New Year's Eve in New Mexico

I have driven a lot in the past few days.  I believe at this point right around 2400 miles.  If I had timed things differently I could actually already be in Tucson, but I can't get into my condo until 1:00 tomorrow afternoon so I figured I might as well stop and have an extended rest somewhere and not be driving. 

It seems that I do my driving in much the same way that I deal with long trainer rides or bike rides.  I start early enough that it's like you're not even awake enough to notice the first couple of hours.  That, coupled with crossing time zones on occasion makes it seem amazing to me when I do the math and realize I've already been driving for six hours or whatever the case may be.  Day 1 began super early.  I had set my alarm for 4:45 to be on the road at 5, but I woke up at like 3:45 and couldn't fall back asleep so just decided to get up and leave.  I was in Pennsylvania by 8am after having crossed New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York.  Of course then the states get really long. 

One of my best friends from college happens to live just over the border from PA in Ohio who I only get to see every few months, so I figured why not take the opportunity?  I got there at about 1:30 and was a great house guest initially as I almost immediately went and took a nap.  That was about 640 miles on day 1, although I was thinking to myself that had I kept going I probably could've made it past Indianapolis. 

Day 2 began about the same, this time I slept until my 4:45 alarm and was in the car 10 minutes later.  I did this drive four years ago with a friend and I knew that time we almost made it to Indiana on day one and then got west of Oklahoma City on the second day, so my goal was to close the gap.  Which I did.  I figured it would be 1000 miles and obviously a lot of time in the car, but I was also gaining some time with a time zone change, the weather looked good and the speed limits increase as you move west, so I had high hopes.  That, along with the fact that I am very efficient in my stops which include less than 10 minutes at each gas station in which I fill up, use the bathroom and buy whatever available to eat in the car and continue on my way.  Efficient?  Yes.  But I'm sure it would annoy anyone else who might want to join me. 

Day two involved a lot of state line crossing again, but all much bigger states.  Ohio to Indiana, Illinois, Missouri and Oklahoma.  I left blizzard conditions to drive into what looked like well-worn snow, and that second day began with some light rain that turned into real rain through Indianapolis and a bit in Illinois before it was just overcast.  The snow slowly but surely disappeared and the temperature steadily rose.  This wasn't so much because I was slowly heading south, there was just a front of unusually warm air moving through the middle of the country.  It wound up being nearly 70 degrees at the warmest points of the day. 

One thing I definitely noticed driving across the country is that there are trucks everywhere.  And they drive me nuts.  Why?  Because they are always trying to pass each other.  It's just like in a triathlon when on the bike the guy in front of you is trying to pass someone, except he won't complete the pass and move over and you get stuck.  Another anomaly I found was that while the speed limits steadily increase as you move west (75 in Oklahoma and west) it seems like people actually start to drive slower.  In New Hampshire it seems that while the speed limit is 65, everyone is driving at least 75.  Here, the speed limit is 75, yet someone is in front of me in the passing lane going 65.  What is wrong with you people?  At times on I-44 especially I would come across what seemed like a dozen trucks all bunched up, some passing each other, and taking a while to get around.  But the further west I went, the less traffic there was and the less of an issue anything was. 

You'd think that driving 1000 miles by yourself for over fifteen hours might start to drive you crazy.  I don't know why, but mostly it didn't really bother me.  I never said to myself, man, I can't stand being in the car anymore!  Initially I was nervous because I don't think I've driven more than 4 hours or so by myself, but it's been fine.  And something tells me that it will continue to be fine for the final 200 miles.  I guess I'm just used to spending lots of time by myself, so why should this be different? 

So last night I had made it through Oklahoma City and it was about 7:00 (8:00 from where I'd left) and dark and I finally decided to stop.  I actually felt fine to keep going, but my mother had called and my phone was roaming and I couldn't answer it, so I figured I'd better stop and call her so she wouldn't think I was stranded by the side of the road somewhere.  So I got a room in El Reno, Oklahoma and didn't realize how tired I was until I actually stopped and lay down. 



Unwittingly, we hit I-40 and made it several hundred miles before somewhere in Texas, of all places, the roads were completely covered in ice.  There was a bit of snow on the ground, about the same amount that we'd hardly even notice in New Hampshire.  But the roads were just a complete sheet of ice.  It was bright and sunny at the time, but cold.  There weren't a whole lot of other cars on the road and we just had to drive probably 30mph for a while until finally we hit New Mexico and the roads cleared up.  I'm guessing the problem came from the fact that it's likely they just don't have the amount of plows and salt trucks that we do.

So, we thought we'd made it through the worst of it.  We'd stopped at a gas station that said that 40 had re-opened from the day before.  We never even knew it was closed.  So we kept driving... until the traffic just stopped.  So we sat there for a few minutes before realizing that this wasn't just slow traffic, I-40 had literally become a parking lot.  The thing that was strange was that at that particular spot there was no ice and the roads were fine even though there was snow on the ground.  But apparently that was not the case further west, and the interstate had been closed. 

I don't know, this seems odd to me that the interstate just closes like that.  We've had some pretty crazy snowstorms back home and the interstate doesn't just close.  You just have to drive slower.  So after sitting and not moving for a couple of hours and fortunately having Olive Garden leftovers in the car, my friend Kate had made friends with some of the truck drivers who were going to lead us on an alternative route so we would not me stuck in New Mexico indefinitely.  Finally we were led off a nearby exit by the police and we proceeded to follow two semi trucks and a couple of other cars from the northeast who also happened to be heading for Arizona. 

I really have no idea how we got anywhere.  We were on dirt roads passing nothing but an occasional farm for probably 100 miles.  Once we hit pavement we lost the truckers and had already come across a couple more roads closed due to snow, but fortunately I can read a map so I was able to navigate us the rest of our new alternative route.  This included going through Roswell, New Mexico.  I saw no aliens, but I can understand why they chose that particular spot.  You just go miles and miles through nothing and then suddenly there is this random city there.  I think if you wanted to go to the "next town over" you'd have to make it a day trip.

So the last time we did that, that was a very long day.  And this time I was determined not to wind up in that same predicament.  So I took out my lap top and very quickly found out that I-40 was unbelievably, once again, closed for about 80 miles in the exact same spot as last time.  Is this normal?  Does it snow there all the time?  Does the road just close anytime it snows?  Why does it always snow there when I am supposed to drive through it?  I think there is some global conspiracy that is trying to keep me from ever seeing Albuquerque, New Mexico.  It was unclear whether or not the road would be open the following day, but I decided that the last thing I wanted was to find myself stranded on the interstate for hours or days or whatever.  Granted, there are enough Powerbars in the car to keep me alive for at least a few weeks, but still.

So, right off the bat I devised a new route from my hotel down through Roswell once again but minus the scary, dirt back roads with no names that aren't on any maps.  The funny thing was, when Google maps gives you the options, of course it usually shows you the interstate routes but also sometimes gives you some options.  Oddly, the second choice route, which happened to go through Roswell and avoid all of that closed roads business, was about 100 miles shorter and was estimated to take less time.  Why was this not the first option?  It was like taking the hypotenuse of the triangle, and I was ready for that different route. 

I slept in a bit more and didn't hit the road until 5:40 after one more check of the weather and deciding that, no, I wasn't going to risk going I-40.  The road conditions looked slightly iffy where I was headed, too, but no sign of road closures, which is of course what I was most concerned about.  So off I went.  The first couple of hours in the dark were a total blur.  I think the sun was up by the time I crossed into Texas.  I had a brief concern when I burned through an entire tank of gas in a mere 150 miles, where it had normally been about 240 or 250... also sad as the Xterra gets terrible mileage.  My Sentra gets 350 miles to a tank and holds six less gallons!  Anyway... I realized just before I pulled off to get gas that while I had the cruise control set, for some reason it was sort of stuck constantly accelerating with high RPM's, which burned through the gas fast.  So I had to pay attention to that the rest of the time, but fortunately that was the only 150-mile tank of gas. 

The worst part about that gas stop was getting out of the car.  It was nearly 50 degrees when I'd left my hotel in Oklahoma.  It was about 24 in Texas and WINDY.  Maybe the 40mph headwind didn't help the gas mileage, either.  I passed the restaurant in Amarillo that serves the 72oz steak and totally would've stopped to try it if it wasn't 8:30 in the morning at the time.  (no likely; I haven't eaten 72oz total of steak probably in the last ten years)  And that was where I got to defer to my new route.  I-27 to... other roads.  On the map they look like total back roads, but they're almost exactly the same as the interstate.  Four lanes, medians, 70mph speed limits.  I couldn't figure out the downside. 

I guess one thing was that at times I seriously felt like I was the only person left on Earth.  I mean, there was nobody anywhere, no houses in sight, no buildings, no cars.... just road.  In Texas it was incredibly flat and then suddenly this one, big mountain showed up in the background and a whole bunch more weren't far behind that one.  I did make sure that this time I didn't wait until the gas tank was near empty, but rather stopped at almost any gas station I found because, well, you never knew when the next one was going to show up.  Fortunately I never came close to running out. 

I'm very curious to know how bad the snow was a bit further north and whether or not the road was closed again because where I was, you never would've known anything had happened.  If I ever drive this way again I would definitely choose the route I drove today, because it was no big deal at all.  It was great, actually.  It did progressively get colder, down to 17 degrees (I thought I left that behind!)  and at 6000' there was some snow, but we're talking an inch or two, and nothing that slowed down what little traffic there was.  I saw some houses in some interesting places in the middle of nowhere.  How do you grocery shop?  Do you even get electricity?  And a couple of the post offices... how do you staff something literally in the middle of nowhere? 

So, after winding through the mountains of New Mexico and leaving the little bit of snow just as quickly as it had shown up, I was down the other side and found myself 700 or so miles from my starting point yesterday in ten hours.  I love you, 75mph speed limits.  I opted to stay in the exact same hotel as the last time I drove through here, and stopped just before 3:00 mountain time.  Obviously I could've kept going... heck, I could've made it all the way to Tucson by now, but I can't get into my place until tomorrow afternoon and I've been pushing and pushing the last few days, so why not take some extra time to sit down and relax and maybe get a full night of sleep?  Plus a nap?  It's still freezing cold and windy, again, exactly like the last time I did this, but it should warm up in Tucson in a couple of days. 

