OCT-A-2

AND, NOW, IT IS FALL—EVEN HERE IN MARYLAND,

WITH DERWOOD PROGRESS NOTABLE,

AND THE SCRAMBLE OF PRE-DEPARTURE PACKING

MIXED WITH SOME LONG RUNS IN THE AUTUMNAL CHILL

October 1, 2003

The short evenings and the late dawns have changed a pattern for me, as the days grow cool. I had been used to ice on the water in the mornings in the Great Land, where the fall had set in in earnest before I had left, but Maryland had remained the subtropics, at least until the perpetual rains and the intermittent storms in train behind Hurricane Isabel. I am still digging out from behind the Hurricane wreckage of the Derwood property in which I have now gone over the damages with the tree service agency.\ It is far worse that I had imagined before. I had counted eight big trees down, and he has discovered another half dozen by going around the back of the house where he had not been before in his assessment which he had said by cell phone to his daughter Kim who manages the business—“What a mess; and this was the prettiest property in Montgomery County, and still could be restored, but only after a whole lot of work!”

I learned from the construction crews that they had moved the new air conditioning unit out of harm’s way from behind the house to over near the hammock, thereby avoiding the problems from the bricklayers and heavy construction equipment. That put it precisely in the path of the falling trees that had crushed the canoe and pushed over four other trees. I did not know until today that the air conditioner—the new one installed only as the Vander Harts left, in a modern updated unit which has not been used because of the former tree canopy that had insulated the house—has been smashed in at its “protected position” by the falling trees rather than the falling cement blocks and ironwork which has been going up over it’s prior “vulnerable “position.

STATUS REPORT ON THE DEMOLITOIN OF DERWOOD,

BY WORKMEN AND BY HURRICANE ISABEL

Tomorrow the structural steel will be delivered that will support the twenty eight foot ceiling vaults opf the Great Room with all the skylights. That is, if the truck can make it around the cut back branches of the fallen trees, minimally sliced back to allow passage around t he back. I called Glenn Murrell to find out what the status would be and to tell him that I would be gone in India for the next two weeks, and he sounded sick and was home in bed. He did not tell me, although I later learned by talking with the office that he had been admitted to the hospital on Sunday with pneumonia and put on Zithromysin for a positive chest X-Ray, but I told him he should stay in bed until he recovered. He said he would be in tomorrow and wanted to check on the status of the couches in the living room and the white oak solid cabinetry that had been saved with plastic sheeting over it in the living room where the plumbers and electricians will be setting up shop next week for the interior wiring work. He then asked how soon the trees could be resolved from the blocking of the breakfast room foundation and the areas around the back of the house.

WOODSMAN—REMOVE THOSE TREES!

I called Ernie Shifflett through his daughter Kim who handles all the business. She said “Here is his cell phone number: now, don’t leave a message, since he does not know how to retrieve a message and is not at all interested in learning how it is done!” I got Ernie on the phone, and he immediately recognized me and said that despite his 16-hour work schedules and several month backlogs, he would be over at the place at 4:00 and would get Gary the crane operator to come along. I went for a run after doing a lot of letter work, and then joined him there. He had assessed the big tree that had crowned at the kitchen door which had fallen to the ground that will be occupied by the breakfast room, and had also seen the big tricentennila oak in its precarious position along the drive ready to push over the tulip poplar that it had tipped. That is what he had seen when he had come over last week, and had told his daughter “what a mess!” I said to him “what do you think of the back of the property?” Neither he nor Gary had been back there, and were surprised when they went with me to look it over. There are additional trees there that they will have to clean out, and the whole project will be a lot of work, and will take many months. I told him to proceed, despite the fact that I cannot raise the similarly overworked insurance claims agents who have been shuffling me around saying that they will see me and evaluate the loss sometime a month from now. We cannot wait that long to hold up the housing work, so I told them to start on the urgent removals and get to the major cleanup when they can. This will cost tens of thousands of dollars, again at a $1500 per day sky crane rental, which will start the process, but only the urgent clearance to get the reconstruction back toward schedule.

As a favor to me, Ernie will get the project started tomorrow, even before I leave. Last time the neighborhood was interested in the hired hands he had brought in with him to do the heavy lifting, since one of the young boys had driven over in a powder blue Viper—yes, the tree removal business is doing quite well, thank you, in Derwood.

I had tried multiple times to get the State Farm people to get to review what had happened so I could see if any of the extensive damage was covered. After being shifted from one agent to another, I was finally desperate enough to call my insurance agent who collects the checks from me, but is not authorized to pay any claims, and told her I was going away on Saturday. That finally got some response, but the response it got was a retired older couple impressed into service to handle these “wind claims” as they called them, called me tonight asking if they could come over as a husband and wife to make an appointment when I was home on Saturday. I explained that is just exactly when I was leaving on a mission trip—no, don’t bother to ask me where. The husband explained that the house and its extensions were covered, but not the falling of trees to the ground—the majority of the downfalls and the expenses of cleaning up the woods. By the time they are here on Saturday, Ernie Shifflett will have buzzed through the bulk of his work and cleaned out the remaining rubble so they will see what they would call essentially minimal damage, with the loss of a few items like the A/C and the canoe, and the grille and the brick fence and a number of other structures that were going to be rebuilt anyway. So, I may get about the deductible’s evaluation of the fallen trees structural damages, as the major tree removal continues on into the next months.

