05-0CT-C-4
RAINY WEEKEND UNPACKING AND DEALING WITH DERWOOD DETAILS AS THE OVERWHELMING WORKLOAD OF THE ELDP ACCUMULATES
October 21—24, 2005
It was not at all easy working my way back to Washington and to Derwood. I had spent the day on Thursday going to Tom Freitag the taxidermist, dropping off both elk heads for full shoulder mounts with open mouth in bugling position, then off to the meat cutter’s place where I have been twice before, unloading the eight elk quarters out of the Durango lined with the tarps. Eric Sarin, who was my medical student at GW and whom I got into the University of Colorado surgical residency is now the chief resident. He had requested that I give him a call when I was back in town, and he and I could meet and we could swap the plans he has made.
We met for lunch at the Squealing Pig, a kind of lunch bar with which the area around Cherry Creek is heavily littered, waited on by the kinds of Colorado chicks who come out to be ski bums a good part of the year. Eric is thriving in this environment and is now the chief resident, living with a plastic surgeon named Erica—conveniently enough—and he is making plans for the three years following his chief residency. He will spend one year at Denver Health under Gene long enough to sit for his Critical Care Boards, then he will apply for a cardiac surgery fellowship. He has written the chapters I had given him and he is still working on a few papers that he had started form working with Gene. He will arrange for the Grand Rounds I had promised him during the time of his chief residency, and he will look into the date for that event.
He had his beeper going off; after we swapped reminiscences of the times we had shared in Himachal India in the Kinaur and Pamirs, and also at Nyankunde before it was overrun in the Congolese War, and then my recommendation of him for the DTMH at the London School. He left on a beautiful warm fall day to go back to the hospital, and I packed up at Gene’s where I left a note for Sarah after seeing that she had left on errands and only the cleaning crew was there. So, I made my way back early to the DIA to turn in the Durango with still one third of a tank of gas—all of which I had prepaid at only $87 per tank. But, I was on time, and thanks to the careful positioning of the tarps, it did not look like a crime scene with any blood spattered around—which, like Derwood, I might have to explain was not form any human, but came form venison, and some form Alaska salmon and some form Chesapeake Rockfish.
With the help of a friendly check in clerk at the desk who was also a hunter, I got the bag checked in despite it being overweight, and cured that by removing my boots and carrying those to get it under fifty pounds. The rifle had to be specially handled by going to the security folk and giving them a key to inspect it. Having done all of this, I was still two hours early for boarding the flight, so I used that time adjacent to an electrical outlet to power up the laptop and edit out the photo card from the digital camera and save to the laptop the several hundred very wonderful pictures of the hunt, right behind the hundred or more of the adorable shots of the twins form San Antonio. I boarded the flight and got into my window seat, then got the bad word.
There was excess oil consumption in the port engine of the 757, and they would have to power it up for an hour to see if maintenance cleared the aircraft for departure. It did not, so we missed our “window” for takeoff. We sat there long enough for maintenance to throw in the towel on this aircraft and decide we needed a change of planes, so we all de-planed and had to queue up for re-boarding. We had to await a similar plane coming in, and when we finally all got re-seated ( I next to a young woman form Manaus Brazil making her first American visit and surprised that I knew about Manaus and its Japanese landmarks so recently toured from my Amazon cruise) and then we rolled out to the taxi way. One of the features of United is that they have the open radio on channel nine of the communications with the tower. It was soon apparent that we would not be going anywhere in this new plane, since the official word was that the weight of the aircraft had to be confirmed from the headquarters in Chicago, and they had still not sent back the message as to the aircraft’s weight as to fuel and payload. Finally it came through that there were eleven passengers on board---and the 757 was full—so they were 141 passengers short in their count at headquarters and we could not depart until this discrepancy was cleared. So, another hour was taken up getting this computer glitch resolved—moving our already late arrival in Dulles back into the small hours of the morning getting larger—long after any other air traffic had quit for the night in IAD.
When finally we took off, I could hear the cell phones all around me telling receivers on the other end that they would be coming in as weary road warriors after 2:00 AM. I would be lugging the heavy bag and the free-swinging boots I was carrying besides the rifle case. And I would be going through the cold and wet night to Derwood left exactly as it re-appeared now, with only one exceptional improvement—there was now a Viking refrigerator in the kitchen, still covered with its “new car like” vinyl cover over the stainless steel---but not installed. ON the front of the door is a big sign in orange (not on the previous refrigerator) “Caution! Top Heavy! Do not open doors until the unit is securely fastened into the wall. It can tip over and cause death or serous injury!”