So, this is where I spent New Year's eve 2006 into 2007.  2006 was an amazing year for me.  By far the best in recent memory and honestly, possibly my favorite ever.  '07 wasn't as great, but not bad.  Now, I wouldn't say this if it wasn't true, but 2010 was, by far, the worst year of my entire life.  I don't think there is any particular other year that I would've considered bad as a whole.  Some not as good as others, but none that were just plain bad... until now. 

First, the clearest example as to why 2010 was awful: my father died.  That in and of itself is plenty, thanks.  I can't tell you how often I think about how much I still just can't even believe that happened.  And it's probably going to be another 9 months of "first time" things without Dad.  We had the first Thanksgiving and Christmas, not looking forward to the first summer without him, but we've probably talked enough about that kind of thing...

So the tri season.  Oh, the tri season.  Wow.  We're talking epic bad.  In 2008 I had a horrible season also, but this one surpassed it by leaps and bounds.  I set new personal worsts in several categories and pulled off my two worst Ironman finishes by far (1 and 2 hours slower than the previous worst) one of them with more time on the marathon than the bike and the other one darn close.  I somehow only did 1 half ironman this year and while that one wasn't the worst one I'd ever done, it was still just generally not a good experience.  I had my worst 5K, slower than my best Ironman marathon pace-wise (there's a real feat, isn't it?)  worst 10K, did manage to avoid my worst half marathon.  Two years ago when I had that other rough season due to injury I at least managed to pull out a win at a really small sprint race on the lake.  Not only was the race that day a complete disaster for me this year, but of course that was the day Dad got in his accident, and otherwise would've been out on his bike that morning instead of watching me suck at racing.  I did finally remember that there was actually one bright spot to the year as far as racing goes, and that was the BTTITT (Boston Triathlon Team Indoor Time Trial) back in February that I managed to win.  I got there late because I got a little lost and I seem to excel at racing without warming up.  I got a pair of Oakleys out of that deal, definitely my best prize for winning a race and the shortest duration of effort for the wins.  10 hours for your win?  Have some Ironman socks! 

There wasn't a whole lot else specific that sucked about this year, at least not that I can think of.  But in general I just wasn't quite my usual self.  Maybe I knew already it was going to be a bad year so I was pre-emptively depressed.  Yeah, that's it.  Needless to say, I'm looking forward to moving on from here.  That is why I am in New Mexico right now, almost at Tucson for a winter of being focused on nothing but training.  I felt a little bit guilty when I packed up the car and left the snow behind, and I don't think I'll need to do this every year (my best season came about after suffering through the snow and cold)  but for now, I need a change of venue, a clean slate and a fresh start. 

Somewhere along the line things started to go in the wrong direction, and that's where they keep going.  What is that saying, that the definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing but expect different results?  Yeah, that.  So, warm weather, different training grounds, a totally fresh way to jumpstart my 2011.  I've got a lot riding on the next three months.  One thing that definitely happened the last time I trained in Arizona: I definitely got in really good shape.  While the race at the end of that stint was a disappointment, that was the fault of race execution and maybe slightly too-high expectations (looking back now I'd just about kill to have a race like that again!)  I'm hoping that this one will end on a higher note. 

So that's it, now I'm going to sit back and continue watching this Saturday Night Live marathon on VH1 before I fall asleep.  Do we really get to start over completely just because the calendar says so?  I'd kind of like to be able to start 2010 over again and do it better (and lock my dad in a closet on September 5th) but I guess we just have to take what we've got and move on, right?

Hope everyone else has a great 2011.

Leaving in the morning...

I will post about Christmas later, but for now, just a quick note that I am finally leaving for Tucson in the morning.  At first I thought I'd leave the 27th, but that seemed kind of early so I decided to leave the 28th.  Then I woke up yesterday morning to the blizzard and decided to give the roads an extra day to clear out from the mess and am now, honestly leaving in the morning.  It doesn't seem real.  Again, I did do something similar in 2007 but that time I went with someone and I think it is just now dawning on me that I am about to spend several days in the car by myself and another 3 months the same way.  Well, the idea anyway is to just completely focus without distraction, so I guess I am at least set up to make that happen.

After spending some time braving the wind and cold I have to say I am not sad to be leaving winter behind this year.  I don't think I'd want to skip it every year, but I was just about to go completely out of my mind last year, so I think this will be good for me.  The car is packed, gassed up and ready to go.  I am, unfortunately, driving a bright yellow Xterra for the next few months.  My brother wound up with my father's car (my sister and I both decided we didn't want it and didn't mind if he took it, being given a car is one thing, but having to pay to maintain it and put gas in it is another entirely) and my mother seems to think it is a bad idea to drive a 2001 Nissan Sentra across the country, so '04 Xterra it is.  Strangely, the Sentra has less miles on it.  I think I often ride my bike more miles in a year than I drive my car.

I will try to post often, hopefully with some pictures of the fun I will be enduring over the next couple of months.  It will be an experience, for sure, just hoping that it is a fun one. 

Christmas

Ten days to go.  As usual, I started to feel complacent since I did a small amount of my Christmas shopping kind of early (for me this means the beginning of December).  But then it's like I forgot that I have several people left to buy for and not a whole lot of time in which to do it.  However, I have at least learned that the mall on Christmas eve isn't crowded at all.  I will do what I can to make sure that a Christmas eve trip is not required, but, well, at least I know it's an option. 

And, hey, I've got one less person to buy for.  And in looking through some of Dad's stuff I did happen to discover a shirt I bought him for Christmas last year, still all neatly folded with the department store cardboard inside it.  I've bought him clothes in the past that he has worn, but apparently missed the mark last year. 

So, let's state the obvious that I am not looking forward to Christmas all that much this year.  I mean, who looks forward to the first holidays without a parent?  Especially one who left way too early?  Now, I do think it could be harder than it probably will be.  Dad was always more of a background figure at the holidays.  Every Christmas of my entire life has been spent at my mother's mother's house, and my mom has a whole lot of brothers and sisters who are a whole lot more vocal than my father ever was.  Dad was never one to talk unless he really had something to say, and he definitely wasn't one to fight for attention at a table of thirty or so Irish in-laws.  In fact, back when we had a dog he used to use that as an excuse to make his quiet exit. 

Of course, just in our house, he was a major player in the Christmas morning rituals.  My father used to get up at like 4:30 in the morning every single day... except Christmas.  It used to drive me and my brother insane.  I'm sure at some point it bugged my older sister, but by the time I was old enough to remember this kind of thing, she was old enough to not be quite as enthusiastic on Christmas morning. 

My brother and I shared a room for a while when we were younger, and even in the years after I had moved into my own room I would usually sleep in the extra bed in his room on Christmas since he was upstairs and "away from Santa".  It just seemed wrong to sleep on the same floor that Santa would be coming on.  I rarely slept at all on Christmas eve.  I just remember lying awake all night and wondering when it was going to be time to get up.  We never went downstairs until everyone was up and we could go down together. 

I don't know what time it was that my brother and I would start knocking on my parents' door to get them to wake up so we could go downstairs.  I like to remember that it was more like 6, but Mom tells me it was a lot earlier than that.  Either way, it always seemed that we couldn't go down until closer to 7:00 when they finally got up.  Again, my mother I think tells me that they probably relented a lot earlier than that, but I know it wasn't 4:30, Dad's usual time to get up, which was what made it frustrating. 

My sister would come upstairs and we'd wait impatiently until Dad finally led the way downstairs, to the right of which was the living room complete with the Christmas tree and three large piles of presents.  They were never under the tree, we each had a designated spot.  And we weren't the kind of family that sat around and watched each person open a present before moving onto the next person.  It was just a free-for-all of ripping through the paper as fast as possible to find out all of the stuff we'd gotten.  Then, when the dust settled, we'd go around and see what everyone else had gotten. 

Eventually we'd sit down to breakfast and Dad would make freshly squeezed orange juice. This was all long before we'd finally go over to the chaos at Nana's house, where aunts, uncles and cousins made for a very full house and plenty more presents. 

Obviously Christmas hadn't been exactly the same anymore, at least not the beginning part.  It still winds up very similarly at Nana's, except now there are great grandchildren.  I think this will be Christmas #54 at that house.  We now go to my sister's house mostly to see the kids and their toys, because Christmas really isn't much fun unless at least somebody gets toys or is excited about Santa. 

So, that was what Christmas used to be all about for me and my family.  It's obviously not going to be quite the same.  You know, a lot of times I can sort of ignore the whole thing because hey, it's not like he'd be around right now, right?  Well, you can't really ignore it at Christmas. 

2011 begins tomorrow

Tomorrow is the beginning of my training for the 2011 season.  I had a good conversation with my coach about a week ago and we have laid out what should be a very busy schedule, but hopefully a good one.  I have to say, at the moment I feel so far removed from any racing that it might as well have been years ago that I set foot on the start line.  In fact, it was three months ago today... and that was also the day of a pretty horrible event, but let's not get into that right now. 

So my key race for the year will be Ironman Cour D'Alene.  I have to admit that when I heard this was the race that most of my fellow teammates would be doing, I wasn't really that excited about it.  I don't know why.  In fact, I wasn't going to sign up for it.  But then, when it came time to figure out my schedule for next year, I couldn't really figure out which other race to target.  There was always Utah again, but let's just say that although someday I would do that race again, I'm not incredibly anxious to revisit the sight of the longest time I've ever spent on a race course.  And that was with perfect weather.  Just imagine that course with less-than-favorable weather conditions!

I guess there was that new race in Texas, but that didn't really spark any interest in me either.  There was always Lake Placid.  But seriously, that would make it my eighth year in a row going there.  Isn't that just a tad bit excessive?  While it is the sight of my greatest triathlon accomplishment it is also the sight of my most bitter disappointments.  So, what was left?  Cour D'Alene.  Ok, so I guess I'll be visiting Idaho for the first time in my life. 

Aside from that there will be a lot of 70.3's which will be nice because just as I was typing that I realized that I did exactly... ONE of those this year.  The plan for next year?  If all goes as scheduled, five of them.  That's a bit of an increase. 

