THE FINAL COUNTDOWN TO LADAKH AND LINGSHED
A WEEKEND LONG RUN PtP PUNCTUATED BY A PUSH
TO PRODUCE ONE OF SEVERAL PAST DUE CHAPTERS
JULY 14-17, 2001
I have pulled my big duffel bags out of the attic, and also unpacked those I had just ordered from catalogs and stuffed them with the extra medicines and supplies we will be carrying to Ladakh, with some excess for the August extension for a week into Lingshed. I realized that I could carry my heavier down and feathers sleeping bag and also have room for a few things that I might leave in the bags for my later trip to Spiti Valley, Himachal and Lukla Nepal in September. At the same time I piled up the things I would need for the trip to Kamchatka for the hunt in August. For that, I would need another duffel bag for the hunt, and since I plan to leave this one for safekeeping in Simla to pick up for the Spiti trip, I ordered two new roomy duffel bags from the Sportsman's Guide catalog for the hunts-both Kamchatka and Colorado elk hunting. I had an additional big box delivered by UPS which is more medicines beyond the four boxes already stacked up, so I will have a total of eight boxes and bags to check in under two of us, whereas the notes sent forward are regarding the other four people who should be meeting me in Dulles airport so that I can check excess baggage under their names with them. Since I do not know them and they have not as yet met me, this system never works, since there is no way they volunteer to come forward and try to manhandle another batch of impediments, and an extra baggage allowance is usually greeted with an "Oh boy, now I can take my hair dryer and other accoutrements!" and I wind up still trying to struggle through alone with the excess. Fortunately, I had layered the names and details of the helpful Lufthansa Dulles station manager in advance, so I may be able to do it without the help of the others-since that is what I will have to count on.
DERWOOD DILEMMAS: COMPETING CLAIMS AND PLANS:
MY REMODELING TO LIVE HERE,
AND THEIR GRANDIOSE DESTRUCTIVE DEVELOPMENT AMBITIONS
I had a couple of other plans for this weekend and the days preceding the takeoff. One was the major PtP run with Joe, and the other was plans with Derwood's remodeling. Right in the middle of this, as I was trying to start work on one of the past due tropical surgery chapters on the precious Saturday when I was alone at home, there was a knock on the door, and once again, Dave VanderHart is standing there eager to negotiate, when he knows full well that he is not to be talking to me while he is suing me. He feels he can perhaps cut a better deal without the uncertainty of his suit, but does not want to give up that option, so, as always, he is manipulating to get the better advantage. He would like a settlement that exceeds the cost of the remodeling plans I have made, which would push the total amount of cash to astronomic levels, and the he would still like to maintain an interest in future appreciation of Derwood even after he is cashed out in settlement. So, in place of totally dominating Derwood to their interest when they lived here, they would like to continue controlling it after they are out-a rather continuous profiteering off my original investment.
I met with Dale, the nice fellow from D. G. Liu Contractors and we went over again the plans for the highest priority items: one is an extension in a two story addition for a game room/conservatory with windows opening out into the woods; second is an extension of the downstairs room to be an expanded library/study; third is a totally remodeled kitchen and extension into a breakfast nook/solarium. What started out as a deck and hot tub appears now to be moved down (and off?) the priority list, with the biggest ticket items being the new kitchen. The original discussion of a deck out the back and an extended room off the south side, has now become no breaking thought he south wall at all, but a two story cathedral ceiling and vaulted window/ beamed ceiling back of the house extension opening the original roughed in doors from an expansion through the living room, and a breaking u p of the interior nooks and cul de sacs to open the dining area from the living room punching through to the expanded library/study. The closed space beneath the new room with shed ceiling or cathedral ceiling may now be the car port that was originally proposed for the under side of the former deck, and may also include a closed space that could later be a finished half of the basement. The new kitchen is the heaviest part of the construction and all new appliances, and would include a nook off the north west wall as a breakfast area, and adjacent to that may be a smaller deck, perhaps as a later add-on afterthought. The initial cost estimates of this amount of remodeling exceeds by over tow fold the original purchase price of the entire property, which the VanderHarts would consider not even a starting point for their quit claim with the first option to keep their interest alive in the future for the "developable parts" of the Derwood estate. So, having the cake and eating it too seems to be every one else's' desideratum except for me, and in my instance, the combined two chunks equal the amount by which my pension fund shrank last year alone.
