THE INTERRUPTED SEQUENCE OF THE "SEPTEMBER ITINERARIES"
CONTINUES
AS I BOARD MY FIRST CLASS EXORBITANT FLIGHT FROM DULLES BACK TO HOUSTON,
PACKING FAR TOO MUCH STUFF FOR THE CLINICAL CONGRESS AND
THE SUBSEQUENT ELK HUNTIN THE COLORADO ROCKIES
Oct. 7, 2001
I am heading off on my continued trip just now, having survived a security screening as rigorous as can be imagined in a redundant search of what I am carrying along with me on this entirely domestic trip, but with two venues and very different purposes in each. If you would like to lead an interesting life and be the center of attention of quite a number of professionals whose job is to blow your cover, try packing up an oversize bag, and check with it an obvious rifle case, and schlep the \whole of this load over to any domestic airport to see how smoothly the friendly skies seem to welcome such an intrusion!
My week's interval stop at home and office-unanticipated, and therefore a nearly ideal time for regrouping and re-packing, -- began with the processing of 15 rolls of film. It also involved the rehabilitation of the photographic equipment damaged in the adventures just passed. I had delivered to George Mora's Nikon Service the N8008 and its lens for the rehabilitation it periodically needs since it is subject to rather harsh ambient conditions when it is trekking through the Himalayas and other destinations.
The very versatile 28-80 mm lens was frozen from the fine dust that had blown up along the Kunzum-La Pass to Chandratal Lake trek and had been further jarred into uselessness by the drop of the carry-on summit pack in Houston when the carrying loop had snapped as I boarded the Thrifty Rental bus. George Mora had rehabbed the Nikons between the items I had dropped off the cameras and lens on Wednesday and called for its pickup on Friday.
I had gone through the litany of the re-entry ritual-getting a haircut, getting groceries, picking up new audiobook on tape, and collecting the backlog of mail in two places, and set about running through all of this while doing laundry and repacking.
I heard some startling news: Craig Schaefer in his new position at South Carolina in partnership with Rodger Althoff found that the situation is not working out, and that business in his volume is lower than he had in his unsustainable days in the last of Salisbury, so he tendered his resignation effective Monday, put his new house on the showing circuit on Tuesday, accepted a new offer from Bill Bear, a general surgeon in Cambridge MD to whom he had been recommended, and is going up on Tuesday to visit, already having accepted the job, with Carol over-eager to return to Maryland. I am happy to hear he is coming back, although sad that things did not work out with Rodger who is over-extended in business entrepreneur things of his own, and will likely continue to work apart from the practice of surgery that got him principally started in the South Carolina practice. This means that Craig and I will be hunting on familiar territory this fall, in addition to the already confirmed trips to Eastern Shore and Pennsylvania for the coming opening days. I will also keep a place for him in the January 15 controlled deer hunt at Seneca Creek State Park for which I had applied in the interval this past week.
I very narrowly avoided exclusions on the hunt that I am leading in Cumberland on January 7-9, since certified checks had to be in by last week when I was aboard. Only after talking with Brian the chief Ranger of Cumberland did I get an exception due to the extraordinary circumstances surrounding the terrorists' disruption of our lives, and since I am the leader of the Nancy's Fancy contingent did he make a single instance exception to the other 28 cases of special consideration who are trying to get into t he hunts. So, I got a certified check off in his direction.
There may be some changes to the fall travel schedule, since I have already got many marathons posted, and had hoped to go down to visit Michael and Judy and the twins-but that having just been accomplished, I may wait until all of us can get together at another time-perhaps all of us running the next "Marathon of the Americas" together.
I had packed and re-packed to get all the stuff I would need for the Colorado hunt, in addition to that which I had mailed ahead, ready to travel with me to New Orleans, where I might intercept the suits and other items I had left with Alden Harken in New Hampshire when he flew out of Logan with the first flights to return to Denver via ORD. I then decided to risk trying to legally transport the faithful .300 Win Magi BAR rifle despite the extra attention it would draw on this trip carrying it through New Orleans, where it would not have a lot of use and a potential afro exposure and loss, if not at least the hassle value of checking it in repeatedly. It has taken some time to get it to, into and through Dulles, despite the fact that it is a perfectly legal check in item. But the whole process of checking in today takes four extra steps and at least one more height potency X-Ray check that was labeled prominently as "Not Film-Safe". I saw this sign after my duffel bag, which I was not allowed to touch once I had turned it over though the Peruana who was working the Continental gate had taken it. She was also the one to try to inspect the uncased rifle in the back room to see that the rifle (from which I had removed the action) is not loaded-indeed, not operable.
So, this is a new era in air travel. It is not easy. NO longer can I be sitting in my office one moment and thirty minutes later be over DCA on my way to anywhere.
A HALF-MARATHON PRELUDE
TO THE NEXT RUN-THE FULL MONTY MARATHON
AS I GO WITH JOE TO BALTIMORE UPON MY RETURN FROM THIS TRIP
Joe was eager to put in one more run before our date on Saturday morning the 20th of October. I called him to arrange a Saturday morning run, which he wanted to start as early as possible-since he will be trying to get back home so that Betty, his wife, can go to work at 9:00 AM. I picked Joe up in the blackness of the pre-dawn at 5:30 AM. The fall colors and the pungent poignant smells of autumn are accompanied by sharply shorter days, making this a nostalgic time of year-with the anticipation of the hunts, the delicious apple season, and the colorful background around Derwood and other parts familiar to me.
When we started, Joe had three requests, that we do a half marathon out and back, that we get back early, and that we try to "negative split" it-i.e. run each succeeding mile faster, so that the last half is quicker than the first/ We ran out toward the stables in the warm wind that became wet as we turned for the DC line. When we came back up the Park, we could hear a loud roar from the sound of a rainstorm hitting the canopy of leaves overhead. Then, it hit us.
