(Really) The End of the Season

Retired guys have to have something to do, right?  Otherwise they drive their wives, neighbors and friends nuts.  And, no point in leaving the kids too much inheritance.  So...

You'll remember that last November my brother Mark and hopped a plane and had four good days kiteboarding on Tampa Bay.  It looked like there was going to be plenty of wind this week, so we started making plans, pushing other stuff off the schedule.   

Yeah, well it turned out there was plenty of wind there.  In fact, Tropical Storm Eta regained hurricane strength as it hit land - at Tampa Bay.  Now, I like a bit of wind as much as the next sexagenarian trying to push away old age, but sustained winds of 70 mph is a little too much.  A LOT too much.

So, we quickly looked around.  Let's see...Aitutaki Island in the Cook Island chain.  Yep - looks like good conditions.  Oops, plane tickets are $2,500 and it takes about 30 hours to get to Rarotonga before you take the hop to Aitutake.  I didn't think that the wives were going to buy it.  Kind of isolated, too. 

OK, what else?  All the usual drive-able possibilities were predicting weird winds, except for - wait for it - Cape Hatteras!!  Almost always the correct answer, and only four hours away, with a room available at our favorite flexible Air BnB!

Yes, but what about the pandemic?  Well, 1) Mark and I were arriving in separate vehicles, 2) the proprietor of the Air BnB wasn't around, 3) kiteboarding is done outside, and 4) winds of about 25 mph would tend to decrease the risk.  In addition, the fact that the kites are on 75-foot lines tends to make social distancing kind of automatic.  It was some good, gnarly kiting.  Mark was happy because he hit a new personal record on a high jump.  I was happy to survive to fight another day. 

We had planned for up to four days, but after two, I could hardly walk, I had dropped three pounds and just as we ended the second day, the rains came.  Paula recorded more than five inches at our place (the max on her gauge) and I-95 closed for a while for flooding. 

 

We had lucked out with an unusually late, warm and strong southerly flow, but as the front came through, the winds did a 180 and came from the north, dropping the temperatures at last.  I am a strong believer and worrier about climate change, but this one teensy time I was glad to be able to just wear a shorty wetsuit on the 11th and 12th of November.

That said, it was a nice end to the season.  Now, time to clean and pack the kites away for a while, find some ibuprofen and eat back those three pounds.  

We hope that you are also finding occasional opportunities in these weird times to have some irresponsible fun.  Meanwhile, be careful in general, and don't tangle your kite lines with anybody.  

Dave

Back to Camp!

On Friday, the 18th of September we picked up President and Sister Maurer from the mission home in Apex where we had left them after midnight, and shared lunch at our house.  Afterward, we met with them and the staff at the Mission Office, where at the beginning of the meeting, I tossed President Maurer the car key fob and the keys to the office (literally), and we left.

While the feeling of a weight being lifted from our shoulders was not as remarkably clear as it had been after the three years in Peru, it was there nonetheless.  The timing was a tender mercy; we left the next morning for the annual Old Guy Kite Camp at Cape Hatteras, North Carolina the date of which had been put on the calendar a year before.

So, what's Kite Camp?  Its roots go back to 1992 when my brother Mark, our medical school Winston and their wives started going to Hatteras to windsurf together.  Over the years, various friends joined us, but the core group continued.  Winston started kiteboarding in the sport's near-suicidal early days, but as the equipment figured itself out, Mark and I finally reluctantly admitted it was more fun, and have been kiteboarding ever since.  Kite Camp now draws friends and family from Seattle, Utah and Maryland, with about a dozen folks in attendance this year.  

Winston always brings something new to try and propel with a kite - this year it was water skis.

The Pamlico Sound lies behind skinny, vulnerable Hatteras Island and offers shallow, generally flat water, perfect for kiteboarding.  With Mark's jet ski for downwind rescues, it's one of the best places in the world to learn the sport.

There are always new victims, er, learners to watch as they crash and flounder about.

So what if the wind isn't blowing?  That's the other great thing about the place.  You can walk on the beach, 

read a book, sleep,

ride your electric unicycle,

eat too much, watch videos, wakeboard or foil behind the jet ski and 'shop crawl.'  That means hitting all the kite stores to drool over new toys; unfortunately (or fortunately) I didn't need anything new this year, but it's still fun.