Apparently Vander Harts sold their free and clear Deer Park property and instead of rejoicing in its appreciation, are very annoyed that it cost them a lot in capital gains tax. The only smart thing to have done, David says, would be to move back into it and live there two years, then sell it and move to something like what they have now, so that they had avoided capital gains taxes over which they are very bitter, saying this cost them over $40,000-as though any action on my part caused their precipitous move on Mary's impulse. The only way he would be comfortable and think that he had not been screwed in any transaction at Derwood is to sell it to developers for the highest possible price, and then he would take half of all the profit off my original capital investment, thank you very much. He said he would otherwise for "renting out his half of the house"-right! He professes an undying love for the Derwood property and an appreciation that I have no intent of developing it, but insists that the only fair thing for him is to sell it and I should move while he calls in the bulldozers to clear cut it and push over the house. If I insist on staying in "their property" he wants half of the highest developers price that can be extracted, and anything even a little bit short of that he wants to encumber with some contract that says in the future, he would get the developable piece of the property -obsessed as he has always been with the subdivision and developing of further houses in the woods that his own engineer called "further rape and pillage."
So, now comes the dilemma-rampant profiteering on one side as a claim against my biggest asset; remodeling costs at least the equivalent of their settlement claim, and a stock market that has devalued the pension fund from which I was to live when I no longer was working and drawing a GW fixed salary-which now seems to be pushed still further into the future. So, it is rather close to call the point at which I cannot afford to live in my own house-at least after buying out a quit claim and a remodeling into something that might fit my own needs for a functional living space, after having been pushed into a room of my own house for decades while doing most of my living on the road and abroad. The morning I return from this trip Dale will meet me at 7:00 AM with the proposal and plans for which I have given him a $1500 deposit.
TROPICAL SURGERY CHAPTER-
AGAISNT ALL ODDS
I had carried home a large number of references and Xeroxed bibliography to attempt to complete one of the two chapters in the book "Tropical Surgery" which I am editing for Current Problems n Surgery series. I had hoped to be able to do at least one of these before disappearing for the rest of the summer, and since I had Eric Sarin allegedly working on the second chapter, I had hoped to be able to do one of these, and send the completed first chapter to him as an incentive toward getting work on the second in which I had offered him co-authorship. He is a resident in Surgery at University of Colorado, through my directed recommendation after our original medical mission to Himachal in 1998, and this would be a big break for hi to enter the published literature on an invited chapter, but he is probably also quite busy clinically and also has the inertia that we all have, but especially any who have not previously written as much as I have already.
So, I had planned to devote a good part of this weekend to this project, and had foregone the Saturday morning run, knowing I would be "going long" with Joe the following day. So, I had pulled out all the materials and had plugged in my new Dell laptop, which had been acting erratically until Thursday when an Ethiopian repairman from Dell came to the office and replaced the motherboard for the problem that began when I was in the St. Louis airport between visits to San Antonio and the running of the Big Horn Ultra. So, it should now have been cured of this bizarre behavior of whole rows of keys not functioning and the abrupt cutoffs-right!
It was just as I was starting that I got the knocking on the door and my day was bent to the obsessions of another's agenda as Dave Vander hart came to my door to obsess about his negotiating deals which he is still suing me and has no legitimate authorization to talk to me at all. So, this blew away the morning.
I went down to pick up the mail and started off to the Giant to get a limited number of groceries as I was working on clearing out the refrigerator and dumping the trash to clear the checks for the coming trip. There was a surprise check in the mail since the long delayed sale of the Professional Building Associates was finally completed and I got a check for the proceeds which included the "Bridge Loan" and the Second Trust Loan and the other times they had come back desperately since the original limited partnership investment as a tax shelter-back in the days when such existed over two decades ago. So, having just signed over a very large check from Legg Mason to the Irrevocable Trust through the Crummie letters that would go to both sons in support of the grandchildren-now including the just-born twins, I had a margin account borrowing to finance that very large withdrawal, and this sale might cover half of that. I dropped the check into the post office for deposit before I leave for a month, and forwarded the proceeds to Keith Carr to offset some of the trust funds for the grandchildren, so that I am not mortgaged now for their future-which is considerably more secure than mine!
