July 4th in The Year That Wasn't

My neighbors were having a backyard barbecue on the Fourth of July with some guests invited over.  We are friendly, banter across the fence lines, and if I needed something that I couldn't do for myself, I would ask them if they were around.  Like the time I had a splinter in the back of my head and I went over to their house and asked A to dig it out with a needle, which he hesitantly did (I had to tell him at the moment of hesitation, Go Deep, Man, I know it's bleeding but I'll be alright) did, since I couldn't do it to or for myself because I couldn't see the splinter directly.

The brother of the lady of the house is my gardener and has become a friend of mine, although he is notably a proud, prickly man, easily offended.  He was there so I knew if I went outside my door where they would see me, they would call me over to join them.  But six feet of social distancing over there more like four feet or even much less and not one of them was wearing a mask.  They were engaged in eating and drinking, after all.  I knew if I joined them they would pile me with food, which I always enjoy since, being from South America, the meats are made the South American way and is invariably delicious.  In these extraordinary times, I did not want to join that party.  The pandemic, you know.  I don't want to become part of the problem overwhelming this forsaken (by its leaders) nation by becoming sick with Covid19 or maybe, getting it again.

I surreptitiously drew my curtains and went up to my bedroom to read.  My dinner was slowly roasting in the oven.  My cell phone had rung, I saw it was from my gardener but I did not answer it.  I left my phone downstairs, recharging.  But then I heard thunder in the sky.  A low, loud roar was coming nearer, from the east, the direction of the National Mall.  I knew from the morning's paper that The Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds and some WW2 vintage planes were flying over the Mall at about that time and perhaps they were flying west to Dulles to land.  I ran to the door and stepped out and was rewarded with the majestic sight of a B-29 bomber flying overhead at about 500 feet accompanied by four much smaller P-51 Mustang fighters, one on each of the four corners of an imaginary large square with the plane that dropped the two atomic bombs on Japan and ended WW2 before a million more Americans (and untold Japanese) had to die, one of them being my father with the First Marine Division.

Those twenty or thirty seconds as I watched the formation recede to the west imprinted in my memory banks a sight that I will never forget.  I saw vintage WW2 planes fly over the Mall in 2015 in commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the end of the war but they were much higher and not so easily distinguishable.  This was special and worth what followed, I think.  (B-25 bombers fly over the Mall in 2015.)

I was immediately called over to my neighbor's backyard, now that I had emerged.  I went, sat in a lawn chair between two people who were each perhaps six feet away, or perhaps five feet of four feet.  I ate the food heaped upon my plate with insistence and pride, and enjoyed myself with my neighbors and some strangers for about an hour, being neighborly.  I went home then, turned off my oven and saved that food for dinner the next night.  I saw that I had been called four times by my gardener the previous hour with voicemails calling me over.  I hope he doesn't think I rebuffed him by not answering, did I say he's prickly?  Leaving, I was going to go out their front gate but someone in that direction executed a robust sneeze, without a mask or covering the sneeze in any way, so I executed a hard right and went out the other way using their back gate.

I like my neighbors and most of their relatives and many of their friends, a lot, but anxiety gnawed at me throughout the hour as I thought about reckless exposure.  Anxiety still gnaws upon me eleven days later because now I'm still a few days removed form the outside festering time for the deadly disease.  I've quarantined since then (i.e. I haven't changed my behavior of the last four months one whit) but a few nights ago I awoke in the early morning hours and had severe shortness of breath that didn't abate even when I sat up in bed.  It reminded me of my acute oxygen hunger I experienced for three or four days in Leadville in 2001 when I stayed at my sister's place there at over ten thousand feet with my three children during my interminable divorce (it was altitude sickness) and I was desperate to get a true or deep breath.  That was how I felt in February for two or three nights, except then I was coughing violently, when I was sick for two weeks with respiratory problems.  But those night terrors haven't returned the last two nights so perhaps it was just anxiety.  I don't have a cough, I just feel vaguely "off" with semi-sore lungs, as I have felt since February.

That was my Fourth.  How was yours in these extraordinary times?

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.

Andersonville

Rather than hang around the District on the Fourth to listen to an oversized kindergartener give his version of the Revolutionary War, with real tanks as props, I left Atlanta the morning after I saw a ballgame at the Braves' new ballpark the evening before and drove to Andersonville, Georgia, to pay my respects to the thousands of Union POWs buried at the National Cemetery there, on the grounds of the notorious Andersonville Prisoner of War camp during the Civil War.  33,000 POWS were kept there within the wooden stockade during the last year of the war, without shelter from the elements and with little food and foul water, and 13,000 died, and many of the rest including, I think, a relative of mine, suffered from ailments because of their captivity there for the remainder of their reduced lifespan.  (33,000 men occupied this field, within a wooden palisade, without shelter and scant food, drinking the polluted water trickling trough the ravine cutting across the field, downriver from the Rebel guards' camp, with only the clothes they arrived with.)

