Fist Bumps, Interrupted

After my fist-bump activities in Brooklyn, Harper's Ferry, and the Outer Banks, I said to Qenehelo, my wife, that I needed suggestions for more physical challenges.  She proposed hiking around Lake Fairfax in nearby Reston.

So off we went a couple of Saturdays ago on the 3 mile scenic trek.   I managed well including going over some steep, short rises infested with tangles of exposed roots and rocks.  When we finished it was again fist bumps all around.

This is the half way point around the lake.

Alas, in the middle of Saturday night (early Sunday morning, actually) I woke with my left knee so sore that it wouldn't support my weight.    Apparently I had injured myself going over the exposed roots.   A visit to an emergency clinic with diagnosis of KNEE EFFUSION and few days of ice and my knee began to feel better.

But not so fast.   On Wednesday I developed a severe pain in my right hip. It took six days to get an appointment with an orthopedist who diagnosed not my hip but spinal stenosis.   I mention all this in the interest of full disclosure.   Right now I'm controlling the pain with Tylenol and doing exercises given to me by a physical therapist. 

Oh the frailty of man's body.   It's clear I ran up against some physical limits.   But I'm working on getting back in shape and looking forward to more fist bumps in the future!



Harper's Ferry Fist Bumps

What do Harper's Ferry and Brooklyn have in common?     Brooklyn is highly urban with store fronts and restaurants, topped by apartments on the higher floors.  Cars and cabs vie for street space and crossing the streets on foot is hazardous.  Harper's Ferry, by contrast, is bucolic, set on the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers.  The mid nineteenth century village is located on the eastern tip of West Virginia with Virginia across the Shenandoah to the south and Maryland, across the Potomac to the east.  The town exists as it did over a century and a half ago and is famous for John Brown's daring raid on the U.S. armoury in 1858.  As you stand in the village everywhere is up.  So what could they possibly have in common?

The thing they have in common is that in each I learned I could do  more than I thought I could.   I chronicled my earlier adventures in the "Browsing Brooklyn" post.   A couple of weeks ago Palesa and her boyfriend Jeff came to visit and we decided one day to go to Harper's Ferry.  My plan had been to sit on a bench while the more hardy explored the village but somehow I got started up the main street and for some reason I then decided to try to ascend "Jefferson's Rock."  the highest point.   With my cane in my right hand and daughter Palesa holding my left, up we went.



Here we are starting up!

At the top is a view that Thomas Jefferson famously described as "worth crossing the Atlantic for."

Here I am near the foundation of an old church with son Thabie and daughter Palesa.

And finally on our way down after sharing fist bumps all around.   Kindly ignore the impression that Jeff and Palesa are half carrying me!   I did it after all and I'll admit I felt pretty proud of myself!

After Jeff and Palesa left, Qenehelo, Thabie, and I drove to Kill Devil Hills on North Carolina's outer banks where, flushed with my activities at Harper's Ferry, I undertook what for me were more physical challenges.   The first was at the site of the Wright Brothers first flight in 1903.   The flight took off from the top of a hill which I climbed up unassisted, albeit with Thabie at my side.

Here I am at the bottom of the hill.   The little specks at the top are people.

 

 And here I am at the top where the first plane took off.  Pay no attention to the small kids who doubtlessly scampered up with ease.  

The next day we went to Jockey Ridge State Park, where the second highest dune on the Atlantic is located.  Hang gliders launch themselves from the top.   It was a slow slog through soft sand but again I made it!





Here I am near the top of the dune with hang gliders in the background.

My wife Qenehelo and I near the Bodie Island lighthouse.

Finally we went to the Elizabethan Gardens, a ten acre botanical paradise, the functional equivalent of Brooklyn's Botanical Gardens where I tooled around in a wheel chair.   This time it was just my two feet.   In an earlier time these would be modest exploits, but now they taught me that if I think I can't do something, give it a try.



