Stories – Splattered Brains

Stories From Lock 27

It was a hot day for a bike ride, and I had gotten a later start than usual due to a phone call earlier in the morning. The plan was to ride from Sycamore Landing to the Monocacy Aqueduct. I did make it, and I set a decent pace in spite of the heat. I could literally feel the heat on my shoulders through the openings in the green canopy of the forest during the later parts of the ride. Surprisingly, I saw more people on the trail as it got closer to noon, when it was beginning to feel really hot.

I could have finished the ride earlier than I actually did, but was delayed by an encounter at Lock 27. An older gentleman seemed to be eager for conversation. I indulged him.

As I was riding by Lock 27, I slowed down to look at a small black dog running around on the other side of the lock. A gentleman who was on the towpath noticed me and informed me that the dog was a work dog. Having heard something recently about the difference between pets and work dogs (specifically those that help to corral animals in the fields and pastures), I asked him if the dog worked on a farm. That was an excuse for me to stop and get off the bike, and for him to extend the conversation. It extended more than I was expecting.

As he walked up to me, he mentioned that his dog was was a search and rescue dog. She was trained to find people trapped in rubble from structures that have collapsed. He went on to inform me that he had been working for FEMA for 40 years. His job was as a search and rescue specialist, a task which he performed with his trained partner dog. He mentioned the recent condominium collapse in Florida as an example of where his work could take him. (He later mentioned that he had been a part of the team responding to the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon.) He said that he was 75 years old. His dog was 7 years old, and her training started when she was 6 months old.

She was a small black dog. She seemed to be very mellow. She looked light on her feet, which is what is needed when she is walking on rubble that you do not want to collapse further. The dog was listening to everything that he was saying to it, and was responding to his instructions. He demonstrated this to me by asking her to go down into the bed of the lock to look around. This was a typical action that would be needed to go into destroyed buildings to try to rescue people. You might have noticed that I used the word “asking” rather than “ordering”. Yes, he actually talked to the dog using full sentences. It was quite clear that they are good friends. She was a very quiet dog. She responded every time he asked her something. She seemed to be happy.

He had had a stroke about a year ago. He is still recovering. He still had some physical issues to overcome (which I could also see), but he was hoping to go back into active service at FEMA. He lived on a farm near the aqueduct. He had his stroke when he was on his tractor working on the farm. He says that when the stroke happened he felt and knew what was coming. He stopped the tractor. Unfortunately, his mobile phone had died. When he got off his tractor, he fell and could not get up. There was nobody around other than his dog. He asked her to go to the neighbor’s farm to seek help. He said that the dog did not know the neighbor. The dog left and eventually came back with the neighbor, and he was able to get the help he needed. Apparently, the dog had appeared at the neighbor’s front door barking insistently, and succeeding in convincing her to open the door. When she opened the door, the dog would apparently try to convey what she wanted by running a short distance towards where he had fallen, and then coming back to the lady. She did this a few times. Apparently, her actions were enough to make the lady understand that the dog wanted her to follow her. And the dog led the lady to where he was lying in the field. The dog saved his life.

There were a few other directions that the conversation went off into once we got talking at Lock 27. He liked telling his life stories.

He had fought in the Vietnam war for 4 years. He had been a fighter pilot, flying F-100s. He named the five dogs that he has worked with at FEMA after military aircraft. His aircraft had been blown up out of the sky by anti-aircraft fire on two occasions. He mentioned how, all of a sudden, he had found himself in his ejector seat in the sky with no aircraft around him. He was fortunate to have been rescued on the ground after he had fallen behind enemy lines.

He says that he did not have ill-will for the Vietcong even in those days. (He differentiated between them and professional soldiers for some reason.) He mentioned that the Vietcong were usually young boys, 14 to 15 years old. They would come out to the base in the night with explosives to try to blow up the aircraft. The military had a process for confronting the kids, the last stage of which was to kill them if they did not respond to call-outs. He said that on several occasions he ended up taking the Kalashnikovs from the kids’ hands and sending them away without killing them. He was hoping to win them over. His approach was not popular with some of the other soldiers.

Without being asked, he admitted to having killed people. He sounded a little bit defensive when he said that. He said that he was following orders from his government. His job was not to question why. And finally, it became apparent to me that his current job at FEMA, trying to save lives, was partial atonement for some of what had happened during the war.

He asked me where I was from. He said that Indians were shady people. I was completely floored by his statement, especially because I, a person of Indian background, was the one having the conversation with him. Unfortunately, it turns out that his prior formative experiences with Indians have not been good. When he was in Vietnam, an Indian merchant tried to rip him off. There was a confrontation (with the use of all the threats available to military personnel being brought to bear) before the situation was resolved. The funny thing is that he seemed to be sympathetic to the circumstances of the person who had ripped him off and, in the end, ended up trying to help him. Most recently, he became a victim of a call-center scam where people from India remotely got control of his computer, locked it, and in the end got money off of him. I was trying to tell him that there are scammers everywhere in the world, and that we are not all like that. I did not do a good job. In any case, both he, and his dog, did not exhibit any suspicion of, or acrimony towards, me. In fact, they were downright friendly. The dog let me pet her and wagged her tail in delight when I scratched her neck. He said that dogs know whom to trust, and behave differently in the presence of different people. He also mentioned that although he cannot do it himself, it is possible to learn about people from their auras. He said that it was a skill that could be taught. I began to suspect that he might have Buddhist leanings.

When I mentioned my name and my background as a Christian from the State of Kerala, he sprung it on me that he was of the Mormon faith! I do not know why, but that caught me completely off-guard. But it did also make some sense. There is a big group of people who follow the Mormon faith in the area where we live, and he had actually grown up in Montgomery County. And I had learnt previously that the Mormons had fought in the past in wars for their country.

In the end, I had to stop asking questions lest I got him going off on yet another interesting topic or the other for an indefinite amount of time. I really had to get moving once again because I had not yet reached my intended destination at that point.

