Raging River Lonely Trail

I love this world you made us

And I love the rivers too

It was billed as the trip of a lifetime, and it was. Maybe it was even life-altering. It was certainly momentous.

Eight days of white-water rafting down the Colorado River where it flows through the Grand Canyon with 12 of my college roommates and their friends, most of whom I hadn’t seen in decades, and 16 others. One person died. Nine others quit the trip. Four veteran boatmen took us 18 survivors 240 miles to the end. Thanks Travis, Lindsay, Julie and Kelly. Our faith in you was well-placed. (Right: Andy watches as Travis’ boat falls into a raging cauldron in a rapids and momentarily disappears from sight.)

I have posted eight entries about the trip. That’s enough. The most memorable time was the hour we spent trying to save the group member who died of an apparent heart attack on the fourth day. We gave it our best shot, and afforded the decedent her best chance to live. Everyone performed magnificently. It didn’t work out.

I see your walls and canyons
And I feel you very near

(Left: Our fellow traveler's final resting site.) I wish it had been different, and to her family, I’m so sorry. Thanks to everyone who tried so hard. Travis who got the chopper coming and then positively supercharged the rescue attempt with his commanding CPR. Julie whose strong presence was ubiquitous in the rescue attempt. Lindsay whose outstanding capability maintained the airway. Dennis whom I have already spoken about. Mary who took her turn performing compressions. Beth who immediately raised the alarm and got swift first-responder help. Harrie who counted out the compressions aloud for us. Whoever it was that kept wiping the torrent of sweat off my brow with a cool wet rag as I worked. The people who helped land the chopper and secure the campsite from its backwash. The chopper crew. (Just two days later a helicopter coming out of the Grand Canyon on a rescue mission collided with another rescue helicopter and everyone died.) The persons who took care of the family members during their time of bereavement. You all know who you are and what help you were. God bless you all.

Travis came up to me at the end and shook my hand. That’s all. That means the world to me, to earn a measure of respect from a man like Travis.

(Right: This person is already fading into the spectral images of the past, the little boy happy with his strong father, the fast high school athlete getting through boarding school, the quietly confident young man making it in the world, the capable State Patrolman managing every perilous situation, the loving father imbuing his sons with manliness, the athletic runner gracefully traveling down life's paths.) Going down the Grand Canyon, the first four days were spent glorying in the stunning exposition of what the Lord gives to us. The last four days were spent reflecting upon the startling finality of what the Lord takes from us.

I may not be like your other children
But I feel very close to you. Boatman's Prayer by Vaughn Short

Dennis

Some of you might know that my life is a search for heroes. Here's one.

Dennis is a single guy who came on our eight-day Grand Canyon trip all by himself. In the original group of twenty-eight, only he and one other person came alone. That's gutsy.

He loved sitting in the front of the boat (First Chair) and absorbing the pounding waves that crashed over the boat in the rapids. We all huddled behind him as he blocked much of the cold, wet sheets of water that swept into the boat during those times.

He's a police dispatcher. He's also what I call an actor, and not a reactor. When bad things happen and something needs to be done, he materializes at the crisis point and helps out in a quiet, non-insistent way. He doesn't stand around on the sidelines wringing his hands when things go south in a hurry, wondering what to do. (Right: Dennis in the front of the boat, taking another one for the team.)

When one of our group went into extreme duress on the fourth day with apparent heart failure (tragically, she died), the guides and a few others did CPR on her for a long time. It was her only chance. We were at the bottom of the Grand Canyon working on a non-responsive person, and we were going to be at it until outside help arrived. (Miraculously, it did in about 50 minutes.) We were going to need to take turns spelling each other.

Dennis came to the working group quickly, and calmly offered his help. He succinctly told us what he was capable of. He knew CPR. (Do you?) We slid him onto chest compressions when I grew tired.