Almost whiplash, from leading a Mission to hoping for wind while catching up on a good book. 

But as they say, someone has to do it.  We hope your late September/early October is as nice.  And that you have enough wind to try out that new 12-meter kite!

Dave & Paula

Nearing the Finish Line

 As explained in a previous blog entry, we were called in late June to serve as interim Mission President for the North Carolina Raleigh Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints until the "real" Mission President and his wife could obtain visas to come from Australia.  

That time has arrived.  They were able to get an appointment last week and apparently answered the questions correctly.  They will arrive tomorrow night (September 17th) all jet-lagged and tired.  We plan on letting them sleep in on Friday, and then make the official hand-off that afternoon.  

This has been a rich experience for Paula and I.  We've gotten to know well over two hundred good young men and women who are here of their own accord trying to help others gain faith and improve their lives.  In addition to preaching the Gospel, they have donated untold hours of service to the communities in which they are assigned.  We have grown to love them.

The missionaries have shown us great patience and love as we've tried to steer the Mission in the right direction.  Just this afternoon we realized that we were the recipients of a "heart attack" by some stealthy Sisters.

OK, it wasn't all perfect.  During our illustrious tenure, we've had two of the missionaries test positive for COVID-19 (both had only mild symptoms), another one totaled a mission car, an appendix got yanked, two kidney stones made their presence known (we're deep in the "kidney stone belt" here), and there have been some homesickness and other maladies.

However, through this experience, our faith has grown.  We have felt the hand of the Lord directing His work, urging us and the missionaries to have courage and go forth.  We will not forget His kindness and patience with us while we've been trying to lead the Mission according to His will.  

So, what happens to us when the Maurers have woken up enough on Friday to accept the car keys and the cell phone?  We introduce them at the Mission office, and as they are getting acquainted there, we quietly slip out and take off our nametags, most likely for the final time...

Dave & Paula

A post about posts. Or "pilings" I guess.

Note:  This post has been sitting on the back drawing board, and as the previous post describes, life has gotten busier and I kind of forgot about it for a while, thus it's out of order. 

    As I've noted before, my brother Mark has gotten me in to kiteboarding.  The perfect site for the sport is one with onshore winds and relatively shallow, smooth water.  However, strong winds cause rough water, so having a sand bar or other obstacle to stop waves outside of a body of water creates a "slick" within.   

     A good example of this occurs on a small bay on the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia, and it has become a favored place for kiters.  However, there were several docks built in the bay fifty to seventy-five years ago and now only the old barnacle-encrusted posts or "pilings" remained.  These were just waiting to ensnare kite lines or kiteboards, and were a real hazard.

     My brother is an orthopedic surgeon who was in private practice for 28 years.  Good "orthopods" are mechanical engineers with a medical degree, having to understand force vectors, materials and how to translate ideas in to physical solutions.  Many orthopedic surgeons, including Mark, have extensive workshops and tools, and likewise, an orthopedic operating table is full of beautifully fashioned drills, chisels, hammers and other instruments, some even made by tool companies such as Black and Decker.

     So what does a good orthopedic surgeon do?  He comes up with an underwater chainsaw to get rid of these old posts standing in four to eight feet of water.

     It sounds like the setup for a crummy joke or a math word problem, but here goes:  One day an orthopedic surgeon, an ophthalmologist and an obstetrician-gynecologist get in a "john" boat and motor out in a bay.  They tie up to old pilings and in eight hours they use an underwater chain saw to cut down 25 of them and drag them to shore. 

 

 

     It takes all day, but then they go kiteboarding.

     Problem is, there's no punch line.  We laughed a lot, had a great time working on the old pilings and kited in some big winds until sunset, then hit a Subway in our COVID-19 masks and drove home sleepy but smiling.
     It's funny what turns out to be fun sometimes.  We hope that you can find something equally as unusual and gratifying in your (oodles of) spare time these days.
Dave

So, where have we been?!