Assisted Living

Have you ever visited anybody in an assisted living facility?   It's where they put people who can't take care of themselves: they can't dress themselves, go to the toilet without help, remember who their friends are, know when it's time to take their medications.   Some of the people at a facility I visited, I admit, did indeed seem to be enjoying themselves.   When I asked a group of Jingo players what was the differende3 between Jingo and Bingo, one old lady chirped: "the name!" The experiences, however, seem to be quite variable.

During the last two years of her life, my mother had suffered a series of transient ischemic attacks and suffered from dementia as a result.   She knew who we were, but clearly couldn't take care of herself.  When he was in high school my son Thabie gave piano concerts in assisted living facilities.  The residents whimpered for their cookies and kool aid while Thabie was playing.  Nurses tend to talk to them as if they were children.   It's still a place you go to only when all other options have been excluded.

A friend of mine, who is just a year older than me, was put in assisted living by his son who thought his dad should not be living alone.   My friend didn't really need to be in assisted living but there were no independent apartments available in the retirement complex.   We visited him there four or five times and walked around where we saw old people playing bingo or sleeping while watching TV: a thoroughly depressing place.   He said the upper floors were filled with people suffering from decrepitude or dementia.   My friend said he was depressed, especially in the morning when he would wake up with nothing to look forward except sitting in his chair. 

For this guy there was a happy ending as he was able to move into an independent living apartment with a gym with trainers, clubs and speakers, a library, doctors and dentist offices.   The majority of residents were tooling around at good speeds in their walkers.  My friend was much, much happier and we were happy for him.  He drove his walker like a teenager in a sports car.

These visits made me ask myself, how do we spend our final years?   It seemed that the people in assisted living were essentially sitting around waiting to die.   Nobody should be doing that.  Everybody, no matter how decrepit or demented, deserves to be treated with respect and dignity.   Everybody, as far as possible, should be engaged in meaningful social interaction and individual creative activity.  Our final years need to be as important as years in our twenties or thirties, filled with activity we find valuable.

I confess that my own inclination has been to spend too much time reading in my living room chair
My recent trip to Brooklyn (see my post "Browsing Brooklyn")  was one successful effort at moving around more and soon I'll be trying to hike the easy trails in Shenandoah National Park.

Winter in the White Mountains: An Adventure Story

Old guys, like me, when we look back, we recall stuff we've done that seems risky and immature.  With our current maturity and wisdom, we never would have done such a foolish thing.  In today's post, I recall such a scary adventure.

In the 1960's I worked at Putney School in Vermont where I was an English teacher and Head of Trips.   In the latter capacity, I ran the fall and spring camping trips that all the students went on as well as a couple of optional winter climbs in the White Mountains.   This story involves a climb of Mount Adams, the second highest and most challenging winter climb in this mountain range.

With my friend Bob, the biology teacher, and me as leaders, we left school after class on Friday, and went to my cabin in Crawford Notch where we spent the night.   Up at 4 a.m. Saturday morning, we had breakfast and took a short drive to the trailhead where we put on snowshoes for the arduous climb through thigh deep snow to Crag Camp, a cabin at treeline where we spent Saturday night.   After breakfast Sunday we put on crampons (a set of  metal spikes strapped to the bottoms of our boots) to allow us to navigate the ice above timber line. 

Mount Washington is famous for having the world's worst weather and the same if true for Mount Adams.  As we climbed upward the wind grew stronger and stronger.   By the time we made the summit the wind was howling so loudly that we had to yell in one another's ears to be heard.   I later learned that the temperature was 30 below zero and the wind was 100 miles an hour, readings taken by an Appalachian Mountain Club expedition (they had also set out on the same day and had turned back wisely).   The standard formula is 30-30-30  meaning at 30 below with a 30 mile an hour wind, exposed flesh freezes in 30 seconds.

Mt Adams, New Hampshire, Winter

I knew we had to get off the summit quickly and so I chose an alternate route down the east side of the mountain so we could be out of the fury of the howling wind.   I had the habit as leader of regularly looking back to be sure everybody was with me.   The second time I looked back I saw that only four students were behind me with the other three students and Bob nowhere in sight.  We yelled but heard and saw nothing.  I decided we would have a major disaster if we spread one by one to look, so I took my four students down to the col,  the low spot (still above tree line) between Mounts Adams and Jefferson.  I arranged the four in a tight circle with ponchos on the outside to trap the warmth.

