PROMOTION for JP!!!

We are a PROUD Ma and Pa!!! Our one and only boy JP got some wonderful award for his promotion night. He received a President's Education Awards Program for getting all A's. The one and only from his 8th Graders. The certificate has a stamped signature of the President of the United States. He also got a certificate for the best student in Geometry. He got recognized for the only student that made it to the School of Science and Math.

JP we LOVE YOU and we are lucky to be your parents. You are an amazing son and you have grown so much. CONGRATULATIONS on ALL your accomplishments!!!

a busy week

Just so I don't forget because sometime I want to write more about these and add pictures, I looked at our calendar for the past week and realized why we might be exhausted.

SUNDAY-Mother's Day: burned beef and vegetables.
MONDAY-EM: neurology appt. SD goes out marking bike routes early morning.
TUESDAY-SA goes out marking bike route early morning. AM volunteering for Band Banquet, has gallstone attack, JP was suppose to attend award ceremony for Chicago trip, misses this; attends Band Banquet, receives Most Outstanding Band Member for all of the middle school. His good friends take the other two top awards.
WEDNESDAY-EM preschool graduation. SD finds out bike routes have to be changed, goes out marking again.
THURSDAY-JP wakes up early AM to go out to Kentucky for middle school honors field trip. SD goes out marking. JP finds out he has baseball game 15 minutes before it starts.
FRIDAY-SD national bike to work day, get up early to lead ride.
SATURDAY-SD gets up at 4 am to help set up Le Tour. Pouring rain. JP and SD ride 50 mile, 1 hour in pouring rain, then sunshine. Breakdown in pouring rain. JP and SD go to the symphony on complimentary tickets from JP clarinet tutor.

gall stones?!

Tuesday afternoon I get a call on my cell phone from AM, clearly highly distressed with chest pain, not really able to talk during intermittent waves of pain. Thankfully, our friend TE was able to drive her into the emergency room. A quick ECG ruled out a heart attack, and by then the pain had subsided. An eventual ultrasound showed a gall stone, although not necessarily in a position that would 100% confirm that this was the source of her pain. (Apparently up to 10% of people have gall stones, most without any symptoms.) Nevertheless, given the history of having a similar attack about 9 months ago, the most likely diagnosis is the gall stone with the recommendation to surgically remove the gall bladder.

So AM is going in thursday to schedule her surgery. She is generally feeling okay now, although very nervous about the surgery.

Laws of Life Essay Contest

In this past school year I entered in an essay contest created by the local Rotary Club. The essays had to be about a law of life. The story had to be fictional and show the law of life. My essay won second place in my school. I got a neat little certificate and a nice check for $50. Here's a copy of my essay:

Law of Life Essay
(This story is fictional)
As a volunteer in a humanities mission group at my church I got the chance to travel around the world helping others. Through my travels I discovered a law of life; always help others in need, and you shall be blessed. I discovered this law of life during my first group mission. Our group was sent to several rural islands in Indonesia to help the survivors of a recent tsunami in the area. I will never forget my experiences there.
As we flew towards and over a few islands I could see wreckage everywhere. I could see people walking aimlessly, not knowing where to begin rebuilding their lives. There were still people crying, people still looking for lost loved ones. These rural islands were in utter despair. It was a twisted paradise with sandy beaches but bodies were floating in the water. I cringed at the sight of all these atrocities. I could see we had our work cut out for us. So, for the next few weeks, we spent every hour helping the locals in any way we could.
One particular experience really stood out in my mind. We were helping a large family whose house, or more accurately hut, had been completely demolished and blown hundreds of yards away. The family was made up of a grandmother, a mother, and five children. The mother told us that her husband and oldest son were missing. Apparently the two had been working somewhere on the beach when the tsunami hit. She said that she still had not told her children that their father and older brother would never come back. Without their father and older brother, it would be very difficult for them to rebuild a suitable shelter, so that became our main focus helping the family. During breaks from building a shelter the mother told us about all that the family had been through. She told us that they had once lived in decent, clean, and sturdy house. But when her husband lost his job because of an injury, they were forced to move into the lowdown, small shack that now lay in bits some distance away. She said that each day was a struggle to survive. There was not enough food for her children, and they were constantly fighting off sickness and disease because of a lack of medical care. Not to mention they were all crammed in that small and unsanitary hut. I could see they had been through so many trials and tribulations, and yet they had survived it all. Such a strong family bond that existed there! After we learned of all the trials they had gone through we worked twice as hard building and shortly finished a sturdy shelter.
That family was not the only people we got to help. We traveled around the islands helping many people with similar stories as the first family. Most were poor and did not have sufficient living conditions even before the tsunami hit. Each day we helped people with heart-wrenching stories. We did not just build shelters; we also helped pass out food, hygiene kits, and other supplies.
The food that we passed out was neither extremely fancy nor that tasty. In fact the only food we passed out were just loaves of bread, fruit, rice, and jugs of water. The people that I saw were so grateful for the meager supplies. Even though most could not speak English, their faces spoke their feelings plainly enough. What we took for granted in the States was gold on these rural islands. I was just amazed.
On the plane flight back home I reflected on my experiences. I realized what a major difference I had made in the lives of those with whom I had come in contact. I had such a warm, glowing feeling inside I thought I was going to explode with joy. I felt so humbled. Seeing and helping those who were less fortunate than I made me see how blessed I was. It made me even more grateful for everything in my life. I would go on many more humanity missions, but I will always remember that Indonesian trip.

