Wee wee wee

There's a German pastry shop in Arlington that is a fun place to spend a half hour.

It has all kinds of marzipan creatures.

Bring a book of poetry and enjoy coffee, crumpets and company there.

This little piggy cried wee wee wee all the way home.

Getting in some miles

It was a good weekend for running.  On Saturday I ran westbound on the W&OD Trail from my house for two and a half miles and returned, burning up an extra three quarters of a mile in my neighborhood before I drove over to Bluemont Park in Arlington to run two miles with my old running buddy David, who is trying to return to running after some serious injuries.  (The sky over Arlington on Sunday;)

We accomplished the two miles on the W&OD Trail in about eleven-minute miles talking about our woes with our children and divorce.  The two seem to be related for men our ages whose family lives are ripped asunder when the woman gets a divorce lawyer and determinedly sets about eviscerating the father of her children like slicing up a butterfly, pinned wings outspread to a plywood board, with an exacto knife.  Yep, that's how I still feel about it after all these years.  (Bluemont Park on Saturday.)

On Sunday I ran 6.55 miles through Arlington, starting out on the W&OD Trail and then running through the parts in Northern Arlington where I used to live.  I'm signed up for a half-marathon in September so I wanted to get in a run that equaled half that distance.  (Charles A. Stewart Park on Sunday.)

Two weeks ago I ran five times for 25 miles total, and last week I ran five times for 29.7 miles total.  So far this week I have run 14.5 miles in two days, projecting ahead to thirty miles for the week, and we'll see if  my chronically injured left ankle will stand the strain.  (Tuckahoe Park on Sunday.)

What you see when running

Although it's been a mostly temperate summer, we've had a hot, humid spell here at the end.   I've been struggling mightily with a cold which has invaded my chest and I haven't run for a week to aid my recovery.

Yesterday I finally got back out there, running a mile in the blistering, sopping heat of the noon hour with a running buddy who was returning to work after maternity leave.  She hadn't been running either for awhile, and we walked the mile back.

My last run before yesterday was a few miles about a week ago in Falls Church and Arlington, in the morning before the day heated up.  I was enjoying watching the people I ran past, other runners going by, a househusband walking and cleaning up after the household dog, a Muslim praying on his mat behind the 7-11.

At about 7 a.m. a cherry red Ford Mustang convertible drove by with its top down, a youthful chariot for an old woman, the roadmap of lines criss-crossing the driver's face belying her wind-tossed bleached blonde hair.  It sure was a nice brand new car.

The Office is Closed Till Monday...

I went running with John this morning, 4 miles on the W&OD Trail from Bluemont eastwards, in 41:21.  The new normal.

Half a mile out we ran under an elevated roadway, pretty much at stream level.  That would be the Four-Mile Creek.

As we ran under the bridge, my attention was drawn to a fellow setting up a picture with his cell phone in the darkness.  I'm a jerk who doesn't want to ruin other people's shots so I yelled, "Coming through!"

I should have been looking the entire scene over.  I almost ran over a raccoon there on the roadway, that he was setting up a picture of.

That's not normal.  Raccoons that don't shy from humans, that sit immobile while people are four feet away, are rabid in my humble estimation, and should be given wide berth.

I was glad I was able to skip over the immobile beast at the last moment and wasn't scratched or bit.  I have no desire to go through a regime of rabies shots. 

I wish the jerk setting up his shot hadn't been setting up passersbys for a month of painful shots because of his lack of understanding about situational awareness.  As John and I emerged on the other side of the bridge, we called out to approaching runners, "There's a rabid raccoon on the trial under the bridge, be careful!"

Most runners were wearing headphones and didn't hear our warnings.  It was a waste of breath on our part.

Coming back half an hour later, the same raccoon was there, sitting immobile in the middle of the trail under the bridge as a parade of humans passed by.  This is an animal,, though docile appearing, I wanted to keep far away from as possible.

We got back to our starting point, Bluemont, and I went off to find the Park Ranger at that location but I couldn't find anyone there.  So I called the Falls Church police non-emergency number on my cell phone, because that was the only emergency number I'd entered in it.  (Bluemont is in Arlington.)

 The woman who answered transferred me to the Arlington PD once I'd explained the situation.  You know, like, if anyone gets bit by this thing there'd be a response by the Arlington emergency response of one or two dozen responders.

