OCT-A-7

A SUNNY COOL DAY OF MY LAST WASHINGTON RUN,

WITH A WAVE FROM GW BUSH’S MOTORCADE

AND A VISIT TO DERWOOD TO “CLEAR OUT THE WOODS”

THEN,

A RAINY DAY DEPARTURE,

AFTER AN ASSESSMENT AT DERWOOD WITH THE

DISASTER RESPONSE TEAM FROM STATE FARM

October 4, 2003

Friday the third of October is Michael’s 34^th birthday, but I was unable to reach him in three calls by phone and two by email. I had sent an unusual package, and also got the English translation of the Geelhoed family name which I had given him in the form of the book published in the Netherlands in Dutch. It is interesting to hear that I had come from a line of poachers, farmers, and even a few upstanding citizens in the lineage traced since 1598! Maybe the twins might be interested enough to read this history and genealogy some day. To date, we have not made the arrangements for the suggested pre-Thanksgiving weekend visit, but I will keep trying.

In my last day in the office, I actually got down almost half of what I needed to do before departure, even to the point of getting half the books I needed for the ELDP—assuming I might find some time to read and write reports in the next two weeks. I also noted that it was a cool crisp day with an overhead sun, before the poignantly brief evenings, and after I had sent out the emails along with the last roll of PhotoWorks pictures, half from the finish of the Alaska trip and the rest of the Indianola visit and Virginia’s World and her livestock, I went out from my office to see the last stages of the demolition f the GWUH hospital—with the rubble in the foreground and the new hospital in the background. I went for a run around the DC Mall, seeing the progress on the WW II Memorial and the Museum of the Native American (Indian) Art—a very grand building serving as the conscience salve of the nation near the Air
and Space Museum. In front of it were highly decorated school buses festooned with condemnation s of the atheistic communist nation of Gomorrah (not always accurately spelled) and a PA announcing that homosexuals and abortion and a dozen other bete noirs are causing this nation to fall down the slippery slope to perdition as astutely pointed out by the vehement but not always articulate prophet driving the old school bus. Only in America—this might be the title of this and the subsequent picture on the roll of film.

Since I was carrying the camera, the next photo was an easy shot. I heard the sirens approaching and the shooing of the cars out of the way. Now I am a Washingtonian, so this sort of thing is not only familiar to me, but I have usually not spent a lot of time gawking at the motorcades of official Washington as they shuttle back and forth from the White Hose State Dinners and the State Department in Foggy Bottom, but this time, on a sunny Friday afternoon, I was standing camera in hand, on the corner as I had just left the showers at the Health and Wellness Center, and I thought I would say hello. I noted the usual motorcycles of the DC Police, then the “Collie Dogs” as the group of Suburbans in basic Black with the heads of Secret Service Agents hanging out the open windows of each vehicle scanning windows above and around them. Well, I decided to take a picture of GW Bush, and as I stood there with the camera, he looked up and waved at me. We will see if you can join in on the greeting if you can see the pictures.

I got an email from Tom Griffioen with the further description of the deerslayer Aubrey, and the dates for the December deer seasons in Michigan, which I may be able to attend. It seems that it may work out to have them come to DC on their way to Cumberland Island with the Dodge Ram Van to carry home some of my fixtures, including the white oak solid cabinets, or maybe the two of them (Drew and Tom) could fly down to Jacksonville and when they come up to DC after the whole of the reconstruction project is complete, they may be able to drive the Bronco back with a one-way U-Haul with the cabinetry and whatever else has been saved from the demolition and total overhaul of Derwood.

I left to go check on what had happened since the clearance of the Tricentennial Oak and the other tree next to the kitchen back door on the site of the Breakfast Room. I was driving up when I heard the annoying whine of the dirt bikes that had plagued the hillsides in spring. These are totally illegal vehicles that cannot avoid the temptation to rip up the hill and often invade across the stream into my property from the park, tossing the mud and water in their muddy bath in the churning of the woods.

