I was sad to hear about club races which had recently been cancelled such as its former flagship 20-miler.

Also last month I saw the present when the current president, let's call him Bryan, ran right by me in Arlington. Although he saw me, he rigorously averted his eyes the entire 40 feet it took for him to run past me as I stood on the same sidewalk looking at him (maybe the guy is shy, or afraid). When I was president I had heard comments about his creepiness because allegedly he could track consumers' visits to the website and allegedly he would occasionally ask a female visitor if he could assist her in finding anything.

But Saturday the current Vice President for Training, my old post before I became president, ran by me and stopped to chat. This former coach who I elevated to the board gave me confidence via a warm and animated conversation that the club was undergoing a great revival in its training programs after an unfortunate period of stagnancy under the last training director (the lilliputian rogue former VP who was a total slackard in my opinion). This committed, compassionate and competent current VP represents the club's bright future, and I couldn't be more glad for it. (The club's bright future is on the right, wearing a shirt I designed for the 10-Miler program. Photo credit John.)

The New Normal

2011-10-24T23:25:00.003-04:00

Today at noon on the Mall was our new normal, 5.8 miles in 51:35, an 8:54 pace. Our running has revved up since we added R (for Rabbit) to our little group.

We leave our work near Union Station, run down to the Mall by the Capitol, go down to the Lincoln Memorial and return by running up Capitol Hill (a significant incline a third of a mile long) in the fifth mile. L, who has never before ran sub-9s, is showing a fierce competitive streak and chases down every runner who passes us.

Today as we ran by the Capitol, a Capital Police squad car came up from underground parking and approached the sidewalk we were running on to cross it to drive onto the street. L pulled up for it while R and I continued by on the sidewalk, oblivious.

The cop actually yelled out his open driver's window at R and I that we had run through a red light (on the sidewalk). There's no profit in arguing with a policeman but give me a break, jerk.

Who's Idea Was This?

2011-10-18T21:41:00.005-04:00

I have been running with L two or three times a week at noon on the Mall since I returned to running in January. I used to be faster than her but I got slower, she got faster, she's smart and interesting to talk to and presto, running buddy.

I was coming back from injury and she was coming back from surgery and oh, we were pathetic back then. Three miles would leave us running ragged and sometimes walking, and we ran eleven minute miles, but by August we were up to five miles and down to ten minute miles.

Then in September we threw in running up Capitol Hill at the end to make it 5.5 miles and we got our pace down to 9:20s and we became full of ourselves. What is it that goeth before the fall?

It was L who invited R to run with us at noon. She came along today and to encourage her to continue, we cut our run down to 4 1/2 miles to see how she'd do.

Something was wrong from the outset of the run. R had lied to us and she didn't run "nine minute miles at best," oh no, we were running sub-nines from the start and trailing her.

I used to be able to do that, and L apparently can do that now, but my breathing was ragged and so was L's conversation and we were definitely out of our comfort zone. The beauty of running on the Mall however is that incessant traffic forces you to stop at the cross streets so you can catch a blow.

R did slow down in the latter half of the run. We also ran up Capitol Hill at the end, although I was DFL in that third of a mile uphill stretch.

Our pace for the 4.57 miles was 8:42.5. R is good for L and I, right?

What a Cool Diss

2011-10-12T21:57:00.008-04:00

I have fallen into social running, and like to talk to runners on trails as I fall in with them. But I'm also 59.

I was doing nine miles on the hilly Custis Trail with John who was getting ready to run the ATM when we ran up on a thirty-something woman running the trail with her headsets on. She was wearing a shirt I absolutely recognized, the gray long sleeved tech shirt from the 2006 NYCM, which is my favorite marathon ever! Yeah, I did that race.

I overtook her and asked, "Did you run that race?"

She ignored me. I said, louder, "Your shirt. Did you run the 2006 New York City Marathon?"

Looking annoyed, she cast a glance in my direction and ripped out an ear bud. "Yes," she said.

I was abreast of her now. "I ran that race too," I said. "It was my favorite marathon."

She coolly said, without missing a beat, "I thought I recognized you."

I said, "Have a nice run," and pressed on. John caught up with me a minute later.

Her put-down was perfectly delivered and unanswerable. We had to stay ahead of her for the rest of our run.

She wasn't the greatest looker and I'll bet I beat her but she had a classic retort. I should have remembered that I never talk to runners I pass when they're wearing headphones.

Running Through History

2011-10-11T04:47:00.005-04:00

I went to Dallas on business last week and asked the concierge at the downtown Sheraton for a 3-mile running route. She pulled out a map and traced a route with a marker.

"Go out the north door and turn left, follow the tracks down Pacific Avenue and go a mile, loop down around the Grassy Knoll here . . ."

I interrupted her. "Excuse me, the Grassy Knoll? You mean the site of the JFK assassination?"

"Yes," she said.

At 5 a.m. the next morning, in perfect weather for running, I altered her route slightly and ran through history. I went out the north door, ran west a block to Harwood, turned left and ran by the magnificent Majestic Theatre on Elm Street and continued on to Main Street. Turning right, I ran through the stillness of the early morning thinking about November 22, 1963 and President Kennedy's last few minutes of life.

Perhaps I was running down Main Street at the same speed as his open-air limousine was travelling along the same roadway as his presidential motorcade crawled towards its history-altering meeting with fate at Dealey Plaza, still half a mile ahead of me. I had no noontime sunlight or cheering crowds to spur me on, only my somber thoughts in the early morning darkness and the presence of little groups of silently moving homeless people on the sidewalks.

I passed over Griffin, Lamar, Austin and Market Streets. I ran by Founders Plaza on my right as Houston Street loomed ahead, on the corner where the motorcade made a torturous right turn and passed by the very building which housed the jail where assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was supposed to have been taken when he was executed in the basement of the courthouse a few blocks behind me.

I made the same right turn. Forty-eight years ago the unsuspecting President Kennedy had less than a minute to live.

I ran a short block and yawed left onto Elm Street, right under a tall fortress of a building, the Texas School Book Depository. I ran down the hill directly away from the Depository and entered the killing zone.

An X painted on the roadway in the middle lane marked the spot where the first bullet struck President Kennedy. This "magic bullet" fired from the corner sixth-storey window of the Depository by Oswald using a twelve-dollar mail-order rifle passed through both President Kennedy and Governor Connolly and inflicted seven wounds upon the two men.

I stopped and looked back. I instantly saw that a man with a rifle in that window could easily kill me, even if I was desperately darting about.

Ten yards further down there is another X painted in the roadway, the site of the fatal head shot. I looked back and the window still seemed so close.

That spot is directly in line with the magic-bullet shot, leaving the shooter to only have to train the rifle barrel slightly downward without any side-to-side movement. The assassination spot was obviously carefully chosen and previously sited in.

I glanced to the north thirty feet and surveyed the infamous grassy knoll. I could see no obvious place for a shooter to hide over there, and it would be a much harder shot since the target would be passing across the shooter's sights and not merely away from him.

I ran the rest of the way down the hill and under the triple underpass where the vehicle bearing the mortally stricken president went. Now I had gone too far on my run and I got lost within a maze of elevated restricted-access highways.

After fifteen minutes of adventuring which included a trip through a homeless camp, a climb up a steep hillside and a trek along an elevated railroad track, I found my way back to the hotel. Inside I went by the workout room and glanced in to see half a dozen guests toiling away in place on dreadmills, ellipticals and stair masters, a mere mile away from a run through momentous history.

The Encounter, Part Two

2011-10-09T07:08:00.005-04:00

I was at the post office on Friday when I saw a woman in line ahead of me looking at me. It was Carol, past president of the DC Road Runners Club, whom I hadn't seen since I stepped down as president two autumns ago and she assumed the presidency.

Part of my decision to resign as president back then had been made based upon the fact that she was a capable, grownup person who could take over the club and keep it prospering. A significant part of the board then was very young and in league with a reckless board member who had set out to destroy my presidency for his own advancement and who controlled the club's IT department, the club's Pay Pal account and much of the club's equipment such as its timing system.

This rebellious contingent actively disrupted the board meetings I conducted, changed and removed my president's posts from its traditional place on the club's website, engaged in suspicious transactions and undertook important club business without my knowledge or approval. One of this youthful band of plotters, a dishonest sycophant (he was a vice president so he gave this posse quite a bit of clout) even called me one night and unloaded a profanity-laced tirade upon me, drunkenly telling me that I had "stepped into it" by opposing their actions and assuring me, correctly it turned out, that I would be a one-term president. Shortly thereafter the posted club bylaws on the website changed without notice in a way that greatly weakened my position during this power struggle.

None of the rest of the board was interested in dealing with the ambitious Iago leading this usurping gang and the two adult vice presidents declined to support me when I requested their assistance in looking into and dealing with the activities of this independent brigade. Although it was a great disappointment to me personally, especially after all the tremendous things I had done for the club both as president and over the years as its training director, I shortly thereafter resigned rather than be powerless as president to control these miscreants. It was a volunteer gig, after all.

It is the ultimate irony that the henchman of these ferocious young turks is now club president and the little drunken liar in their pocket was cast aside and is no longer even a board member. All of this unpleasantness dropped away on Friday as I called out a greeting to Carol and she came over to speak with me. We had a delightful chat, catching up on each other and she filled me in on what's new with the club. President to president, you know?

I was gratified to hear that responsible, good people, persons I had largely cultivated on the training side of the club, had been put into important board positions such as treasurer and VP of training. Although I no longer belong to the club, I wish it well.

The Encounter, Part One

2011-10-07T23:45:00.008-04:00

I was president of my local running club in 2009, being forced by circumstances to resign when my presidency was deliberately wrecked by a young contingent on the board (all 20-somethings except for one 30-something) that was made up of the IT department of the club plus a sad-sack lackey VP who was in their pocket. These young men, led by the head IT guy whom I'll call Bryan, loathed me personally and disrupted my administration of the club by doing things like unilaterally removing my president's post from its traditional spot on the club's website and conducting important club business without my knowledge or approval.

This posse of four miscreants took to actively disrupting the board meetings I conducted by sitting in a group and noisily acting like muttering, smirking school children in an out-of-control classroom. When they voted and seconded among themselves to "end" my last board meeting before business was concluded, personally affronting a friend of mine whom I was trying to present to the board as the next newsletter editor, the other board members fled the restaurant to escape the contentious scene and I found myself standing confronting Bryan, the henchman of this gang, while his three juvenile friends pressed in behind him in support. My friend interposed and led me away from this tense impasse before it degenerated into fisticuffs, and I tendered my resignation to the non-supportive board the next day and quit the club.

This was a great disappointment in my life because I had worked hard in a volunteer capacity for years to develop the club's training programs and I did some wonderful things in my six month tenure like overseeing its lucrative association with the country's premiere ten-mile race by becoming the race's official training partner. I wasn't able to properly develop my vision for the club of making it more inclusive of runners of all types by developing more programs and activities, but who ever said life was fair? The VP who took over the presidency, whom I'll call Carol, is a grownup and she stepped down this year whereupon Bryan, now barely thirty, fulfilled his consuming ambition by becoming president.

One Saturday morning last month I was standing on a sidewalk in downtown Arlington after a six mile run when the current president of my former club ran by. He was running alongside a woman as he approached and he caught my eye from thirty feet away. Bryan instantly looked away and, only having a woman for support this time around rather than three strapping young men (well, two strapping men, the rogue VP is a pathetic pint-sized little guy), he found something of absorbing interest to look at in the curb on the other side from me until he was past me even as I looked directly at him the entire time. One president passing right by another, you know?

I have heard that Bryan has said slanderous things about me since I stepped down, for instance to the management of the premiere running store in the area. That conversation with Bryan will have to wait for a time when he doesn't run away from me.

The Canadian Woman

2011-09-25T17:07:00.004-04:00

She seemed so unapproachable. A beautiful woman wearing headphones passing by us on the Mount Vernon Trail as John and I ran our weekend 10K, she ignored our salutary comments and slightly outdistanced us.

She was run/walking so we passed her back on the wicked uphill switchback leading to the hilly Custis Trail near where the Key Bridge connects Arlington to Georgetown. John urged her on as we went by, and she broke out of her desultory walk to join our trotting run up the steep incline.

Noticing my Garmin, she asked how fast we were running to which I answered, "9:40s." She seemed stunned and, one earbud out, evinced that she had been hoping that she had been running at a 5:30 pace.

It turned out that she was Canadian and had taken my pace retort to mean minutes per kilometer instead of minutes per mile. Apparently 9:40s would be just-shoot-me slow north of the border.

The Eight-Miler

2011-09-06T13:14:00.007-04:00

Last Saturday I met John at 7:30 a.m. at Bluemont on the W&OD Trail to run 8 miles before I drove down to NC to visit a friend who was impacted by the visit of Hurricane Irene a week earlier. Eight miles was the longest either John or I had run in two years.

John was bothered by a hip injury he's been dealing with so we ran slowly, enjoying the time we were out there. We set out westbound on the trail so that we could do the last half downhill after we turned around.

The local high school was conducting its first cross country training run so a steady progression of skinny young runners ran by opposing us and then shortly, they all overtook us and passed us from behind. We passed a few of them back because we'd catch up with them at street crossings where they were patiently waiting for the green light and we'd run the red and get ahead for a short while.

We turned around at the 42 minute mark and ran a negative split of 40 minutes coming back. Afterwards I stopped in at the INOVA Health Center in Merrifield to give my 89th blood donation lifetime before tackling the seven hour drive to NC.

Hurricane Irene

2011-09-05T19:20:00.004-04:00

Hurricane Irene was an annoyance in DC the weekend before last, the source of much rain and wind, lots of hours spent watching the weather channel and the subject of plans for hurricane parties. I called up a friend in the District to tell her that I was out of milk and ask her what should I do (I never drink milk) and to see if she thought 4 rolls of toilet paper would be enough to get me past Irene's passage.

But I have another friend for whom it was not a funny joke. He lives in Vandemere, NC, on the edge of the water, and Pamlico County, where tiny Vandemere is (it's near Oriental, NC) was the hardest hit county in this top-ten disaster storm.

Hurricane Isabel in 2003 was popularly known to be the storm of the century down here because of the unprecedented devastation it inflicted when it came ashore, he explained to me, but the storm surge when Irene came ashore in the region was higher than Isabel's. By two and a half feet.

My friend estimates Vandemere has 120 houses, and that probably 80 of them were breached by seawater. Houses in town were flooded that never took in water before, not even during Isabel. My friend's house is on stilts and the water came to within two feet of invading his floorboards.

As usual during hurricanes, townsfolk parked their cars at the firehouse, which had always remained dry in every storm. All the cars were flooded with seawater up to their dashboards and totaled.

His house high atop its stilts became like a stationary ark on storm-tossed seas, with the ocean rolling around just under it and waves lashing the pilings. The thick trunks of the trees in his yard emerged from the wind-whipped waters and rode out the storm alongside the house.

I came down this past weekend to help my friend clean up because he lost everything he had stored in his outer buildings, which constituted many of his lifelong treasures like old books, his parents' furniture, photographs and old construction-paper cards to him from his school-age children on special occasions. He sadly explained that he thought they were all stored on shelves high enough to remain dry even during the worst storm, as we surveyed the sodden mess. For the past two days while he carefully separates stuck-together pages of photo albums which have recorded his life hoping to salvage ruined remembrances, I plow through the treasures-turned-trash and dump most of them in garbage bags.

In town the scenes of disaster are worse as practically every house has mountainous piles of water-stained mattresses, warped wood, ruined carpeting, soggy insulation and waterlogged furniture heaped on the curb. But everyone down here is working at recovery, thankful for what remains rather than despondent over what's lost, and the spirit imbuing this town is indomitable.

Leaden Skies

2011-08-28T07:46:00.004-04:00

The phone rang yesterday at 7 a.m. It was John who asked, "Do you still want to do it?"

I looked outside at gray skies and low light but no rain. "Let's do it," I said.

Thirty minutes later we were underway on a seven mile run from Bluemont Park to Shirlington and back on the W&OD Trail under ominous skies and moisture-laden air. Hurricane Irene was offshore to the south somewhere, working her way north.

We did 9:45s going down and ten-somethings on the way back which is slightly uphill. It was the furthest I've run since Army 2009, at which 10-mile race I suffered a debilitating over-use injury to the tendon in my left ankle.

It was a joy to be out there, knocking off the miles, talking with a friend, nodding to passing runners, knowing the whole weekend would be stretching out luxuriously before me when we finished well before 9 a.m.

We threw in a long exhilarating sprint at the end trying to overtake a runner in the distance pushing a running stroller. One of us passed her just before the end, one of us fell just short. Breathing hard, sweating profusely, we exchanged high-fives at the end of our perfect seventy-one minute run under leaden skies.

A once in a hundred years earthquake

2011-08-27T20:52:00.006-04:00

This week I was in my 3d floor office in the District when the floor shook. I looked out the window to see if a heavy truck was passing by, or if there was a flash and a blast noise out there, or if the trees were whipping about.

Nope. Earthquake!

A minute later the floor rocked and rolled under me for 45 seconds. It felt like liquid jelly underfoot.

I got the hell out of the building before the upper six storeys had a chance to collapse on me. Wrong thing to do, say all my left coast friends.

What was wrong was that my work-force marshaled across the street, to take names and check them off, under a six storey building with a four foot overhang around its upper level. Those cascading chunks of concrete could have killed me for sure if there had been an aftershock of magnitude.

So I sit here today and consider my three lovely sons, Jimmy Rogers (he changed his name on his 21st birthday he loves his Mother so), Johnny Lamberton and Danny Lamberton, whom I haven't heard from since 2003 (they were minors then when they were enlisted by her for offensive use in the divorce proceeding, they're adults now).

I paid every cent of child support for all those years, and have paid or guaranteed their full college tuition and fees in Virginia state schools. I thought they might have called to see if I was alright after the historic earthquake.

Nope, and their Mother, Sharon Rogers Lightbourne of Fairfax City, a first grade schoolteacher (!) in Falls Church, refuses to give me their addresses (or indeed any information at all about them, even if they're well or, well, dead). There's a saying, Jimmy Johnny and Danny, see ya wouldn't want to be ya!

Speed Work?

2011-08-26T18:12:00.010-04:00

I been running this summer, combating the other-worldly heat this summer ("feels like 117"), trying to build my base back up after a year and a half off due to injury. With my co-worker L, I have been running three times a week at noon on the Mall five miles each run, with a "long" run on Saturday morning with John on the W&OD Trail.

My bum left ankle feels tweaked from the twenty-mile weeks I have been putting on it, despite the cortisone shot it received awhile ago. But I dutifully pull on my ankle brace each run and make sure I get out four times a week. I used to run five times a week at 9:00 miles 35-40 miles each week, but times have changed. (L keeps me honest on our runs. Her husband is a hero who returned recently from deployment in Afghanistan.)

Now I trundle about at 17-21 miles each week at 10:00 miles and love its effect upon my out-of-shape conditioning, having dropped to 205 pounds in the last half-year, halfway yo the return to my former "ideal" weight. My running buddy L is coming back from C-section surgery while I am rebounding from hernia surgery. I keep my mouth shut, as this woman who used to be considerably slower than me now pulls me along. I satisfy myself with the thought that I have made her faster.

So this morning, I resisted running "long" as I lay in my bed, content that L was on vacation so I didn't have to look forward to five miles with her on the Mall. I decided to do a "speed"workout.

Without pulling on my brace, I went to the curb to run my neighborhood mile to see what my speed had become (or dropped to). I used to be able to pull these runs off in 6:50s. (Mein John.)

Off I went, running on feel. Although I set my watch, I determined not to look at it, even once, during the mile. I didn't want to hurry up my run to meet a goal or slow it down due to despair if I was fading badly midway.

I felt good running uphill the first part, feeling like I was moving with alacrity. My labored breathing didn't hinder me as I was able to manage my discomfort of being out of breath during my exertion. Half a year ago this would have been crippling.

