JUN-A-3

THE DEPARTURE FROM WASHINGTON AND THE ARRIVAL IN DENVER FOR THE STAGING AREA FOR THE STEAMBOAT SPRINGS EXCURSION

MAY 21—JUNE 1, 2001

             I have been hosed!  This trip is now setting of through Dulles with only one thing certain—I am on the U/A 1205 flight TO Denver, with no idea of how or when I am coming back.  I had a ticket that was reserved two months ago for a round trip to Denver for $351 to go on 5/31 (this same flight!) and return on Tuesday 6/5.  No problem!  It was booked far enough in advance and stayed over Saturday night.  I also had a round trip to Providence RI to give a talk on May 13, for an airline fee they paid of over $1,000, but they cancelled, and when they suggested June 7, I added these two flights together for a total of $681, which saved them over one-third and me 100%.  Great planning---that is, until yesterday when they cancelled the postponed program and the fourteen day advanced purchase round trip.  Any change now is an automatic $100 fee to change, and clearly, I won’t be going to Providence.  But, moreover, any change I make will be a one way ticket, and the simple return to Dulles that was $351 is now more than three times that number, since it is no longer advanced purchase, and weekend stay etc.

I had an email from Judy this morning asking when I would be coming, and I still had not made the plans for the trip I was planning to San Antonio on June 12 with the idea that I would continue on to Denver on the 14^th in order to drive all day on the fifteenth to get to Dayton Wyoming in order to run the Big Horn Ultra on the June 16^th date.  If they would like to have me sooner, I could go from Denver this next week on a change of the ticket to go from Denver on June 5 to San Antonio on the next couple of days returning to Dulles on the June 8 date.  All of this makes the trip from a reasonable starting point an outrageously expensive airfare that the careful planning that I always do to prevent such last minute changes into a real FUBAR. 

So, Michael will be home tonight and talk with Judy and call Reg’s house, as I am out to dinner, probably with both Francioses and Harkens, and we will see if I can get all this cleared up by tomorrow, when I am either borrowing or renting a car and driving to Steamboat Springs to acclimate, pick up the is for all the runners who will be once again this year be coming in from the Brown Palace midnight residents’ soiree, for which I hope to have the running stuff and the breakfast material for them at the Steamboat “Cabin”.  Further, I had promised Keith Carr’s brother-in-law that I would call when we got closer to Steamboat Springs and possibly join him for dinner, and we may even tour around a bit in Steamboat Springs and also get over to Strawberry Park, and possibly soak in the hot springs at least once before the run.

It may not be the altitude that should slow me down, but just the fact that I have been dragging in the last few races, having done NO long hauls in the last months except for the 105^th Boston, which went about as well as I could expect, and the two hour River Bank Run 25 K in Grand Rapids, in which I pushed rather hard to keep an eight-minute pace, and did—but I knew I would not have continued that pace for another 15 kilometers to complete the marathon.  And if that specter of under-performance at a stretched distance is not enough, I have double that marathon distance at another third higher altitude along sagebrush choked trails and fording streams and snowdrifts to do only 13 days later.  And for that run, I will have to now make another short-term air reservation to get to Denver again.  What a Bummer that cancelled gig in Providence has turned out to be handing me!

This is the first chapter of the Jun-A-series after signing off the May-B-series along with the pictures that had come in from the Dharamsala clinic and the Taj Mahal—not to mention a few photogenic pyriformis/sciatic nerve dissection photos!  This series will have me in various domestic travels, and making plans for the next long haul, which will now be modified, on the far end.  It seems like my plan to return to Stok Kangri and climb that 22,000 foot mountain from arrangements I was making from Lei, Ladakh after the two weeks of altitude accommodation was already complete, may founder on a wash out of someone else canceling a commitment.  The Flying Doctors had promised a clinic at Lingshed in the Himalayas a rugged ride away from Lei, but have abruptly cancelled. Ravi asks if it would be all right with me if I extended my stay and led that team in a helicopter trip to Lingshed and seeing about five hundred patients there to make up for the promise on which the Flying Doctors have welched out.  This would preclude my climb, and completely change the return trip and its careful adjustment, since there are now emerging August long-haul travels depending on that schedule.

It seems that the Kamchatka Big Horn Sheep Hunt that George Sevich had tried to organize around Gene Moore and me had foundered when Sarah would not allow Gene to go, and I started making other plans for August.  I sent a note to Scott Miller after I had tried to raise him by email and by regular postal mail, and told him about the hunt. When he got back to me by email and phone, I had faxed him the information about the hunt and he is quite interested.   So, I may have to now reconsider this hunt which was out of range for me at the get-go, but would be REALLY exorbitant when next offered, so it would be a case of now or never.

 I have looked around the preliminary taxidermy filling up Derwood, even before the big items have been hung up or before some of the even larger trophies return from taxidermy, so adding an expensive brown bear mount and a Kamchatka Big Horn to the mix may make this a trip that promises to get even more expensive if successful!

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, with all your snivelly little detailed objections, how is the overall program going just now?  Just swimmingly, thank you!

 My student advisee John P. Sutter, who had been with me in Ladakh, and who had toured a bit of India before that with Hadley Abernathy, has sat with me over the fall and winter plans forthcoming, and would like “to do it all!”  This means—go with me to the Spiti Valley and from that trip continue on to Nepal and the Lukla medical camp.  I would trek up to Namche Bazar, as he would continue on to the Everest Trek and Everest Base Camp, where I had been in 1999, as I fly out, somehow, from Namche Bazar, to get to New Orleans, to attend the ACS to give a talk on the October 10^th session on International Medical missions.

