NOV-A-8
THE VETERANS’ DAY RAINY WEEK
AS THE GOLDEN/BURGUNDY LEAVES FALL,
AND I GET THE YEAR-END LETTER-02
“THE YEAR ALONG THE ROOF OF THE WORLD”
ASSEMBLED FOR LATER COMPLETION
November 11, 2002
I am wistfully watching the golden orange and burgundy leaves which have made a halo over the house in a barrage of fall colors enhanced over any other year I can remember here in Derwood, as the winds and rains pick up and bring them down underfoot. I had raked for an hour and a half on both Saturday and Sunday and a few hours after each time I could see no evidence that I done anything at all for the leaf litter.
I am considering myself a “veteran” entitled to this Veteran’s Day off, which I started with a long run in the rain with Joe, in a warm rain. Two notable things happened in today’s run: one was that I spotted two big bucks, each within a few feet of us, and the one a high-crowned rack buck with a good halo overhead, which stood nobly at the swollen Rock Creek side under the same golden aura that surrounds my house and environs. I had suggested to Dale Kramer that he might come over to bowhunt from the Derwood woods, and he had spotted innumerable buck rubs and scrapes along my back woods down to the stream. On one morning, he had a big buck coming in to a grunt call, but stopped with a scent of man and bolted. As I am typing this note after an after noon of cutting and pasting a large part of the year-end letter to date, there are four deer browsing out the bumper crop of acorns just under the shadow of the large snow sheep ram in the dining room window.
The second item of our run was that as we approached the intersection of Beech Drive and Connecticut Avenue, I held Joe back as the red light would be changing in a steady rain. Two cars were stopped at the light and a third was approaching as it slammed on its brakes and swerved to miss the two stationary vehicles. It jumped the curb, and I turned to push Joe out of the way, knocking him down and tangling him with me, as the car slid right up the sidewalk to stop just before us. The fellow jumped out and immediately asked, “Are you fellows all right?” He was a nice guy, wearing his Navy ID tags and I introduced Joe as someone who also worked for the Navy. Only then did he look at his car and could not believe that he had no ill effects of his car either, except perhaps a misalignment of his front wheels. I was happy that Joe and I cold run on to make the turn for the drinking fountain at the eight mile point. This was the longest run I will make before the MITP six days from today. This is the last marathon I have booked for this year, although I am already signed up for the second DC Marathon in March, and just now have booked both the 107th Boston Marathon (based on my qualifying time in the MITP 2001 which I had run with Joe) and the Back Bay Boston Hilton Hotel for April 21 next spring. Thinking of spring at this poignantly brief period of the glorious autumn as leaves are falling reminds me of the other part of the year when the colorful trees and their floral and leafy canopies attract attention. But, at that part of the year, there is a longer period of daylight with which to enjoy them, and already at 4:30 in this daylight savings time I cannot see the canopy over Derwood.
No progress has been made on either the minimal repairs of Aurora Drive (a minor repair of the wrought iron handrail and the cement stoop in which it is anchored has come back to me with a six week time delay and a $7,200 estimate!) I had had the landscaping suggested be done by the realtor completed by John Shorb’s company at an estimate of about four times what I thought it might be, but at least it has been completed. Meanwhile, however, the house is neither listed nor being shown until these little items get taken care of, and I am not going to be anywhere around when the house is finally ready for sale by the standards of the realtor, who expects that I am always nearby, as everyone else seems to be. At the same time, there is no evidence of any progress or movement of any kind on the Derwood property resolution that would allow me to start up the remodeling. The state of the stock market and my retirement funds may make this delay longer even if there were settlement of the blood money demand, since I have fewer resources with the shrinkage of the funds. Further, the Democratic County Council members and Montgomery Executive have crowed about the fact that with the new Republican governor in Maryland, now everyone in local government is now all for getting the mid-county connector highway built as soon as possible. The right of way for this proposed new highway would be the rear of my Derwood woods, with the creek suggested as the ideal place to simply culvert over and put a high speed highway there as an “improvement” on the Derwood woods.