Coming back on the out-and-back, I resisted several times checking my progress on my stop-watch and came into the zone of a placed radar-zone display for approaching traffic to dampen speeding in residential areas. I ran full on directly into its sweet zone and couldn't generate a reading for my speed. Huh!

At my driveway, the ending point, I hit my stopwatch and saw 8:01. If I had been monitoring my time I would have busted the eight minute mark. I am very happy with my current speed.

The 16 ouncer

2011-08-14T10:13:00.007-04:00

I ran 10K on the C&O Canal Towpath yesterday in 60:54, jumping in with my friend Ashley while she did 14 miles getting ready for the MCM in October. For the first time in a long time the running came easy, just like in the olden days, abetted by the company of a good friend and the forgiving surface of the towpath.

When I let go of Ashley after five miles to return to my car while she finished her much longer run, I even practiced picking people off the last mile. Team in Training was out there ahead of me and the last quarter mile I ran hard to overtake three runners who were a hundred yards ahead of me. It was fun and I felt good.

Then I went to the Steak 'N Egg Kitchen on Wisconsin Avenue for an artery-clogging breakfast, ordering the Old South Sunday, a meal of biscuits & gravy, 2 eggs, hash browns, bacon and sausage (but I eschewed the extra cheese). While I ate I marveled at the clockwork-like efficiency of the eight persons working in the narrow space behind the counter, three cooking on the grill, three more waiting on the counter diners, and one worker each busing and dish washing. A ninth person handled the outside patio from the other side of the counter and she obviously knew everything that was going on with all the orders.

One patron ordered a T-bone steak with his eggs and seemed disappointed when the steaming meat slab with juices dripping off it was put in front of him. "Is this 16 ounces?" he asked. When assured that it was, he proceeded to eat it with relish. The place was packed and it never closes.

You know there's an Italy, right?

2011-08-12T21:19:00.006-04:00

I have been running this summer, fighting the brutal heat of July while I go on 3-5 mile runs three times a week at noon with my co-worker running buddy L, the two of us egging each other on. It seems that every other run one or the other of us has to break our run down to a one-mile recuperation walk somewhere in the last half, but as our conditioning improves, those interludes are getting fewer. One day the air temperature reportedly "felt like" it was 117. The office dreadmill runners regard the two of us as crazy to be running outside but hey, we're only doing 10-minute miles, and we always bring water. I also "go long," run 6 miles, every Saturday.

Last week I ran 23 miles. I have shed half of the excess weight that I put on in my year and a half of inactivity while I nursed my ankle injury. Or should I say that I have only shed half of the excess weight I put on while inactive all that time?

Last month I took my summer vacation, flying to Minnesota to see my sister and attend the memorial service for my uncle who died in the spring. From there I drove across the Dakotas to Montana and back, visiting a number of Indian Wars (Sioux War) battlefields, drove around the Badlands and walked around the Devils Tower in Wyoming. The Sioux kicked the Americans' ass twice, at the Fetterman massacre in 1866 in Wyoming and the Custer massacre in 1876 in Montana. Not a single trooper with the engaged U.S. detachments survived either of those battles. (Right: Custer, two of his brothers, a nephew and about forty of his remaining men died on this hillside while trying to reach the Little Big Horn River marked by the green strip of cottonwood trees in the background so that they could assault an Indian encampment on the other bank that contained ten times as many well armed fighters as they had in their entire initial assaulting force.)

When I got back, a friend who had been following my trip thanks to my FB posts and who knows that I have never been outside of North America said it sounded like a great trip, especially since I was a history major in college and I read military accounts for relaxation. Then he asked if I had ever, uh, like, considered going to Europe or Asia or Africa? It's a big world out there he added, just in case I missed the point.

The day I almost died.

2011-08-04T23:05:00.002-04:00

A friend of mine chastised me recently for having a "thin" profile pix on my blog, that comes from 2009. Since then I have been out of running b/c of an injury, and I have put on a lot of weight. So here is a 2010 pix for my blog, which I shall make my blog profile pix, taken the day I came w/in a few seconds of drowning under a wrapped boat in a rapids on the Dolores River in Utah. It changed my life; obviously I didn't die. I no longer fear death.

WW2 Heroes

2011-07-22T20:22:00.005-04:00

I ran on the Mall at noon today when it was 97 degrees and the heat index made it feel like 117 degrees because of the humidity. The temperature was in triple digits by the time I finished over an hour later.

I ran from my office near Union Station intending to go to Lincoln and back but I only made it to WWI before I turned back near the half-hour mark. I did a lot of walking on the way back. I lost 4 pounds during the outing.

As I ran, I thought of my Dad who fought at Peleliu in WW2 when the temperatures often rose above 115 degrees. Those Marines were tough. I could (and did) quit anytime I wanted. He couldn't. Of course he was 19 then, not 59.

I also thought of my Uncle who passed in April. He was a Marine in the Pacific too, a shipboard gunnery officer. I will be attending his grave side service in his hometown of Winona Minnesota next week, the last of my father's and mother's generation related to me to pass. They're all gone now.

Every man I knew, practically, when I was growing up was a WW2 veteran. The Dads of all my friends had been over there somewhere.

In this frame of mind, on my way back I stopped at the WW2 Memorial. I wanted to tell my cousin, my Uncle's daughter, next week that I stopped in and saw her father's battles etched in stone upon the memorial. When her Dad died she started reading all of his contemporaneous WW2 handwritten notes and sometimes she asks me for context as she knows I know history. He won a bronze star for heroism.

I was glad to take a break from my sweltering run and walk respectfully through the imposing memorial. I asked the ranger why the Pacific column was on the south side and the Atlantic column was on the north side. He didn't know, saying I was the first person who had asked him that question.

I went to the Pacific column and read the battle names carved into the base of the fronting pool. I traced the Peleliu and the Okinawa inscriptions, the two battles where my father fought, and thought of him. I lost him a quarter century ago today, to lung cancer. During WW2 they included three cigarettes in each K-ration pack.

I traced the Battle of the Philippine Sea and the Japan Carrier Air Strikes inscriptions and thought of my Uncle.

I traced the Manila inscription and thought of my Uncle Bill.

I went over to the Atlantic column. I traced the Sicily inscription and remembered my Uncle Bob.

I traced the Battle of the Bulge carving and thought of my friend's father, a laughing man whom I met once before he passed recently. This veteran told a story with a twinkle in his eye of getting a coveted D-Day pin because he was at sea on June 6, 1944, a raw rookie on a troop transport who happened to be going from America to England on that day. He saw the elephant later that year with Patton's Third Army at the biggest battle in history.

Then I ran/walked back to the office. I mostly walked so did I consider my run to be unsuccessful? Not at all, it was a very satisfying, successful run.

Major Reno

2011-07-21T21:59:00.005-04:00

I'm going to be at the battlefield of the Little Big Horn in just a few days. Custer's Last Stand, this battle involved a thousand or two combatants, in which a few hundred died, stands in the top three most famous battles in North America, along with Yorktown (world turned upside down) and Gettysburg (the last best hope of mankind). Heady company.

Little Big Horn has it all, a villain, Major Reno (his men survived), a savior, Captain Benteen (he disobeyed orders and left the doomed men under Custer to their fate by joining Reno and saving his command) and an enigma, General Custer (the greatest Indian fighter of the day who got all of his men killed). Their ferocious opponents, the Sioux and Cheyenne, were protecting their children, women and elderly and their way of life, with Crazy Horse as their tactical leader and Sitting Bull as their spiritual leader.

I have always been a Reno fan and a Custer detractor. Lately, research has "shown" that Reno was drunk throughout the battle and that maybe, Custer could have won and destroyed the Indian village if Reno had been steadfast when his 110 troopers charged the village containing 1,500 or more warriors, allowing Custer and his doomed 210 troopers to swing around and strike a hammer blow upon Reno's anvil.

Here's how Mari Sandoz in 1966 in her book The Battle of the Little Bighorn explained Reno's bizarre behavior on the field of battle against overwhelming odds when, in the white hot heat of battle he issued confusing orders that ultimately saved two thirds of his command:

"The major [Reno] stopped beside the Ree [Indian scout Bloody Knife] to ask by sign where the Indians would concentrate their thrust, to help [Reno] plan the run for the river and the heights beyond. Before the scout could answer, a new burst of bullets ripped though the torn foliage. One of them struck Bloody Knife, blowing his skull open and spattering the handsome black kerchief with blue stars that Custer had given to his once-favorite scout--spatterings that reached Major Reno standing beside the Ree. For a moment the hardened campaigner was as sickened as the rawest recruit. Plainly the Indians were everywhere, penetrating everywhere ... ."

The horrified Reno issued a series of contradictory commands that led to the salvation of most of his command (something akin to, Every Man for Himself!]. What would you have done?

Meanwhile, according to recent research, Custer watched Reno's desperate battle from the heights across the river and commented that Reno must fight his own battle. He didn't ride to Reno's aid, rather Custer rode in the other direction seeking glory and finding it, but at a high price for everyone else.

Whatever Custer did led to his command's complete annihilation. Perhaps Custer, a teetotaler, should have drunk of the same cup as Reno.

Running will do that for you

2011-07-20T07:09:00.003-04:00

It's another sweltering July in DC; running on the Mall during the noon hour leaves me literally reeling from the soupy heat by the fifth mile. This morning I got up a 4:30 A.M. to run 5 1/2 miles and although it went better, still for an hour afterwards I left behind little pools of sweat wherever I paused for moment.

But I'm glad to be back to running, although my troublesome ankle is still giving me trouble despite the cortisone shot a few months ago. I guess its effect is wearing off, leaving me with only the surgical option if my chronic tendinitis disables my running again.

This week I finally hit 20 miles, running my new-normal four times a week (I used to run five times a week). Although I am much slower than I used to be, running 10:10 miles now instead of 8:50s, and my conditioning (endurance) still sucks, miles is miles as I tell my running buddy at work as we jog down the Mall getting passed by everybody.

Next week I'll be in Minnesota attending a grave side service for my uncle who passed away a few months back, and I'm sure the many cousins who will be present will be checking each other out to see how we're all weathering our fifties. Fortunately I'm not as roly-poly as I was at the beginning of the year, as I have dropped 26 pounds in the last 13 weeks thanks to my return to running.

Big Sky

2011-07-19T03:26:00.007-04:00

On June 25, 1876, Custer, having brought his isolated column of 660 Seventh Cavalry troopers over a divide into the Big Horn Valley in a night march, intended to lay up all day under cover and attack the large Indian village in the distance below them along the Little Big Horn River the next day after rest and proper reconnaissance by his 40 Crow and Arikara scouts.

These Indian scouts had already seen that the faraway hillside of greasy grass beyond the river was alive with the slow undulating movement of a huge pony herd, indicating thousands of warriors. To the unseeing white officers training their spyglasses on the far distant bank in the morning haze they urged, "Look for the worms crawling on the grass."

Behind them, smoke from the troopers' breakfast fires curled into the air, giving away the soldiers' presence. Custer's encampment was soon spotted by some hunters from the Sioux and Cheyenne village and Custer decided to attack immediately, counting on the adrenaline of battle to offset the fatigue of his sleepless troopers and give his attack the proper esprit de corps.

First he divided his force into four unequal parts and dispersed them on their separate tasks. One part he assigned to guard the slow-moving pack train bringing forward the reserve ammunition, another 150 men under Captain Benteen went to reconnoiter the southwest and prevent any Indians from fleeing in that direction, three companies under Major Reno were to charge the lower end of the village and provoke panic and confusion, while he took the lion's share, 250 men in six companies, across the river bluffs to approach the upper end of the huge encampment.

A world famous battle would unfold over the next two days, highlighted by a thirty-minute whirlwind of death for all of Custer's troopers that afternoon, a half hour that also sounded the death knell for the old way of life for the battle's free roaming Native American participants. I'll be walking those very grounds where heroes tread under the Big Sky next week.

Montana

2011-07-17T21:42:00.008-04:00

Next week I am visiting the site of the Battle of the Little Big Horn in Montana. On June 25, 1876, on the bluffs leading down to the Little Big Horn River, General George Armstrong Custer and all 210 troopers under his command from the Seventh Cavalry were annihilated by an overwhelming number of Sioux and Cheyenne warriors from a huge Indian encampment they were trying to attack.

Custer split his forces four ways in the face of a superior enemy, a fatal mistake. The other three parts of the Seventh, about 450 men, eventually coalesced around his second in command, Major Marcus Reno, on a hilltop about four miles away in a separate fight and survived after two days of battle.

There is no good way to get to the battlefield as it is about 800 miles from Denver, Seattle or Minneapolis, so I am flying to Minneapolis and driving across the northern plains in a rented car to the national monument. Along the way there and back, I plan to visit my sister's yarn store, travel through two states I have never been in (North Dakota and Montana), attend a baseball game at the Minnesota Twins new ballpark, see minor league baseball games in St. Paul and Sioux Falls, go to Wall Drug Store, determine whether the 5-8 Club or Matt's Bar makes a better Jucy Lucy (Juicy Lucy), visit my best friend from freshman year in high school whom I haven't seen in four decades (he contacted me this month on Facebook), see many cousins, attend my Uncle's memorial service and visit my parents' graves.

I have been boning up on Custer history in preparation for the trip and I recommend these half-dozen books on the subject in the order I enjoyed them or found them informative: The Last Stand by Nathaniel Philbrick (Custer came close to winning); A Terrible Glory by James Donovan (a good portrayal of the last chaotic hour of the "massacre," relying on often-ignored Native American sources); Son of the Morning Star by Evan Connell (outstanding literature, pure and simple); The Battle of the Little Bighorn by Mari Sandoz (despite having read it decades ago, I still remember her description of Reno becoming unnerved by being spattered with the blood and brain matter of the Indian scout he was talking to at the instant the scout was shot dead early in Reno's fight); Troopers With Custer by E.A. Brininstool (a terrific series of Indian-fighting accounts from participants of the battle); and Custer by Jay Monaghan (an excellent biography of this vainglorious soldier who got all of his men killed).

Buried Treasures

2011-06-21T08:06:00.004-04:00

The earth yielded up its treasures readily on Father's Day, for some reason. I was weeding a long-neglected garden in my yard on Sunday, yanking out unwanted growth by the fistfuls, when I saw the first object lying half-buried.

Glittering in the freshly-exposed dirt like fool's gold was a medium-sized yellow Leggo block. I pulled it out and set it aside, a relic from the days long ago when my yard rang with the happy cries of three boys at play, long before the divorce wars started and the permanent estrangement from them all ensued.

Next to be encountered was a toy soldier lying on his back embedded in the earth. This would be the playground of my middle son, I smilingly mused, the only one of my three sons that used to actively set up battle lines with opposing armies of toy soldiers.

Last up was a pint-sized green plastic toy grenade that I could easily enclose in my hand. I imagined Johnny's chubby little boy's fist holding it, looking for the best spot to toss it into the enemy camp.

Memories. Treasures.

Four Miles in Forty Minutes

2011-06-19T09:15:00.004-04:00

A local running store, Pacers, puts on a series of road races throughout the DC region, and they were sponsoring a 4-mile Dad's Day race in South Arlington this morning. It started and ended at the old Gotta Run store I used to use as the home base for the training programs I formerly conducted for my former running club. I love running down there, by the Pentagon.

I wanted to run the race, although I knew I wouldn't have a good time given my overweight condition and lack of a base. An hour before the start it was threatening to rain and since nobody I knew was going to be there, I decided to run a virtual 4-miler on the W&OD Trail behind my house instead and save the entry fee.

The trail is mostly flat and has half-mile markers, so it's easy to keep track of your time. I walked out my door and within a minute and a half was at mile marker 7.

I punched my Timex Ironman and ran east to mile marker 6 in 9:36. The morning was overcast and deceptively humid. Turning around and running westbound, I was passed by a runner and I passed another runner. Just like a race! my mind enthused to my tiring body.

I passed mile marker 7 at 19:45, halfway through the "race." I seriously considered making this a 2-mile race instead as I looked longingly at the back of my house when I passed it (coffee inside! food! McDonald coupons!)

However I soldiered on, slowing considerably. I arrived at mile marker 8 and turned around at 31:58, an ugly mile but now three quarters done. It had started raining and I was drenched.

As I shuffled my way back eastbound, I mused about my coaching days. Oftentimes when I encountered a runner plodding along in a fatigued rut, I would suggest varying the pace to break the painful mental monotony the runner's tiredness had induced. Speed it up a little, in other words, because it's rejuvenating plus you "get there" sooner.

I picked it up and felt better. The last mile was my best mile except for the first mile.

I diverted from the trail half a mile from mile marker 7, onto residential streets so I could finish the "race" right at my house. My watch showed 38 minutes and change with three blocks to go. I ran faster. Turnover! my mind told my body.

Silly delineations matter to runners. I certainly wanted to break 40 minutes for the "race."

I was closely monitoring my watch as my house came into view. I stepped onto the sidewalk of the block my house is on and punched my Ironman. 39:59:51. Made it!

Who could say that just because I hadn't reached my driveway yet that the 4-mile point wasn't somewhere on that block. I'm putting this sub-40 virtual 4-miler into the books.

Dad's Day

2011-06-18T13:03:00.009-04:00

Tomorrow is Father's Day. Although I have three sons, it's not much of a day for me since they are all estranged from me due to their Mother's active overbearing of their wills (Parental Alienation Syndrome or PAS) when they were minors during a nuclear divorce and they haven't spoken with me in years.

Those four took every cent in court-ordered child support though, even as they were active scofflaws in ignoring the visitation and joint-custody orders for years. Court orders only applied to me, see.

I have moved on and put them out of my heart, although not out of my mind, through forgiveness, which I actively work on through my faith as practiced at the Falls Church--Episcopal congregation. It's been a return to church for me after decades of absence, even as I leave my fatherhood behind due to being deprived of my children through the actions of the alienating parent (some people consider PAS to be a form of child abuse).

Nobody knows or cares about this scourge upon Western society except those to whom it has happened (mostly fathers), and then it is like your children died and you are thereby grievously deprived of the rest of your normal, humdrum life. Research indicates that the afflicted children (victims) tend to develop a lifelong inability to form close relationships and are frequently emotionally unstable.

You Can Start Next Week

2011-06-10T20:26:00.008-04:00

A Memorial Day twenty-minute 3K race time while in recovery mode after surgery is fine, but I want to get back to running! I laid off any further running til the following Monday when I ran 2 1/2 miles around the Capitol at noon with a co-worker L, at a sedentary 12-minute pace. Still in recovery mode, you know?

Tuesday we went 3 miles around Capitol Hill at a 10-minute pace with a brief pause to listen to comments Senator Barbara Boxer made to a professional nursing association assembled in a nearby park, about keeping the government's hands off our Medicare as we know it (think Paul Ryan's impoverishing Vouchercare). Only in DC can a casual noontime jog be so elucidating.

Oppressive heat enveloped DC on Wednesday when 99 degree heat settled in accompanied by humidity. I just had to run in such a challenging environment so at noon I ran 2 1/2 miles around the Capitol at a 9-minute pace before I left work early to keep a 2-week post-op appointment with the operating surgeon. That run felt great!

The doc examined the incision on my stomach, said it was healing nicely and gave me the okay to start running again in another week. I celebrated my imminent return to running by running 5K in 102 degree heat with L the next day and 3.2 miles in 99 degree humidity at lunchtime today. I gotta be honest though, I had to walk in the last mile each day because, apparently, I'm not enough used to such brutal running conditions yet. But I hope I'll get there real soon.

The Falls Church Memorial Day 3K Fun Run.

2011-05-30T10:35:00.006-04:00

My second race of the year is in the books. My city has a Memorial Day 3K Fun Run which I run every year.

It's flat, and fast for reasons which I'll disclose later. I walked to the race's starting point, about a mile from my house, and settled into the back half of the pack because I wasn't intending to run very fast out of deference to my umbilical hernia repair operation five days earlier.