I had corresponded with George Poehlman who will be going back to Malawi in January February of 2002, and I told him about Mindanao. (See conjoined plans attempting to merge in Jun-A-5.)  I had suggested we might team up in both.  Not only was he interested in considering that, he sent me an email following my suggestion that maybe we could get together on my recent trip to the Carolinas—and he agreed, but I got that message upon my return from that trip, carrying the Boar’s head and a few goodies from Craig and Carol’s in Georgetown SC.  I told John Sutter about the possibility of doing the Goa trip in January, and then dropping down to South Africa (and meeting Christian Elwell’s friend Ian there) and continuing on to work with George in Malawi.  We could then continue on across the Southern Hemisphere and try to work in Mindanao, both in Tboli and in other places along the Malaybalay and other points we had discussed the last time in March, along with a trek up Mount Apo, and along the mountains here where the Tboli and the Tasaday live.  I just got a very welcome letter from Don and Vivien Van Wynen giving me the additional story of the T’nalak cloth I had got and expecting my return to do the mountain treks after or before the operating days in each venue.

            My student John Sutter is applying to do it ALL, with me—including the first as a month of primary care and the second as a month of surgery elective.  We will see if all of this can be fitted into a single lifetime let alone the next six months.

But here I am coming up now upon Denver, through a lot of bumpy air from the fringes of some large rainstorms in the area, that has me alternating the use of the photo albums I have been labeling from the last trip into Dharamsala—which I just may have with me now to show to Michael and Judy after I show it in Denver, if it turns out I will be going out that way after my Colorado run.

I am counting on this technology to support and extend my reach, since I am now going to be marrying this computer and its CD reader to download the maps and data for each of the world’s regions on CD down into the hand-held Garmin GPS III Plus with 500 waypoints.  Next, I have discovered a device I already have and did not yet know it.  I had been running with Dan, whose last day at GW is today. While I listen to the balky Books on Tape, which occasionally snarl the tapes or get stuck or are never easy to repair on the run, he has been listening to a much smaller and more reliable MP3 disc device, in which he downloads a “Meg a minute” from Napster or some other website and chooses what music he will listen to.  I had been at the George Award Ceremony in September and was given a device made by Samsung electronics that turns out to be an MP3 disc player with capacity for an extra memory chip.  Now, what does that mean?  I can download from a disc into the MP3 and listen to audiobooks on disc as I run, obviating all the snarls and hassles of the tapes, which are unreliable.  I may get to do a longer term and more reliable system---from a device I already have!

DENVER ARRIVAL,
MET BY SUE, THEN HOSTED BY THE HARKENS FOR DINNER
AT THE GREEN TOMATO

            Sue met the flight; somehow my bag did NOT make it on a single limb of a simple flight without connections.  It was taxied over late to the 1200 Holly Street house that Sue has renovated, making a Renaissance in it, a lot of it done by herself.  We talked about her plans and Reg’s—which will come to a decision point this weekend, based in several turning points: Reg is leaving Sunday with Steve Petersen to try to climb Denali (for which reason he will miss the Steamboat and Big Horn Runs); Sue would like to be pregnant either right now, or by December; they are going to be moving to Vail by July first, and will be subletting their house with Reg doing a reverse commute to work two days at Denver Health.

            At least some of the new accommodation search has to do with a new Huskie that Sue got to keep her mixed breed dog company, and these two big dogs could not stay in the basement apartment that the Vail position had offered.  So, Sue will be going up as the designated driver with Gene on the late post-resident banquet at the Brown Palace that I had declined for this year, and then going back up to try to secure something for them to live in during the next year. 

            The other good news for the later year is that Sue and her mother, a retired nurse, may be interested in going to the Spiti Valley camp on the trek I am leading to work out in the Himachal area in September.  That would be a pair of great additions, and I would be delighted to have them with us.

            We met Alden and Laurie, each coming in separate vehicles, and Reg coming in driving still another.  Since he will need his to run errands to get the final packing done before his departure, I was prepared to rent a car, but Laurie and Alden would hear none of it, insisting we take one of theirs. Which one was a surprise.

            We compared notes on the arrival of the proudest achievement of the past few months—the arrival of Charles Alden Harken—so that we could swap pictures of Grandsons.

 This is a happy and a good time, despite a background of other this not so pleasant.  Gene had called, and had apologized for not getting back to me after multiple messages, for reasons that there were lots of clinical disasters and tight schedules to be worried about, as well as a big family catastrophe.  Hunter’s best friend, Zack, whom I had met and who had gone up to do some mountain biking on the first time we had gone to Steamboat when I had driven up with their second son Peter, had ridden out on a motorcycle in front of his Dad, following on another cycle, both wearing helmets.  But the boy slid out and hit his head on a car bumper, and helmet notwithstanding, was killed. 

This weekend I have come up is always the Prom weekend, and flowers have to be bought and tuxes rented, and this being senior graduation for Hunter, this is not going to be an easy time. The Harkens themselves are also under a strain after recent bad faith on the part of the Dean, for whom Laurie works, yet he has been the point person for a movement that seems to have taken on a life of its own. Tabby has one year to go in the University of Colorado Medical School, and then questions might arise about what is next, and where, for not just Tabby.  “Like having cancer,” said Laurie, “the only good thing might be that it keeps you living day to day, and appreciating it.”

 Yet, despite all the other worries (the Spanish word I always like since it is translated “preoccupation”), the three teams of Franciose, Harken, and Moore could not have seemed less preoccupied with anything other than making sure we had a very good time and enjoyed their hospitality to the maximum.

These are no ordinary people we are dealing with here!

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