So far...

After my health woes of the last 12 months, once I was fully healed by May, I started on the long and arduous road back to running.  I don't run with anyone anymore as all my former running buddies have moved away or in one instance, she doesn't return my calls. Life moves on, friends fall away.

I created a plan--run 3 times a week, paying close attention to distance (low mileage) and pace (plodding). Most running plans fail because of unrealistic goals, and I am closer to 70 than 60.

I started with a 1/2 mile per jog for two weeks, then kicked it up to 3/4 miles per run for two weeks with a "long" run of a mile. By June I had pushed past the I'm-going-to-die feeling each run and although my pace remained a mere plod, I found a "2d wind" late in runs, and I was up to a mile each run.  Most importantly I was still at it. 

I added a little weight lifting before and after and I stretched prior and subsequent to each run, a significant factor that I believe has kept me injury free so far. 

July brought further progress, 3 miles per run with a long run of 4 miles. I recently hit a weekly total of 10 miles. 

Unfortunately I developed a mystery calf injury last week and although I I felt like a sloth, I took the full week off and it healed. Monday I plodded two miles and I intend to do 3 miles my next run. So far so good.

I'm coming back

What a year. A year ago I developed a hole in the vision in my right eye and I had emergency surgery the next day for a torn retina, the first of four surgeries in the past year that saved my sight in that eye. 

The worst was when the first surgery failed and the surgeon filled my eye with silicon the next week (surgery # 2) and for 5 months I went about with a foreign substance in a major organ (my eye) and don't think my body didn't know every minute of every day that there was something foreign in it that it couldn't expel. But surgery # 3 took the oil out, except for floating residual particles (that I call my asteroid belt) that lazily cross my vision in a flurry and I wonder if a lifetime of this will eventually drive me nuts. In other words, it seems as if often there are flies buzzing about on the periphery of my vision, except that they aren't there, unless it's that one in a thousand that actually is there. 

This caused me not to run till my eye was fully healed, which I determined to be a month after my fourth and last eye operation in April. Meanwhile I put on dozens of pounds in my lethargy. (Any workout can strain the eye, in my feeling. And my vision had (has) flaws in it from the damage, especially in depth perception.)  

In May I started coming back, running three times a week beginning with runs of 1/2 mile at a time that first week. I couldn't make the entire two laps around the track that first time out without having to walk. Last week I suffered a slight setback in my routine, but I have come back from that. More to come later.

Grand Theft Auto

Sometimes when I have trouble sleeping in my house during the heat season (I have no central air), I take a walk in the cool of the night.  Last night I woke up in a drenched bed and I took my accumulated aluminum cans to the recycle barrel on Main Street around the corner.

As I was pouring the cans into the recycle bin I heard a car being cranked over repeatedly.  At 3:30 in the morning in a darkened business district with no one else around.

I took a few steps and stood on the sidewalk watching someone inside a darkened car in the used car lot turning the engine over, and then when it caught the car made a loud screeching sound, shuddered and the engine killed.   Again and again this process was repeated

I thought my standing 60 feet away in the dim glow of the street lights would induce the driver in the dark car to emerge to sheepishly explain himself, or else run away, especially since the business was completely dark and shuttered for the night.  Not so, he just kept repeating the suspicious process.

The former cop in me, 30 years dormant but already jarred awake by the dissonant car engine noise in the night, I thought briefly about striding up to the car in the lot and asking the driver what the hell he thought he was doing.  After all, maybe it was a repo, or an owner who had returned to get his car at that hour, perhaps by arrangement.

But in the olden days (cops always take action, it's their job to do so) I would have had two crucial advantages: a pistol on my hip and a radio nearby in my car, connected to a wide network of swift support.  This was a dangerous course for a mere civilian out alone in the dark encountering a possibly criminal situation with no nearby apparent support.

Ruing that I am so old as to not view my cell phone as an essential appendage of my body to be taken with me at absolutely all times (it was sitting on my dining room table), I turned and started walking briskly home, a two-minute walk.  As I rounded the corner to gain my residential street, I heard the noisy engine finally catch and with a loud vroom, it pulled out of the lot onto the street and I looked back to see it peeling off EB on Main Street at a high speed, completely without lights.

I ran the rest of the way back home and dialed the Falls Church police.  Thus began a charade, a caricature of civilian interaction with police that informs us why the public doesn't readily interact with the police.

A female answered on the fourth ring and the conversation, while not verbatim, went something like this as well as I remember it 24 hours later.

"Hello?"

"Is this the Falls Church police?"

"Yes, how can I help you?"