Also on the docket of course is that three months I'll be spending in Tucson.  I can't believe that I will be leaving in three weeks.  I need this excursion right now more than anything.  I don't think that at any point in my starting to do these races that I have ever felt like less of a triathlete than I do right now.  While that is certainly the case, I can also say that I have probably also never been more rested than I am right now.  Usually I finish up a season with an Ironman when I'm exhausted and sick of my bike and never want to drink Gatorade again for the rest of my life.  I couldn't tell you the last time I had some sports drink. 

So, this could all be a really great place to start or a really terrible one.  I don't know.  I'll let you know in April.  Actually, hopefully I will be a much better blog updater when I get out there.  If for no other reason than to make those of you riding your trainers while it snows outside insanely jealous.  That, and I'll be there by myself, so what else do I have to do while I'm not training? 

So tomorrow is the beginning of what I guess I can consider my last chance season.  If it goes well, fine.  Good.  Let's keep at it.  If not?  Well, I don't know yet.  But hopefully I'll never have to figure that out.

Disney World, Philadelphia, and it's almost Thanksgiving.

Well, I have been a terrible blog updater.  But lately the posts have bordered on more than just mundane, so I laid off for a while.  But recently I actually had some slightly interesting events, if you could call them that.  Last week I went down to Disney World.  I always enjoy a good trip to Disney World and it lets me act like the big kid I still am.  We went a few times when I was growing up, then I went with a few friends in college, and then we did another big family trip down there last May when I actually managed to squeeze in 26 hours of training around long days in the parks by getting up between 3:30 and 4 every morning, swimming in a smaller-than 25-yard pool, biking in the dark on a 2.4-mile loop over and over and over and over again, and running in the dark in circles.  Hey, you do what you have to.

This time wasn't quite like that as I had minimal training to get in that could be taken care of by awakening at much more sane hours and also riding the spin bike in the hotel gym.  This is one of the only times I am glad for my current training focus on running. 

Anyway, I'm going to admit that although I know I love it down there, I wasn't super excited to go.  I mean, when things aren't so great in life you're not that excited to do all of the fun things you usually love.  But it was really just the distraction I needed for a bit.  I went down and met up with one of my best friends from college and her husband and kids.  They are in the Disney Vacation Club and has some use it or lose it points and asked if I wanted to join them.  Let me think... ok, yes.  Between planning the trip and going on it, Heather discovered she was pregnant with child #3 so unfortunately that meant no extreme rides for her.  But fortunately for the rest of us, it made the decision of who stayed back with the 3-year old and the 16-month old that much easier.  We'll just have to go again later when she can do the rides. 

I might be unwilling to divulge this secret for fear that it might get out, but I figure even if the seven of you who read this take advantage of it I'll still be ok.  But the week before Thanksgiving is a fantastic time to go there.  While the parks seemed to have lots of people walking around, there was never a line for anything.  I mean NEVER.  A few times we got fast passes but never wound up using them because it wouldn't have made the wait times any faster.  I don't think I'd be able to tolerate Disney World if I had to wait more than 10 minutes to ride anything.  I honestly don't know why you'd even bother to go if you knew it was going to be crowded.  Why spend all that money when you're going to spend the majority of your time in lines?  I managed to do the Everest rollercoaster four times in the span of maybe 15 minutes.  Finally they stopped even bothering to make me get off.  Space Mountain?  No wait.  Thunder Mountain?  No wait.  Splash Mountain?  Tower of Terror?  Aerosmith rollercoaster?  Yep, get right on.  It was great. 

It was also probably the only time I've been ok with Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving.  Some of the lights were incredible.  Although the music just felt weird, being in shorts in the warm sun and having it feel like summer.  So if you get the chance to go then, I'd highly recommend it.  The weather was also perfect, which made up for the last time I was there and it rained literally the entire week.  Record setting, worse than a hurricane, almost 20 inches of rain that week.  At least we dind't have to worry about sunscreen.  But anyway, had a great time, hung out with some friends, enjoyed some good weather and then came back.

Except I didn't fly back to New Hampshire.  Instead I flew back to Philadelphia to watch my friends Kevin and Trent run the marathon there.  They drove down on Friday and were due to pick me up at the airport.  I kind of knew in the back of my head not to expect them on time, so I found myself a nice little corner with a comfortable chair and got my computer out and killed three hours until they got there.  Hey, as long as I can stretch my legs and stand up whenever I want, I'm fine.

Once they picked me up we headed to New Jersey to stay at Kevin's friend's house since they were actually at Disney World just then.  There was a note to feed the hamster, and Kevin told us to look around and see if we could find the hamster food.  Then he called us into the next room to see if we saw a hamster in the cage, because he definitely didn't.  Great, so we're thinking there is a hamster roaming around loose in the house and I started looking for any little debris on the floor because when I had a hamster as a kid that was how we always found her when she got out. 

Eventually Kevin had texted his friend and he said that she likes to burrow down underneath all the fluffy blue stuff lining the bottom of the cage.  So, fearing that we might get a little hamster bite to the finger, I started digging around using the eraser end of a pencil.  Finally I uncovered the white, furry little body burrowed way down at the bottom.  So great, she's not loose in the house.  But not so great, she's also not moving at all.  A couple of more forceful pokes with the pencil confirmed it: Bubbles is dead.  Great.  Lesson learned, kids: if you're going away from home, have someone feed your hamster in less than a week.  I mean, maybe it was just her time, but there was no food in that dish when we got there...

So that minor trauma ended and we tried to watch a movie but fell asleep instead.  Got to check out the Philly expo the next day and see a bit of Pennsylvania and only made it back to the house in time to eat dinner and go to bed.  I was glad not to be racing, but not glad that I was sharing a car with them and would have to leave just as early as they did.  At least we had managed to secure gated parking at an office building right close to the start line.  And it wasn't that cold of a morning, which made the spectating that much easier.  But it was definitely one of those mornings where when my alarm went off I had a few moments of, where am I, what's that noise and why do I have to get up right now?

The race was a success for both Kevin and Trent and as usual Kevin could hardly walk afterward while Trent sauntered down the street was no big deal.  To be fair, Kevin went 2:55 and Trent went 3:08, so maybe once Trent breaks 3 hours he will have equal trouble walking back to the car.  We immediately got out of town and after a quick stop to pick up our friend Leslie in New Jersey we finally headed home.  We were even home at a decent hour, and I was afraid it would be like 11 at night when we got back, but before 7 was perfect. 

So that was my big, exciting week that made me feel all well-traveled.  I relish any opportunity to travel without my bike.  In fact, all I had was my backpack so I didn't even have to deal with baggage claim.  So now here I am, waiting for Thanksgiving.  And I'm trying not to think too much about how this is the least I have ever looked forward to Thanksgiving, ever.  By far.  Aside from the one time I stayed in Los Angeles for the holiday, this is the first time I have to have Thanksgiving without my father.  Most of the time we have celebrated it with my mother's family, which is big and loud so Dad was more of a background fixture rather than the one running the show.  But that will probably only make it a little bit easier.  You see, for a while now it's been kind of easy to just convince myself that well, Dad wouldn't even be here right now with me, so what's the big deal?  There is no denying that he would be there at Thanksgiving dinner, no matter how much he would've rather stayed at his lake house and watched football all day.  We will miss you tomorrow, Dad.

I'm Officially Wintering in Tucson

So, I think I might have mentioned this before, but I am going to be spending the winter in Tucson.  I don't remember exactly when I decided it.  It might date all the way back to my 10th long ride last winter done alone in my basement when I had finally seen every movie ever made, including all of the really bad ones, and I thought I was finally going to go insane.  Whenever the decision was made, of course it never quite seems that real until you finally set up accommodations for when you get there.

Well, thanks to the power of craigslist, I will be subletting a place in northwest Tucson, a bit out of the city, from a guy who is going away for the winter.  This is great because it means it is not really a vacation property and in a way I'm doing this person a favor as well.  Plus, the location looks great, it's next to a golf course which leads me to believe that it is in a nice neighborhood, and according to Google maps, it is half a mile from a YMCA with a gorgeous outdoor pool and plenty of lap swim hours.  In short, I think it's just what I had in mind. 

This is exactly what I need on so many levels.  Obviously things have been a bit different in my life, we're still getting used to the idea that Dad is never going to be around again.  And admittedly right after that incident occurred I thought to myself that there was no way I was going to go away for the winter.  But time passed, and you know what?  It still feels like it's what I should be doing.  So I am. 

This is not my first winter of escape.  In 2003 I was living in Los Angeles.  That wasn't for the purpose of escaping winter but rather my brief attempt at having a career in the film business.  Believe it or not, that is actually what I went to college for.  Unfortunately, the summer before I left I also did my first triathlon, and the rest is history.  But anyway, I also decided to go out to Phoenix for the winter of 2007 in preparation for Ironman Arizona which back then was run in April.  I left my real job and headed across the country for what I considered to be the beginning of an amazing training experience. 

Well, when race day came around, although I was swimming and biking faster than ever before, I may or may not have tried to power through the hideous winds that kicked up on the bike course and somewhat sabotaged my run.  Of course, my marathon time that day is probably one I'd kill for now even though at the time I considered it a huge disappointment, and the overall time got me first in my age group and the Kona slot that goes along with it, but at the time, that wasn't good enough for me. 

But anyway, sometime during that fun outing I rode my bike from Phoenix to Tucson and realized very quickly that I'd picked the wrong city in Arizona to live in.  While Phoenix isn't entirely terrible, at least from where I was living, I was pretty much forced to drive my bike 20 minutes away from home and park somewhere to get a decent ride in.  On occasion I'd ride from my condo, stopping at lots of lights, riding briefly on the paved canal paths, then stopping at more lights.  But it was close to an hour of slowly getting out of town, which meant I'd spend an hour slowly coming back.  That is not the kind of riding I wanted to do.  And maybe for some people they don't mind driving their bike somewhere and riding, but that has never been of interest to me.  I like to get ready to ride from home, open the door and start pedaling.  And, fortunately, I think that this time I've gotten myself a place from which I can do that.