The open-air prison contained no officers, only non-coms, and military order quickly broke down and a hideous lawlessness reigned inside the camp, perpetrated by the Raiders, a gang essentially that preyed upon individual soldiers or prison newcomers who had not yet formed bonds with anyone, robbing, beating and killing them.  These predators were opposed by the formation of a reprisal gang called the Regulators who identified the lot and especially the ringleaders and reported on them to the camp commandant, Major Henry Wirz (who was the only Confederate tried and executed after the war as a war criminal).  (The six predatory gang leaders within the prison camp were hanged by their peers after a trial and buried apart from the thousands upon thousands of Union soldiers who perished from the inhumane conditions within the POW camp.)

Wirz arrested the identified Raiders, kept them apart from the main population while a military tribunal made up of inmates inside the prison put them on trial and delivered the six ringleaders back to the prisoners after a sentence of death by hanging was imposed upon them by their peers, who hanged them inside the prison on July 11, 1864.  A raider leader named Patrick Delaney uttered his last words, "I would rather be hanged than to live the way most prisoners have to live."  (The Raiders are hanged for their crimes.)

The six executed men were buried apart from the rest of the Union men in the burial grounds.  Today a Union sentry stands vigilant guard over the thousands of men within the cemetery who gave their last full measure of devotion to the freedom we enjoy, for now.  (Ever faithful to democracy, despite the individual cost.)

Happy Fourth, yeah

It cut me to the quick.  An email message sent by me a couple of days ago detailing the sad particulars of a service for a member of the greater family was responded to by a closer member of my family with an unhinged rant about what an, ahem, ass I am and, by the way, he pointedly asked, How are my kids?

I ignored the threatening aspects of the screed, although I am no fool and have taken precautions already, but the reference to my three kids, who, because of the divorce, haven't communicated with me for years, really hurt.  I don't think about them every day and I have mostly moved on past them after all this time, but this roll-out by a family member of his best version of nuclear hurt in response to this humdrum familial contact has shocked and depressed me greatly.

Today being the July Fourth holiday, I went to my well-known, well-publicized favorite restaurant at noon for lunch on a holiday and hoped that one or more of my children would come to share the meal with me so we could get started on living out the first day of the rest of our lives in contact.  It didn't happen of course, because PAS is an insidious, invidious form of cruelty inflicted on the other parent by a parent who will use tender children in the advancement of her own preening, overweening ego despite the well-documented permanent harm it does to the minor children.

Reality is very precise.  Et tu, Brutus?

In the dentist chair again

On July 4th, a hot, sultry day, I thought it'd be a grand idea to cool off by having a chilled Snicker's bar, purchased from the cooler at the drugstore across the street from where I had a holiday lunch.  By my second bite into the hard, cloying mass, I was thinking it might not be a good idea to keep eating it because lesser things have pulled crowns out of my mouth before.

One more bite, a totally ill-advised one obviously, a tentative bite spurred on mostly by the thought that I'd just spent $2 on this confection, and a crown that was installed over a root-canaled tooth in 1988 was now in my hand, metal post at its base and all.  But it was intact, and maybe it could simply be cemented back in.

I didn't know it, but I was destined to be in the dentist's chair three times over the next fortnight on this emergency dental condition.  But now I had dental insurance, so I'd get to discover how effective it would prove to be because having a crown come out, or having a new, necessary crown put in, was surely a procedure that dental insurance would cover.

Two days later, I was in the chair with a new dentist, because my former dentist retired after 20 years of inspired dentistry in service of me, and forty years of service to the underserved public.  The new dentist was recommended by her, about 8 years from dental school, very personable, apparently concerned about me and very knowledgeable about mouth matters, and I was going to get the opportunity in the coming two weeks to get to know him much better.

A boot and a crown

So the Dog Days of Summer arrived.  I'm in a boot now, because of an achilles strain I incurred while running (the doctor said, "If the boot doesn't work, I'll refer you to the surgeon.") so I'm just sitting around getting fat.

I went in to the District once to have lunch with my past and hopefully future running buddy, since I'm currently incapacitated and haven't run in months.  The Fourth of July arrived, and at noon I went to the Lost Dog Cafe for lunch.

Nobody I recognized came in.  But how would I know what my children would look like anyway, since I have never laid eyes on any of them even once when they were of majority age.

After lunch with the empty chair, I strolled around outside while I called a sibling, and a friend.  Then since I was hot, I purchased a refrigerated Snicker's Bar from the drugstore and while chewing on that semi-hard nougat mass, I pulled out a crown, one put in just two years ago.