He worked doing that for a long time, performing it steadily and correctly. It's exhausting work if it goes on for an extended period. He was a godsend. When he became fatigued, he informed us and he was relieved. He then stood by, ready to go back in when necessary. That's the way it's supposed to go.

Dennis is a hero in my book.

Last hours

She had never seemed well. Always quiet, she was pale and subdued. She was the very last of the group of twenty-eight that I got around to meeting. It turns out that I never got to meet her.

She was 65, the mother of three children. She had come on the eight-day Grand Canyon rafting trip with her husband of 48 years. They apparently were inseparable at home. Sweethearts since age 15, married at age 17, on the trip they were always curled up together at the back of the boat.

(We encountered beauty...) On the fourth day she was more languorous than ever. At the lunch break, we put ashore at a little side stream that emanated from a small waterfall 200 yards up the shallow, rock-strewn stream bed. Everyone waded up to it to stand under the warm plunging water.

I was last off the boat. I could see that she was having trouble getting up the stream bed. It was only ankle-deep to the left, but the bed sloped off very gradually to the right into chest-high still water. She seemed caught up in that gradual slope and couldn't get out of it. Further and further to the right she went as I came along, into deeper and deeper water. It was odd. Absolute safety in water only inches, not feet, deep lay a few centimeters to her left.

Suddenly she was in water up to her chest and she seemed flustered. I reached out a hand for her and brought her back to the shallow side. Her husband was twenty feet ahead, waiting for her. Neither one spoke a word to me.

Then she was having trouble manipulating the shallow part of the stream bed so I extended my hand again and guided her a few steps to her waiting husband. I went on ahead to partake in the cascading shower of the waterfall and when I returned, she was seated in six inches of water, resting, while her husband stood guard over her.

She died four hours later.

(...and danger on our journey.) Later I heard that reportedly, she had a bad heart. But she had undergone a battery of tests in preparation for the trip, a stress test, an MRI and others, and passed every one of them.

The Colorado River where it passes through the Grand Canyon, with its boiling rapids and broiling heat, is a harsh taskmaster.

Getting over her

I hope no one on the packed jetliner saw me cry today. I was crying for her even though I barely knew her.

It was on Friday that she passed. She lay down nearby and never rose again. Summoned immediately, our response was swift. We worked on her for almost an hour, a tight circle of people kneeling clustered about her, working in tandem and issuing curt commands to each other which were instantly obeyed. But she didn't come back.

The trip member who had raised the alarm came up to me later that evening and rubbed my back briefly as I stood there glumly, and said we had done all we could in the circumstances. It felt so good to have a momentary physical connection with a living person. I inanely told her that coincidentally, I had taken a CPR course just six weeks ago. I earnestly told her how well everyone in the little group had performed.

On the plane ride back home five days later, as I was writing notes about that day, I became overwhelmed with the grief and disappointment of losing a fellow being. Of having someone die even as my hands were on her for almost an hour, beseeching her to hold on. When it was over, the living just got up and walked away and continued on with their lives.

I put down my pen, closed my notebook and my eyes, and leaned my head far back into my seat. I kept brushing those pesky tears off my cheeks as soon as they trickled down.

At that moment on the plane, I wanted someone I loved and who loved me that I could hold onto as I replayed it in my mind. I wanted to cry out my hurt and pain over the loss of another on a loved one's shoulder. But although I was soon to be home and my three adult sons live in town, they don't care for me nor speak to me. These self-absorbed young men are not persons I would ever look to for help. The rest of my family lives elsewhere.

I wish that lady had lived. I can still see her husband of 48 years, shock etched on his face, kneeling in the sand off to the side, holding her hand as we worked. Damn it all, we worked so long and hard and got such wonderful assistance from everybody there and we had no damn success.

Old Cop Cars

A few posts ago, during National Police Week here in DC, I tole you about Colorado State Trooper Zach Templeton, who was taken from us in October at age 27 by a careless teen-age driver. He left behind a daughter, who was the joy of his life.