I couldn't even break into a trot for the first five minutes of the race due to the congestion caused by thousands of participants and dozens of running strollers crowding onto the two-lane roadway which comprised the first half-mile of the course. The hundreds of walkers and many walking stroller pushers who had lined up in the first half of the pack made it impossible to penetrate into the race course for several blocks.

The roadway broadened after the first turn and sideways darting movement from curb to curb finally made running possible. I moved very slowly and settled into a slow plod.

Ten minutes into the race I was running unencumbered and I jogged along, focusing on my body. I could feel a dull pain where the incision on my stomach was but so long as I ran very slowly and didn't get too out of breath, I felt fine except for the tenderness and some general fatigue.

It was hot though, with the temperature in in the eighties and the humidity high. As sweat started to soak my shirt, I could see the finish line a couple of blocks away.

My watch had just rolled past 19 minutes but I resisted the urge to pick up my pace and dash to it. Although I wanted to break twenty, I didn't want to hurt myself.

My watch read 20:36 when I passed the finish clock of this self-timed fun run. The race clock, however, read 19:47.

I decided to record the sub-twenty time in my personal race ledger, as that was the "official" time. I felt good about completing this twenty minute jog, and used the run to show myself that I shall shortly be back to running after last week's surgery.

Now for the reasons why this 3K race is so fast. I have always known that the course is about a tenth of a mile short, but now I also think that the race clock isn't even turned on until about a minute into the race.

A race with a course that is flat, short and which has favorable time mismanagement. How sweet is that?

Trevor's OK

2011-05-29T19:29:00.009-04:00

On this day before Memorial Day, the priest of my congregation mentioned in her sermon that we should consider the homeless around us as many of them are veterans who have come home to difficult circumstances, whether it is because of PTS Disorder or suffering from Agent Orange exposure or being wrongly discharged from the Army due to a mental illness designation after suffering from Traumatic Brain Disorder due to a close-by powerful IED explosion. You see them everywhere in our warlike society if you look, often on street corners begging for dollars.

At church today I gave thanks for the successful passage out of six hours of spinal surgery on Monday by a former running buddy of mine, the strength I found to deal with two hours of successful stomach surgery on Wednesday, the sacrifices of my father and three uncles who all answered the call in WW2, the ultimate sacrifice in Afghanistan last fall of a former running acquaintance and the sacrifices of all those nameless service members who keep us safe. I thought of Trevor, about whom I have posted before, on his traffic corner wearing his sign, "Combat Veteran, Always Faithful."

I parked nearby and walked up upon him after church, noting that he was watching me closely as I approached. He knows me and calls me "Lawyer."

After giving him five dollar coins, I spent about twenty minutes with him on his street corner as he spoke animatedly. He is a powerful man who has a habit of emphasizing his points by flicking out backhand taps to your body.

I was gratified to listen to him explain that he has reduced his prescribed narcotic pain medication intake from his service-related disability from over a hundred a month to about thirty. "You know I also take mood medication," he added, which apparently in conjunction with his powerful pain medication gives him unpredictable emotional swings.

Keeping my hands discretely in front of my four-day old surgery incision in position to ward off any inadvertent taps to my stomach, I discussed his health, rehabilitation and future with him. Rolling Thunder is in town per usual this Memorial Day weekend, and he apparently took his buddies from the 82d Airborne Division out on the town last night.

Then he tired of chatting with me and chased me away by saying he had to "make some money" from passing motorists on his street corner before the day was done. In fact, beyond my five dollars, he had collected only a single dollar in all the time I was speaking with him.

We shook hands repeatedly as I took my leave from him. I wish him continued wellness, this representative of America's huge and faceless homeless population.

Everthing's A-OK.

2011-05-28T08:47:00.003-04:00

My umbilical hernia repair went well and I am on the mend. I have been walking every day since the surgery, and I still think I could have walked home after it.

I don't know whether they merely stitched the hole in my abdomen or inserted a mesh. There is an incision below my belly button that looks like the grin on a smiley face.

I talk to the doctor in two weeks and hopefully he will clear me for a rapid return to running. In the meantime, I've been grabbing plenty of bed rest which means reading.

I read Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson. What a fabulous little book, so rich with fascinating dialogue.

It had a passage in it depicting David Balfour being washed overboard in a raging sea that reminded me of my involuntary swim down the rapids in the Dolores River in Utah a year ago.

I went down, and drank my fill, and then came up and got a blink of the moon, and then down again. They say a man sinks the third time for good. I cannot be made like other folk, then; for I would not like to write how often I went down, or how often I came up again. All the while I was being hurled along, and beaten upon and choked, and then swallowed whole; and the thing was so distracting to my wits, that I was neither sorry nor afraid. ... And then all of a sudden I was in quiet water and began to come to myself.

That's pretty much how it went for me, too.

Oh Yeah

2011-05-27T20:28:00.009-04:00

Well, I'm going to miss this latest version (the fourth iteration) of the bucket trip due to recent stomach surgery. That leaves my college roommate Jimmy, Barry (I listen to him closely when he talks), Guy (who arrived at age 60 somehow without ever having held a job) and Todd (whom I respect immensely) as the only ones who will have attended all four.

Todd nearly died of natural causes a few years ago, and has the surgery scars to show for it. He is a poster boy for the life-sustaining value of calling 911, and I ran a few miles with him before the first bucket trip while he told me the heroic actions he undertook to save his own life (his wife was away) when things turned bad for him.

I'm having some troubles with my own family, as my three adult children have nothing to do with me and two of my five siblings have demanded that I never mention them in my blog. This hurts as I don't believe in any form of censorship and in the age of google, such a demand seems senseless to me.

Maybe it is my fault. All those things I denied during my oppressive divorce litigation, perhaps they would seem right to an observer given the attitudes my siblings have expressed towards me.

Good News

2011-05-24T22:15:00.007-04:00

I am happy to report that my running buddy of days past had successful spinal surgery yesterday to restore normal functions in his perambulation that have been disrupted for the past couple of years by two degenerated disks, a condition which was only diagnosed a few weeks ago by a neurosurgeon. See my post two postings ago.

After years of doctors having no answers to my friend's debilitating, life-changing ailments and pain, he was referred to a neurosurgeon by a physical trainer. Neurosurgery ensued mere weeks later, with hopefully fully effective results.

He's already home, although he's in a lot of pain. They cut open the back of his neck, in effect, and snaked implements down his throat as they worked.

It sounds awful, but he's already been walking about a little, carefully, and he reports that his leg pains are gone. Maybe it's only a result of the pain medication, but he is very upbeat. (Right: My past running buddy & friend is looking forward to a full recovery after serious spinal surgery.)

He's already graciously wishing me success in my much-more-minor surgery scheduled tomorrow. We're both ready to get to the recovery!

Prepping

2011-05-22T15:25:00.006-04:00

As I await surgery later this week, which recovery from will knock my return to running back to near its starting point in January, I am taking my current conditioning, as it were, up to the very day of surgery. I had just arrived at running four days a week, four miles each time, four forty-minute outings.

Thursday I ran four miles on the Mall at noon, plodding along alone, greedily partaking of the full length of every red-light I came to on the cross streets. That completed last week's four workouts.

Friday I threw in a "long" run of five miles, barely breaking an hour on a long loop around my greater neighborhood that I always used to complete in under forty-five minutes before. It was my longest run since October 2009.

Yesterday and today I ran my four-mile "hills" route in my home town, running it in reverse on Saturday and the regular way this morning. Today I ran all the outside stairs at the school on the hill, which made my time over two minutes longer today than yesterday.

Tomorrow at noon I'll run four miles on the Mall with a workmate, and then all that will be left is to walk the mile from my house to the medical center two days later at noon on Wednesday. Weeks from now, after recovery, I'll start all over again.

I won't lie to you, I'm bummed. I'm also terribly worried about my former running buddy's serious neck surgery tomorrow (see my previous post), but I have hopes that he and I will be doing slow 3-mile geriatric runs together down the W&OD Trail in the August heat.

True Love

2011-05-20T08:53:00.004-04:00

I am stunned by the outpouring of love expressed to me as a result of my last post about my upcoming surgery. Thank you all, especially you-who-you-know-who-you-are.

Good folks from my workplace, and my old running friends, have reached out to me. I only wish that my own children had been taught some love for others when they were impressionable minors by those responsible for the way they are now. You know who you are.

I shouldn't complain about my outpatient surgery, which is next Wednesday afternoon. Below is a message of love I received from an old running buddy of mine. Back in 2007 we ran Riley's Rumble together, a local legendary hilly half marathon in July that separates runners from pretenders, he in 1:49 and me in 1:51. The race was notable that year because a deer ran over a runner.

Hi Peter,

This Monday morning, the 23rd, I will be having spinal surgery at Georgetown. The neurologist figured out that the source of my injuries (resulting from all the [ultra-running] falls I've had) is a severe degeneration of the C5 and C6 disk/vertebrae (I still don’t understand the jargon). This is causing undue compression on my spinal cord with loss of balance being the greatest symptom. Communication to and from the brain/limbs gets scrambled. It also triggers some sort of “Pain syndrome” that caused old injuries to burn like fire.

He is going to rebuild the bone structures from donated cadaver bone then tie it all together with metal plates and screws. I will be home then counting down the days until I can walk and start basic core work. I weighed in last week at 220. A PR and about 45lbs > than my marathon weight.

I’ll keep you updated my dear friend,

[Running Buddy & Friend].

God be with you my friend, and I'll see you soon and often as you recover.

All the Love Money Can Buy

2011-05-18T13:47:00.013-04:00

I went to my doctor for the first time in over a year, saying I needed drugs. She said my symptoms, fatigue, chest congestion and a runny nose, were just allergies.

I insisted that I had an enervating summer cold. "It's interfering with my comeback to running," I said.

So she prescribed five days of antibiotics. "And also, as long as I'm here . . . ," I continued, and showed her a tender part on my stomach that I have been ignoring for months.

She gave me an appointment to see the surgeon the next morning. That doctor scheduled surgery for me next week, saying that although the condition wasn't serious, if an incarceration occurred that developed into a strangulation, that would be serious indeed.

"Just a two-hour outpatient procedure," he said, smiling reassuringly. "We'll give you a local anaesthetic and a relaxant, and after a couple of hours in the recovery room, you'll be ready to go home."

"Of course someone will have to pick you up afterwards. You won't be able to drive because of the medication."

I live alone. Everyone I know works, and I can't ask any of them to take hours off from work just to drive me home ten blocks.

"I only live a mile away so I'll walk home," I told the doctor. His smile vanished.

"No you won't walk home after the operation, or drive home yourself, or get into a taxi. Someone we can turn responsibility for you over to will come to pick you up or I'll cancel the surgery."

I do have family members in the area. Three sons, all in their twenties now, for whom I paid tens of thousands of dollars in child support after the divorce while they ignored court-ordered visitation.

Furthermore, each child upon his eighteenth birthday came into a trust fund, set up by my Mother before she died to be used for their benefit and worth almost a hundred thousand dollars. I have also provided for full payment of each child's college tuition and fees.

None of these lads has communicated with me in years. Their Mother, a local first grade teacher, refuses to provide me with their addresses, or give me any news at all about them.

My adult children aren't an option for me in my moment of need. Maybe I can hire the neighborhood kid who dropped out of college to come pick me up after the operation and drop me off in front of my house.

The Marathon Charity Corporation

2011-05-08T04:52:00.008-04:00

My Couch to 5K Training Program is over. In January, after a year of inactivity due to injury, I joined a 5K program for beginning runners put on by the Marathon Charity Corporation in Arlington.

It was kind of boring, actually. We met outside a locked Mall every Saturday morning and ran/walked 4 miles around the same huge block that girdled the commercial establishment, each complete passage constituting a mile. By the time we finished our four laps, the Mall was open and we'd go inside for coffee.

After a couple of weeks of pure walking, our walk/run ratio started at four minutes walking followed by one minute running. Sixteen weeks later we finished up at one minute walking followed by four minutes of running. It was sort of like a NASCAR race, except that we were always run/walking turn-right whereas race-car drivers are always zoom/braking turn-left.

Midweek we were supposed to run/walk the same routine two or three other times. I always just jogged the damned distance three other times each week on the Mall with a coworker at a 10:10 pace.

The coach, an RRCA-certified trainer (as am I) who is also a five-hour marathoner, ascertained that I was in fact an experienced runner who was fast (relatively speaking). After awhile, I fell into running on Saturdays with Nick, the most fit and competitive of the inveterate group of seven athletes who kept showing up, and we'd leave everyone else behind and try to lap them. We never could, a mile is too much to make up in only four miles, especially when you walk part of the distance (everyone pretty much walks at the same pace so you make no headway then).

In March, I ran my target 5K race in Falls Church (the route went by my back door twice) in twenty-nine minutes and change (about a 9:25 pace). Finishing under thirty minutes was a huge relief since I used to break twenty-three regularly in 5K races. Everyone else ran/walked their target 5K race in April on a hilly course in Fairfax, with Nick and a few others bringing it home in forty-one minutes and the coach and the rest finishing in about forty-eight minutes. (Right: Me with my coach, John, in the vest, after my 5K race.)

About that time, the stress of the faster pace in the race and doing sixteen miles a week caused my lingering injury to flare up again and I went back to my specialist to insist that we had to try a more aggressive treatment than merely taking time off and wearing a brace. This led to a cortisone shot in my ankle (an instantaneous cure) with the promise of surgery to come if/when the pain comes back.

So after a few weeks of severely reduced running following the shot, now I'm back to running four miles four times each week. My ankle doesn't hurt anymore, but I can't say that things don't feel "suspicious" down there. Meanwhile, I'm trying to improve my conditioning/motivation. I cannot believe that I used to run training runs at an 8:30 pace, and although I love being back to running, it's hard to get out the door these days. I'm also trying to shed the ton of extra weight I put on during my year-plus of inactivity. I'm a third of the way there.

Thanks for getting me back in the game, MCC.

Polly's Run

2011-05-07T14:54:00.005-04:00

I recently found out that the last grandparent of my children died last year. My children haven't communicated with me in years due to PAS, and their Mother has repeatedly refused to give me their addresses or any news at all about them.

She was 82. I first met her in 1975, the same year I met my children's Mother, who was engaged at the time, and started living with her.

We got divorced in 2002. My three sons were "involved in [the] divorce up to their armpits" by one parent, an adult who did not act in the best interests of these minors.

I remember my divorce attorney at the time telling me a truism: You want to know what your wife will be like in twenty years? Go talk to your Mother-In-Law.

I went for a plodding 4-mile hill run in my town yesterday as part of my laborious return to running after a long layoff due to injury, jogging past the school on the hill where I went to kindergarten and then traversing the same hill via Highland Avenue. Ascending its steepest part from yet another direction, I put Polly squarely in my mind as I toiled up Mt. Daniel Drive.

My lungs burning, sweat rolling into my eyes, my breathing tortured, I made my peace with her memory during that painful quarter-mile. I am sorry for my children that the last of that generation of blood-relatives has departed, and I hope they are well.

A year ago...

2011-05-05T20:23:00.013-04:00

It was twenty years ago today, Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play

A year ago today, I found myself in a cold and lonely water-filled place. Trapped underwater beneath an overturned boat wrapped around a rock in a rapids, I instantly knew I was in the last minute of my life.

Well, I didn't die, Providence granted me a continuation of life. What have I done with my life since then?

I won the first trial I ever conducted, my second trial in twenty years.

I took a car trip to the Mississippi River, seeing a professional baseball game in a different stadium each day and visiting the Federal Courthouse in St. Louis where the first Dred Scott trials were conducted, the Flood Memorial in Johnstown and the Flight 93 memorial under construction in Shanksville.

I read a couple of very good books, Collapse by Jared Diamond and The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold and re-read a couple of excellent books, The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger and Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger.

I started jogging again after a layoff of a year and a half due to injury, after consenting to a cortisone shot in my ankle.

I celebrated Thanksgiving with my sister's family in Columbus, speaking with my brother for the first time in several years thanks to her, and Christmas with my cousin's family in Newport News.

I celebrated the graduation from college of my middle child, a fact I surmised when the statements for his tuition and fees for which I had provided full payment stopped coming, since I haven't heard from Johnny since 2006.

I stopped actively attempting to reach out to my three children who were estranged from me as minors due to PAS upon the passage of the twenty-second birthday of my youngest child, since I haven't heard from Danny since 2007.

I mourned the passing of my uncle, the last of the generation represented by my parents, members of the Greatest Generation.

I started attending church services on most Sundays, working on forgiveness and a better understanding of why fairness does not exist in the world.

I have to step it up.

Where were you when...

2011-05-03T21:59:00.004-04:00

Shortly after lunch on Friday, November 22, 1963, I was a seventh grader sitting in study hall when Miss Annapole, Principal of JHS 51, New York City, came on the intercom and announced in an angry, accusatory tone that President Kennedy had been shot, killed, and we would be having auditorium in 15 minutes. After a further harangue about the murder in the auditorium from Miss Annapole (I remember she was shrieking into the mike so much it went on permanent shrill buzz) we were discharged out the doors and sent home, shocked and bewildered.

On Tuesday morning, January 28, 1986, I had awakened from a fitful four hour slumber after returning home from a graveyard shift as a Colorado State Patrolman and I was wondering through the Target store shopping aimlessly in Boulder when my attention was drawn to the active TV sets in the electronics department. They all showed continuous re-runs of the 73-second ill-fated Challenger space shuttle flight which culminated in its fiery destruction in sub orbit with its devestating loss of everyone aboard (I'll always remember the Houston Control announcer saying dryly as the pieces of rocket scattered to smithereens in a huge trail of smoke, "Obviously a major malfunction.").

On Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001, I was on a Metro platform going to work when the PA system came on and the announcer informed us that the Pentagon station was closed due to the "terrorist attack" there. My imagination conjured up an image of some zealots boiling out of the station there and assaulting the Pentagon building with some AK-47s. When I arrived at work in downtown DC a few minutes later pandemonium was reigning in the hallways of my workplace as people were running around looking for "shelter" within the building and reports were coming in that more planes were on their way to bomb us and car bombs were going off in the street. Welcome to the world that Osama bin Laden introduced us unsuspecting Americans to on that day.

Late on Sunday evening, May 2, 2011, I was checking my email account on the netbook which was open on my chest as I lay in bed. Automatic news alerts in the account informed me that Osama bin Laden had been "killed" and that President Obama was addressing the nation in a few minutes. I went downstairs to watch his speech wherein he announced the death of this mass-murderer, the result of a completely successful American special operations raid in Pakistan, ordered by the president. When President Obama stated that following a firefight, Osama bin Laden had been shot in the head and killed, I knew right away that this was a euphemism for the fact that the bloodstained polygamous zealot had been summarily executed.

Where's Your Husband?

2011-04-30T21:01:00.009-04:00

The sweat rolled off my brow as I struck my shovel into the rocky ground and threw out a spadeful of dirt. For 30 minutes Cecila, David and myself had been digging a hole in a front yard into which we would soon drop a tree, which was sitting a few feet away, its root system wrapped within an earthen ball confined in a burlap bag.

The city's "green department" had dropped the free tree off onto the homeowner's property two weeks earlier. Five days ago a city crew had marked the exact spot where the balled tree would be planted by spraying a circle onto the homeowner's lawn with white paint.

This was a Saturday morning volunteer effort for the three of us diggers. We were tree huggers, do-gooders, giving back to our community.

It was time to roll the tree into the hole and cut away the wire holding its burlapped root ball together. The homeowner's door opened and a woman came out.

"Hey, thanks for coming, it's so nice that you're here to put the tree in," she said as she walked up to us. I thought maybe she might offer us green-earth do-gooders who couldn't figure out anything better to do on a Saturday morning some ice-tea or water, and I was thirsty.

"Lissen, we were thinking and we decided we don't want the tree after all. I'm sorry, but we've just changed our minds."

