APR-C-2
IN
A TIGHT SCHEDULE OF MORE SPLIT SECOND STRATEGIES
BEFORE DEPARTURE ON A FIVE WEEK ABSENCE
IN MULTIPLE FAR FLUNG VENUES,
I AM HANDED A BIG SURPRISE:
A SNAFU IN THE UVA VISITING PROFESSORSHIP
SCHEDULING LEADS TO A LAST MOMENT SCRAMBLE
IN READJUSTING THE SPLIT SECOND COMPLEX TAKEOFF
PLANS
FOR INDIA AND NEPAL--
WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THAT THE
106TH BOSTON
MARATHON MIGHT NOT BE THE MOST
EXCITING AND DEMANDING EVENT
IN MY WEEK'S SCHEDULE--
AND WE AREN'T UP TO HALF WAY INTO THE WEEK YET!
April 17--18, 2002
I am here in the Omni Hotel, Charlottesville's Business Center for an unanticipated and unprepared interruption in my schedule just as the "ground rush" of the impending departure was about to crank up into high gear tonight with my packing up for the long trip(s) and the logistics of moving the extra supplies, me, my vehicle and its parking and two medical students had been firmed up for a careful plan for tomorrow.
Until late last night, I had completed the chapters in the Apr-B-series concluding with my description with the events of the Boston Marathon, putting off until tonight to do the packing of my personal items into a small back pack (the north Face I had bought in Nepal in 1999 and had had embroidered with my "Himalayan high" book trilogy title.) All the other stuff I am carrying to overfill the Bronco consists of four big MAP packs and a locked Action Packer for the equipment I will carry in for the next multiple trips throughout all the multiple Himalayan treks. I was then going to stuff all of that in the Bronco, drop off my audiobooks on tape at the library, and drive down to GW where the medical students would be awaiting with their stuff, and drive them and the overload to Dulles, drop it all off with them, and come back to park at GW and take the Metro to West Falls Church station and then the Washington Flyer for the "just-in-time " Lufthansa arrival--the kind I used to do before the September 11 security aftermaths.
As I drove to Charlottesville with all my kit for the afternoon's lecture and Grand Rounds, I had posted a half dozen packages and emailed scores more with the Apr-B-series and then left a final note on the host's email at UVA with my cell phone and carried both his office and cell phone number planning to call when a little closer to find out where I should park.
It is another record day today with the heat of 92* F smashing all previous records at each of the three DC airports. I was dressed in a dark suit in the Bronco without functioning air conditioning. I got almost up to Charlottesville when I got a call form Jonathon Moreno, in much embarrassment and very upset. I am in Charlottesville where he came from, and he is in DC where I came form and he blurts out--"I have you down for tomorrow!" The lecture would be given at the precise time I am flying if that would be a bit more irony. No matter that I have the last three emails and a letter all confirming it for this time and place to day, after three re-bookings because of conflicts on the UVA side because of travels, what can be done now?
A
NEW SET OF VERY TIGHT PLANS FOR TWO VENUES AT ONCE
AND A LOT RIDING ON EACH 160 MILES
APART
By calling his assistant Carrie, Jonathon was able to book the fourth hotel they tried since the ones close to the campus are all booked up. So, I am now in the Omni--without so much as a toothbrush, a condition I am about to change as the "pedestrian mall" is right outside, even though few walkers are strolling, because of the heat, and with the temperature a it is, the UVA coeds are putting on a show that usually one has to pay admission for in other venues--just like the GWU campus I left at noon. I have a few things that I was going to try to work on here tonight--all others having been swept off the deck clearly since there is no way I can get back to Derwood before 3:15 PM at the earliest, and I will need a limo standby arranged by hone here as I rush to throw three minutes of items I just outlined on my notepad while sitting outside on the "Main Street "Three Notch Road" Pedestrian Mall."