JP receiving the award

Laws of Life Essay Winners

Prairie Home Companion

PROLOGUE

A long time ago, when I was a young boy, I was a lifeguard at the local pool which was not much bigger than most backyard pools. During the mornings I taught swimming lessons and during the afternoon lifeguarded an extremely crowded pool filled with little kids and their mothers. Mostly lifeguarding was kind of boring and an exercise in trying to stay awake in the hot sun for the two 20 minute rotations in the chair per hour while scanning utter chaos for signs of trouble.

But there was one part of lifeguarding I really liked. That was guarding the late evening reservations. Groups would rent the pool for a couple of hours in the evening. The groups were usually relatively small, less than 50 people, often only 20-30, which meant that there was much less chaos and the guarding duty more to facilitate the groups enjoyment. So we only had 2 guards, and we could stand together near the office window, chat, and listen to the radio softly playing in the office while the sun slowly set over pool at the end of a hectic day. It was here that Lon Haskell, a guard who was the older brother of one of my high school friends, introduced me to the radio show Prairie Home Companion. The center piece of the show is the monologue about the events in the lives of the townspeople in a fictional place called Lake Woebegon out on the edge of the Minnesota prairie.

Oral story telling was a central core of my growing up years. We didn't watch that much television, if I remember we had a 30 minute limit per day. Instead of TV, the most important ritual in our home was the reading of a chapter a day by my mother from books like Little Britches, Cheaper by the Dozen, and The Jungle Book. The tradition of story telling surely come from maternal grandfather, who when he came to visit us would regale us with stories from his days as a boy growing up in Moab, Utah. The power of oral storytelling is the license it gives to your own imagination create the images and fills in the details that TV and movies give without effort. Perhaps this why I still rarely watch the news of TV, yet devour the news and programs for hours on National Public Radio. So listening to Lake Woebegon monologues has become an important Saturday evening ritual for us.

A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION COMES HOME


This Saturday, Prairie Home Companion came to the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, TN. As Garrison Keillor has stated more than once, PHC was conceived while he was a young man sitting in the balcony of the Ryman Auditorium when it was home of the Grand Ole Opry. We had never been the Ryman, the tabernacle of country music and the birthplace of bluegrass. So we spent the big bucks and bought tickets to the off-air show. (OK, the first show that goes on air was sold out long before, so we were only able to get tickets to the second, later show that doesn't go on the air.)


The Ryman


At the back of the auditorium were display cases of some of the Grand Ole Opry stars who performed regularly at the Ryman during the 31 years it hosted the Opry. Stars such as Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, Little Jimmy Dickens, Roy Acuff, Bill Monroe, and more. So we gave ourselves a self-guided tour prior to finding our seats.

