I have been running this summer, fighting the brutal heat of July while I go on 3-5 mile runs three times a week at noon with my co-worker running buddy L, the two of us egging each other on. It seems that every other run one or the other of us has to break our run down to a one-mile recuperation walk somewhere in the last half, but as our conditioning improves, those interludes are getting fewer. One day the air temperature reportedly "felt like" it was 117. The office dreadmill runners regard the two of us as crazy to be running outside but hey, we're only doing 10-minute miles, and we always bring water. I also "go long," run 6 miles, every Saturday.
Last week I ran 23 miles. I have shed half of the excess weight that I put on in my year and a half of inactivity while I nursed my ankle injury. Or should I say that I have only shed half of the excess weight I put on while inactive all that time?
Last month I took my summer vacation, flying to Minnesota to see my sister and attend the memorial service for my uncle who died in the spring. From there I drove across the Dakotas to Montana and back, visiting a number of Indian Wars (Sioux War) battlefields, drove around the Badlands and walked around the Devils Tower in Wyoming. The Sioux kicked the Americans' ass twice, at the Fetterman massacre in 1866 in Wyoming and the Custer massacre in 1876 in Montana. Not a single trooper with the engaged U.S. detachments survived either of those battles. (Right: Custer, two of his brothers, a nephew and about forty of his remaining men died on this hillside while trying to reach the Little Big Horn River marked by the green strip of cottonwood trees in the background so that they could assault an Indian encampment on the other bank that contained ten times as many well armed fighters as they had in their entire initial assaulting force.)
When I got back, a friend who had been following my trip thanks to my FB posts and who knows that I have never been outside of North America said it sounded like a great trip, especially since I was a history major in college and I read military accounts for relaxation. Then he asked if I had ever, uh, like, considered going to Europe or Asia or Africa? It's a big world out there he added, just in case I missed the point.
It's another sweltering July in DC; running on the Mall during the noon hour leaves me literally reeling from the soupy heat by the fifth mile. This morning I got up a 4:30 A.M. to run 5 1/2 miles and although it went better, still for an hour afterwards I left behind little pools of sweat wherever I paused for moment.
But I'm glad to be back to running, although my troublesome ankle is still giving me trouble despite the cortisone shot a few months ago. I guess its effect is wearing off, leaving me with only the surgical option if my chronic tendinitis disables my running again.
This week I finally hit 20 miles, running my new-normal four times a week (I used to run five times a week). Although I am much slower than I used to be, running 10:10 miles now instead of 8:50s, and my conditioning (endurance) still sucks, miles is miles as I tell my running buddy at work as we jog down the Mall getting passed by everybody.
Next week I'll be in Minnesota attending a grave side service for my uncle who passed away a few months back, and I'm sure the many cousins who will be present will be checking each other out to see how we're all weathering our fifties. Fortunately I'm not as roly-poly as I was at the beginning of the year, as I have dropped 26 pounds in the last 13 weeks thanks to my return to running.
It was twenty years ago today, Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play
A year ago today, I found myself in a cold and lonely water-filled place. Trapped underwater beneath an overturned boat wrapped around a rock in a rapids, I instantly knew I was in the last minute of my life.
Well, I didn't die, Providence granted me a continuation of life. What have I done with my life since then?
I won the first trial I ever conducted, my second trial in twenty years.
I took a car trip to the Mississippi River, seeing a professional baseball game in a different stadium each day and visiting the Federal Courthouse in St. Louis where the first Dred Scott trials were conducted, the Flood Memorial in Johnstown and the Flight 93 memorial under construction in Shanksville.
I read a couple of very good books, Collapse by Jared Diamond and The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold and re-read a couple of excellent books, The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger and Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger.
I started jogging again after a layoff of a year and a half due to injury, after consenting to a cortisone shot in my ankle.
I celebrated Thanksgiving with my sister's family in Columbus, speaking with my brother for the first time in several years thanks to her, and Christmas with my cousin's family in Newport News.
I celebrated the graduation from college of my middle child, a fact I surmised when the statements for his tuition and fees for which I had provided full payment stopped coming, since I haven't heard from Johnny since 2006.
I stopped actively attempting to reach out to my three children who were estranged from me as minors due to PAS upon the passage of the twenty-second birthday of my youngest child, since I haven't heard from Danny since 2007.
I mourned the passing of my uncle, the last of the generation represented by my parents, members of the Greatest Generation.
I started attending church services on most Sundays, working on forgiveness and a better understanding of why fairness does not exist in the world.
