rambling around in america

two days since the last diary blog entry and one long flight to virginia from oxford. flight day went ok, but of course leaving oxford at 6am after 3 hours of sleep didn't leave any time for a run on friday. met some interesting people at the airport and on the plane and that was nice. one was a cancer dr. and we had an interesting conversation about my melanoma history. he suggested that i look into getting into a study being done in Pittsburgh and i just might. he also talked about how the bad cells were affected by levels of sun and why it was more important for a person who had a history of melanoma to not be exposed to long periods of sun exposure. as a side note this nice dr was travelling with his wife and daughter and split his time between Pakistan and Seattle, wash. seemed like a real nice guy and we had a nice talk about a changing world and family life and how the new world is affecting that life and his daughter growing up in two countries.

also met a IT guy who lived in wildwood, ca. in southern md where gail and i used to live. small odds on that. he was on a two+ year contract to pax river and went back and forth between the usa and the uk. even on the way home, the taxi driver and i had a really interesting conversation about the state of the world and his life which was spent going back and forth to Egypt and driving the dulles taxi and sending money home.

interesting world we are living in. and then i was home- to a house where the back yard hadn't had the grass cut since early march and gave me an idea of what a meadow would look like in my garden. three feet high grass and lots of weeds and trees growing everywhere. wonder how long it would take before the garden was forest. but a lot of the stuff i thought had been dead had made really nice comebacks and were seemingly thriving. could spend a long time weeding and trying to cut the lawn down, which i started on just to see how hard it was going to be to get it done.

the big problem was inside where the really heavy recent rains had clogged the back steps drain and the results were a flooded laundry room which had spilled over into other areas downstairs. a nice headache for later on. the water was gone and now the cleanup would begin, but after sifting through three months of mail.

and then to get some sleep. plan was to sleep early and run early and go to the cancer relay. but at 4:25 i woke up- my head thinking it was 9:25 and wanting to be up i suppose. read for awhile and when the sun came up i got ready to run. by 6am i8 was at the track. 70+ degrees already and humid. this was not oxford weather. i had already been re-introduced to dehydration while recovering from the grass cutting.

did a very short warmup thinking i would start my workout slowly and let it come to me instead of forcing it. and it went as ok as it could have. was interested to see how i could handle some longer stuff, but knew the humidity would be a factor until i was used to it again. ended up running 3 sets of 100's and 200's plus a few 400's and one 800. the speed was ok for now. the right leg held up as well as it could and while it was a hard workout i enjoyed it. on some more sleep and conditioned to the heat it would have been easier. my morning heart rate was very high and i didn't bother to finish taking it. but the nice part was that when you start running at 6am you get done pretty early. even with a long cool-down and close to 9 miles total i was done and back home cutting grass before it could get really hot.

and then it was time to get to the relay. the survivor luncheon went well. the speakers are always inspiring, though i was glad they hadn't chosen any children this year. it is always hard to listen to their stories for me. it must be very hard as a parent to watch your child go through cancer treatment. to most people cancer and its' treatment is some nebulous out there thing and they feel it is hard, but here in a room with 70 survivors and talking to them and listening to their histories, you can get a much truer picture of its affects on them and their families. strangely, there is also a level of humor in it also.

the rain storm started while we were inside at the luncheon and they moved everyone inside to do the walking for awhile. bumped into an old running friend about two miles into my walk and we walked about 4 miles together. gave me a nice 6 mile warmdown from the run this morning and about 15 miles of exercise, a good start to being home. while walking a young lady came up to me whom i had talked to on the plane. small world.

eventually i was just too tired to stay anymore and i headed home making one quick stop at the store and then home to do some work in the house and deal with m ore mail and start in on the basement problem. then to sleep, which turned out to be a nap as i am up typing now. will get some more sleep and start early tomorrow and get on with the many things i want to do while home.

will be curious to see how the democrats meeting went today. no matter what it won't really help hillary. they cannot give her every delegate and she'll still be behind. is she more electable than obama? i don't know of course, but i need one of them to win and so does the rest of the world. the world is changing and mc cain doesn't get it. like england, where the people worry about losing their identity and are just not into embracing the coming change to their world, the usa will have to deal with that also. we can choose to have some impact on what happens or we can react to it after it does. no reason to just let it fall on us.

england is so much smaller than the states and change has more of an impact - we can spread it out more and over a longer time frame. i see us two generations aways from major impact. hope i get to see what will come along. what will the world be like when my own kids are almost 62 like i am?

2am in oxford right now. turned on some news and a show about gladiators is on. tv continues to sink to new lows. change is not always for the best.