Schoolteachers

I watched a news report extolling the school teachers who were heroes in the Newtown massacre, who shielded their children as the insane killer stalked the halls of the school.  Some died, with living children under their bodies.

Heroes.  I know they're in heaven with the children taken from us that day, along with the brave principal and school administrator who tried to take out the armed crazed killer at the onset.

These women gave their last full measure for their youthful charges.  I weep for them, and the children killed.

My ex-wife is an elementary school teacher in my home town and I hope she would be so selfless and unselfish as befits her profession.  But having witnessed her actions in our nuclear divorce litigation, wherein she brought our three minor children into the front lines of the proceedings which so radicalized them that they haven't communicated with a single Lamberton in years, where she used these children in an unconscionable manner to merely advance her selfish and shortsighted purposes and ruined what should have been their happy childhoods and warped perhaps forever their adult associations, somehow I doubt it.

West Virginia State Capitol

(Abe Lincoln in front of the West Virginia State Capitol, depicted in his night gown during nocturnal wanderings while pondering how to save the country which had torn into two irreconcilable halves upon his election.  Sound familiar?)  

After seeing the minor league baseball game in Charleston on the first day of my summer vacation in August, I went over to the State Capitol to wander around some before I retired to a motel for the night in preparation for rafting the next two days in the New River National Gorge.  The capital grounds had lots of memorial statues which I always enjoy, in addition to having the Governor's Mansion right next door overlooking the river which flows by just across the local highway.

(West Virginia pays homage to the working men and women who made the state great.)

A long time ago I was a Colorado State Trooper assigned to the Governor's Executive Security Detail in Denver for a couple of years, stationed at the Governor's Mansion there, which was about five blocks from the State Capitol which we also patrolled.  One of my most notable moments on that detail was when then-Vice President George H. W. Bush (Bush the First, father to the Decider) came to speak at the Capitol and he went right by me on his way to the assembly chamber.

(West Virginia honoring the modern American soldier.)

(Abe overlooking the river as seen from the Capitol steps.)

(The instrument of the country's salvation: A Union soldier.)

(A harbinger of greatness to come: A Revolutionary War volunteer.)

Charleston

I started my driving vacation (in August) by taking the scenic route to the West Virginia capital through the Shenandoah Valley and then through hilly terrain in the Mountain State.  The final stretch to Charleston is along a river so it is naturally beautiful.

I was going to attend a minor league game in Charleston but I got a late start and despaired of making the game in time.  However when I got within 15 miles of the state capital I found the game on a local radio channel and it was in the fifth inning.  I hoped there were plenty of hits and pitching changes as I drove closer.

I drove by the Capitol eventually and took the next exit for the ballpark.  With about half a mile to go to the stadium, according to my GPS device, I parked for free and walked the rest of the way.

As I walked up to the park, I saw that all the ticket booths were closed.  A cop and a stadium attendant were lounging by the wide-open gate and I walked in, for free, while they gave me nary a glance.  (I would have gladly purchased a ticket if I had been able to.)

It was the seventh inning but that still gave me ample time to roam around the stadium of the West Virginia Power, a class A minor league team.  The vantage points were interesting, you could see the gold-domed State Capitol from the third base side seats and up the nearby steep hillside, above the noisy traffic going by on the Interstate halfway up, was a cleared patch of hilltop with a cemetery up there with several large monuments.

I had a hot dog and a beer, and the home team won in the bottom of the ninth when the opposing shortstop fielded an ordinary grounder near the second base bag with the bases loaded and two outs and as he went to toss the ball to the second baseman for an easy force-out to end the inning of the tie game, he just dropped the ball.  He stood there thunderstruck as the winning run scored.

The losing visitors trudged off the field glumly while the home teamers all gladhanded and high-rived.  Apparently it was the fourth straight loss for the visitors because a stadium attendant got atop the visiting team dugout with a broom and slowly swept off the dirt up there (a sweep, get it?).

Minor league baseball, it's fabulous.  The stadiums are so homey and hospitable too, with some hokum mixed in.  In this stadium they had the visitor's bullpen lined up on folding chairs set out in the blazing summer sun in the dirt along the stadium wall down the third base line while the home bullpen was in a shaded spacious area under the stands on the first base side.

Running while Rome burns.

Government shutdown, week two.  I go out for a run every morning, usually running the hills in my town up around the school, stopping at the 7-11 on the way back to buy coffee and a Washington Post.

I did my LSD run with John out in Fairfax on Saturday on a hot, humid summer-like day.  There was a 5K race occurring at the same time along the route we were running so we ran on the sidewalk and watched the race leaders go by.

We diverted from our planned route near the finish line and ran into the shopping mall to mingle with the runners in the finish line area there.  It wasn't really stolen glory, I used to run 50 races a year before my chronic injury and I enjoy chatting up runners.

(I'm on the left, John is on the right.)