The Fourth of July

A six mile morning run heralded the arrival of the holiday on a grey day that made for a cool albeit humid run around the greater neighborhood.  I passed by a parade where that neighborhood's kids in a ragged line were chasing after three crawling lit-up and noisy fire trucks.

At noon I had a nice lunch of a Greek Pie and a draft at the Lost Dog Cafe in Westover in Arlington.  There was an extra draft at the table but it went untouched.

The meal wasn't altogether silent though as I had an extended conversation with my server Lily about her extensive tattoos, and she proudly showed me the wolf on her upper arm which is an exact copy of the one her deceased dad had on his upper arm.  Her love for and pride in her departed parent shone through as she described for me the magnificent tattoo she has on her back, which is an original design of hers in honor of him.

I was touched by this earnest and honest display of fealty for a father on the part of a still-grieving child.  After dark I watched the town fireworks from my back stoop to close out the holiday.

My new car

I went car shopping on July 4th.  I walked over to a nearby used car lot where I'd spotted a car that attracted my attention, a convertible in my price range with only 10,000 miles on it.

As I walked up, the car was being driven off the lot by four people.  I was disappointed but when I inquired about it, the used car salesman said those folks were just out for a test drive.

After they brought it back and departed, I took the car out.  I was waiting for the dealer to get into the passenger side to go on my test drive but he said, "I thought you said you were local.  You don't need me to come along if you know the area."

I'd never test-driven a car alone before.  It was fun; I went through the parking lot near my house to see how maneuverable it was and how it handled potholes, I went over the steepest hill in town to see what kind of power it had, and I drove it one exchange on the Interstate to get a feel for its top end.  It was nimble, powerful and zippy.

Then the dealer put the top down for me and I was hooked.  I wrote a check for it, including a service plan, on my house equity line-of-credit and drove it home.  I just love it.

(Enjoying a morning run at Bluemont with my running buddy John by having the top down.)

Fourth of July

On the morning of the Fourth, I ran a 5K race in Potomac, Maryland with Jeanne. I run a race every Fourth of July.

In 2001, I ran a 5-miler in Fredericksburg in under 40 minutes which pleased me, so I didn't run another 5-miler until last year because I was afraid I'd "ruin" my 40 minute benchmark in the next one (I didn't). In 2002, I ran a 6K in Baltimore in over 30 minutes which displeased me, so I had to wait a whole year to run it again so I could get this oddball distance under 30 minutes (I did). Who says runners are obsessed with numbers?

In 2004, I ran a 25:51 at the Cure Autism Now 5K in Potomac. I ran it again the next year in order to break 25 minutes on the somewhat hilly course but guess what? I ran exactly 25:00 so that didn't count. Last year I had a good day and passed over the finish line at just over 23 minutes. This year I ran the Potomac race again in a relaxed manner, having met my goals there, and thoroughly enjoyed myself.

However, I have been dealing with a tendinitis issue in my left leg since April. It limited me to running just 50.5 miles in May. Since I'm getting ready for Chicago in October, I bumped that up to 100 miles in June but it caused my leg to get worse again. (Pain is not merely weakness leaving the body.).

July 1st I did an LSD of 15 miles at a 9:20 pace and although the leg felt alright during the run, it felt like fire afterwards. I tried to run the next day but quit after a block. I legged out 2 1/4 miles the following day leading the weekly running group at work and then did the relaxed July Fourth 5K.

Coming back from the race, I decided how best to enjoy the rest of the holiday. Rather than jostle with the masses on the Mall to view the fireworks, I figured out how to watch the Falls Church fireworks from a really good, really close-up spot.

The second tallest structure in Falls Church is the six-level parking garage at West Falls Church Metro which overlooks the town's high school playing fields. (You can see the town's tallest structure from there, the enormously tall back-stop costing hundreds of thousands of dollars behind home plate on the baseball field which prevents foul balls from sailing onto cars speeding by on Interstate-66 one hundred feet away.) The city launches its fireworks every year at 9:30 pm from the football field, one hundred yards away from the parking structure.

My idea was to park my pickup truck atop the parking garage in a spot overlooking the football field and watch the show from a front-row seat in my car. At noon I parked in the last remaining space along the wall nearest the field. Other folks evidently had the same idea. I ran home from there, an even mile, in 7:55. My leg hurt.

In the evening a friend dropped by and we walked to the parking structure where we clambered onto the bed of my pickup. We sat and watched the thirty-minute pyrotechnic display as it literally unfolded right before our eyes. It was spectacular! (My pickup. Hey, how do you like my cool 26.2 oval magnet below the rear window?)

The only downside was that after the fireworks it took an hour to get my truck out of the packed parking garage so I could drive my friend to her car. The next day, of course, was a work day.

I also called and left a message for my oldest child, a 21-Y.O. who lives in Arlington with his Mother. I asked him to call me to say whether he'd like to go with me when British soccer superstar David Beckham and his team play against the DC United at RFK.