During the initial part of the ride I had been thinking about whether I would have anything interesting to blog about as a result of the ride. The only notable events so far in the ride had to do with birds that were not cooperating with me when I tried to take their pictures. They would seem settle down for the shot, but would fly away when I got off the bike and reached for my camera. I did not get even one picture of a bird! Fortunately, Bob and Raider came to the rescue!

Random Musings On The Flight From Los Angeles (1/29/2009)

I wrote this during one of the many trips that I used to take to Los Angeles when I was working. I have taken the liberty of making a few corrections/improvements, but not that many…..
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The American Airlines Boeing 757 lined up on Runway 25R at LAX airport, with its distinct and ugly snout pointed West towards the Pacific Ocean. Silverbird quickly accelerated down the runway, muscling its streamlined form with rapidly increasing speed hard against the wind. Barely halfway down its runway the aircraft rose up from the ground, nose pointed skyward, as if eager to break its connection with Mother Earth and get away from its clutches as quickly as possible. It quickly ascended at a steep angle and attacked the sky like an eager and angry fighter jet rising to meet the enemy, its engines screaming with a distinct shrill and high-pitched sound that sounded so unworldly, yet so sweet, gaining altitude by the second. Within moments the aircraft was over the Pacific Ocean and was banking sharply to the left, beginning its U-turn to head back east to the Washington, DC, area. The aircraft turned east in the area over the Port of Long Beach and quickly rose to its cruising altitude. The unusually swift prevailing winds that had originally delayed my arrival into LAX on Monday were now speeding me on my way back home for an unexpected early arrival.

The Westin Hotel near LAX is located due east of the airport. Century Boulevard, which runs in front of the hotel, takes you directly from the hotel to the airport terminals. The hotel is shaped somewhat (but not exactly) like a cross, with the base of the cross facing the airport. The aircraft flight paths leading into LAX happen to be on both sides of the hotel (and therefore on both sides of the airport terminals themselves). LAX’s four runways run in an east to west direction (or west to east, depending on your perspective), on either sides of Century Boulevard. The runways on the south side of the airport terminal begin not too far from the hotel itself. The runways on the north side begin further away from the hotel, closer to the airport terminal itself. Most of the time the planes come in to land from the east and takeoff to the west. There are very rare arrivals from the west, usually late in the night or in the early hours of the morning before the regular traffic has begun. Being a frequent traveler, I usually get a room on the highest floors of the hotel. My view from the hotel depends upon which section of the hotel my room is located on. If I am facing east, I can get a beautiful view of the sunrise over the hills, and of the aircraft, with their lights turned on, lining up to land on the runway that runs close to the hotel. If my room faces south, I can see the planes fly right by my window at a very low altitude. To the west, I can view aircraft taking off from the airport, and I can also enjoy the glorious colors of sunset (if I manage to get back from work at a decent time). The planes look very nice in the light of either the rising or setting sun. To the north, I can observe the planes approach the airport at a significant height (since the runways start further away from the hotel), framed by the hills to the north of LA and the skyscrapers of downtown Los Angeles in the distance. The rays of the rising sun hitting the skyscrapers of downtown LA can create a unique and beautiful sight that lasts for just a few moments. I am usually awake well before dawn because of the difference in time zones, and I spend time looking for things to photograph in the distance. I sometimes wander down the hallways of the hotel to try to get a good spot to take a picture – to find the particular angle that, at the right time, offers a unique perspective. I have to admit that my pictures do not come out well since I am dealing with non-ideal conditions for photography, and a camera with limited capability. But I keep trying. And the hotel staff have not yet stopped me from doing what I am doing.
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American Airlines Boeing 757 through a dirty window

It has been many years since I last visited Los Angeles. I still have a lot of memories of my trips. The Westin Airport LAX is still in operation.

Sample pictures taken from the Westin during that period of time are in the next blog.

A Christmas Story

I had been ambivalent about the whole project. When she had first brought up the idea of delivering food to my parents in Chennai from a restaurant in town that her sister and her husband had ownership in (a first-class restaurant, may I add!), I had told her it probably was not a good idea. There were the logistical issues to consider. First of all, the restaurant was quite far from where my parents lived. Secondly, I had experienced issues when dealing with deliveries to the home while in Chennai. The problems started with something as basic as specifying the address for delivery. (The online maps that the vendors used with their GPS systems did not use the postal address as their basis for locating the house. We had to figure out an addressing scheme that worked with GPS. (My first attempt at placing an order in Chennai with an Amazon ended up with a cancellation – because the delivery person never arrived. That was when I recognized the issue with the “address”. All subsequent orders for delivery that I made involved my standing at the gate of the house and keeping my eyes peeled for the delivery person, sometimes keeping track of his progress on my smartphone.)) I should add that Dad and mom have no idea how to use any of the technology involved in managing a delivery to the home. There was nobody else in town to depend upon to help with this. Any delivery of the food had to be coordinated remotely.

Anyway, she was determined. She decided, on her own, to have a delivery of food made to our home for Christmas. It being a special occasion, I did not object completely in spite of my concerns, and I tried to help. She was going to rope in her sister to help make it happen. The process was going to be managed remotely from Bangalore. I noted my concerns, not the least of which was that I did not want to do anything that would stress out my parents in this whole process. I was told not to worry. I provided as much information as I could so that the house could be identified. I consulted with my brother who had faced similar issues during his own trips to Chennai. I even provided a link to a picture I had taken of the shops in front of our house to help with locating the home. I thought I had covered all the bases. The order was placed. Delivery was going to happen around noontime on Christmas day. I was not involved in any of the organization. I must have continued to express my reservations. I was told not to worry.

The next step was for me to inform my parents that the food was going to be delivered at a particular time, and for them to expect phone calls related to the delivery at around that time, the last phone call being made by the delivery person at the gate to the house. Alas, this is where the plan in its original form began to go awry. I attempted to make a phone call to Chennai the day before Christmas. The phone at home was not working.