We settled in to the pews. (Yes, this really is the tabernacle of country music.) The lights went down and the show began. From the beginning it was obvious that being at the second show was going to mean a more spontaneous and fun show. Much more bantering and playfulness, and extended sets and feedback from the audience. So in many ways it had the same intimate feel of the Bluebird or of the late night gig of our friends. Simply put, live music performance is transformational in a way that I can hardly describe.

Some highlights of the show:

Little Jimmy Dickens
In some of reminescences, Garrison talked about not being able to get tickets to the Opry, and standing outside at the window trying to hear the music and catch a glimpse of the performers. He said the one performer he could see all of was Little Jimmy Dickens (being 4' 11"). He then brought the man himself to the stage, dressed in his full rhinestone outfit. The oldest living veteran of the Grand Old Opry, now 88, didn't sign but told a series of jokes before retiring to a standing ovation. Sorry the picture is blurry beyond recognition.


Sam Bush
The leading figure in New Grass, a new movement in bluegrass, Sam Bush and his band, were simply amazing. Sam plays the mandolin with inspiring intensity, joy, and youthfulness. I have since listened to the replay on the on-air performance. Without question, the live performance we listened was simply far better in so many ways. The song choices were different, the interplay between the players was more evident, the banter between Garrison and Sam was not possible on the taped show.


Brad Paisley
Although I am not a country music fan, I have heard of Brad Paisley because my brother-in-law, TK, has some of his albums. It was an interesting performance for someone who is one of the biggest current stars of country music. Brad came off as vulnerable and tentative as any other young aspiring songwriter in Nashville. After starting one of his songs, he stopped and admitted he couldn't remember the words for the moment because the La Bomba song from the skit before was still running through his head. He also admitted that he was rusty because he hadn't been touring while working on the new album and his wife had just had a baby. This eventually led him to play a song which might be titled "Anything Like Me" imagining what the life of his son might be like. He bantered back and forth with some of the audience members and with Garrison and he turns out to be really quite funny and personable. He played several of the songs that he had been working on for his new album and who knows, I might even buy the CD when it comes out. (TK must be falling from his chair about now.)


The Radio Company

One of the great things about the later show was that there was much of the banter between the regular casts was more back and forth, spontaneous with a lot of running commentary. We taped a few clips, if I can figure out how to make them into a postable clips I will do it.

In the end, our show lasted 3 hours, while the normal show only last 2 hours, so we got our lot more fun and performance than the folks who watched the taped show (and we could take pictures!).

Music City Shuffle

So you may remember that one of my new year's goal was to lose weight and that one of the ways I was hoping to accomplish that was to train for the CM half-marathon. Back at the New Year, I had set a goal of 2:05 and to get down to 205 lbs.

Unfortunately, for most almost all of my March my training stopped because of work on the roof, root canals, and work constraints. About 3 weeks ago, I realized that the race was coming up and the longest run I had done was 8 miles. Not good. So first I reset my goal 2:30. Slow I know, but given my lack of training, the reality was that finishing at all would be difficult and that I would need to walk a fair amount of the distance.

So with that stark reality facing me, 3 weeks ago, I decided that my Saturday long slow run had to go 11 miles, no matter how long it took and it would be just fine to do lots of walking. Which was good because at mile 8 I hit the wall. My legs cramped up and I couldn't run anymore, just walk. But with a little help from a Sonic Route 44 slush from AM, I managed to finish in a total time of 2:16 for 11 miles. Not very promising for a 2:30 finish.

The week after, having failed to get in more than 1 short run during the week, I decided I had to run at least 11 miles again. This time I finished around 2:09 on a very flat course (BM Blvd), and was able to run 3 miles, walk for a minute, then run miles, walk, etc... At 2:09 for my finish time, there seemed to be some chance of finishing in 2:30, even though it was very troubling that even on my short runs I barely run 10 minute per mile pace, which is usually my out of shape pace for short runs.

My friend SI from Alabama had decided to run with me. SI had qualified for the Boston Marathon a couple of years ago, but had not run in about a year as part of an agreement with his wife until he finished his PhD dissertation. With the end in sight, he was able to register and did a couple of weeks of training, which would have allowed him to run about a 1:50 half if he had chosen. But instead, he agreed to pace me. He had previously paced me to my half-marathon PR of 1:53 on the very flat TK course, but this would be a very different run.

