Ned Henry January 5, 2021 · (nedhenry.medium.com)
Middle of the night. Nausea kicked in for really the first time. My feet are cold and I can’t warm them up. Socks, more blankets. Nothing works. Tossing and turning. Working to just Let it Be. Let myself have this experience but it is uncomfortable. Stomach churning, feet freezing. I’m tired but can’t nod off. Took Ambien and Benadryl hours ago. Still no sleeep. I am so tired. I haven’t been able to just crash for 12 hours since chemo. It’s a couple of hours here and there a night. And I just want to crash and rest. Stomach too upset. Can’t take more drugs just have to live through this — just be with this. I’m gonna go put a symphony on in the living room and let myself just lie on the massage table and rub my belly. Breathe with me.
That was lovely. I feel a little better. I just laid on my back with my feet up on one of those big exercise balls. Threw a blanket over me and just breathed in The Messiah ( the whole thing). Stomach still churning when I got up. Turned the heat up feet not as cold but the air is dry. I’m gonna go back to bed and see if I can nod off. Don’t have to be at the hospital til 1 PM for a Spine MRI. I’ll be back sometime.
Oh my daily lesson should be posted. Its’ not up yet. Lesson 5 in Course in Miracles. I’ll catch it when it come in. G’night.
It’s around 8 AM and I never did really get back to sleep. My feet are still cold. Stomach not as bad. The anti nausea meds must have kicked in. I had stopped taking them since I didn’t think I needed them anymore. So I just got up and getting my day going. When I first got up though I thought of something I have never tried. I’ve heard about them — just never had any. Flannel Sheets. I think I am going to go to Amazon today and see if I can find some good flannel sheets. I’ll bet dollars to donuts that that would help my cold feet (and so my body’s ability to fall asleep) immensely.
The lesson is here – 6 minutes long – Gonna go get coffee and listen to it. Course in Miracles Lesson 5 — I am Never Upset for the Reason I Think.
Playing Chopin. I remembered something else about Aubrey. I uded to take Qi Gong classes with her. Only time I ever treid that. Was never that good. I’ve always needed lots of “body” work. I’m gonna go see what exercises an old man like me can still do. I used to take lots of yoga classes from different folks all my life until me knees got bad. Deborah was my yoga teacher here in Decatur. I have not been in touch with her in years. I’m sure she doesn’t know I have cancer.
You know all this reminiscing is really about letting myself appreciate my life. I tend to think too much about the things I didn’t get to do or the people I didn’t get to hang out with more. And this is my own damn fault, I tend to let people go and move on. I don’t put the effort in to maintaining close friendships. I have taken them for granted in my entire life. And when I move on, I just let them go. I don’t do Christmas cards. I haven’t wrtten a proper letter in I don’t know how long. In some ways that’s what I want this to be. My acknowledgment of the amazing and generous friends I have had over my life. To remember them, appreciate them, value them. I did not do enough of just that most of the time. I also realize that I have been so lucky in my life that so many interesting and caring and loving people have shown up along the way. I push folks away with my behavior and new ones always seem to come in and fill the gaps. I look back now and want to reach out. Not necessarily to burden someone with my sorry story about cancer but just to let them know that I really did love them, I really did care. I just didn’t know how to express that at that time. And so I want to do that now without intruding. As I write this blog, I am learning just how much this means to me. We’ve talked about me processing my cancer and really processing my life but this morning I realize that I am also appreciating all the people in my life. I’ve been given so much by so many and I haven’t really given that much back yet. I don’t feel guilty about that but I do feel like I want to do better with the time I have left.
