The year in review Part 2

Once I got back from Europe in April, I had my fourth and last eye surgery, putting my eye woes behind me at least for now.  In May I picked up running after a two-year layoff, once my eye healed.  I had electricity woes inside my house where half my electrical outlets would suddenly click off inexplicably, including my TV, refrigerator and bedroom lights and then suddenly come back on minutes or hours later, for seemingly no reason.  It cost me three weeks and a couple of thousand dollars to fix (I needed a new outside box) and involved permits from the city, visits from Public Service and many headaches.  If that fix hadn't worked, the next step (inside re-wiring) would have started at $15,000.  I maintained ties with a few former colleagues by having lunch about once a month with somebody or other.  The spring flowers about the neighborhood and in the District were a pleasing splash of color as usual.  I attended a graduation party put on at a local hotel by my neighbors for two of their daughters who had graduated from college, one with an advanced degree.  It represented a timeless American immigration tale, the parents came to America from Bolivia not knowing English and both were schoolteachers by trade.  They took menial jobs, worked hard and long, bought the house next door, sent their children to the excellent public schools in the area, and became citizens.  Now their children are college graduates who speak English but very little Spanish and have good jobs in the cybersecurity area.  The latest in the ever present wave of migrations washing over our shores, making America great.

I continued my return to running slowly and painfully in June by running three times a week, although only a mile and a half or two at a time, running a few times in the District, such as running through the Mary Livingston Ripley Park on the Mall as pictured below.  As the month wore on I decided to skip out of town over the July 4th holiday because I didn't want to be in town while our president commandeered the celebration of our country on that day and made it all about himself.  The Revolutionary War soldiers capturing airports indeed!  I planned a car trip through the south.

In July I drove through North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee to see some sites and attend a baseball game at the new Atlanta Braves park, where I hadn't seen a game yet.  The Braves won that baseball game but Bryce Harper hit a home run for the Phillies, the new park underwhelmed me, the Atlanta Stadium Motel 6 I stayed at ripped me off by double billing me then claiming I had reserved two rooms (yeah, right) and refused to reverse one of the charges.  Effin Southerners with their phony, slow and cloying sweetness.  Places I visited were Corolla on the Outer Banks where I swam in the ocean, the Currituck Lighthouse, a couple of coastal towns in North Carolina, Charleston, Andersonville, Chickamauga Civil War Battlefield, Lookout Mountain, Chattanooga, The D-Day Memorial in Bedford, and Appomattox Court House.  It beat listening to someone bloviate on the National Mall.  Persons I visited were my sister and her family, my college roommate, and my best friend in ninth grade.

In August I took another car trip, this time to the midwest.  I went to Maryland, West Virginia. Pennsylvania and Ohio.  I visited the Flight 93 9-11 Memorial near Shanksville, Morgantown, and spent some time enjoying Columbus at the house of my sister, where I enjoyed hanging out in a college setting with two of her her three sons, like her middle child, below.

Images from Columbus

Here are some last images from my visit in the summer to Columbus:

A pedaling bar vehicle downtown.  I think the cyclists are pedaling away their inebriation.  I hope the driver is the designated non-drinker.

The Orthodox Christian Church downtown.

A bridge over the Scioto.

Hangin' with my nephews.

Sundown downtown.

The Confederate Cemetery at Camp Chase.

The food truck festival downtown one evening.

St. James Episcopal Church in Upper Arlington, my sister's church.

Images

In Columbus, I tried to capture some beautiful photographic images. I always love to capture mirror images of bridges or structure on the water; here I got a picture of a bridge reflected on the Scioto River underneath as a boatman paddled up to it.

Here's the city's namesake outside City Hall.  I wonder when the groundswell of removing Columbus' statue will grow to a volume that can't be ignored because after all, his arrival in the New World (can I still say that?) initiated the genocide of indigenous peoples due to the introduction of urban diseases like smallpox and the disparity of technologies like guns versus spears.