Dave spoke up, because he's the city employee. "Okay, ma'am, we can just pick the tree up on Monday."

The hole we'd spent thirty minutes digging was between us and the homeowner. I turned my back on her and leaned on my shovel.

"Oh thanks." She went back inside her house and closed the door.

I turned to Dave and said, "He didn't even have the balls to come out and tell us; he sent his wife out instead." Cecila laughed knowingly.

We filled the hole back in, placed the scalped turf back on top and left. I made sure that every toaster-sized rock we'd laboriously dug out of that hole made it back in there.

I think Republicans live in that nice house on the southeast corner of Hillwood Avenue and Brook Drive in Falls Church. They coulda told us little folks to stop before we had finished digging that hole.

The Laughing Man

2011-04-28T20:24:00.008-04:00

I just finished reading The Laughing Man by J.D. Salinger for about the seventh time in my life. It's in Nine Stories.

Many short stories come close to it in impact but none can claim primacy. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce is compelling, with its alternate, mind-bending ending. The Lottery by Shirley Jackson is excellent, an uncomfortable depiction of you and me. The Lady, or the Tiger by Frank Stockton is tantalizing, with its portrayal of power colliding with an irreconcilable conflict.

The Laughing Man can be read over and over with no diminishment of its heart-wrenching effect. Chief, Mary Hudson and the boy Comanches, all of them are headily won over in their playground on the upper East side by the burgeoning love between a man and a woman.

When that love is extinguished, for whatever timeless reason, a heart-wrenching, indeed numbing, feeling of the loss of love oppresses the reader. Where does Chief go from here, and why did he let her go?

It’s a beautifully written story. The story is told from the vantage point of a nine-year old member of the Comanche Club, a group of schoolboys who are picked up after school every day by Chief, a New York University Law School Student, in his dilapidated school bus.

Chief takes care of the boys til dinnertime, by splitting the larger club into the Braves and the Warriors. He fills their time with baseball or football games in Central Park or, if it’s raining, trips through the New York City museums.

How would these kids otherwise ever roam those halls? During down times, and as a reward, he swings around in his broken-down driver's chair and tells them, in hair-raising installments, The Laughing Man story.

Chief is a wicked story-teller, and his account of the escapades of the Laughing Man traces a parallel tale about love through the short story. His face horribly disfigured in a childhood incident, the Laughing Man wanders through the heartless wilderness communing with exotic wild creatures, the beasts being the only ones who can bear to look upon him as he truly is.

Laughing Man foils the evil plots of bandits and villains and promotes goodness throughout the land. Chief is from Staten Island; do you know that's where I grew up?

"Once [Chief] started narrating, our interest never flagged. ‘The Laughing Man’ was just the right story for a Comanche. It may even have had classic dimensions. It was a story that tended to sprawl all over the place, and yet it remained essentially portable. You could always take it home with you and reflect on it while sitting, say, in the outgoing water in the bathtub."

When you were a kid, did you ever watch the water whirl out of the bathtub as the hot water got tepid? Did you ever buy those 25c turtles at the dime store; I'll bet they resided in your bathroom before they expired.

When the Chief’s love interest shows up, the beautiful and ebullient Wesley graduate Mary Hudson, the young captain of the Warriors’ team is shocked at the transformation that occurs in the normally self-assured and naturally graceful club director.

"The Chief was very nervous. He didn’t just fail to contribute any talk of his own; he could hardly listen to any of hers. The gearshift knob came off in his hand [as he drove the bus with amateur-like lurches], I remember."

When the captain gets smitten by Mary because she smiles at him as he tries to keep her off his team, he acts as any boy would to hide his embarrassment. "For poise, I picked up a stone and threw it at a tree."

Mary turns out to be a naturally gifted ball player and quickly earns a permanent spot in the Warriors outfield. The boys view her as a sort of auxiliary club member whenever she comes on their outings, and her presence, indeed her participation, is accepted and not resented by the boys (after all, she is a girl).

But Indian summer gives way to winter and cold winds blow in. The boys notice Mary’s absence, as well as the effect it has on Chief.

The captain of the Warriors spots her watching their baseball game from a bench a hundred yards away, and points her out to Chief. He goes to talk to her.

Mary walks back with him, but it is the end. "They didn’t talk as they walked, or look at each other."

Have you ever been there? Man or woman, oh yeah.

Mary declines the captain’s entreaties for her to take the field and sits on a bench, lighting a cigarette and crossing her legs instead. The young boy tries to alleviate the tension by buffoonery.

"I tossed my first-baseman’s mitt up in the air and tried to have it land on my head, but it fell in a mud puddle. I wiped it off on my trousers and asked Mary Hudson if she wanted to come up to my house for dinner sometime. I told her the Chief came up a lot. ‘Leave me alone,’ she said. 'Just leave me alone.'"

This is a dagger in your heart, right?

The boy captain "had no idea what was going on between the Chief and Mary Hudson, but nonetheless, I couldn’t have been more certain that Mary Hudson had permanently dropped out of the Comanche lineup." Shortly thereafter she ran off, crying.

"The Chief didn’t go after her. He just stood watching her disappear."

A man. Then, as was his custom after games, he directed the boys into the bus to hear another installment of The Laughing Man.

Within five minutes, he had irrevocably killed off the Laughing Man. The youngest Comanche burst into tears, and no one told him to shut up.

The captain’s knees were shaking as the bus took him home. There, his teeth chattering uncontrollably, he was told to go straight to bed.

I read this story to my 12-year old charges in my cabin when I was 16. They were economically depressed kids from Harlem attending the Lawrenceville Preparatory School Camp in the summer of 1968 in New Jersey, thanks to dedicated donations from the school's collection at the non-denominational mandatory Sunday chapel.

I love this heartbreaking love story. It’s a masterpiece.

Easter thoughts

2011-04-24T13:24:00.005-04:00

I'm just back from attending my first Easter Sunday service since I was a boy. My sister says that if you're returning to the church after a long absence, and hence are unfamiliar with its rituals, you shouldn't start with an Easter service, the superbowl of the Christian year as she puts it.

There's some validity to that, but I wanted to attend today because my congregation was saying a special prayer for my Uncle Harry, who passed away ten days ago, and I wanted to be there for that. He was the very last of his generation, the greatest generation, still with us, having been preceded by my father, Uncle Bill, mother, Aunt Dare, Uncle Bob, Aunt Johnnie and Aunt Betty.

I miss them all. My father was put ashore on Okinawa on Easter Sunday in 1945, a Marine combatant in the last land battle in WW2 that claimed 50,000 American casualties.

Other than that, and the fact that at least one Easter Sunday fell on my birthday, Easter hadn't held much attraction for me until recently when I started attending church again after many years. This morning I internally said my final goodbyes to my Uncle Harry and all of his generation, reflected upon the resurrection and listened closely to the sermon, which prominently featured Mary Magdalene's experience at Christ's tomb as revealed in John's gospel.

Miracle Cure?

2011-04-22T17:40:00.007-04:00

The doc stuck the long syringe into my ankle and asked, "How'ya doin'?" He had prepared the injection site with a cold spray on the surface. "Okay," I said, "except I shouldn'ta been watching that needle go in." It was nauseating to watch the depth of the insertion.

"So are you okay?" he asked. "Oh yeah," I said, feeling like I was going to throw up.

A cortisone shot, a steroid, had just just been injected deeply into my pesky left ankle, which had hurt for a year and a half and had curtailed, or, actually, eliminated my running. If this miracle shot of cortisone into the trouble zone didn't take, I had ankle surgery upcoming on my schedule.

I heaved off the examining table and stood up. The pain of the last year and a half was instantly gone.

Trevor's doin' okay

2011-04-20T08:42:00.006-04:00

I've spoken before about Trevor, my man in my hometown, the homeless guy who hangs out on a busy street corner and accepts donations from passing motorists. He doesn't solicit money, that would be panhandling and illegal, he merely takes what is offered to him.

His spot isn't far from the W&OD Trail where I often run, so I stop and speak with him occasionally when I'm out for a jog. He calls me "Lawyer."

He knows my car and we wave at each other whenever I drive by, which is often enough. Usually I give him two dollar coins when I see him.

All homeless people have a story, and often it is an interesting one, if not always fully coherent or believable. Trevor is doing well, and here is a recent picture of him.

Life in the District

2011-04-18T21:10:00.007-04:00

Sometimes I'll exit the subway on my way to work and, as today, walk to work past the Central Union Mission, a homeless shelter. This morning I was leaving my morning coffee shop (not a Starbucks-type shop for sure) when I noticed an elderly African-American with a cane leaning over on the sidewalk.

I watched him closely as I passed by because I thought he might be sick. No, he was bent over emptying the contents from a small glass container of whiskey into an opened bottle of an energy drink that he'd placed on the sidewalk.

I felt so bad for this defeated man, and our system. A moment later I heard the breaking of glass and I saw that the homeless man had surreptitiously broken the whiskey flask under the iron grating of a small sidewalk sapling that will someday grow into a mature shade tree along that street.

By then I imagine this human being, whatever his lonely story, will be gone thanks to this great society's lack of an encompassing social safety net. Perhaps we'll all be departed by then as well, not having taken care of each other or our environment along the way.

And The Last Shall Be First

2011-04-15T18:15:00.008-04:00

Everyone on board ducked instinctively as the plane roared in at rooftop level, so close that the shipboard gunners could see the facial features of the Japanese pilot as he tried to maneuver his disintegrating, burning aircraft into the ship’s superstructure. The plane narrowly missed and cartwheeled into the sea on the other side of the light cruiser Vincennes, throwing up a terrific geyser of water.

Another Japanese plane hurtled towards the ship as Marine and Navy personnel brought their guns to bear on it, while behind it two more Japanese planes streaked in low off the horizon. In 1945 my Uncle Harry, the officer in command of the Vincennes’ Marine-manned anti-aircraft batteries, received the bronze star for his resolute actions on this day of hellish combat filled with swarming enemy encounters similar to this. (Right: Me and my Uncle Harry, on the right, in 2010.)

Admiral Halsey’s Fast Carrier Attack Group had just conducted a devastating carrier-based bombing raid against Japan, and Uncle Harry’s light cruiser and another one were left behind by the departing task force to defend a damaged aircraft carrier as it limped away from the Japanese mainland at a speed of only a few knots an hour. All the subsequent day the lonely trio of ships fended off numerous enemy attacks before the Americans got safely out of range of Japanese land-based planes.

Uncle Harry passed away last night at age 87, the last of the many World War II veterans that I used to know. His daughter, my cousin, and her family were with him at the end just before he joined the rest of his family and his brothers in arms, to live on forever in our memory.

A Run in the Park

2011-04-13T06:19:00.011-04:00

Cherry Blossom time in the District is such a beautiful time of the year. The cold, bitter winter is over and spring is breaking out all over in a soft splash of pinks, whites and reds.

I have gotten up to running four times a week, four miles each time. Late last month I ran through the tiny Japanese-American Memorial Park in the District because it is always so striking this time of the year.

The park, a beautifully compact memorial to the rugged American spirit of the wrongly interred Japanese-Americans living on the west coast at the outbreak of WW2, is a hushed, haunting yet uplifting space, where two intertwined cranes, bound by barbed wire, struggle to break free from their imprisonment. The names of the various internment camps created in the nation's interior, interspersed with inspirational slogans, line the walls.

Enjoy. I certainly enjoyed the run.

A Victory of Sorts

2011-03-28T06:49:00.012-04:00

Yesterday afternoon, on a crisp cool Sunday, I jogged to the start line of the W&OD Trail 5K race, 1/2 mile from my house. The W&OD is a 40-mile long flat 8-foot wide asphalt trail extending from Arlington to beyond Leesburg, a paved-over railroad bed that cuts across my back property line at MP7.

Because I hadn't raced in a year and a half and I'd only been back to running for eight weeks, I was as nervous as any novice runner. My 5K time used to average about 24 minutes, but now I was worried I was confronting my new running paradigm of a 30-minute 5K race, unexplored territory for me.

I had hydrated all day, eaten a huge bowl of pasta for lunch and quaffed an energy drink before leaving my house. I punched my Garmin when the starter gun went off and moved out with the crowd.

The first quarter-mile went by at an 8:50 pace, which I knew was too fast. I slowed as I climbed the bicycle bridge over Leesburg Pike at the half-mile mark, my breathing ragged.

I hit the western turnaround at Shreve Road at the mile mark in 9:32. I was too tired already to do the math to see if that pace would be good enough for a sub-30 minute 5K. (I needed to maintain a 9:39 pace, which I should have calculated before I went to the race.)

We ran over the bicycle bridge again as I enviously looked at my house from its height, feeling like just packing it in and going home. I used the downhill off the bridge to pick up my pace and I passed the second mile marker in 9:15 (18:47).

A fog of fatigue enveloped me as we ran eastbound past the start/finish line and proceeded to the far turnaround at Little Falls Road. I felt like I was crawling as I retraced the half mile back to the finish line, passing the 3rd mile marker in 9:51 (28:36).

My time was 29:12 (9:24), a PW but still exhilarating since I achieved my goals of a) finishing b) running all the way and c) breaking 30 minutes. I was 89/183, tenth out of sixteen in my age group.

Yeesh

2011-03-26T18:41:00.004-04:00

I did my tuneup for tomorrow evening's W&OD Trail 5K by running 4 miles this morning on the race course, which happens to go right by my back yard. I ran slowly, a maintenance run.

Slowly as in 43:45 for four miles (10:58), and I passed the 5K mark at 33:05. Yeesh.

I wasn't feelin' it today, but I finished the run. A lady passed me by and I caught up to her and chatted with her for a bit. Irina, she runs 3 miles two days a week every week (she had a German accent so I imagined she never misses a scheduled run) and because I could maintain her pace she was impressed with the fact a) I was doing four miles & b) I had only been running since January.

Irina was a steady runner but she actually wasn't that fast. But she pulled me along for a mile and then I let her go and turned around to come back, grateful to revert to a slow shuffle.

I love talking to unknown runners that I fall in with. Many are friendly and if they aren't, I pull away or drop back. Runners with headphones on I never bother with. I ignore them because I think it's a) selfish & b) dumb to run with headphones. Why not just pound out the mileage on a dreadmill for all the good being out in the open air does for these runners, enclosed in their own little cocoon of sound. These runners always display their annoyance if you try to talk with them by making a big show of yanking out their headphones to see what you want.

My walk-to-run training program spent all of January getting our walking up to 4 miles at our Saturday sessions but currently we're on a 3-minutes-running 2-minutes-walking gig. I don't tell them that I run the four miles the other three times I run each week, albeit at a slow pace.

I guess you could say that I have actually been back to running for about six weeks since my year-and-a-half layoff due to an injury which is still bothering me. I don't have any expectations for the 5K race tomorrow. It's late in the afternoon and I hate waiting around all day to run a race. I can leave my house and jog to the start line in six minutes though.

W&OD 5K.

2011-03-25T19:21:00.007-04:00

I couldn't talk anybody at work into going for a 4-mile run yesterday at noon with me; perhaps I should change deodorant. So I ran on the National Mall alone, 4.2 miles in 41:42.

My first race since the Army 10-Miler 2009 (where I got injured) is upcoming this weekend. A 5K where I'm dreading I'll go over 30 minutes for the first time.

I'm in a Walk-To-Run 5K Program, which frankly is the only reason I've ramped up my weekly mileage, which was zero for all of 2010 because of my chronic injury, to 16. The program participants, all non-runners, suspect I'm an interloper and can actually run.

My coach e-mailed everyone to say, "Peter L. is running the W&OD 5K this weekend but he has lots of racing experience so I'm not worried about him." (No one will be there to "support" me.) Can I break 30 minutes?

Yeah I been running a little...

2011-03-24T02:59:00.008-04:00

A year and a half ago, I was atop the world. I had just finished running the Army Ten Miler as the race's official 9:00 pace group leader, having completed my running club's fifth consecutive 10-miler training program as a site director and certified running coach, a program I had formerly directed and largely developed. I was president of my running club.

I got injured in the race and haven't raced since then. I haven't run since then. I was unsupported on the club's board, running afoul of some young Alpha Dog twenty-somethings in the club's IT department, one of whom in my opinion is an actual paranoid schizophrenic with narcissistic affectations, and this crew, with the active participation of a young disgruntled club VP and the hands-off acquiescence of the other VPs, literally ran me off the board (I resigned when I could not get any requested information from them, especially about suspicious transactions in the club's payment-receiving account). I let my club membership lapse, and 95% of my "friends" from a decade of running don't have anything to do with me anymore.

In a year of injury-induced inactivity, I put back on practically all of the weight I had lost and kept off during ten years of running. I almost died in an accident. I stopped blogging.

Well, I'm trying to come back from "there." I check in regularly with my family (meaning my five siblings, my children are alienated from me as a result of my Western-style nuclear divorce). I attend church regularly.

In January I started participating in a walk-to-run 5K program which has caused me to drop a little weight and get my running schedule up to 16 miles a week (my injury still bothers me). I have my target 5K race coming up in three days.

Four days ago I ran four miles on the race course in 40:35 (10:09 pace), a slow time for me back in the days of old but still my best outing in a year and a half. My 5K time would have been about 31:50, a far cry from my PR set a decade ago of 21:58. I have run dozens of 5Ks and not one has ever been over thirty minutes.

Things change. Or perhaps the more things change, the more they remain the same.

We'll see.

Dear Children

2011-03-23T07:32:00.006-04:00

I posted this fare-thee-well recently on Face Book to my three sons, all now adults, who have rejected for years all of my attempts to re-connect with them after a contentious divorce. During the nuclear litigation, these minors were the supposed plaintiffs in a secondary lawsuit brought against me that the court found to be an unconscionable harassment petition, an attempt by their Mother to interfere with my relationship with my children.

The court sanctioned and assessed costs against her of nearly $50,000, but I never saw my children again. That's why it's against public policy to allow children to be parties in domestic law litigation.

Moby Dick ends with the ship sinking and dragging a living part of heaven to hell with her. "Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled 5,000 years ago." Fare thee well JJ&D, live long and prosper and I'll always love you.

Love Dad.

Dear Danny

2011-03-22T07:13:00.010-04:00

My youngest and most easily manipulated child, Danny was in my opinion turned against me during the divorce by his Mother with the active assistance of the charlatan court-appointed psychologist, who rewarded him with an X-Box for his cooperation, and several other paid-gun agenda-driven social service "professionals." These adults in my opinion whipsawed this tender lad emotionally to the point where he expressed some violent ideation.

Do you think domestic law in America is broken?

The last time any of my sons communicated with me was in 2007 when Danny sent me a letter asking me to provide for payment of 100% of his college tuition and fees, which I am doing. None of my sons has communicated with a single family member on my side in over seven years, a hallmark of PAS.

When Danny passed into maturity upon his birthday last month, I posted the following fare-thee-well to him on FB after he had ignored my friend request to him for over a year and left unanswered the personal message I sent to him on that medium. His Mother, a first-grade school teacher, refuses to give me the address of any of my three children.

My youngest child Danny, now a man, was a special boy. Neither the fastest nor the most athletic on the field, he had a unique ability in sports. At fullback during one football game he twice broke through the line and ran for TDs on long runs, displaying nice juking moves and a good sense of angling to the corner of the end zone to outrun faster pursuers. But his best play came at the end of the game when, as the outside linebacker on the weak side, he came all the way across the field to the strong side and knocked the opposing ball carrier out of bounds at the two-yard line to preserve a 13-7 lead. What a team player. Happy Birthday Danny, have a good and prosperous life and I was blessed to know you as a child.

Love Dad. [I am sorry for what those "professionals" do to children and that I was unable to protect any of you from it. I love you JJ&D.]

Dear Johnny

2011-03-21T06:27:00.007-04:00

My middle child Johnny has graduated from college I think, at least he used up all four years of the pre-paid college tuition plan that I purchased for his benefit. For years, the annual statement from the plan administrator is the only scrap of information I've received about my three children after a contentious divorce a decade ago.