With my students relatively protected I started back up the summits alone to look for Bob and the three students by myself.   As I climbed I kept looking back at the circle of four protected by their ponchos.  At one such look back, the students, then no bigger than ants, started gesturing wildly and pointing.   Sure enough, around the bend came Bob and his three students.   I hurried back to find out what had happened!

What I discovered was an incredible feat of heroism on Bob's part.   The crampon on one of his student's boots came off, the strap broken.   Hiking above tree line was impossible without two crampons.   Bob had somehow managed to get string out of his pack and fashion a makeshift crampon strap.  Remembering the 30-30-30 (on this day actually 30-100-10) rule, I have no idea how he managed to do this.

The rest of the descent was uneventful.  The only minor casualty was with 6'4" Garrett who could never find ski pants that were long enough and so had a pair on that did not fully cover his ankles causing him to acquire nasty frostbite.   Because of this, Garrett had to miss our annual ski trip to Stowe, Vermont, but he proudly declared from the school's infirmary, "It was worth it!"

In retrospect, from my current vantage point, I should have turned back.  But it's an open question: which is preferable, my youthful spirit of adventure or my "mature" caution.

Browsing Brooklyn

When I began this blog last February, I pontificated to the effect  that the past was history, beyond our control.   The only events over which we could exert control were the present and the future; therefore, don't fret the past.  I then proceeded, over some eighteen blogs, to ruminate on things long past: my hippy days, my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer, and my foreign service experiences.

Today: back to the present or very recent past.  I had made up my mind that, due to declining energy levels, travel was something I could no longer manage.   Specifically and painfully I would see my daughter Palesa's apartment in Brooklyn only through emailed pictures. I even thought maybe if I fly it would be easier!  My wife, Qenehelo, son Thabie, and daughter, Palesa, all  argued that all I had to do was sit in the front passenger seat of the car, tilt the seat back and take a nap.  Finally I was persuaded, and by George we made it!   And in good shape.

Not only that, I actually tooled around Brooklyn on my two feet.   We went to beautiful Prospect Park, across the street from Palesa and Jeff's apartment where we walked to the edge of a lake. 

Qenehelo and I in Prospect Park

                                                                                                    

Palesa and me in her apartment

                                                    

The next day we went to Coney Island, where the rides were shut, the effects of Hurricane Sandy were still evident but the board walk had lots of traffic.   I could hardly believe I was doing this stuff.

Thabie at Coney Island

                                                          
Then we went to the Botanical Gardens, my personal favorite place where, we borrowed a wheel chair and I tooled around, the energy supplied by Palesa.

Here I am tooling around the Botanical Gardens!

The next day we were off to the Brooklyn Museum, again on my own two feet, African art, ancient Egyptian stone carvings, Rembrandts, contemporary American art.   I had had a stereotypical notion of Brooklyn as a place of run down apartments and not much else.   Wrong!  Botanical gardens, parks, museums, and more.   Not the borough I had conceived of. On the next day we walked four or five blocks to an outdoor concert of African music near Metro Tech Center Commons where people were dancing and I struck up an acquaintance with Daryl from Harlem.

Music at the MetroTech Commons in Downtown Brooklyn

    
                                                                       

Here I am with Daryl

I realize that all this sounds like the tedious scribblings on travel post cards.   But the main point was that I was actually doing it.   A week earlier I would have said that all this was the stuff of dreams, nothing I could actually do.  The lesson for me was that I could do a lot more than I thought I could, thanks to the encouragement of Qenehelo, Thabie, and Palesa.  I  feel so much better for having gotten out of my chair, gone to Brooklyn and acted like any tourist!

