05-OCT-A-2

 

THE ARMY TEN-MILER AND MICHAEL’S BIRTHDAY START OFF THE FIRST OF FALL

 

October 1—3, 2005

 

            The dry, clear, cool sunny fall days are almost painfully beautiful and are getting poignantly short.  I now have to sweep the decks twice a day of falling leaves.  The record setting dry September (total precipitation measured eleven hundredths of an inch for the record-setting dry month) has meant that the leaves are not turning into the glorious colors I associate with this time of year, but are falling green, and are not notably changing on the trees as yet.  It has meant that with shorter daylight exposure in combination with the lack of rain, I have not needed to mow the lawn since the thorough job I did on return from Eritrea and before deployment to New Orleans.  This has meant for farmers in Maryland (as reported by Bill Webster for his brother who farms his land where we will hunt in December) that their fast start to a good year has dried up, and in contrast to the usual fall problem of having too much water to get their machinery into the fields to harvest the soybeans and corn, a good deal of it has withered in the field.  The second punch has come with the $3.29 price of diesel fuel—the same fuel and the same price as I just agreed to in a contract with Petro to heat my house and hot water.  As has been said before, “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.”

 

            And, for me, I am sitting in the Game Room looking out at the beautiful fall day through the tall windows and being grateful that I am here, ever mindful from very recent experience that on this spectrum the parts of Africa I have worked in for two extended periods this year, and the Gulf Coast of New Orleans Louisiana have gravitated toward the negative send of that teetering totter, while I am above the fulcrum on my end.  Life is good, despite the niggling annoyances of total replacement of all my home appliances and the cleanup not yet completed, and the still high costs of fossil fuel which permeates everything in the economy we all live in daily.  But, let’s look at what is going right:

 

LIFE IS GOOD—

IF CHALLENGING—

WHICH IS THE SAME STATEMENT REPEATED!

 

            I am running—long, often and well.  (More on that with the unique running earlier today of the 21st ever running of the Army Ten Miler—largest ten mile race in America.)

 

 I am a graduate student, who, though behind, is digging in to an accelerated run through the extensive obtuse readings from a start in the backfield from my AWOL position, and pulling out small inspirations that I am able to gel into papers produced “just-in-time.”

 

 I have students who find their interaction with me rewarding—as reported in the recent GW Progress, which also carried the reports of my response being “first-on-the-scene” in Louisiana in Katrina’s wake.  There will be a report of the Eritrean mission on Thursday (05-Oct-A-3) to which a lot of “wannabes” are coming to learn how they can get into the rewarding thrills of an African mission as they have heard form their classmates.

 

 I have just received from Jill Seamans the newsletters of the ongoing Trachoma Surgery project in Sudan that is picking up steam now that the peace process is coming about and the trainees that I had taught and the supplies I had left are being regularly used in a “magnifier” of the efforts we started in Old Fangak six months ago.  I had earlier written to Larry Conway after repeated requests which had arrived when I was in Louisiana to nominate Jill in Sudan and Rick Hodes in Ethiopia for the MMHOF. (05-Sep-B-7)

 

 A mission is already scheduled for Mindanao in January when I may be able to also carry the “Explorers Club flag” (05-Sep-B-9) up to the summit of Mt Kitanglad—the second highest mountain peak in the Philippines.    I have gathered both supplies and students and residents for this coming annual Philippine excursion, with many more seeking this surgical bonanza of efficient experience in helping hundreds of patients within the two weeks, then the thousands more I hope to offer the chance to prevent goiter if I can entice the Lipiodal supplies from the French manufacturer, and all of this climaxed with the climb up the tropical rainforest mountain at the conclusion of this year’s expedition. 

 

A full schedule of proposed medical missions (05-Sep-B-8) is submitted to Larry Conway and the MMHOF for the coming year with the possibility that we may be able to offer partial student scholarship support (05-Oct-A-4).  A full team is preparing a return and continuing relationship with Eritrea in the next year, which may enable us to encourage graduate programs in everything from surgery graduate residencies to music and cultural programs from proposals being put forth by close friends who may accompany me.    