Sober, responsible, earnest Johnny most resembled me with his heartfelt nature, exhibiting a great concern for others (a trait in a child that is subject to gross manipulation by conniving adults) and displaying an interest in military history. As a boy, I used to conduct massive battles with little green army men in my bedroom; Johnny did the same in our yard when he was a child. Occasionally I'll come across a long-lost faded little plastic soldier in the yard and it breaks my heart as I think about Johnny.

He is an adult now and the choices he makes are his own now. I recently posted the following fare-thee-well to him on FB.

My middle son Johnny was most like me, his Mother observed. My favorite description of him came from his football coach at a year-end team banquet: "Johnny was always nearby whenever he wasn't in the game, and he had a question about every move I made and an answer for every question I asked." The first child of mine to act upon his desperate love for his Mother and end a relationship with me, I miss him. I love you Johnny, wish you a happy and prosperous life and was blessed to know you.

Love Dad.

Dear Jimmy

2011-03-20T03:09:00.012-04:00

My youngest child recently had a birthday that took him beyond his twenty-first year. Now it is time for my children to contact me, if they ever care to, rather than for me to always be fruitlessly reaching out to them on every major holiday. They know where I live. (Their Mother refuses to give me their addresses, or indeed, any information at all about them.)

I last heard from any of them in 2007. I last saw any of them in 2006. That's PAS in the West.

Losing your children is devastating. The only thing that has allowed me to move on after years of personal devastation is a growing Christian belief. I attend church now frequently and reflect upon the inscrutable nature of faith.

I forgive them all, even the scumbag divorce lawyers who, in my opinion, preyed upon children and were the enablers of this family-wrecking.

Last month my oldest child had a birthday and I published the following fare-thee-well to him on FB. Those posts, limited to 220 characters, are necessarily short.

I remember Jimmy Lamberton dribbling down the pitch with two minutes to go in a scoreless championship game while being jostled by a midfielder, juking around a sweeper and scoring upon the previously unbeaten goalie. It was a beautiful run. He had just joined the McLean Sting, a select soccer team, which thus won the tourney. Happy birthday Jimmy Rogers and have a good and prosperous life. I'm going to miss you but I was blessed to be your father.

Love Dad.

Dear Family

2011-01-06T10:33:00.005-05:00

Never say never. This date is my middle child's birthday. As usual I invited him to lunch but as usual he ignored me and I ate alone, for two.

In December I sent out a summation of 2010 to my 5 siblings, enclosed in my holiday greeting card. Three responded with Christmas cards (up from none in 2009).

There is little to report from VA for 2010. Jimmy Rogers apparently lives somewhere in Arlington. Johnny apparently graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University. Danny apparently dropped out of Virginia Commonwealth University. Their Mother apparently lives in a first grade classroom in Falls Church, perhaps with her 2d husband, although I doubt he lives in a first grade classroom.

On my third annual Bucket Trip with my college buddies, this time rafting down the Dolores River out west, I apparently came within a few seconds of drowning under a wrapped boat in a rapids in UT. Once I got out from under the overturned raft I was washed down the rapids on a hair-raising ride. I went in seconds from knowing that I was going to die to thinking that I might live, which obviously I did.

It was an interesting couple of minutes in my life. Yet still, in the half-year since then, I haven’t bought a M/C, started practicing karate or moved to Key West. However, I did take a retirement seminar and have started clearing out my house, which is a slow process.

Does anybody want a WWII Marine Corps uniform [my Dad's dress uniform]? I left off a USMC flak jacket, some Marine medals and a New Jersey state wrestling championship pin at [my sister] Kate’s. [My younger brother's effects--he no longer speaks w/ me.]

Since I’m not running or volunteering my time currently, I have been going to the Falls Church-Episcopal church services a little and reading a lot. The Episcopalians attend mass in the loft of the Presbyterian Church because they were kicked out of their property by the homophobic members within their midst who illegally took over the historic church building and joined a Nigerian bishop who advocates stoning sinners, as near as I can figure. That property/contract dispute is dragging its way through the state court system.

My 12 favorite books I read this year were Plagues and Peoples by William H. McNeill, Shane by Jack Shaeffer, Never Enough by Joe McGinniss, The Stranger by Albert Camus, We Are Soldiers Still by Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway, The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen, Collapse by Jared Diamond, If I Die in a Combat Zone by Tim O’Brien, The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916 by Alistair Horne, Islands of the Damned by R.V. Burgin with Bill Marvel, Hollywood Station by Joseph Wambaugh and Banners at Shenandoah by Bruce Catton.

I saw Kate twice, on a car baseball trip to the Mississippi River and at Thanksgiving. I saw Melissa in CO and spoke with Abby several times. I spoke with Hilary and Jack for the first time in a long time. I visited Zanesville OH, Johnstown PA, Shanksville PA and the federal courthouse in MO where the Dred Scott trials were held. I had breakfast with Erik [a childhood friend]. I saw 42 Boulevard [the house I grew up in on Staten Island], restored after the fire, and stopped in to see Mr. & Mrs. Murray on Staten Island.

I achieved the twenty year benchmark at my work and conducted my second trial, in Tampa. I stopped blogging and started face-booking. I discarded my laptop for a netbook. I got cable TV and now have access to two thousand channels of crap.

My unlocked car was burgled in my driveway while I slept. A friend of mine was killed in Afghanistan and I attended his funeral in Arlington National Cemetery. I am using my 7 1/2 foot artificial Xmas tree for the last time and will switch to a 5 1/2 foot model next year. My car gets 22 MPH on highway trips, turns 10 within a month and has 72K miles on it. I have attended games at 41 MLB parks and have 3 to go, knocking off KC, CWS, StL and the NYM this year. That’s all. So it goes.

PL

[Next I say goodbye to my kids, now adults, and hope they have long and prosperous lives.]

Green Pastures and Still Waters

2010-11-02T17:26:00.007-04:00

I cried this morning when I found out. Alone in my house, I cried.

I stopped blogging earlier this year when I figured that I’d said everything my estranged kids should know about the father they cast out years ago when they were children. Since then I have posted on facebook, although it is so much less satisfying than blogging.

Facebook is informative, however, sort of like wandering by a public bulletin board. When you glance over the tiny posts your friends publish, occasionally something will absolutely rivet you.

This morning while scrolling down the long list of all my friends, I lazily clicked onto the profile picture of someone whose page I hadn’t visited lately, a woman who participated in several of the running programs I directed in the past for my former running club. As a coach, I ran with her on Saturday long runs occasionally, and became friendly with her.

Her portrait showed a happy smiling woman standing next to a handsome virile man in uniform, her husband, a sergeant in the 101st Airborne Division. I ran with him a few times, doing repeats on the track whenever he accompanied his wife on program speed workouts.

She ran 400s with the other coaches and the rest of the trainees while he did his own repeats, rushing around the track at a much faster pace. Being competitive, and a better runner than most of the others in the program, I tried to run with him.

Only I couldn’t keep up. He was young, tough and strong.

Army strong. Later that year he ran the Army Ten Miler with a stress fracture and still beat my time.

This morning I looked at the picture of the winsome couple on her FB page, then glanced nonchalantly at the opening lines of recent posts on her wall. Horror instantly assailed me.

"I am sorry for your loss... ." "Your husband was... ." "Although I can’t know how you feel... ."

I knew from a post on her FB page last year that her husband had been deployed to Afghanistan. She left the area around the same time and I hadn’t seen nor heard from her her since.

The long string of posts from her friends were all dated within the last few days. With my heart pounding, I googled his name.

The search result was instantaneous. He was killed by an IED in Afghanistan on Thursday.

I knew him and had run with him, and now he was gone. I cried, yes I did, for him and for her, and for all the rest.

A Dark Passage to Light

2010-06-29T07:53:00.008-04:00

He plunged into the dark, cold water and drifted easily downward while he considered the situation. He was in a canal filled with water that was over his head and he must be near the bottom now.

His lower hand reached out and touched the mud at the bottom. It was time to go to the surface now but he didn't want to suddenly thrust up in the water and get his feet mired in the muck.

He rolled over and tried to orientate himself so that he could propel himself upwards without having to kick out behind him. Although he was relaxed, it was definitely time to get to the surface.

But the coldness of the water and the slow turning of his body had disoriented him and he was suddenly acutely aware that he had only a single breath of air. An urgent note of finality characterized his actions.

He felt that he had only one chance to attain the surface now. He hoped that he was pointed upwards because he didn't want to dive headfirst into the bottom mud and have to wrestle around down there getting reoriented while his single breath waned.

He pushed off and his eyes opened to light and he sucked in a breath. The dim luminescence of dawn was filling his bedroom.

He lay under the sheet considering. He'd been dreaming, and perhaps a little bit of acute sleep apnea was involved.

His dream sequence was eerily similar to being trapped under the boat in the rapids last month. He remembered that when he'd described his near-death experience then to his sister afterwards, she'd used the word reborn to characterize his escape.

He thought about the dark, lonely place under the boat, with nothing but fluid surrounding him in his confined space. Then he had pushed off downwards to launch his journey into the unknown, which he feared might lead to him being pinned by the current against the rock that the capsized raft was wrapped around.

But there had been no other choice then because it was time to leave, and he had traveled under the stern of the boat and come out into light and air, before being plunged down the rapids in a wild ride where he had to fight for his life. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.

Parking enforcement in the District

2010-06-28T02:11:00.008-04:00

The District has expanded its metered parking exponentially and enforces the restrictions aggressively in its desperation to garner revenues. Parking at any meter citywide costs $2 an hour from 6 am to 10 pm Monday through Saturday.

Personally, it just means that I actively stay out of the District on Saturdays. I reckon that attitude represnts a loss to the city in the form of potential lost sales tax revenue.

The city is very efficient at dispensing parking tickets, having its uniformed meter-maids zip up and down the sidewalks trolling for expired meters on Segways. With a couple of taps on his or her hand-held computer, the officer prints out a $60 ticket, slaps it on the windshield and is speedily off looking for other miscreants.

Going to lunch the other day, I observed one of these hard working parking enforcement officials during a few seconds of downtime from revenue enhancement. He was cruising hands-free on his two-wheeled vehicle in the middle of the street alongside a slow moving Metropolitan Police patrol car with its driver's window rolled down, engaged in a discussion with the pretty officer inside while he smoked a cigarette with one hand and held a cell phone to his ear with the other hand, conducting yet another conversation.

Got soccer redux?

2010-06-27T13:05:00.004-04:00

Boo hoo, America lost in the knockout round of the World Cup. Yawn. We scored once all game, on a penalty kick.

Ghana's second goal was a wicked shot, the best I've seen in the tourney so far. Beautiful kicks like that are few and far between because scoring in soccer is so hard, especially with defenders hanging on you every step.

It's almost impossible to get "space" in the box. The scorer in overtime created a tiny bit of space and made a superb shot.

If you get a step on the defenders, they'll take you down. And half the strikers cowardly take a dive in traffic trying to get a free kick.

Soccer needs scoring. It needs fixing.

The Americans could help out here. FIFA should borrow rules and procedures from the NHL, NBA and NFL.

Every goal in soccer is suspect because of the archaic, stifling offsides rule. Make offsides only be dependent upon no one being offsides when the ball first crosses midfield (the blue line in hockey).

Then strikers could spread out and get open. Teams would have to make choices in defending their end.

To ensure that two strikers don't hang out bracketing the goalie, have a three second rule in the box like in the NBA. We love those riveting nil-nil games after all.

Soccer is so boring because of all that backwards passing, often all the way back to the goalie. The rest of the world slowly passes the ball back 75 yards to try to advance it 90 yards into the scoring zone.

This is trying to get a head start, I guess. You know, like a quarterback taking a snap at midfield and running back to the 10 to try to throw a bomb.

To keep movement mostly being progressive, institute the backcourt and icing rules from basketball and hockey. No passes backwards past midfield once the ball on offense has entered the box unless it has been lost in the interim, or else the other team gets a free kick at the spot the ball was touched by the offending team (always at least 10 yards outside the penalty area regardless). No backwards passing series past two lines anyways, to eliminate all that boring back-to-the-goalie stuff.

When a player gets fouled, give a free kick from there but tack on 15 yards (move the ball closer). Why let the defense use fouling, and the resultant free kicks from the point of the foul, as a chance for the defense to catch up and reset.

Keep the game time on the scoreboard clock, and have it stop during all that "stoppage" time when players are writhing on the ground after receiving phantom hits. When the period is over, that's it.

This will give sponsors the ability to have TV timeouts. There is no 45-minute-long continuous flow to soccer, that's a ridiculous notion.

Change the asinine rule (which is hard to determine) that the ball is scored, or dead, only when it completely crosses the line. Adopt the NFL's break-the-plane rule.

And for sure, have the FIFA commish assess fines each week after reviewing game tapes for flopping, unseemly unwarranted writhing, peacock strutting after gooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaals, clothes-grabbing and bad fouling. Soccer sucks the way it is now.

Goodbye Melvin Dean, I hardly knew ye!

2010-06-26T13:42:00.010-04:00

I'm still in spring cleaning mode although summer has arrived. Now that I no longer do any coaching or administration because my running club and I are no longer an item, I've got lots of time on my hands on weekends.

After ordering cable TV over the winter and having the novelty of channel-surfing 500 vacuous channels wear off, I looked around my house and noticed all the neglected tasks. In the basement are about a dozen boxes I packed a few years ago, labeled with the initials of my three sons.

Since none of my now-adult children has responded to any of my entreaties for years, on trash day this week I brought one of the boxes, labeled "JBL-bed buddies," to the curb and left it for the garbage truck to haul away to the dump. First, I looked inside and said goodbye to the box's contents of the Hulk Hogan wrestling buddy, the Cabbage Patch kid Melvin Dean clutching his "birth certificate," the Wild Thing that made my oldest child shiver when he opened it one Christmas, and the Daffy Duck doll which my mother sent him two decades ago.

The box was gone when I came home from work. I'm moving on, and will throw out another box each week until they're all cleared out.

Got Soccer?

2010-06-21T22:26:00.005-04:00

I have been watching the World Cup on TV. This weekend I saw England (where modern soccer was born) play Algeria to a Nil Nil tie.

I sat still for ninety minutes of non-riveting action. Two beers helped me get through this.

Twenty players on the "pitch" using only half their bodies for play (if you ignore all the handballs) while two athletes get to use their finely tuned hands and arms. Is it only America that knows about opposable thumbs?

The goalies made the only exciting plays in this hour-and-a-half stinker, a coupla outstretched overhead catches of high balls sailing across the goal mouth, the type of plays that T.O. makes in the first quarter of an NFL game.

Yawn. Before you start thinking I'm just an ugly American who doesn't understand this "beautiful" game, I'm a certified soccer coach.

Tonight I was watching Chile beat Switzerland One Nil. At least there was a score in the interminable ninety minutes, because the referee had sent off a Swiss player on a questionable foul and thus pre-determined the contest.

This red card led to a Chile Goaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal! The Chilean peacocks in their little short pants went whipping around the pitch clawing at their shirts in their frenzy, sliding on their knees and backs to signal to the world, Look-At-Me!

There's more flopping in elite soccer than in the NBA, and these lithe international athletes regularly lie writhing on the ground for minutes after each close non-contact, holding their faces in their supposed agony at receiving a phantom elbow. World Cup soccer is a phoney.

I switched to a mid-season baseball game after awhile, a 2-1 contest. It was so much more satisfying, real and action-packed.

Happy Father's Day, Dad

2010-06-20T19:54:00.013-04:00

I hated losing you when you were just 61 in 1986, Dad. I'm glad one of my three sons was held in your strong hands, and I'm sad the other two never encountered you.

I salute you as the father of six, husband to one, son, brother, combat marine, attorney, intellectual, liberal, volunteer, difference maker, fearless example and principled person.

In times of trouble I think of you, Dad, and ask myself what you would have done. I love you.

Woody

2010-06-19T23:11:00.008-04:00

I went to see Toy Story 3 this afternoon. I'd been in a funk all day because of the holiday tomorrow and I thought seeing a well-reviewed movie would help alleviate my blues.

It is an excellent movie, with wonderful writing and a complex plot. I was glad it was a 3-D film and I was wearing dark glasses because when Andy gave away the toys he'd outgrown to the little girl who would give them a welcoming home, the tears just rolled out of my eyes.

Both eyes. They just silently spilled out during the movie's heart-rending final scene, a denouement that imparted so much promise and goodwill for everyone and everything.

I usually don't cry, although some tears did spill out a couple of years ago after we lost a Bucket Trip companion to a heart attack in the Grand Canyon. I don't think the movie audience today noticed my water-stained cheeks because I craftily didn't wipe my face.

You see, this morning when I was pulling up weeds in a corner of my yard, I came across a plastic green army man buried in the dirt, lost during some long-forgotten battle a long time ago. It was the type of toy soldier that my middle son always used to play with, sometimes in the yard.

Finding this weather beaten little trooper reminded me of Johnny, and also my two other estranged sons, all of whom are adults now. I just hate it when the good-bad memories get stirred up.

Congratulations, Johnny.

2010-06-17T11:29:00.007-04:00

Sunday is Father's Day. For me, holidays always suck because I have three children, who I love and have fully provided for from birth through full payment of their college tuition and fees, and not a one of them has talked to me in seven years.

They all walked out of my life permanently in a show of support for their Mother when she actively made them her close allies in our interminable nuclear divorce litigation. It's called Parental Alienation Syndrome ("PAS"), it's a form of child abuse, it's devastating to everyone involved and it happens when the alienating parent, usually the primary caregiver, instills an us-against-him feeling in the immature minor children.

I think my middle child graduated from college in Richmond this month, because the annual summary I get from the Virginia pre-paid tuition plan that I own for their benefit showed that on January 1st he had used up 3 1/2 years of his four years of eligibility. As with his high school graduation, I wasn't invited to this ceremony.

Why would you inform the person who purchased the plan that paid for 100% of your college tuition and fees (no college loans, yay!) of your graduation? This is a special graduate; I am imagining him now, walking across the stage, receiving his degree, flipping the tassel, tossing his mortar board into the air . . . .

That's a wrap

2010-06-16T19:04:00.006-04:00

I was telling Maria, a friend of mine in Colorado, that I went rafting on the Dolores River in Colorado and Utah last month when she informed me that she was a river guide and had traveled down the Dolores River plenty of times herself. Since I almost drowned when the boat overturned in a rapids and I became trapped underneath it, I asked her how you get out from underneath a capsized boat.

"Keep ahold of the boat and let it pass over you," she said, "by using your hands to pull yourself upriver as it floats downstream. Use the air pocket under the boat to breathe, and when you come to the back of the boat, duck under the gunwale and come out behind the boat, holding onto to the boat until you can determine whether you want to stay with it or take your chances swimming down the rapids."

She added that you don’t want to come out downstream so the boat is pushing you, because it might hit a rock and pin you between it and the rock. Better to emerge upriver and have the boat pull you, so you can let it go if need to achieve separation.

"Maria," I said, "there was no air under that boat. The current had pinned it against a rock and it wasn’t moving."

"Oh, you were under a wrapped boat," she said. "That’s different and very dangerous. You have to get out from under a wrapped boat any way you can, although you still want to try to get out upriver, in case it suddenly starts moving." (Right: A wrapped boat.)

I got out from under the wrapped boat downriver, on my third try with my life hanging in the balance, after failing two times to get out upriver. Maria is the first person I have talked to about the situation I was in who immediately understood that there was no air pocket down there, which gave my efforts to escape an air of immediacy which fully garnered my attention.

The Longest Day of Sergeant Thornton

2010-06-06T13:48:00.007-04:00

Sixty-six years ago today, Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy in the greatest amphibious landing ever, successfully breaching Hitler's Fortress Europa enroute to an historic meeting with Soviet troops on the Elbe River in Germany less than a year later. Some commentators say that ancient history flowed into that date and modern history flowed out of it.

