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(c) Courtney B. Duncan 1997, 2002
Chapter 4.
The End Game - A Broken Stride
Viannah's Sunday School class for fifth and now sixth grade was called The Edge. The class was for kids on the boundary between childhood and adolescence, ending elementary school and about to start junior high. Sunday morning April 20, 1997, they were playing a game in the dark in the Sunday School room. Someone fell over Viannah's leg and cracked the bone in her foot, again. It might not have happened if the prior injury from last year had healed up correctly, but it hadn't and now damage was done again. By that evening she was back on crutches. Early the next week she went to the doctor and was referred to a specialist who put her foot in a cast, not a brace like last time, but a plaster cast with purple wrapping.
Viann spent much of the week furious with our Health Maintenance Organization. X-rays had been taken on an 'urgent care' basis, but the results had been mishandled and our pediatrician didn't have them until two days later. Viannah's major part in the upcoming children's musical So Long Joe would have to go on anyway. This Pharaoh would have a cast on his/her foot this year.
This looked like the end of our extensive, ramped-up training. There would be no more hiking or even walking for six weeks. To the day, that meant getting the cast off about ten days before we were planning to leave for Arizona. I had not planned any training for the final two weeks. Cramming is not the way to prepare for a heroic physical quest. Maybe there would be time for something minor at the end. Maybe we would have to cancel. Due to all the reservations and plans involved, it was too late to re-plan without a major upheaval. Delaying until August might be possible, but that was the time of year we were trying to avoid in the canyon. Could we postpone a whole year? That didn't seem to fit into the over-arching program's mathematical precision. Could we go during the school year? No, it wasn't clear what to do. Press on? Cancel? Delay? Re-scope?
Emotional
Crash
Everything else seemed to go wrong at once. I needed to talk this situation out with someone. Viann was too busy hauling kids around (Viannah to the doctor, and the others to school, church and their other individual activities), working extra and being generally exhausted from responding to the kids all the time when not otherwise in motion. I saw her alone only when she was asleep in bed.
That Sunday night our Bible Study group met at our house. Only two other people came, both people with issues that they'd rather not talk about (or didn't know they needed to). Me too. We were going to spend an evening not doing what any of us urgently needed to be doing, working out our problems. The discussion turned to one of the church's evangelism plans that was spearheaded that day, "Bringing Our World to Christ." It all seemed so artificial, superficial, institutional. I had no patience.
By Wednesday, I had lost additional patience, abusing the kids verbally and abusing the car physically. Viann was somewhere else, working late or at a church committee meeting. We hadn't exchanged complete sentences in days. Finally I did one of the things I often try when I can't seem to get everything consolidated in my mind, I made a list. In this case, it was couched as a note to Viann as follows:
April
23, 1997
I
am rapidly losing track of things that might have been important
sometime in
the past.
So
here are a few things we might talk about if we were allowed to
communicate in complete
sentences while awake:
Cancellation
of May 3/5 Hike.
Cancellation
of Grand Canyon Trip?
Continuing
lack of IRS refund
My
doctor's appt. today (didn't even know about it did you?)
Dentist
Secretary's
rebellion at work
The
Op-Ed piece I wrote for QST.
Charley
can't walk by (which is frequent) without being snide.
Why
am I the only one who lives here who doesn't have a right to be a snot?
Dad's
pacemaker. mom.
Daughter's
day at work (tomorrow)
Viannah's
other issues.
Cashflow
Wilda
needs someone to talk to too.
Jenny
Emotional
support - do you have friends at work or somewhere to talk to,
peaceably?
I
don't
Plan
for work on the car.
This
weekend.
Your
family priorities (just curious)
Wilting
bulbs
There
are other less important things too, like the calendar for May, yard
work and
woodpile, problems other friends have, my messed up [TV] taping
rotation. I don't have the brain space to
remember
those details in light of the above.
At the bottom, I signed Courtney and scribbled in
Katy's
Art Lessons
Calibrator
I did this Wednesday morning and printed out a copy of the list for Viann and a copy for me. I sent the copy for Viann with Viannah to school instructing her to give it to her when they went to the doctor that afternoon. She forgot to do this. Thursday I mentioned it, Viann hadn't heard of it yet. We started over.
She took the list, glanced over it, and went off to respond to the latest kid screaming or house cleaning priority. I retreated to sulk further.
Every endeavor of life has little things that don't go right. Everything that went wrong, no matter how small, seemed to add to the crises. The list grew, every blow adding to the despair. Viann wandered by a couple of days later.