My siblings and I were independently in touch with somebody who was planning to visit my parents for Christmas. When I asked, Venkat informed me that he was going to be at our home in Chennai about an hour or so before the food delivery. I asked him to please inform my parents about what was going to happen just in case I could not call home before that. The stage was set.

I continued to try to call Chennai but could not get through.

When we woke up on Christmas day, we retieved a message that had arrived overnight from Bangalore. It said that the person delivering the food in Chennai had not been able to get in touch with my parents after his arrival at the house. Of course, the phone was not working. Nobody was responding to him when he called out from the compound gate(s?). Strangely, he reported that one of the gates was locked from the outside. Suman was on the phone with the delivery person when all of this was happening. She gave him instructions to leave the food at the gate. That was the last thing we heard about the delivery. We had no idea what might have happened to the food. Nobody could get in touch with my parents. My worst fears had been confirmed. This had been Mission Impossible! Again, I was told not to worry. We had tried.

Christmas day went by. I could not get my mind completely off what I was now convinced was a complete disaster. I should have done more to prevent this kind of a situation from happening. So many people had put in so much effort to make this happen, and it had fallen apart. Food had also been wasted.

But, the good thing was that we also had the distractions of Christmas to keep us occupied. We were getting the treat of a dinner cooked by Angela. She had suggested the menu for Christmas dinner, and had offered to cook everything. It was going to be an Indian meal. She had no previous experience with the dishes she was planning to cook. She was going to make them for the first time using recipes from books. She was going to be adventurous. Others assisted in her efforts as needed, but she was in charge. She organized things very precisely leaving very little to chance. She even transcribed the detailed instructions from the recipe books to a notebook that she kept in front of her while cooking in order to make sure that things were done right. The result was amazing!

We also spoke to my siblings and their families in the afternoon on Christmas day. The topic of the attempted food delivery in Chennai came up. We were joking among ourselves that the food had probably ended up feeding some stray dogs, or the rats that hung around the place. I did not want to talk about it any more!

Teresa and I realized much later that evening that we had not passed along one critical piece of information about where the food was supposed to have been delivered in Chennai. There was a second house, newly built and unoccupied, next to the the house where the food was supposed to have been delivered, and we had not even thought about making a mention of this house when giving directions. Perhaps the person had attempted to deliver the food there. Anyway, it was too late to do anything about it. The dogs must have had a good time.

When I woke up the next day, I found a texted message awaiting me from my brother. He had finally gotten through to our parents on the phone. He mentioned that the food package had actually not been lost! The message I had passed on to Venkat had gotten through to my parents. Mom had gone over to the new house to see if there was anything that had been left there. She had done this in spite of the fact that they had not talked to anybody on the phone. The plan had actually worked out somehow!

It was already too late to call and wish my parents a Merry Christmas, but at least they received the Christmas gift on time. All’s well that ends well.

PS. FYI, from our personal experience, the food from Kappa Chakka Kandhari is exceptional and highly recommended!

How I became friends with jimmy john (4/18/2008)

Inroduction – I have ended up digging deep into my past while creating this blog. It was supposed to be a simple re-post of an email I sent many years ago. Much water has flowed under the bridge since 2008. Life was very different at that time. This blog even takes me back to the early days of my career, before the email you are about to read was written. Here goes.

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There are two separate topics in this e-mail, and the second topic is more of a reflection on longer-term happenings in my life. It would be perfectly understandable if you skipped this second part.

So here I was walking through the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show in the Convention Center in Las Vegas, when I heard a shout “Hello, Malayalee anoo”? (Hello, are you a Malayalee?) I turned to see this guy walking up to me. He started talking to me in Malayalam with a heavy accent. I was totally taken aback at being accosted in this manner in the middle of a convention center in Las Vegas. The gentleman mentioned that he had seen my badge and recognized that the name must belong to a person from Kerala. Very quickly, before I could even recover, he asked me where I was from, whom I worked for, how long I was going to be in Las Vegas, etc.. I had no clue who this person was, and did not understand why he was talking to me with such familiarity and asking all these questions. He must have noticed a bewildered look on my face because he paused for a moment. “Am I asking too many questions?”, he enquired. I did not know what to say. He then noted that the way he was asking me questions was the manner in which people broke the ice and started conversations in Kerala. He said that he was from Toronto, and in my confused state of mind I heard the word Trivandrum instead. I looked at his badge and it said jimmy john (just the way I have written it!). Anyway, jimmy soon realized that I was not too much of a Malayalee (even though my parents are from Kerala), but that did not deter him from continuing the conversation. We continued to talk in English for a while about our backgrounds and I became more comfortable with the conversation. I suppose he was a simble (inside Malayalee joke!) person, and perhaps we could continue talking because I am also simble (hmm, maybe not that humble). Turns out that he produces a show in Toronto called Malayala Shabtham and his production company is called CKTV, Canadian Kerala TV Productions. He seems to know people and politicians in Canada, and he sounds like an enterprising fellow. For all I know, he is a well-known person in certain circles. Perhaps one or more of you may have heard his name. Anyway, we exchanged cards and then parted ways.

Now, changing topics: Later the same evening I went out for a dinner organized by a gentleman from DIRECTV named Bob Plummer. Bob had been at the David Sarnoff Research Center while I was there and had moved directly to DIRECTV after that. (He is one of the folks who encouraged me to move to DIRECTV.) He is a very senior person, has a lot of friends in the industry, and will be retiring this year. He apparently has been organizing this dinner during the NAB for several years for his friends in the industry. This time he invited me to the dinner so that I could get to know some of the folks, and I also met an old friend from Sarnoff, Joel Zdepski, who has now gone on become a Senior VP in a company called OpenTV. In any case, the food was very good (and very expensive) and there was plenty of wine to drink. At a particular moment during this whole affair, Bob walked into a conversation that I was having with somebody else and turned to the person and said something along the lines of – Kuria is one of those people who can actually get things to work. My goodness, what a complement! It is quite possible that the number of drinks that had been consumed at that point inspired the comment. But it got me thinking after I got back to my hotel room later in the night (and this is where the humble part goes out the window!). In the early years of my career I had worked on some really unique and challenging problems that were cutting edge, without really realizing the magnitude of what I was doing. At Sarnoff, we were trying to design the first digital high-definition broadcast TV system in the world, and were implementing certain concepts for the first time. Without really thinking too much about it, I came up with a unique solution to a particular system problem that we had, and, although I did not have any hardware experience, I got into the thick of things and actually helped in implementing the concept and making the darned thing work. I was working on something that I had minimum expertise in, and something far removed from the topic of my graduate studies. I depended a lot on intuition. I was also quite naive and did not even realize the complex nature of the problem I was taking on and solving. But others did notice and remember! And it is staggering to realize that the things that we worked on at Sarnoff have now become the foundation of a gigantic worldwide digital TV industry. Wow!

