Coronavirus Diary March 19, 2020 to January 14, 2021

April 29, 2025 – Below is the diary I kept for the first year of the Coronavirus pandemic, mostly detailing my horror at the president’s mishandling, which in my opinion cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of American citizens.

I’m including it in my “autobiography” because it was a significant part of my life.

I got vaccinated as soon as I could when it first became available and have been vaccinated every six months since then. I have never gotten Covid…. yet.

With his re-election in November, 2024, President Trump has dismantled many of the health agencies that would protect us from the next pandemic. It will happen, and he will be as responsible for that one as he was the first one.

Thursday, March 19, 2020

Following in the footsteps of Samuel Pepys or Boccaccio, I’m going to begin keeping a diary of what appears to be the greatest pandemic of my lifetime of 70 years. It remains to be seen if this one will supersede the great flu pandemic of 1918. I think it probably will not, but it does seem like it’s going to be bad enough in its own right, and it has certainly gripped this nation and the world in ways unseen since that one.

Back in late December, reports began to creep out of China that there was a new flu virus hitting the city of Wuhan. By mid-February it had peaked, with 81,000 cases and 3000 deaths, just as new cases were being reported in Iran, Italy and South Korea. These cases were soon greater in number than those in China, and from there, of course, the disease overspread the world.

As of today, there are over 191,000 cases world-wide with 7800 deaths, and here in the United States it can be found in all 50 states.

A major emphasis is being put on what is called “flattening the curve”. In other words, by taking early and stringent measures, which includes “social distancing” and massive testing of a nation’s population, a potential huge spike in cases that would overwhelm both medical and social services can be avoided.

This is what has seemed to work successfully in South Korea (8000 cases, 90 deaths and the curve diminishing) and why Italy is failing so spectacularly (36,000 cases, 3000 deaths with the curve still rising).

So where is the United States in all this? Currently we stand at 9500 cases, 155 deaths, but we seem poised to follow Italy’s model, much more than South Korea’s. Why?

Several reasons:

1. Until one week ago, President Trump was publicly calling the virus a “Democrat hoax” designed to destroy his presidency.
2. In a “cost-saving” move, the President in 2018 disbanded a special committee within the Center for Disease Control (CDC) designed to deal specifically with pandemics.
3. The US historically relies on its own CDC-approved testing for these kinds of outbreaks (like SARS, swine flu and others that have periodically arisen). But this year something went horribly wrong with our testing, and the first wave of them malfunctioned. Instead of immediately contacting the World Health Organization (WHO) for their test formula, we went back to square one, the result being that we are just NOW beginning to get a significant number of tests into the places that need them most (which by now means just about everywhere).
4. Because of the late response of the president, Americans have not been on board with the other most important part of conquering this disease: social distancing. Just yesterday we were seeing pictures of spring break beaches in Florida swarming with college students, and other scenes in cities across the U.S. of many people in close proximity. This is a combination of governors not taking action to order public facilities closed, and citizens simply not understanding the gravity of the situation. On the other hand, most institutions large and small have heeded the call. The NBA, MLB, NHL, NCAA and virtually every college, university and public and private school across the nation have canceled their seasons/shut their doors for the unforeseeable future. All “single-day” events (Daytona 500, Kentucky Derby, Indy 500 etc.) have been canceled. Virtually every business has ordered employees to work from home. All restaurants and bars are closed by order of governors. Grocery store shelves are empty of items like milk, bread, toilet paper, paper towels, disinfectant wipes, hand sanitizer. On a smaller and more personal level, all mountain bike races have been canceled or postponed. All of this is unprecedented in our history, and will have a massive impact on the economy: no one knows to what degree. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which had risen from 19,732 on the last day of the Obama administration, and had peaked at over 29,000 during Trump’s three-plus years in office, closed yesterday at 19,898, wiping out all the gains of the past three years. Congress is dithering over what to do – pass legislation to bail out large corporations, or attempt to funnel money directly to the millions who are instantly unemployed.

Sadly, Republicans, now the party of President Trump, have tended to follow his lead, and in states led by Republican governors, or in churches led by Trumper pastors, the status quo has been held for far too long.

Here is a list of statements made by Trump prior to this date:

January 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming from China. We

have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”

January 30: “We think we have it very well under control.”

February 10: “By April, you know in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it will miraculously

disappear.”

February 19: “Things are going to get progressively better as we go along.”