I said, "You know, you could look at the list and pick one or two of those things to talk about."
Later she did, we talked about dad's pacemaker and my mother's health problems.
Katy turned 10 on the 28th. A big party was planned for an upcoming weekend. May 3/4 was now freed up for that.
I went and caught up on some other things, a C++ orbit integrator I was working on as a hobby, a few videos, some QSL cards from past ham radio contests. Weeks came and went. We went to church every week. The issue of homosexuality as a disqualification for church participants and leaders came up. Six weeks were spent in turmoil about it before the senior pastor went on a three month sabbatical for the summer. I walked to work and back once in a while but what had been left of the enthusiasm was now completely gone.
When after several days, Viann brought up Cancellation of the Grand Canyon Trip from the list, her input was that Viannah would do just fine; this was proven on our last hike up the Gabriellino Trail. After ten hours marching uphill, she danced out at the end like it had been a day at the mall, and that mostly sitting. It was I with the heavy pack and the middle aged non-athletic body that we needed to worry about. I could continue to work out on my own.
"But," I protested, "this was supposed to be for talking, bonding, working together, getting acquainted."
"Well," was the reply, "you've done that and you will do that again, but it's just not going to work out right now. She'll be fine."
I
continued walking to and from work, often in full pack, always with my
hiking
shoes.
On Tom Sawyer day at school, Katy and John wanted to walk. It was one and a half miles up hill to Palm Crest campus. I agreed to go along on my way to work, we left at 7:30. Katy is a trooper, she will complain, but she will follow through on something she has decided to do and has begun. We arrived at school after about half an hour. I took off my pack. "I don't think I want to do this again, dad," she said.
"Not even once a year?" I was thinking of potential future Tom Sawyer days.
"Well, maybe."
Everyone safely deposited at school, I continued on to work, not arriving until about 10 a.m. As soon as I was settled in, the boss came by. I had written an e-mail in confidence in response to an editorial in some trade magazine back in January. My confidential response had been published as a letter to the editor in the latest issue and my management was not amused. It was not because of what I said that they were not amused, it was because I had used my JPL e-mail account that was supposedly equivalent to JPL letterhead that they were not amused. Larry was there to "bash me on the head" for it.
"How do you always manage to do this at section ranking time of year?" Section ranking is when annual performance based raises are determined. Good politics would have good things on management mind right then, not something like this.
Viannah went to the doctor for an evaluation every week. May 12, they decided that she could take the cast off. She could hike and swim but not twist or run. I asked if she could hike 25 miles? They hadn't asked. I pointed out that the hiking boots would be good support if she wanted to wear them, or in particular when she had to wear them for training.
We had a reprieve, the cast was off with nearly a month to go rather than ten days, but now the calendar was too full of other things like the end of school, catching up on the paying of bills, to allow more than about one more major training activity. This made the list simple. I toyed with the idea of a one-day trip up the Mount Wilson toll road, one of those on the previous plan. We looked for a suitable date. Things were back on track as well as they could be. My mood improved.
The
Long Weekend
On May 23 at 3:15 a.m. Viann got up after a sleepless night to go to Texas for her niece Jennifer Skemp's graduation from high school. She would take advantage of the long weekend plus Friday and Tuesday to have a family visit and maybe even see Jenny's baby, now adopted out to a large family. Meanwhile, I would have full charge of our three babies for one hundred thirteen straight hours.
The first day was "normal," a Friday in which all would go to school. They went off in their carpool and I went to work. That evening, we treated as a Wednesday, trying to do little but eat, watch TV and get to bed at a reasonable hour (reasonable as defined by us older folks), eighteen hours down and ninety-five to go.
Saturday both girls went to the 85th birthday of Girl Scouting, attending an event in Pomona. Arrangements had been made, they left in the morning and came back late in the afternoon. John's friend Pierce called wanting him to come over for lunch. I dropped him off and took advantage of the couple of hours to rent a video, one of those from my mental list that nobody else in the family wanted to watch. John and I spent the rest of the day painting his bike.
The bike was a hand-me-down from Viannah, was pink and purple with kittens on it. John would have nothing to do with this girl stuff and wanted it all painted black. We bought a can of spray paint and a new black seat, took apart the non-metallic parts, masked some, and went after it, thirty-two hours down and seventy-one to go.