Having all of the details worked out makes it seem like much more of a reality and makes me much more excited about it.  I don't necessarily mind winter... until Christmas is over.  Then I'm sort of done.  I actually do enjoy skiing.  But I can't tell you the last time I went skiing that I wasn't with my father, who was always initiating trips to Cannon Mountain and when I worked for him sometimes he'd actually make me take a day off in the middle of the week to go with him.  Needless to say, I don't know that I'd be going skiing this year even if I did stick around.

So off I will go to warmer weather.  I really need to do this, I think.  I need the complete change of scenery.  I need to be in a place where I can just focus on the training and not worry about anything else.  I need to be free from distraction.  I used to be a lot better at getting myself through the training with other things going on, and I think that once I get back into that mind set, I'll be fine with it once again when I come back.  But for now, I just need that little push in the right direction. 

Because you know, if things don't turn around again next season, I don't think I can do this anymore.  I mean, this is sort of what I want to do with my life.  Or at least what I want to do with it until I get too old and ruined to do it anymore.  But I can't keep going back and forth from having decent seasons to bad ones for no good reason.  I completely respect the fact that there are so many triathletes out there who just want to go out and race because they enjoy it and don't really care what the outcome is as long as they finish.  I'm just not one of those people.  If I can't do it well I don't really want to be wasting my time with it.  So, I've got a lot riding on you, 2011.  Let's not mess this up.

Some ramblings

It seems wrong that any triathlete with a blog wouldn't comment on this whole Ironman Access Program debacle that transpired over the course of 24 hours.  When the e-mail popped up in my inbox, I went down the list of 'benefits' thinking to myself, huh, that's interesting, I guess.  Then the final line listed the price at $1000.  Are you kidding me?  Um, no thanks.  Now, to be fair, had it been listed at a lower, more sane rate, chances are there would've been too many people lined up to snag those 'slots'.  But making it $1000 to join this exclusive club insured that nobody would sign up unless they really, really wanted to... or $1000 just isn't that big of a deal to them.  Probably both.

I will say that although I found the whole concept a little ridiculous, knowing it was simply a way for them to make $1000 per entrant in return for... nothing.  Did anyone have to pay for their subscription to Lava magazine?  Any of us who's done one of their races this year already got a free subscription simply for signing up for one of their events.  I'll stop there, because you've all heard the arguments, but I will say that I never expected there to be the amount of angry, keyboard happy triathletes as there were.  If only we could start collectively working to make them lower entry fees or at least keep raising them so much, and stop letting so many freakin' people into their races. 

Now, I've got my own opinions on this, but I don't want to go off on a big rant about it.  I will say though, that as far as the apology and the cancellation of the program goes, I cannot for the life of me figure out how exactly this was supposed to solve the supposed 'problem' of people signing up for multiple races and only showing up at one or two of them.  Had the program meant that these people could get into events up to a month before hand, well, that would make sense to me.  Giving them one week in advance to ensure a spot, to me, doesn't mean they wouldn't sign up for more than one event.  I don't think most of the people who choose to do this are doing so because they are afraid if they wait to try to sign up for IMFL, they won't get in because it will fill too fast, so they might as well at least make sure they get into Louisville.  I am sure that some of these people do this, I just don't believe for one second that it is anywhere in the vicinity of 2500-3000 athletes as they claimed.

But ok, so what if it did fix the 'problem'?  What they are telling us now is that they are taking registrations and filling these races to capacity, but then suddenly race day comes and there are 400 no shows.  Of course some of these are injuries and some are family issues or deciding they hadn't trained enough or any number of reasons.  And I'm sure some are people who decided to do Ironman Lake Placid instead of Cour D'Alene because they had signed up for both.  Sure, like maybe five or six of them (and that's being generous). 

The thing is, they allow a certain number of entrants knowing full well what to expect in terms of actual racers when the day finally comes.  So, are we expected to believe that freeing up these 'unused slots' for people who were shut out of registration is supposed to be a benefit to anyone?  For anyone who did Lake Placid this year (and probably any number of their races) the thought that the course could've actually supported the three thousand entrants is laughable.  This was my seventh time at the race and I'm sad to say that it might be my last.  Just because you have room for 500 extra bikes in transition in 2010 as compared to 2009 doesn't mean that it is a good idea to have that many of them out on the course.  And don't even get me started on the swim. 

So, apparently this 'solution' was going to mean that there were going to be less no shows and even more crowded courses.  And if you've done any of these races lately, and especially if you have been doing them for several years, you will know that the courses can't get much more crowded without calling it a parade instead of a race. 

But you know, a lot of things have changed since I started racing.  It makes me feel like an old-timer or something when I can start to say things like, "Back in the old days..."  Yes, the 'old days' of 2002, when I first got into this crazy sport.  I'd just turned 23 and decided to try one of those Danskin all-women's sprints.  I hadn't discovered internet forums (where mostly you spend time reading about all of the things in the world you are supposed to hate and be enraged over) and trained based on a little book I found in a real book store.  I didn't wear a wetsuit and it wasn't out of place.  I used a road bike without aero bars and it wasn't a big deal. 

Also unbelievable about that first year was that I signed up to do the Timberman half... about 8 weeks before race day.  Just try getting into a race like that two months before now.  Plus, I think it was somewhere in the neighborhood of $130.  And I think I came home with more SWAG that year than any other year since, even though the price has ballooned to almost $300.  I get inflation, nobody can get around that, but are we expected to believe that the cost of putting on the race has doubled in 8 years?  Somehow, I doubt it.  Especially with literally 2000 more people contributing to the pot.  Yes, that first year there were something like 800 racers.  The bike course was a bike course, not an obstacle course. 

It's not just race entry fees though.  It is everything associated with the sport.  I raced for two seasons on my dad's old road bike which I finally had to get rid of because the bike shop told me it was going to rust through.  I bought a new road bike and tossed some aero bars on it.  I never even considered something like race wheels.  To me, that seemed like something only the rich people in the sport bought.  Now?  It's like you can't even show up at a race and not have race wheels without feeling completely inadequate.  In 2005 I went to Kona for the first time and I am pretty darn sure I was the only bike on the pier without race wheels.  I aws only 26, surrounded by other people in my age group.  Where did these people get that kind of money?  Race wheels were about as much as my bike. 

The $5000 bike seems more like the minimum you have to spend to get a nice bike anymore.  But 7, 8, $10,000 isn't really unusual either.  I know, you can always buy cheaper, but it just seems to me like now you can't even sign up for a race without at least looking the part, including a really nice tri bike. 

Oh, but now let's talk wetsuits.  I did my first season without one because I didn't get what the big deal was.  Ok, I also didn't know I was going to become addicted to the sport and fortunately both races I did had very warm water, so I just had to suffer through my 45-minute half Ironman swim without one.  When it became apparent that I was going to start racing indefinitely, I decided to get a wetsuit.  My first wetsuit, which was brand new, was $129.  Sleeveless, but still not a bad deal.  I still have it and there still aren't any tears in it.  I do recall that back then the top-of-the-line wetsuits for each of the major manufacturers ran about $400.  I got a message in my inbox the other day that XTerra's new top-of-the-line wetsuit is $750, and I suspect that many of the other companies will be similar.

I don't expect every wetsuit to be under $200, but again, I just find it hard to imagine that the cost of producing these things has gone up so much in the past few years.  Oh, and the best part is that these new, expensive wetsuits seem to only last a season or two before they rip or the zipper just pops right off. 

And then there are run shoes.  I guess that a lot of them haven't changed that much, but everyone is being roped into thinking they need to spend $180 on run shoes every 3 months.  Fortunately, you can still find good deals and really all you need to go running is some shorts and a t-shirt, so running is at least relatively safe. 

So it's not just signing up for these races that has gotten more expensive.  I guess the truth is that I wonder if I was 23 and starting the sport now, would I even be able to get into it?  Could I afford it?  I can barely afford it now, but fortunately my most expensive pieces of equipment were the result of sponsors.  In the case of my race wheels, that sponsor's name was Dad.  Someday I probably will have to buy a new bike, but I am not looking forward to shelling out the money for one. 

A lot of this stuff just makes me less and less excited about racing.  I have some great friends I've made in this sport, and it is always fun to go meet several other questionably-sound people to swim in a lake in New Hampshire in October, or ride over the Kancamagus Pass in April when it's 40 degrees and raining in the middle of a 7-hour ride or run the toughest 14-mile route you can find just because you can.  But I feel like those aren't the people I'm seeing anymore when I go to these races.  Not the majority, anyway.  I don't know, maybe it's just turning into another "thing to do" because people have the time and the money and they want a good excuse to eat lots of carbs.  It just doesn't feel the same anymore and it makes me wonder if I would've been as excited to be a triathlete if I had waited 8 more years.

So... what now?

It's Columbus Day weekend, which is usually a pretty nice weekend in New England, complete with tons and tons of tourists checking out the foliage.  This was the first Columbus Day weekend I've actually been home since 2004.  Because that was the last time I wasn't in Hawaii.  I didn't get to cross the finish line in Kona every year.  I qualified in '05, '06' and '07 and raced and finished.  I had a bad year in 2008 when I was injured but I went to spectate anyway.  Being there as a spectator was actually kind of a nice change... until I saw the finish line and knew I wouldn't get the chance to cross.  I decided I'd do what I could to get there again the next year.

So I did.  I qualified last year, except 4 weeks out from race day I found myself walking home on one of my last long runs with a stress fracture.  I continued to train and actually thought going in that I'd finish no matter what, even if it meant walking 26.2 miles.  I made it to T2 and sat around for probably 20 minutes before I decided to just call it a day, and once again was left without finishing.  2010 was supposed to be the comeback once again.  Except it wasn't.  I had no injury excuses, I just wasn't in it mentally.  So I did two Ironman races which were the two worst performances of my career, out of 12 finishes.  Not really moving in the right direction there. 

I thought about going to spectate again, but well, you know, stuff happened and I stayed home.  I will at least say that it was an amazing race to follow online.  I was disappointed in the lack of Chrissie Wellington, but also got to see some amazing performances from both men and women out there, as well as friends and teammates.  So many going sub-10, lots in their first appearance there, and of course Cait running her way up to 8th overall with the second fastest women's marathon ever recorded there.  Not a bad day.  Wish I could've been there with you guys.


