MAY-B-3
FLYING TRIP THROUGH COLUMBUS TO MICHIGAN
FAMILY VISIT COMBINED WITH THE
RUNNING OF THE GRAND RIVER BANK RUN
MAY 10—13, 2001
I had mailed a package to Andrew, which arrived on his birthday, and got to call him—although he was not in a telephone mood, so I talked with his father instead. Things seem stable for the moment in Florida, as they do as well in San Antonio, where I called to find Judy at home in the pool.
I had packed up all the photo albums from the December VI family reunion on, that included large volumes of I-- January (Florida and Kacie Elizabeth, and Cumberland, and my birthday celebrations in DC area), II--February (Antarctica), III-- March Mindanao, Philippines, and IV --April Boston marathon and Dharamsala. The Vth volume and the next four for this year have already been set up with a view toward the big events scheduled for later this year, and May will have its events including this trip home to Michigan to visit family to celebrate A) Drew’s 12th Birthday at Cooper Creek, B) The 24th Running of the River Bank Run, C) Mother’s Day with my three sisters—the summer time equivalent of the Christmas Party we had when I was last home in deep snow drifts in December.
I started out in Columbus Ohio. I had through checked the heavy suitcase with the running gear and photo albums, and had hand carried a few cases that a defense team was supposed to be going over with me. It turned out that each of those was either settled or dismissed, and a series of new cases was presented for opinion. Kevin Brennan and I then went to a Seafood Restaurant for a good lunch. I flew east, oddly enough, to go west, from US Air’s Pittsburgh hub, to arrive in the long summer evening light of Michigan to be met by Don and Martheen, who were the first to go over the photo albums, just after I had completed the Antarctica album’s labeling of Volume II of 2001 on the plane. It takes almost a week of concerted effort just to label these albums, and if I do not keep them up to date, the next series would swamp the previous ones, so, as noted in the last message in May-B-2, at least the photo albums are up to date if nothing else I should be working on is.
I said that Michigan May has long light summer evenings—but that does not mean that it is warm. There were frost warnings for the avid gardeners, and a lot of the news was focused on what the weather would be like for the running of the River Bank Run—the “signature event” for any Grand Rapids sporting events. I was planning on running with a singlet, despite the predicted start which would be 39*, warming under a clear sky sunny day to 55* at the end, if the stiff breeze was not included in the calculation.
Sherri was scheduled to go to the real estate office where she and Tom are both licensed realtors. Tom and Sherri had been scouting around and buying very decrepit old houses, renovating them themselves, and renting them out, with a goal toward having six of these income properties for each of the kids, as their education trust—by the time he is forty, which is five years away—as he is the same age as Donald. He is well on his way, and we looked over the two small old (one a 100 year old wreck without power or plumbing or walls or ceilings which he had bid on a long time ago, until the bank had finally called to say it was his.) Tom thinks it is on an ”L-shaped lot” which can be used to renovate the house for rental with a lot of work, and then a second house built on the property. They have been spending weekends at “Cooper Creek” the second property they had bought with a doublewide house on it, a hot tub, and barns and horse paddocks. They had recently purchased a four-horse trailer, and with it an Amish handmade dog cart for a pony to pull.
Martheen baby-sat for the morning and I went along, as I sat labeling albums, and being entertained by Martina, and Mark and Michael, the first and the last only eight days apart, and all three in the same year. The kids appear to be doing well. I saw Drew come home from school after Mark had come home from Jump-Start. I saw the back acres where Tom had just got a big tom turkey, that had walked by Drew. Drew will be twelve on Sunday, and had completed all the hunter safety courses, but could not pull the trigger at the time—a reasonable situation. But his grandfather had got from HIS grandfather a shotgun upon reaching the age of twelve—a status I would like to try with Andrew, and there is a surprise coming to Drew.
It continued cool and rainy, and everything is very green throughout Michigan. There also seems to be a supercharge on gasoline, which is scraping at the underside of two dollars a gallon. The whole family is going to celebrate the last of the vacations they once had taken with their camper, that will precede Cheryl’s wedding on July 21 at LaGrave Avenue church. To celebrate Don and Martheen’s wedding anniversary (in the Calvin Church in which I was a participant only 45 years ago—and now I see enormous cranes and expansion going on over the structure of what was then a new church next to a college that has moved away a quarter century or more ago!), all of the kids and Tom’s family—meaning six grandkids are getting packed up to go down to Florida to a condo that is rented for them to be at a pool and the ocean. This may be the first time that the whole Tom family has been out of Michigan, since it is a lot of work to mobilize six kids, with various stages of preparedness, and they have a lot of livestock—which three year-old Martina was happy to show me. She carried in tow new kittens, and showed me the two Pomeranians, Gunner and Peaky, the latter about to deliver pups just at the time the dogs are put into the vets for their Florida trip.