It was an enormous, complex enterprise involving hundreds of thousands of men. Allied airborne troops preceded the troops splashing ashore at daybreak by several hours.

Ever heard of Sergeant M.C. Thornton of the British Sixth Airborne Division? This one man might have changed the course of history that night.

The German plan to throw the invaders back into the sea depended upon Panzer units counterattacking the left flank of the landings while the Allies were still on the beaches. To do this, their tanks had to cross the Orne River and the adjacent Caen Canal in order to get at the British.

Ever heard of Sergeant M.C. Thornton of the British Sixth Airborne Division? The road to modern history might have flowed through his foxhole early that morning.

Maybe you've heard of Omaha Beach, where the Americans almost came to grief; probably you haven't heard of Pegasus Bridge, where the British almost came to grief. Historian Stephen E. Ambrose wrote a book about the Sixth Airborne's early morning battle at the bridge over the canal, seeking to deny the Germans the only road their Panzers could take across the water barrier blocking their armor from the Allied beaches.

The Allies didn't simply blow these bridges six miles off the beaches because they wanted them so their troops could use them to break out of Normandy and head east towards Germany. Just after midnight British paratroopers captured the bridges, but their thin ranks had to hold them until troops landing later that day could come to their aid or else the intact bridges could turn into an avenue for furious Axis armored counterattacks.

In the early morning of June 6th, the Germans knew something was up. Glider troops had landed and heavy firing was going on.

The local German commander sent his tanks along with some infantry in the dark to investigate the confused situation at the bridges. As they approached the Pegasus (Benouville) Bridge, a single company of British troops who had landed practically on top of the bridges in gliders just after midnight waited with no antitank weapons save one Piat gun, the British equivalent of the American bazooka.

The noisy German tanks were moving slowly and cautiously towards the bridge, with the foot soldiers following. Sgt. Thornton was in a fire pit with his Piat gun 30 yards off the bridge entrance way, near the end of the weapon's effective range.

All other weapons the lightly armed British paratroopers had with them were useless against buttoned down tanks. The German troops should have preceded the tanks, but the German response was hesitant and uncertain that first night.

"The Piat actually is a load of rubbish, really." Thornton said years later. "Even fifty yards is stretching its range."

"Another thing is, you must never, never miss." It was too time-consuming to reload and the gunner would be killed by counter fire if he missed.

The British held their fire as the tanks approached. Shaking like a leaf, Thornton took aim and fired at the lead tank as it turned towards the bridge.

In typical British understatement, Thornton described what happened. "I hit him right right bang in the middle."

The round penetrated and the tank went up, and burned slowly for the rest of the night, cooking off rounds occasionally. The rest of the tanks retreated, not to return that night.

A British paratrooper colonel came up later towards the burning tank with a few additional troopers as reinforcements. "What the bloody hell's going on up there," he asked Thornton.

"It's only a bloody old tank going off," Thornton replied, "but it's making an awful racket."

With the bridges leading directly to the Normandy Coastal Road in Allied hands, German armored counterattacks were forced to divert far inland around Caen and they were committed piecemeal, with ineffectual results. Eastern Front veteran Colonel Hans A. Von Luck, commanding the elite 125th Panzer Grenadier Regiment of the 21st Panzer Division which was east of Caen at the time, "contends that if those bridges had been available to him, he could have crossed the Orne waterways and thrown his regiment into the late-afternoon D-Day counterattack. The attack, by the 192d Regiment of 21st Panzer, almost reached the beaches. Von Luck feels that had his regiment also been in that attack, 21st Panzer would surely have driven to the beaches. A panzer division loose on the beaches..." Pegasus Bridge, p. 125.

Put yourself in Sgt. Thornton's foxhole at 2 a.m. on June 6th in Normandy in 1944, staring at a German tank 90 feet away that hasn't spotted you in the dark. One shot is all you will get, and if you shoot and miss, the tank will kill you. Even if you shoot and hit the tank, it or the second tank might kill you anyway. The small detachment of British troopers nearby cannot help you in this solitary duel. The British troops who will pour ashore hours later on Sword Beach are depending upon you to do your duty, to keep these tanks off their flank. Your trembling finger slowly tightens on the Piat gun trigger as the iron monster noses forward, its cannon swiveling looking for a target.

When interviewed decades later by Stephen Ambrose for Pegasus Bridge, Thornton told him, "Whatever you do in this book, don't go making me a bloody hero."

Ambrose replied, "Sergeant Thornton, I don't make heroes. I only write about them."

A lot to say

2010-06-05T07:59:00.013-04:00

I sure had a lot to say about the third day of my recent Bucket Trip down the Dolores River in Utah, when our boat capsized in the rapids. A friend who reads my posts said, "You tend to go on and on."

What, half a dozen or so posts concerning a single minute on (in?) the river is going on too long? Well, maybe.

But since I returned, I have related the story of my minute underneath the overturned boat to a few select friends, and have had the good fortune of receiving in return two excellent commentaries about travails on the river. The first one is from J, a running buddy of mine.

J was tubing on the Snake River many years ago, and because he was much younger and less wise, he wasn't wearing a life jacket. He can't say for sure, but he might have had one or two.

The rushing river took him straight into a large rock, where the current swirled around and around in front of the standing impediment creating a fierce mini-maelstrom. Perhaps you have never truly been on (in?) a river; but I can say from close experience that the incredible power of the water is both unrelenting and unforgiving. It can kill you like that.

The whirling well of water drove J down and he could feel the inner tube he was gripping being torn from his hands. An inner tube has buoyancy and is likely to return to the surface at some point whereas a human body might stay submerged within the center of a deep, rotating pool of water for a long time.

J held on for dear life as he was swallowed up. A few seconds later the inner tube was ejected from the whirlpool and discharged downstream, with J still clinging to it.

To this day J credits his death grip on the inner tube's handles with saving his life. In a subsequent post I'll relate what I learned from a river guide friend of mine.

Incidentally, J was practically the only person who gave me unbridled support after I ascended to the presidency (short lived) of my former running club last year and vicious board infighting broke out. He watched my back when I stood up after my last board meeting and I was, um, closely confronted by four belligerent young alpha male board members who had been disruptive throughout the meeting.

Decoration Day

2010-05-31T11:22:00.004-04:00

Happy Memorial Day to all veterans out there, and thanks for your service. Here's to the memory of my Grandfather Jack (Navy in WWI), Dad (Marines in WW2 on Peleliu and Okinawa), Uncle Bill (Army in WW2 in the Philippines) and Uncle Bob (Army Air Force in WW2 in North Africa). Here's thanks to my brother (Marines in Lebanon in 1981) and my Uncle Harry (shipboard Marine in WW2 at many battles, including the battles of the Philippine Sea and the Fast Carrier Strikes on Tokyo, bronze star recipient). I saw him in Durango this month and he's doing all right. See for yourself.

Livin on jacks and queens

2010-05-26T08:39:00.007-04:00

Friday, May 7th was the last day of our rafting trip in Colorado and Utah, an uneventful day spent gliding down the Dolores River (which means river of sorrow) past its confluence with the Colorado River a short ways, which brought the third annual Bucket Trip to a close. On this trip I had undergone the most incredible day of my life on May 5th when two of our three boats got trapped in a rapids, with one overturning with almost deadly results. (Above: We're all still here. Trip's end. Photo by B.)

We had all survived, and become stronger for it. I brought home from the trip a gimcrack I picked up at the Denver airport, a magnet that has a Native-American saying on it.

The courage inside us is the strength that guides us. I put it on my refrigerator with magnet momentos from other trips because it reminds me of the minute that I spent underwater trying to escape from underneath the capsized boat.

The first BT was the trip of a lifetime, rafting on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. The second BT was a wonderful sailing trip through the Florida Keys, gliding through the Everglades some and venturing out into the Atlantic a short way.

The trip on the Dolores River was unbelievable, an adventure that I will never, ever forget. My heartfelt thanks and admiration go to Guy and Joe Vinyard of Colorado for keeping us all alive, and to my other Sewell Hall friends, Amy, Barry, Carolyn, Harrie, Jimmy, Julia and Todd, with whom I shared this difficult and very intense personal experience.

Luck is the lady that he loves the best

2010-05-25T05:57:00.010-04:00

We didn’t get onto the river on the fourth day until noon because J had to patch where he had slashed the bottom of his boat to let water out the day before when he got caught on rocks in the rapids and the river had poured in, threatening to capsize him. G had to patch the bottom of his boat too because it was leaky and full of small tears.

J used a sewing needle, floss, rubber patches and cement to repair the holes he found whereas G just smeared shoe glue over several suspect points. Both approaches seemed to work just fine.

Finally, an idyllic day on the Dolores River! We all just floated downstream in the brilliant sunshine with an occasional pull or push on the oars.

I took a turn for an hour on the oars and it was quite strenuous work as well as being nerve wracking as we bounced and scraped over rocks in the river while I tried to get the hang of pushing oars to propel a boat in a strong current. There was one more rapids to pass through and I relinquished the helm to G when we approached it.

Slider Rapids looked formidable enough, a solid class III, but after scouting it out from shore and endlessly palavering about possible routes through it, we all made it down just fine. We were all veterans by now, combat-tested.

We pulled into camp early that evening, about seven miles from Dewey Bridge in Utah, the end point of our third annual Bucket Trip. That night we enjoyed sumptuous beef burritos and had a sing-along around a campfire, with the best rendition being performed by J as he sang the title song to the old fifties TV series Maverick. (Right: Row, row, row your boat...)

Ridin' the trail to who knows where,
Luck is his companion.

A Boat Recovery

2010-05-24T02:31:00.011-04:00

G's boat had gone down the No-Name Rapids by itself after it capsized and, amazingly, lodged against a huge standing rock in the Dolores River below. Once all ten of our rafting trip entourage had been safely accounted for and the rest of the boats secured below the rapids, our two river men, G and J, who are brothers, went after it in the largest boat and I went along to lend a hand.

G and J fell to intense bickering like brothers do even as they performed incredible physical feats and at one point I had to tell them to quit arguing as we attended to the boat recovery. We went by the hung-up boat once and missed it in the strong current and had to be hauled upriver by everyone on shore pulling on our tow line for another attempt at beaching on the mid-stream rock with our oar boat.

On the second pass J grabbed the capsized boat's floating bowline as we went by and somehow. by holding onto it, pulled our heavily-laden boat into the lee of the current behind the large boulder. G scrambled onto the rock then and started working on freeing the stuck overturned boat.

At one point our boat started floating away and G, standing on the steep rock, held our towline in one hand and the other boat's bowline in his other hand and I couldn't believe the strength, or will, he displayed in not letting go. He freed his boat alright, but let go of our towline in the process and we drifted away and his boat started floating away too.

The first rule on the river is to stay with the boat and J shouted to him as we floated off, "Jump in and grab your boat!" Which is what G did, executing a prodigious leap into the river for the second time within the hour, this time all the way to his escaping boat, which he grabbed onto.

We oared over to him, took the bowline and pulled the upside down craft to shore. Then, after securing the large boat to the bank, the three of us got in the shallow water and tipped the overturned boat right side up. (Right: Drying our stuff at camp that evening.)

Dress to swim and rig to flip. Incredibly, all the baggage and equipment, except for the oar which A had already retrieved, was still with the boat. (Left: We had a lot of stuff.)

Water had invaded all our dry bags though, and our sleeping bags were wet. It meant for an uncomfortable night for G, Jy and I when the nighttime chill settled in but hey, we were alive and our third day on the river, the most incredible day of my life, finally drew to a close.

Giving thanks

2010-05-23T13:29:00.005-04:00

I went to church today for the first time since my life-altering moment under the boat on the Dolores River in Utah on Cinco de Mayo, to give thanks for discovering the strength within me when I was in the river to get out from under the boat before I drowned. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, you know?

I was relating my nascent faith to a friend today and she pointedly asked about me delaying for two Sundays after I got back before I made it to a service if that's how I now felt about it. She's actually not much of a believer herself, and views my belief with skepticism.

I just laughed. Two Sundays ago, today, it doesn't matter really, not to me anymore. (Right: Tough times on the river. We all came out alright, thank God.)

I think I've changed a little, actually. Tomorrow, for all my non-readers out there, we'll recover the overturned boat and learn the truth about "dry bags" as the cold night descends.

Let's speed this account of a single hour on the Dolores River up...

2010-05-22T00:10:00.017-04:00

So we got the second boat out of its predicament on the rapids by utilizing tow lines, which is ropes used to haul the boat downstream while it is in the river. T was instrumental in this, as were others; I helped out a little by being a stout leg T could grab onto for support while he perched on a rock and extended a rope out to J, H and C who were laboring in their stuck boat in the river. (Left: Tow lines.)

J had had to slash holes in the bottom of his raft while the river was pouring in to let water out when he first got stuck in the rapids so his boat didn't capsize like ours did with potentially deadly effect. Once J's boat got free and navigated the rest of the vicious No-Name Rapids, T and I, with G acting as captain, brought the third boat through this nasty little rapids on a wet and harrowing ride. (Right: T, Jy, B, Ju and A.)

G justified his 100% safety record by bringing the small paddle boat through flawlessly. T's score sheet also read 100%, but at this moment he wisely deferred to the leadership of the vastly more experienced G. Me, I was just crew. (Left: Happy to be alive on the river, thank you.)

Meanwhile down river A chased a floating oar from G's overturned boat a mile and a half downstream and then dived in, swam to midstream and brought it back. This became very important later when J's boat lost an oar in a subsequent rapids, his boat having already lost its spare, and our boat was able to lend its spare oar to J.

The river below the rapids had a current of around seven miles an hour and A ran the floating oar down at her standard marathon speed of about eight minutes an hour. Yay for runners. A and her husband T are heroes of mine.

Now we had to recover our capsized boat. Incredibly, it was hung up a quarter mile below the rapids on the only free-standing rock in the Dolores River between the pernicious rapids we had just passed through and California.

The Dolores River

2010-05-21T09:39:00.009-04:00

May 5th, about 2 pm, on the Dolores River in Utah was the most incredible hour of my life. I almost drowned under a boat, lived through a harrowing journey down a raging rapids and then immediately had to plunge into a lengthy rescue mission.

So what is the most incredible hour of your life? Coming out of the womb?

I feel close to Jy because he went down the same rapids I did, and had to work hard to survive his passage. Meanwhile, G leaped astonishingly to safety.

G is an American hero of mine, an amazing mountain man. You would want this man in your foxhole! His late father went on combat patrols in Normandy in 1944 and walked by German patrols in the dark.

Yeah, not much matters to me anymore. So how was your summer vacation?

A self rescue

2010-05-20T07:44:00.012-04:00

Cinco De Mayo this year was the most incredible day of my life. For the rest of my life, I will celebrate each new one I attain as a gift of life. The events which I have been describing in the last several posts all occurred on the Dolores River in Utah on Wednesday, May 5th.

I escaped from being trapped underneath the overturned boat and survived my passage down the powerful rapids. G and Jy managed to shove the upside-down boat free of the rock but its sudden departure, still-capsized, down the rapids left them stranded on the rock that had upset us, twenty feet from shore. (Right: Our boat gets away, wrong-side up, never a good thing.)

Jy was unable to crawl up the rock and slipped backwards into the water. He disappeared down the rapids.

Another of our boats was trapped on submerged rocks forty feet behind the standing rock where G was. It was a hell of a mess.

G walked around the rock, obviously hesitant to go into the river and be swept downstream. From the shore where I was, I gripped a stout sapling branch in one hand and waded into rushing water up to my chest. (Left: Jy and G are in extremis.)

Steadying myself on my anchor of the branch, I extended myself fully, my free hand open, my back leg on the bottom near the shore but my forward leg dangling in the deep water, and urged G to run off the back side of the rock, jump upstream as far as he could and try to catch my free hand as the current carried him down the rapids past me. The extension of my body bridged about half of the gap from shore to rock.

G went to the top of the rock, turned and ran off its back. He made a tremendous leap and splashed upriver into the water. (Right: Jy was gone and G contemplates going into the river as well. Behind him, J, H and C are in distress on their boat.)

He stood up, in waist high water. His astonishing jump had carried him past the swift current into the calmer water nearer the shore.

G had executed a self-rescue. At about the same time, Jy showed up from down river, wet and shivering but safe and unharmed.

Now we had to go rescue the boat in the middle of the river, find our boat, and get the third boat down below this hellacious No-Name Rapids. The day was far from done. (Right: Carefree days on the Dolores River.)

Downstream, B was running after A and yelling at her not to go into the water as she chased after a paddle in the river from G's boat. Since she is a Boston Qualifier and he is not, she was pretending not to hear him as she outdistanced him and then plunged into the river.

Another Ride Down A Rapids Without A Boat

2010-05-19T07:55:00.011-04:00

Our third annual Bucket Trip was the gift that kept giving, the trip from hell. The adventures kept coming at us non-stop and they weren't through yet.

On the afternoon of the third day of our trip down the Dolores River in Utah on three rafts with 10 persons, Jy had skippered our boat into a huge standing rock in the middle of a rapids and it had flipped over. After a harrowing escape from underneath the boat, I had gone on a wild ride down the rapids to the bottom.

After I shakily pulled myself out of the river, I had gone back upriver to see if I could help out with our capsized boat. I hadn't seen Jy or G, the other man in our boat, since I had been dumped unceremoniously into the frigid water.

I hoped they were both alright.

Well, they were, more or less, at least for now. When I arrived on the bank across twenty feet of torrential rapids from where the rock was, the scene was shocking.

The overturned raft was being held fast by the current against the rock we had crashed into. Jy and G were out of the water pressed against the rock themselves, standing atop the higher pontoon of the boat, shoving against it with their legs trying to get it to move off the rock.

Forty feet behind them was our largest boat, tilted precariously in the river, hung up on rocks in the rapids while its three occupants scrambled about the boat deck and stepped into the seething water which was pouring over the barely submerged river rocks in their attempts to free it. Just like our capsized boat, it was stuck tight.

On the bank with me were the last four members of our trip, both couples that had been in the 4-person paddle boat. When its captain, T, had heard the approaching rapids, he had judiciously put in on shore to scout it on foot before embarking down it.

We watched helplessly while the five persons in the river worked frenetically to free their boats. There was no getting out to them, the river was too deep and the current too strong.

The two women on shore, Ju and A, accompanied by B, went downriver on foot to try to collect anything that might break free from the boats. This is called recovery, not rescue.

We all hoped it wouldn't be bodies.

After many long minutes, perhaps a quarter of an hour, G and Jy had made some progress in shifting the position of their boat. It moved downstream ever so slightly while they shoved against it while keeping their backs pressed against the vertical wall face of the standing rock they were leaning against.

Suddenly the current caught the boat and it broke free of the rock. With a shout, Jy and G scampered about trying to scramble onto the raft before it left them on the rock in the middle of the rapids.

This proved to be impossible because it was still upside down. Down the rapids it went, sunny side down, sucked down the same vortex that I had been sucked into when I got out from under the boat.

It left its crew behind as it disappeared from sight.

G, being an experienced river man, crawled higher on the tall rock where its angle was less severe and gained his feet. He climbed to the top of the twenty-foot rock and looked off downstream at his disappearing boat.

Jy, not being used to such things, was clinging to the rock face with his river shoes barely out of the water. He pressed his belly against the smooth granite, his fingers dug into a couple of slight crevices.

"G, help me, I can't get up the rock!" he called out. G kept watching his boat. Behind them, the crew of the other stuck boat were oblivious to the drama on the rock as they frantically worked in their own little island of chaos to free their boat.

Down river, A was having her own adventures, which involved going into the river to its midway point. Her status as a Boston Marathon Qualifier enabled her to save our trip from further, possibly irreparable, disaster.

Jy was aware of my presence on the bank opposite him. He had been visibly relieved, as had G, when I had showed up, because it meant that I hadn't been killed or severely injured. Jy also now had proof that a passage down the rapids was survivable.