But, can't do anything about what's happened this year, all I can do is try and take control of what's going on next year.  I feel like I'm in the worst shape I've been in for years, but it is certainly not the worst shape I've been in ever.  We always have to start somewhere, it's just a lot easier to start from a place where things are easier.  You ever dig yourself into what feels like an insurmountable hole?  That's what I feel like I'm in now.  But watching the race coverage yesterday made me remember how much I love being there and how much I missed not being there.  My parents hadn't been out there to watch me since 2007, and had already talked about coming out next year.  Obviously only Mom can come now, but I still want to get there. 

Sooo... what's the plan?  For now, just trying to get in some semblance of shape.  I had originally planned on running a marathon in a few weeks, but as you can imagine, a lot of plans changed.  A couple of weeks of no running made that not such a great idea, so instead, we are just training to train.  After Christmas, I'm going to get in my car and drive across the country to Tucson, where I plan to live and train for 3 months.  Well, assuming I can find a place to live.  Anybody have any leads?  I could use some ideas!  And the only two races I'm signed up for as of now are California 70.3 in April and Ironman Cour D'Alene in June.  I guess I'll fill in the gaps later, but that's what I'm in for to start, anyway. 

So, that's the plan.  Trying to find that athlete I keep seeing in pictures from a couple of years ago that is hiding somewhere in here.  Getting the dedication back.  My father loved watching me race and I don't think he'd be happy to know that I stopped, so I better keep at it. 

What happened

It has been a little over two weeks since the accident and just under that since we said goodbye to Dad.  I'm sure that a lot of people are wondering exactly what happened.  The short answer: he fell off his bike.  That's it, really.  He somehow managed to fall off his bike in exactly the right way to fatally injure him.  An epic stroke of bad luck for a man who has had mostly good luck throughout his life... although he'd probably argue that it wasn't so much luck as just making good things happen for himself. 

Sunday afternoon, September 5th.  It was the last Sunday afternoon for months in which Dad wouldn't be parked on the couch in front of the TV watching hours and hours of football.  After another especially hot week, the weather had cooled and it felt like fall.  My sister had brought my niece and nephew, Conor and Moira, up for the previous night and were just saying goodbye.  Dad made a big show of how heavy 4-year old Conor was when he picked him up to say goodbye and they went on their way. 

Not long after that Dad decided to head out on a short ride before we would go to have dinner at the Woodshed, his favorite restaurant.  It is exceedingly rare for Dad to go out for a bike ride in the afternoon, but he had spent the morning watching me race in a sprint triathlon down the road.  He is so entrenched in his routines that a shake-up like that might have prompted him to skip it all together, so he could instead enjoy his more normal afternoon routine of taking out the boat or napping on it while it was docked.  But it was sweatshirt weather, not bathing suit weather, and he had spent much of the week talking about how good he'd felt when he was riding, so he didn't want to miss the opportunity for another ride. 

I headed upstairs to put my feet up and recover from my race while doing some work.  Mom stayed downstairs and watched some TV while Dad headed off.  The caller ID said it was 3:12pm when the phone rang.  It was Speare Hospital in Plymouth, only it wasn't Dad who was calling.  I never looked at the phone, it was a few minutes later when I saw my mother come into the room and she said to me, "You have to come with me."  I looked up and saw that she was crying.  My immediate thought was that my 89-year old grandmother had just died.  I have seen my mother cry only a handful of times in my entire life and unless she is watching a movie it is never over nothing.  She wasn't crying over Nana.  She just said, "Dad's been in an accident."

I sat up and went to throw on some sandals and offered to do the driving since Mom appeared to be in no condition.  She told me that he wasn't at Speare, which was a mere 15 minute drive, but rather had been air lifted to Dartmouth Hitchcock in Lebanon, about an hour away.  This was only the first example of my naive optimism throughout this entire ordeal.  I refused to cry about this at that moment.  I figured we'd drive over there, maybe find out Dad had a concussion, a broken collar bone, something like that.  It didn't occur to me that they don't just airlift people to one of the best hospitals in the country from a perfectly adequate one, one Dad's own company had done extensive construction work on, for some broken bones. 

I spent the drive trying to distract my mother from thinking about the worst possible outcome.  However, it didn't escape me that my mother was the exact same age my grandmother, her mother was when her husband, Mom's father died suddenly of a heart attack.  I tucked that thought away and tried instead to think of a way to get Mom to let Dad have his bike back when he got better.  Over the phone they had simply told her that he was found by the side of the road and brought in, obviously unconscious.  Dad had a fairly nasty bike accident when I was in high school.  He somehow managed to fall in the driveway, knocked himself out a bit but only came away with a separated shoulder, bruised ribs and some road rash.  I think it might've been the only time he missed work in his life and when Mom drove him to the emergency room he wouldn't get out of the car and insisted he was fine.  Then they drove home and he couldn't get out of the car, so she brought him back.  Aside from the tendon sticking out of his shoulder ever since, you wouldn't even know it had happened.  I expected something more like that.

After an hour of driving down back roads through nowhere, NH, we made it to the hospital and fortunately picked the right building to go in.  On the drive over Mom asked if we should call anyone, and I told her that I figured we shouldn't call anyone if we didn't know anything.  I thought maybe we'd get there and it would be no big deal.  They brought us into our own little waiting room and after a few more minutes a nurse came in and told us what was going on.  She said she could only tell us what she had heard, but that he had been found not breathing and without a heartbeat.  Someone came along and did CPR and brought him back but nobody had any idea how long he had been down. 

This wasn't the news I was expecting.  Mom seemed to know this was going to be bad, but she wasn't taking it well.  The nurse left us alone for a few minutes before someone else came in to get his medical information because he had been brought in as an unknown patient since nobody was there to identify him, even though he had his wallet in his back pocket.  I offered to make some phone calls because she didn't seem up for it.  I couldn't get in touch with my sister but managed to find my brother.  At that point we weren't sure if he needed to come up or not, so we'd wait for the doctor to come talk to us, someone who had actually seen him. 

So far, each bit of news had gotten progressively worse.  The trend continued when the doctor came in.  His neck was broken.  He was likely quadriplegic.  Nobody knew how long his brain had been without oxygen.  My mother kept asking terrible questions like, is he just going to be a vegetable?  To which the doctor answered: potentially.  Mom was of course in bad shape and I went to call my brother and have never had such a hard time getting words out.  We still couldn't find my sister but I left him to find her.  My mother had managed to tell my aunt, and I talked to her and she decided to drive up.  Another aunt and uncle had just heard when they returned from a trip and they decided to drive up.  While we waited for them we were also waiting for them to take Dad in to do a CAT scan and an MRI to see if they could discover the extent of the damage. 

My watch seemed not to move while we sat in our little room and drank copious amounts of water.  From the moment we got the call my mouth had gone dry and no amount of fluid seemed to help.  After my fifth trip to the bathroom I gave up.  My aunt Tricia arrived first, and not long after my brother and sister had driven up together once he'd found her at a friend's Labor Day cookout.  Then my aunt and uncle, Kathleen and David, and not long after that, my uncle Mike.  These are my mother's side of the family, the ones who live closer.  Finally my brother-in-law arrived.  He called my father's twin brother in Pennsylvania and he and his wife decided to get in the car and drive through the night to get there. 

A few hours had passed since they last talked to us, but finally they came out and told my mother she could see him.  Someone came out to get me and my siblings a few minutes later and took us to this little room where Dad was laid out on a stretcher with some tubes in his mouth and nose, making sure he was still breathing.  There was fluid around his mouth and nose which they had to clear occasionally, due to some lung issue that I'm still not clear on because whatever it was, it had gone away a few hours later.  There was some blood on the sheet but I didn't know where it was coming from because there wasn't a scatch on him.  Usually when you fall off your bike you are guaranteed to lose some skin, but for some reason that did not seem to be the case. 

I really don't remember much about what was said in that room when another doctor came in.  I only vividly remember that my mother asked another awful question, if this was the kind of thing where in a couple of days she'd be asked if they should pull the plug.  The doctor's answer: probably.  You can imagine this was not a good moment for the remainder of our little family.  Once we could speak again, we had to go out and pass the news on to the rest of the family sitting in the waiting room.  Dad was going to be moved up to the ICU.  The aunts and uncles headed home since there was nothing they could do, and the rest of us went up to the ICU waiting room. 

My brother decided to drive the hour back to Manchester to get some things for himself and I decided to drive the hour back to the lake house to get some stuff for me and Mom since it appeared we would be there for a while and I was already sick of sitting around and waiting.  Once I got to the house my sister had sent a message that he was stable there and they were going to try cooling his body down for 24 hours to make the swelling go down and that probably nothing was going to happen between now and then.  I considered staying at the house since it was already 10:30 but knew right away I wouldn't be able to sleep anyway and although I'd done it before, at that moment being alone in that big house didn't seem appealing to me.  So I gathered our things and headed back. 

Mom went in to see him one more time once he was settled in ICU and we decided to go down the road and get a couple of hotel rooms just after midnight.  We were in bed for probably close to five hours but I don't think I ever fell asleep.  We arrived back at the hospital just after five on Labor Day.  I didn't like the idea of spending so much time just waiting but based on what we'd been told, I also knew that things weren't going to change that day and therefore at least couldn't get any worse.  I went in to see him and he looked better in that aside from the tubes in his mouth, he really just looked like he was sleeping.  Plus, after a summer of sun he had a great tan and certainly didn't look like a sick old man.  He was under heavy sedation and even if he wasn't paralyzed anyway, they kept him that way so that he couldn't move and hurt himself. 

My brother asked me that day if I had been telling people what happened.  I said that I had told a few people but I wasn't exactly ready to make it my facebook status update.  Nothing remotely close to this had ever happened to me before and I wasn't necessarily ready to start talking to a whole lot of people about it.  And for the people I did tell, I also told them to feel free to talk to me about ANYTHING else because I was enjoying any and all distractions.  That afternoon since we were waiting for nothing our cousins Hannah and Brendan and Brenda's girlfriend Allison came up and took me and my brother out to lunch.  Being Labor Day at about 2:00 in the afternoon we were just about the only ones in there for a few hours of much appreciated fun distractions. 