After a short while we finished our run, grateful for the brief respite in the stifling heat.  I'm keeping active during my forced inactivity but I can't wait for the politicians to resolve the situation.

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.)

The New River day 2

(National memorial to Project Overlord in Bedford, Virginia.)

In August I took a car trip for my summer vacation through West Virginia and extreme western Virginia, rafting for two days on the New River and seeing three minor league baseball games in two different stadiums in West Virginia.  In Virginia I saw the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford and the Natural Bridge.

(Natural Bridge in Virginia.)

The second day on the river, with another outfit, was just as much fun as the first day.  We rafted the rapids, swam in the river, jumped off a tall rock and paddled under the tall suspension bridge, with nary a mishap, although I am certain that we came within a hairsbreadth three times of flipping the raft over.  The guide later allowed as to how, once, he too thought for a moment that we were going over.

(It gets busy in a hurry in the rapids.)

Afterwards, during happy hour at the lodge, they played a videotape of a boat in some rapids from earlier that morning, which was truly spectacular (canoeists precede the raft groups down the river and tape them shooting each rapids).  It was so good I'm going to describe it because, well, that was the same river we went down an hour later.

(That day's swimming hole.)

A boat went into some boiling water in the standard setup--four rowers on each side and the guide across the back gunwale calling out rowing commands, back-rowing and sliding across the back as necessary for balance.  The boat went into a hole in the water, flexed, turned sideways and virtually stopped.  In came the next tall roller that the bottom of the raft rolled up on sideways (the establishment slowed the video action down here for effect) and suddenly the raft was broadside straight up and down.  The four rowers atop this anomaly clung to the upper gunwale momentarily and then started cascading down the open side into the four bottom rowers and took them all with them over the lower side of the boat into the roiling water.

(Different day, different rock, same long ways down.)

Here the boat slammed back down, fortunately upright, into the water.  The only one left in the boat was the guide who stood up, looking incredibly shocked.  His boat was now empty except for him!  The guides in the bar observing this on the tape started cheering and someone said excitedly, "Look, Norm got rid of all of them!"

(Yeah, it was cool on the river.)

As the tape rolled on, you could see the guide immediately get down to business once his initial shock passed.  He ignored the one rower who, though in the water outside the boat, was clinging to the gunwale.  He reached out for the closest person in the river who was detached from the boat and pulled her into the boat.  Then he reached out for the next closest detached person and pulled her in.  Those two started pulling remaining swimmers into the boat as the guide went back to rowing to get close to the remaining swimmers.  The last one pulled into the boat was the bedraggled swimmer who had never once let her death grip upon the gunwale go.

(It's a long way down to the river from the modern suspension bridge.) 

Fortunately the boat never went over which would have made the rescue a lot more difficult.  Also fortunate was that most rapids on the New River, although quite vigorous, are short.  It was fascinating to see how quickly and professionally this rescue unfolded.

(The old and the new: The old 2-lane highway bridge, front; the new 4-lane highway bridge, back.)

The New River

(Above:  "Row, row, row your boat... .")

I have a coffee cup which I picked up in a thrift store which extols the New River in West Virginia as the Grand Canyon of the East for rafting.  Ever since a class 3 rapids just about snuffed out my life during a bucket trip in 2010 underneath a wrapped boat in Utah, I have found rafting in rapids interesting.

(Above:  The New River National Gorge High Bridge.)

I hadn't rafted since then (I finished that trip which required 3 more days of rafting).  I'm pretty sure my fellow bucket trip college freshman dormmates think that experience so unnerved me that I lost my nerve.

(Above:  "Bail!")

I'm not so sure about that; my seven years as a Colorado State Trooper had a few harrowing moments.  My nerves are fine.

(Above:  Our tour guide Zach kept us all safe and no one got rubbed out of the boat.)

Anyway, this summer I signed up as a single for two day-trips down the New River, the aforementioned Grand Canyon of the East.  The first of our bucket trips went down the Grand Canyon on a raft in 2008, conducted by professional river guides, and I know the Grand Canyon's the real deal.

(Above:  "We're going in!")

It was fabulous.  The water was three times its ordinary flow and I found myself idly wondering as we drove down to the riverbank the first day whether I tempting fate by returning to the river.

(Above:  Swimming in the New River.)

But I took a seat in the first bench up front and paddled for all I was worth throughout the day in subservience to the commands of the boat master.  There was a lot of water that rolled over and through our boat, one wave of which nearly washed me out into the river on a class-2 rapids called Surprise! and I had a ball.

(Above: "Oof!)

I went swimming through a rapids in the river, pulled or pushed with my oar for all I was worth in the higher-class rapids and jumped off a twelve-foot high rock into the river.  That was the "Growing Rock" because in reports home it becomes a twenty-foot ledge.

(Above:  The Growing Rock.)

I hope you enjoy the accompanying pictures because I enjoyed the trip.  And I showed up the next day with another outfit for another trip on the New River.

(Above: "Hey, where'd everyone go?")