They are telling me? Of course it needs to be installed before I put anything into it. It has a warning on it which I, for one, hardly need re-enforced. I have paid for the installation twice over, once to the Great Indoors which I had also pre-paid for the delivery fiasco which I had insisted that they refund, and also to the contractor, who could not find how the previous one had been bolted in, but had arranged for a plumber to connect the ice maker to the cold water line for the ice maker in the new downstairs refrigerator/freezer. So, I turned ht cold water back on from the hot water heater downstairs. Good news—now there will be ice.
Bad news! Now there is no hot water! So, once again, I am sitting in a rather extravagant new house re-renovated, with a shower stall in which I must take a bucket of water heated on the stove and carry this hot water from the fire and pour it over my head as I have done in any number of third world countries until the process is corrected here in newly redeveloped Derwood!
Of course the air scrubber and dehumidifier machines are sitting downstairs pumping at full speed consuming great quantities of electricity to no purpose. There have been several calls to get them out, and each had been responded to by a date certain as to when they will be right on over to get them out—Friday, Monday, Tuesday, and they are all still here. The Viking instructions on how to fix it in place with many warnings about not opening anything until it is secured have been faxed to D G Liu, but no one has come here to attempt it and they are awaiting a plumber to come on over and to check out the non-functioning water heater.
AFTER THE DRIEST SEPTEMBER EVER RECORDED,
THE WETTEST OCTOBER ON RECORD FOLLOWS
As always when I return from a trip, there are many branches down and this time leaves area also scattered all over the decks, but not turned in color, just knocked down by rain. So, I have walked around in the drizzle picking up the downfalls, as it seems that the fall “color tour” will have to await next year. I had called Bill Webster, who will be coming across the Bay Bridge, now for the third time in his life, to visit me and to carry over the large oak pedestals I have had made for the fox and the wolverine mounts in the Game Room. He may also being over the Weber Grille that I now call the “Webster Grille” since Bill repaired it after the grille took a direct hit form the Hurricane Isabel’s downfalls last year plus one. I have learned that the Tur hide and skull and hoofs are in North Carolina where the hide has been tanned and now if I send them money they can ship it forward to Gina Tyler at Eastern Shore Taxidermy. There is also the hope that I can go with Craig to a farm owned by a nurse who has a barn on the property overlooking fields in which the coveted Sika Deer congregate. I have been trying to get one of those to complete my Eastern Shore trophy collection, so we will await the right season, whether muzzle loader or rifle or maybe even archery, so that I can add that to my other sought after quarries in this fall’s hunts since I now have a lot of freezer capacity to fill up.
I met with Howell Simmons, the gentleman who had sat next to me in the flight to Denver as I was going elk hunting and he was going with a three-year-old golden lab to hunt geese in Alberta Canada on the northern edge of the flyway, as a field trial and showcase for his bird dog. He had talked hunting with me at first, then we talked about missions and he wanted me to meet Pastor Jupe from Kigali Rwanda, which his United Methodist Church in Virginia sponsors. We met by my pre-arrangement at the River Inn for lunch and it now seems likely that I will be going at some time next spring to Kigali and Gisenyi Rwanda on a medical mission which I am now organizing with him to coincide at least partly with the GWUMC spring vacation since the least several had been scheduled around the Haiti trip which has been canceled three of the last five times I have booked it. So, I have a string of these missions already booked and the next one now being ticketed is my return to Mindanao, so I am getting a full slate already for 2006, with an additional stop in Toledo Ohio at the MMHOF to introduce my successors, whom I nominated for the MMHOF induction in the coming year. Even though the date for that appearance in Toledo overlaps by a day the March meeting of the ELDP (as it did this year) and that this will be a frenetic period of time since it is the last meeting before the Comps, I would like to try to go to Toledo, since the inductees would each be my nominees. We will see how that works out, since that is also the time I am requested to put together a medical mission to Kigali Rwanda. So, the Spring looks even busier than this time of fall! And, now, to work on my Mid-term exam before the multiple papers which I wilt yr to do while awaiting the starting howitzer that will signal the cold running of the Marine Corps Marathon this “Fall-Back” weekend!