     Look, I know that none of you, I hope, hang on every word from this blog.  It's generally fun writing it and documenting funny and weird occurrences in our otherwise boring life.  However, things have a way of changing, and we've been a bit tardy on entries lately.
     We are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, formerly known as "Mormons."  As you're well aware, many of the 18-25-year-old members of the Church serve voluntary eighteen-month (for the young women) or two-year missions (for the young men).  They are assigned to many parts of the world, and there are almost 70,000 of them out at this time.

     A married couple presides over each geographic mission, of which there are almost 400 worldwide, and they serve for three years.  If you've been reading this blog for a while, you'll remember that we presided over the Peru Huancayo Mission from 2013 until 2016.  The President of the North Carolina Raleigh Mission was two years in to his calling when he and his wife were assigned elsewhere and had to leave at the end of June. 

     Their replacements are the Maurers, a delightful couple from Brisbane, Australia.  We have 'met' them on several Zoom meetings, and they seem like great folks.  OK, so far so good.

     However, despite trying for several months prior to the changeover and since, the Maurers have been unable to obtain visas to come to the U.S. because all of the American consulates in Australia are closed.  So...

     Near the end of June, we received a call from Salt Lake and we were called to serve as the mission president for an undefined period of time until the Maurers can get here.  This means that we are in charge of greeting the new ones as they arrive, saying goodbye as they finish, and juggling the assignments and companions of the 200-230 missionaries assigned in the eastern half of North Carolina.  This includes, among many other duties, interviewing each one personally every six weeks and holding various meetings with them, at the present time all on the background of strict precautions due to the pandemic.
     We are honored to do so, but this has certainly caused a revision of our previously calm retired lives.  On the other hand, as my Dad said, it's better to wear it out than let it rust. 
     We are growing to love the young missionaries and we hope vice versa.  We found this on our front door the other day:

     Their assignment is not easy, and it has been made even more difficult by the pandemic.  As we have gotten to know the missionaries, there are some days that we kind of wish that the visas for the Maurers would continue to be on hold; there are a lot more days in which we consider knocking on the consulate doors and seeing if we could work something out. 

     Well, back to work.
Dave & Paula

Practicality? Way overrated!

     So it had been a month since we last stocked up at the grocery store, and the cupboards were looking a little grim.  However, it was a perfect 75-degree day with a deep blue sky.  How can you put those two together?  Simple!
     Take the Miata!

     Let's see; you put the milk by the spare tire, where the avocados and mangoes are stashed, then the macaroni and cheese boxes go over by the gas filler.  The hot dog rolls are squeezed in by the battery on the right by the crunchy peanut butter jar.  The eggs?  Clearly, they go on the little ledge under the taillight housing, and a flat layer of frosted mini-wheats and granola boxes finishes it all off.  

     Then we put Paula in the passenger seat and filled in around her with whatever was left over.  She said the frozen foods were making her ankle go numb, but hey, it's only 3.32 miles home, and like I said, it was a beautiful day, so she was instructed to quit whining.  When I suggested that on a day like today we should take the long way home, she said something threatening.  

     We hope that your trips to the store are 1) as uncommon, 2) as fun on a pretty day, and 3) in a vehicle with enough room that your significant other doesn't get frostbite on her/his ankle.  

Dave & Paula

On Day 21 we ate the squirrels

OK, not really.  We have plenty of things in the cupboards, and WalMart, Costco and Target have kindly instituted an early opening prior to their usual start times for us 'older adults' (see previous post).  And yes, at some risk from the neighbors, we admit that we're OK on toilet paper.  For the moment.

Stating the obvious, the methods of avoiding further spread of the coronavirus have caused big changes in everyone's lives.  Many, many folks have lost their livelihoods; sadly, this is especially true among those who didn't have much to begin with. 

In an instant, an economy that seemed to be heading upward forever has quickly withered.  Untold wealth has been swept away by something you can only visualize with an electron microscope, something that passes unseen between us on a cough or quietly on a shopping cart handle.

For Paula and I, among other things it has meant the loss of sociality with friends and with members of the Young Single Adult church congregation over whom we have a degree of responsibility.  Our own kids all fled from home years ago and most of our communication with them has been via the internet anyway, but we yearn to draw them closer, and prayers in their behalf are ever more earnest.