I had a few other such “Eureka” moments during the early part of my career, some of them at Hughes Network Systems, but I think none matched the magnitude of the work at Sarnoff. I think I had a real problem-solving mentality that is typical of an Engineer, and this ability compensated for a lot of my other personality issues. But the years have gone by since then and the reality of life has caught up. It is now more about shouldering responsibilities and trying to make sure that one does not screw things up. I do not have to solve difficult technical problems. I am more careful. Everything is more mundane. And I have to find other less risky roads to follow to push myself and experience the excitement of learning new things and challenging myself. And, although one accepts where one is in life without any regrets, one wonders once in a while about what might have been if other routes in life had been followed and if more time had been spent earlier in life on developing other talents. It is probably true that one can waste a lifetime simply asking questions and not doing anything else. But at least on that one magical evening in Las Vegas (under the influence of alcohol, of course) I felt like I had done something unique and special, something that not just anybody could have done. Is it all about feeding the ego?

There used to be an advertising line having to do with the Las Vegas tourism scene that stated – Whatever happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas. You can see that this is certainly not true with what has happened to me in Las Vegas during my last two trips.

Such is life.
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Today’s postscript – While looking for pictures of people who I worked with while at Sarnoff, I came upon this website with details about the project I was involved in at that time. You can even find pictures of me from my youth (at least four of them in the section about the “AD-HDTV System Integration at Sarnoff Field Lab”). My signature is on a document that we signed at the end of the project. I directly contributed to the specification document for this project. I was responsible for something called the priority processor.

I do not know how long this website will stay up, but I might as well make use of it while it lasts. This is certainly taking me down a memory lane.
https://www.glennreitmeier.tv/advanced-digital-hdtv-prototype
https://www.glennreitmeier.tv/advanced-digital-hdtv-prototype?lightbox=dataItem-jkrigr9z2

My Time along the C&O Canal Thus Far

I started out this blog simply wishing to show some pictures from our last outing on the towpath. The effort morphed into something else. I am OK with that. These days I find that I am more easy-going about such things. It makes for a less agitated general state of mind, and fits in with the current tagline for the blog – Anything Goes!

I have been making visits to the C&O canal and the towpath regularly since 2005. I try to get there every free weekend, even when the weather is not very cooperative. The nature of my experience on the canal has changed with time. The initial and middle phases of my travels were periods of discovery of new sections of the canal not too far from home, and then of gradually extending the scope of my coverage of the 184.5 miles of this park space. Reaching Harpers Ferry was a first big milestone for me. Reaching the town of Hancock further to the northwest was the next major step. I finally ended up running along the canal just beyond the remains of a town that was called Orleans, west of Hancock. The further away the location from home, the more time the Sunday morning visit took. At its extreme, I would drive over an hour to get to a parking lot for the start of a run. The last stretch of the C&O canal, including the town of Cumberland and the Paw Paw tunnel, were finally conquered only during my bike ride in 2016 from Pittsburgh.

I used cover very short distances along the canal during my initial visits. I was still learning about the possibilities for exploration along the towpath. I was also just learning to run on a regular basis. I actually ran in hiking boots the first few times because I made a spur-of-the-moment decision to run instead of walk. I did not even have proper running shoes. The effort level and time spent outdoors increased with time. At its peak, I did a steady 12 miles of running on the towpath every Sunday. The park became the place where I regained my sanity from the weekday madness. It also became the place of my exploration with the camera.

These travels have become a family affair in recent times. They are joint explorations. We do not run. Rather, we try to walk briskly. We currently cover between 7 and 8 miles on a regular basis on Sundays. While walking, I try to remember things I saw and experienced in past years, and now it is also about sharing what I have been enjoying for years. That is part of the joy of the experience. I do miss running, but life is about trade-offs. The first priority is the joint outing. I try to run during the week. During the summer weekdays, I might also take the bike to the towpath.

There is a seasonal pattern to the experience of our visits to the canal. This time of year is mainly about the Spring flowers – which was what I wanted to talk about when I first started writing this blog. These Spring flowers will all be gone in a short while. Every year, my focus is on capturing the beauty of the flowers while they last. I take the pictures of the same flowers year after year, but the novelty of the experience still remains. The result is perhaps a repetitiveness in the pictures of the flowers that I post in albums and in blogs every year. That is the way in goes. Keeping that in mind, today, I will try to only post pictures of flowers that I believe I have not shared in this forum so far this year.