I ran around Lake Needwood only once, in order to get back in time to re-start the writing process. I ate my ham bake dinner, as I listened to part of Garrison Keillor's PHC re-run, and abruptly got up even before the "News From lake Wobegone" to get a determined start on the Tropical Surgery chapter. I sat down at the laptop and did not get up until I ha completed the text of the chapter in semi-final form, leaving only the illustrations as figures and tables penciled in along with a hand written list of bibliographic references to fill in after the run with Joe in the morning. I would then be able to finalize the first chapter and send it down the wire complete, with the required follow-up of the disc, figures and hard-copy text to be mailed later I hope it worked just that way. I finished just before midnight, and fighting off any drowsiness after the Sunday morning long PtP run, I did the mechanical editing of the bibliographic references and legends down to the last details, and scrambled to GW to print a couple of copies and email it to the publisher as well as send to Eric Sarin as a tickler to get the second coauthored half-chapter in draft form to me. I wanted to get all of this out of the way before I went to DCA to start up a very different phase of my summer which would change dramatically to a focus on the medical mission to Ladakh and its extension for Lingshed, if I could clear the decks of at least a few of these leftover items that had been delayed or procrastinated to this last moment point before my departure.
THE PtP LONG RUN OF THE CCT WITH JOE;
RUN LONG AND WELL
This was the second PtP in Joe's career and he had been looking forward to it since our first one two weeks ago on the morning of the fourth of July. I had told him that the next one would be the Capital Crescent Trail, which I had only run once before as a Point to Point, but had run a part of it as the Marathon In the Parks, and had run the bottom parts of it from GW in summers before much of the trail had been completed. Only a few weeks before at Janet Newburgh's Breakfast Run on July 1, Joe and I had run in a "Hot Humid and Hilly" course and come back drenched after 13 miles. This time we had planned a run from Grosvernor to the Post Office pavilion, a scratch over 18 miles, and we would try to do this at nearly eight minute mile pace without slowing down at the end, as most anyone would do. We did it well, and celebrated at the Post Office Pavilion with cold drinks and an apple strudel
THE PUSH TO FINISH THE CHAPTER AND A RE-FOCUS
ON THE NEW PHASE OF SUMMER-THE GETAWAY FOR LADAKH
I got to the Post Office Pavilion and changed into the dry tee shirts I had carried in my fanny pack; it had been on my waist during the first half and the waist cinch snapped at the belt buckle, so we had had to alternate carrying it along the course. I got back to Bethesda by Metro and dropped Joe at his house even before the family was up and around. I got back home and worked non-stop on the bibliography and legends to finalize the chapter and then sent it down the wire to the publisher until I can get the figures copied to send forward with the hard copy. I had just completed this task at GW when I headed to national Airport to start the next phase that will continue through the next several weeks. I had a chance to consolidate the packing and the loading of the Bronco with the medical packs and also had stopped at Galyan's for some final purchases and the chance to eat at Joe's Crab Shack at the Gaithersburg Lake around Rio's. WE then went to see 5010 Aurora Drive and on to the Stables which is the turnaround of the runs Joe and I occasionally make down the Rock Creek Trail. When I saw the Woodend mansion which now belongs to the National Audubon Society, in the woods adjacent to which I run with Joe at dawn, I went there to see what I could learn about the guided bird walks on weekends that Joe might be able to take with friends and his kids. While there I had tried to fix the long delay in the phone service which seemed to take forever to ring. They said it was just because of hi volume. We had promised to stop by Joe's house to see Maria his daughter who was sick, and Joe was worried about running under this circumstance. We packed up final and returned to Derwood for the final cleanout and meeting with the remodeler, stopping once in Reston enroute to Dulles to visit a family friend who had just moved to a nursing home there and was very disgruntled about not being able to communicate with the very far gone residents. All 8 bags and baggage got off loaded and I scrambled to get the Bronco back to GW and make the shuttle bus connection back to Dulles-and not a moment too soon. Somehow, however much is left undone, I am now off to Ladakh!