 

The two new appliances downstairs, an upright freezer and matching upright refrigerator/freezer are installed and I now have for the first time in over a month refrigeration in my home so I can buy milk, meat and orange juice, after all other such supplies were discarded along with the taped-shut appliances that held them.  The big Lowe’s truck that delivered them apparently did not leave Derwood unscathed but snapped an overhead wire for which PEPCO responded to my call at night to string it up out of the way of vehicles, but the PEPCO repairman/driver told me two things: first, I shall have to call Verizon to have them replace it, since it is a telephone line and I might get the equivalent of their “heavy-up” service to change to a fiberoptic cable for the future “information highway to my home; and second, he has lived here all his life and had no idea that such an idyllic “Eden in the Woods” was tucked back here within the park.  I told him that “Eden” is the original estate name in the county land records from which this large lot, Candlewood Estates and the park itself were all created, and despite the best efforts of the developers, this is the way it will remain.

 

On Monday, I will have DG Liu Contractors appear at seven in the morning to begin the repair to the walls and Mexican tiles of the Viking’s toppling over me and into them.  At 9:00 AM the long-awaited C & C Complete Cleaning Service will return after a month of the dehumidifiers and air scrubbers blowing and actually clean the areas in the kitchen alcove which is why the Viking was pulled out in the first place to make its precarious and treacherous assault on me.  The big unit is standing in the center of the kitchen as a moldy behemoth with a broken hinge door, a trashed almost new unit with four more years of warranty on it.  Since it is a “Professional Unit” a simple repair of the door and hinge would make it serviceable for someone else, since a new replacement will be forthcoming from the Great Indoors of the identical model from the same place to be installed with the same “ice maker” water line as will be installed for the basement Frigidaire at the same time.  So, on Monday the battered Viking will be hauled out by the Contractors outside, and I have corresponded with both Bill Webster and the organization “Dinners for Homeless Women” who feed 125 women a day and could use a refurbished “Professional Viking” top-of-the-line unit.  So, the prolonged recovery after the micro-cosm of the kind visited on the Gulf Coast, with a month of power outage here while I was away in Azerbaijan and Africa is going to be slowly put back together after the drywall and tile are replaced, painted and the new replacement Viking installed.

 

So, as I had said, life is good.  And compared with the very much longer and larger repair projects to be undertaken in the Gulf Coast where I had worked a week ago, or Eritrea in the Africa where I had worked a month ago, or Sudan where I had worked six months ago, or Niger where I have not yet worked, but where starvation is approaching an epic scale and may be calling to me in the near future—I have had it easy.  And, just how well I have been able to run along through the devastations that are affecting the neighbors all around me, read on about my life “on the run.”

 

THE 21ST RUNNING OF THE CLASSIC

ARMY TEN MILER,

LARGEST TEN MILE RACE IN AMERICA—

WITH A SURPRISE THAT WILL MAKE THIS ONE UNIQUE!

 

I had kicked into gear on return from New Orleans where I could not run—except once, and only then between the guard posts on the periphery of our encampment at Meadowcrest Hospital which was a limited course from one to another of seven guard sentries—run only once when that too was canceled because of neighborhood gunfire.  So, upon my return, I put on increasingly long and at first slow miles, at Needwood, the Capital Mall, and the C & O Towpath.  I was not without entertainment.  A few deer were as close to me as the average house pet on several occasions, and if that “warm and fuzzy” image does good things for you, stay with it, since the camera I carry on these crisp fall runs with sunny hot afternoons also recorded that other creatures I had encountered.  A very large black snake crawled out to greet me looking like it had just tried to use a hair de-curler and stopped half-way. This is a very long and very black snake that eats rats and other rodents so he is a good resource to keep on station.  I also snapped photos of another snake which I can show, a harmless garter snake, but only for contrast with the much more impressive specimen—as sizable copperhead.  The latter was somewhat obscured when I overran it, but I took a few photos of it as it slithered off before I had come too close to it, and tried to wave off a woman running alone who came up behind me.  I tried to explain why I was waiving her off, but she seemed to be unfamiliar with English as a young Oriental woman and seemed genuinely terrified—not of the unseen snake, but of me, trying to catch her attention as she was “zoned out” in her own space.  She ran away hurriedly, and I thought “Well, at least I had diverted her form the snake.”  When I was returning toward the Lake Needwood parking lot where I had left the Audi, I saw her there, and this time she was all smiles, since she had apparently encountered the snake off the path on the rerun trip and finally figured out why I had waived her off the trail.  “Hsieh-hsieh” to you too!