I'm just back from attending my first Easter Sunday service since I was a boy. My sister says that if you're returning to the church after a long absence, and hence are unfamiliar with its rituals, you shouldn't start with an Easter service, the superbowl of the Christian year as she puts it.
There's some validity to that, but I wanted to attend today because my congregation was saying a special prayer for my Uncle Harry, who passed away ten days ago, and I wanted to be there for that. He was the very last of his generation, the greatest generation, still with us, having been preceded by my father, Uncle Bill, mother, Aunt Dare, Uncle Bob, Aunt Johnnie and Aunt Betty.
I miss them all. My father was put ashore on Okinawa on Easter Sunday in 1945, a Marine combatant in the last land battle in WW2 that claimed 50,000 American casualties.
Other than that, and the fact that at least one Easter Sunday fell on my birthday, Easter hadn't held much attraction for me until recently when I started attending church again after many years. This morning I internally said my final goodbyes to my Uncle Harry and all of his generation, reflected upon the resurrection and listened closely to the sermon, which prominently featured Mary Magdalene's experience at Christ's tomb as revealed in John's gospel.
Everyone on board ducked instinctively as the plane roared in at rooftop level, so close that the shipboard gunners could see the facial features of the Japanese pilot as he tried to maneuver his disintegrating, burning aircraft into the ship’s superstructure. The plane narrowly missed and cartwheeled into the sea on the other side of the light cruiser Vincennes, throwing up a terrific geyser of water.
Another Japanese plane hurtled towards the ship as Marine and Navy personnel brought their guns to bear on it, while behind it two more Japanese planes streaked in low off the horizon. In 1945 my Uncle Harry, the officer in command of the Vincennes’ Marine-manned anti-aircraft batteries, received the bronze star for his resolute actions on this day of hellish combat filled with swarming enemy encounters similar to this. (Right: Me and my Uncle Harry, on the right, in 2010.)
Admiral Halsey’s Fast Carrier Attack Group had just conducted a devastating carrier-based bombing raid against Japan, and Uncle Harry’s light cruiser and another one were left behind by the departing task force to defend a damaged aircraft carrier as it limped away from the Japanese mainland at a speed of only a few knots an hour. All the subsequent day the lonely trio of ships fended off numerous enemy attacks before the Americans got safely out of range of Japanese land-based planes.
Uncle Harry passed away last night at age 87, the last of the many World War II veterans that I used to know. His daughter, my cousin, and her family were with him at the end just before he joined the rest of his family and his brothers in arms, to live on forever in our memory.
Happy Memorial Day to all veterans out there, and thanks for your service. Here's to the memory of my Grandfather Jack (Navy in WWI), Dad (Marines in WW2 on Peleliu and Okinawa), Uncle Bill (Army in WW2 in the Philippines) and Uncle Bob (Army Air Force in WW2 in North Africa). Here's thanks to my brother (Marines in Lebanon in 1981) and my Uncle Harry (shipboard Marine in WW2 at many battles, including the battles of the Philippine Sea and the Fast Carrier Strikes on Tokyo, bronze star recipient). I saw him in Durango this month and he's doing all right. See for yourself.
The Bucket Trips: In 1970, I entered the University of Colorado and was assigned to the first co-ed dormitory there, Sewell Hall. With the Vietnam War raging and the Haight-Ashbury District flowering, revolutionary sentiment and the smell of cannabis hung in the air.
I met a wonderful group of matriculating students there who became lifelong friends. We spent many hours riding Enduro motorcycles through the canyons surrounding Boulder and hiking in the nearby foothills.
Two years ago the Bucket Trips got started when Swell Hall alumni C organized a reunion for ten of us on a week-long professional rafting trip of two boats and twenty-eight persons down the Grand Canyon. Tragically, one person who wasn’t part of our group died during that trip of a heart attack.
Last year we sailed for a week in the Florida Keys. This year J and G, brothers who live in Colorado, organized a rafting trip in Gateway Canyon on the Dolores River for ten persons on two 3-person oar boats and one 4-person paddle boat.
In the run-up leading to the early-May trip, a sense of uneasiness developed among some trip members, myself included. It was going to be a grueling trip in a wilderness area with some significant rapids.
I called up one of the organizers and asked, only half-jokingly, if anyone was going to die on this trip. My friend laughed and said no, but added that we all better be in shape for it.
C wasn’t going on this trip but he loaned J and G some river equipment and one of the boats. He told G, in all seriousness, not to get anyone killed on the trip because he would regret it for the rest of his life.