February 25: “If we go back six months, or even three months ago, nobody would ever have

predicted this.”

February 26: “When you have fifteen people, and the fifteen within a couple of days will down

to close to zero, uhh, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”

February 28: “They say, ohhh, you should do more; uhh, there’s nothing more you can do.”

February 28: “We haven’t seen an increase and people are getting better. Almost everybody that

we see is getting better. And it could be everybody, too.”

February 28 (at rally): “The Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus…. They can’t even count their votes in Iowa…. They tried the impeachment hoax. And this is their new hoax. But you know, we did something that’s been pretty amazing. We have fifteen people in this massive country…. The press is in hysteria mode. CNN – fake news – and the camera just went off!”

February 29: “Unfortunately, one person passed away overnight. Since the early stages of the foreign outbreak my administration has taken the most aggressive action in modern history. That really turned out to be a lifesaver in a sense. A big lifesaver.”

March 4: “Some people will have this at a very light level and won’t even go to a doctor or a hospital – they’ll get better.”

March 6: “Anybody that needs a test will get a test. They’re there. They have the tests. And the tests are beautiful… The tests are all perfect…. The transcription was all perfect.” (referring to the truncated Ukraine phone transcript of June, 2019)

March 10: “And we’re doing a great job with it, and it will go away…”

March 12: “…because of what I did, and the administration did with China, we have 32 deaths at this point. Other countries, other smaller countries, have many many deaths.”

March 15: “It’s a very contagious virus. It’s uh incredible. But it’s something we have tremendous control over.”

March 17: “I’ve always known this is a real… this is a pandemic. I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.”

March 18: “We have very great approval numbers. People like the job that we’re doing.”

March 19: “The only thing we weren’t prepared for was the media. The media has not treated it fairly.”

The result of all this? I fear the horse has left the barn. Without testing and without early social distancing, we are doomed to face (possibly/probably) the worst numbers of any industrialized nation (and God help West Africa*, where it seems to be just beginning). The spike in our own U.S. curve seems to indicate exactly this. The next week will tell the story. (*3/24/20 note: there may be early indications that warmer climates are being significantly less-effected than cooler climes. Still too early to say, but possible hope here.)

Here at home

We live in Naperville, Illinois. As late as this past weekend, bars and restaurants were filled with customers. Life seemed to be carrying on almost as usual. Too late. Too late.

Yesterday, we drove past the commuter parking lots – virtually empty. Downtown – virtually deserted. Every restaurant and bar closed and dark (some offering carry-out options).

Lois taught pandemics in her Modern World History classes for years. She has a particular fancy for bad shit: earthquakes, volcanoes, natural disasters of all types. Thank goodness. When this began to break out from China in early February, Lois began getting us ready.

There are four of us in this household: myself, Lois, Lois’s 84-year-old mother Mary Lou, and our friend 68-year-old Cathy Mosher. Mary Lou is coming off of foot surgery caused by a car accident in January, and just at the tail end of a bad cold. Cathy is quite sedentary – does not like or get any physical exercise, and breathes somewhat heavily just going up a flight of stairs. The mortality rate for people over 60 is off the charts compared to all ages below 60.

Our first priority is Mary Lou’s health. She is by far the most vulnerable member of the household. Cathy would be next. Lois and I, who both get a lot of exercise, are not overweight, and are basically some years younger than our ages, are last on the list. That’s not to say that I, at 70, am not concerned for myself and for Lois. This virus strikes the lungs, turning into a fast-developing pneumonia that requires respiration, without which death tends to follow quickly. Healthy lungs have an excellent chance against it. But both Lois and I have had pneumonia – Lois about 25 years ago, and mine a year ago. Chances of getting pneumonia again are greatly increased for those who have already had it.

A little more than two weeks ago Lois stocked up on supplies like paper toweling, toilet paper, and cleaning supplies. These are supplies that today are virtually impossible to find in the grocery stores (see above). More than a week ago we began what I would define as “semi-self-quarantining”, canceling any unnecessary appointments and going out only for necessities like milk. As of this week, we began drawing that quarantine tighter. For instance, when we run out of milk, we’ll do without it until we feel it’s safe to go to the store.