"G, I can't climb this cliff! I'm going to swim down the rapids. Do you think I should?" Jy had a life jacket on, as did we all.

G grunted. Life on the river is tough.

He was clearly worried about the boat, which was his possession and contained all our stuff. Jy slid backwards into the raging river and was gone down the rapids in a flash!

Jy was on his own now. There were persons down below who could possibly help him if and when he emerged from the rapids.

Did I already say that life on the river is tough? (Left: Jy disappears down the rapids on a lonely ride. Good luck, buddy!)

I hadn't read the trip brochure closely enough before I came on this trip. At the last second, I almost gave in to my vague unease about it and went off to Custer's Battlefield instead. Talk about last stands. Look at them all! Don't let any escape!

Jy had vanished down the rapids. G was atop a standing rock in the rapids, twenty feet from safety across a rampaging channel of churning, frothy water.

J and his crew were caught in the rapids in the middle of the river. They had already lost their spare oar the day before when their boat got stuck at Stateline Rapids, the supposed "tough" rapids on this trip.

Unbeknownst to me, A was diving into the river at about that moment down below after a long run in pursuit of one of the paddles from G's boat. This trip was five days on a remote section of river, devoid of serviceable roads nearby and without cell phone service, and every oar was precious.

My boat, with all of its baggage, had floated away downriver upside down and was out of sight. The only possessions I had left were the soaked clothes I had on.

I had almost been drowned under the boat and then killed in the rapids.

There was the paddle boat upstream, our smallest boat, which still had to make it past the rapids.

Night would come soon enough, with its 40 degree chill.

A Wild Ride Down A Rapids Without A Boat

2010-05-18T04:31:00.010-04:00

Disaster overtook our rafting trip on the remote Dolores River in Utah during the third day when the boat I was in ran into a huge jutting rock in the middle of No-Name Rapids and flipped over. I was trapped under the boat but escaped when my desperate dive into the underwater current carried me out behind the boat beyond the rock.

When I came up, I greedily sucked in a mouthful of air just as a cascading wall of foaming water poured over my head and drove me below the surface again. I was swept away down a long rocky chute by this torrential deluge of water rushing past the boulder which the capsized boat was pinned against. When my life jacket brought me to the surface again everything was a blur as, engulfed in tumbling, crashing water, I flashed by partially submerged boulders on both sides.

When I was underneath the boat I thought I was going to die, now that I was back on the surface I thought I might live. Although I was in desperate straits as the rushing current propelled me down the rapids at a reckless speed, at least I could breathe again so long as I didn’t get hung up on a rock and become trapped underwater again.

I plunged downstream past impediments marked by water boiling over their surfaces. I recall thinking that I had to save myself now, because my surviving this solo trip down the rapids was the best thing I could do now to help the two crew members I was leaving behind.

I know what you are supposed to do if you get thrown into a rapids. Get on your back, point your legs downstream and use your feet to fend off any rocks that you encounter. You have to trust your life jacket to save you and watch out that you don’t smash your head on any rocks.

I fought to bring my feet underneath me and point them downstream as I rolled over onto my back. I had never been in an element with this kind of power and omnipotent force before.

I was too upright in the roiling water and fighting the current too hard with my arms and this caused me to suck in water and start to cough. I forced myself to relax and lay back fully as I hurtled downstream. Clasping my hands across my vest and tucking my arms in tightly, I raised my head slightly and focused on looking down the length of my body to watch for approaching hazards.

Below me, water gushed around an obstacle just below the surface and I used my feet to skip over a submerged rock as I roared over it. Ahead of me, the current was taking me directly into a huge boulder standing upright in the river just like the rock which our boat had crashed into. I kicked mightily the instant I struck this towering edifice and careened off of it down river again.

Down I sped amidst the swollen eddies and crashing pinwheels of water for maybe a quarter of a mile. Suddenly I was discharged from this rockbound channel into calmer waters below.

As the gentler current of the river took over for the congested, frenetic rush of the rapids, I rolled over and did a slow sidestroke to the left bank. Grabbing at willow saplings on the shore as I passed by them, my quaking muscles barely allowed me to hoist myself onto dry land. I had survived.

I stood up and checked myself over while my chest heaved from exhaustion. Although wet, cold and bedraggled, I was uninjured.

I was by myself, almost half a mile below where I’d gone into the river. I hurried upstream along the bank to alert my other crew members that I was okay.

Above me were a capsized boat and two persons probably in need of assistance. It turned out that their situation was indeed desperate. (Right: My overturned boat trapped against the rock by the current. After being dumped into the water by the boat's sudden capsizing, I "came up" underneath the boat in the passenger well just past where the end of the red-tipped oar is barely sticking out from under the boat. There was no "air pocket" down there. After two futile attempts to get out from under the boat on the "upriver" side, I dove down below the boat in desperation and the strong current swept me out behind the back of the boat, where the lashed luggage is visible in the water, and sucked me down the rapids. Notice the other stuck boat behind our boat.)

I didn’t know that a second boat was caught in the middle of the rapids as well.

In the blink of an eye...

2010-05-17T03:50:00.008-04:00

Stateline Rapids, the three-quarter mile long robust Class IV+ rapids with its mandatory scout on both banks and its dangerously low water flow, was behind us. It had almost claimed our biggest boat but we were past it now and the guidebook promised us smooth sailing for the rest of the trip. (Right: After G skippered the 4-person paddle boat down the lower Stateline Rapids on the third morning, we thought we were home free.)

We were ready for a little relaxation. The hump past the impassable diversion dam the first day of the river trip and the drama that consumed the second day and the morning of the third day at the diabolical rapids had sapped our spirit of adventure and we were all looking forward to smooth, unruffled sailing down a gentle, sun-dappled river in the last half of the trip.

The weather was cooperating as the sky continued to be brilliantly blue and cloud-free, promising us no rain. The days were sunny and warm and the nights were cold but clear, affording anyone who looked up a spectacular display of stars.

We sipped an occasional beer and lounged on the boats as they moved lazily downriver at a leisurely pace. We reminesced about the good old times when we were freshmen and oh-so young in coed Sewell Hall at the University of Colorado in Boulder forty years ago.

Jy, who knew as little about oaring a boat down the remote, fast-moving Dolores River as I did, took over the helm from G, to give him a much appreciated break. We bounced our way down one small rapids with Jy at the oars, a fun little escapade of the boat first being pushed (better visibility) and then pulled (more power and control but you're going backwards) by Jy's oars as the current caught us and spun us around, We all laughed and carefully pointed out hidden rocks to the busy driver.

After a lunch of sandwiches on the bank of the river, Jy continued to row and we heard the increasing noise of another approaching rapids. Its entrance looked all right, with not too much water in turmoil down there, so we sailed on into it without scouting it out first.

We immediately got into trouble. Once we were sucked into the vortex of the thing, the inexperienced Jy pretty much lost control of the boat. Looming in our path was a big standing rock in the river which Jy narrowly missed crashing into as G yelled directions at him. The current spun us around backwards and we traversed alongside a line of barely submerged rocks across the stream while approaching another tall, broad free standing rock behind us.

G screamed, "Jy, don't hit that rock!" Easier said than done in the powerful rushing water. Now we were right next to the towering rock going backwards and the current pushed us right into it broadside.

Things happened in the blink of an eye next. The wall of water seeking a way downstream slammed us sideways into the rock. I was on the upstream side of the boat with G on the seat next to me and Jy behind me. The downstream side of the boat rode slightly up the broad face of the rock as the current tried to shove us downstream. This caused a torrent of water to immediately start flooding into my side of the boat which had been lowered ever so slightly by the dynamics of being pinned against the rock. The frigid river water cascaded into the raft with shocking swiftness.

In these circumstances everyone should climb onto the high (rising) side of the boat so that the added weight will bring that side back down and raise the lowered side. It was a maneuver we had never practised and for which there was absolutely no time now.

I thought, "Hey, the river is pouring in... ." In a flash the boat flipped over.

I was in the water fighting against the terrific current to rise to the surface. I had my life jacket on, which gave me buoyancy.

I rose in the water but never made it to the surface. I "came up" in a cold, dark watery place, underneath the overturned boat.

It was quiet under there but there was definitely no air pocket down there. I could feel the fury of the current all around my body, driving me back towards the rock face behind me.

I remember thinking that I had about one minute to get out from under this boat or I was going to die. I could feel the clock ticking.

The very death I had feared most, death by drowning, which was the very reason for my unease over this Bucket Trip in the first place, the overwhelming fear I thought I had defeated by travelling down Stateline Rapids, was confronting me. My 58 years had brought me to this one spot under the boat on this "insignificant" rapids in Utah and now I thought I was going to die alone, right here and right now.

I was determined to try to live though. I grabbed onto some rigging and clawed my way across the underside of the boat against the current to try to emerge from under the boat on the upstream side. I didn't want to be pushed back against the rock face behind me and get pinned there by the mighty water flow.

When I got to the air-filled bulbous rubber pontoon which encircles the boat, there was nothing to grab onto and the rushing current pushed me back. I tried again with the same result.

I was acutely aware of my single lungful of air. I figured that having failed twice at my efforts to escape, I had time for one more attempt at salvation before I blacked out. I felt myself weakening.

A rule on the river for anyone in the water is to stay with the boat. Besides the obvious risk of drowning, the water is dangerous because you can crash into all kinds of things while being propelled by the current.

It was time to leave the boat if I could, despite my fear of getting pinned underwater against the rock behind me. Holding fast to the rigging under the boat, I pushed off downwards and backwards into the current.

A moment later I popped out to the surface behind the boat, into light and air but in the midst of a raging torrent of cascading water. I grabbed a mouthful of air and was immediately thrust under the surface again by the force of the water. Now thoughts of death were replaced in my mind by thoughts of survival as I hurtled down a very powerful, rock-strewn quarter mile of rapids at warp speed.

Stateline Rapids, the next morning

2010-05-16T05:24:00.011-04:00

We woke up on the 3d day of our Colorado Dolores River Bucket Trip the next morning with a new determination. We ate breakfast, and made lunch sandwiches, and everyone was raring to go.

The 2 boatmen and T and B took the paddle boat down the lower Stateline Rapids with no problems. The 2 women on that boat walked.

C, always game, wanted to ride an oar boat down the lower rapids. The boatmen, returning from downriver to take their oar boats the rest of the way down Stateline Rapids, wanted only men for crew, because men are stronger and unafraid to act.

That's just the way it is in remote Utah (we'd crossed the stateline) where miscues on the river can cost you your life. The two boatmen, having faced danger in the middle of the rapids the day before, could assert their will. (Jy and G bring our boat through the lower Stateline Rapids. Photo by B.)

My boat left under G's guidance with G oaring and Jy paddling. G chose a good line down the lower rapids and made it through without incident.

J allowed C to ride with us through the dangerous rapids, although only I had a paddle to help him as he oared. It's the strength thing, although C apparently has no fear of danger. And there was a woman walking down the rapids from T's boat who would put all us manly men to shame in a pinch, as you'll see. Did I already tell you that A qualified for Boston?

I'm glad C was in the boat because it was a rough ride through the lower rapids and at one point, as I bounced around the boat as we jostled over rocks and spun around In the current, I was knocked into her and she righted me so I could stick my paddle into the water again and help J out some more.

So now the Stateline Rapids was (were?) behind us. We were home free! (Left: Home Free! Oh really? Photo by B.)

Really? Four hours later I was alone in a cold, dark place contemplating my maker.

Dolores River Trip, Stateline Rapids

2010-05-15T16:58:00.017-04:00

It was mid-afternoon of the second day of our 37 mile, five-day rafting trip down the remote Dolores River in Colorado, we had gone 9 miles so far, and trouble was definitely upon us. Our two most experienced boatmen were currently under extreme duress in the river and our largest boat was stuck, hung up on a rock and pressed into immobility there by the powerful current, in the middle of raging Stateline Rapids. (Right: Houston we have a problem. Photo by B.)

The two boatmen, J and G, and I had brought the smallest boat down part of the rapids to a portage point a half hour earlier. Buoyed by this success at navigating the ferocious Stateline Rapids, Jy offered to accompany G and J when they took the second of our three boats down the rapids.

I would be the third crew member on the last trip, as one other man was all the crew that G and J wanted to accompany them on the oar boats when they traversed the dangerous rapids. The seven of us landlubber crew members lined the shore alongside the upper rapids and watched as J brought his boat down.

We all shouted and gave a hurrah as the heavily-laden raft came shooting down the rapids. Jy and G were paddling for all they were worth up front and J was rowing furiously from the back with his long oars.

Round and round the boat spun as the flat rubber bottom struck submerged rocks and forged over them. Waves of spray from the roiling water broke over the boat.

Then our huzzahs died away as the boat spun into a little maelstrom of swirling water and got hung up and pinned on a rock in the middle of the upper channel. With the river current roaring past on both sides, the boat turned broadside and was held fast against a large rock outcropping while water poured into the upriver side of the boat. J’s oars were useless in this tight space and the little paddles were ineffective.

All hell broke loose on the boat. G climbed onto the slippery rock and started working the boat back and forth with his hands and feet, pushing and shoving. I was dearly afraid for him, worried that the heavy boat might slip a little and pin him between the boat and the rock. He could drown in those circumstances. (Left: The 3 boatmen worked desperately in the middle of the raging river. Photo by B).

Jy started bailing furiously with a 5-gallon water bucket. As G clambered about the partially submerged rock, Jy dashed him full in the face with a bucketful of cold river water as he desperately sought to keep the boat from filling with water. It would have been funny to us observers if the situation wasn’t so deadly serious.

J pulled on his oars and tried to get leverage to turn the boat in the confined space. The raft was hemmed in by rocks and held fast by the powerful current. He snagged an oar on a rock and it was wrenched from his hand and went downstream. We never saw it again.

We stood on the shore gaping at the spectacle, unable to help them in the least. The current was too powerful for anyone to wade out to them and it was too far to throw a rope. The three men were on their own.

Seconds turned into minutes and then a quarter hour passed, then half an hour. The current was holding them fast. At times, all three crew members were on the slimy rock in the raging river, pushing on the boat. It seemed to be moving slightly.

T tried to wade out towards them but it was too dangerous. The third boat was still upstream and could be used to assist them but it was likely that it would just sweep on by. If it got caught in the same place it would just add more dimension to the disaster.

The boat had stopped taking in water though, so the situation seemed to be improving. The sum knowledge of what to do was already out there with J and G, the two boatmen who had vast experience on rivers. The rest of us were helpless spectators, reduced to wringing our hands in an agony of inaction. We sat down to watch the three men work in the middle of the river, hoping that none would slip and get swept away by the rapids.

T was ready to put the paddle boat in the river if that happened, I am sure, and I would have gone with him in any rescue attempt. Half of that boat’s paddles were with the oar boat, though. There was no prospect of rowing upstream to their assistance.

Finally, after about forty minutes, the large boat slowly swung about and started moving again. There was great consternation on the rock as all three men scrambled to get situated in the boat before it broke free. Suddenly the boat went plunging down the rapids again with all three men paddling furiously.

J did a masterful job of steering with one oar and suddenly they were free of the upper part of the rapids, in a small, relatively calm part of water that separated the upper and lower parts. They paddled to a small beach, where we met them. The men were cold, wet and clearly exhausted. (Right: Free. Free at last. Photo by B.)

The boat seemed to be alright, and J was for taking it the rest of the way down the rapids and continuing on once we portaged the first boat downriver and brought the third boat down. He wanted to put Stateline behind us before nightfall.

T pressed the contrary point, suggesting that we camp right there and tackle the lower rapids on the morrow, after bringing the third boat down to this beach, of course. J acquiesced to this and J, G and I trudged upriver to the third boat to bring it down.

Watching the large boat get hung up in the middle of the rapids had scared the crap out of me. But what are you gonna do? J and G were tired and needed help and if the next boat got stuck, I could be a strong pair of helping, albeit untutored, hands. I trusted G to bring his boat down safely as he said he could and would.

And G did just that. We shoved off and J and I paddled for all we were worth while G steered and pulled with his two oars. We had an "uneventful" trip. There was plenty of water that crashed over the bow and we scraped over many rocks and swirled around a couple of times but we made it down clean. Although G looked cool in his helmsman’s chair, he cursed like a salty sailor the whole trip down. I remember being tossed around a lot. (Left: G guides us down the upper rapids to the campsite. Photo by B.)

By the time we landed, the landlubbers had portaged the smallest boat to the beach and we set up camp. We cooked spaghetti for dinner and slept away from the river by the gently babbling diversion stream. My perennially sore ankle was hurting from the day's exertion and the shallow chute of frigid flowing river water provided a perfect ice bath to dip my injured foot into.

Tomorrow we still had to pass though the lower half of Stateline Rapids, a dangerous task in itself. After that, though, the way would be in the clear with nothing further downstream but a couple of gentle rapids, we thought.

That wishful thought would instill in us a sense of complacency that almost had a fatal result the following day.

3d Bucket Trip Day 2.

2010-05-14T06:40:00.013-04:00

Day two on the river got underway at noon, after we ate a breakfast of eggs and hash browns, packed up our campsite, manhandled the three boots up the steep, muddy bank, carried them 50 yards down the shoreline past the unnavigable diversion dam, put them back into the water and lashed all of our stuff onto them. Seven miles ahead was the supposed highlight of our trip, the three-quarter-mile long Stateline Rapids, rated a solid Class IV+.

The guide book said it was a mandatory scout location, walking the river from both banks. After we navigated Stateline, the book said, the rest of our 37-mile trip would be easy, with only a couple of Class II rapids downstream from there. (Left: The Southwest desert was starting to bloom. Photo by B.)

That was reassuring because everyone was nervous about Stateline. Us greenhorns were afraid the water would be too tall and fast and we might not make it, and the river men were afraid the water would be too shallow and slow and we might not make it.

It was assumed the women would walk down Stateline on the shore. The men were quietly querying each other as to what we would do.

It was known that J and G, our two expert river men, were intending to take each of the three boats down the long rapids, in turn. Would any of the other five men accompany them?

I have already stated that I had felt an unease about this Bucket Trip from the start, fearing that the Dolores river trip might be a wee bit unsafe. My disquietude, especially in light of the somber, serious discussion of Stateline Rapids in the guidebook, had been occupying my mind and I had put my finger on what was bothering me.

I had decided that the worst fear I had in this life was of dying by drowning, and I was facing my fears now. Actually, unbeknownst to me, I was a full day away from confronting this fear head-on.

Towering cliffs closed in upon the river on both sides as we made our way down stream. By mid-afternoon, we heard the roar of Stateline Rapids and could see the agitated water ahead. (Left: High cliffs crowded in upon us on the river. Photo by B.)

We put in on the west bank and walked down a dirt road that allowed us a view of the long expanse of rapids. The upper rapids were especially ferocious, and since from the left bank we couldn’t see the entire length of the preferred passageway down the right-hand side of the river, we rowed across the river and repeated our scout on foot on the other side.

The cautious captain of the 4-person boat decided to portage. Three-quarters of a mile is a long way to portage.

The long boiling rapid, with equally forbidding looking upper and lower parts, had gotten the attention of all of us. One of my trip mates said he wasn’t going down that tumultuous rock-strewn chute on the raft and that I shouldn't think that I had to, either.

That sounded comforting. Let G and J take the boats down the rapids, and we’d watch from the bank and help out somehow if they got into trouble.

But I couldn’t do that. I offered to crew with G and J as they prepared to shove off, and the three of us put the smallest boat, the 4-person paddle boat, into the river so we could paddle it partway down the rapids to a portage point mostly through the upper rapids. (Right: Wrestling a boat down the upper Stateline Rapids. Photo by B.)

Everyone watched from shore as G and I, following J’s commands, tore frantically into the river with our paddles as the boat spun round in the wild current and bounced off rocks like we were in a pinball arcade. My heart was in my throat as we hurtled down the rapids and then safely made calmer water in a diversion channel and paddled to the shore at a portage point.