Octogenerians Rejoice

Friday's Washington Post (May 24) included the usual sadly depressing litany of people killing one another:  the page 8 world news digest included " 5-day death toll at 16 after frightful night" (Lebanon);  Rickshaw bomb killed 13 in Baluchistan"; "7 Iraqi soldiers shot dead at checkpoint." 

Then at the end a short note on an astonishing event: "Japanese man, 80, becomes oldest to scale Everest."   The paragraph notes that "an 80-year old Japanese man who began the year with his fourth heart operation became the oldest conqueror of Mount Everest. . . even with an 81 year-old Nepalese climber not far behind him."

This is the mountain that for the first half of the twentieth century the world's greatest climbers, in the prime of their lives failed to conquer, until Edmond Hillary and Tensing achieved the feat in 1953.   And they were young and in top shape.  Many octogenarians, myself included, consider it a challenging climb to walk upstairs in our houses and here are two men in their 80's, one of whom had recently had his fourth heart operation, on top of Everest!   It's almost impossible  to believe.

Mountain climbing has long been one of my favourite activities.  I've hiked the Green Mountains in Vermont, the White Mountains in New Hampshire (including several winter ascents of Mounts Washington, Adams and Lafayette, with some of the world's worst weather), The Rocky Mountains, the French Alps, and even  the Himalayan foothills.   But never have I aspired to try the great Himalayan Peaks. 

So I have no envy of Yuichiro Miura.  I have only incredulous awe of his feat and vast admiration.  At a time when I'm dealing with reduced physical capacities, he's climbing Everest after his fourth heart operation.  What a guy.  I'd love to shake his hand some day. 

Young and Reckless in Nambia

You might think that after sampling a week behind bars in a Mexican jail, I wouldn't go near any more jails. Wrong!   (See my post of March 5).   During a school break when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Lesotho, a fellow teacher, Richard, and I decided to visit Namibia, which was then called Southwest Africa and controlled by apartheid South Africa.   How does one get from Lesotho to Southwest Africa without a car?  Hitchhiking, naturally.

Using this method we crossed the subcontinent and arrived in Southwest Africa, well south of Windhoek, the capital.   Our destination was Etosha Nationals Park in the extreme north, bordering on Angola.   Where would we, on volunteer budgets, stay during the nights?  Richard had read somewhere that if you went to the local jail and they had a free cell, you could bunk down there.   One problem solved.  We spent several nights in unlocked cells, not the Ritz, but a roof over our heads. .The other problem was that there was a war going on between the South African army and the freedom fighters of SWAPO (Southwest Africa Peoples Organization).  Well, we'd just have to be careful.  The jail idea having actually worked well, in due time we arrived in Windhoek.

In Windhoek we learned that all speed limits were off to the north to give motorists the chance to evade the war.  We rented a car in the capital and started off.   We encountered South African army patrols going through the woods and figured that all would be well once we got to Etosha.  So we had a pleasant few days watching the big game, confident we didn't need to worry about civil war.   There were no other visitors. Only later did we learn that SWAPO was using Etosha as its headquarters.

We made it back south where Richard and I parted, he going to Cape Town and I going back to Maseru, Lesotho.  When I arrived in Bloemfontein, the bastion of apartheid, it was evening and I had in my pocket enough money only for dinner or a hotel.  I opted to eat and afterwards made my way to local jail, where I was asked to wait for half an hour.  

Eventually someone showed up and said "I'll show you to your quarters."   I thought that sounded promising until I was put in a cell and the door was looked.   They had never locked the doors in Namibia.  "Wait!   I'm not a criminal!"  "It's for your own safety.  You'll be released in the morning."  Around 11 p.m.  the door was unlocked and a wildly drunk man, yelling and thrashing about, was pushed into the cell with me.   I immediately set about trying to calm him down with minimal success.  I may have slept an hour or two.

Sure enough, the guard opened the door at 6:30 a.m., where there was woman from the Salvation Army, handing out religious tracts.   "God bless you, my son," she said to me.

Later, when I was a Foreign Service officer in Lesotho, I told this story to the king who roared with laughter at my naiveté in thinking I could mosey into a jail in Bloemfontein without consequence.