This may change my enthusiasm for commuting long distance from what will be in essence just another urban enclave, and rather than hiring a stable and interval riders to come and ride a horse that is being kept, maybe a farm with its own capacity to keep some livestock would be more appropriate to search for. But, if I have to stay near home for one animal, it might as well be a couple of them, so maybe I could finally get the bird dog I had long wanted to have. I could take it out and run with it, as Rick Byrd, one of my running buddies does with his Weimeranner named Rosie, with whom I ran last week.
I have been told that the computer problems I have had all week are from a bad hard drive, and that the processor in the computer is a Pentium One, and that OIT no longer services any such device so outdated, so that I have to get a new computer. If that is the case, I will have to try to get a desk top computer along with a multimedia package so that I could process digital photography and make Power Point slides for presentations as well.
Without the computer and email access, I have not heard whether I am expected in Malaysia the day after the MITP marathon this weekend, and I already have a number of potentially competing plans. Joe and his family want to have me go with them on a camping trip for the weekend before Thanksgiving, since they have no experience camping, and they have got a place in Solomon’s’ Island for November 22—24. I am still trying to get the Thanksgiving morning Turkey Chase 10K booked with Joe, but he is awaiting the word from Betty who may actually try to run the two mile part of the race, which both of us have been encouraging. If I am not flying off to Kuala Lumpur—a pattern that is more likely for me since I am always making long flights all stiffened up by a marathon just before I leave—I may go to the Solomon’s’ as the expert in camping and guide for the Aukward family at a facility that the US Navy has made available to him for that time. For the reasons of multiple engagements piling up on top of each other and the extraordinary investment in time and multi-stage efforts of the assembly of my customary year-end letter, I thought I should try to get ahead of the rush and prepare as much of it as I could to date, and have spent several full days working hard on the kind of year-end review you have come to expect. I am not at all sure that I should continue to plan to a commitment of a Christmas chronicle as extensive and intensive as this one, but that will remain to be seen as the next Christmas may be quite different from this one.
Craig and Carol Schaefer came over for the weekend originally planned for Craig’s folks also, for whom I had arranged the Building Museum and the C & O Canal Mule Barge “The Georgetown”—but his father gets tired easily so they backed out. Carol wanted to start her Christmas shopping at Tyson’s’ Corner, which, I believe, still has the claim of the world’s largest retail outlet—“Mall of America” in Minnesota notwithstanding. I saw a couple of stores briefly with them, such as the upmarket Crate and Barrel there, which is nestled among the Macey’s and Nieman Marcus and other very new and expensive stuff of the Tyson’s II complex. I am glad that I do not enter these temples of Mammon very often, and am always startled at where all the rich young people come from that seem eager to buy the stuff which is for sale at half the quality and ten times the prices that I regularly see while traveling elsewhere than in the “Number One Retail Outlet of Wealthy America.”
Craig and Carol were staying in the Ritz Carlton and they had wanted to go out to the Palm Restaurant, but were unable to get reservations for the latter. So, we went to my friend Jim Hamrock (Chona’s husband) Pulcinella, an Italian Restaurant which is also an upmarket experience. As executive chef, Jim works hard in back with a large variety of Hispanic waiters out front. We had Jaime from Bolivia, and suggested that we knew the Executive Working Chef, and we would have what he recommended—and he sent us out appetizers and a tiramisu dessert on the house. It was a good dinner, after which we went back to the Ritz Carlton. Craig and Carol had come over in their Burgundy Mercedes which is a better vehicle to park at the Ritz than a fifteen year old Bronco, but I still could get back and forth with it when it was needed. Their Virginia weekend retreat was an advance payback for Carol as we will be going to our usual hunting excursions in MD and PA immediately after I spend Thanksgiving weekend with them. So, they had a good retreat with the Ritz’s good Sunday brunch, while I got out to run with Joe and to work further on the letter you will get at year’s end.
So, it has been a quiet week in Lake Derwood, and at the DC CRC, and at GW, as the short sweet days of Indian summer have brought down the spectacular leaves of Derwood into my range as something to be managed, after I limp back from the 26.2 mile trot I will be making through the neighborhood parks this weekend—if I am not elsewhere.