The two bigger, less maneuverable oar boats waited upstream. Jy took his turn at crewing alongside G, and under J’s command, the largest boat put into the river and came down the rapids while we all watched from shore.

We had thought our problems at the diversion dam the evening before had been tough. The trip’s troubles were about to begin.

3d Bucket Trip Day 1

2010-05-13T08:47:00.014-04:00

The first day on the river was very short and very hard. We didn’t get on the water until 5:30 in the afternoon of Monday, May 3d, and then we only went three miles down river.

It took forever to get organized at J’s house in Montrose, to gather all the equipment and drive to the put-in place on the Dolores River at Gateway in Colorado. The day before, our hosts had ferried cars around so that there were vehicles were waiting for us at the take-out spot in Utah, four hours away by road. (Right: The Dolores River in Colorado.)

Everyone had a lot of stuff, packed into waterproof bags. I had two duffel-bag sized drybags myself.

Lashed into the boats were three 70-pound metal bins of refrigerated food, dry foodstuffs and liquids, plus four 20-gallon jerrycans of potable water weighing about 80 pounds each. There also were several large metal boxes containing kitchen items, a fold-up table, chairs, propane tanks, stoves, charcoal, tarps, the latrine and various other sundry stuff.

Everything had to be rigged onto the boat so it would stay no matter what. There is a saying on the river that came to be proven absolutely true on our trip: Dress to swim and rig to flip.

(Left: The boat I rode in with Jy, middle, captained by G, who oared from the back. The life vest I was wearing absolutely saved my life. Photo by B.) There are some descriptive terms on the river that also came to be proven true. The way was "bony" which meant there were a lot of the rocks exposed above the surface which made for a difficult passage, and the water was "skinny," meaning it was shallow and likely to hang up a boat.

There is a dam upriver of our put-in spot, and our two river men were dissatisfied with its release, reckoning the purposeful discharge from the dam was barely sufficient for us to progress downstream. The river flow was 1200 cfs, or cubic feet per second, and they wished it had been 2,000 cfs at least.

More water means less danger, apparently, because less rocks are exposed. This was all pretty esoteric to me.

Down river we went in the late afternoon, the leaky rubber pontoon boats taking on water constantly and losing air continuously. The boats were so laden, overladen, with all the gear and everyone’s stuff that they rode low in the water.

For an hour the trip was idyllic. The three boats paddled and oared on a broad calm river through a wide canyon with high hills and towering cliffs defining the nearby horizons.

Then we approached what the guidebook said was a difficult Class III rapids at a diversion dam. I didn’t know what a diversion dam was but a far off din of roaring water down river that steadily grew to thundering definition garnered my attention.

The river was calm though, because we were in the pooled up backwater of the diversion dam. Finally we could see a tiny line of leaping foam running across the broad water horizon, signifying the trouble spot.

We put in to shore and got out of boats to take a look. The sight was astonishing. (Left: The Diversion Dam. Photo by B.)

In Colorado, ranchers own the bottom of the rivers which run through their property and hence, they can indiscriminately disrupt the water flow of the river. Here the rancher had bulldozed huge boulders across the river during the summer, when the river flow is minimal, and created a diversion wall for the water so that it would flow into an artificial channel the rancher cut into one bank leading into his fields.

The two Coloradans explained that by partially diverting the river, the rancher thus saved the cost of electricity that running a pump from the river would entail. The problem was that the diversion dam made the river impassable at that point for our three small boats.

From the bank beside the artificial dam, we watched the water pouring over the obstacle in a tremendous torrent, hence the roar, and falling three feet or more into a series of holes in the water below the dam. There were jagged rocks strewn about everywhere on any potential landing points amidst the tortured water underneath the dam.

The two river men, who had never been on this stretch of river before, saw the obstacle as a problem to be solved, getting the boats over that dam. They discussed using this or that tongue of water flowing over and past the dam to shoot over the barrier rocks, and then the quick actions that would be necessary upon hitting the boiling water in the boulder field below the dam.

The leader of the paddle boat, T, nixed that talk entirely. "Portage," he said simply.

It was 7 o’clock and we needed to set up camp soon. If disaster overtook a boat at the dam site, it could be dark before we could effect a rescue for the boat and its occupants.

The vote was to unload the boats above the dam, cart (portage) the contents and the boats below the obstacle, and re-enter the water after rigging the boats again.

This is humping! It’s a lot of work, especially with a full load of crap such as we had.

The beauty in T’s suggestion was that we would have to unload the boats anyway, to make camp. Why not do it there, camp, and proceed below the hindrance on the morrow.

The two river men took it as a bit of a defeat, I think, saying they had never portaged before, but they bowed to the popular will. The banks were steep and also muddy and sucked at our shoes and caused us to slip and slide as we unloaded the three boats.

We cooked a dinner of bratwurst sausages in the dark and slept under the stars beside the deafening diversion dam on a ranch road running alongside the man-made water-bearing channel. We didn’t know if the land was public or private, but I suspect we were trespassing. (Left: Looking back at the diversion dam as we left the next day. Photo by B.)

The night was very clear and very cold, just at the freezing point. We had gone just three miles and I was worn out already.

3d Bucket Trip Precursor

2010-05-12T18:46:00.009-04:00

The Bucket Trips: In 1970, I entered the University of Colorado and was assigned to the first co-ed dormitory there, Sewell Hall. With the Vietnam War raging and the Haight-Ashbury District flowering, revolutionary sentiment and the smell of cannabis hung in the air.

I met a wonderful group of matriculating students there who became lifelong friends. We spent many hours riding Enduro motorcycles through the canyons surrounding Boulder and hiking in the nearby foothills.

During the day we attended some classes on campus and at night we imbibed 3.2 Coors beer at the Sink or saw performers like Country Joe McDonald and Leon Russell at Tulagis on the Hill.

Country Joe McDonald - I Feel Like Im Fixin To Die

Rab MySpace Video

Two years ago the Bucket Trips got started when Swell Hall alumni C organized a reunion for ten of us on a week-long professional rafting trip of two boats and twenty-eight persons down the Grand Canyon. Tragically, one person who wasn’t part of our group died during that trip of a heart attack.

Last year we sailed for a week in the Florida Keys. This year J and G, brothers who live in Colorado, organized a rafting trip in Gateway Canyon on the Dolores River for ten persons on two 3-person oar boats and one 4-person paddle boat.

In the run-up leading to the early-May trip, a sense of uneasiness developed among some trip members, myself included. It was going to be a grueling trip in a wilderness area with some significant rapids.

I called up one of the organizers and asked, only half-jokingly, if anyone was going to die on this trip. My friend laughed and said no, but added that we all better be in shape for it.

C wasn’t going on this trip but he loaned J and G some river equipment and one of the boats. He told G, in all seriousness, not to get anyone killed on the trip because he would regret it for the rest of his life.

The Gateway Canyon stretch of the Dolores River starts at Gateway, Colorado, on the western slope about 45 miles west of Grand Junction. It is 37 river miles from the put-in at Gateway to the take-out at Dewey Bridge on the Colorado River in Utah. (Right: The Dolores River is, well, beautiful.)

There are no roads near the river for most of the way except for dirt trails that service ranch vehicles. There’s no cell phone service either, and we didn’t encounter any other boats.

It’s remote. We were on our own with no ability to call 911.

I flew out to Denver on Saturday, May 1st and drove to Durango that night to visit my octogenarian uncle who lives there with his daughter, my cousin. I visit him once a year as he is the only relative I have left who is of the World War II generation as all of the rest have passed on.

Since I was too cheap to pay $25 to check a bag on the airlines, I went to Walmart when I arrived and bought a sleeping bag for $9, good down to 45 degrees, and a sleeping mat for camping out under the stars for four nights. I brought along a tarp and some rope with which to fashion a tent in case it rained.

My visit with my uncle went well and then on Sunday I drove through a snowstorm to Montrose where J lives. We were leaving from there to go to the river to put in the next day.

Everyone else was already at J’s house, six other men, B, G, H, J, Jy, T, all Swell Hall residents in the seventies, and three women. A was T’s wife and a Boston Qualifier, Ju was B’s S.O. and C was the sister of both H and Jy.

Everyone except for C, who was in her sixties, was in their fifties. G and J were veteran river men and would oar two boats and T would direct the paddle boat with the two couples in it.

Except for G and J, and maybe T, who is generally an excellent waterman, we were all inexperienced, if not novices, at river rafting. Except for the Grand Canyon trip, where we went through several Class V rapids in a motorized boat, I have been along as a paying, paddling passenger on at least a dozen day rafting trips through some Class II and III rapids.

I have been instructed several times on what to do if you fall into a rapids. To the best of my memory, I have never been told what to do if you get trapped under a capsized boat in a rapids.

Baseball footprints

2010-05-11T16:54:00.009-04:00

Aboard the plane going to Kansas City on my Field of Dreams trip, I got to talking with the passenger beside me, V, who grew up in the suburbs of Kansas City. We discussed my quest to see a game at every big-league ballpark. I asked him about Municipal Stadium in Kansas City, the long-demolished home of the Kansas City Athletics and the first home of the expansion Kansas City Royals. Before that it was a prime venue for the Monarchs, a premiere franchise in the Negro Baseball League in segregated America.

I told V I was going to Brooklyn and 20th, the site of the razed stadium, to walk around the footprint of the old structure. He grew concerned and claimed, correctly, that it is in an economically depressed area. That was his euphemism for-It’s in a black neighborhood.

He asked me who I would tour the site with. Just me, I replied.

I did it in many cities, I said. For instance, last summer when I was visiting both major league ballparks in Texas, in Houston I walked around the perimeter of the abandoned Astrodome, the home of the Astros before they moved to Minute Maid Park in 1999. I also perambulated one corner of the parking lot where I supposed the old Colt Stadium used to be, a temporary wooden structure which housed the team, then known as the Houston Colt 45s, before the Astrodome was completed in 1964. (Right: Colt Stadium with the Astrodome being built next door.)

Claiming I wouldn’t be safe at that location, V made me swear that I would stay in my car when I toured the area. I lied when I made the promise, and the next day I spent a lovely two hours tramping around that neighborhood, now a single-family housing development on a little level plateau in the hilly part of Kansas City. The people I encountered were hospitable and accommodating, and frequently inquired in response to my questions whether I was from Minnesota. You see, the Royals were playing the Twins that weekend, and everyone had me pegged for an out-of-towner.

After I completed my walkabout in the area of the old ballpark, I went to Kauffman Stadium to watch the Royals beat the Twins in 12 innings in a pelting rain. It was a cold and miserable four and a half hours, but the Field of Dreams quest is not all open air and sunshine.

I didn’t care too much for Kauffman Stadium, plunked down as it is next to Interstate 70, miles from downtown. As I huddled under the eaves of the stadium trying to stay dry, I found myself fascinated by the juxtaposition of the glacially-paced baseball game unfolding in the foreground at three innings per hour while a never ending stream of whining vehicles raced by in the background at a mile a minute.

Before I left town, I sampled burnt-end barbecue sandwiches at both Arthur Bryant’s and Gates’, two famous local culinary establishments. The fare at Gates' was hotter and caused my face to stream with perspiration, while that at Arthur Bryant’s was sweeter and less sweat-inducing. Both meals were very different from each other and very delicious.

Next up for me was the third annual Bucket Trip in a week’s time with my old college buddies. This year we were rafting down the Dolores River in Colorado, and I was inexplicably experiencing unease about the impending trip.

Field of Dreams

2010-05-10T19:16:00.006-04:00

Three weekends ago I flew to Kansas City on my annual Field of Dreams trip and saw a big-league game in Kauffman Stadium there. The Royals hosted the Twins.

It was the 38th ballpark I have seen a major-league baseball game in. There are only 30 major league teams but I have seen games at some stadiums that have been demolished, like the Polo Grounds in NYC and Griffith Stadium in DC. (Right: The Polo Grounds in Manhattan.)

I have six stadiums left to go to complete my list, although the number keeps growing as new stadiums are built. Two brand new ballparks opened last year in NYC, a new stadium was unveiled this year in Minneapolis, and one is under construction in Miami.

I keep an actual list, with notes, of my visits. It has asterisks for special circumstances.

For instance, in 1979 I saw a minor league game at Mile High Stadium in Denver, and the Colorado Rockies played at Mile High Stadium for two years when they were created in the nineties. But I didn’t see a major league game at Mile High Stadium, which has since been torn down, and the Rockies now play at nearby Coors Field, where I saw a game in 2001.

So Mile High Stadium isn’t on my list of 38 stadiums, although it has a special mention of my minor league experience there, set off by an asterisk following the Coors Field entry. It’s complicated.

Here’s a personal life asterisk. Seeing a game at Coors Field was the last time I attended an event with all three of my sons.

Every summer I go see a game at one or more of the ballparks where I’ve never been. It’s my "discipline."

A happy Mother's Day.

2010-05-09T17:09:00.010-04:00

The cute blond two-year old was babbling and banging his plastic cup on the table at the restaurant where my friend and I were having brunch this morning. My friend was glaring daggers at the toddler's parents who were sitting unconcernedly next to him.

It's Mother's Day you know. My friend is not a mother.

"It's only a baby," I said to her about the noise machine two tables over. Trying to distract her, I asked her how her blintzes were.

"They could give that baby something soft to play with, or take it outside," she said. "Oh, so you got out of a bad predicament on the river and now you're going to be 'happy' for the rest of your life?"

"Maybe," I answered.

A lot has happened in the past two weeks. Three weekends ago I went to Kansas City on this year's Field of Dreams trip and saw the Kansas City Royals play the Minnesota Twins twice at Kauffman Stadium. It's the thirty-eighth ballpark I've seen a major league baseball game in, leaving six stadiums remaining on my checklist. I sampled some authentic KC barbecue while I was there.

Last week I went to Colorado for my third annual Bucket Trip with my college freshmen dorm mates. The theme of these trips seems to be water.

Two years ago we rafted down the Grand Canyon for seven days and six nights with professional river guides. It was the trip of a lifetime.

Last year we spent a week on three boats sailing the Florida Keys. What a trip.

This year we rafted for five days and four nights on the Dolores River on the western slope, starting in Colorado and finishing in Utah. Ten people went down the river on three boats.

I don't think I'm being overly-dramatic when I say I had a near-death experience on the trip. In an incredibly fast sequence, I suddenly found myself alone in a cold, dark place with maybe a minute to live. Obviously I'm still here; it wasn't my time yet.

But I saw how it could be. It didn't freak me out then but it's become a major head-trip since I got back. I arrived home last night and and I have never been so glad to return from a trip.

Already I'm calling my memory of that stark moment on the river "my cold dark place." It puts life in perspective.

Everyone finished the Dolores River trip safely. Stay tuned.

I'm Afraid

2010-04-28T21:14:00.006-04:00

When I was a policeman I learned not to show fear, or to let fear influence my actions, because in that realm fear can get you killed. So although at times I am afraid, I try not to ever show it or act upon it.

I was traveling last weekend and I went through airport security. I had barely made it through the metal detector after taking off my shoes (my toes were poking through my worn socks), my belt (my pants started creeping down my hips), my hat (my bald pate was luminous) and my jacket (revealing my untucked shirt) when a TSA guy boomed, "Sir, is this your bag?"

We were in Kansas City and the blue-shirted bag-examiner was triumphantly holding aloft a 13 oz. bottle of Arthur Bryant's Original Flavor Barbecue Sauce. Having just spent the weekend in KC, I knew from several days of taste tests that Arthur Bryant's is the preferred Kansas-style bbq sauce, even above Gates or LC's.

This cooking elixir wasn't in my carry-on bag though, it was in the bag of the guy behind me. I think he was trying to sneak this bottle of liquid amber gold past TSA to take it home and liven up his dinner fare.

He owned up to ownership, declined to go back through the onerous security line again after removing the offending item from the security area and offered it to the guard, who put it in a bus pan by the back window. This receptacle of prohibited items was chock full.

I sidled over to that window from the other side once I cleared the security and looked at the contraband through the glass. Inside the brimming pan were a dozen or more sealed bottles and cans of Arthur Bryant's sauce, Gatorade, purified water, Red Bull and Coke, along with shrink-wrapped tubes of shampoo conditioner and sundry makeup.

I was sorely tempted to take a picture through the window of this basket of shame to record what is going on in the fight against terrorism in the heartland of the homeland. But I was afraid that snapping a photo of the bucket of discarded items would be a "suspicious activity" that might get me questioned and perhaps put on a no-fly list.

I was greatly conflicted but I decided against the photograph. The Decider would be proud for having been successful in making me afraid.

The last year...

2010-04-23T13:46:00.004-04:00

I recently had a birthday and observed another year of my life passing by. A decade ago I started running and dropped a lot of weight and changed my life. I stuck with it and thrived, becoming training director for my running club and then president. Great things seemed to be beckoning.

Six months ago I resigned as president after a short tenure due to an inability to get information on suspicious occurrences that centered around the club's IT department and after a series of shocking affronts directed at me personally by the arrogant young turks controlling that department (these alpha 20-somethings disliked me intensely) who were joined by a 30-something lapdog of a VP who was disgruntled with me. These boys were and are in a position of absolute power in the club and were up to no good, in my opinion. They were implacable and insurmountable. Hey, it was a volunteer position, for chrissakes. I am no longer a member of the club and although I wish it well, it needs good luck more than good wishes.

This unpleasantness coincided with an injury that has prevented me from running for the last half year. The weight I kept off for a decade has largely returned. With the aid of a soft "boot type" brace, I have attempted to get back into running, but I can barely run a mile anymore before I feel like I'm going to expire.

It hasn't been a good year, but running teaches you to deal with adversity. Reality is very precise.

One and Done

2010-04-08T12:21:00.007-04:00

After I worked out my differences with my shirt laundry (they found my missing shirts and we kissed & made up), I took the wise advice my readers (primarily DC Rainmaker) and went back into my morning coffee place to ask for my $10 back. It wasn't forthcoming, so I shrugged & went next door to Jack's (a more tony place--the only time I took a friend on my morning routine, she demurred on my coffee spot & went into Jack's instead) and lo, the coffee was better (Seattle's Best) and the same price. So now I have my alternative in place, although I regret the lack of devotion out there for committed customers (thanks Danielle in WA formerly IA).

No more wading through desperate DC lottery buyers to buy my morning coffee & bananas. Life moves on.

Here's a pix of the Japanese-American Internment Memorial Park (think WW2) in DC during Cherry Blossom time.

None of my friends at work has a clue about this park that it is a mere three blocks from our office. Here's another pix, one that I recently took that I like of my agency. Tell me, can you identify the (new) building in the background? (Think First Amendment.)

Double workout

2010-04-04T18:30:00.010-04:00

Four runs, ten miles, that was last week's workout tally. It was a start in my return to running after taking half a year off due to injury. (Left: The soft, dirt surface of the C&O Canal Towpath is perfect for running on.)

Not that I'm all better, but it's time to get back to activity. Either running or I'm going to have to find something else to do to keep active.

(Right: The park is teeming with critters.) I started off this week's workouts with a two mile lope this morning up the most formidable hill in my town and then down the W&OD Trail, in 20:03. It was such a beautiful Easter day that after a couple of hours of recovery while browsing the numerous books I'll never have time to read in the huge Barnes & Noble in Bethesda, I drove to the C&O Canal for my annual trek on the rugged Billy Goat Trail. (Left: Bridge or downed tree? This year I scrambled across the stream atop the log.)

The Billy Goat Trail is a two-plus mile hard scramble off the towpath over sharp boulders and across sheer precipices that border the tall rock cliffs above the upper Potomac River in Maryland. Two hours later, with my tender ankle aching and my hat brim dripping sweat beads, I was done, having registered a double workout for the day and entertained a fervent hope that I'm on my way back to some modicum of fitness again. (Right: The spectacular views of the Potomac are well worth the strenuous hike.)