Saturday morning dawned bright and hot. We started in corral 22, which meant we didn't actually cross the starting line until 45 minutes after the starting gun went off. The race drew about 30,000 people, most doing the half, and I had never started off in a corral so far back before in this race and I hope never to do it again. It was horrible. I never felt like we ever got to a place where everyone was running at a similar pace, and there would continually be walls of people who had stopped to walk or go slow on narrow streets that forced lots of maneuvering and slowing down and speeding up. In the early corrals, this trouble of unequal pace usually goes away by mile 3 or 4, but I guess in the late corrals it never does.

I had told SI that I was treating this run like a backpacking hike. My goals were to live off the land (eat all the good stuff from rest stops), enjoy the views from the various hills (of which there are many on this course), cover the distance, and maybe see a bear or two. My one final goal was to run the last two miles. For a long while the run was fun, as I was essentially having a long extended conversation with SI as we weaved through traffic. For the most part, the land yielded up good things: oranges (my race favorite), bananas, strawberries, cytomax, water and once some GU packets. (SI found a bush loaded with about 10 packets, good pickin' indeed.) At mile 7, I felt pretty good about how things were going. We weren't running very fast, but I didn't feel like I was blowing through my reserves either. But after mile 7, I started feeling a bit leaden and over time the feeling got stronger and my run became more and more simply a shuffle. Hills especially. And more and more I just wanted to stop running and walk. But through mile 9 I kept to my goal of running 3 miles than walking ~1 minute. Around this time I also saw my bear. Poor fellow must have been pretty hot in his furry outfit in the blazing heat of the day. So there was only one goal left: running the last two miles. (This was a goal because in my last two halfs, I had ended up walking the last two miles.) Unfortunately, SI held me to this goal, when I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY wanted just to stop shuffling and start walking.


RUNNING WITH THE GEEZERS

I don't know if shuffling was actually any faster than walking but I did more or less run the last two miles (except at the water station, which was planned). SI ran the last two miles going backwards, I think mostly to have something to do while I went along at a turtle pace. Finally the finish line came into sight and I accelerated from my 13 minute per mile pace to my 12 minute per mile pace and crossed over the finish line. With a great relief I found a place to collapse for about 10 minutes.

Splits:
Mile 1 9:44
Mile 2 19:47 (10:03)
Mile 3 30:24 (10:38)
Mile 4 41:10 (10:46)
Mile 5 52:14 (11:03)
Mile 6 1:02:26 (10:12)
Mile 7 1:13:38 (11:12)
Mile 8 1:24:18 (10:41)
Mile 9 1:35:06 (10:48)
Mile 10 1:45:56 (10:50)
Mile 11 1:58:12 (12:21)
Mile 12 2:10:39 (12:22)
Mile 13.1 2:23:14 (11:46).

So there it is. I finished under 2:30. I set my masters career personal record! It wasn't pretty, but thanks to the encouragement of SI, I reached all my revised goals.

Just for comparison I looked up my old times and placement in this race over the years.
2000 (full marathon) 4:42 (53rd percentile of finishers)
2004 (half) 2:01 (17th percentile)
2005(half) 1:55 (14th percentile)
2006(half) 2:04 (21st percentile) (this is the race where I was in the best shape of my running life and targeting a 1:50 and tore my hamstring the week before the race in my final speed work session, and then retore it during the race, I was so mad.)
2007 (half) 2:09 (32nd percentile)
2009 (half) 2:23 (42nd percentile)

UPDATE:
Some of you may know that a 25 year old Army sergeant collapsed after finishing the half-marathon and died shortly thereafter. His name was announced in the news today and I looked up were he finished by the race clock, because given his finish time, I thought it might have occurred about when we were finishing. Based on his clock time, he probably came in and collapsed about 20-25 minutes before us, but there were no clues at the finish line that such a major incident had occurred only a short time before. His sister and father apparently were running in the race as well, and based on her clock time for the finish, the sister must have been somewhere pretty near us. I hope that someone was there to identify her and take her somewhere private to give her the news.

More Tornados

Last Friday, a major tornado hit middle Tennessee. Our area is okay, but there are many families in a nearby area who are not. Unfortunately one family was killed.