JUL-A-2
SUMMER TIME AND THE LIVING IS RATHER HOT;
BUT SOME LIKE IT HOT
I ASSEMBLE A COMPLETE HUNTING INVENTORY
WITH TOYS AND TOOLS
July 1, 2001
It has been a quiet stay-at-home week in the Derwood deer woods, with a home town show of early morning athletic effort and patriotic fervor—“High as a Kite on the 4th of July.”
“ON THE RUN”
I went out for a mid-day run at Lake Needwood on Saturday—in what might be the hottest part of one of the warmer years on record. I ran along the bike trail alone listening to a patriotic book on tape-- Safire’s “Scandalmonger,” the story of the early founding fathers’ quibbles and quarrels and peccadilloes, that led to duels according to the code of honor in the “code duello” between Hamilton and Burr. The Post “style section” calls them the “greatest generation” of such as Adams, Washington, Hamilton, Monroe, Madison, Burr etc, and I have been refreshed in the foreign policy disputes of French and British vs. US “X Y Z Affair” and “Millions for Defense and Not One Cent for Tribute” and a lot of other information that was taught in grade school when it was lest understood.
AND THE VICE PRESIDENT’S IMPLANTED DEFIBRILLATOR
I also carried my Nonin Pulse Oximeter, and wore it on the hot and sticky run. It showed consistently what I had thought to be fluke when I did the previous run with it: my O2 saturation remained 96% at this constant 450 feet above sea level elevation, throughout my run, and even when I held my breath for the length of time needed to drink large quantities of water. But, what was fascinating to watch is that my pulse at rest is around 48; anticipating running can kick it up to over 100; starting out, it goes up to about 120, but then within about ten minutes of the steady pacing it comes down toward the high 80’s as I methodically run eight minute miles. But, then, when I stop—as for example, at the water stops—the pulse shoots up to 132, and comes down toward 90 over the next 90 seconds if I remain stationary, but that it comes down sooner if I return to the run at about the eight minute pace.
It seems my stroke volume and cardiac output are very adequate for my aerobic requirements (possibly a definition of “training”) on the run, but that the stroke volume decreases and the pulse races when the metabolic demand is down when I have stopped. Perhaps the lactate buildup during the run is flushed back toward the heart to cause the epinephrine response to be maximized by lowered Ph in the period of standing after the running intervals, but I will have to check this out when I climb and run at very different altitudes, temperatures and levels of exertion. All this is transpiring at the same time that Dick Cheney is back in GWUMC getting a demand pacemaker and automatic internal defibrillator implanted to control his abnormal electrophysiology picked up on an weekend wearing of a Holter monitor to prevent sudden death from an electrical conductivity accident now monitored and automatically treated by this device, called an “insurance policy”” by carrying your own internalized cardiologist who never fatigues, and can be set to record, screen and treat malignant arrhythmias.
OF THE NEAR-MIRACULOUS KIND:
MY FORTHCOMING UPGRADED GARMIN GPS III FOR CD LOADABLE INFORMATION TRANSFERRABLE FROM MY LAPTOP
On the revolutionary front, I had a visit with Jim, my mailman, and showed him my new trophies which I have just displayed, (as I am centralizing my hunting equipment and memorabilia of the hunts past—see below.) He went out to his truck and came in with a neat digital camera that is loaded with a floppy disc and a memory chip to extend its capacity, and took pictures with it for showing his buddies in his pick-up mountain band to whom he has been telling stories about me and the friend he has who “goes all over the known and unknown world on missions and hunts and adventures.” I thought he was going to forward them to me on email, but he came back in a few minutes, having downloaded the image on throwaway sample AOL discs, so I can show you what the latest taxidermy looks like by attaching it to this message.
When I called Joe Brewer, the taxidermist at Fort Bragg who had done my Cumberland hog (q. v..—which see above) he told me that the Garmin III programmable GPS I had ordered through his PX was in and the CD’s were burned to be sent with it this week in time for me to carry it to Ladakh and Kamchatka, Siberia---both “out of the way” treks, of this month and next, for which I can now download data into the handheld device from the CD player in my laptop for precision information of the GIS variety as I continue “adventure trekking to the ends of the earth.”