The picture below is of honeysuckle flowers. These plants are quite widespread along the length of the canal, and the flowers visible everywhere this time of year. These might more specifically be called Japanese Honeysuckle.This flower below is called Dames Rocket. I used to mistake it for wild Phlox. It is not as widespread as phlox.This is the time of year for the Rosa Multiflora plants. They flower late in Spring. These thorny plants are massively invasive.These are wild phlox.This is most likely Queen Anne Lace. Some time later in the year, all the extensions on which these flowers grow today will come together around a big seed ball in the middle of each cluster. You would not associate the seed ball with this flower if you saw it.The flower below is called Miami Mist. Finding out the names of some of these flowers is sometimes an adventure. I usually try to find a direct reference somewhere on the Internet to the presence of the flower on the canal itself. In this case, there was none. I had to search further because of this – a more difficult task! Sometimes I look at pictures of flowers I have taken in past years to try to jog my memory. I was fortunate to find the flower this time. The last time I took a picture of it was in 2011.I am almost sure that the flowers in the picture below are Ragworts. I see them regularly during this season, but I tend to forget the name every year since there are so many flowers in this general shape and color. These include the sunflower, and the state flower of Maryland, the Black-eyed Susan. We also have yellow goldenrods this time of year. Fortunately, they have a very different shape. But I do tend to mess things up initially!The Buttercups are everywhere at this time.I could not resist this final picture of a buttercup and a rosa multiflora flower next to each other.It is an interesting exercise to think about where flowers of a particular kind are to be seen in greater quantity along the canal. Some are widespread over the length of the canal, probably because the plants are more invasive than others. Others are found only in certain places, and in bunches. Consider the natural processes that carry the seeds of these wild plants from place to place – the wind, water, birds, animals, humans, etc… Consider the rate at which invasive species of plants spread. Consider the patterns of spread. Nature is fascinating!

I will end the blog with just the pictures of these flowers. As usual, there were other things we saw, and other encounters we had, which are also interesting. I will leave those for another time, and perhaps even another forum – or perhaps it will all remain unsaid. How is that for saying something about nothing, or is it nothing about something. Never mind!

Fields of Gold (9/11/2005)

I wrote this email in 2005. I had just started visiting the C&O canal towpath the previous year, and was still in the process of regularizing my weekend exercise routine beside the Potomac river. Some of the places that I visited along the canal were not as familiar to me then as they are now.

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I was up early this morning and headed for Point of Rocks for my morning run. These morning runs have become less frequent with the efforts to get the rest of the family involved in the C&O canal activities. Last weekend Teresa and I biked 16 miles on the trail. (That is certainly an great achievement for a first-timer!) I have biked with Angela on other occasions, and, a couple of times, also run on the trail while the others have biked along. However, as I realized this morning, while getting the family involved is a good thing, you still need your own time to rejuvenate and recuperate. There is nothing like the silence of the woods in the cool of the early morning to sooth your soul and bring your internal temperature back to normal. Come what may, I need to find a way to continue my travels and meditations.

As I was driving towards Point of Rocks this morning, I was struck by the sight of the fields of gold. Yes, the leaves in some of the fields are beginning to turn golden yellow. These fields alternated with the neighboring cornfields where the stocks of corn stood tall, some of them turning brown due to the coming of Fall. It was a sight to see, and I stopped by the roadside to take pictures. It immediately brightened my mood. Lona Alias, my favorite Sunday morning DJ on the radio, provided some reminders of events in the real world, including the anniversary of 9/11, and happenings down in New Orleans. She played some nice songs. If you have not done so already, you should find a way to listen to the song “Louisiana 1927” by Randy Newman. Although it is going to take up some space, I am going to include the words for the entire song here. Hope you don’t mind.

“What has happened down here is the winds have changed
Clouds roll in from the north and it started to rain
Rained real hard and it rained for a real long time
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

The river rose all day
The river rose all night
Some people got lost in the flood
Some people got away alright
The river have busted through clear down to Plaquemines
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangelne

Louisiana, Louisiana
They’re tyrin’ to wash us away
They’re tryin’ to wash us away
Louisiana, Louisiana
They’re tryin’ to wash us away
They’re tryin’ to wash us away

President Coolidge came down in a railroad train
With a little fat man with a note-pad in his hand
The President say, “Little fat man isn’t it a shame what the river has done
To this poor crackers land.”

Louisiana, Louisiana
They’re tryin’ to wash us away
They’re tryin’ to wash us away
Louisiana, Louisiana
They’re tryin’ to wash us away
They’re tryin’ to wash us away
They’re tryin’ to wash us away
They’re tryin’ to wash us away”

Apparently, the 1927 flooding of Louisiana resulted in widespread death and destruction, and very poor response from the authorities. History is repeating itself. Enough said.

I ran from Point of Rocks to the Monocacy Aqueduct and back today. The morning was cool, portending the coming of Fall. All the people I encountered on the trail were cheery and greeted me with smiles. The kids were packing materials from the campsites that they were vacating after overnight stays, and carrying the stuff to their cars. Other kids rode their bikes in disorderly columns, with adults trying to provide supervision and prevent them from running people over. As I jogged by, one gentleman even wished me well on my efforts to complete the 12 miles. I did not even feel too tired after the run and my muscles did not give out on me during the run. I still feel great!

One incident to note. After I finished the run, I walked up to the railroad tracks to take some pictures. I walked along the tracks with my camera, trying to find spots with some interesting shots. When I returned, I observed a vehicle belonging to the Park Police in the parking lot facing my car. I walked by the officer trying to act nonchalant, wondering if I was in some kind of trouble, especially since I had been trespassing on the railroad tracks a couple of minutes back. (Think Al Qaeda!) “Good morning” I said to the policemen. “How is it going?” he responded cheerily. As I opened the driver’s door and got into the car, he got out of his vehicle and started walking towards me, at least that was what I thought. As he got closer, he angled away towards the car besides mine. It was an old beaten-up wreck, parked further away into the woods. He inspected the car carefully and started talking into his radio. He then turned and walked back to his vehicle, taking a glance a me as I sat in the front seat of my car eating a donut as he went by. He then drove away. I wonder if he also checked out my license number in my absence, and if I am now on some kind of a watch list. Of course I am paranoid! Anyway, that was my adventure for day.

Enough for now.
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The above letter was written shortly after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. This hurricane devastated the city. It never fully recovered to its old self.

You can listen to the song I talk about here.