So I went back to Santa Cruz for the Fall quarter in 1979 after my time in Alaska. I finally realized the for professional (money making)reasons, I better finish that last quarter of college and get the BA. So I had to take 4 classes and I had to figure out a major. I had taken all the “requirements.” I just kinds took classes in stuff I was interested in. UCSC has these small liberal arts colleges inside a bigger university. It was modeled on the Oxford idea that you could get the advantages of a small college AND a big university at the same place. Not sure the idealism of that really translated to the reality, but I went to the college that “specialized” in liberal arts. There were only 4 colleges then. Cowell (mine), Stevenson (Social Sciences), Crown (Natural Sciences) and Merril. I just tried to google their core course and it came up “Reading ourselves, Reading Our world.” I don’t remember what their specialty is but each college had a required core course and Cowell’s was Western Civ at that time. A 2 year course that was REQUIRED and was taght by an eccentric professor from England Jasper Rose. The fine art calsses were taught by Mary Holmes A reall nice and smart old lady. So I went along for years and years just getting requirements done — you know Oceanography and Marine Biology for the science requirement. Social sciences and Liberal arts weren’t a problem. I knew I was screwed up so I took lots of psychology — abnormal psychology and I took lots of liberal arts — shakespeare, whatever interested me and my interests were pretty broad so when the class schedule came out I picked my 3 courses to take that quarter. Took Latin as my language since I had already had 4 years of it in high school so all I needed was to take one quarter of college Latin and I had my language requirement done. I started high school in the seminary. In those days the Catholics wanted to get them young and get them on the path toward priesthood before they could really figure out the whole sex thing. Well we had a bishop as a pastor and well he was willing to pay my freight to go to the seminary (I was an altar boy and all that) and hell as I look back, this was really a strategy to get out of the house at age 14. And do it legitimately with the support of my parents. So I went to this boarding high school seminary in the Valley called Queen of Angels. I’m sure it is long gone. It was at one of the California Missions — San Fernando as I recall. I could go home on weekends if I wanted but they let me stay if I wanted. I did both. Sometimes I stay on the weekends and play pool for 2 days. No sports teams there — all intramurals. So I got no coaching or anything like that. That hurt me when I tried to make sports teams at the Jesuit high school where I finished the last 2 years. I couldn’t make any of the teams because I hadn’t come up in their freshman and JV sports programs. So things were geting a little weird. Guys jacking off in dorm room at night, I was starting to feel really uncomfortable around some of the guys. And I started smoking and well I think I had a bad attitude and after sophmore year they kicked me out. well what they do is they “ask you to leave” because they think you don’t have a vocation. So I left and moved back home. There were some 13 people living in that house then at 857 S. Bronson Ave, LA, CA 90005. Jack hadn’t been born yet and yes it was CROWDED. But I had started with church Latin so I just kept it up and Latin became my language when I went to Loyola High School on Venice Blvd. Now I was smart enough and we were poor enough that I qualified for a California State scholarship at whatever college I wanted to go to. I was natually accepted at Loyola U (now Loyola Marymount) and Santa Clara — both Jesuit schools. And I applied for UC. You picked the campus you wanted to go to and ranked them. I had read about Santa Cruz and My dad had taken me on a trip to Northern California to look at Santa Cruz and Santa Clara. He wanted me to go to the Catholic college. More expensive by alot but the scholarship covered that and books so it didn’t matter. In those days people were turning down Stanford to go to a place like UCSC to participate in this “experiment” they were trying out. You know the no grades, no test lots of writing thing. (The whole house of cards sort of fell apart when folks realized they couldn’t get into grad school without a GPA). So UCSC was not and IS not a very prestigious university. I never even applied to a place like Stanford or USC. Didn’t want to. Didn’t want to stay in LA and didn’t care if I went to an elite school. Needed to get away from the family. So I chose Santa Cruz and well just skated through for 4 years and it became crunch time and I was really getting pressured to figure out a major. I had also fallen in with some of the local Santa Cruz kids and spent more time hanging out with them than students. Guys from like Soquel High school. They knew how to party and I was living off campus and real life was more interesting to me that college life. Reagan was governor and he used that “Shining City on a Hill” line alot. Well that was UCSC. The campus was on a hill looking out over the ocean. It was like above the rest of the world. The local guys called it the Shitty on a Hill. But they accepted me in their crowd and they were probably my closest friends in college. Not at all intellectual — these were mechanics and tradesman. And we did drugs and went camping at big Sur alot and just enjoyed lving life. Needless to say I was NOT a good student. So I left college one quarter short of graduating and I did not have a major. Decided to go traveling but I had no money. Slight problem. But, I could go to Mexico. didn’t cost much, was close, and well after reading Carlos Casteneda books,Carlos CastanedaCarlos Castaneda (December 25, 1925 – April 27, 1998) was an American author. Starting with The Teachings of Don Juan…en.wikipedia.org
I wanted to go find Magic mushrooms in Mexico, learn Spanish and well travel. I did 7 months all over Mexico and Guatemala on $1,000.
