APR-B-3
THE RUN-UP TO BOSTON,
VIA BWI AND PROVIDENCE
AND THE AMAA MEETING IN THE BACK BAY HILTON,
WITH THE USUAL RENDEZVOUS PARTY OF BOSTON REVELERS BEFORE THE MAIN EVENT
APRIL 13—15, 2001
Boston is a race—sure enough. The most venerable race in history, in fact, probably surpassing the Olympic Marathon. In fact several winners of the Boston have said they would rather win the Boston and have foregone the Olympic run. Last year’s woman winner from Kenya of the Boston was not even chosen by the Kenyans to run in the Olympics, since they had made a sweep of almost all places in the “money runners” of Boston for several years. But, much more for me and the other 15,000 folk who are at Boston as non-money winners, Boston is a great party and represents a wonderful place for the gathering of the clan, in a tradition of a wholesome activity among great companions. Among this year’s running mates, there are the “none better” “round up the usual suspects.” The combination of the AMAA and the other similar organizations and just clusters of friends who come together for this event is a tradition I would like to continue as long as I am able to crawl across the mat on Boylston!
I had said once to someone who had asked why I continue to do this and other races, that “I am not a big money runner.” That was meant to mean the prizes in the purse available to the runners was not a draw for me, since I might only see them as the elite runners’ bus pulled in to Hopkinton and I was looking up through the glass at the diminutive figures looking down and waving back at me. I do not follow the circuit of prize money races. Only after I sat down to tally up the numbers did I realize, I AM a big-money runner—with the unfortunate sign preceding those numbers being negative. I remember seeing the financial impact statement for the New York Marathon and what that event meant for the city, and I have surely done my part to boost the local economy of Boston from my participation. I made one effort after the fact to reduce the impact of the gouging of parking fees by moving my Hertz rental car out of the Hilton and abandoning it on the street on the Boston harbor waterfront—and that may have been the cagiest thing I had done to reduce the profiteering, but otherwise, I just realized that this is about as good an investment as I can make in my otherwise anemic entertainment budget—so, Boston is a worthwhile “Charity.”
I flew up from BWI after hunting and gathering a parking place for the Bronco left behind in the Green Lot at BWI. I flew up to Providence—a cagey maneuver, since the fares must be matched by the like of USAir which has the competition of Southwest Airlines to consider in the fares charged—about one third of the rate to Boston. So, from that difference, a rental car can be financed, and allowed me to visit Lee and MJ Dutton in Providence at Women and Infants Hospital at Brown. I picked up my brand new Mazda 626 (11.3 miles on the odometer) and drove to the hospital, but spent time in the parking lot, going over my talk for the morning and marking the album labeling of the Antarctic Marathon trip.
When MJ and Lee were ready, I joined them and me went to Barnside restaurant for dinner, a discovery MJ had made. It was the right time and place to talk since Lee, my running buddy from GW, who had convinced me to come up and take on the October 13 Hartford Marathon in the peak of the fall colors, has undergone a recent change of outlook after having been hassled a bit by the program directors of the surprisingly anti-academic Ob/Gyn program within Brown. I hope this turnaround goes well for him. We had a chance to talk a bit more than I ha anticipated at first, since I had used the afternoon time to put together a bit more of the first-up morning talk for the AMAA program, and would not need to be alone at Boston for that reason, but I would miss the traditional Legal Seafood dinner which starts us off on our Boston weekend on Friday night—this year, it would be Friday the Thirteenth.
I drove up to Boston, and had just pulled the rental car into the expensive Hilton lot and come to register at the desk for my pre-paid room, when I met the Clarks and the Dysons (Imme, Freeman and their daughter Becca) in the lobby on return from Legal Seafood for which Charlie had left a message for my joining them earlier. I may have missed that one, b none of the other events of the wonderful Easter weekend.
I settled into the room, which is too much luxury for me alone, and put together the running gear in one corner, and the lecture material in another, and registered in for the AMAA meeting for which I was the lead-off speaker.
The AMAA meeting went well with a good attendance up front, although the later program suffered from a problem that was apparent with a different registration site for the Boston marathon itself, for which a half-day trip had to be planned. My talk was followed by a rather good discussion of the glucosamine/chondroitin advantages for runner’s cartilage, and the group had one of the several package inserts I had made available, with an additional letter that had just been written in to the American Running and Fitness “Clinic” to which I was asked to respond, to be published next issue of their newsletter. We could then listen to Charlie Clark’s talk on “Altitude and Running” which was of interest to those of us who have a plan to run around in the Himalayas. On that subject, the July Ladakh trip now ha a long wait list, and the group here included a cardiologist named Lenz, who with his psychiatrist wife and two daughters wanted to join, as well as Jim Stanley and his son (ENT) daughter (with whom I rode the bus to the Hopkinton start) as well as Lee Dutton would like to also join. WE may have to double up on the number of people trying to go to Ladakh.
Thea Crist came to see me at the AMAA. She had last seen me when she was a nurse at GW OR twenty-five years ago. I had met recently with her brother Costas in Washington. I had recently met him again (last time met in Nairobi, when I was there with Michael and when he was in the Peace Corps) and toured around the Conservation International for which he now works on return from his home in Belize. Thea works at Mount Auburn Hospital as an anesthetist, but is escaping the competitive process of one group buying out or closing out another by having become licensed as an acupuncturist and is looking to move to Miami from Boston.
We had the traditional lunch (now 30 years running for the Clarks) at Pizzeria Uno. The Clarks and Dysons and I chose our menus carefully—as though it mattered what fuels we were consuming as to how well we would perform a couple of days later. This is a bit like the fun I had at the expense of the Japanese on our ship the Orlova, who were feeding their champion a special kelp/squid high-energy secret formula on the morning of the race—postponed, twice, before canceling. We, like they, were “all dressed up with no place to go.”