I had always hoped that this gang could get down to DC for the mandatory teenage or late latency tour of the Capital, when I could entertain them in the Derwood woods. But, I can see it is a handful, and I can see where they have to stay close to the phone for real estate, as well as the animal husbandry projects of six horses, three dogs, miscellaneous cats, rabbits, and one deceased guinea pig. All this is spread over two locations now, as they shuttle back and forth from their house in Belding to Cooper Creek, about ten miles away. TOMG is at 43* 06. 08 N, and 85* 16.02 W, which is 19.8 miles from MART on bearing 248*. I later marked COOP at 43* 13.31 N, and 85* 19.12 W, which is 9.91 miles from TOMG on bearing 167*
On return to Martheen’s house, Don and I went down to the Runner’s Expo in the Amway Grand Center to pick up my running packet and bib and tee shirt. There I met Mary, who was race director of the International marathon that runs under and over the Detroit River into Windsor, and who was on the Antarctic marathon Orlova. Don and I got ice cream cones and freebies such a as Frisbee I wanted to give to Drew, and then came home for a quiet evening after a big spaghetti (Pasta loading) dinner.
Milly came over at 6:45 AM, and I had got into the running gear with warm-up suit—which was needed, at the biting cold wind. We parked with her GVSU sticker in the new Richard DeVos Center of the Grand Rapids campus of the GVSU. Almost everything is named after the donors Richard DeVos and Van Andel in the renovated downtown—and these two Amway entrepreneurs have made a large urban renewal difference in downtown DC. Also, there is an East Campus of Calvin going up across the East Beltline for a new Communications School financed by a ten million dollar combined gift of Prinz (who recently died of a heart attack in an elevator) and Richard DeVos—his first major gift to Calvin after being rather generous to GVSU. We walked across the Grand River near the salmon fish ladders, to enter the Grand Center.
We were inside to stay warm amid a crowd of what was advertised as 9,000 runners, with a few elite Kenyans and invited seeded runners. About half of these run the largest 25K in the US, and which is the USATF championship for this distance; the other half are 5K runners or walkers, mostly for a charitable cause. I peeled off the outer layers of warm-ups and went down toward the starting line to be seeded into the eight minute pace. Martheen had once seen me off on the start of the 24th Marine Corps marathon, and Milly and Doug had seen me through the entire 25K of the only previous time I had run this race, two years ago in a downpour. Otherwise, I have never had anyone from the family see or cheer on a race I have run. This time there would be both Milly and Martheen and Don and Betty Geelhoed, whose son Tom, was also running—whom I met for the first time on this run in the rain two years ago, when he took my picture—unaware that I was the long lost mysterious cousin he had never met.
I was packed into the warm bodies as we shivered in shorts and singlet when the gun went off. I moved out rather well since I was in the eight minute pace group, but passed a lot of people near the start who were obviously lined up above their abilities. I cut through the one-mile mark at eight ten. Considering that there was about a thirty-second delay for me to get across the mat to start my chip time, I was on a seven thirty pace which I held for the first five miles. When I had got out to the point where the course climbs up and over the bridge to cross the river, I heard my name called from the first thick group of cheering spectators, and saw Don And Betty Geelhoed, and reflexly pulled up the pocket camera I was running with and took their picture. I pulled out over the bridge and into the 10 K distance without seeing the time, hearing a few shouts for Calvin—I was the only one wearing such a singlet this year. I predicted that I would still be sub-eight, since I crossed the half way mark in under an hour, and when I came up upon the ten mile point, it had not yet turned over to 80:00:00
A young woman was running with me, and I asked her if she had done this before; she had done one previous race in her life, and that was this one, ten years ago, and now she was trying to do her second, three babies later. She had trained religiously for this race—and here I had just rather walked on to it, with the thought that this is the shortest run of any of my coming races by half and a quarter coming up. She was awed by the number of marathons I had done, and I told her if she was going this fast this far, she should do the International run at Detroit to do her first marathon. When I asked her where she was from she pointed four houses down from the closed gypsum mills. Everyone around me seemed to be local.