The Arlington PD weren't too interested in my report of a dangerous animal on the BUSY W&OD Trail.  They transferred me to Animal Welfare which had a voicemail advising me they were closed directed me to leave a message which they'd access on Monday.

Losing interest in this Good Samaritan project, I called one last number, a number on the bulletin board there which directed me to call it to report anything on the trail.  Somebody, in Reston, answered and tried to pawn me off on calling yet another number.

I said, "Please pass on the information about the dangerous animal squatting on the middle of the trail at milepost 3."  "Will do," was the response.

Parking in Arlington

I'm having trouble with regulators these days.  Yesterday I enjoyed a lunch with a friend at a restaurant in Arlington. 

Arlington is notorious for its parking enforcement.  They make you want to never go there.

After lunch, I returned to my car and was standing there with my driver's door open, one foot inside the car, waiting for my friend to come get in.  He was lagging behind twenty feet or so on the sidewalk, coming and plainly in sight.

An Arlington Meter Maid swung by in the traffic lane on her Segway.  Vroom vroom look at me I'm an "Officer" and I'm bad.

While I stood there, standing with my car door open, one foot inside, waiting for my passenger who was in sight mere feet away and coming, she wrote out a ticket (they punch in or scan in your license plate, hit a code and out pops the ticket in seconds) and tendered it to me while I stood there, standing with my car, door open, foot inside waiting for my clearly visible passenger.

"This is my car," I said.  "And that is your ticket," she said smugly.

"I'm not parking, I'm standing," I said.  "There are no signs prohibiting standing."

"You're seven minutes over," she said sneeringly.  "$35 for seven minutes, five dollars a minute, three hundred dollars an hour to park in Arlington?" I asked while I still stood there with my driver's door open and my foot inside the car waiting for my passenger who was plainly visible a few feet away to get in the car.

"Take it up with the traffic board," she said.  "Do you know how hard it is to stand on this machine all day?"

I had no sympathy for her for her complaining, probably she should come down off her mount a little to address her prodigious frame.  She swirled around in the traffic lane on her Segway like the Lone Ranger rearing up Silver and roared off at twelve mph, swerving around the corner in search of quota fulfillment.

Welcome to Arlington, Virginia, friend.  My weekend running buddy who lives in Arlington assures me that Traffic Court in Arlington is merely Kangaroo Court where they'll just assess the printed penalty and then assess you 15% more in court costs for having the temerity to come in.

A revealing early morning run

I woke up at 6:30 this morning and decided to go for a run. It had been awhile since I have run through Falls Church and Arlington early in the morning.

Down the W&OD I ran eastbound, entering Arlington, until I turned left when I came to Lee Highway. Running over the Interstate on the highway bridge, I continued eastbound on the north sidewalk of Lee Highway towards the bank behind which lay the small park I was going to circle around to get headed back to Falls Church via Lincoln Avenue.

Commuter traffic was starting to pick up as it was now about ten minutes past seven, and I started noticing drivers in the morning sunlight, observing their foibles. A convertible pulled out of a no-outlet cul-de-sac just in front of me, driven by a person with a wrinkle-lined face but a big hank of bleached platinum blonde hair which belied her obvious old age.

After I returned to my town, before I went home to shower I ran up the hill past the first school I ever attended, the sole car parked in the school lot attesting to the earliness of the day. Running early in the morning reveals all kinds things if you are observant.

A Birthday Wish

I want to wish my old friend a happy birthday and express my thanks, and say good luck in the future because you will need it, I'm sorry to say.

Arlington's Ridge Road

Arlington Ridge Road is as it sounds, a long hilly road that offers a magnificent view of the District stretching out underneath it to the east, past the Potomac. We ran along it a lot in the recently-concluded DCRRC 10K/10M Group Training Program, for which I was a roving coach. I loved going up there because I like to do hills on 6-10 mile runs; it throws variety and difficulty into the workout.

The houses up there are magnificent, in the million dollar range, I imagine. Even now after the meltdown. They're big, usually white and columned, and nicely spaced out. Between the imposing structures you can see snatches of the Washington Monument, the Capitol, and the Lincoln as you run past.

Lately, practically each front yard up there has been festooned with campaign signs. And guess what they all say? McCain/Palin. Even though Northern Virginia is not the real America because it's going to deliver Virginia into the blue column for the first time since 1964.

