APR-B-8
RAPID TRANSIT AS A
CREAKY FORMER RUNNER-BECOME-PASSENGER
April 13-14, 2003
After three major system failures yesterday, I am creakily packing up my large suitcase full of items for my multivenue trip that begins immediately after my UltraRun. I put the Dell Latitude in my carryon bag so that I could catch up on the details of the run and other events as they transpire along the way, and had just ordered a new battery for the Dell to hold me all across Africa--so I am prepared! No, I reckoned without the gremlins that infest technology. What system should fail utterly and resoundingly now? The Dell Laptop, upon which I am depending to get me form here to there and back again! It turns on, but the screen is not visible, and does not light up. So, it is as useless as a boat anchor, to be carried along through the airports of the world as one of the machines that makes life much more productive and efficient--in full time servicing of the machines!
So, having ignored it for over two years, I am now turning to my Think Pad, retired now for over three years. It is going to have to be impressed into immediate service, since, I need a laptop to work, and there is no way I can turn in the defunct one during the eight days I am gone (an ideal length of time for them to troubleshoot and fix it) and since i am leaving directly afterwards for Malawi, I need it nearly instantly.
So, add the laptop computer to the audiobooks on tape player, and the Nikon TeleTouch camera as systems I rely upon, which fail with a resounding crash when they go down, as they always will, and usually in a cluster, at a critical time, when they are needed most!
SLOW-MOVING TRANSIT OUT OF DERWOOD, THROUGH DCCRC, AND ON THROUGH BWI AIRPORT, ATLANTA AND GAINESVILLE, TO THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA VISITING PROFESSORSHIP
I went through the security check trying to juggle all the stuff that is now required to be carried rather than checked in--like cameras and film---and I made it with the cellphone and the Bull Run Run medal in the plastic trays that would otherwise set off the alarm systems. Apparently, the X-ray at check in is too strong for ANY speed film, and aot the passenger screening, it is enough to fog film of 800 ASA--which is the speed of my small disposable cameras. So, they require individual chemical scanning for the solvents of explosives.
I made it through Atlanta, trying, once again, to re-learn what I had once been able to use, my IBM Think Pad, which had been retired for the past three years, and the batteries are flat even when recharged from the wall electricity.
ARRIVAL IN
GAINESVILLE, AND DINNER AND GATORADE AT THE HOME OF PARKER AND NATALLY SMALL
Parker Small is the patron of the Global health program at the University of Florida and the one who, along with Alan Burns, the Anthropology Chairman, president of their Advisory Committee, had arranged my return to Gainesville to be the keynoter and bell-ringer for the student programs on which over half the class now goes for an experience in the Caribbean or South America. He and his wife Natalie knew that I would be moving slowly, and they picked me up at the GNV airport and carried me first to their home. There, we had drinks---my choice---Gatorade, and lots of it. I was now realizing that I was thirsty as well as consciously sucking down multiple refills of the 1.83 liter bottles of Gatorade, without stopping to pee. My muscles were stiff and sore, but i could still move around, but would certainly rather not stoop down to pick up anything dropped. I figured I was about "three quarts low" on the dipstick, and what urine I might produce was going to be full of myoglobin and hemoglobin casts from the "rhabdomyolysis" that happens from overuse of skeletal muscles. At this rate of hyperexertion, I have noted that the pyriformis area is not much more sore than any other part, so it may be actually getting better as a chronic problem.
I was checked in to the University Centre hotel, across form the Shands Hospital of the University of Florida on its very pretty campus, which is neotropical, with hanging Spanish Moss on the live oaks in thick small jungle patches in small corners of the campus, with large new buildings that have popped up on genetics, molecular biology and brain research.
I was oriented as to the program, of which I am the keynoter, and inaugural lecturer, which turns out to be a bigger deal, since this is the first time that the medical students have had their classes canceled, and will be all out for the first ever Global health Day. This has been a student driven event, with the deans and administration rather reluctantly coming along. There is an international office on the main campus, and of all people to be heading it up is Dennis Jett, whom I interviewed when he was the Ambassador to Mozambique. He has been a non-supporter, but a number of people have tried to consistently help out the students and get them funds for their travels--just as I do at GWU--and they include the nursing school, vet school, dental and pharmacy, so that a multi-disciplinary team can be fielded to places like Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Panama, Yucatan, and all of the students who had been out in these various places for their spring vacations will be giving their "show and tell" on a power point presentation and reporting to the media under such titles as "Project Heal." So, Off I Go---on a Slow Walk!