BEGINNING IN THIS JUL-B-SERIES WITH LADAKH-03

July 17—18, 2003

I have made it---out the door, and into Dulles, so I have closed a big chapter, and opened another. Most folks would consider that the international trip of two major treks into the Himalayas might be the anticipation I have referred to. But, this is old hat, and I am very familiar with each of the next excursions, and have hardly thought about them other than making the arrangements so far in advance that I have discounted them for when they now begin. What makes this takeoff special is that I pulled the door behind me on an empty house, now no longer more than a shell of memories, many of which are packed in boxes in storage.

I had come home early from GW yesterday afternoon, having written a large check to Ernie Shiflett for the Tree Service, to remove the several trees that might threaten the newly renovated house at some indeterminate point in the future. As soon as I arrived, Ernie drove up, with a fellow named Gary who will be the crane operator. Ernie was most interested in showing Gary what a gem of a secluded woods was tucked back here into the park. They also resolved to go directly to work probably as soon as tomorrow to lift the big trees out, without even so much as threatening the power lines that run right next to the trunk of the biggest one. If the limbs should disrupt the power lines, that would have severe consequences to the refrigerator and most specifically, the freezer downstairs, in which most of the game is stored. It would not make any difference to the refrigerator/freezer in the kitchen—any more. I had emptied it almost entirely, with the exception of what we would need for breakfast, and had packed up all the frozen foods as well as the refrigerator stock in a big box for the Joe Aukward family, who are just now returning from two weeks’ vacation on the beach—so they are coming home when the cupboard is bare, and they had the advantage of having all their grocery shopping carried out with the stock I had sent them home with after our picnic—on paper plates and disposables. The kids were intrigued by swinging on the tire swing, and exploring the woods, and then having our picnic grille of whatever could be cooked up, along with the year’s first farm-picked sweet corn from the Eastern Shore’s recent excursion. Joe had stumbled upon a 5K race at the beach, and linked up with the last year’s winner of the event, who was so nervous about the possibility of running with a blind man on a tether that he did not sleep the night before. He and Joe came in a favorable 21 minutes, in a race that was like the one we participated in last Thanksgiving at the Patuxent Naval Recreation Center, where they had never thought it possible that a blind man could run. We did not ever look back and never saw anyone else in the race after the takeoff, coming in at about the same time that Joe did this week in a similar “pick-up race” which had never seen a blind runner and had been surprised at the outcome also. There was even a picture story in the local newspaper, looking like Joe and me finishing the MITP the year before last. With Joe in full stride. He also joined a biathalon with a half mile swim the next day. They had a good time in the woods and the fireflies came out to entertain them after the sun had gone done. They took a look around the empty house, and said they would be eager to see how it turned out.

Lee Dutton arrived in late afternoon, and he and I talked a bit as he got packed up for the trip to India. I had explained that I would be dropping him and all the bags at Dulles, then driving down to GWW to park the Bronco, and then would come back to the airport to try to check in al the excess baggage. I am the only one going out Lufthansa, since Lee was too late to join in on this flight, so I have to find a way to check in all the excess baggage, since I have all the MAP packs for both the Ladakh and the Lingshed medical missions. There is an MPH student I had met named Megan who may be at the airport, and I may try to find her by cell phone to check in several bags under her tags.

FINAL CLOSE-UP OF THE DERWOOD MANSE,

AND LAST MINUTE GLITCHES IN PLANS

Who knows what things may look like upon my return? They may be far advanced into the “demo” phase, or, then again, they may be looking at exactly the same status of an empty forlorn house that I just shut up. The reason stems from a “house location plat.” In the three unauthorized developers’ plans that the Vander Harts had commissioned, several sets of plans were made for high density housing site development and cluster developments. The very official-looking site maps had a penciled-in “”existing house” on the property, which was of little interest, since the land was more interesting for exploitation. It turns out that none of these three plots by the elder Widmer, or by his successor son, Mike Widmer, was an official “house location plat” which is needed before the construction permits can be approved. This would seem to be an easy solution since I remember once having the lot surveyed and paid for at the time of the purchase from the Bennets, but that plat does not seem to be in existence. It should have been present in the settlement at closure in March, but I do not recall having seen it. After a week, Mike Widmer had asked his father, and they had pulled out the dead project file from archives and had not found the official site map, so that they would have to repeat the survey, at my expense and at a considerable delay, even before the construction permits could be applied for let alone approved by the slow county apparatus. This would mean that the tight contract with its six months schedule and its early start—tomorrow for early tree removal, and “demo” for the first of August, with the construction beginning around the first of September—could all be pushed back. I left phone and email messages for both Dan Kennedy and Dale Kramer and also, as a fallback position, authorized the repeat survey as my second poor choice, so that the already tightly wound up clock can spring in to action.

The two guest bedrooms are two thirds filled from floor to ceiling with the boxes and stacked books to be later gleaned for re-entry. We moved the single bed into the guest bedroom this morning and as a last item, cooked up two burritos in the microwave before disconnecting it and string it as well. I pulled tow carpets that had been rolled up in the attic, and spread them on the hardwood floors in the dining room to protect them as the heavy equipment is rolling over them in the “demo phase”, and made one last check around, turning off the water heater and shutting off lights and opening a few windows for ventilation. Dale Kramer had two subcontractors come by, one for the shingles and sidings and another for the carpentry in framing, then later a young woman came from DG Liu’s office with the last revised architectural blueprints, She stayed long enough to watch a couple of the big bucks in velvet that I have been admiring so far through the summer, and then Lee and I drove over to pack away the clothes in hanging bags into Diane Downing’s closet for storage, where they might stay depending on the phase of the destruction for however long that might be discovered upon my return from this series of Indian expeditions and then the Alaska hunt. There will be another expedition to Sikkim in October, and then a series of marathons come along with the fall running season. The Marine Corps Marathon-28 sent me the three five year patches for the five, ten and fifteen marathon completions of the MCM’s and now I have to do some serious running to get back and ready for a pair of back-to-back marathons in October and November—the MCM-28 and the MITP-4.

SHUTTLE BACK AND FORTH TO DULLES/GW

AFTER SIGNING OUT DERWOOD

I am now in Dulles, having performed the shuffle in which I dropped Lee and all the goodies at Dulles, then made it back to GW, where I stashed the Bronco in its paid parking place for the next seven weeks. I shuttled over by Metro and Washington Flyer, and saw the two hour queue for Lufthansa. When I showed my ticket at the far end of the line, the agent noted my Premier Pass Card, and told me to go to First/Business Class check-in, where I was first in line. This meant that there was no wait and no limit to the baggage I checked in, so I got all the MAP boxes into checked luggage and the MPH student Megan into the checked in passengers as well as saw Lee off for his Air France flight connection, So, now, I can charge up the batteries for the lap top so that it might be useful to me on the endless flights from here to Frankfurt, and then on to Delhi, then with a six hour in-airport wait in Delhi after transfer to the domestic terminal in our sleepless an hung-over state, I gather up all 25 first year wannabe clinicians and “orient “ them before boarding the flight along the Karakorum to the highest jet port on earth, the airport at Leh, at 11,880 feet altitude. Then the familiar Mahindra jeep commute to the Hotel Kangri and the acclimatization day before starting the endless dusty bumpy jeep rides over the highest and mightiest mountains on the face of planet Earth along the Indus River, will re-run this, my “frequent flyer” into Ladakh, Tangste, and the high saline lakes culminating in Tso Morari. You have been there before with me; let’s see what we can tell you that may be different in this trip to the same places!

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