After that, since we hadn't slept in something like 36 hours, we went back to the hotel to lie down at about 5 while the cousins headed back home.  My sister and brother-in-law had gone home for the day to be with their kids and Mom was still over in the hospital.  For some reason, sitting in that hotel room brought me back to when Johnny and I were little and used to watch TV in Mom and Dad's bed on Saturday nights.  I certainly wished at that moment that I could go back to that right then.  Although I still can't figure out how we related to "Golden Girls" when we were like 8 and 5.

We stayed in the hotel room all night with the TV on.  Mom came back eventually, and everyone tried to sleep and I think I might have gotten an hour or so.  I heard Mom in the shower at about 4am before she told me she was going back over.  Normally at 4am I'd have no trouble going back to sleep, but not this time.  I suddenly felt infinitely worse than I'd felt throughout the entire ordeal.  I'd slept for an hour or so, which also meant that for the first time sicnce it had happened, I'd woken up and come to the painful realization that it wasn't all just a nightmare.  Also, that day the whole cooling him down and warming him up thing would come to an end, which meant that we might finally get some news on his condition.  While there was the possibility that we'd hear something good, there was also the very real possibility that we'd hear something bad.  It was like we weren't safe anymore. 

I almost never cry, but I had a very difficult time holding back tears that morning.  Almost immediately after Mom left I felt like I had to do something.  I couldn't go back over there yet because my brother and I were sharing a car and I didn't want to make him get up yet.  I picked up my computer and started writing a note that I put up on facebook.  I knew I had to write something because it's a good outlet for me.  I didn't want to write what I'm writing now, just a rehash of what had been happening at the hospital.  I didn't want to go too far back about what a great Dad he was growing up, although I'm sure I'll get to that eventually.  I had been thinking a lot about the last week and how perfect it was and hated that I had to think that it might have been his last week on Earth, but I also wanted everyone to know that if it was, it couldn't have been better.  And of course that up to the moment of the accident he really never wasted a moment. 

So I started writing, and when I went back to proof read it I realized that I had written the entire first paragraph in past tense, so I changed it in the hope that he wouldn't really be gone.  We had heard that they had stopped the cooling process about four hours early because his heart rate had gotten too low.  They never told us if that was a good thing or a bad thing, just that it meant they'd need to warm him up early, which would take 12 hours so as not to shock his body.  They checked out his heart to see if maybe he had had a heart attack that had caused him to fall but found it to be in great shape even at 64. 

This was where we actually started to get some good news.  First, that morning we had gone in to see him and he had been starting to wake up a bit.  I went in first with just my mother and she started talking to him a bit and I said fairly loudly, "Dad" and his eyes immediately opened.  He wasn't really looking at anything and we could only see the lower part of his dark blue irises, but to me this seemed like a good thing.  Since he was no longer sedated or forcibly paralyzed they discovered that he would actually kick his foot if you pinched his toes.  After hearing nothing but the worst possible things that can happen to a person over the past two days, discovering that he wasn't paralyzed seemed incredible.  Although apparently depending on where the spinal damage happens it can actually affect the arms but not the legs.  I always thought it moved bottom up, and if the legs worked, so would everything else.  Either way, this seemed to be enough good news for me.  His spinal damage had been downgraded from "complete" to "incomplete."  These were not terms I fully understood but I also refused to torture myself by looking up things on the internet, so I simply took it as a good sign.

Two very large problems remained: he still couldn't breathe on his own and hadn't attempted to take a breath, and still nobody knew how long his brain had been without oxygen and whether or not it had been affected.  This would be determined by an MRI.  But they don't do MRIs for ICU patients during the day usually, only in the middle of the night when there are no everyday patients scheduled.  Which meant yet another long day of waiting and probably nothing changing.  When I'd go in to see him he really did just look asleep, but his heart rate kept dropping I think because he was cutting off his own air by chewing on his breathing tube, so the nurse kept having to wake him up.  His eyes would remain half-open until he'd drift off again and inevitably after a minute or so I'd see his heart rate drift down into the 30's.  Saying his name didn't seem to wake him up anymore. 

Everyone else had gone home that night except for me and Mom.  My friends Leslie, Kevin and Trent came up and took me and Mom out to dinner, another nice distraction.  I think I managed to actually sleep for two or three hours that night and we were back at the hospital just after 5am on Wednesday morning.  We knew that day at some point we'd be having what they call a family meeting with all of the doctors and everyone who had been working with him and would finally find out what had happened with the MRI and get the last of the answers we needed. 

When we saw him that morning he looked the same  We had had lots of visitors over the past couple of days and each was appreciated.  Really, throughout the whole thing it was amazing the amount of support we'd received.  That, and how quickly the news had spread.  Even just the first night my brother was receiving text messages and e-mails from people he had no idea how they'd found out because at that point only certain family members knew.  Bad news travels fast. 

My mother, brother and I were sitting in the ICU waiting room that morning at about 11:30 or so when a nurse came in to find us.  We knew our official meeting wouldn't be until about 3:00 that afternoon but she said she wanted to give us some news since it wasn't fair to make us just sit around when they actually knew something.  She probably told us the news in the nicest possible way but when you see that cringing look on a person's face and the way they sort of tilt their head and get a little quiet when they say the words, "diffuse brain damage" that it can't possibly mean anything good.  After she left my brother-in-law came back from a coffee run and my mom told him to go back to the hotel where my sister was napping and bring her back so we could tell her.  We didn't want to tell anyone over the phone. 

I didn't know what to do at that point.  Again, I know I probably had all the information I needed to come to the inevitable conclusion but I refused to.  There still had to be something they could do.  Two days ago he was paralyzed and that wasn't the case anymore, maybe this could change, too.  I went to the food court and watched other people eat and decided I couldn't really handle it myself. 

3:00 showed up quicker than I would've liked.  It seemed there was no way this would end well and any shred of hope I still clung to was probably about to be taken away.  Mom, Johnny, Katy and I were taken into a small conference room in the ICU where there were a few doctors, nurses, a social worker, a recovery specialist and a neurologist.  One of the nurses had told my mother earlier that if the neurologist doesn't sound very hopeful, then things are surely not good because those people apparently love to work miracles.  We learned pretty quick that even a miracle wasn't going to save Dad. 

The brain damage was extensive.  Throughout the entire ordeal my mother and sister had been asking a fair amount of questions.  I never had any.  To me, there were only two possible outcomes in this whole scenario: he was either going to be ok, or he wasn't.  Anything else didn't matter to me.  The people in the room took turns sharing various facts about his condition, never ever pushing us in any direction but allowing us to draw our own conclusions.  Aside from the brain damage there was still the fact that he hadn't tried to breathe on his own yet, and one of the doctors said that since he had been under the heavy sedation it was still possible that he'd be able to breathe on his own and we would see that if we waited another 72 hours.  I hated the idea of waiting anymore, but I also hated the idea of missing opportunities. 

Nobody else seemed to like this option.  Everyone, it seemed, had realized the truth of the matter except me.  Mom asked me if I wanted to wait the 72 hours.  I nodded my head.  Then she asked the doctors probably exactly what I needed to hear.  She said, "Here's what I'm afraid of: what if we wait the 72 hours, and he does start breathing on his own?"  The doctors all nodded, but not in a very positive way.  I knew then what it all really meant.  At that moment we had an easy way to just let him go, but if we waited, he might be breathing, but it wouldn't really be Dad.  He'd be some empty, Dad-shaped vessel lying in a bed in some nursing home somewhere.  Apparently this was something he and Mom had talked about sometime in the past few years, and both had decided that they would never want to live like that.  She asked me again, and I told her it was ok.

The terrible decision had to be made, and they asked us when we'd want to do it.  We all agreed that we should do it as soon as possible.  We'd all had enough waiting and just wanted it to end.  Most of the doctors exited the room but the neurologist offered to show us the MRI of his brain.  It goes down level by level and she told us that the white sections indicated where there was damage.  As she moved through the images his entire brain was nearly a sea of white.  There was nothing left.  He had been wearing his helmet during the accident and it actually protected his head from physical trauma of the impact, but obviously he had been without a heartbeat for too long.  I'm glad she showed us those images.  It doesn't make the decision any less painful, but it did help to remove all doubt. 

My sister went out to get my brother-in-law and Dad's twin brother, Bob and his wife, Sandy.  Not long after that someone came in and reminded us that Dad was an organ donor, and at his age he was still eligeble to donate his kidneys.  Unfortunately he was way over the age limit for most other organs, including his heart.  Someone probably could've benefited from that, for sure.  Mom had the option of saying no, but we all felt that it would be good if someone or probably two people in this case could benefit from this.  Later, we heard that apparently his name had been on the organ bank list as a potential donor since the night the accident happened.  Seemed there was never much hope anyway. 

The bad news about all of this was that it entailed more waiting.  We were told it would take 3 or 4 hours to assemble the teams necessary to prepare for the surgery and transport.  It hadn't taken us much time in that hospital to learn that everything always takes longer than they say it will.  We agreed to wait anyway.  One of the nurses brought us in a tray of cookies and coffee.  It seemed sort of funny to me, like, hey, sorry your loved one is about to die, but maybe this will help.  Even the thought of a chocolate chip cookie churned my stomach at that point.  This did provide some much needed comedy as eventually someone finally opened the little envelope on the tray.  It read: To the family of: Unknown.  And Unknown was hand written.  My sister works in health insurance and apparently when a patient comes in as an unknown, they cannot change them in the system even once you know who they are.  We really couldn't do anything but laugh.  At that point it had become fairly obvious that Dad was anything but unknown.  Mom even went out to show the doctor, not to rub it in his face and tell him how awful that was, but so he could laugh at it too, and he did.  He also told my mother that she'd made the right decision regarding Dad's condition.

Somehow, humor was the theme of the following hours.  I think we all knew we could either spend the next 4 hours sitting around crying or just trying to be ourselves and we opted for the second one.  Mom had to answer a bunch of questions for the lady from the organ bank and I think she appreciated our humor.  It was something I needed as well because any time we got quiet I felt the tears welling up.  I needed to be distracted.  I thought about telling some of my friends, either e-mailing or calling or texting, but I didn't want any responses yet.  I knew there was plenty of time for that later. 