Apparently, there is some recent controversy about expanding the Zoo component of john Ball park, which I was last in on the days of my youth when we could sit on the bronze statue of whoever john Ball was and rub the bronze to a shiny glow. The abandoned property along the west side of the Grand River extends all the way from Johnson park below the Gypsum and Gravel pits to John Ball park and there is a proposal to connect it all in one large “Millennium Park”. It seems that name is a bit dated if the idea has not already taken form, but it is still controversial about whether to expand the zoo along the river to connect the parks. It might be great for the running venue, but that is probably the controversy, which might mean that it has a better use in generating tax-producing commercial real estate.
I came upon what passes for hills here, just before entry into John Ball Park. These are not hills for someone who will be running a month exactly from the day in the Big Horn Ultra at 10,400 feet, so I did pass a few folk there. I keep thinking of this distance as a half marathon, so that I know I am always at about 1:50 or less in a half marathon, so I looked forward to breaking two hours in this event. I was discouraged when I could see the finish line area, then found the course turned away from it to make up another mile or more in a zig zagging through West Side neighborhoods. I had strategized for two hours and kicked it up to come in under that time right at the fifteen mile clock—but then there is an annoying half mile more—and that cost me four minutes. There were now a lot of people walking around me, far more than one would see in a marathon at this point. I came up over the river on the bridge and looked for the green and white restaurant awning where I thought my sisters would be. I never saw it. I knew there was a turn to the Campau Square finish, so reeled in the runners around me, and passed each as I kicked around the turn. I heard my name called and saw Don Geelhoed again and snapped his picture. Ahead I could see at the edge of the sunshine in the shadow of a big reflecting glass building my two sisters, but they were somewhat obscured by a race official in front of them, so I waited until I had almost past them on my final kick to shoot their picture.
I floated in on the foreword momentum, and heard the mat beep as my chip activated it, and saw the clock registered 2:04 as I heard the announcer give out my name, but not my address. I went through the line and got my medal and the Popsicle, but the cold black cherry ice was too cold to be eaten in the shadow of the building as the wind came through. I moved over to the Calder plaza, and as I did so my left pyriformis tightened up and I had to stretch it out. As I was there, a young lady wearing reflecting shades came up to me and said “Glenn?” I asked, “Who might this be behind the shades?” She said, “I’m Kim Hofstra.”
I took her picture, since she is Wendell and Ginger Primus’s daughter, and I will pass it along to them. She had got good press last year, since she had not started running until after her triplets were born, and that was her first run when they were just a year old. I told her about Michael and Judy expecting twins. Her husband came along to kiss her and congratulate her as we both emerged from the chutes, and I took a picture of him wheeling the triple seater stroller. When Milly and Martheen came over, Martheen shook Kim’s hand and identified herself as Cheryl’s mother since Kim and Cheryl were roommates at Calvin.
Don and Betty and later Tom Geelhoed had come over, and Betty’s sister from Tokyo who is visiting for a month, although she uses no English. We posed for pictures as we had two years ago, and I told Don about the forthcoming twins also, since he has been the new acting Geelhoed genealogist. I carried a couple of the black cherry ices, and was cold enough that I did not want more than one of them, so we walked back across the Calder Plaza before the awards ceremony, so as not to have the ice melt into my new Boston marathon long sleeve tee shirt which I was planning to wear to warm up. A new world record was set by a Van Dyk from South Africa in the wheel chair division—who had been in Atlanta on Friday night, thinking the race was Sunday as almost all of them are---but this race is a Grand Rapids signature race—and it probably could not be run past all the churches that dot the landscape. So, he an a colleague scrambled to get a standby and he collected an extra five thousand dollars for the record having been alerted by one of his competitors who called him to come up. The Kenyans took the first three places and the Russian repeater took the first place in the women’s—all of them familiar to me from Boston.
I had heard about, but not seen the second place that Tom and Sherri had been fixing up at Cooper Creek. Now we went in a full van with Doug and Millie and their Grandson Tony, a few months younger than Andrew William, and Don and Martheen and I. When we arrived, there were the Seifs—Sherri’s father and her grandparents and Sherri’s sister Valerie. Tom and Sherri have done a remarkable job with not only the six kids, but also in fixing up this rustic vacation kind of place with ten acres for the horses and trails in the woods where deer and turkeys can come and feed. It is a double wide decorated with traps and pelts that Tom had bought, as well as a turkey fan he has from last year’s gobbler.