 

On Saturday, I reluctantly drove downtown (I am making fewer elective trips and try to consolidate them to do several errands on the same thankful these days) to go to Marriott Crystal City Gateway Ball room to pick up the packet for the Army Ten Miler.  I had parked at GWUMC in my usual space and had taken Metro, as suggested, to get to the Hotel.  I got the packet, did not need the Champion Chip (since I have my own) and got back to Metro’s Crystal City entrance to hear the bad news.  The Metro would be running one way operations alternately, on the same track, since one was closed for emergency evacuation of someone who had been struck by a train with EMT crews trying to get access on the disabled track.   So, the afternoon I had hoped to be writing ELDP papers had turned into an all-day packet pickup excursion –but, again, consider the others considerably more inconvenienced than I by encountering a Metro train.

 

I had a very upbeat call from Virginia preparing for the opening hunt as I was prepping for the last race I will enter before the October 30 running of my 25th MCM—my 100th marathon, God willing.  I told her I would be going to the Pentagon as early as she was preparing to be going to set up the hunt and the brunch, as she was looking and feeling her best, despite the crunch in her own circumstances from fuel costs and a big diesel truck as she makes round trips to the barn and to the choir in DesMoines that she has taken on and so much enjoys.

 

In the cool pre-dawn darkness I drove to GWU and got on the Metro that opened especially early to accommodate 25,000 runners and hangers-on in the very big and very extensively organized Army Ten Miler.  I took off my warm-up suit and checked it into the bag claim area and walked through the large crowds to the Green arched balloons—ranked by color according to the anticipated finish times based on your previous records in this race—so I was one step behind the invited elite runners.

 

The Army artillery signal corps blasted away with their heavy howitzers—the same team that shoots off twenty-one gun salutes for visiting heads of state as the Golden Knights parachute team floated overhead dodging a swarm of helicopters.  “A Hooah!” and we were underway.  I just learned that this grunting call of the marines and other leatherneck devil dogs is not a reflection of their average IQ, but represents HUA—“Heard, Understood, Acknowledged” as receipt of orders.

 

I had sprinted out after the mats which clocked me in on my Champion Chip, and passed quite a number of those in the front lines. I was doing well in the cool clear morning as it was beginning to climb to the later sunny and hot day that spectators would enjoy.  I averaged seven minute miles as I passed the mile markers and their clocks, which I thought was too fast a pace to be sustainable, but I kept at it, since I felt fine.  The usual twinges that I run through were just there to remind me of the mere mortal who runs but needs to get above and beyond such pains and focus on a longer goal—and I pushed on.  I threaded over the Potomac, and through DC and passed the five mile point in under forty minutes, at about seven and a half minute pace.  This would have made this the fastest ten miler of the “Trifecta” this year (the Cherry Blossom Ten Miler in April in the brutal cold wind I ran with Joe, and the hot, and steamy rain of the Annapolis Ten Miler in August on return from Eritrea.)  A fellow I had recognized by ear came up behind me.  He is a pleasant black young man with “Running for Jesus” inked on his singlet.  He plays a flute-like recorder, and in the past has run at full speed with a fife or piccolo—and he is good.  He played the Battle Hymn of the Republic, Amazing Grace, IF you’re Happy and You Know it Clap Your Hands (and several hundred runners and spectators within ear shot, fell in to the chorus) and the theme of Chariots of Fire—all expertly played in shrill marching tunes at a pace when most people would be out of breath or out of breath control as we were still under eight minute miles.  He kept me going—and I gave him High Fives and snapped his picture with my camera;  he shouted back “Good to see you again my Good Brother, God Bless You!”   Ah, runners; yes they are different!

