DESPITE THE DOG DAYS OF RECORD HEAT, RUN WITH TEST REEBOKS,
FROM KEN-GAR TO BALTIMORE, WHILE UNPACKING, RE-PACKING,
AND CLEARING THE MAIL, PHONE, EMAIL AND OTHER DECKS-
AND PLANNING A KILLER ITINERARY FOR SEPT/OCT
IN A SIX VENUE, WORLD-RANGING TRIP FOR EVERY ACTIVITY
FROM LECTURING, MOUNTAIN TREKKING TO ELK HUNTING
August 12, 2001
It has taken more than a non-stop week to make a dent in the backlog upon re-entry, but I have whittled away at it-using the early morning rising from the half-globe of jet lag to compensate for the early crashing right after my pick-up dinner. Besides the clearance of phone messages, the stacks of mails in two venues, and over a thousand email messages, I have sorted through twenty rolls of prints and a couple of on-line rolls from PhotoWorks. That is the good news.
Now for the bad. There will not be a slide show from this trip. For the second time in a decade, the E-6 processor at the GWU AVS has crashed---with my film in it. The last time this happened, it was with Jim Kendrick, and he was very apologetic. This time it was not doing well, so they applied for a new machine and were refused since it was beyond budget. They had nursed it along, and then patched it up and ran two of the own test rolls to see that it was working. It seemed to be, so they put all of my batched rolls of slides in to run-and the drum never turned over, so that the chemicals never touched the film which was destroyed. Ironically, the first three slides of each roll were developed, and they reported from these that the scenery was outstandingly beautiful! Congratulations! Now they have the justification to replace the machine!
But, from the residual, I will have a full album VI to show you on Ladakh-'01-and I had best hurry, since the Kamchatka-'01 experience is coming up next weekend, followed only ten days later by the six-venue blitz of Sept/Oct (see Aug-B-3, with the extensive itineraries and plans that required several days of smershing the far-flung destinations together within the deadlines of the commitments.
It has been hot. Not just hot, but drenching, suffocating, record-setting hot. The heat/humidity index has been over 110, but the absolute temperature has been close to 100 each day---not exactly ideal running weather. I actually got suited up and did my errands like grocery shopping and getting a haircut before tackling the pile of mail and bills-then went to Lake Needwood, and set out into such a drenching afternoon, that I turned around, and hung it up. I had received a new set of Reebok test shoes, which needed to be put through their paces, and Joe had called for a chance to run. So, I tried for a couple of mid-week runs, since ideally, Joe and I could have run the weekend, except that he was going away to Rehoboth for a beach vacation with the kids. I went to Joe's new and refurbished office at the Navy Yard, where I had last been when I had taken the Holtvluwer family to see the Navy Museum on their George Washington's Birthday break when it began to snow. After chuckling about the blizzard of Maryland, it turned out in the morning that there was 37 inches of snow that shut the city down-rescued only by protesting farmers who had driven their big rigs to the Capital Mall. Now, I threaded my way through the hot reconstruction of the highway accesses around the Navy Yard, and drove over to pick Joe up at his office.
There is a ship docked at the Anacostia River slip behind the Navy Buildings there-the USS DD Barry, a WW II vintage battleship that saw action in the Vietnam War. We stopped briefly to see what it had on display, and then made a slow but steady plodding along Ken-Gar, where we might have been the only runners/swimmers into the thick air.
We might have ideally gone to Baltimore this weekend, since a large group of the BRRC, Hopkins' Heroes, and others were planning to run the middle part of the very tough Baltimore Marathon Course---the Inaugural Running of this marathon takes place the morning after I get back from the long itinerary you see booked in the attached Aug-B-3. Since Joe could not do it, I did.
At 6:00 AM I made my way toward Baltimore's Beltway and tried to get to Perring Parkway-which I had never heard of before. I found myself at the very surprisingly large campus of Morgan State University, having passed Towson State and a group of other schools, VoTech and otherwise, with lakes and sprawling parkways and residential communities I had never seen. The conclusion of the run went through Johns Hopkins Homewood Campus around Memorial Stadium, where I had first seen the Orioles play. In the large sign on the brick front of the stadium, it says "Time will not erase the glory of their deeds"----as the wrecker's ball smashes away the wall on which the sign is inscribed in brass.
There is also a section through Druid Hills Park, where there is a Zoo. I had last been to this area in about 1970, when David and Donna Oakes and their kids were visiting when I had just come to NIH. That is over a quarter century ago, and Donna developed a colon cancer metastatic to her liver when first discovered only a few months after that and died. It means that I hardly knew any of this Terra Incognita except through very distant foggy memories of this area of Baltimore County.
I now have new memories of this part of the world which I will next see with Joe at my side as we struggle up the hills----This is one very tough run! It had all three in the most malignant form-HHH---Hot Humid and Hilly---with over 350 feet of up and down elevation gain. It will not be easy---particularly coming directly out of a long haul that begins five weeks of road-tripping earlier and continues to the nigh before when I am returning from Denver where I will be giving a talk a couple of hours before being whisked to the airport after clambering up and down the Capital Peak. And, to think the next weekend I will have the Marine Corps Marathon as an encore!