AND LOADING A NUMBER OF MEMORIES
ALONG WITH HUNTING MEMORABILIA
When Craig and Carol came up from South Carolina, they had driven their new pickup truck with the gun safe in the back along with a hand truck and the tools that I could not pack into the Bronco on my trip from there on Memorial Day. Craig and I brought the gun safe in to the basement around the place where a number of the larger trophies are still located since there is no wall big enough to store and display them, so this may be the time to catalog the trophies and the equipment in my hunting armamentarium (the first time this term can be used with legitimacy!) I loaded all
of the firearms in the new gun safe, which is so safe it took me another hour to master the combination to get it open again! At the same time I made a complete inventory which I am cataloging here and also took group photographs of the rifles, shotguns, pistols, and blades, moving the latter into the glass-fronted display case from which I had taken the firearms to their newer and safer location. Now, by sending this list to you of what is now a rather complete collection of the implements of the hunt (“the armamentarium”) I have a catalog of equipment that is not locked up in the same place these items of equipment are, if there is any question of loss at a late time.
EACH WITH RECORDED PLAQUE OF DATE, LOCATION
AND DETAILS OF THE TROPHY
Trophies : In residence—the elk bull “The Monarch of Richardson Ridge” from the Mackay Bar Horseback Expedition into the Richardson Ridge in Idaho, the big Tom Turkey from Garrett County, MD, the bull caribou from Northern Quebec territories (North of North expedition with Roland St. Pierre guiding) and the Greater Kudu from Namibia, “Suaro Albertini guiding) are each downstairs, sitting ignobly on the basement floor, awaiting wall space. This small part of the collection of large mounts does not include the massive Byk Maral Siberian stag from the High Altai which is still in process at North American Taxidermy along with the roebuck from Kazakstan and a dozen other trophies such as forest Cape Buffalo, two bushbuck from Congo and a number of South African trophies—nor yet the Kamchatka Big Horn Snow Sheep and big Brown Bear that may be coming from the August hunt in Kamchatka Siberia or the inevitable moose trophy from an Alaskan hunt for mountain goats with Zack and Christian Elwell. For all of this there will need to be a large wall space with cathedral ceilings—which must await a major remodeling or an A-frame game lodge retreat in some wilderness setting.
One piece of this collection that has been missing is a very secure gun safe for the small collection of serious firearms I have for hunting purposes. I have had them stored in a wooden case with a glass front that would have been easy to break into. So, I moved the guns to the new safe and along the way, pulled them out b category and took their pictures so that I would have a record for insurance purposes. I have four categories:
Rifles:
Shotguns:
Pistols:
Shooting Accessories:
Within the collection of the hunting paraphernalia are such items as extra holsters, slings, lens caps, cleaning kits, safety gun locks, graphite lube and gun oil cleaning cloths; there is a whole lot more equipment (the “necessary bag” that goes with the muzzle loader). Not to be judge in any way as “accessory items” are the separate equipment that is a required part of the hunt—in most cases of the hunting experience, they may be more useful than, and are far more frequently used, than the shooting irons.
Bow Hunting:
Primitive Hunting and
Defense Weapons:
Utility Blades of Modern Origin:
AT NEWBURGH’S BREAKFAST RUN WITH JOE
After telling you about just some of the very extensive hot and still not half done sorting of things past to have them in readiness for the future (I also put the collections of hunt photos with the gun safe for the eventual storage with the outdoor “discovery room” and game animal collections), it would sound like I could not get any hotter and stickier on a mid-summer weekend, just before the fourth of July. Not yet: I got up at 4:00 AM on July 1, 2001 when it was already 80*+ and we went to the eight mile course through Potomac that MCRRC President Janet Newburgh had laid out and we took off before 6:30 AM through the luxury neighborhoods where we encountered more deer than cars. It is a series of “rolling hills” making for the worst of all combinations—the “Three H’s”---Hot, Humid and Hilly. Within minutes, Joe and I looked like we would have been less wet if we had fallen into any one of the dozens of ponds we had passed, where I could describe to him, and he could in some cases hear, great blue herons, turtles plopping in, Canada geese cropping grass, and deer bolting away.
We changed out of our dripping wet togs into dry shorts and tee shirts to enjoy the full breakfast, and wandered home after making plans for an even earlier point-to-point run on July 4th morning, with a later picnic and a chance to “watch” the fireworks together.
So, yes, it has been the hot mid-summer doldrums as I put away the first volume of the year’s narrative of events, began the year-end review for the first half of the events at this midway point before the very long range and continuous adventure travels coming one after another next weeks through April of next year (see Jun-C-3) but I have been able to get to a bit of the consolidation and organizing of some of the overdue projects—such as the inventory of the hunt and the securing of some of the equipment just now detailed. And, I will pause in patriotic celebration along with Joe as we once again work up a very copious sweat in our rundown into a series of Inaugural Marathons—as guide runner and impaired athletes in the first ever Baltimore (10/20/01) and first ever DC marathons (3/24/02)
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