Here are some pictures taken that day.The parking area at Point of Rocks has changed significantly since 2005, the time I first started visiting. It used to be real rough. There were just a few spots off a dirt road, and you parked in whatever random space you found. You could also drive beyond the lot to a space under the bridge carrying US Highway 15 across the Potomac. You could find dicier parking (if the water in the river was not too high) there. All of this has now been replaced by a real parking lot, and a very big one at that! Also, you can no longer drive beyond this lot to the space under the bridge. The space on the other side of the canal, between the railroad tracks and the main road (MD Route 28), has also now been converted into a well-maintained park. And a lot more people visit these days.

Jones Point Park, VA

It is the darnedest thing! I have had this particular blog in the back of my mind for quite a few days. I keep thinking about it every day, but I cannot get myself into the proper state of mind to write it. There are so many distractions. I am just going to have to force myself to eject the words out of the brain in free form when I have a little bit of free time, and then read it all back later to see if it makes sense.

It had to do with my bike ride last Wednesday. It was another one of those rides that required some extra motivation on my part to get it going. I am finding it hard to maintain a regular schedule. I am too good at finding excuses. It had rained the previous day. The trail was going to be messy. Perhaps I should stay home. That was my excuse this time.

But I found a way. I decided that I would ride on the paved trails in Virginia so that I could avoid the mud and potholes of the C&O canal. In order to do this, I would park the car on Canal Road at the Chain bridge, on the outskirts of Washington, DC, and then head south on my bike on the towpath into Georgetown. I would then cross the Potomac river into Virginia on the Key Bridge. I was then going to ride south on the Mt. Vernon Trail. I did not know how far I would ride on this trail, but I knew that if I rode to the end, it would end up being a somewhat tougher ride than usual.

Things went according to plan as I rode into Virginia somewhat early in the morning. As I crossed the Key Bridge, I could see and feel the rush hour traffic headed into Washington, DC. This was was the scene on the Roslyn side of the bridge. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA I got on to the Mt. Vernon trail at this point and started pedaling away beside the river, passing Roosevelt Island early in this section. There was a very short stop for pictures at Gravelly Point Park. There was already a steady stream of planes headed into National Airport. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA The airport was busy. Both runways were in use.

The Mt. Vernon trail passes under the Woodrow Wilson bridge just beyond the town of Alexandria. This bridge carries Interstate 495, the Capital Beltway, over the Potomac river. The approach ramps of the bridge pass over Jones Point Park. The Mt. Vernon trail snakes its way between the massive piers of the bridge at this point. There is a lot of open space under the bridge and people of all ages hang out there – fishing by the river, playing basketball, biking around, etc… It seems to be a meeting place for groups of mothers with babies.

Most often I bike right through Jones Point Park without stopping. But this time, an unexpected thought crossed my mind just as I was headed out of the park. At that point of the ride I was thinking to myself that I really did not care about the distance I covered that day. So why not take some time to get off the trail and explore some of the smaller, less well-defined, paths that I had seen in the past while riding through the park. It was a sudden decision. It also turned out to be a great decision!

Riding along a smaller trail, I ended up at a spot where I began to see boundary markers beside the trail, with signs on these markers for the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia. These markers were lined up in straight lines, with the black line on their tops indicating the actual boundary line between two jurisdictions. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA There was also a lighthouse beside the river, and a few wayside exhibits around it.

It turned out that I was at the tip of the area of land that originally defined the southern limit of Washington, DC! These newer boundary markers were meant to mark the historical boundaries of the District of Columbia. The history is very interesting, and you can read more about it here. Essentially, the District of Columbia was originally conceived of as a diamond shaped area of land with sides of 10 miles each, with a total area of 100 square miles. The land for DC was going to be obtained from both Virginia and Maryland. In the end, the land that Virginia was going to give up in this regard was taken back. (This covered about 31 square miles.) This was called a “retrocession”.

Another interesting fact is that when the original area for DC was being mapped out, boundary markers were set into the ground at one mile intervals along the sides. Most of these boundary markers still exist, including the one at the southern tip, the place I was at!

Unfortunately, I did not think about the significance and existence of the original boundary markers while I was in the park. It was only later that I read that the original southern boundary marker for Washington, DC, was actually embedded in the seawall in front of the lighthouse. It is something that I will stop to investigate further the next time I am in the area. It is located on the right side of this picture of the lighthouse, under a cover of plastic. It is next to the wayside exhibit and in front of the steps, below the level of the ground. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA I took pictures of a couple of the wayside exhibits that provided some historical information. (You can click on the pictures to open them up in bigger size.)I continued my bike ride past Jones Point Park. At this point, I was within reachable distance of Mt. Vernon and the end of the Mt. Vernon Trail. The temptation of complete the trail was too much to overcome. So, I biked to the end. It was not the optimal decision.

The ride began to take its toll on the way back. Basically, I was retracing my path. The ride was beginning to feel somewhat more mechanical at this point as I endeavored to keep a steady pace. It became more about the challenge of the ride. I was even beginning to pick up speed as a matter of course. My mindset for the ride had shifted. This is typically what happens to me when I bike long distances. It is more relaxed in the beginning, and then, bit by bit, it becomes more intense.

I began to tire without even being too aware of it. I was also running out of water. I stopped at Fletchers Cove, about a mile short of Chain Bridge, the place where I had parked the car. My thigh muscles cramped up immediately when I got off the bike. I had pushed myself too hard.

I was able to buy a bottle of Gatorade at the concession stand at Fletchers Cove. More than half the bottle went down the throat immediately. After a few minutes, I was able to get back on the bike and continue riding to the car. I had no further issues. Because of the long stop at Fletchers Cove, I had also managed to alter my mindset, and I was able to ride at a more relaxed pace.

In the end, I had ridden over 44 miles. I have ridden longer distances than this in the past, but under different circumstances. I was probably also in better shape when I did longer distances!

That is my story for the day, and I am sticking to it!