Slept on hammocks on beaches, Ate in the markets, would run into other hippies along the way, hang out. I was trying to be a vegetarian then and when I got Oaxaca I found some buddies from Santa Cruz — you know the local guys — in the zocalo. Didn’t even know they were there. They were making hash to sell back in California. They looked at me and I was emaciated. One of the guys claimed he was DB Cooper — the first highjacker. Who knows? I don’t. But they took me in their rented house and fed me steak and eggs for a week and my vegetarian career was done for. But I felt better. It’s hard to maintain a good vegetarian diet in the best of places. On the road in Mexico with no money was not the ideal place to try to do that. It was just beans and rice and tortillas that I was living on. Well I found mushrooms and lots of pot along the way. Was with a girlfriend from France for the first half of the trip but sent her packing back to France when we got to Mexico City on the flip of a coin. I think I talked about that already. And kept going South on my own for the rest of the trip. The best mushrooms were in a place in the Oaxaca mountains called San Jose Pacifico.
I guy I knew in Santa Cruz who had given me my first Mantra told me about it. I got there and well rented — really got had — a small isolated hut in the woods and valleys there. I think it was just an abandoned one room shack. Bought a bunch of mushrooms and went out there to live by myself for a week and eat mushrooms. The only people I saw were shepherd girls who herded their flock of sheep through a couple of times. They snickered at the stupid Gringo haging out there all by himself with the long hair and dirty clothes
with patches all over my jeans.Here’s what I kinda looked like in those days. This was taken in the dorms at UCSC with a local guy named Jack Crick who straddled that line between the local kids and the tourist intellectual invaders from places like LA. Hanging out with couple of guys like Jack was how I got accepted by the locals — even though I met all the criteria to be an outcast from that crowd. Jack became a postman and did it for his whole career and ended up with a USPS pension and did alot of walking his entire life delivering mail in Santa Cruz.
So I’m in the woods in San Jose Pacifico alone and lonely. Caroline was gone now for a couple of weeks and I missed herPsilocybinPsilocybin ( sy-lə-SY-bin ) is a naturally occurring psychedelic prodrug compound produced by more than 200 species of…en.wikipedia.org
And doing psilocybin mushrooms and getting really really sad. I finally pulled myself together went down to the beach at Puerto Escondido met some hippies and life got less complicated. Moved on eventually — went to all the Mayans ruins, Spent a month in Tulum living on a beach where I rented a place to hang a hammock. Tulum is the only place I have ever been to where both the Sun and the Moon rose out of the ocean. The ruins there were small but really interesting. This was 1973 so it wasn’t touristy at all. I remember when we went past Cancun, it wasn’t even there yet. It was just an abandoned empty beach. So I wanted to keep going and go on to Guatemala but there a a problem. Belize. Look at a map if you want. In Tulum I was close to Guatemala but I had to go through Belize to get there and at that time Belize was sort of well dangerous and not very friendly to hippie types. So I doubled back to Palenque (great ruins there) and went through San Crisobal de las Casas into Guatemala. San Crisobal was a mountain town with a cultural mix of Catholic and (not Mayan — that was more in The Yucattan)Indian culture. Their own language — like in Guatemala. Lots of folks did not speak Spanish. The spoke an Indian dialect. And of course I was speaking Spanish full time by now. Caroline had helped me learn it and with the Latin background it was pretty easy to pick up. Went though Guatemala and made all the way up Tikal.
Read about it. Its’ a very interesting place and HUGE. Spent a week there in the jungle. We would walk around and the monkeys would throw sticks at us from the trees above us and then we would climb up to the tp of one of the Mayan temples and look down and those same trees looked like little bushes. We sit on top all day and smoke weed. Psychedelics and weed were my drugs of choice back then. I hated speed and reds (downers) and anything that didn’t wake you up. Some of those local Santa Cruz kids were experimenting with Heroin. I never wanted to get anywhere near that shit. And I never did.
So I got the end of this trip and I was fried. Decided to hightail it back to the US and jammed as fast as I could by bus. I was a mess. Here I am at 857 wearing a guatemala shirt when I got back to LA.