Lois and I have both been going outside for our exercise (Lois’s gym closed), but now are questioning that in light of an ABC World News report last evening that stated the virus can hang in the air for up to three hours. I had a conversation with a med school student* just this morning, however, who put me a bit at ease about that. A person would have to sneeze or cough violently (regular breathing wouldn’t do it) in a relatively closed indoor space for that “3-hour” rule to apply. Outside, even in still air, the virus would dissipate rapidly. (*former student Emily Temple-Wood, whose virus blog CoronaExtra appears to be going “viral” [sorry])

In order to support our local restaurants who face economic catastrophe, we decided to periodically order out for pick-up. I went two nights ago for Chinese. I was frankly nervous about it. I made certain not to touch the railing going up and down the stairs to the restaurant (and I usually use railings as a crutch). I pulled my sleeve down over my hand to open the door. I was relieved to see not a single other person in the restaurant other than the man behind the counter. I stayed back while he brought out our bag. I gingerly handed him the money and just as gingerly received the change. I picked up the bag at the handles, touching nothing else. When I got home I washed my hands thoroughly after pulling the food out of the bag.

This, by the way, the day before Illinois conducted its primary election, in which tens of thousands of citizens went to polling places. Idiocy on the part of our governor for not postponing or going to all-mail-in ballots, and idiocy for those who went to the polls. I was scheduled to be an election judge, but that was one of the “appointments” I canceled the week before. I don’t understand why any election judge (and they’re all like 95 years old) put themselves directly in the line of fire for a continuous 12 hours on Tuesday.

But there we are. The Dow Jones has dropped another 300 points this morning as of the opening bell a half hour ago. The US had 2800 new cases of coronavirus yesterday, up 66% from the day before.

Friday, March 20, 2020

Reporter: “What do you say to Americans who are watching you right now and are scared?
Trump: “I’d say that you’re a terrible reporter. That’s what I’d say. I think it’s a very nasty question. I’ve been right a lot. Let’s see what happens.”

U.S. – 15,771 cases, 204 deaths as of 11:30 a.m.

Dow Jones closed today at 19,173, a new low.

But over 19,600 cases and 264 deaths by 10:20 p.m. (Although numbers vary. CNN reporting 18,700 cases and 258 deaths. We seem to be entering a new phase now, with the numbers spiking upward in a rapid fashion. I wish I could describe how I felt. It’s not a gut-wrenching fear. It’s more the uncertainty of it all. In some ways I feel like I know more about the disease today than I did a few days ago when I was unsure about anything – was six feet far enough? could you catch it from someone who was just breathing normally? How long did it actually adhere to surfaces?

Now I feel like I have more of a handle on where and how I can go out, how to handle the necessary trip to the grocery store or over to Walgreen’s, heading out for a ride on the bike.

But… that uncertainty. Where is this going? Who is the first friend or family member who succumbs to the disease? Will it be me? Lois? One of our daughters? Sons-in-law? Cousins, nephews, nieces, grandchildren, etc. etc. It seems certain, certain now that someone in the family will get the disease. Maybe more than one.

Recording first person I know to possibly have Covid-19: Alicia Formato, daughter of our friends Matt and Gale Formato. Alicia lives in L.A., is sick with the symptoms… and cannot get tested. How many more friends and family will we hear of in the days to come?

The states of California, New York, Illinois and Connecticut (about 75 million Americans, or nearly one-quarter of the U.S. population are under governor’s orders to “shelter in place”. This means stay home except for going out for groceries, pharmacy, gas or restaurant pick-up. Nobody going to work, nobody taking the train, all restaurants closed for sit-down, all bars closed, all non-essential businesses closed.

BTW, my source for statistics is coming from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/, a website that gets high marks for reliability and honesty. (I’m choosing it over Emily’s corona extra blog because it updates much more frequently.)

Saturday, March 21

The virus, which started in Wuhan, China in December now appears to be dissipating there. Today, Europe is the epicenter, with Italy the eye of the storm. Italy reported 672 deaths in yesterday’s 24-hour span, their highest number yet. We’re guessing the U.S. will be about two weeks behind this curve. And what happens when it starts hitting Africa and South America?

Today’s world totals sit at 277,000 cases and 11,500 deaths.

In the U.S. today, NYC is our epicenter and they appear to be getting slammed. In the space of just three days, they went from “things are okay” to hospitals being overwhelmed. And we’re at the front edge of this curve! Biggest problems now facing the healthcare system are lack of ventilators for patients and lack of face masks for responders. Both of these problems can be laid directly at the feet of the federal government under President Donald Trump. When we elected this incompetent fool in 2016, Lois and I hoped simply that we might get through four years without his doing real damage. Those hopes were not realized. Our hope now is that America will finally wake up from its experiment in electing a dangerously incompetent president and return to sanity in November.