As we ran by each week, I joked with other runners that a midnight sign-gathering foray might be in order. (Just kidding! I wouldn't do that.) Practically anywhere else in Arlington, Obama signs pre-dominate. It's clear up there, though, what wealth does to political preference. (Right: This is part of the Not-Real America, the District as seen from Northern Virginia.)

But there is one funky house up there that sports an Obama sign. Just one. That house is a little different from the rest, sort of angled into its large lot, so it affords passerbys a better view of the vista below. It's more ramshackle than the rest too, and has vans and old VW buses out front instead of sleek long black sedans with tinted windows. I call it the hippie house. Maybe they grew up in the 60s and made their money in a dot.com instead of in the 80s and making their money managing or mis-managing other people's money.

I wonder if the occupants of the hippie house have to replace their Obama signs each morning in that little blue island in the sea of red up there.

I saw the papers Dad.

"Mom showed me your draft visitation order, Dad. I saw that it called for me to be at your house every other Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I think it should only list every other Saturday. I'll come over more, but Mom said it's easier to get more time later than to try to visit less often once an order is in place. That's over 150 days, almost half the year. That's too much to commit to, because I might have stuff to do."

We were at a restaurant about a month after Sharon had taken our three children out of the house on a pretext, demanded that I leave before she would return with them and then filed for divorce. This was my second meal with my child since then. In a month, I could count the number of hours I had spent with him on one hand.

"Unfortunately you're a minor, son, and you're not allowed to set the schedule, or even supposed to see the draft pleadings being exchanged. It's not close to being half the time because it's only every other Friday evening to Sunday evening. And if you have places to go, I'll take you there. After all, I live only two miles away, in your boyhood home, and everyone will have their own bedrooms again."

"Well, she said since it affected me I should have a say in it. She said you'd be like this. Why won't you respect my wishes?"

This is one way PAS is perpetrated, wherein the custodial parent alienates the child from the targeted parent by convincing the adolescent that the other parent is too rigid or inflexible or controlling or domineering or uncaring (choose whatever word you'd like) to respect the desires of the child. The draft schedule, which never should have been shown to him, called for visitation every other weekend from 6 p.m. Friday to 8 p.m. on Sunday, 50 hours, which represents 14.9% of the 336 hours every two weeks.

This child nevermore stayed over at my house. His counselor, Meg Sullivan, LCSW, also counseled his Mother. I didn't know about this until after the divorce litigation began. It took over a year for a judge to order this grotesque conflict to cease.

During the divorce litigation, my son told people he was "afraid" to be in my presence, especially when he spoke with me because of my "tone." This isn't the way boys speak. (Another son, an All-Star football player, told people he would never play sports again because I had "crushed" his "spirit." As the story went, he told me that he had scored a touchdown and before I praised him, I'd asked if his team had won. Apparently, this had "crushed his spirit.")

During the custody trial, my minor children had faxed a letter to the Judge's chambers stating their custodial preferences. This isn't the way children act.

My son never went to college. He changed his name to her name on his 21st birthday. He hasn't communicated with any relative of mine in over half a decade. He lives in a basement bedroom in her vacant house, which is currently on the market.

PAS, a form of child abuse, is alive and thriving in this country.

Life it is

Paul Newman is dead. I watched Cool Hand Luke at my all-male prep boarding school in the 60s, when he famously said, "Shakin' that bush, boss," and he ate the 50th egg. None of my friends to whom I put those moments knew what I was talkin' about. How out of touch am I?

How about, "What we have here is a failure to communicate," as Newman's character gets cut down by gunfire (this is years before Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with their six-guns blazing charge into the gunfire of hundreds of South American soldiers--and fade away to the command of "Feugo! Fuego!" Freeze frame on Paul Newman & Robert Redford as we always want to remember them).

Can you hear the high-pitched voice of the southern prison warden as he brooks no dissent and has his sycophants shoot the dissident Luke down? Shortly after that I saw Easy Rider, and it confirmed for me the southern attitude towards diversity. Unbelievably, the south has controlled our presidential vote since 1964. I guess us northerners won the war and lost the peace.

Cool Hand Luke, who went to work on that southern chain gang for the misdemeanor of destroying some parking meters, is a hero of mine. I also remember Joy Harmon and her washin' that car. Yeah she put her heart and soul and everything in between into that sudsy scene. To a young boy watching, it seemed like the two sexes could and would get together and always prosper together. That's what love is, right? But now I think it's only blood that ultimately matters in relationships. We're all tribal.