I ordinarily go to church an hour early for rehearsal on Sunday morning. This was harder than usual since the kids ordinarily only got up on Sunday about the time I was leaving then had the extra hour to get ready and get there themselves. This put me up an hour earlier than usual in order to get myself ready then to get them up and moving and ready to go when I would normally go. They were very familiar with church, once on the premises it was no problem to go to the customary places and do the customary things.
Sunday afternoon we learned that John couldn't ride his new, black bike down hills! He wasn't that good at it yet. He would be unable to ride in the parade after all. I checked the school entry information to see about other options. The local amateur radio auxiliary 'PERCS' (Public Emergency Radio Communications Service) was helping with the parade. Unwisely, I had agreed to be involved as a corner monitor again this year.
Monday we were up early again, this time to go to the parade, seventy-five hours down and thirty-eight to go. Dressed in my bleach white pants, red T-shirt (with Solid Waste, the donor's advertisement, printed large across the back), green PERCS hardhat and radios, I drove the kids to the assembly point for their school. Nobody was there. We waited fifteen minutes. Other people showed up for the entry not knowing where they were supposed to be either. I was a PERCS participant in uniform and I didn't know anything myself. The radio channel was too busy with more urgent lineup problems to call in and find out. I left the kids in charge of another family's parents, never having seen any of them before, and sprinted off to my position at the end of the parade route.
The radio service was useful; one little girl (not one of mine) got separated from her group and was re-united with her family. PERCS and the sheriff's auxiliary handled this. I was standing next to an Explorer Girl Scout in sheriff's uniform at Indianola and Foothill. The calls went out on PERCS frequency then shortly later the important ones would come out on her radio.
We had no trouble getting back together at the end of the parade, we all went home for lunch and naps then at four went to the annual block party up the street at the Goold's. The kids required more than no supervision, particularly in the pool, but it was a congenial family atmosphere where we could visit with the neighbors without worrying too much.
As the day wound down, we got a call from Viann. They had done everything except see the baby. The adoptive family was not comfortable with so many "birth relatives." We were to pick her up at Los Angeles International (LAX) at 8 p.m. Tuesday evening, eighty-nine hours down and twenty-four to go. The worst was over; it had been an exhausting holiday.
Tuesday was again a "normal" day with school and work. I left Viannah in charge for the hour or so from when they got home to when I got home, a foreshadowing of Wednesday arrangements to come in the next school year. After a bite to eat, we loaded up and were on the way to the airport in the new van. I didn't pay much attention to speed limits on the way down or back, just trying to fit with traffic as usual and so, as we returned around 10 p.m., I was stopped and given a ticket in downtown L. A. I was honest with the officer about what I was doing and what I thought the limit was and he wrote a lenient ticket accordingly. But a ticket was on my record nonetheless.
In July I mailed in a fine and applied for traffic school. In August, the mail having been lost, I got a second notice on the fine, this time for $281! I took the afternoon off and went down town in person to pay it and complain. Late in September, I got a refund and was allowed to go to traffic school, this time "on line." But all this is a different story. I felt like I had gotten my foot caught in the great machinery of the legal system and just barely managed to get free.
Back in the present, it was a hundred and thirteen hours down and none to go. The five of us were back under one roof.
A colleague at work, Chuck Lahmeyer was a great fan of the Grand Canyon, having been many times in several different past years both as a hiker and as a rafter and kayaker. On learning of my plans, he said he would be happy to take my passes if it turned out we were unable to use them. Maybe there would be a problem and I could oblige, but given what we had been through already I didn't think so. I cautiously hoped not.
The
Abbreviated End Game - Mt. Wilson
May 31, 1997, Saturday was cleared, with difficulty, for a last major training hike, from Altadena to the top of Mt. Wilson via the old toll road. This was the same road that the 100-inch mirror had traveled on to the observatory under armed guard many decades ago. Wednesday and Thursday prior were both Wednesdays for me in the evening in the sense of having the kids home by myself, Thursday because of a Children's Choir worker's party. This left Friday overbooked with trips to the grocery store and Sport's Chalet.
We were up until midnight packing our packs as if this were the real thing. This would be the closest thing to a real simulation that we would have. Tent, clothes, food, radios, the works. It was at this point that I scrubbed several radio accessories and other unnecessary "security blanket" items from my pack, saving space and pounds. Knowing that we would be working FM direct from inside the canyon, I had mentioned to Viann that I might build an antenna on a pole to get better coverage from the campground below or from the backpack while we were on the trail. She wisely declared that I wouldn't do any such thing; we would just use the radios as they were and take what we got. Such an antenna would have been thrown out at this stage of packing anyway; I would only have lost additional sleep to have worked on it.
