05-JUL-A-4

 

THINGS ARE NOW HAPPENING ON A RAPID RUSH IN FAST FORWARD IN THE PREVIOUSLY LAZY INTERVAL OF THE CANCELED HAITI MEDICAL MISSION:

 

LARGE PURCHASES FOR HOME REMODELING

 ARE EXPANDED FURTHER,

AND THE LONG-AWAITED VISIT TO REVIEW THE NEW GAME ROOM OF BOB AND MARY KILLET IN SYKESVILLE;

THEN AN EARLY MORNING RUN OF THE

 SENECA CREEK GREENWAY TRAIL,

A PRE-MISSION MEETING WITH THE ERITREAN GROUP,

AND THEN I DO A DVD PERFORMANCE FOR

 EURASIAN EXPEDITIONS IN A VISIT TO

 DERWOOD’S GAME ROOM BY GEORGE SEVICH,

 AND A PROPOSED CHANGE OF PLANS TO INCLUDE A

 MID-ASIAN HUNT BEFORE THE ERITREAN MISSION

 

July 10, 2005

 

            After a period of drift while hauling a sea anchor, I have moved forwarded in a rush on several areas.  First I am settling into my home; Second, packing up and arranging for the next medical mission; Third visiting friends in a postponed round of promised visits; and fourth abruptly making some sweeping plans for squeezing in an adventure summer mid-Asian sporting trip to take place while I am “out of school”  and before Eritrea; and fifth, rapidly working up the writing projects for my doctoral program n fast forward mode, since it appears I may be gone after the next week’s now denser and more rapid paced schedule.

 

            First, I am now filling in the vacant master bedroom with a complete and very elegant “Vintage” classic bed and nightstand, all the mattresses, split box springs and beddings, down to and including new pillows, mattress pad, and the sham, sheets, pillow cases and flounce with the duvet and color coordinated scheme for the “Primrose Sprig “ paint scheme.  I have changed abruptly from temporizing as though I were waiting for some one or something else to move in to the spaces reserved for each, and followed my sister Shirl’s instructions to “maek of my house something that fits and reflects me.”  So, I also bought a Longchamps complete crystal collection to add twelve pieces each of crystal water glasses, highball (or juice) glasses and wine goblets, all in the classic Longchamps pattern that I already have four piece settings of, so I fulfilled her requirements to fill out a complete set of serving places for the large dinner parties I have not yet had in mind.  I added other furniture, such as the new nightstand to match the elegant leather headboard of the rather imposing master bedroom suite.  I am very happy with the way things are coming together in the rooms not yet finished, and even some of the outside fixtures and furnishings are filing in. It looks like I live here, and am not in the prolonged process of “just moving in.”

 

            Second, I have met with the team who will be going to Eritrea, including the anesthesia and nursing team and have packed some of the materia medica which is now set up in the medical mission storage room ready for distribution to the next mission to Eritrea and subsequent ones to follow in Mindanao and returns to Africa.

 

            Third, I had left form the large purchases, done al at once at Hecht’s, to drive to Sykesville, to be the first guest in the newly expanded home of Robert and Mary Killet, SCI officers as well as the couple who are SCI master measurers and among the most honored of the US hunters for the completion of their collection, now on display in their newly opened Game Room, where they had hosted me at dinner.  I admired the huge collection of trophies he has assembled and took a number of pictures which I will show at a later time to show you the extent of their collections. Besides a good evening, we also went over the wolverine, and on official measurement of the skull, the wolverine places well up in the top ten—perhaps about number four in the SCI record books. He needs only one more of the oxen, and two Asian sheep to get the super slams to put him on the top pinnacle of American hunter/collectors, and I had suggested to him we might join in for a future hunt.  I had told him that George Sevich had called me, and that something might come of an offer George had made to me in a recent email which might be for a hunt very soon.

 

            Fourth, I met with George Sevich after a flurry of phone calls, and he came over to Derwood, a visit that had been promised for some time but never carried out because of both of our schedules. He was going to take a few pictures of the trophies I had collected in each of my several Eurasian Expeditions hunts, and I had sent him still pictures in the past.  I had also sent in an article which is going to Magnum magazine about the Kazakhstan hunting adventure story, and he wants to assemble a good video of a difficult hunt with at marathoning mountaineer climbing into high country to hunt trophy Tur and wolves. There was a possibility of going to Kyrgyzstan or Azerbaijan, and now it seems that I should scramble as soon as my renewed passport arrives to get an Azerbaijani visa as well as the Eritrean visa, and I might change my flights to go first to mid-Asia and back through Frankfurt to come in to Eritrea in Africa from Asia.