"I just saw a very suspicious occurrence at the Falls Church Auto used car lot on Broad [Main] Street one minute ago, a person started up a darkened car in the lot and went speeding off eastbound on Broad Street at a high rate of speed with no lights on."

"Sir, what are you saying?"

"I think a car might have been stolen from the used car lot at Falls Church Auto just a minute ago and it was headed EB on Broad Street without lights a minute ago."

"Where is Falls Church Auto?"

"It's on Broad Street across from the car wash."

"Which car wash is that?"

"It's right where the bicycle bridge on the W&OD Trail crosses over Broad Street."

"What part of town is that?"

"You're not familiar with Falls Church, are you?"

"What side of town is this lot in?"

"It's right next to the Car Title Loan storefront, and Smokey's garage service station.  It's directly across the street from the old Chevy Chase Bank branch, which turned into a Capital One branch, which is closed now."

"Do you know its address?"

"No."

"And the car left on Broad Street?"

"Yes, EB."

"What kind of car was it?"

"I don't know, it was dark.  It was a dark sedan.  It had a pennant flag on the roof and a promotional front plate."

"A what?"

"A cloth banner flying on the roof and a promotional front plate."

"What's a promotional front plate?"

"It wasn't an ordinary front tag, it contained an advertisement for the used car lot on the front plate."

"Did you see the license plate or get a license number?"

"No, it was too dark, but I could see that it was a novelty front tag."

"What is your name"

"Peter Lamberton."

"How do you spell that?"

"Like it sounds.  L-A-M-B-E-R-T-O-N."

"What's your phone number?"

[Feeling crucial minutes slipping away!]

"Isn't my number on your caller ID?"

"We just want to confirm it.  Does it end in 4**4?"

"Yes."

"Can you hold for a minute?"

"Yes."

After three minutes of being on hold, I hung up.  There was no further communication with the local police.

Today I stopped in at Falls Church Auto.  After all, I have bought two cars from that business, and sold two cars to it.

There I heard a sad tale of woe, that a classic car with only 15,000 miles on it, already pre-sold to a buyer in France and being prepared for him, had been stolen off the lot at 3;30 that morning.  The police received a call from a citizen at that time and had responded by 3:48 am and had found an open window at the business and left a note.  They came back at 9:30 am, learned of the theft and took the report.  They didn't have any information on who the informant was.

At the business, I learned that a key for the car was missing, and that it was a manual transmission and that the emergency brake had been locked down tightly, both of which would explain why the car had been catching, shuddering with a screech of metal on metal and quitting if the thief was not fully conversant with a stick shift or knew that the emergency brake was tightly engaged.  I wish I could have done more to have averted this theft because it is a small business and I like the people there.

Climate change, anyone?

June was the hottest month on record.  July is on pace to be the hottest month yet again.

This week it has, with the heat index, seemed like 110 degrees outside.  My bedroom has become my living cocoon in the house because it has a window air-conditioning unit..  Using the rest of the house, I sit at the dining room table as much as possible, next to a cooling fan.

To go outside is to instantly break out in a sweat.  I took a 3-mile walk the other day on the Mt. Vernon Trail instead of running that afternoon.

I go out with friends for lunch in restaurants which, obviously, have air-conditioning.  Pastrami sandwiches, chili, mussels, it's all good.

50 years ago today...

I remember exactly fifty years ago today, the wonder of observing live (on TV) the first setting of a human foot on a foreign body in space over 270,000 miles from Earth.  Apollo 11 had settled down safely on the moon's surface a short while earlier (I think Neil Armstrong had only a few seconds of extra rocket fuel left aboard the Eagle when he picked a boulder free landing site to land upon, before he started using the reserve committed to lifting off again).  That was a wonder in itself but when, listening that evening (on Nantucket) to the pinging of the transmission sounds from the moon on the live TV shot and watching from a remote camera shot the awkward, jerky-jerky descent of the fully space-suited Armstrong down the pod's short ladder to step onto the moon's surface, that was an incredible few seconds.

Awe inspiring.  What an American achievement, an incredible undertaking equal to Operation Overlord or the Manhattan Project, a difficult enterprise brilliantly executed that shouted out the greatness of America which has never dimmed from that day.  (MAGA. What cockamamie horse shit.)

Even Armstrong's corny, scripted words, sexist though they were even then, were thrilling to hear in the moment.  "A small step for man.  A giant leap for mankind."