We got up at 6:00 a.m., not 4:30 as planned and hiked away from the car at 7:15 rather than 5:30 as planned. My pack weighed 45 pounds and Viannah's 15. This didn't count the two full gallon canteens of water. Each of us would carry one and they were eight pounds more apiece. I tried having one of the canteens tied up high in the middle of my backpack but it kept swinging around and hitting me in the shoulder. Viannah tried adjusting it some for me. People on mountain bikes and with lighter packs passed us. We rested often and did not make what I would have thought of as good time. Nobody was really happy, but we kept putting one foot in front of the other, sure that the campground 2-3 miles up the road would be around each next bend. Finally we arrived, rested at the entrance sign and then went the 200 or so yards on into the wooded camping and residence spots. At 10:30 we were in the Henninger Flats campground for a long rest at one of the picnic tables. Further, we both made good and successful use of the flush toilets there! First class!
There were overnight campers here; most were more towards the cliff edge of the campground that was now creeping into the sunlight. The ranger came out to see if we were planning on staying, with our full packs and all.
"No, just passing through on the way to the top, training hike you know," I replied.
He nodded with understanding.
Before loading back up I called in on the radio to report progress and to deal with schedule-at-home issues that had come up in our absence. No one felt like moving on, but we had to keep going. We used the table to support getting into our packs and started up the winding road, now in full sunlight.
Short cuts up the inner switchbacks in this relatively flat part of the road looked appealing to me (this time) but not Viannah. Side trails looked appealing to an ancient part of me for adventure but this was not the day for unnecessary adventure. They looked like ways to get more rests to Viannah.
We rested often (by my standards), fought flies, saw a snake in the road, sweated (finally, some practice heat!), ate our fruit, drank our water, and talked about math, football, books, and general stuff.
The crowds were very thin now in the middle section of the Toll Road, too far along to be going up casually, too far down to be coming down this early. We were on our own for a few miles of uphill grades, save the occasional mountain bikers.
The last two miles were tough. Too bad we were always miserable in such beautiful places. We coordinated with Viann on the radio from a shade-side rest stop in a cut and she started the hour-long drive up the mountain to pick us up. We had a direct frequency, but there was so much radio energy at the top of the mountain that our hand-held radio receivers were blocked and didn't work well until near the very end. I had some idea that we were a mile or two from the top, based on having read the map without absorbing enough detail not to have misread it optimistically. The end should be in sight, right around that next bend. As always.
We met two people coming down and asked them how much further. It didn't seem far to them "not a mile," they answered. They then asked us about the distance to the bottom as if they were thinking about going down and coming back up this evening. It was near five p.m. and the walk back up would be much slower. I advised against it, but the woman seemed disappointed not to go for it anyway. They continued down, we continued up.
We passed through a beautiful haven of trees in the clean air most of the way to the top. Viannah started rolling dirt down the sides from the road again. "There's nobody below here is there, dad?"
"No, but let's keep going."
"Daaaaaad!"
We arrived at a smaller radio site south of the main peak and stopped for a long rest. I lay flat on my back on a slab, exhausted, sore and chafed. We saw something spiraling out of the sky. After many minutes it went down in trees to our east. I knew about professional and amateur balloon flights but had no idea what this might be. A year later, it was confirmed for me that it had not been the descent of a routine weather balloon.
We had to keep going, just for the little bit that was the rest of the climb. Now it was me who didn't want to get up, but Viannah who wanted to get out of here. Viann, Katherine and John should be up there by now, but I had been calling without any luck for the last half mile.
A more educated reading of the map showed maybe 3/4 mile more to the top, and another 500 or so feet vertical. I could hear Viann calling me on the radio, but she could not hear my replies, being up in the bulk of the interference. Another two big switchbacks and a tempting shortcut that was steeper and taller than it looked and we were in sight of the top. Finally in radio contact, Viann and the other kids agreed to start down to meet us. They met us one and a half switchbacks, which was four hundred road yards from the end.
Viannah was tired but fine. Viann insisted on driving. I got what I thought was car sick in the van on the way down the mountain. Luckily (perhaps) there was not much on my stomach. This had been the same length and grade of trail as the hike out of the Canyon would be, but 1000 feet lower in elevation and on a day that was 20 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than was expected on an Arizona June day. Still, we had made it in full pack and felt now that we were ready to go for it for real. This would be Viannah's last training, two more weeks until 'show time.'