 

I pulled up hard and outran even the shrill piping that kept a good rhythm going, and crossed a 7 mile marker that showed what I predicted to be a 74 minute finish if I could hold the pace, as it seemed I might be able to do.  I put my head down (which I know I should not do since it is always a later “pain in the neck”) and bulled forward, pulling up to and reeling by runners I had seen ahead of me, including a few long-legged women who were good athletes.  I looked up to see if I could spot the next mile markers and could not.  They did not appear when I expected them, but I was on pace and kept going, realizing I was closing in on my expected finish time.  I hit the 70 minute point and a woman spectator along the course yelled “A mile and a half to go!”  “Yeah, right!  I said to the fellow next to me, “I think she is off by about a mile and a half!”  He agreed, but the Pentagon was not visible, and abruptly as we crossed the bridge, I realized that the waters beneath my feet were not the Potomac but the Tidal Basin.  “This is the Cherry Blossom Ten Mile course and the Marine Corps route” I shouted, and the puzzled runners next to me agreed, including a few veterans who added “I should have finished by now!”

 

Up ahead I saw an Army uniformed man holding up a sign—not the well-positioned fixed signs we had along the way.  I looked and it said “One Mile” and he added not very helpfully “One more mile to go, Sir!”  Is this a joke?   I was almost at 80 minutes as I spurted by him to finally see the Pentagon and a hastily re-erected arch of balloons that announced the finish line—or, at least A finish line, and not the one that I had seen before the race with four lanes of incoming finishers over the timing mats.  There were no mats.  No one was there to tear off the named tags on the bottoms of the bibs.  A young short blonde woman near me was having trouble and saying “I cannot make it!”  I grabbed her hand and pulled her along, saying “Now is the time for the kick to the finish!”  “But, I am kicking!” she protested.  I hauled her by the arm across the finish line as the official photographers clicked away, but I saw no mats. I never saw her again either, but then I heard an announcement. 

 

“Congratulations!” The 2005 Army Ten Miler was eleven and a half miles long.  You have all been good sports about it.  The race was canceled on advice of the DC Police Department because of a Security Breach and there will be no timing or winners or records set today as it was hoped.  Thank you for your understanding, and I hope you had fun!”

 

The story seems to be that after the very big pack of serous runners took off and were all in hot pursuit of a PR or a new course record, a suspicious package was spotted under a bridge we would be crossing.  All runners and spectators had been screened electronically and patted down at the entrance to the large “secured area” at the Pentagon where all the festivities would take place (“a target rich environment” as one of the military types had put it) but the course ahead had been patrolled and this new and unidentified package was found under a bridge along the course.  Welcome to the new age of running high pressure and high visibility races—the world’s largest Ten Miler—in our nation’s contemporary capital, where an announcement had been made after the invocation and Star Spangled Banner before the howitzers sounded, that fifteen US Army runners were also starting simultaneously in Iraq in concert with their buddies here in Washington DC, and were running with a security contingent to insure their safety there as we had witnessed here.  At this writing, I have no idea what the package under the bridge represents, and it may have been as simple as someone jettisoning their trash since the city of Washington is never cleaner than after a big run in which the troops are turned loose with orders to “police the grounds” and pick up everything that has accumulated there since the last big race!

 

So, such are the costs of the “security society” in which we live and move—whether in the sniping of the Louisiana losers at the relief workers, or suicide bombers in Baghdad, or garbage disposers in DC.

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MICHAEL!

I WILL BE DOWN TO HELP YOU CELEBRATE

IN ANOTHER WEEK!

 

“The first Monday in October” is the constitutionally required opening day for the Supreme Court past which I ran on Thursday a few hours after the impressive Greek palace came “under new management” with John Roberts now ready to call into session the highest court of the land—a new Chief Justice with two first names.  But, I will celebrate this day as the first one in a new year for Michael—Happy Birthday, My Son!