The Gateway Canyon stretch of the Dolores River starts at Gateway, Colorado, on the western slope about 45 miles west of Grand Junction. It is 37 river miles from the put-in at Gateway to the take-out at Dewey Bridge on the Colorado River in Utah. (Right: The Dolores River is, well, beautiful.)
There are no roads near the river for most of the way except for dirt trails that service ranch vehicles. There’s no cell phone service either, and we didn’t encounter any other boats.
It’s remote. We were on our own with no ability to call 911.
I flew out to Denver on Saturday, May 1st and drove to Durango that night to visit my octogenarian uncle who lives there with his daughter, my cousin. I visit him once a year as he is the only relative I have left who is of the World War II generation as all of the rest have passed on.
Since I was too cheap to pay $25 to check a bag on the airlines, I went to Walmart when I arrived and bought a sleeping bag for $9, good down to 45 degrees, and a sleeping mat for camping out under the stars for four nights. I brought along a tarp and some rope with which to fashion a tent in case it rained.
My visit with my uncle went well and then on Sunday I drove through a snowstorm to Montrose where J lives. We were leaving from there to go to the river to put in the next day.
Everyone else was already at J’s house, six other men, B, G, H, J, Jy, T, all Swell Hall residents in the seventies, and three women. A was T’s wife and a Boston Qualifier, Ju was B’s S.O. and C was the sister of both H and Jy.
Everyone except for C, who was in her sixties, was in their fifties. G and J were veteran river men and would oar two boats and T would direct the paddle boat with the two couples in it.
Except for G and J, and maybe T, who is generally an excellent waterman, we were all inexperienced, if not novices, at river rafting. Except for the Grand Canyon trip, where we went through several Class V rapids in a motorized boat, I have been along as a paying, paddling passenger on at least a dozen day rafting trips through some Class II and III rapids.
I have been instructed several times on what to do if you fall into a rapids. To the best of my memory, I have never been told what to do if you get trapped under a capsized boat in a rapids.
Last week when I was in Colorado visiting my 85 year-old uncle, I went with my cousin Liz's husband Bill and his son Jimmy, the professional bull rider, to Roswell NM where Jimmy competed in a two day bull riding event. It's a seven hour ride to Roswell for an eight-second bull ride. That is, if you're lucky (and good) and don't get bucked off.
Roswell is where the aliens landed in 1947. Or rather, crash-landed. There's been a massive government cover-up about it ever since. Just ask anyone in Roswell. They'll tell you. (Left: The UFO Museum in Roswell.)
The three of us on the long drive to Roswell decided that probably the coolest thing for Obama about winning the presidency was that on January 20th "they" took him aside and told him all the secret extra-terrestial stuff. About the autopsies of the four little green men (one was big) and the metal that never tarnishes or crumples and the technology the Air Force got from the crashed ship. Why do you think American fighter jets are so much better than everyone else's? Because we're smarter? Have you talked to a Tea Party member yet? (Right: Jimmy and Bill react to discovering the truth in the UFO Center.)
(Left: The bulls were waiting for Jimmy.) Anyway, Jimmy's been in a slump. He got bucked off of all of his bulls. But going to the Roswell UFO Research Center on Main Street was fun. Inside, the curator was telling the folks ahead of us that there had been another sighting that very morning but it was already being covered up. All of a sudden the five police cars I saw go screaming down Main Street at 7 am with lights and sirens made sense. I wondered if it was maybe another crash. Of a flying saucer.
I also liked the county fair that was at the fairgrounds in conjunction with the Professional Bull Riding Competition. There were a lot of 4-H animals being displayed there. Here's my favorite.
When I was in Colorado last week, I drove from Denver to my cousin Liz's house, which is in Bayfield, outside of Durango. It was snowing when I traveled over Wolf Creek Pass.
Here's how the mountain valley looked on the other side, pointing westbound towards Durango.
Here's the sky over Pagosa Springs.
Here's my cousin Liz, the one I went horseback riding with. She runs a program up there in the Colorado high country, a house of sobriety, where she oversees drug dependent teenagers and gets them to go straight through animal therapy. She shows them how to take care of horses as part of their treatment for their dependency, including riding the horses.
Suddenly breaking into a run, Stormy took off at a fast clip up the hillside. I held on as well as I could, bouncing up and down in the saddle while I maintained a death grip upon the pommel with one hand. I held the reins with my other.
Branches from the close-in spruce trees on both sides of the trail lashed my face. I was reviewing my life as it flashed before my eyes when I remembered the advice my cousin Liz gave to me before we left the meadow of her Colorado high-country home about turning Stormy in a circle if he started to get away from me.