Return from Washington Adventist (7/12/2008)

I have have been thinking about posting this e-mail for a long time. I sent it to family and friends back in 2008. A few of you have seen it already, and may even remember it. It is now a part of my life story and history. More than ten years have passed since then, and I can now reflect on how this has effected the way I live and my outlook towards life. Perhaps you will find something interesting.
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Dear Folks,

I am very happy to be back home this Saturday evening. Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers. As many of you already know, the fact that I had to stay overnight at the hospital is an indication of the fact that they indeed found some blockage in the heart and some work had to be done. The news, in short, is that two stents were introduced into the arteries feeding the heart – one in the first obtuse marginal artery (OM1) which was about 95% blocked, and another on the Right Coronary Artery (RCA) which was about 70% blocked. A drug-eluting stent was used in each case to try to prevent the arteries from re-closing. I feel fine right now, but have to take it easy for the next few days so that the femoral artery through which they inserted the catheter can heal completely. My daily Asprin and Lipitor dosages going forward have been increased and I will probably have to continue to take this medication for life. I also have to take Plavix, an anticoagulant, for a year. These are the consequences of heart disease. But I will be back to my activities as soon as I am given the green light. It would seem that I have been given an extension of sorts, and I should make the best use of the additional time. I feel fine.

You should probably not read past this point if all you wanted were the facts, and you are not interested in the gory details of the trip to the hospital. In fact you should not read past this point if you have a tendency to get distressed in general. An overnight stay in a hospital, as some of you know, makes you a humbler person. You are basically out of your comfort zone and for the most part you are dependent on others. It does not help that you wear a gown that is open at the back. If you happen to be connected to an IV line you also cannot move around easily without help. You depend on the nurses for almost everything. You could feel out of sorts even if you are physically OK.

The catheterization procedure itself went smoothly. It was interesting to be awake during the process and be aware of what was going on, feeling no pain, and hearing what sounded like distant conversations – with an occasional request from the doctor to hold my breath. He informed me of what he was going to do before he inserted the two stents. I was done with the procedure and back in the recovery area before noon. I had been given an anticoagulant drug at the completion of the procedure to prevent clots from forming around the stents. Because of this, in order to avoid issues with healing, they waited for a couple of hours before they pulled the sheath (from which the catheters had been inserted into the femoral artery) from the area of the groin. As soon as the sheath was removed from the groin, I had one of my famous fainting spells. I felt the coldness creep in and I told the nurse who was working on me that I was going to faint. As I got knocked out, I saw the guy reaching for the alarm button. Code blue!

Apparently, I flatlined, and the guy kept pounding on my chest while applying pressure to the wound to prevent bleeding. I am told that I was out for about 15 seconds, and when I came to it felt as if I was coming out of a dream. (No, I did not see a white light.) I think I shouted – Where am I?! I saw a bunch of anxious faces in front of me, and one woman was holding my hand in a very reassuring manner. But I recovered quickly after that. I asked for some food immediately because I knew that part of the problem was that I had not eaten since the previous day. (And according to Teresa I was apparently also not well hydrated during the procedure.) I have experienced fainting spells every once in an infrequent while since childhood, and now there is name for this. It is called vasovagal syncope. Look it up. It has to do with bad signals being sent to the heart due to a process with positive feedback within the body. I used to think of my experiences in childhood as some kind of weakness on my part that could be controlled mentally. It actually is something that has a physical origin.

Anyway, because of the drama I had created, I was placed in the Cardiac ICU for the night. I got personal attention, but I had a hard time sleeping, one of the reasons being that I had to lay my right foot out straight through the night. This morning I watched the daybreak out of the window of my room on the fifth floor – with the blues and the whites and the oranges lighting up the early morning sky. I felt things were going to be OK. I was feeling strong. I felt strong enough to sing to myself, but for some absurd reason, tears would come to my eyes. (I suppose “Bridge over troubled waters” is not the best song in these circumstances.) But I had a good breakfast and lunch before Teresa and Christina were able to rescue me and bring me home. The unfortunate episode and the helpless feeling that goes with staying in a hospital are quickly fading into memory. I am feeling great right now. Lets see what the next challenge is going to look like.

Once again, I am very, very, grateful to all of you for all your good wishes and for thinking about me. I am touched, in fact my brain may be a little fried from a lack of oxygen (only joking, OK!).

Sincerely
kuria

Riding with Dan Q (1/30/3005)

It is not that I have run out of ideas, but I find myself recently unable to find some quiet time for the mind. I have become quite distracted in recent days. So, I am resorting to posting an old email that I had sent to family and friends a long time ago when I used to volunteer in the furniture program at our church. We used to pick up furniture that people wanted to give away and deliver it to the homes of needy people. I wrote the following.
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I am sorry folks, but I have gotten the bug! I cannot stop writing, even if there is not much to say. I wake up on the weekends with the neurons clicking in my brain, with phrases forming in the head that I want to put down. What is one supposed to do? The good thing is that you can always trash my e-mails, electronically speaking that is, if they are full of junk.

Woke up today, Sunday morning, to the white of winter and the sight of snow gently falling all around the house. Truth be told, my first instinct was that this whole winter business was getting old, it was getting to be a big pain in the rear rend – this was getting me down, making me sick (middle of last week), and also getting in the way of things that one wanted to do. I have not been able to run for three weekends already (but then again, what is three weekends in a year, or a year in a lifetime). Although one is missing the quietening and balancing effects of the outdoors, one will definitely survive, although in a crabbier mood than usual, with the crabbiness factor increasing exponentially as time passes. I was also supposed to go out to perform at a music show this afternoon – that’s right, innocent people were going to pay to hear me sing, and I was thinking of the pain of driving in these conditions. (That show has since been cancelled because of the weather.)

What then has changed my mood? I was looking out into the backyard through the patio doors, just watching the white stuff come down – it was a steady fall, not the big thick flakes that float around and make people go “Ooooh” and “Aaaah”! The snow was heavy and wet – it made the work of shoveling the driveway later more difficult. A white layer had formed on the branches of the trees and the nets that I have around the plants, and you could see that some of the smaller branches were bending over with the weight of the water. I caught sight of a squirrel scurrying across the snow – a black figure bouncing about on a pure white background. It was hopping along, occasionally stopping to look around, and then heading off in a new direction. Soon after, I saw another squirrel. It did not seem to mind the snow either. Then, there was the red breasted bird sitting on one of the leafless trees behind our property. Even though it was small, the bright red on the grey and white background could not be missed. As I became more aware, I noticed that there was another small bird with a head of black (black capped Chickadee???) on the tree just next to the house. Looking up into the sky I could sight a couple of birds headed southwest, gliding through the sky and through the falling snow (how does that feel, I wonder?). Life is still going on as usual all around us….