Look at the tension in my shoulders. I was wound up TIGHT as a DRUM. I was lost. I was in total and complete culture shock shut down despair mode. I did not know what the hell I was going to do. I had no job no skills no nothing and I was totally lost. Just home because my folks ALWAYS would take us in, but I didn’t have a clue and my dad didn’t know what to do with me. We had a rose garden in the backyard and I’ll talk about that later but here’s a glimpse of it and in retrospect, a glimpse at the hope for my future. After this I went to that dental student at USC and started a long hard road back to life again.
Chopin mix ended and I put Dave Alvin on. Once it hits on a tune I especially like, I’ll post it. The best drug I ever did was mescaline.MescalineMescaline ( 3,4,5-trimethoxyphenethylamine) is a naturally occurring psychedelic protoalkaloid of the substituted…en.wikipedia.org
Just wanted to mention that this is a drug I woulkd take today if I could ever find it and know that it was pure and safe. I wouldn’t touch acid anymore or anything else. Acid was kind of harsh. Mescaline was sooo mellow. All those locals from Santa Cruz and I went to Big Sur one summer week to a place in Big Sur called Pine Valley. We went in the back end through Carmel Valley (where Joan Baez lives). There were about 2 dozen of us. We camped and hung out hiked and swam and lived life for that wondeful week in nature. Nature is THE very best place to do psychedelics. Well one guy had a baggie of this pink powder. It was synthetic mescaline and it was incredible. We’d dip our fingers in the bag and suck the magic powder off them and wait. As it wore off, we’d come back for more. It was like to a week long trip in the woods so peaceful and calm. So secure. I’d love to have that one more time nut at least I can appreciate it now by rembering how I felt then. But in the end, drugs didn’t really do it for me. There in LA when I was such a mess, I knew I HAD to stop using them or I would die. I was also a smoker this whole time. I didn’t give that up until I was maybe 35 years old. It’s almost 11 now and I have to grab a shower and get to the hospital. I’ll polish this later and find something new to tell you about.
Let find a couple of Dave Alvin tunes for you.
Here’s a really old one. Been to Andersonville in South Georgia. A dreary hopeless place for Union prisoners. There’s a museum there. Google it.
Again My brother Jack turned me on to him. He’s from LA of all places. Jack and I saw him at Eddie’s Attic once. Eddie’s Attic is a really small venue, a club really in Decatur. Also saw Dave Alvin at The Earl with Allen. That’s a bigger venue in Atlanta. I think Allen isn’t quite sure to make of this. I’m not hearing from like I was since I started. It might be too much for him. He’ll come around. I know he loves me. He is a good guitarist. I’ll tell you a funny story about he started playing sometime. Gotta run and get my shit together. Enjoy yourself.
You tube just bounced to a HOT TUNA concert. It’s 2 hours and 45 minutes long. I gotta hear this. Hot Tuna is Jorma and Jack Cassidy from the Aiplane. I used to play a little bit of one of Jorma’s songs on guitar. One of the very few I could pick. Simple picking pattern. He is a great guitar player. I’ll post it and listen to it when I get back.
My Cancer Journey 1/5/21- Post 2
Ned Henry January 5, 2021 · (nedhenry.medium.com)
I hope you enjoyed Hot Tuna. Paul Kantner also joined that concert and Grace Slick sang Volunteers with them as the last song. Almost the whole Jefferson Airplane. Here’s the Dead concert for the closing of Winterland in San Franciso. This is a 4 hour and 15 minute concert. You can groove to it while you read, sleep , cook or anything all day long if you want. And while you’re driving tune in to XM 23. It’s better than the noise of the news. I’ve given that up. I’ll post a couple of Jorma songs at the end of this post.