I didn't know Zach, but I worked with his type when I was a Colorado State Patrolman from 1980 to 1987 and I would have trusted Zach with my life. I always say, if you need help immediately because you're in desperate straits, find a trooper. S/he will act right away to resolve your problem.

Here is Zach's name on the National Law Enforcement Memorial wall here in DC.

I got my pictures back from that week. Enjoy.

Here is the Massachusetts State Police band.

Next is an old squad car. Its hood is up, the universal sign of trouble on the highway. Somebody call a trooper.
Here's another old police car. When I started work for the state patrol, we had two dome lights on top, one blue and one red. That was quite an advancement from the single flashing light on top. You didn't turn them on, you activated them. By the time I left to go to law school, we had a bar of emergency equipment across the top. Progress.

The National Police Week in DC was international. Here are some London bobbies attending the tribute to fallen officers at the the memorial. Do you know why they're called bobbies? I do. Because Sir Robert Peel was responsible for putting the first policemen on the beat in London. Don't know who Robert Peel was? I can't do everything for you. Google him. Or as Stephen Colbert would say, check his wikiality.

Lastly, here's another old squad car. Doesn't it look fast? When I started with State Patrol, we had standard old Chrysler six-cylinders. Man were they powerful. They could get up to speed real fast and go 140 MPH.

Myself, I didn't like going over 90 MPH, and the once or twice I actually went 130 MPH, when there was no traffic and I thought an officer might be in trouble, terrified me. Grimly I went, hands compressing the steering wheel. But you gotta get there. Any trooper would have done the same for me.

He ain't heavy...

I didn’t know him but I feel close to him.

Zach Templeton was 27 when he died in October on a divided highway outside of Denver. He was in the grassy median where he had stopped to help a motorist wrestle a 22,000 gallon plastic water tank back onto the trailer from whence it had fallen. Scott Hinshaw, 38, was also there helping.

Traffic was crawling past the men. When I was a State Patrolman, we called these drivers who slowed down to gawk at roadside spectacles lookie-loos. They are a menace.

Seventeen year old Cody Loos was driving down the road searching the floorboard of his pickup truck for some sunflower seeds to chew on. Such is the price of a man’s life, some sunflower seeds. Loos glanced up to see that traffic was almost stopped immediately in front of him and he jammed on his brakes. His pickup skidded, slid into the median and slammed into Templeton and Hinshaw. Templeton was killed and both of Hinshaw’s legs were badly broken.

No drugs or alcohol were involved. Only sunflower seeds.

The two men lay like crumpled dolls on the ground under Loos’ truck. Moments before, both had looked powerful and resplendent in their Colorado State Patrol uniforms. The blinking emergency lights on their now-empty units added a terrible stridency to the suddenly-chaotic scene.

This is National Police Week in DC. Hundreds of police officers from all over the world are in town to honor the thousands of fallen American peace officers whose names are inscribed on the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial. On Saturday there was a 5K race run in commemoration of the event. Last night there was a service for fallen officers at the Memorial.

I attended and perused the personal tributes laid upon the wall in memoriam. I was a Colorado State Patrolman for seven years and I know the names of several of my then-brethren, and others, who are there.

Some are legendary in Colorado State Patrol lore, like Trooper Tom Carpenter, who was abducted and forced to drive around in his patrol car by his assailant, who held his own service weapon to his head. Before he was brutally killed, Carpenter desperately engaged in outlandish radio traffic as a signal of trouble but no one caught on, and radio protocol was changed after his tragic murder.

As I walked the wall of heroes, I saw a CSP shoulder patch laid by a picture of a virile young man familiarly dressed in sky blue epaulet shirt and french blue slacks with a charcoal gray stripe. One of my own, a Colorado State Trooper taken in October. I reflected upon the photograph showing a strong man of youth and promise, noted the name and went home to research Zachariah Templeton.