I enjoyed spending time with my sister and her family.  Here I enjoyed a libation with her and her middle child, a graduate student in Columbus.

Later we were joined by her youngest son, who also lives downtown and is an engineer who works for a foreign car company.  These young men apparently didn't get the memo from my three children about how terrible I am, actually, these blood relatives of mine haven't heard from those lads in over 15 years.

Columbus

In Columbus, I hung out with my sister, her husband, and my nephews.  One of my sister's sons lives downtown while he attends classes to get a Master's degree, and I met them downtown.

We went to the location of the big POW camp in Columbus during the Civil War and in the Confederate cemetery there, I noted that the Rebel sentinel was standing guard over the graves again.  During the murderous Neo-Nazi riots in Charlottesville a couple of years ago, the sentry was vandalized and sent out for repair; I thought he might never return but he is back.

We attended a food truck festival downtown and enjoyed a beautiful sunset.  The city has created a river walk along the Scioto River in the heart of the city.

The next morning I went out early and tried to capture a beautiful sunup at a nearby park.  There is a lot to do in Columbus, Ohio's capital and its largest city.

Food on my summer trip

After I visited the 9/11 Memorial near Shanksville in western Pennsylvania, I had lunch at a hotdog restaurant, Hot Dog Shoppe Brighton, on a local highway north of Pittsburgh in Mars that was fabulous.  Inside as I was waiting for my order, I encountered a man waiting for a pickup order who was visiting his gravely ill brother in a hospital in Pittsburgh who asked him, as a last favor in his short time left, to bring him two hotdogs from this very restaurant when he came.

I had the loaded dog (chili, cheese and diced onions for about $1.69 each), which I consumed in my car without creating a mess because it was assembled so well in addition to being so good.  Then, satiated, I drove to Columbus where I stayed for a couple of days at my sister's house.

My sister and I went out the next day for lunch at a great barbecue restaurant, City Barbeque in Arlington, where I had as good a pulled pork sandwich as I have ever had.  The baked beans weren't bad either.

I think my sister liked her sandwich as well.  Her husband is an OSU professor who did deep research on burnt ends barbecue in Columbus and came up with this restaurant s being the best, which he subsequently and often confirmed by in-person trials.

Thanksgiving 2018, Part Three

Thanksgiving day came and went with the fun of it centering on finding food for dinner that evening (a Korean joint) and navigating the milling frenetic chaos of Black Friday, on Thursday night, to get a cake for my nephew for his birthday party after our meal of Korean BBQ.  That impromptu party dispelled the lingering gloom on the holiday caused by the very serious medical condition of my sister's husband's mom who had been moved to hospice in the hospital.  The next day dawned and I took a frigid walk at dawn in the nature preserve a few blocks from my sister's house.

Then I drove to the nursing home to say goodbye to Jimmy's uncle there, glad that his condition was noticeably improving, especially with the advent of the visit from Jimmy, who was already present at his bedside, cajoling him into arising from bed to walk the hallways as part of his rehabilitation so he could return to his house soon.  I returned to my sister's house midmorning and she and I went to the hospital to visit her mother-in-law who was still unresponsive as my sister read to her from a book but seemed to stir when her daughters, and son and grandsons, arrived soon afterwards to be with her.  Discussions were resumed to have a traditional Thanksgiving meal in Dublin at the house of my sister's sister-in-law the next day and my sister and I returned to her house to do a little meal prep for that upcoming meal.

I was driving back to DC the next morning so I packed to get ready to depart early in the morning; then Jimmy came over to visit and stayed for an enjoyable hour.  He had never met my sister before and he too, was leaving early the next morning to fly back to his home.  Later in the evening my sister and I drove her husband's webber grill over to her sister-in-law's house in my truck, about fifteen miles away, so that the cooking of the turkey could begin early the next morning.