The next part of this e-mail is not meant for the faint of heart, or for the children who may be misled by the misdeeds of supposedly mature adults. Sometimes a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. This was one of these occasions!

I helped with the furniture program yesterday. Pat Byrnes sent me out with Dan Q., in Dan’s pickup truck. The mission was to pick up a sofa and a love seat. This was the first time I was meeting Dan Q. – a young white man, clean shaven and thin lipped, hair on the head completely shaved off, wearing wraparound sunglasses, and speaking with a strange accent that I could not place – looked tough! We arrive at this home and pick up a really nice sofa and love-seat set. These are loaded into the back of the open pickup truck, and we pull ropes over from one side to the other over the furniture to make sure everything is securely in place. The cushions are stuffed into crevices to make sure that they do not fly off, and the throws (smaller cushions that you throw over the sofa) have been secured in garbage bags which have been shoved under the ropes. Dan says that he will drive carefully. I did not realize then that “carefully” was a relative term. About half a mile into the trip back to the storage area, Dan informs me that one of the garbage bags has fallen off. Luckily there is no traffic since we have not hit the main road yet. I pop out of the passenger seat, run back, grab the bag, and stuff it back more securely into the back (or so I thought). Off we go once again. We are now on a busier road, Route 118, and Dan is driving “carefully” once again. As we pull up to the traffic light just after the Interstate 270 overpass, we hear desperate honking behind us. A van pulls up beside us – you lost one of your bags, we are informed by the driver. So Dan makes a U-turn (carefully!) at the light and we head back. There, in the middle of the busy road, on one of the lanes carrying traffic in the opposite direction, is our garbage bag. As we prepare to make the next U-turn to pick up the bag, I notice that our second bag is also on the road, further along the way. We have lost all our throws! It was just amazing that nobody had yet driven over the garbage bags. Further defensive (or perhaps, in the opinion of some people, offensive) moves are made. Dan pulls up in the middle of the road, and Mr. Joseph has to get out of the truck to pick up the bags. Timing was critical in these maneuvers, and Mr. Joseph performed admirably. The passenger door of the truck had to be pulled open with perfect timing to make sure that it was not taken apart by traffic in the next lane. Mr. Joseph proceeded quickly, and with surprising dexterity, to carry out his mission and make sure that both he and the garbage bags returned to the truck in one piece. The throws made it back to the storage center in the cab of the truck and on my lap – I would not have needed an air bag if Dan Q. had gotten us into a pickle (which would not have been surprising considering the way he was driving). That was my adventure for the day – risking life and limb for a noble cause!! Actually, I have spiced this write up a bit – the traffic was rather light and it was not really that dangerous. Do not worry…..

It turns out that Dan Q is an armed security guard. It is a job he was forced to take after he lost his original job with Verizon many years ago. He is trying to get top secret clearance so that he can get a better job in the government. He intends to complete his master’s degree along the way. He has ambitions. Meanwhile he is also investing in real estate and selling mortgages. He has formed a Limited Liability Company with his wife (now, where have I heard a similar story?). His father was a Chemical Engineer who worked for the government. Dan is from Eastern Maryland – hence his accent. He thinks that the war in Iraq is a big mistake. (There is still hope for America!) That is one more memorable person/character I have met through the furniture program. I do not know if I will get to ride with him again.

I should stop here. This has gotten longer than I wished it to be.

later
kuria

Cruelty and Injustice

Some of us have enough spare time on our hands to ruminate about what goes on around us in this world, sometimes without any “education” or any formal process that forms the basis for our lines of thinking. I know it is a waste of time, but there is something intriguing about the search. I have enough time on my hands that I even created this blog a few weeks ago musing about what it is all about.

But sometimes, when you see what is going on around you in the real world in real time, you can be shaken out of this somewhat disconnected and disjointed state of mind, the state of mind where you feel like generally talking about things in the abstract. There is specificity. And your mind screams – really, is this what we are capable of? Events that can evoke that kind of a response are happening all around us all the time. There are certain aspects of human reality, and of the nature of human unkindness, that make you want to scream – what is wrong with us? Is it our true nature to be cruel and unjust? Does it take a truly supreme effort for us to get away from our basic instincts? I fear that this could be the real truth.

I do believe that if I were left to my own devices I would end up revealing the true nature of the cruelty that I myself am capable of. I can sense it in myself, feel it lurking somewhere in the background. And I know that I have even revealed this innate element of my character to people who I have interacted with all my life. Family, friends, relatives, and even other creatures of this earth (watch that mouse that you have trapped, or the cockroach that you have squashed, die!), have experienced it. A process of learning, forgiveness, and maybe even forgetting, can perhaps help deal with this state of being, especially as you age, but the process never ends, and some memories never go away.

But does one not have to at least try to learn that because of the nature of this society that we inhabit, because of the nature of this interconnected and interdependent world that we have built up, we need to at least try rise to a different level, and we need to work to uplift everybody around us, not just ourselves, in order to survive? Could being good also not make you feel good?

I am in this frame of mind because of a story I read in the newspaper yesterday. This is not an isolated story. Cruelty and injustice happens everywhere and everyday. Most of these stories do not affect us directly, but I tend to have a gut reaction and respond sometimes when hearing such stories. Here is one such reaction I had in the past. We can try to close our eyes because something does not affect us directly, but ultimately these things say a lot about us, and what we are willing to accept.

If you are inclined to follow the link I provided but are not inclined to read the entire article, the videos will provide you a shorter synopsis of what this particular story is all about.