It has been a momentous summer for me. (No, none of the three boys I supported at financial ruination throughout their adolescences has even a disdainful word for me, thanks to modern American (or western) domestic law, but a lot has happened.) Stay tuned.

For Ryan

I ran 5.5 miles this morning in memory of Ryan Shay. It's a running community thing.

I wanted the run to be memorable, so I set out at 3:30 am for old times sake. I haven't done a run in the wee hours of the morning in a while. I did quite a few during those interminable years not so long ago when implacable, crushing, financially ruinous and emotionally devastating divorce litigation was obliterating my life. (There, does that adequately sum up divorce for you?)

But this morning I remembered again the joy of running free in the absolute stillness and quiet of the early morning, after all the late-night people have gone home and before the early birds have arisen. There is a lack of other moving human things around that is profound between 3:30 and 4:30 in the morning. Otherwise us city-folk runners always have the bustle of human company out there in some form, a car driving by, a radio broadcasting, a person walking a dog.

You have to stick to streets with lights on them, traffic arteries of some sort, so you can see where your feet are landing. You have to be on the road and not the sidewalk because sidewalks are uneven.

This is not a time for headphones because you have to feel, hear and see cars coming up behind you. Cars make noises and approaching lights change the shadows around you. Also, you need to wear a baseball cap so you can tip your head down and use the brim to shield your eyes from the blinding headlights of cars coming at you.

Thoughts flowed through my mind. One of my children was an ADHD child. Until you have one of your own, you tend to think such children are either myths or the new-classification creations of psychologists. I thought about that son and how I doubt that he could feel, hear or see cars coming up behind him if he were running, like I can. I think there is a rush of other things going on in his mind constantly that keeps out new approaching stimuli. I tried to imagine what that would be like and I had no idea. I am so sorry for him. I have often wondered if a daily glass of wine during pregnancy could cause that.

I found a new foot trail between two lit roadways I run on a lot at night. I traversed this discovery in the dark, walking it, and discovered it went through.

I went into Arlington and ran by the house we moved into when we first came to the area. I stopped in the dark and listened for a moment of reverie to the faint sounds of three toddlers running around, two adults still acting to responsibly raise a family, and a grandmother coming to visit. The spectral images died away as the toddlers grew up and became judgmental, the adults grew to hate each other, and the grandmother passed on. I continued my run.

I went over to the Custis Trail and was surprised to see that it has lights, albeit low-powered ones. I loped along it for half a mile but I know it feeds into the W&OD Trail which doesn't have lights, so I ran back onto the streets of Arlington again.

A sea of flashing blue lights at 4:30 am attracted me. I diverted my course to run by the scene, a major intersection where signal lights control traffic exiting off the Interstate highway and traffic passing by on the six lanes of Lee Highway. Somebody had run a red light and two smashed cars were in the intersection. Firemen were still extricating one driver, with an ambulance standing by.

I am a former state trooper. I did traffic for years. I couldn't see the tell-tale skidmarks in the roadway in the dark, and I didn't think the four cops on the scene would appreciate me walking into their evidence scene to take a closer look. So I had a mental challenge, to figure out which way each wrecked car had been traveling, making the determination solely from their final resting positions and the damage each car showed. The cars were widely separated in the roadway, with one halfway onto the sidewalk below the exit ramp, pointing the wrong way for the exit ramp, and the other resting pointing SB in the NB lanes of Lee Highway.

I was reaching back twenty years with this stuff, to a time when I could do this easily with just a glance. It took a couple of minutes to process.

It had been a left front quarter panel (driver's side) to right front quarter panel high speed impact, that much was plain to see from the damage on the wrecks. All cars when they collide dispel their energy around a centerpoint and spin off or rotate from there. When they separate they travel off in the direction their spin has sent them, rotating to a greater or lesser degree. The more glancing the blow, the less rotation or spin.

The cops must have thought I was a weirder-than-usual lookey-lew as I started rotating my body with raised left arm (representing the point of impact). Perhaps they shrugged me off as a crazy early morning runner. I was getting my car spin down by circling in place, figuring out which of the two cars had been coming off the highway. It slowly came back to me.