We got downgraded to a smaller room to continue the waiting.  Eventually a social worker came in to explain to us what was going to happen.  She was a nice enough person, but we really didn't need that at the moment.  I mean, I guess we needed to know how it would work, but she was there for much longer than we needed her.  However, that at least made me realize how lucky I was to be in a room with seven people going through this as I'm sure there are many times when that whole ordeal is handled by one, lone survivor.  She asked us how we were doing and my brother told her that we were basically in anticipation of the worst moment of our lives.  That about summed it up.  It was probably 7:30, and we thought we'd be through it all by then but of course that wasn't the case.  She asked if she could get us anything to eat because sometimes people got woozy in that situation if they hadn't eaten.  I hadn't had anything since about 11 that morning and wasn't really in the mood then either, but decided to at least drink some orange juice.

I really don't know how the rest of the time passed.  We went back and forth from being quiet to joking or talking about just about anything, I really can't remember what.  My aunt Sandy offered to stay back with me when they went in the room for the last time since she could tell it wouldn't be easy for me.  I knew it wouldn't be easy either, and of course it wasn't something I was looking forward to but I also knew I couldn't not be there. 

As the time passed my stomach clenched every time I heard footsteps coming down the hall, and eventually, they were for us at about 9:00.  Mom, Bob, Sandy, Katy, my brother-in-law Jeff, Johnny and I walked down to the ICU one last time.  Never in a million years did I think this was something I'd have to experience in my life.  Well, maybe when Dad was like 95, but definitely not now.  The curtain was closed over his little cubicle.  We were informed that due to the organ donation procedure, what would happen is they'd take out the tubes and wait for him to go into cardiac arrest.  We'd have a minute or so to be with him after it happened and then he'd have to be taken very quickly down to surgery to get his kidneys while they were still good enough to be taken for someone else.  They kept the curtain closed while they removed his breathing tubes and then let us go in. 

I held his left hand, which had never moved throughout this whole thing and noticed how warm it still was.  We each said the sorts of things you might expect in that situation, or at least as much as we could get out.  My eyes darted between his increasingly lifeless face and the monitor to my right that showed his heart rate slowing more and more.  30, 22, 17...

"We have to go," we heard and the surgical team moved us out of the room and very quickly wheeled him away for the last time.  Dad was gone. 

In reality, he'd been gone since Sunday, but we'd been given a few days to sort of talk to him and come to grips with what was happening.  They let us back into the room to have a few moments, but most of the alarms were still going off and we very quickly decided to get out of there.  It was the worst night of all of our lives and we'd had enough of that hospital.  Katy and Jeff went home and I drove Mom with Johnny following behind and Bob and Sandy behind him.  We almost had a three-car pile-up with a moose on the way home, but eventually we made it to the lake house and went home the next day. 

The next few days were a blur of e-mails, cards, flowers, visits and funeral arrangements.  It's not the kind of thing you probably ever think about until you're in your 80's or so, but as Mom said, it was like trying to plan a wedding in an hour.  I had never considered it before, but it became pretty obvious that this was going to be a BIG funeral.  Dad was always just my dad, but he had also been prominent in the construction industry and among several boards for various organizations.  In short, he knew lots of people and we knew lots of people.  And he hadn't planned out any of the specifics of his funeral.  We didn't even know if he wanted to be buried or cremated.  He and Mom had casually mentioned wanting their ashes spread over Squam Lake, so that's what we decided we'd do. 

I feel as though we handled things pretty well in those first few days.  It was't really until I was participating in picking out a coffin and an urn for the ashes that I had a really hard time.  But then all I had to do was look at some of the interesting things you can do with your loved one's remains when they're gone, like send them into space, and I could laugh a little again.  Dad will remain on Earth.  Or at least what's left of him will.

Sunday was the wake.  So we had to see him again.  I knew that I didn't want the last image of him I had in my head to be at the hospital just before they wheeled him away (it was not like it is in the movies, where they look exactly the same and you just hear the machine telling you their heart has stopped... I wish it was) but the man in the casket looked more like my grandfather than my father.  I wasn't even born until my grandfather was like 71, so this was not a good change.  But again, I never really considered how I'd react to such things, but I do think I handled it better than I might have expected. 

We knew we were in for a long afternoon, and we were right.  The joke was that if my mother ever told my father that he had to go to a wake on opening day for football season, he probably would've refused.  So thanks to anyone who came out, and I know there were plenty of you.  I think I just quadrupled my lifetime hug total in one afternoon.  Apparently some people were in line for 90 minutes or so.  There was a four hour window for people to come, and we started letting them in early because they were already lined up in the parking lot and we stayed probably an extra 40 minutes to let the rest of the line come through.  I suppose that is some small comfort to see so many people come out for him and to support us.  If anything, in spite of the bad luck of the accident itself, it did show how lucky we are to have the support that we have.  Even my grandmother, 89 years old, was there the entire time.  She has a lot of trouble remembering new things these days, but this seems to have sunken in. 

It was a long afternoon, but it actually went by pretty fast.  And after the first bunch of people came through I at least became sort of immune to the automatic crying response to seeing other people crying for us.  I almost felt bad later on, like people might think I was void of emotion or something since I wasn't crying at the wake.  We'd just already done that part by then. 

Then there was only one thing left: the funeral.  Monday morning we were picked up by the limo and brought to the funeral home one last time to say goodbye to Dad since it would be a closed casket at the church.  The running joke among my family during this whole thing was to "Kennedy up" and not act all weepy in front of everyone.  My brother came up to my mother when we were just about ready to head to the church, "Come on, Jackie." 

To further show you the level of our inappropriate humor, once in the limo we were joking about all still being in the denial phase, and my brother and I realized that there was a Simpsons episode where Homer goes through those phases in about 30 seconds.  This being the 21st century, instantly the clip was brought up on my brother-in-law's phone and that was how we passed the time from the funeral home to the church: watching the Simpsons.  It beats crying any day, I can tell you.  But the limo driver may have been suspect of our sanity.  But so you know what I'm talking about:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6mh8SX_sXs

The parking lot at the church looked like mass on Christmas eve.  Mom said she and Dad used to joke that they didn't want anyone at their funeral, if only because they wanted to be so old that nobody would be left to attend.  I guess that's one good thing about dying much sooner than expected.  Apparently there were about 700 people in attendance.  This was only the second funeral I've been to in my entire life, the other one having been in 1994 when my aunt died, so I don't have much of a basis for comparison but I'm told that is an exceptional amount. 

I walked down the aisle holding my mother's hand and although I sort of wanted to see who was there, I also wasn't much in the mood for making eye contact with anyone at the moment.  And again, I have no basis for comparison, but the funeral itself was really quite nicely done.  My brother held it together to give an amazing eulegy, (or eugoogly, as Mom liked to refer to it all week in reference to "Zoolander") they played his favorite song "On Golden Pond" and they honored his service in Vietnam and Antarctica with Taps and two Naval officers.  Mom was given the US flag and offered condolensces on behalf of the President of the United States and the US Navy. 

Then it was over.  We were advised not to greet people outside the church because we'd be there for probably over an hour, so we headed over to the country club for our reception.  There were people there from all over the place, and for that I am incredibly grateful.  I did realize from being on the other side of this for the first time that although I had never known what to do or say, just showing up or saying almost anything at all is enough.  It never felt like anyone was intruding, it really was nice to see or hear from anyone and everyone.  And there certainly were a lot of them. 

It was a great way to honor Dad's life, even if it was too short of one.  One of the good things is that I don't feel like I ever took him for granted or didn't realize how great he was when he was alive.  I didn't need his death to show me that.  I don't feel guilty about anything I said or did in the end, anything I wish I could've taken back or changed.  I mean, I suppose I could torture myself with a thousand what ifs about going with him on his bike ride or not having that race that morning so he would've ridden earlier, but that's not going to change anything.  I don't know the last time I told him I loved him and I don't know the last time he told me either, but we didn't need to say it to know.  We were never a family of throwing around words like that, we speak mostly through our actions. 

The funeral was only a week ago and yet already it feels like months.  I know I'm going to miss Dad, but at the moment, I feel like I'm trying not to think about it too much.  It's like I'm saying to myself, well, Dad wouldn't be here with me right now anyway even if he was still here, so I don't have to be sad about it.  I'm sure it will hit me in a thousand small, unexpected ways in the coming months and probably years, but for now, we are doing ok. 

Mom and I went and picked up his bike and stuff from the police station a few days ago.  The police do not believe there was a car involved and if you saw the bike, you'd probably have to agree.  The front wheel is barely bent and the left brake is bent in from where it hit the ground, but that's it.  The helmet is cracked in from where he hit on the very top of his head.  There is blood on the inside.  We'd always known what road it was on but hadn't been told exactly where.  Dad rides this road on every single ride he does.  This was probably his 10th day in a row riding down it.  Until a couple of years ago when they started doing bridge work on his usual route, he didn't even know it existed until I showed him the detour.  Even once the bridge was fixed he never went the other way again since he liked this new route so much.

I know the road pretty well myself, and there was only one spot that made any sense to me that he could've fallen like he did without a car hitting him.  It was right where I expected.  There is a sharp downhill that levels off a bit after you gain speed, then the road curves to the left.  Probably a hundred different things could've happened to make him fall the way he did, but we'll probably never know exactly what.  Could've been an animal, as simple as a squirrel or a dog.  But on that very road I've come across deer, moose and even bears while riding my bike.  He could've hit a rock or a stick or an acorn in just the wrong way.  He could've been hit by a golf ball since there is a country club right there.  Heck, he could've sneezed for all we know. 

All we know is that whatever happened, he fell in absolutely the worst possible way.  Sometimes you get lucky, and other times you don't.  I've flipped over my handlebars at mile 56 of an Ironman and still finished the race with only a few scratches and some mildly bruised ribs.  I've actually been hit by a car and somehow managed to remain upright on my bike.  I've had many other close calls that could've ended badly but didn't.  For every thousand close calls, there's just bound to be one or two that wind up catastrophic.  You never expect the worst of the luck to land on you, but the truth is, plenty of terrible things happen to all kinds of people on any given day.  Even though most of the other obituaries in the paper the same day as Dad's were 80-somethings and 90-somethings, there are always plenty of young kids who have terrible things happen to them.  This was bad for sure, but there are almost always worse things. 