Back home I was miserable all evening, couldn't stand to take a shower, and fell asleep in the bathtub. After a long night's sleep I felt fine except for a little residual soreness.
My Own Final Training Hike, Cherry Canyon
It had been decided long ago that Viannah was ready for the trip whether she had any more training or not, but I felt that, considering the length of the intended "real" hike, I couldn't get enough physical training or equipment experience. Monday morning, June 1, I dressed up in full regalia and hiked to work one last time with the full, never-unloaded pack. Going up La Granada, I passed Viannah's friend Lena's house. Her mother was outside getting in her van and asked what was up. Already tired from the initial climb, I gave an abbreviated description of the trip and goals, tipped my hat and lumbered on up the hill.
The big plan this day was a major hike home from work up the Cherry Canyon trail where Viannah and I had gone early in the program but this time in full pack and by myself. Total walking mileage would be about ten, but split into two very distinct parts, a morning downhill and a longer cool evening uphill.
Around
4:30 p.m. I started into the loading and packing ritual and by 5:00 was
out the
south gate and on the way down to the Devil's Gate runoff and the
bottom of the
trail that was in a stream. Listening
to the regular commuters on the 222 MHz radio and working in between
them I
checked in with Viann from a rest stop between horse properties in
Flintridge. At another long rest stop I
had a banana and realized that I was in the same condition here as we
would be
in the Canyon with the peel, pack out that trash!
When Viannah and I had done this trail, it had been mid day and we even worried a little about heat (or at least direct sunshine) as we ascended the treeless final mile up the northeast side of Cerro Negro. Today the sun was about to set in the shallow canyon as I reached the same stretch. Resting at the bench on the plateau near the fire tower on the top, I watched people below doing a project in their backyard. While I watched, the sun went down for them and evening was underway.
As had happened to me many times before, I was going to be up here in the dark, even though we were nearing the summer solstice. The sun was down for everybody in the Southland, not just the ones on east slopes of hills, as I reached the apiary and switched to the foot trail down to the truncated service road beside the Lanternman Freeway (I-2). By the time I reached the bottom, streetlights were on and it was downright dark under the bridge where the dead-end road passed beneath the freeway. I still monitored the JPL repeater on the radio. Viann called and I told her to start supper without me.
From this point it was all streets but any residents looked with guarded alarm as somebody in full pack hiked through their neighborhood in the dusk. After crossing Verdugo at Indian Springs, it was all uphill to the house. I walked in at 7:45 just as supper was being finished and without any appetite of my own. I sat down in Viannah's vacated space and after being served simple food that didn't look very attractive, we discussed the status.
This had been my last training hike. Ready or not, here we came! I'd never been in a bicycle century ride, but had read about preparation. You worked hard in training for some weeks but the last several days before the actual event you rested and ate carbohydrates. It was time for that, at least the resting part. I felt like we had everything figured out and tested that we absolutely needed to test. The packs might be too heavy, but there was always that optimism that, in the adrenaline of the moment, we would be able to pull it off even in a sub-optimum situation. I had no real backpacking experience against which to determine just what "optimum" would be or just how "sub-optimum" our adventure and equipages were. We had everything we thought we needed and then some. We had done all the training we could possibly work into our schedules, given the minor disasters and other problems encountered.
There would be no time until the actual trip was underway for more journaling. The last couple of weeks before leaving on vacation always seem quite busy.
School
Dance
The doctor had cleared Viannah for hiking and swimming but not jogging or dancing, activities that might twist her still delicate ankle. Viann and I felt that the hiking boots would hold the ankle up fine and that she would do fine in that respect.
There was a year-end school party and dance Viannah wanted to attend. I was adamant against it on the principle that going to that one party, given our earlier experience with her ankles, could blow away everything we had worked for. She and Viann conspired for her to go anyway, promising to be careful (something she should know by now how to do) and I just rolled my eyes and looked the other way.
Despite my fears and their foolhardiness, there would be no more injuries and the only thing I was still slightly worried about was the heat in Arizona, something I had once known how to deal with (but that was years ago) and that Viannah had never really experienced in a very serious way. Well, 'there's always something,' we would just have to go, be careful, carry water, and do our best. "Our best" would mean not overdoing it.
We had sufficient camping experience, know how,
and supplies
planned for the base camp ends of the trip.
Viann would be in charge of set up without me for the first
time, but
that wasn't thought to be very hard.
All the launch-commit criteria we could think of were met; it
was time
to start the countdown!