A FEW GOOD, OR AT LEAST LONG, RUNS

I know I am not going to be able to run much in Sikkim, and should not run upon return since I will be in my “taper” (“Off from what?” You may ask!) just before the back-to-back marathons. So, I should put in at least one or two good long runs before going. I packed up a package to be sent to Michael to recognize his 34^th birthday, and one to Shirl with the events of the past several months in India and Alaska, and with a dozen other things pending and a “down” computer to do them on, I took off from the Wellness Center on a run up the Capital Crescent Trail heading toward Bethesda. It was a cool breezy day, but good for the long run. I kept going up the Cap Crescent until I reached Woodley Avenue in Bethesda—the finish line of the Marathon in the Parks—the second marathon of my fall six weeks away. That is over nine miles up from GW, so I turned to complete the round trip of just over eighteen miles—at least I did one long one! Along the way, I noted that the areas of the flood damage from the Potomac had abated, and that there was water back in the C & O Canal again after it had been drained out by the Hurricane Isabel flooding. I had run down the towpath when I spotted a few of my favorite living creatures—wood ducks! The mailbox at Derwood is not the only place where the wood duck drake swims in regal splendor!

I took off the following day to run the other way on the Mount Vernon Trail, passing National Reagan Airport to Four Mile Run in Alexandria, a turnaround of 16 miles, but with muscles that had given out so that I was doing a fast walk toward the end. So, if I can work in one more long run, I will crawl onto Air France and vegetate across the globe again, which is my usual resting state before and after a marathon anyway!

PREPARING FOR AN ILL-PREPARED MISSION EXPEDITION

I will be packing little more than the MAP medical packs in hopes, again, that the crew remembers to carry my pack with the sleeping bags and clothes forward from Simla to Sikkim, I will not be wearing the same thing for the next two weeks as I once had to do in Kinnaur and Spiti Valleys last year. I am leaving lots of issues unresolved, not least of which is the course work from the ELDP still to be started—possibly enroute. I have a number of writing chores and other works in progress, but those are all carefully preserved for me in stacks that are now beyond reach. I must resolve not to pre-plan and carefully assemble all the items I may need for future commitments since this just means I can loose all of them at once together. That is the hazard of being in storage in at least two or three sites and with no idea where the stuff isolated for use in the interval has gone missing. I cannot retrieve the stuff packed away in the Derwood household guest bedrooms, since it is packed away so firmly, that I went to retrieve it, and found the door of the guest bedroom locked where all the densely packed books are stored, and the door casing where the key was resting had been obliterated. So the only way to get in is to smash the door. That will be done anyway eventually, and it will join the others in the dumpster. But, I wondered how the door got locked and why? Then I saw from the outside, that all the upstairs bedrooms, as well as attic and new bathrooms have the new state of the art Easy Wash Norco hinged windows installed. How they managed to do that in the two rooms with floor to ceiling storage of books and files, I have no idea, but I know that when the door is opened, it will not be a pretty sight. Nor will the scrambling of the carefully stacked items segregated for meanings known only to me be in any order for anything ever to be retrieved again. So, what I may have done is very orderly and compactly assembled a neatly bundled mass of stuff to be hurled directly into the waiting dumpsters, the result of a whole July full of packing a whole life of waiting incomplete projects.

WHAT PROGRESS HAS BEEN MARKED OFF THUS FAR?

Nearing the time of my departure for nearly three weeks, the demolition is completed; most of the windows have been replaced—even in the attic. The attic has been partitioned and the framing of the walk-in cedar closet has been completed. The basement has been partitioned off and the framing has been completed for the “fitness room” and a bathroom of the “Grandkids' Room”. The master bedroom has been expanded and the northwest guest room has been obliterated and framed up to make a large walk-in closet, and the master bathroom has been framed in to make the shower and whirlpool stalls and the vanity in the enlarged accommodation.

The garage has been completed in the bricklaying as has the northeast storage room, completing the basement’s extension ready for the framing and the structural steel of the Great Room, Dining Room and library which will be started on next week and enclosed by the time I return. After the trees are removed, the foundations and the superstructure of the breakfast room will be built, now without having to worry about the tree, nor even its stump which will be removed. It was a major landmark that would have been preserved and the extension built with it in the plans, but as a stump it represents only a termite threat, so it will be gone as well. The deck will later be the link between the breakfast room and the extension of the house outback. The permit posted in the window says that there are 630 square feet of qualified expansion being added of the approximately 1400 square feet of the add-on, the balance not requiring special permits since it consists of storage area, a garage and an extension of a basement and decking, not interior living space.

When I return, the house will look much different in its exterior extensions, and the interior will then be swarming with a dozen of the “subs” (as the subcontractors, such as the “Sash and Door folk from Frederick” are known) working on everything from the lighting to the HVAC and plumbing to wall coverings, to flooring, etc. It will be later in the fall, and the open foundations and frames which have been soaked in the perpetual rains of the summer will at least not be subject to the vagaries of the kind of winter we had in February of this year in which I navigated to the mailbox on snowshoes.

“You have the prettiest spot in Montgomery County in this woods---still” said the Sky Crane operator Gary and Ernie Shifflett and his Tree Service tonight while planning to cart away hundreds of board feet tomorrow. With that thought as a lingering smile, I am packing up and shipping out to the cold, high, dry Himalayas for another medical mission with great changes going on behind me in my absence.

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