I left at 6 a.m. on Saturday on the nine hour drive home and it was a miserable trip as it rained the entire time and there was pea soup fog in the West Virginia mountains, where for about forty miles visibility was reduced to about 60 feet, or three lane marker stripes.  Regretfully, my brother-in-law's mother passed away peacefully last week.  Although I am sad at her passing, I am glad that I was able to see her again, even though it was in a hospital setting, after not seeing her since my sister's wedding in the eighties.

Thanksgiving 2018, Part Two

The day before Thanksgiving I was in Dublin, OH driving around with my college roommate Jimmy, who lived there for many years.  We visited his mother's and stepfather's gravesite, which had an interesting gravestone for the two--it has an Eastern Airlines commercial jet inscribed on it under his stepfather's name, Peace.  It's quite distinctive, remarkable even, with the prominent word PEACE across its top in bold letters with a jet flying underneath it.  Harvey Peace was a pilot for Eastern and retired when the airline followed TWA into oblivion in the shake-out that occurred following the de-regulation of the airlines in the sixties and seventies.

At noon I went to the hospital where I met my sister and we visited her mother-in-law in the massive Riverside Methodist hospital complex in Columbus.  She was lying comfortably with one of her daughters in attendance, although she wasn't responsive for the most part.  Her son came in and two of her grandsons as well, so she had plenty of loved ones at her bedside.

As evening approached, I went to stay at the place Jimmy was staying at and we called three or four of our friends from our Sewell Hall days at CU.  It was good to catch up with the ones we reached, although we talked a lot about heart attacks, surgeries and other medical maladies in addition to the raucous good old days.  Thanksgiving day I went to visit Jimmy's Uncle with Jimmy and then at noon I went over to my sister's house and we went to visit her mother-in-law, whose condition was pretty much the same, where I met one of the other daughters, who had flown in to spend Thanksgiving with her sister, brother and mother.

That evening there was too much personal sadness going on for a Thanksgiving turkey to be cooked, plus my sister's husband, a gourmet cook, was ill, so we procured some take-out Korean food to enjoy for dinner and braved Black Friday at Walmarts to get the birthday boy in the house a birthday cake.  Black Friday now starts on Thursday.  The birthday party was nice, I gave my nephew a book on the Little Bighorn Battle, which in my youth was called the Custer Massacre.

A Somber Thanksgiving in Columbus 2018, Part One

I went to visit family for Thanksgiving this year, traveling to Columbus to spend the holiday with my sister and her husband and two of their three sons.  Coincidentally, my college freshman roommate was there visiting his uncle who had taken ill and was recovering in a nursing home in Upper Arlington.

The nine hour drive there on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving was uneventful except for the disturbing call I received midway through it that my sister's mother-in-law was in the hospital after suddenly collapsing and was being considered for hospice due to her unresponsive state.  Once I got to Columbus I dropped off my stuff at my sister's house, which was deserted because everyone was at the hospital except for one of her sons who had been sleeping and was unaware of his grandmother's condition, and I went to visit my friend Jimmy at his uncle's institution.

We visited for awhile with Jimmy's uncle and then I spent the night with Jimmy where he was staying and we caught up as I hadn't seen him since shortly before the Trump disaster in 2016.  We had a pleasant time discussing how the midterm elections was a good harbinger for America being restored to greatness again in the next election and I checked in by phone with my sister who indicated that the prognosis for her mother-in-law was not good.

The next morning I took a walk around the neighborhood where Jimmy's uncle's assisted living place was which was a vibrant neighborhood full of shops and restaurants and parks.  Then we went to visit his mother's gravesite in Dublin and afterwards stopped in to see Jimmy's daughter-in-law who was staying in Dublin with her parents while her husband was away at sea, and I met Jimmy's grandson, a fine baby of four months.  We spent a pleasant hour there while I arranged to visit my sister's mother-in-law's hospital room where the stricken person's children were keeping vigil.