Another remarkable thing is how responsible the two oldest good kids—Drew and Aubrey—are in looking after the other four. They may need the Florida holiday as much as the parents and grandparents! Drew had a cake showing a woodsy scene with fish in the stream and a few big bucks standing around. He got presents of some clothes, and then a gun case with a ribbon around it presented by Grandpa Seif—in which was a 20 gauge pump shotgun engraved to Drew from his grandpa on his twelfth birthday (as he himself had received on the same birthday from his grandfather) with both a shotgun barrel and a slug barrel for deer hunting. I would hope to be along when each are used by Drew, and would be happy if I could work out the same arrangement with Andrew William who has already been talking about going hunting with this Grandpaw—and the last time I was in Florida, he said he had bagged with his thirty thirty lever action “one T. Rex and a reindeer”.
We followed the kids around the trails into the woods, which can have them riding horses out to the adjoining County Park with horse trails in it. I then threw a Frisbee around with Drew and Aubrey until it was time for us to get back to Grand Rapids, as the younger Griffioens settled in for their Mother’s Day weekend in the Cooper Creek woods. They have the kind of rustic spot I would need to hang up the heads and use a s my “camp base.” Maybe Tom and Sherri can look for a lake for me as well in the woods in Michigan or advise me on the remodeling of Derwood.
I may have no nearby Mother to celebrate with, but there are many memories of her here in Grand Rapids, although all her sisters are now gone as well, and only her two very old brothers are left. I joined Don and Martheen in their Sherman Street Church, and saw George and Ellen Monsma, as well as Tom Geelhoed. He said he looked for my name on the Web and in the Grand Rapids Press, and could not find the results in either. When I looked, I could not find my finish either, so I wrote a note to the Classic Race management to see what went wrong with their chip timing system.
A woman named “Turner?’ came to me, who identified herself as the sister of Don Gabrielson’s mother. This was a classmate, locker mate, pre-med Calvin freshman with me who died of Hodgkin’s disease between freshman and sophomore year. I went to Cadillac where he was from, on a choir tour, and donated the Alumni scholarship I had received as a memorial to him in his local Cadillac church. She had remembered that. I showed her pictures of the next Donald William, and his two children, and she said she would pass that word to Don Gabrielson’s mother, her sister, now widowed from her former husband Don also.
We all gathered at Shirl’s house—only the adults form our generation—my three sisters and I—and those who have spouses with them—for Mother’s Day dinner on the porch. Gardening was the chief topic, in distinct contrast to my last visit here, when the depth of the drifts we had been sledding in took the top rank in the conversations. There were pictures enough of each event to be shown around, and the souvenirs of my recent Philippine trip to be passed around. The ten meter hand loomed runner may find its way to the LaGrave Avenue church as the runway for the “Here Comes the Bride” July 21 wedding of Cheryl and Trent, for which I will be in Ladakh, India. After some initial ambivalence, it seems that the whole large event with over 350 reception guests at the adjacent Greek orthodox hall to the LaGrave Avenue CRC in which Don and a minister relative of Trent’s will be participating is now in the full planning stage—down to and including the bridesmaids’ dresses and accoutrements. So, maybe a whole village of the Tasaday may have contributed to the big event in mid-summer through my mother’s Day gift.
I went to Sherman Street’s very casual evening service, but had to duck out with Don and Martheen to just make it to the GRR airport to check the heavy bag and fly through Pittsburgh. The late flight from Pittsburgh to DCA may be the last one in, as I hauled the suitcase out of luggage claim and ran to the Metro being told that the last train had already gone. I got a Super Shuttle downtown and got dropped at the GW office where my car is parked securely in the Medical School parking lot. How secure? Well, let me tell you!
I went to the office and picked up the mail, the voicemail and the email, and by the time I had completed all that, it was 1:45 AM. I went down to the Bronco and got revved up to drive up to the exit gate. Nothing happened. I got out and punched the emergency release button on the exit doors. Nothing. There is a sign there that says the parking lot will be closed until Monday morning at 6:00 AM May 14, 2001, due to a problem with the gate. I am securely locked into my parking lot.
What to do? Metro is already out for the night. I cannot get the car out anyway, so I went back up to the office and finished the Philippine Album III labeling. What next? I cannot even lie down in my office since it is so crammed with boxes. So, I shuffled a few of them around to make enough space to lie down for a couple of sleepless hours of urban indoor camping—probably the kind of comfortable stay I might have in one of Tom’s more newly purchased pre-rehab properties. I made the usual lunch time oatmeal this time for breakfast at around seven, and have gone about my business for the day, as though it is a fresh new week---which, of course, it is!
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