I worked it out. The car on the sidewalk had been leaving the highway and struck the other car, pretty much quarter panel to quarter panel. The other car reached the point of impact a nano second earlier and had been knocked a glancing blow into the opposing lanes. The car on the sidewalk had done much more rotation, a full 180.

As to who ran the red light, well, I'd have to hear the drivers' stories to form an opinion versus merely being suspicious. The car exiting the highway was going a lot faster and had taken almost no evasive action, that much was clear to me. His visibility was more limited by the terrain. I imagined he might be unfamiliar with the signal light as he came off the Interstate if he was from elsewhere. The other guy was on a local road so maybe he was from around there and familiar with the intersection. I'd pencil in the guy on the sidewalk as at fault initially, easily subject to change.

Blame preliminarily assigned, I ran on. I was now back in my home town. A mile out, I kicked my lazy run into a much higher gear and ran home hard, for Ryan. I did a 7:39 for that mile, and elevens or twelves for the rest.

It was an interesting 3:30 am run, as many of them are.

Mendacity

I had some interesting responses to the question posed in my last post, What you would do if you saw some bills lying on the floor in a crowded room? Here’s the set-up.

I was standing by the door on a jam-packed subway train after last week’s historic soccer game at RFK. (Don’t you remember? I told you that Jaime Moreno rolled a penalty shot in to break the all time MLS scoring record. You forgot already?)

One more person wedged on board before the doors closed. Looking for open space, he noticed two clumps of crumpled dollar bills on the floor right by my feet. He pointed down and said to the man on the other side of the bills, "Is that yours?"

The man immediately looked down and, without missing a beat, said, "Yes." He bent down, scooped up the two wads of bills and shoved them into his pocket without looking at them further or saying a further word (like, "Oh thanks!")

Trouble was, the money was mine. I know it was. Since the helpful guy's comment wasn't directed at me, I looked down too late. Should I have arrested the thief's wrist as it came back up with my two clumps of money? There on the crowded train full of liquored-up fans coming back from the game? Should I have instantly gotten close and personal?

The money was gone in a flash. The swindler turned and faced away from me and his benefactor.

Money is fungible, right? How could I prove it was mine? My pocket was full of wadded up bills. I had just pulled my employment id out of that pocket without looking to make sure I still had it. Some clumps of bills had obviously tumbled out.

My change from lunch was gone, a five and a some ones. My change from a snack purchase at the stadium was gone, some singles.

I said to the good samaritan, "You know, that money was mine." He said, "I’m sorry, I didn’t know." I assured him, "You did the right thing."

Pointing directly at the smooth operator I said, "He, on the other hand, did the wrong thing." The man looked back at me impassively, then moved over by the door.

Room opened up in the car. I considered going over and accosting him for my money. Or maybe bargaining with him for half of it back. What better way to create a volatile situation in a crowded subway car than to start an argument over the theft of money, which charge you couldn’t prove? Would the other riders enjoy that male alpha show?

I sat down and, staring at him, slowly pulled every wadded up bill out of my pocket and carefully smoothed them all out. The mendacious one glanced over, saw what I was doing and turned to stonily face the closed door. He got off a couple of stops later. This thief and liar evidently lives in Clarendon, which is in Arlington.

I used to believe in karma (and fairness) til I got introduced, in Arlington, to American family law (divorce law). Now I believe in the jungle.

That guy knew it was my money. But what are you gonna do in those circumstances? What should I have done? It still pisses me off. But I marvel at the guy who gave away my money. What a guy! (I'm serious. He tried!)

Yesterday was Father's Day

On Father's Day, June 25, 2003, my phone rang. It was my three children calling, from where they live with their Mother two miles away. She apparently was standing by listening.

I answered, "Hello, this is Peter."

"Hello Dad, this is Johnny."

"Hello Johnny, how are you?"

"Happy Father's Day."

"Thanks."

"Here's Jimmy."

[Oldest son comes onto the phone.] "Ditto."

[Youngest son comes onto the phone.] "Ditto."

Click. Danny hung up the phone in my ear. I sat there, mouth agape.

That phone call lasted about twenty seconds. Even so, it was twenty seconds longer than any communication I have received from any offspring of mine on any subsequent Father's Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas or birthday.

My three children were all minors then. They are all adults now.

There is a body of people, mostly male and substantially made up of a growing number of estranged fathers of minor children in divorce situations, who absolutely believe that Parental Alienation Syndrome ("PAS") is child abuse. I am sorry for these children.