Drawing to a close 2

As the current year winds down, here are some snapshots from my new camera from the fall that I like.  This portrait of a jumbo jet encompassed within the symmetry presented by the straight line drawn down the National Mall by the Grant statue, the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial symbolizes, to me, the continuing greatness of America, denoting inventiveness, innovation, power, world leadership, transportation and tremendous commerce.

The Christmas tree in the Trump International Hotel in Washington, presented here against an American flag backdrop, reaching up towards the sky beyond the soaring roof of what formerly was the Postal Pavilion.  America's greatness never needed to be restored, it has always been present since July 4, 1776.

Mists rise from the hillocks below, signifying the agelessness and endlessness of the Shenandoah Valley.  This view is from Skyline Drive.

Sunrise in a Columbus park.  I enjoyed Thanksgiving in the midwest with my sister and her family.

Happy Birthday Kate

It's my sister's birthday.  Happy happy!

Huntington Park, Columbus Ohio, August 2010

Wardrobe Malfunction

I ran a Turkey Trot race, the Flying Feather Four-Miler in Dublin, Ohio, on Thanksgiving morning with two of my nephews from Columbus.  Now I can say that every one of my sister Kate's three sons has beaten me in a race.  (Below:  M and K flanking their proud Mom pre-race.)

The day started out cool and crisp so naturally I overdressed.  Perfectly comfy at the start, I was dying by MP 1, which we passed at about 9:15.

Stripping off my fleece jacket, I tied it around my waist and we hit the halfway mark at about 19:40.  The race course meanders through rolling wooded parkland in this suburb north of Colombus.

Both of my nephews were being extremely solicitous, running alongside of me.  I could tell that M, the live-at-home college sophomore who had been running nighttime miles getting ready for this outing, wanted to go on ahead, while K, the college freshman who is attending his university on a rowing scholarship, assured me that I was pulling him along.  Except that his words weren't coming out in ragged gasps like mine were.   

In my state of overdress, I was wearing leggings which were proceeding to slide off my hips despite me cinching the drawstring tight.  Just past MP 2 I had to stop, untie my jacket, hoist up my pants, tie the drawstring extra tight, refasten my outergarment about my waist and proceed.  Both young men waited patiently with me despite my urgings for them to go on.  (Below:  Clutching my finisher's bottle of wine with my malfunctioning leggings still sagging below my waist post-race.)

By MP 3 I was once again yanking my leggings up every three steps as they continued to slide down my legs.  Fearing that I would get entangled in my falling-down warmup pants and go sprawling amidst a horde of racers, I had to stop to tighten my leggings again.  This time M went on while K stayed with me, assuring me that he wouldn't even be running in the race if it weren't for me.  I chose to take his comment in a postive light.

Finally we could see the finish banner off in the distance and we picked up our pace and broke forty minutes.  My time was about 39:31, with K a second ahead of me and M about half a minute faster than that.

This was a cool race, with the goody bag containing a tech long-sleeve shirt, a race-logo hat and gloves, plus a shot of whiskey in an airline mini-bottle.  Each finisher received a full bottle of beaujolis to take home to his or her Thanksgiving dinner.

Gifts with Messages?

Ha ha. I already tole you all that I was photographed last summer running past the Jefferson Memorial with another runner one Saturday morning. This picture, by someone I supposed was a tourist, wound up on page 75 of the October issue of Cooking Light as part of its feature on DC as the 3d best city in the US, based on whatever criteria Cooking Light uses for such lists. The two anonymous runners illustrated DC's "walkability" (we weren't going that slow). (Photo credit Douglas Merriam.)

Anyway, I have five siblings, and three sons who don't speak to me. So that was eight Christmas presents I sent out "cold," a wrapped October issue of Cooking Light for each one of them. No note of explanation. I loved my three-week fantasy of all those bouts of head-scratching on Christmas day. (They all think my presents carry messages.)