So senseless was the devastating accident that claimed the trooper's life that Colorado State Patrol Chief Colonel Mark Trostel, in assuagement, could only conclude that God must have called away Templeton for duty, because never again would Templeton’s three-year old daughter feel his strong hands holding her, nor would his family and friends ever again be cheered by his infectious smile. Hinshaw is still working determinedly to recover from his traumatic leg injuries.

Loos, now 18, expressed remorse at a hearing in March while pleading guilty to careless driving resulting in death, a misdemeanor. Perhaps worse than the sentence he received, two years probation and 300 hours of community service, was having to face several of the victims of his act and listen to their outpouring of understandable rage, bitterness and grief.

Five months afterwards, Trooper Hinshaw would need a wheelchair to attend the sentencing hearing. He felt a guilt that was "absolutely unbearable" that he had survived while Templeton hadn’t. He wished he could have changed places with Templeton. Hinshaw addressed Loos, and spoke of forgiveness.

"I am willing to stand with you and do this community service with you and help you honor this man right here. You messed up, Cody, and that one decision cost a life. [However] I refuse and do not want you to let this ruin your life. ... Be better than you can ever be, always strive to be better, always be unhappy with where you are in life. Carry on, brother, we’ll get better."

The Colorado State Patrol released a statement afterwards that said in part: After the tragic loss of Trooper Templeton and the devastating injuries to Trooper Hinshaw, "our focus has been on assisting the Templeton and Hinshaw families through these trying times." Hopefully the conclusion of the criminal case will allow the Templeton and Hinshaw families "to seek closure and turn a new chapter in the healing process. ... It is also our hope that the healing process may begin for the Loos family as well."

Amen.



In Memoriam to 24 Colorado State Patrol Officers.

Heroes at the Flying Pig Marathon

The following account is taken almost entirely from information contained in an excellent front-page article in today's Cincinnati Enquirer about yesterday's Flying Pig Marathon, written by Dustin Dow (ddow@enquirer.com).

Bobby Edwards was a streaker. This is what they call marathoners in Cincinnati who have run all of the prior Flying Pig Marathons in that city. On Sunday morning, as he was approaching the tenth mile in this tenth running of the Flying Pig Marathon, Edwards was feeling good. Suddenly, without warning, the 55 year-old sub-5 hour marathoner collapsed. He lay lifeless in the road while bystanders desperately called for help. A minute ticked by.

Patrick Conrey, an EMT from Clearwater, Florida, must have been getting hot in his fireman's gear as he approached milepost 10. Cincinnati fireman Oscar Armstrong III had perished in a fire on March 21, 2003. Two Cincinnati-area firefighters, Captain Robin Broxterman and Brian Schira of Colerain Township, had similarly fallen while fighting a fire on April 4th. Conrey was running the Flying Pig Marathon in full fireman regalia in tribute to them and to raise money for charity. (Conrey was running for others at the Flying Pig Marathon.)

Some paramedics from local fire departments were running with Conrey in support of his effort. This group came across Edwards lying motionless in the roadway a minute after he went down, at about the moment that a paramedic team standing by elsewhere on the course was being dispatched to the scene. With one precious minute gone by, every second counted for the inert Edwards.

Surveying the scene as the group ran up on the prostrate Edwards, Conrey said to his comrades, "It's time to go to work, boys." The unnamed local firemen switched from runners to rescuers instantly and sprang to Edwards' aid.

CPR was started upon the unconscious Edwards. The standby paramedic unit arrived. For twenty minutes paramedics worked upon the prone runner in the roadway while marathoners streamed by.

Chest compressions were done. A tube was inserted in his mouth. He was shocked by a defibrillator three times.

Edwards was resuscitated and transported to University Hospital. He was speaking by the time he arrived. On Sunday night he was listed in stable condition.

Conrey modestly said, "I don't want to take too much credit. I was just there handing them drugs. Those paramedics running with me, they saved his life."