I went out on the side porch and looked at the moon, brilliant in the dark, clear, sky.  I could have stood in the back yard and observed it rhapsodically for as long as I cared to but I wanted to be closer to it in the thrill of the moment so I jumped up, grabbed the gutter and pulled myself up to the roofline and hung on it for a minute, a few feet nearer to the celestial orb as I observed it in wonderment, a new destiny which humankind had claimed that night in America.

Call the Zombie Patrol for a Pickup

Like a zombie lurching through a heat-stifled town, as if apocalyptic fires were burning everywhere adding to the heat, I plodded four miles this morning as the heat of the day built up rapidly.  The hottest June on record last month, and July is headed for another heat record.  With high temperature and excessive humidity, it's slated to feel like 110 degrees later today here in DC.

I went 3.2 miles early on Wednesday, another scorching day where it felt like 100 degrees when the heat built up.  I finished my run then totally drenched and feeling lightheaded and slightly sick, just like today, and I spent the rest of that day in my house recovering from the enervating effort.  I feel better today, so maybe I'm becoming acclimated to the sapping heat.

I feel good about my running right now.  I was out of running for the last two years while I recovered from an achilles strain and then was felled by a retina tear which required four surgeries to heal and nearly took my sight in that eye.  My last surgery was in early April and on May 1st I started running as I was fully healed.  Coming back was (is) slow and hard; my first day I targeted running a mere half a mile, slowly, and I had to walk the second half of that "run."

But I have been keeping at it, running three times a week, stretching my calfs and achilles before and after each run assiduously, which I never used to do, and slowly building up the mileage, first a half mile, then three quarters of a mile, then a mile, now I'm up to three-mile runs each time, albeit very slow and plodding, with today's long run for the week of four miles.  Whoot, I cracked double digits after two and a half months with ten miles for the week.  It's paltry progress but I'm keeping at it, taking it slow and steady, and I no longer feel like I'm going to die each run.

Sorry I missed your birthday earlier this month . . . .

Hey birthday boy!  Sorry I missed your birthday earlier this month, but I was busy driving around towns in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia on a big car trip for my vacation.

I forgive you for almost backing over me years ago, if that was you dating my ex-wife last decade, in your big jeep with its ever present Life Is Good spare tire cover.  After all, you are now married to her and I wish you all the luck in the world; if the scales ever fall from your eyes you will need it.

There is one psychological condition you should research, that of the covert narcissist.  Just sayin'.

But I am sorry to say that you revealed to me a hard, inhuman side to your character, in my opinion, that puts you in proper company in your latest marriage.  You see, I haven't had a word of communication from any of my three children in over a decade and have repeatedly tried to ascertain if they are well or indeed, even alive.

The last time I saw the mother of my children on a public street in Arlington, very near where I live, I happened to drive by while coming home from work and you, an adult man and woman, some teenagers and a German Shepherd were on a walk with her on the public sidewalk and I parked and walked past the large group and asked her, regarding each of my three children, five questions for each that represent the bare minimum that any parent would tell another parent, no matter how estranged or outlandishly inimical that person was to the other.  After all, I love my children and worry about their wellbeing and you, since you were there, could have at any time during that single minute, allayed my fears by interjecting, as any human being would to another, that my three children are well, or not well because of [this happenstance].

After all, you obviously know them all; my youngest son speciously referred to you as "Dad" in his marriage book, my middle child has used your address as his address, I believe, and my oldest son has parked his vehicle for extended periods outside your abode and does or has, I think, lived there or caretaken your dwelling.  The five basic questions of anxious parents?

Is he alive. Is he well. Is he married.  Does he have children.  Where does he live.

Your current wife has had this pressed-lip, fallacious and self-serving (to feed her implacable, absurdly oversized rage against the father of her children) narrative to answer my former written inquiries about my children, limited though they were, of:  The children will give you any information they see fit to.  This is an outlandish wild-eyed attitude of parenthood that represents the fringe far end of the PAS (Parental Alienation Syndrome) spectrum, a Western phenomenon fueled by the Mother Knows Best bias of domestic law courts that Sharon played masterfully with her coterie of divorce lawyers and "professionals" until the Arlington court and Appellate courts woke up to her harassing litigiousness, using our minor children as her lawsuit cut-outs, and penalized her almost $50,000 for it.

I don't agree with her parenthood-wrecking attitude and actions but I understand them because she is, in my opinion, a covert narcissist and they only think of themselves.  Your attitude I don't understand, unless you are a terribly cowed husband or you didn't want to, in fact, impart terrible, distressing information to me in a brief interlude.

Indeed, are they all alive?  Well?

There was no answer from her to any of my five simple questions about each one's current well-being (see above).  Nor from you.

A belated happy birthday, Jim.  Life is good, eh?