Call me naive, but I'll give many leaders of the nation credit for honestly trying to help, albeit with resources grabbed from the future.  My heart is swollen as I read of those caring for the afflicted at the front lines of this struggle, upholding their oath of service with deadly seriousness. 

If I were God and wanted to get someone's attention that wasn't listening, and to get them to think about what really matters and who is dear to them, this would probably be among the tools I could find rummaging around in the shed.  I know that He loves us, and wants us all to be concerned for one another.  It is imperative in this troubled moment that we be nice.

We pray that you and your loved ones, and even your not-so-loved ones might come out of this OK, and that perhaps we might learn some humility and perspective from all of this.

With love,
Dave & Paula

Dang! Really?!

I guess it had to happen, and as they say, it's better than the alternative, but when I read the cautions about the coronavirus and "at risk" groups, it hit me - that's ME!

"The CDC says 'older adults' and people with severe chronic illness are more likely to become severely ill from Covid-19.  

OK, so how did they define 'older adults?'

"Infectious disease experts define 'older adults' as anyone age 60 and up, so people in that age group should be cautious."

Well, crud.  While I appreciate all those who congratulated me on my 66th birthday a couple of days ago, I guess I should start making some adjustments and being more cautious.  Like maybe putting the training wheels back on my bicycle.  

Or remembering the water wings when I'm in my boat.  

And maybe putting an airbag or two on my kiteboard.

I will not repeat what Paula said or did when I suggested sponge baths, but it should only take a week or so for the black eye and other bruises to disappear - well, huh, maybe a bit longer now that I'm an older adult.  
Dave

In the end, it was just a house.

It was only the stage upon which the dramas and tragedies and comedies of lives were played out.
At the same time, it was sad this foggy morning to see our neighbors' house torn down by the unknowing sweeps and crunches of the big orange machine, with the truck ready to carry off the debris that was once a cherished home.  Sixty-three years of being a home, and it came down in about two hours.

The same thing happened to the house in McLean, Virginia that my parents had taken care of for so many years, the flowers and curtains and door mats, the thousands and millions of decisions and actions both small and momentous that had taken place there   The laughter and tears and snow shoveled and lawns mowed and shrubs trimmed and leaving for college and bringing the granddaughter by to be admired, until we had all left and the machines came.

It's all gone now, replaced by a McMansion whose owners have no clue as to the lives that took place there, now writing their own.
Yeah, I know that in the end they were just houses, but things took place in them that will echo through eternity.  I hope that when the time comes, ours will go peacefully after being the stage upon which more good than bad took place.
I hope that yours is a place where love can dwell, and where peace may be found while it stands.
Dave

Blizzard! In Raleigh!! North Carolina!!!

Or so you would have believed listening to the excited on-air meteorologists.  Schools closed early, (like five hour before the first flake fell), bread and milk was flying out of the stores, and everyone got really excited.
With all due credit and apologies to Gary Larson, one of our favorite old Far Side panels was this:

And that's how blizzards usually go here in Raleigh.  When one hears a forecast of dire wintry conditions, someone in the household will inevitably say, "More like defused nuclear warheads, if you ask me!"  The city is said to possess three actual snowplows, though if needed a few more can be rigged using plows on trucks.  Brine stripes are sprayed on the highways, but anyone who has lived here for a while realizes that the proper response is to hang out, watch a movie, get up late and wait for the sun to come up and put everything right again.  

On the other hand, it is pretty for a couple of hours, and kind of fun.

The daffodils, on the other hand, are not amused.

With the shift in the climate of the world, we'll be getting fewer of these kind-of-fun blizzards.

We hope that you had a nice day off, too.

Dave & Paula

Keep an eye on your house!

As I mentioned in the previous entry, our part of town has become popular as folks have been having to build further out from the city center; we're suddenly close in.  As Paula likes to tell people, she's within two miles of Costco, Target, Trader Joe's, Walmart, Wegman's and REI.
A local developer started it all by taking down the first mall in Raleigh, North Hills Mall as it was catching its last breath.

In its place he put up a 'walking mall' with a fancy hotel and snooty shops and restaurants.  A lot of tall office space and apartments have sprung up around it, and now the area is known as "Midtown." At least for this brief moment it's fashionable.  