I will try to catch the students who may be able to get to Derwood, and have them go with me in the limo van, and just now succeeded in getting the home phone numbers to leave messages on with this hotel phone number and my room number. I cannot do about a dozen things I would have had to do, which are now all history since they cannot be worked in and I cannot go down to GW to recover any items not already in the mail. So, this SNAFU in the Charlottesville scheduling has them falling all over themselves trying to accommodate me and what I might need here, but none of that is as significant as the last minute squeaky tight connections I have to make for me, the vehicles, the large overload of medical supplies fort both the Dharamsala and the Nepal venues, and the involvement of the other students. one of the other students has a ticket, visa, and all of her stuff packed, but her university is paying for this trip, and they refuse to do so now since they consider that India/Pakistan is a war zone. Despite my reassurance that I am on my way and I do not like to "do wars" and that we are dealing with the peaceful Buddhists, she is knocked out. If the student Marita Mike from GW, a Maryland lawyer who is a freshman who did not go through channels in asking permission and got everybody's' nose our of joint in the Deanery so that they were trying to nix her trip until I went in to p[lead her case, if she had also been knocked out--I would have to be seeing all 12300 patients myself alone--which is essentially what I have to do anyway in covering freshman medical students with no clinical skills whatever and less understanding of therapy and the appropriate treatments of most anything. But, if I go only to work, that blows the educational opportunity for quite a few students who might otherwise have learned form this unique experience.
And that is just Dharamsala for starters! I then have to bug out as the next team has already been touring around Katmandu for several days, and I fly in from Delhi and take off immediately to Lukla in the High Himalayas--wearing whatever of my gear is within reach when I tear through Derwood tossing things into the backpack as the limo is honing its horn. I will then be climbing the Everest Trek Route and summiting both the Everest Base Camp and Kala Patthar--for all of which I should have several items being held hostage in several places--my Goretex boots by Sportsman's Guide and the one gaiter that Diane Downing has had for a couple of years, as examples. So, I will be making do on a rather exalted level in the Himalayas, as I am here in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia--camped out without much in the way of supplies except for handouts and slides in a talk I am giving--not right now, as it turns out--but tomorrow, only a couple of hours before I should be flying, as I am standing before this group in a suit, about three hours at best from Derwood, and anther hour and a half to Dulles--without massive overage in baggage check-in.
So, you thought that the most demanding strategies and exertion in close connections and last minute planning were on the road from Hopkinton to Boston on Monday of this week? Well the week is not half way started as yet, and already, except for the medal in my packet, and the aching contracture of my muscles, particularly the screaming spasms in the left pyriformis, which the orthopedist said is a syndrome he does not believe in, so he sent the multi-thousand dollar MRI back after a glance, and canceled the appointment I had made as a close connection before my last international takeoff trip to Mindanao/Malawi, with about the same engineered fine tolerance between them as that which I would have had tomorrow without the UVA glitch of an even tighter connection.
IN
THE "SNIFF THE FLOWERS ON THE RUN" DEPARTMENT,
I WANT TO REPORT ON THE BRIEF
AND VERY TRANSIENT
DERWOOD SPRING WHICH I WILL NOT SEE AGAIN UNTIL HIGH SUMMER
Spring happened in Derwood as I was running in Boston. I came back to see the glorious burst of the redbud tree on the right side of the driveway, and the left side had the glorious burst of a flowering dogwood. As I stopped to admire them, a scarlet tanager flitted through and stopped to pose for a while between them. This is one of the spectacular birds that makes it way up the migration pattern of the Rock Creek fly way at just this time of year. It continues a little longer, but then it cannot be seen happening since the leaves unfurled yesterday, and will be in a full canopy by the weekend, so that the birdlife in the canopy cannot be so easily spotted.
While I am gone, the geese will hatch their goslings around May 1, and I will be here at June 1 when the deer are dropping fawns all through the Derwood deer woods--as recorded each of the last two years despite diligent looking for every year I have lived here.
The structural engineering plans of the add-on to the house at the game room have delayed the schedule by a few weeks, but as I am gone the sub-contractors will be combing through the house to get a final estimate and bid for the whole project. When I come back, there will no doubt be further preemptory demands about an early exorbitant settlement form the usurpers who had testily rejected the generous contract and said they would set a deadline of their own for their own terms and timing. Right! A pox on their house, as I am making plans for mine that they seem to be interfering with as well.
NOW,
IN THIS UNLIKELY LEISURE AT THIS VERY COMPLEX
LAST-MINUTE PRE-DEPARTURE,
I WILL SCRAP THOSE ITEMS WHICH
I CANNOT DO ANYTHING
ABOUT NOW, AND AT LEAST PUT TOGETHER A GOOD PROGRAM FOR THE UVA,
WHATEVER GOT US TO THIS SNAFU
WHICH SO TIGHTENS UP MY LAST
DAY IN MARYLAND IN TRANSIT