You see, Stormy has attitude. He doesn't brook fools or tenderfoots. I might be a fool too, but I clearly was a novice, not having been on horseback for thirty years. As passing evergreen limbs threatened to sweep me off of Stormy's back, I pulled back on one rein.
Before the ride, Liz had saddled Stormy for me and offered to get a footstool so I could use it to mount the gelding. That's western-speak for, You're a dude, man.
I declined the stool but I did take Liz's advice about demonstrating who was in charge to Stormy. Before I climbed aboard, I spent a minute pressed in close to the big horse, leading him around in a tight circle by gently pulling his halter to one side and forcing him around with my body. Now as the hilltop loomed, I viewed that as a minute well spent.
Stormy's head came around in response to my pressure on the bit and he went into a turn. He slowed down to a walk.
Liz, who rides every day, trotted up on her horse and said, "Well done, Peter. Stormy tested you and now he respects you." I just beamed for the rest of our slow and peaceful ride through the beautiful and quiet National Forest, observing deer and wild turkeys and passing over bear scat.
A week ago Saturday I drove out of Montrose enroute to Durango and had a knee-knocking experience driving over Red Mountain Pass in snow flurries on the Million Dollar Highway between Ouray and Silverton, two old western mining towns. It is a two-lane roadway that clings to the side of the mountain (no guard-rails) in the best of times, which is July and August. In the worst of times, like when I was on it, it is a one-lane plowed path through a wintery white landscape where a driver keeps on the roadway by driving alongside the reflectors lining the side of the road, if they aren't buried in the six-foot high snowbank. Bring sunglasses for the reflected glare (which I didn't have). This roadside icefall greeted me on the way up.
Once I got to Bayfield, Colorado, where my cousin L lives, we went to see her Dad, my Uncle Harry, in Pagosa Springs. He's 88 and doing really well.
It snowed the next day of course. L stays fit by walking in addition to spending hours taking care of the animals on her small ranch before she goes to work each day. I walked with her a couple of miles in the fresh snow on her forest-access roadway at 7200 feet and she wore me out!
That night we watched the mighty Giants slay the Patsies in the Super Bowl, going outside several times to make sure the TV-dish was clear of snow. L's husband, W, a great guy, allowed me to choose watching the big professional football game over watching a Professional Bull Riding meet which he wanted to watch. That's the way it is in the mountains. I was going to drive to Santa Fe on Monday to see my sister who lives there. It was snowing and all the passes were closed, although the back road into New Mexico via Chama was open. Here's what my car looked like on Monday morning. Those two white blobs in the background are the cars of L and W. Here's what the main highway looked like.
So we "moved snow," as W calls it, for a few hours, using shovels, the snowblower and the snowblade on the tractor. (W hard at it so we could get the door open at least.)
And then I drove away. Here's what the road into New Mexico looked like. I went slow (doh!) and the drive to Santa Fe wasn't too bad. I arrived there mid-afternoon on Monday.
A couple of posts ago I published a B&W picture of my Uncle Harry in Colorado as he looked during WWII. My life has been a search for heroes, and he is a hero.
Star on his high school football team, shipboard Marine during WWII in charge of AA fire onboard his light cruiser protecting the flattops, bronze star recipient, Princeton grad, farmer and geologist, father of three lovely daughters and a son, devoted husband, I was very grateful to be afforded the chance to see him again earlier this month in Durango, Colorado. He fought at the first and second Battle of the Philippine Sea (the first one being the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot, the second one being the Battle of Leyte Gulf, where the Japanese very nearly pulled off a stunning surprise), the China Sea raids, the Iwo Jima landing, and the First Carrier Air Strikes at Tokyo.
His ship was off Peleliu when my father, who was also a WWII Marine, was fighting in that bloody island battle. Many shipboard Marines were sent ashore as replacements for the heavy casualties incurred onshore, and I have read my uncle's journal entry where he expresses relief upon learning from lightly wounded Marines transferred to his ship from the raging battle that they knew my father and he was unhurt so far.
Jim is alive! is the notation my uncle made about his brother. Those were the days when boys barely out of their teens had such concerns, eh? (My father was nineteen when he served his time in the hell called Peleliu.)
Here is a picture of my father during WWII. You could see these pictures in the Navy Log at the Navy Memorial in DC on Pennsylvania Avenue across from the Archives at Seventh Street. He also fought on Okinawa, and was posted to China immediately after the war to confront the Communists in an attempt to bolster our fatally corrupt ally Chiang Kai-shek.