There have been daily press conferences from the White House. When the president speaks, he is childish and petulant. More importantly, he has given information that his own experts, lined up behind him, have to step in and correct. The result is a lack of coherent message coming from the top. In yesterday’s press conference, an NBC reporter asked the president what he would say to assuage the fears of millions of Americans. The president’s response: “I’d tell them you’re a bad reporter. That’s a nasty question.” I know if you’re reading this years from now, that seems like an insane answer in a time of national crisis. It is, but this is the president America elected in 2016 because they wanted to overturn the system. Well, his voters got what they wanted.

How do you die from this virus? It begins with dry, hacking cough and fever (over 101). Extreme fatigue. No stomach cramps or other bowel issues associated with “regular” flu. Then it moves to pneumonia and that’s how it kills. As hospitals are overwhelmed with the need for respirators and ventilators, those who require them won’t get them. There are some very scary videos coming out of Italian hospitals. An antidote for the disease will take a year to a year-and-a-half to produce, though they do hope to be fast-tracking that. We’ll see.

11:30 a.m. – U.S. confirmed cases – 22,019, up about 6500 from yesterday at this time. That’s basically an increase of 1/3 in 25 hours.

U.S. deaths – 281, up 77 from yesterday at this time. 27% increase.

World confirmed cases: 290,322, up 13,000 from this morning

World Deaths: 11,962, up 350 from this morning.

10:45 p.m. – U.S. confirmed cases – 25,859, up approx. 4000 in 12 hours

            U.S. deaths – 348 – up 65 in 12 hours

People critical of “over-reacting” to the virus should pay attention to these numbers.

Sunday, March 22 –

All churches closed, most doing livestreams in some form. Cannot imagine what the African-American church service is like with no call-and-response congregation and no choir.

Lois and I drove down to Swallow Cliffs so she could do the stairs. As we pulled up we realized the gates were closed and there were two squad cars there making sure no one got in. Makes sense on a weekend, I guess. Those stairs can get crowded, and the handrail…

Meanwhile DuPage Forest Preserve put out a “come on in” message yesterday, letting us know rest rooms would be closed and any manned facility would be closed, but the trails are available for walking, running and biking.

We saw our first virus testing station in a Walgreen’s parking lot in Bolingbrook on the way home. Small white tent with about five workers in full head-to-toe pandemic regalia.

Today’s stats as of 1:30 p.m.

 U.S. cases – 32,356 – up 4,000 in the past 13 hours

            U.S. deaths – 396 – up 48 in past 13 hours

The president spends a significant portion of each daily press briefing attacking the press for its “nasty questions”, “unfairness” and “fake news”. Other time is spent posing opinions which his medical experts then have to take the microphone to refute, refine or correct in some fashion. In short, he’s being exactly the kind of person he’s always been.

It’s clear today that tests are still in woefully short supply all over the nation, but especially in the hardest-hit areas. The masks that first responders need are continually promised by the president, but never seem to be actually supplied in anywhere near the numbers needed. Ventilators, the critical piece of equipment needed to keep the critically ill alive until they can pull through, are also in extremely short supply.

Monday, March 23, 2020

Fox News interviewer: “A month ago, the CDC had an initial test that failed. At that moment late February you said it’s perfect, and it wasn’t perfect.”

Trump: “What I said was perfect was my conversation with the head of the Ukraine. That’s what I really said was perfect. Okay, that was another whole scandal, nonsense, a total witch hunt. But nobody ever expected a thing like this….”

10:30 a.m. – U.S. – Cases – 35,232 – (up approx. 3000 in past 23 hours – slowing trend???)

            Deaths – 459 – up 63 in past 23 hours – slowing trend???)

Today, reports indicate that the president is growing impatient with the lockdown orders. He’s concerned that unless we get people back working, the economy my suffer some kind of permanent damage. (Dow Jones down 605 to 18,568 as of 1:00 p.m.). At the same time we’re hearing Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell accusing the Democrats of holding up the rescue package because (paraphrasing) “the economy is tanking as the Democrats dither”. In times of crisis, people (and political parties) display their true colors. So today we see the fundamental and stark difference between Democrats and Republicans displayed in both these men: for Republicans, it’s about the economy. For Democrats, it’s about human beings.