I carried my camera and the cell phone. I saw two quads and two dirt bikes, and took a couple of pictures of their vehicles and their license plates, to use later if they did not quit their illegal use of a motorized vehicle in the park, or invasion of private property with destructive result without invitation. I have had kids mouthing off at me before, that they have done it whenever they wanted to and would continue to do so at their pleasure, and got the same response this time. One of the drivers of a new Quad stopped and came back to “help me out” as though I was lost. I asked him if he would like to take it from me that what he was doing was illegal and he would be arrested for trespass or if he preferred to hear it from the park police. He thought I was bluffing when I pushed the 911. I got connected to the Park Police of the MCPPC and talked with an officer and said that I had a fellow in front of me named John Doug who said that rules did not apply to him and he was rather sure that he could ride anywhere he wanted and destroy park and private property—and I handed him the phone. The police explained to him that they had to go, and that they would be arrested if they did not. I got a bead on them as the big guy explained that he was just leaving but had only come in here to see what damage the storm had done to the woods—far less than they had done in their repeated ripping up the hillside, The police said they would come and reseed the hill and took a full report saying that if it happened again with those same folk they would be in trouble—but that I had an officially registered complaint if any future easy riders came along to continue their “off-roading “ destruction in the woods. The Park Police fellow I had talked with congratulated me for handling the situation to a resolution that was nearly ideal---which I believe meant that he did not have to come out to do anything further.

If only the proposed Inter County Connector recognized itself as one of the more disruptive influences in the woods that made dirt bikers look innocent by comparison, we could keep the woods pristine and perpetually self-sustainable, as I hope to do with the 10 acres under me.

`I walked up the hill and looked to the house. I did not see the structural steel that had been delivered behind the house and the now completed garage addition and the library. It had been delivered only the day before. Then I looked up. It is all up! The roof of the Great Room is already up and the steel structure is ready to take the roofing joists lying at their base. So, it is likely when I return from Sikkim, that the whole are will be enclosed and the Breakfast Room will be built up on the foundation footings now uncovered by the removal of the big trees.

As I left work, I got a call from Ernie Shifflett. He said that something was coming up this week, since the county had a free dumping of tree refuse from the storm for only the next few days to mark a limited time for carrying off the heavy tree downfall which they run through the chipper called the “Intimidator” which can swallow tree trunks up to 26 inches across. They make not just mulch but fuel for steam generation of the resulting truckloads of mulch. He said that he had talked with his partner Gary and they could come back next week and clean up the whole woods with a crew of thirty workers to dump all the tree trash while the free county dump of tree stuff was still available, and he did not cite price for this but I told him I trusted him, particularly since he knows that I paid him a check for the price of a full size SUV for just the two trees he removed the day before, that I am not a practicing physician making millions, but a volunteer mission medicine doctor, which he and Gary said they needed to return some charity to of their own, and that he could use whatever lumber came from it. This would uncover the garden from a heavy tree that fell on it, and tidy up all the big logs that are rotting now around the house, with more firewood that I can ever use. So, I said, ”Go to it Ernie, I trust you, but can’t afford a second hit of the same size!” He said “I appreciate what you are trying to do to keep the woods in a virginal and pretty state, and that you are not developing it to subdivide and make a mint, so when you return the woods will look very different and you will be very pleased.” So, I am trusting the care of my woods to Ernie Shifflett Tree Service, whom I have already paid a mint in cash, and then trusting my house to the Contractors with whom I left another check due at the time of the enclosure of the framed in additions. The total of these checks, all written the same day, exceed my annual salary! But, this may mark forward progress in getting what I had hoped to have done accomplished.

I had a long talk with Glenn Murrell, the chief production manager whose full-time job is my Derwood renovation at the same time that Dale Kramer is looking in on it since it is “his baby” Glenn I had called to find him in bed with what he called the flu-like illness and laryngitis and hoarseness now on Zithromax. But, he had a chest X-Ray when he was in the hospital in Frederick, and they had taken a CT scan in follow-up of what appeared to be a spot on his lung. I only learned that later when I called in the office and spoke with Kaisha who had obtained the final permits to proceed with the construction. When I hear that I go ton the phone again and met with Glenn. I had said I wanted to follow up on the findings, and his doctor and he were going to meet later after he saw me, since they are scheduling a CT guided needle biopsy of the lesion which he had down-played as a source of worry, but it seems that I is likely that this could represent a malignancy given his long history of smoking and the natural history of this disease. So I am now going to have to follow up on that as well as that of Adolpho, the Guatemalan who has a shoulder injury, since now the whole crew knows that I take care of people who cannot pay, so that the Guatemalan crew of the Shifflett Tree Service were especially interested that I could talk with them and knew where they were from—and I might be available for their care at some point in the future, since they do not have health insurance—despite the high hazard of their jobs and the near-inevitability that they will get hurt while swinging high in the canopy while riding a bucking chain saw.