I regret that my estranged son never returned my call. He was victimized as a boy by a form of child abuse known as Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), which is the deliberate destruction of the other parent's bond with a child by the parent with primary physical custody and his or her coterie of hired gunslinger "professionals."

If you can't beat 'em...

I was invited to run a Fourth of July 5K race with Jeanne. You all know Jeanne, she hides behind the misnomer of Not Born To Run.

Well, we all know that she has burned two marathons. She's been to Boston. She has smoked many 5Ks and an 8K here or a 20K there. The only thing that ever got ahead of Jeanne was surgery earlier this year, that she is just now coming back from.

How could anyone turn down down an invitation to run in a race with Jeanne? The publicity value alone is immeasurable. Whenever she posts something, she gets a dozen comments right away, guaranteed.

I arrived in Potomac (MD) at the Cure Autism Now (CAN) 5K this morning hoping that my trepidation wasn't showing. There I found out that Jeanne's daughter, known worldwide as NOD, was running too! She's even faster than Jeanne. It's in the genes.

This wasn't fair. I felt like an Ethiopian amongst a bunch of Kenyans. Early in the race they'd surround me and take turns setting a pace that would grind me into the pavement. I started to run through my usual running ailments to see which one I would advance for DNFing. But then Jeanne said grandly that we didn't have to worry about NOD, she was going for a PR today and wouldn't be running with us. She was going to jackrabbit off at the start.

Whew. One less person I'd have to worry about keeping up with.

I thought maybe I could hang with Jeanne, because she was still recuperating from surgery and I knew her training hadn't fully kicked in yet. I was determined to give it a try. Maybe today would be the day I caught her off form and took her in a race.

The gun went off and we set out. CAN is one of those hot, hilly and humid races everyone is told to avoid. The first half mile was crowded and up a grade. We started too far back (at least one of my stratagems worked) so we were immediately hemmed in and slowed down by the crush of runners on the narrow two lane rural roadway (no shoulders). I caught a real break here.

It took us practically a mile to break into the clear. I had to shove aside a child or two to keep up with Jeanne who kept going to open spots and getting ahead of me. NOD was already way out front and it didn't seem likely that she would "come back to us" today, she was running so effortlessly.

Jeanne was running relaxed too, obviously concentrating on her breathing. She worked her arms nicely on the uphills and seemingly glided on the downhills. You could learn a lot from watching her run a race.

We passed MP 1 at 9:55. Uh-oh, way fast. I started talking to Jeanne in short bursts between ragged gasps to distract her. I told her stories about my recent running escapades, which she'd already read on my blog. My brain couldn't conjure up new stories. Jeanne politely engaged in the conversation and even asked me a question or two. Do you know how many people there were in the 13 original colonies? I guessed 2.6 million. Wrong! 2.5 million.

The morning was heating up. Whenever we passed a lawn sprinkler system spraying the street, I veered over to run through it to cool down, and Jeanne politely followed. I told her we should walk through the water stop, and she accommodated me. I caught a breather as I slowly drank from my cup. Jeanne seemed rarin' to go but I kept giving her the cheers sign with a raised cup to show her I wasn't finished yet. We passed MP 2 in 10:03, still too fast but better.

The third mile, a series of rolling hills, stretched out endlessly. My pace was slowing down and I was back to thinking of which typical running ailment I could pull out to insist on a walking break. Jeanne was eying me closely and listening to my breathing. "Why don't we walk for a minute?" she said gently. I felt like I would live after all!

The break was over all too soon. Noting my red, flushed face, she suggested another walking break half a mile further on. More mantra from heaven! We passed MP 3 in 11:20. That was more like it!

The finish at CAN is a 150 meter downhill straight stretch where you can see the race clock the whole way. With the finish line in sight and a nice downhill to run on, I took heart. I was even with the great Not Born To Run late in a race! Notions of tomorrow's headlines flashed through my mind. Peter Catches Jeanne on her Return From Surgery. It would be grand.

Jeanne sped up. But so did I. We ran down the hill side by side, arms pumping, legs driving. I was sucking in oxygen, trying to lengthen my stride so I could edge her out. The finish! The finish! Only twenty yards away!

Huh? Jeanne beat me by three full seconds. It was like, suddenly she was just gone. I swear I saw a little burst of trailing dust in the air, like in the roadrunner cartoons, as she accelerated into the finishing chute and left me flatfooted behind her.

To be honest, I think she was toying with me the whole race. Her last split was 1:00 for a finishing time of 32:18 (10:24); mine was 1:03 for a finishing time of 32:21 (10:25). She cleaned my clock that last 20 meters. What a finishing kick!

NOD was waiting for us. She had been unconscious while she raced and finished in 29:40 (9:33!), a PR. Well, she is younger.

Thanks for the great race, Jeanne.