So I had my last test for a while today down at Crawford Long in midtown. Driving down Ponce I saw lots of folks out there with Ossoff and Warnock signs. We’ll see if Georgia really has turned Blue. Someone text me and let me know cuz I won’t be turning on the TV. The hospital almost wouldn’t take me. It took 25 minutes to valet park so I was late. But it turns out since I got the brain MRI done on Saturday, all they needed to do was the spine MRI so they got me in. Thank God for that fiasco on Saturday. Amazing how things are just working out on this journey. The radiologist was so sweet. We chatted and she seemd genuinely interested in my story. I listened to the Messiah AGAIN while I was in that MRI machine. Twice in one day. Fabulous. I have a very important strategy Zoom meeting with the oncologist on Thursday. She will have all these test results by then and I’ll find out just how far the cancer has spread in this race. I know the chemo is racing too. Bits of hair coming out on the hairbrush. Not a lot yet. I have prep to do for that meeting with the oncologist. Sue is going to be there with me thank God, so she will keep me focused and on topic without a lot of wasted time. There will be a lot to cover in 30 minutes. I’ll let you know about it. The fact is that I FEEL good, I FEEL strong. I’m not wasting away. I have good genes and they are fighting back too. And I am fighting 24/7. No time to do anything else. Which is why writing this has become so important to me. It is MY work on this cancer — on my life. But I’m glad a few people are along for the ride as bumpy as it is at times. Mary I better here from you SOON.
So back to Mexico for a minute. So Caroline and I rented an aprtment in
San Miguel de Allende for a couple of weeks with a guy from Mexico City who spoke very little English but wanted to learn. He was who introduced me to guitar for the first time. I had never tried to play before. He jotted down a few songs on pieces of paper like this and drew the chords at the top and we practiced them on his guitar. I didn’t get my own guitar until I got back to the US. Anyway, this is Magnolia by JJ Cale. Really good song and was one of my standards and when I get around to playing again regularly it will be again . Read the words he wrote down. “We port we singing South Submarine” Well those who know the song know that it’s “Whippoorwill’s singing Soft summer breeze” I still sing it like he wrote it down. It’s perfect. I think I remember his name was Miguel but I’m not sure. But he is the one that got me to pick up a guitar in the first place. As I told you I’m not a very good guitarist. I know some chords and if I practice I can strum a few Dylan tunes but I’m no great shakes at all and never really put in the effort to get good on it. So I’m on this Ski trip with Kay Remond’s ski group in Keystone Colorado. The first one I took with this group. I had been skiing for a few years with the Atlanta Ski Club. I started late (in my 50’s) but I loved it and I went West often on ski trips to Colorado, Utah, and California mountains — a couple of weeks a year most years. I’ve skied maybe 15 or 20 different mountains out west ( I could count them up but why)and NONE in the east. Separated my shoulder on one trip in Keystone trying to keep up with Kay going down an icy slope on the back side of Keystone. I was a good intermediate skier and I loved to ski FAST. Not dso good on bumps — hard on the knees and not so much fun for me. But groomed trails were my favorite. Blues and a few groomed blacks. Not the double black diamond stuff. Steeps never bothered me but bumps did. My goal was to get the cost per run down as low as I could. Up and Down and up and down as fast as I could. So fucking much fun. I’d love to get to do that again. Just like Bob Boozer. I led the Kay Redmond ski trip after she died that Bob Boozer fell on that led to his quicker than it needed to be death too. He fell getting off the bus at the condos in Keystone and never got on the mountain. There used to be a picture of him on the Collegium Vocale website but it’s not there anymore. I just looked for it. He sang with the chorus. Another 2nd bass and a good one. He really wanted to ski one last time as he was dying from prostate cancer. I thought long and hard and ultimately decided that it was worth the risk to let him come along. Everyone agreed we would help him along to make the trip. Probably a bad decision but he was adamant about wanting to ski one last time. He knew he was dying. So we carried his stuff for him (Skiing is a VERY extensive STUFF sport) all that but he slipped on the ice in that parking lot and went down. And within a day or 2 was airlifted back to the hospital in Atlanta where he died.
