MAR-B-13
THE SAINT PADDY’S DAY WEEKEND
FROM FROSTBURG STATE UNIVERSITY TO
RUNNING AND CELEBRATING WITH JOE
March 15-17, 2002
It’s been a quiet week at Derwood, my home town, out in the woodlot. It had been warm with the daffodils all nodding and the trees all budding, then a cold snap and a lot of frigid rain moved in.
I was planning a rendezvous in Frostburg, which I carried out on schedule to show pictures of the last two excursions which I have been collecting and collating, and trying to get them into a pair of albums, with the time that was graciously provided to me by the incompetence of Marazul, the travel group of Cubans that failed to deliver my tickets or visas in the “just-in-time process” I had so carefully pre-arranged. I have later heard that many others had got similar treatment, denied hotel rooms, etc, but mine was the most egregious case by their opinion. Marazul wrote me an email stating that none of this was in any part their fault, but had to be the fault of any of the other s of all that complained, so this whole IHMEC must be an unruly mob, since they all had problems.
I arrived in good time at the Hampton Inn in Frostburg in time to meet Margeaux, Virginia’s niece, whom she is taking on the “college tour” for her applications for after next year’s graduation. We had a two-hour tour of the FSU campus, then, by pre-arrangement, went to lunch with my friend Dave Treber. He will be coming down to join me this weekend, as he will be running the Inaugural DC Marathon also.
On departure in the cool spring weather in the Maryland Mountains, I stopped our convoy in two places, one of which I had not previously visited. This was the Green Ridge visitors’ center and scenic overlook. I had driven by this wild piece of Maryland any number of times in coming and going to and from Cumberland, when I had covered the Sacred Heart and the Cumberland Memorial Hospitals when I had moonlighted at NIH. These are pretty places in upstate rural Maryland. I then went to an old favorite, the Sideling hill Road Cut exhibit of the prehistory and geologic time of the formation of this continent revealed in the deep cut in the Sideling hill to let the new I-68 pass through it.
My next days were spent close to home in the rain as I gathered groceries and unpacked form the last trip and packed up for the next. On Sunday morning early, Joe and I took off on a run, beginning just after dawn in the cold morning of St. Patrick’s Day. We ran twelve miles—our last pre-marathon run, but on return we hardly noticed we had been running, since we were in deep conversation all the way. On return the wind picked up and it began to rain a cold lashing rain that has not stopped in days since.
Joe had wanted to take his kids to his sister’s house since they would be hosting a St. Paddy’s Day party. That was not possible since Betty, his wife, was feeling under the weather, and she had the youngest, Michelle with her. She is afraid to drive in the dark or the rain, and it was both. So, I volunteered to carry Joe and the two older kids to the party, and I joined them for Irish potato soup, lamb stew, and all the fixings down through Irish coffee. And then ducked out to get a few things both printed and Xeroxed in the office, before returning to complete the festivities and return tired and sleepy kids back home.
This process will be repeated at the forthcoming weekend when we get the kids off to a Fun Run at the MCRRC Piece of Cake Club Birthday Party, before Joe and I, now joined by Dave Treber, leave early on Sunday morning for a similar cold start in the inaugural DC Marathon.