Ken Burns has produced a film on World War II which singles out the Battle of Peleliu as prime examples of a sanguinary battle that was strategically worthless, the brutality of the war, and how little Americans actually know about World War II. (Peleliu bled the First Marine Division white. It also was the Marines' introduction to the new Japanese strategy of eschewing wasteful banzai charges and making the Americans root them out from their fortified entrenchments one by one, which proved hideously costly at Peleliu, Iwo Jima and Okinawa.)
And yes, I thought my father, who died in 1986 at age 61, was a hero too. Did a family member of yours serve during WWII? Look his or her service record up.
Yeah I been running. I haven't been posting, but I've been commenting on posts. I dispense all sorts of advice to posters, who should always remember what the advice cost them before they follow it.
I've been busy at work. You know, work, the curse of the running class.
Last weekend I went to Colorado on business. After running six miles with my Ten-Mile Training Group last Saturday, which capped off a forty-mile week including a track W.O. and a 6K run home from that, I flew out to Denver and drove about 600 miles around the state that evening and on Sunday, visiting my 88 y.o. uncle (my dad's brother), my 90 y.o. aunt (my mom's sister) and three cousins. I went over Wolf Creek Pass twice and remembered how beautiful the Rockies are. (I used to live in Colorado.) I was glad it wasn't snowing, which sometimes happens in September out there. Monday and Tuesday I was doing work stuff in Denver. Way too busy to run. (Below: My Uncle Harry. He earned the Bronze Star in the war against Japan.)
On Thursday I ran during the noon hour at work. I jogged to the Tidal Basin where I ran a virtual 3K race around it in 13:58 (7:30). You see, from the Tidal Basin you can see the Pentagon, which the terrorists struck with a commercial plane at great loss of life on September 11, 2001. Every year since then I have run a memorial 3K race around the Tidal Basin on September 11th. This year I was two days late because of my travel, but I ran it when I could.
Friday evening I left my office near the Capitol at 6 pm to run the bridges, something I had never done before. I ran into Georgetown via the C&O Canal and went over the Key Bridge into Virginia. Running south on the Mt. Vernon Trail, I ran over the footbridge onto Roosevelt Island and circled it. Hurrying down the trail again in the gathering gloom, I ran back into the District over the Roosevelt Bridge, then re-entered Virginia by the Memorial Bridge. Finally gaining the District one last time by running over the 14th Street Bridge, I ran up Capitol Hill in the dark and got back to my office at a few minutes past 8 pm.
I achieved a 10 minute per mile pace for the thirteen miles that I ran, pretty slow, but my friend Bex tells me that that should be my training goal pace on long runs, because it is 90 seconds slower than my hoped-for marathon race pace of about 8:30 minutes per mile. But my feeling is, if I can't do it now at half the distance, how can I do it later at the full distance? Time will tell. (Left: Bex packing her car like a glove minutes before she drove away from the east coast for good enroute to the left coast.)
Yesterday morning I ran eleven miles in the District with my training group, covering the second through ninth miles of the Army Ten-Mile race course. We were doing 9:30 miles. The members of my group are three weeks out from their goal race and all of them are looking terrific as they get ready for Army. (I will be running Chicago on that day.)
This morning a cool crisp note was in the air, a certain indication that fall is at hand. At 8 am I found myself lining up in my village for the start of a 5K race. Talk about a hilly course! The brand new race course runs up the hill that I use for my hill workout. But the official race clock was off by more than four minutes so I had a killer time. (What, that doesn't count?) More on that in the next post.
Even as I write this, NBTR is running in the Philly Half-Marathon. Good luck, Jeanne! [Added later.] NBTR ran a strong race that placed her in the 48th percentile according to her age-adjusted grade. Congrats! (Right: Not Born To Run finishing eight miles in a recent Ten Mile Training Group run on the W&OD Trail.)
d U.S. detachments survived either of those battles. (Right: Custer, two of his brothers, a nephew and about forty of his remaining men died on this hillside while trying to reach the Little Big Horn River marked by the green strip of cottonwood trees in the background so that they could assault an Indian encampment on the other bank that contained ten times as many well armed fighters as they had in their entire initial assaulting force.)
I was going to drive to Santa Fe on Monday to see my sister who lives there. It was snowing and all the passes were closed, although the back road into New Mexico via Chama was open. Here's what my car looked like on Monday morning. Those two white blobs in the background are the cars of L and W.