Edwards' daughter Stephanie Rabius said, "I could be planning a funeral right now. He had a heart attack. If they hadn't been there, my father would be dead."

Edwards asked his daughter at the hospital, "So, was I dead?"

She told him, "Yeah. You were."

Race medical director Dr. Jon Devine said the hospital cardiologist described the recovery Edwards made from his heart attack as "one of the greatest saves he's ever seen."

Conrey, a 3:22 marathoner who went on to finish the marathon in a time of 5:26:42 while carrying about 40 pounds of equipment, stated how he felt about having an unanticipated delay during his race. "You almost feel like that was the reason we were running the marathon today. It was twenty minutes well spent on the course."

There were some heroes afoot in Cincinnati this past weekend.

Paranoia strikes deep

Into your life it will creep.
It starts when you're always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away.

Last year a tragedy occurred at my agency when two employees were struck and killed in front of the building by a city bus making a left turn as they crossed the street in a crosswalk with the light. This year an employee suffered a broken leg when a turning car struck him in a crosswalk in front of the building.

What to do? The Metropolitan police showed up recently outside the building one morning and started handing out $100 jaywalking tickets. A runner friend observed a cop give a ticket to a runner who ran across the empty street against the light, and issue a gotcha ticket to a pedestrian who stepped off the curb into the crosswalk (but went no further) while the light was still red.

This sucks. I run around there, a lot. I'm careful, but occasionally I run across roadways when I'm not in the crosswalk and the light isn't green.

DC has a running mayor who runs several miles every morning. I wonder if he stops and waits for every light.

L'Etranger

Since I was a young man, I have read Camus' The Stranger at least once every single decade. It's a great little existential story about the meaninglessness of life--if we allow ourselves to drift through it.

The little man protagonist floats through his existence living in Algiers, making dinner, sitting on his balcony smoking cigarettes and watching life flow by on the street below, making love to his girlfriend Marie. Here is sex in Camus.

Toward the end of the show I kissed her, but rather clumsily. Afterward she came back with me to my place. When I woke up, Marie had gone. She'd told me her aunt had expected her first thing in the morning.

Does it get any better than that? Everything's left to your imagination. What lovemaking they had that night! Probably after a long evening of romance and foreplay. Here is love in Camus.

She was wearing one of my pajama suits and had the sleeves rolled up. When she laughed I wanted her again. A moment later she asked me if I loved her. I said that sort of question had no meaning, really; but I supposed I didn't. She looked sad for a bit, but when we were getting our lunch ready she brightened up and started laughing, and when she laughs, I always want to kiss her.

This little man is in love.

But the story moves inexorably to its conclusion, the extinguishing of this man's life, the end of the world, really. Where does the world go when we die? Camus provides the answer through his protagonist. Other men and women will continue living, and the world will go on as before. Oh.

The narrator's Mother has recently died and he is working through his grief without knowing that's what's going on. He finds himself on a beach with a friend, confronting some local toughs, holding his friend's gun. He shoots one the the thugs in cold blood, without a moment's thought about the enormity of the deed.

He is put on trial and offers practically no coherent defense. He is sentenced to die and all the pleasant little vignettes of his life come to an end.

While his appeal process plays out, our little hero gets used to prison life. He describes his new life of confinement in my favorite passage.

Afterwards I had prisoner's thoughts. I waited for the daily walk in the courtyard or a visit from my lawyer. As for the rest of the time, I managed quite well, really. I've often thought that had I been compelled to live in the trunk of a dead tree, with nothing to do but gaze up at the patch of sky just overhead, I'd have gotten used to it by degrees, I'd have learned to watch for the passing of birds or drifting clouds, as I had come to watch for my lawyer's odd neckties, or, in another world, to wait patiently till Sunday for a spell of love-making with Marie. Well, here anyway, I wasn't penned in a hollow tree trunk. There were others in the world worse off than I.