Sometime soon we are going to meet with the guy who did CPR and kept Dad alive long enough for us to say goodbye and long enough so that his kidneys could be of some use to other people.  Nobody heard or saw a thing but he was found by a father and son who saw him down when they were putting their golf clubs in the car and the man who performed CPR was a golf pro working in the shop at the course.  It still seems crazy to me that he could've fallen in such a perfect way to do the damage he did, and I still sort of expect to see him walk in the door with his arm in a sling or something so we can make fun of him for not being able to pedal a two-wheeler.  But I know we won't get that chance.  I finally had a dream about him last night.  For some reason we were all sitting in a train station, and he looked perfectly normal.  Younger, actually. 

I am sure there will be more Dad-related posts to come, and I realize that this was an awfully long post, but I wanted to write down everything that has gone on and how this all progresed.  I hope that nobody else out there has to live through that sort of thing or make those kinds of decisions.  And I'd also like to thank the many of you who have sent notes, cards, flowers, food, texts, phone calls, visits, whatever.  If nothing else this kind of thing can at least show people what amazing friends and family they have.  I guess I never really had a good chance to see it all at once or truly appreciate it before. 

It has certainly made me realize that bad luck can strike anyone at any time.  But it doesn't mean that you should live in fear of it every second of every day or really ANY second of any day.  Except for leaving this life earlier than he probably meant to, I don't think my father had any regrets.  He always did what he wanted to do and tried to make himself and his family happy.  As a result, we all were.  And mostly still are.  Don't waste time on things you don't want to be doing, because you never know how much time you're really going to have.

Dad

My dad is the happiest guy you’d ever want to meet.  I’ve never met anyone else who seemed to truly have everything he ever wanted.  Except maybe for my mother.  The only thing I can think of him complaining about anytime recently was the saddle that came with his new road bike a few weeks ago.  Aside from the obvious of loving his family, he loves his job and the people he works with, he loves the lake house he had built two years ago that was beyond any dream I think he ever had, he loves his boat and driving around the lake in it while playing the soundtrack to “On Golden Pond.”   He loves going around the lake in his kayak, good restaurants, good wine, and he absolutely loves riding his bike. 

Dad spent this past week having probably the best week he’s ever had at the lake house.  It was a somewhat unplanned vacation as originally he was going to be off the week after Labor Day.  Things had come up for that week and he wouldn’t be able to stay every day, and this past week, each day became more gorgeous than the last.  90 degrees and sunny, 93 degrees and sunny, 94 and sunny…. sunny, sunny, hot and sunny.  Taking Monday off became Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and while we’re at it, let’s just take make a week of it.  It was a week of the best summer weather we’ve probably ever had. 

Dad is a creature of habit.  He gets up early every morning, makes his coffee, proceeds to immediately put it in the microwave to heat it to epic-high temperatures that nobody else could ever drink it, pours it in a travel mug and takes his Boston Whaler down to the country store to pick up the morning papers.  Once he comes home and has breakfast, usually next he gets on his bike and rides anywhere from 35-50 miles, sometimes less if he doesn’t have time, depending on how he’s feeling.  He does this every single morning he has the opportunity if he’s not working. Sometimes lately he’d come back from work early enough to get in a quick ride, which he never used to do.  But he seems to have grown to love it even more lately so he seizes all opportunities.  Earlier this week Dad had finished a bike ride up, smiled at me and told me that the more he got to ride, the more he loved it.  Dad and I used to ride together all the time until I started training a little too seriously and he started using the excuse that he was getting older.  I never bought that.  My Dad doesn’t get old. 

Post-ride he will often jump right into the lake in his bike shorts, but either way he will be in his bathing suit soon after and ready for whatever he feels like doing that day.  If the water is calm he might take out the kayak, the plants might need watering because it hasn’t rained much in who knows how long, or maybe it’s straight to the back of the boat to lie down and take a little nap while floating on the waves.  But again, no matter what he fills the late morning with, lunch is at precisely 12 noon, no matter what.   Sometime probably two years ago at about 11:15 he had wound down from a long bike ride and looked at me and said, “I’m so hungry, I wish I could have my lunch now.”  I informed him that it was perfectly acceptable to eat lunch earlier than noon if you were hungry and just that once he made an exception.

Most afternoons he takes his Chris Craft boat out.  He’s had this boat for a few years now and I don’t think he’s ever happier than when he’s driving that boat around Squam Lake.  Usually Mom is sitting up front, reading a book.  And if I’m around I’ll be up there, too. Or of course if my brother or sister and her family are up, we might all go out. Sometimes they stop somewhere to swim for a bit or pick blueberries, Dad’s favorite.  Sometimes they just drive around at low speeds.  It really doesn’t matter to Dad, as long as he’s on the lake.  But almost without fail when the boat slows to the no-wake zone between these two islands, he will play the “On Golden Pond” theme song, which is the only music he allows to be played on his boat’s great sound system.  The song lasts precisely the amount of time it takes to get from one end of the channel to the other, and when Dad gets to drive people around the lake, it is obviously his favorite part of the tour.

The rest of the afternoon could be spent just lying in the sun some more or sitting on the dock talking to mom or just looking at the lake.  He says all the time how much he just loves looking at the lake, and I can’t say I blame him. It’s one of the reasons why he wants to spend every moment possible at that house, even if it makes his commute an hour instead of ten minutes and he might not even be back long enough to enjoy the daylight.   Often his lake-watching is done with a fresh pour from his kegerator, another favorite addition to his favorite house. 

He and Mom will have their pre-dinner cocktails on the porch, and in the summer he always has a Beefeater gin and tonic.  Although he does love going out to dinner, he also loves eating dinner on the porch at the house, which is where most dinners occurred this week.  Except for one night when he and Mom took some food out on the boat and ate on the water.  This past Monday I actually had dinner with them out at Walter’s Basin and we took the boat over to their dock. 

I spent the entire week at the house with my parents.  Fell asleep in the lounge chair next to his while he napped one morning in the sun, went out on the boat, watched him come and go from his bike rides on his new bikes.  He has two right now because he somehow managed to crack the titanium frame of the other one he had for 8 years but was too impatient to wait for the lifetime warrantee replacement, so he bought a new one right away so he wouldn’t have to be without riding for too long.  Aside from plenty of great bike rides this week, Dad also spent a few hours out on the kayak, which isn’t something he does often unless he is acting as my Sherpa for a long training swim.  My aunts and uncle came up at the end of the week and had a nice dinner on the porch which they followed up with incredible stargazing.  And on Saturday night my sister came to the house with my niece and nephew and she had a nice dinner with my parents.  I had eaten a bit earlier because I was doing a sprint race in the morning. 

Sunday morning I awoke fairly early to eat my pre-race breakfast in the comfort of the house because the race start was at 8am and 3 miles down the road—biking distance.  As I choked down the applesauce Dad emerged to start the coffee and gave me his usual enthusiastic pre-race vibe.  Dad comes to watch lots of my races.  And fortunately he is a creature of habit at those, too, so in years of doing certain races multiple times, always know exactly where I’ll see him.  In Lake Placid: I find him and mom in the same spot by the water every year, which is always comforting pre-race to be able to talk to them and hug them before the race and get one final “Good luck” before I brave the treacherous Ironman mass start.  After the swim he’s on the hill by transition (extra fortunate this year because my mom prevented me from running down the wrong row to get my bike).  After the first loop of the bike they’re at the top of the hill just before I turn back to start loop two past the Olympic Training Center.  When I finish the bike he is always right there at the bike dismount and I’ll never forget him yelling for me almost like an excited little kid when I came off and was about to take the lead.  Dad never gets like that, really…. Unless the Patriots win the Superbowl.

 

Then there are their standard spots on the run course, this year he told me on loop #1 to straighten out my hat (usually more of a Mom-thing, but that’s ok) and he is always right there after I finish, whether it’s earlier than anticipated, or much later. 

So in his travels to see me on Lake Winnipesaukee or Lake Placid or even all the way in Hawaii, it was no surprise that he’d take the short drive down the road to watch me race that morning.  By the time I left the house he had already gone on his newspaper run, and as I crossed the bridge over the channel on my bike, I saw him in the boat headed back to the house. 

This particular race is small and extremely low-key, so it didn’t take long to set up my transition area and head towards the water where of course I saw Dad waiting for me.  Thankfully he was there to help me zip up my wetsuit before I went to the water.  I heard him yelling when I was coming out of the water, heading out on the bike, finishing the bike and of course and of course finishing the race.  Due to the slack nature of transition area security, I had barely thrown my jacket on when he came in to find me and tell me good job even though I didn’t really do a good job, but that’s what he does. 

So that’s one reason why that day he didn’t go out on his bike ride first thing in the morning like he usually does.  Once I got home he was doing some things around the house and later had lunch.  My sister and the kids said goodbye and headed home.  Sometime after that, Dad went on his bike and Mom got a phone call from the hospital and was told he had been in an accident and was airlifted to Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, where we spent three agonizing days wondering what was going to happen to him.  We were told right away that he was probably quadriplegic, had broken his neck and nobody knew how long he was without oxygen to his brain because he was found not breathing and without a heartbeat.  After a brief glimmer of hope when he had started moving his legs a bit, we had to meet with the neurologist who showed us the MRI and told us that he had suffered extensive brain damage.  Also being without the ability to breathe on his own, we had to make the decision to terminate life support.  There were several more hours of agonizing waiting while they got him ready for organ donation, so at least someone, or likely two people, will be benefiting from Dad's kidneys.  His heart was in great shape as well, but he was over the age limit for donation on that end.  And at about 9:20 on September 8th, 2010, we were with him when he left us.  

Whatever winds up happening, at the moment it is a huge comfort knowing that the entire summer but specifically the past week has been about as close to perfect as it gets for Dad.  Almost as if you asked him to design the perfect week at the lake, that would’ve been it.  The only thing he didn’t get was one more dinner at the Woodshed, his favorite lakes region restaurant, where we were supposed to go on Sunday night.  Everything else couldn’t have been better and I’m sure that’s how he would’ve wanted it.

Dad, we love you and will miss you terribly.  You touched the lives of so many people over the years, and I don't think I truly realized how many until we had this outpouring of support over the past few days.  But we will be ok only because you made us that way.