You gotta lug so much crap on these trips even if you rent skis. So Kay is skiing down this icy slope and she was good and I caught an edge on the ice and went head over heels and landed on my head and shoulder. Fortunately I had a helmut on but I separated my shoulder and to this day my right shoulder is a little deformed. I never got the surgery. It didn’t hurt THAT much and it didn’t affect my ability to play golf so I treated it with accunpuncture for a couple of years with a little tiny Japanese lady that Jane introduced me to. Kay got very sick. Also cancer If I remember. Kay had a house in Buckhead on Lorraine. Near where Pete lives. And she was a packrat. I did not know this. But at the end she needed 24/7 care and the folks from these trips took 12 hour shifts staying with her. I think Sue took shifts too. She was who introduced me to this group which saved me ALOT of money on ski trips. Kay was ruthless about not paying too much for condo rentals and ski lessons and gear rentals or anything at all. So she saved everyone money for these trips — costs were like 60% of the Atlanta Ski Club trips. I did a couple of overnight shifts with her as she was dying. She wanted to watch the video of me performing in HMS Pinafore. So we did. She liked that. Played cards — passed time. She slept a lot. It was good for all of us to be with her at the end. Well one of the ways she saved money on these trips was that with 6 condos of folks, each condo cooked one dinner on the trip for everybody. So one day of the trip you had to leave the mountain early and get cooking for 36 people or so. (6 people per condo in 6 condos. Do the math.) That’s generally how big these trips were. Everyone showed up at the designated condo for dinner (hungry as hell) with plates and silverware and had a great meal and a great party every night. And we only had to work on it once per trip. Really good idea. So Mike Hastings, a good buddy who bike rides 200 miles in 2 days every year as a fund raiser for the Dana Farber Cancer Center in Boston – a wonderful place from what I have heard. He’s done it for 25 years. I always sponsor him and then he throws a party in November. No party this year cuz of Covid but he did the race. Mike is a GOOD guitar player and he brought his guitar on one of these trips (the first one I was on) and we decided to pass it around at one of these parties and play a song each. Mike was really good. He played some funny Irish folk song beautiful picking and singing. Then my turn. I banged out Mr. Tambourineman adequately. Then it was Allen’s turn. Now Allen is a REALLY good friend to this day. He does pretty much aLL my grocery shopping for me now since I got cancer and since I don’t want to go into stores with cancer during Covid. So he tries to play something at this party and he is TERRIBLE. Doesn’t have a clue. He tried valiantly but he was BAD. So I said to him — this was when I first met him — “Wow you make me look really good.” Oh boy that got him going. He came back home and practiced and practiced and learned hundreds of songs and to this day plays all the time and has become an outstanding guitarist and really decent singer too. This might all too hard to follow for some but for those that know these folks, you can follow. So Kay and Bob Boozer are out there watching all this. Mike would want to know I have cancer. I need to drop him a text but I feel funny telling people. I don’t want to make people feel bad and I don’t want sympathy. Not sure I’ll tell him but I hope he finds out. I know he would care. He is personally invested in this fight against cancer and has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years on these 200 mile bike rides over a weekend. I don’t have pictures of Kay or Mike. But I do have this.
It’s a cake Mike made for his 2019 cancer party to celebrate all the folks who sponsored his ride that year. Sue and I went to this party. Mike was really proud that he got the layers to work and not bleed into each other so the cake really did look like the flag. And it was GOOD too. So no pic of Mike Hastings but just his cake intstead.
Just got off the phone with Mary Therese. She is a dear cousin in Chicago who is really on this journey with me. I got a wonderful card from her expressing so much love and I just had to talk to her. It had been a while and I didn’t even have her in my contacts. We had a very close and deep connection tonight. I love you Mary.The Story of the Weeping Buddha!We all know the story of Siddharta Gautama. He was a prince who saw the troubles of the world, and instead of…theopenmindcenter.com
My brother jack sent me this Buddha today. It is hand carved and came from France. Read about this Buddha at the link . I am going to start my mediations with it and rub its back as I do.