One sister thought it heralded a gift subscription. Another thought I was going batty. Another thought that I was implying she was a bad cook. My brother thought he received the wrong present. My three boys, I don't know what they thought about it but it probably wasn't nice.

The jig's up. My sister from Ohio called.

She thought I had sent it to her because we had recently discussed soup-making. The magazine has a picture of a bowl of soup on its cover. Last weekend she was actually making soup and flipping through the periodical for ideas. As she was fanning through the magazine glancing at the pictures, she suddenly thought, Hey, I know that guy. She went back to the photo and scrutinized it. Who? Oh wow, it's Peter!

Ha ha. She wins the prize!

This One's For You

Rich had a nice post about running a 5K with his 15 year old nephew that got me to thinking about running with children. It's great that Rich is introducing the youngster to running. I hope the young man sticks with it. I also notice that Rich beat his nephew handily. You gotta be careful because kids are treacherous.

I once ran a Race For The Cure (RFTC) 5K with my 17 year old nephew. My sister lives in Columbus with her three children and her husband, a college perfesser. She's an artist and a sometimes runner. She has an art show coming up. Maybe I'll tell you more about that later.

I am envious of her because she won a plaque in the one race she has run in her life (other than a couple of RFTCs). It was in 2005 and I was running in a crazy Half-Marathon in the middle of Ohio in the dead of winter called Last Chance For Boston. You run around a mile loop in a deserted industrial park 13 times. There's a marathon, a 10K and a 5K going on at the same time. Around and around everyone goes.

My sister was doing the 5K version of the race. We started together, 1/10 mile behind the official clock. The marathoners and 10Kers were 2/10 mile behind the official clock. The gun went off and this race's version of a staggered start got underway. I bolted out to stay ahead of the surge of fast marathoners and 10K runners coming up behind me. My sister said her greatest fear was that I would lap her before she finished her third loop. Not to worry. She finished in 32:40 and took third in her age group (out of six runners). I didn't pass the clock my fourth time until 34:04. I finished my Half-Marathon in 1:53:08, a PR. I was seventh (out of nine) in my age group. I would have been third in my age group if I had run the 5K and taken home my very own plaque.

My sister's plaque was very handsome. I had never won a plaque. I was filled with jealousy. In some degree, six of the seven deadly sins were at work in me whenever I looked at her plaque. Only sloth seemed to be totally absent.

Anyway, in 2003, I went to run with her family in the Columbus RFTC. My sister took her two younger boys and walked. Her oldest son and I ran it.

The race went swimmingly. I encouraged my nephew to keep running whenever he flagged. I accommodated his pace. I ran ahead and snapped his picture for a keepsake. I waited for him. I put him on track to break 30 minutes.

Near the end, in way of encouragement, I said, Look, Nephew, there's the finish! There's only 200 yards to go.

My nephew looked. He saw the finish banner. He looked at me. A predatory look passed over his face. He took off.

Hey, I cried. I took off after him.

Don't let a teenager hang around you near the end of a race. Put them away long before that. They're fast! Maybe not for long, but in a sprint, they'll beat you. Result, Nephew 28:15 and bragging rights that night, me the big runner in the family 28:18 and pie in the face.

But I got him back. Revenge is a dish best served cold. He visited me that summer. We went running on a four mile out and back. We easily loafed two miles away from the house in about 25 minutes. At the turnaround point I casually asked him if he thought he could beat me back to the house. Sure, he said, his competitive spirit flaring. Our paces quickened. We agreed that whoever lost would cook dinner that night.

The gauntlet thrown down, I asked him, Do you remember the RFTC? He nodded. Well, see ya then, I said, and kicked it into tempo pace. He matched me stride for stride for a few yards and then quickly fell away. I kept the hammer down all the way home.

I was sitting on the porch in a fresh shirt, sipping ice tea, when he finally came running down the street, hot, flushed, his breath labored. He looked positively bedraggled. I called out to him as he pulled up at the driveway and slouched towards the house. Hey Nephew, what's for dinner?