More and more of the older houses are being bought up, torn down and replaced with new ones, some approaching the million-dollar mark.  The house to our left, and the two directly across the street have been marked for demolition and replacement.  You could almost feel this little 60-year old house trembling when the excavator was unloaded today.   

Luckily, our house is updated enough that we'll be spared that fate for the time being, and hey, we've still gotta live here.
However, just to make sure no one got the addresses mixed up:

We hope that no one mistakes your house either.

Dave & Paula

The Guerrilla Gardner

Our part of town has been stable forever, but finally the last of the IBM-ers from the 1960's surge that led to the building of the neighborhood are dying out.  We learned from the utility guys painting fluorescent lines on the ground and planting little flags that the house next door and the one across the street are going to both be demolished and replaced with something fancier.

We kind of thought as much when the children of the next-door-neighbor came and dug up some ancient gardenia bushes, but this nailed it.  Knowing that both houses had been occupied by gardeners, Paula asked and received permission to 'liberate' some of the small plants and flagstones that would be destroyed by the new construction.  Recognize that Paula is the Guerrilla Gardner of North Hills.  For instance, the other day on our morning walk, she came across an amaryllis bulb with big white flowers in someone's yard waste barrel and so she 'liberated' it.  

Among the specimens to be preserved were some lovely hellebores, a low-growing plant that blooms in the winter, 

as well as some Arum italicum, a pretty shade-happy lily.

Luckily, her aggressive 'liberating' hasn't gone beyond legal limits...yet.  If I were the neighbors, I'd watch out for my gardens.  I'm just sayin'.

Dave

2020? Where the heck did THAT decade go?!

I'm reading Nobel laureate Kip Thorne's classic Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy, a book which has to be read slowly and re-read slowly to wrap one's head around the concepts contained therein.  I'm starting to feel that my frame of time must be warped somehow, that those years with everything they contained must have been compressed in some way; surely I'm not ten years further in to the future.... Yeah, OK, I just checked the birth certificate and Google Calendar, and yep, it happened.
Man, what a decade!  Started off pretty normal, dinking around, having fun, enjoying life

grandkids coming along,

kids making progress in life, 

and then BOOM!!  The message came through loud and clear that it was time that we were supposed to do something else, so I burned the operating-room shoes

and we headed to Bogota.  You know, like Colombia.

I became internationally certified in Toilet Repair.

And we learned to enjoy new things.  Mostly.

Yeah, that's a big crunchy ant, and it wasn't even on a dare.

And whether I liked it or not, I learned a lot about dengue fever, tuberculosis, head trauma, and other things having to do with keeping missionaries healthy.

We kind of got used to how things were done in South America.

And we came to appreciate and enjoy beautiful Colombia.

Big, BIG mistake.  It has been said, "If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans."  He must have been giggling uncontrollably, because about the time we were getting OK with and looking forward to our second year helping the missionaries in Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela, we received a new assignment, and after a brief interlude back in the States to re-pack, 

and check on the grandkids,

we headed for Huancayo, Peru.  That's HUANCAYO, and no, neither we nor you had ever heard of it.  We spent three wonderful, 

terrifying, 

beautiful, 

not-so-beautiful,

hot,

cold, 

and incredibly rich years in the Peru Huancayo Mission, coming to love our 451 missionaries and the thousands of local folks we came to know.  And then we came home, and unpacked,

and fixed stuff that had worn out, 

or needed some help,

and she showed the gardens once again who was the boss.

Luckily they hadn't moved the beach,

and we got to go to some cool places, 

and we played with the grandkids (when did they get that BIG?).

The dinking around continued,

I went back in Scouts, then back out of Scouts, 

we got to see some more cool places,

Christmases came and went,

grandkids got HUGE,

and they started stealing cars,

and then, - Wait.  What?!  That was it?!  The decade, with missions and elections and births and deaths and gladness and sadness and growth and all the rest was done.

I need to call Kip Thorne, though I'd better hurry because in that decade he turned 80.  There's just gotta be some kind of time warpage going on here.  So much happened in so little time.

We hope that your decade was as rich, and that the next one works out as well.

Dave & Paula