A RAINY DAY VISIT WITH THE DISASTER RESPONSE TEAM

FROM STATE FARM INSURANCE

It took me most of the week to arrange it, but I got a couple on the phone who had called from Virginia (where I had first thought they were living) named Boyce and Sandra Mac Reynolds. It turns out they are a couple called out of retirement who live in Texas, and are up here as a Disaster Response Team to investigate the consequences of the Hurricane Isabel claims. Sine I was leaving for Sikkim on Saturday afternoon, they made an exception to the “wait a month and we will come by” suggesting that I get the Tree Service to pull the trees off the house and any structure impacted by them, but telling me that there would be no coverage of the trees that fell without any structure involved. I saw a note appended to my mailbox that was a rather snippy sentence from my neighbors the Rubins—whom I assume are still going to the Olney Playhouse with the VandrHarts, stating “Glenn: I assume you have made arrangements to have the logs and trees removed from our front lawn and would appreciate hearing from you as to what those arrangements are.” The Rubins were the first to call Ernie Shifflett the night of the storm and had him come out first thing in the morning to cut away the branches of the overhanging branches that fell just behind their cars to let them get their cars out, without much note of gratitude that it did not hit their cars. Every school child knows the principle that the limb that hangs over your property and falls upon it is the responsibility of the property on which it falls—but they were probably hit by the high price of this emergency removal service and are expecting me to take care of it. The other neighbors, the Lubens, had called me on the fourth of July to tell me that a big limb of mine had fallen on their yard but it was entirely their responsibility to clean it up. That was not clear to the Rubins apparently. Having already paid more than the price of a new car for a three hour session two days ago not covered by insurance, I have not got a high priority toward clearing the Rubin’s yard, but I had left a note with Ernie Shifflett to say that they had left this note—and his immediate response was “That is their responsibility.” I asked if he could check in with them while he was coming over next week in the cleanup of the yard of the other storm felled trees.

I could not see the MacReynolds couple when I arrived in the rain in the top of my circle with all the tree debris stacked up around it. They had driven around to the back of the house where the construction had cleared the trees to get access to the back of the house to erect the steel superstructure of the addition and to finish the bricklaying of the garage. The couple pointed out a couple of things that I suspected in advance—the removal of the two dead trees in advance of the storm was not covered, nor was the huge tricentennila oak that did not (yet) hit any structure. If it had continued to fall rather than being propped up by the big Tulip Poplar, it would have bisected the house on the neighboring Leopold—and that would have been his insurance claim. What he also told me is that the canoe, boat trailer and other items “not in a completely enclosed building” would not be covered. The back stoop, the Weber Grille, and the air conditioner would be covered, and the part of the expenses to get the tree off the structures to include the brick fence and its replacement would be covered. As a good old boy chain-smoking Texan, Boyce said he would send in what he could, and he took a dozen Polaroid pictures and took the two dozen pictures of mine that I had taken of the construction before and after the storm and then after the major clearance done by both DG Liu and then Shifflett Tree Service. He said that the bill I had just paid for the tree removal was very steep, and was mainly concerning uncovered losses, so this whol storm damage problem is going to hit me as a rather big luxury expense, and we have not even got into the issue of cleaning up the woods after Ernie’s crew arrives this week. But, we will try to get the whole house and woods started up anew with a fresh and nearly perfect start.

I passed the Tree Dump special holding place for the county’s tree refuse, which will close next week, and they were busy bulldozing the tree trunks into a chipper. As remarked about the big operation on Thursday in Derwood, I was amazed at the heavy duty machines which can devour a mature tree and make chips of it—and any stray bodies that wander into its maw—within seconds. I keep thinking that I would get out and chop up a bit of firewood myself with a small chain saw, but the hazards of this job are too high, and the total quantity of dead wood for firewood that I have now lying down would be more than could be supplied to any fireplace for the next ten years. So we will start over with the fresh wood “windfalls” after the clearance of the woods in the next week’s cleanup operation.

As for clearing out, that is what I am about to do right this moment, with the MAP packs and a limited amount of luggage, hoping to rendezvous with the bag I left in India, which has my clothes and sleeping bag, and ---as has happened several times already, despite a dozen notices that I will need it and am expecting it to make the trip to the Sikkim excursion—the same was promised for Spiti and Kinnaur and Nepal, with few of those coming through. So, we will see if I am to wear the same stuff I am wearing on the plane for the next two weeks, or will have to buy some warmer stuff in Sikkim, when I appear and the bag does not in the final destination I am checking all my gear to be sent through by air, to Bagdogra, Sikkim. And, now, as they say on Air France: “Bon Voyage!”

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