 

            George has hired an experienced cameraman form Albuquerque New Mexico to go with me and film the entire experience, which he wants to emphasize is an “extreme hunt” in the truest sense, and not a bus ride up to an enclosed animal farm with a client being wheeled out to pop the target presented to him, but a vigorous and challenging true wilderness experience at the fittest level of free chase hunting.  As he and his son Peter made their first visit to Derwood, they were impressed with the Game Room and the trophies displayed, and made a DVD of me in impromptu speeches about each of the adventures that had resulted tin the collection of the trophy on display.  This would be integrated into several of the still photos also taken, and the whole would be put into a program for which he said I was a “natural” which he would like to use in promotion of the Eurasian Expeditions kind of hunting experience.  He already has a DVD of a Texan outfitter type named “Colorado Buck” for the colorful “American cowboy meets Eurasian Mongol” but now is appealing to a different clientele with an articulate naturalist who appreciates the hunting experience and the natural and cultural environment around the hunting experience, and not just the scoring on a specific animal as trophy—although that will be very much a part of the filming of this forthcoming DVD and TV production.  So, if this comes off as the change in plans now being worked on, you may be able to join in this experience in an upscaled version of the caribou hunt in the northern Quebec Territories that was aired on Maine Outdoors TV about a decade ago.  Before I have too many more decades slip by, George wishes to have me doing a high climb in pursuit of remote wilderness big game to show the kind of fitness and adventure that can be expected in the “extreme hunt” in these remote central Asian mountain hunts.  We will see what can be arranged, since there is an immediate opportunity, since the cameraman is already scheduled along with the hunting outfitters in Azerbaijan along with an unusual abundance of giant trophy Tur—a kind of mid-Asian mountain goat.  With a cancellation of the hunter who was planning to go on the basis of the fitness that would be required not coming forth from the original booking, there will be a slight discount for me, but no where nearly like the outrageously expensive sheep hunts of the Marco Polo variety that I cannot afford.  So, we will see, if I can rearrange flights and packing to go in through Asia, and get the rifle back home via that cameraman, as I go on to Eritrea.

 

            Fifth, I got one more of the five outstanding papers required for the doctoral program completed, and will have to complete each of the rest before I can take off, since they would each be due when I am gone and before my return from Eritrea directly into the weekend residence session of the ELDP.  I should further also have the presentation made up for the Halsted Society, which I have never assembled before and will be due in early September around Labor Day. 

 

I must remain at home on Tuesday for the HVAC people to come to repair the one thermostat/control monitor for the major cooling/heating zone of the house which quit working the week my sisters were here, so I will try to do some more writing when I am homebound.  I must also be around home on Saturday when the Hecht delivery and assembly of the bed, mattress and all the furniture will be scheduled.  I already have all the bedding accoutrements already in the master bedroom awaiting the new completion pieces, which look very elegant together in the Hecht showroom as the “top of the line” in the Vintage collection.

 

I made it to the early morning Seneca Creek Trail run along the wilderness trails that Ed Schulze has been so carefully maintaining and improving with the help of other volunteers.  I felt a little bit stiff and creaky on getting up early after returning late from the Killet’s wonderful hospitality, which followed a brisk eight mile run on Saturday after the completion of one of my ELDP papers.  I knew what I would find when I came to the Seneca Creek Park as Ed waited for the runners—he had done a hundred mile run on Friday along the same trails, when they were in flooded out status, as Seneca Creek had overflowed, and the runners were actually required to swim across the flooded out stream at several points.  Despite this ultra long run, Ed was less creaky than I after “taking it easy” for a full day on Saturday.  He is leaving next with his family to the beach at Rehoboth and Bethany on Maryland’s Atlantic coast.  He can shrug off long distance runs easily, and today, he outran me in the short eight miler we put in along the muddy river bank trails next to the flooded out “Black Mill," millhouse,, one of the classic pre-Civil War mills we pass along the Greenway running trails, which are like a remote wilderness, right down the middle of the very populous Montgomery County.

 

So, yes, the times, they are a’changin’.  Since change they will be doing anyway, I have decided to take charge of a few of the changes rather than be floated about by most of them, and I am going to take off in some form of ride along, while I can still shape events—and, now, even my homestead, according to a few plans of my own choosing.  And, I, much like others who have written to me recently, might add—“And, it is about time, too!”