It is a powerful Buddha and one I have never encountered before. I am looking to walking with him on this journey. Here is Jack and me after my first triathalon. Jack encouraged me to give it a
try. This was during that lean decade of working for not much money after turning 50. I wasn’t under real business pressure like most of my career, so I was working out more and getting in better shape. These were the years I skied the most too. So I was going to the Y in Decatur — swimming a mile a day, riding the stationary bike and running on trails and streets. Jack told me, well let’s find a trialthlon and go do one together. I had never considered such a thing. But I thought well I am doing all three things and well why not give it a try. I guess I was just into my 50’s then. So Jack finds this Triathalon in Oceanside California near Carlsbad where my parents lived. And we sign up. These are the sprint distance not the full ones or god forbid the Ironman ones. So the swim is a mile more or less, the run is 10K I think and the bike is 25K. You swim first then bike and then run. I think those are the distances. So in Oceanside the swim is in the ocean. And although I could swim just fine for a mile in the pool, the ocean current just kicked my ass. I could not swim against the current to get around the buoy you had to get around to be official. Jack did it. He’s a much better athlete than me but well he IS18 years younger than me too. He’s the youngest, I’m the oldest. So I finally got out of the ocean dead tired but I wanted to finish. They told me I could finish but it wouldn’t be official. I have no idea where Jack is at this point. So I take off on the bike and finish that course and now the run. Well since this was close to my folks house, they were naturally there watching and supporting us. The run was around several blocks in Oceanside and you had to make serval laps around them. The spectators were on the inside so they could watch and cheer us on. All of the sudden I hear a very loud — “THAT’S MY BROTHER!!!” coming from the crowd in a very familiar voice. It was Terri there with my folks cheering us both on. So whenever Jack or me would run past her, she yelled at the top of her lungs. “THAT’S MY BROTHER!!!” It was such a great day. We spent the rest of that day at my folks house as a family. It was so special and even though it wasn’t “official” for me (it was for Jack btw), it was quite an accomplishment. And I was glad he encouraged me to do it and glad I did it. We both had to fly home for work the next day so he went to Chicago and I went to Atlanta but what a time we had. The next one I did was in Carrollton GA. Swim was in a dirty dirty lake but I got a flat tire on the bike so that one was doomed as well.
I finished the first time officially South of Atlanta in a State Park called High Falls. Here’s the tee shirt and I see it corrects my remembrances of the distances for the Sprint triathlons . Well at least this one. Who knows what that ocean swim distance really was swimming against that Pacific current. So 8/25/2001 was when I did it. I turned 50 on 7/23/2000. So I was 51 when I finally git er done. After that my
triathalon carrer was over but I still ran the Peachtree every 4th of July and I still have the shirts to prove it. And lost my knees to prove it too. SO……..Who are these guys??? So I’m living in San Francisco working at One Market Plaza at the of Market street. This was around 1976 because I remember being out for lunch one sunny day going for a walk on my lunch break and stopped to listen to a guy literally standing on a soap box at the corner of Market and Powell (where the cable cars turn around to go back to the wharf) telling us why he thinks he should be President. I stopped and listened to him and later voted for him for President and very very much later heard him teach Sunday school in a small town in South Georgia called Plains. In MY book, he just happened to be one of the best presidents we’ve ever had. He has integrity. He got a bad rap over the Iran hostage thing but what a kind and giving man he is to this very day. So I’m at Halliburton in San Francisco working on the pipeline project as an auditor in the huge PROJECT office there. They picked San Francisco for the project office because it was 2 hours from the home office in Houston and 2 hours from the project on the Slope. I was later hired by one of the pipeline companies and moved to Alaska. Well I took a week off in the summer and these 2 guys came up and we had a ball for a week. Yeah Jack and Dave. My youngest brothers. We did everything there was to do as a kid in San Francisco. Saw the sights, visited Louise in Petaluma. I put together a photo album of the week with all the stuff we did that week. But the highlight I think for all of us was going to a Giants double header at Candlestick with the Big Red Machine. I got the Halliburton season tickets for the games. So many great moments that day. We saw Morgan and Foster hit homers in one game. And we saw Willie McCovery hit the hardest home run I have ever seen in my life. It was gone instantly. It was a rising line drive that would have gone to Oakland if the seats weren’t in the way. It was momentous.
Mom let them come up and stay with me in that apartment and we had a great time together. This is me sitting on the roof of that building on top of Nob Hill with the Golden Gate in the background. I have a mug with this view painted on it that a friend from Vancouver named Adrian long since gone and lost to me, painted on the cup. Let me snap a picture of it. BRB.
So that was the view from my roof. The view wasn’t quite the same from the apartment.
I never did get around to getting the flannel sheets. On the list for tomorrow. Hope to sleep better. Gonna sign off for the night. I want to sit and rub that Buddha’s back and do a little walking and then try to get a good night’s sleep. Let me go find those Jorma tunes I promised. This is from that concert at the Fillmore.
This is the one with the real simple picking pattern that I used to be able to do and will again once I put the practice time in.
Marty Balin is singing but Jorma is picking. Such a simple yet beautiful picking pattern. I don’t really care for the words all that much but I love the guitar. See you tomorrow.