Then one morning they come at dawn to take him to the guillotine. In his last moments he rebukes the attending priest in a fit of pique and sends him away. Here is death in Camus.

It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe.

I love this little classic.

How does it relate to me now? I am so glad I took up running several years ago and changed my little life--do you hear that, Sharon? But I am heartbroken that you and your coterie of "professionals" wrecked, in my opinion, the childhoods of the three minor boys in the half-decade of divorce litigation that followed, by immersing them in it.

Death's 5-year plan.

My great-grandfather died at age 71 of lung cancer. He smoked.

My grandfather died at age 66 of lung cancer. He smoked.

My father died at age 61 of lung cancer. He smoked.

Do you see a pattern here?

Twenty-five years ago today, I crushed out my last cigarette at two seconds to midnight. I haven’t had so much as a puff since.

In three and a half months I’ll be 56.

I'm Nobody

I received a distressing email today from a running friend who left me far behind when he fell into the clutches of ultra runners. He puts in 60 to 70 miles per week now to my 20 to 25 miles per week. Now he does marathons as training runs. One Saturday he ran from Iwo Jima to Mount Vernon and back, over 30 miles, just because he felt like it. He didn't take the next day off, either. Next up for him is a hundred miler, no doubt.

I used to be a better runner than him, but now when I encounter him in a race, I just try to hang on within sighting distance of him for the first half. I did beat him by a few seconds last year in a 5K when I ran a 22:45, but then my friend had already run several miles to get there (part of his training routine) and he was running home afterwards. That's the way he trains now. The severe snow storm we had last month, when the government closed, he went to work anyway. He ran there. But he does battle injury issues now, moreso than I do.

Here is part of his email: "...my tendonitis is to the point the Dr says I'm flirting with a rupture. I'll be taking it one week at a time... . Yesterday a friend of mine collapsed and died in front of the Arlington courthouse at about 10AM but because he had no ID at the time it was last night before his family found out. I need to pick up one of your road ID's."

This is a tragedy that strikes the DC area once or twice every year. Carry an ID when you run! I have an ID tag fastened onto every pair of running shoes I own. Below is the testimonial I wrote last year for the company whose tag I use. I meant every word of it. I like their product but I benefit nothing from promoting it. There are lots of companies selling runners' IDs on the Internet. Google "runners id" or some like phrase and buy an identification system for when you run. You can also go to petsmart and use their store vending machine to create a dogtag to run through your shoelaces. That clinks, though.

Many of us carry no identification when we run. We grab our shoes and head out the door. Free of encumbrances, we run carefree. But we are not responsibility free. Our loved ones need to be informed about our circumstances as soon and as properly as possible if tragedy strikes.

Here in DC, where it’s hot and humid, it seems like practically every summer a tragedy strikes. A solitary runner collapses on a trail during a weekend run and cannot be revived. Who is the runner? Perhaps, like me, the runner lives alone with no family in the area. Often identification of the stricken runner has to wait until the following week when co-workers notice his or her absence.

I have a dozen pairs of running shoes. I have a dozen Runner’s ID tags, one for each pair. They are unobtrusive, virtually weightless and practically noiseless. I don’t know the tag is there. I have never lost one. Each Runner’s ID tag is individualized but they all contain necessary basic information about me, my name and an emergency contact. Beyond that, there is lots of space for creativity with the Runner’s ID tag’s six lines for entry of information.

Each pair of my running shoes has run a marathon. Each Runner’s ID tag, in addition to my basic information, records that race in a different way, with the date, maybe my time, and perhaps the conditions of the race or whether it was an inaugural running or a PR.

I give Runner’s ID tags to running family members and friends as gifts of love, memorialized in a way unique to each person. "Please put it on your running shoe," I say, "for me. Because I care about you and would want to know if anything ever happened to you."

Runner’s ID. With it, I’m somebody. Without it, I’m nobody.