WE were drenched in a downpour, with our heavy tee shirts and shorts absorbing most of the heavy rains however. With Joe cheering us both on, uttering the Leatherneck phrases for keeping on in endurance events, we rounded the bend for home, with a result that said we had done the first half in 76 minutes and the back half in 67 minutes-a respectable "Negative Split!" Are we no ready for twice the distance in the same pace? Stay tuned for the end of this series to find out.
I was forced to stop over at the lawyer's' office to continue the response to the legal suit lodged erroneously against me, but that should be making further headway in the coming weeks. I have not yet received the reply from the second remodeler, which should be in by the time I return from this trip.
ACS MEETING IN NEW ORLEANS
AFTER A LONG HIATUS-BACK IN THE MEETING MODE
I have just calculated that I was last in New Orleans when the ACS was meeting here five cycles ago-that means that since it is in mid-country once in three years, that was fifteen years ago. I am arriving on Sunday October 7, 2001, giving my presentation on October 10, and leaving from MSY to Denver on the pre-dawn cycle of Thursday Oct.11, I will be leaving off the non-expense acco0iunt mercy of the ACS at convention time for four days-an ill-afforded luxury. I will meet Rich Reinert and Don Frey and Tim O'Leary at Brennan's of New Orleans' French Quarter at 7:00 PM for dinner this evening right after I get to my Holiday Convention Center Hotel and check in. I called pre-dawn and left that phone number so that it is known where I can be reached-a precaution that was reserved by the DOT before for international travelers, but now seems appropriate for any air traveler in this new era I had witnessed in the scrutiny of my transit through security at IAD enroute to IAH.
LET THE BOMBING BEGIN:
MY APPROACH ON THE GLIDE PATH INTO IAH,
HAS OTHER AMERICANS IN SIMILAR FLIGHT PATTERNS INTO THEIR FINAL DESTINATIONS
At 1:00PM, I learned immediately upon landing at 1; 30 pm, the military combined forces of the US and United Kingdom launched fifty tomahawk cruise missiles from ships, submarines, carriers, b-52's flown all the way from their US bases 24 hours away, as were the B-1 bombers involved in the attack, with B-52's from Diego Garcia flying the 2,000 miles north to saturate the bases of Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, and Kabul, Khandahar and other parts of the Taliban government's strongholds, if a medieval government of fundamentalist clerics can be called either strong or a government.
The aiding and abetting of the Taliban's cause by Osama bin Laden from his own purse has brought about the staunch refusal of the doctrinaire clerics to compromise him-so that since they are sheltering the number one terrorist on the US most-wanted list, the Taliban looks like it is about to become an extinct historic aberrations. Its non-supporters inside Afghanistan will be encouraged and supported to overthrow it and the collapse will come from within inevitably, but for now, it is squirreled away along with its number one guest in a rabbit warren of the hills and desolate mountains of the Afghani countryside-I had a direct introduction to all that inside the Khyber Pass.
I saw the complete Press Conference by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld who was as steely resolved as he could be and refused to discus operation s that are ongoing, with occasional deferral to the Joint Chief of Staff Meier, but it looks like the full attack has come and will continue until the objectives of eradication of this and any other hiding place of such terrorist training camps and networks are found and rooted out.
This is a non-primetime to be flying, since the guarantee of 100% US domestic terrorist revenge attacks already preplanned had been predicted. The attacks have typically been pre-planned for months to years, but this should hair trigger their launch.
The Al-Gezira TV network based in Qatar broadcast a pre-taped broadcast message from Osama bin Laden who prepared for this attack by making a tape calling for the Arabic speaking Moslem world to rise up in a jihad against the great Satan he sees in the US. Since the Qatari representative was just in Washington last week and they were told if they broadcast any such message they must be sure to broadcast the other side as well or they, too, might be classified as "an aiding and abetting" country-and "y'all can see that just ain't healthy for folk who persist in such views."
Dutifully, the Al-Gezira network broadcast everything I just saw live-including Rumsfeld's Press Conference and the Presidents' and Tony Blair's speeches, so the world at large-including the large Islamic population out there-if not with a TV set in every home, at least with one in every village, can make their own choices within the range of the Al-Gezira broadcast net..
George W. Bush has just called over forty world leaders to inform them of the joint attacks, and even last night told the Democratic head of Congress Dick Gephart of his go-ahead-while Gephart was at Cal Ripken's retirement game in the Camden Yards ball park. So, our side, too, can make long-planned coordinated attacks by plan that remain secret until they are launched, but hey do not stay secret in a democracy very long, which is why there had been such exquisite care to a full and complete accounting to the American people at the moment they were launched -even in TV time as sacred as during the pro-football Sunday games!
ARRIVAL IN NEW ORLEANS AND HEAD IN TO THE HOLIDAY CONVENTION
CENTER
AND OFF TO DINNER AT BRENNAN'S IN THE FRENCH QUARTER
Well, I ma on my final approach over a sinful city also, but I will not be delivering any ordnance on it, and may have a chance to meet and greet a few friends from a former life as an academic surgeon in the US, now transformed into a practitioner in the Taliban's backyard. After all, besides the warplanes that went in on the destitute nation, there were two C-17's of food and humanitarian aid as well-I can identify with that-bomb them to make it safe to deliver humanitarian aid!
Stay tuned for other late breaking events on the ongoing "so-called war"
against terrorism, and this one single pocket where it can be, for now, dimly
identified. Both Bushes have had almost ideal demonic government leaders as
opponents, and both will still probably be around for a long time after our
own democratic form of government shuffles leaders around in ballot box bingo.