Boston is still doing the over-run “Big Dig” to bury its freeways, and has all kinds of other big construction going on. A lot of that is out at the wharfs where I once had gone to places like Anthony’s Pier Four, or where the” Spirit of Boston” is tied up. That is where the World Trade Center is located near the South Station. During the break of our morning meeting at AMAA, I ran over to the Hynes Convention Center in the Pru where we always had picked up our chip and the running packet where the Expo circus had always been. I met a guard at the door, who asked what I thought I was doing. I said “Picking up my packet, as always!” “It is not here.” I thought, “Right, he would know. Here I have picked up my packet here every time I ha run this race.”
He did know. The convention center was evidently booked for some other purpose, and we would have to take a half-day excursion to go get our numbers. So, we did. The Clarks and Dysons and I all piled in to the Mazda I had rented, and I ransomed it out of the parking lot of the Hilton and drove it out to the docks next to the Big Apple Circus, also going on, and found a construction site on the street there without a sign or parking meter and abandoned it. I figured the worst thing that could happen is a ticket, or towing, or a breaking in to Mr. Hertz’s car, but I did not want it to sit idle for four days gathering large parking fees. We all went in and got our tags and toured the exhibits. There I saw Bill Rodgers again and had our photo taken again.
There would be no second “drop in” this far away, and we all made our way back by the MTA. For the evening we had made reservations at Davios’s restaurant on Newberry Street, where we strolled thought the” High Trendola” neighborhood after our Pizza Uno’s lunch to raise the reservation to include Ron Lawrence and his wife for the evening.
Ron Lawrence is a neurologist who is now into a dozen other gimmicks, including therapeutic magnets. He lives in Malibu, and is doctor to the Hollywood set, dropping the names of the rich and famous such as Jimmy Coburn and Cuba Gooding and all the other glitterati. But he was founder of the AMAA when it was the AMJA (Joggers) and had run 130 marathons when he launched a tradition of walking them later. He has had an interest in the Himalayas, and also has talked with me about an agent friend of his Jack Scoville in New York. His wife is going to Minas Gerais in Brazil about which could tell her a few details from prior visits.
I had told Freeman that Peter Caws was my advisor and thesis committee chairman. I asked about his prior career as physicist, and learned to my surprise that he had worked with the Dysons at Princeton. I told him about the” Festschrift” Symposium in Peter’s honor on his 70th birthday on Friday next, which I will attend before flying off to Dharamsala, and Freeman wrote a greeting on the back of a card for me to present to him.
The Davios dinner was a god example of the real events that bring us all back to Boston around the Main Event, and this one does not even cause us to break a sweat!
The Dysons had a special Easter service. They borrowed the Clark’s car and drove to Maine where their daughter Mia is a Presbyterian minister. They could both hear her preach, and then re-unite with the grandchildren, all this before Mia went off to Europe this week after a hectic Lenten season in a pastor’s life. I just got Don and Martheen’s letter closing out their time in Troy Michigan and returning home also, having the opportunity to announce the acceptance of the call to pastor that congregation after the transition.
I tried to sneak around into two churches, one being the classic old Trinity church,a very High High Church, but each was filled to overflowing. So, I will carry my spring Easter worship to the streets—including the long one from Hopkinton to the Pru. Boston has a lot of coincidences for each of us, since Cindy did her nursing training at MGH, I lived in Brookline and have the whole of the PBBH and Boston Children’s Hospital Med Center tradition behind me, with Michael having been born in the Richardson House at Lying-In (all hospital names and amalgamations having been homogenized among all of these former traditions into “Systems” now of corporate money power). But, the Dyson’s daughter Becca is a radiologist who had headed up the mammography unit of the women’s health division. Formerly married to an emergency medicine doc from the PBBH, and at whose home we visited about three years ago with the grandkids of the Dysons including Dorothy’s three boys and their twins, and Mia’s kids in the new house in Westwood, she is now living with Peter, a neat guy who is a radiologist as well as a short-order cook—which we proved in the pre-race pasta party at his rented house. When we drove over, the poignancy of this time is apparent, since Becca and Peter are leaving on July first, having each taken half a job as radiologist at a 64 bed hospital in the 4,000 population town of Shasta California. They will be climbing the namesake mountain as soon as they get there and had pitched the good Moss tent in the backyard to test it out.
` In the driveway are two vehicles that set the differing perspectives of each of us drooling: Becca’s new Porsche Boxer roadster and Peter’s 34 year-old Land Rover. I, of course, would trade the one for the other in a heartbeat. Peter had got the Rover from a woman kindergarten teacher who had replaced the undercarriage. Now, who among you would like to meet this chick? Peter has competently tinkered with the Rover to put all other stuff in working order so its magnificent four cylinder 60 horsepower engine can pull the vehicle along in all terrain.
We had a good time with the family and I could play again with the kids especially the twins—this time with a bit more than academic interest as I may have had when I was the entertainment for them as we waited outside Faneuil Hall for a pasta party pre-race dinner about four years ago. The poignancy is that each of these occasions are precious, but always changing –sort of like grandkids are always changing—since addresses, and special members of such groups may come and go, and is a privilege at any time to be among them. As Hereclitus did NOT say: “It is impossible to step into the same river ONCE!”
But, now, we have had our reunions and our fun frolics, and it is time to get out there and hit the road for the main event: Get up early and hitch a ride to Hopkinton, since we will make our way back with a few good friends and running mates to Boston ON THE RUN!