5:15 p.m. – U.S. – Cases – 43,033 (up 7790 cases in past 6 hrs. 45 minutes – uh oh)

            Deaths – 530 – (up 71 in same amt. of time – also uh-oh)

I think we’re approaching a very important 3-5 day period here in the U.S. in which we may well discover whether we begin to “flatten the curve” as they say, or whether we go off the charts into an area unseen by any other nation to date.

History:

This virus started in the city of Wuhan, China and quickly ran rampant there. The totalitarian Chinese government (hard to know what to believe with them) clamped down with severe restrictions on movement. The virus killed over 3000 people there through January into February, but seems to have now quieted down. It’s possible it’s merely in a remission phase – we’ll find that out, I guess.

In the meantime, it spread to Iran and Italy, both nations very hard-hit. Again with Iran, a totalitarian regime, hard to know what to believe, but to date 23,000 cases and 1800 deaths (127 more just today). Italy with 64,000 cases and over 6000 dead, and seemingly far from over there.

Here, the first known case was near Sacramento, California. This case seemed to be a complete mystery… until it was discovered that the passengers from a cruise ship who were being quarantined at a military base near Sacramento were being greeted by a group of untrained and unequipped border patrol agents who had been taken off their duties guarding children of illegal immigrants at the Mexican border and whipped up to Sacramento. These workers were then allowed to leave the base each evening and go back into the community. Height of stupidity? Yes, but not a surprise.

The first real epicenter, though, was in Kirkland, Washington, centered in a nursing home there, where the disease ran rampant among residents and staff.

And then the jump to New York City, which is now going off the charts. This, of course, has massive ramifications. We’ll see where it goes.

Prediction: Florida, with a Republican governor resistant to closing the beaches during spring break and a huge senior citizen population, will become the worst. Also, any major city, including of course Chicago.

The U.S. seems to be about two weeks behind the Iranian/Italian curves, but as of this weekend, our curve appears to be spiking steeper than either of them at similar points in the development of the disease. Even a slightly sharper incline can mean the difference in hundreds of thousands of lives. There have been estimates that up to half the U.S. population may contract the virus. This would be 160 million cases at worst. With a 3% mortality rate, which seems to be our average so far, that would be 4,800,000 deaths… or just a shade above the 30-60,000 annual flu death rate the doubters (mostly Trump Republicans) like to taunt us with (ie., “There’s only 500 Americans dead. That’s NOTHING compared with the average number who die of the regular flu every year! Why are we panicking??”)

There was actually a Republican governor today who suggested that a few thousand older grandparents probably wouldn’t mind dying if it meant the economy could get turned around again.

Which reminds me, the market was down another 582 today to close at 18,591. Two months ago, Lois and I deposited $10,000 into a mutual fund account with Fidelity. I don’t even want to look to see what it’s worth. Same with our IRA’s. We’re in for the long haul, and some day this thing will turn around. How long will it take to recover back to 29,000? Maybe not in our lifetimes, but we’re fortunate in that our IRA’s are the back-up to our pensions. Now… if the pension funds go south…

Tuesday, March 24, 2020

12:40 p.m. – U.S. cases – 49,594 – up 6500 in past 17 hours – slightly slower pace

            U.S. deaths – 622 – up 90 in same time – slightly slower pace

To be clear, our spike in new cases has more to do with increased testing perhaps than anything else, but the spike in deaths is another matter.

Meantime, China reports its first new cases (78) and deaths (7) in a week or more. Second phase beginning, or just a blip?

Italy still skyrocketing with 5900 new cases (a pace slightly lower than U.S. in numbers but not per capita) and 743 new deaths in the past 24 hours.

World – 407,696 cases, 18,251 deaths. In the past six days, the number of cases and deaths has slightly more than doubled. We’ll have to watch and see where this goes. The curve doesn’t look good.

3:30 p.m. – U.S. cases – 52,878, up 3300 in the past three hours

            U.S. deaths – 682, up 60 in the past three hours (not good)

10:30  p.m. – U.S. cases – 54,867, up 2000 in the past seven hours

U.S. deaths – 782, up 100 in the past seven hours (definitely not good – we seem to be beginning the geometric progression.

Wednesday, March 25, 2020

5:40 p.m. – U.S. cases – 65,424 cases, up 9400 in the past 19 hours

            U.S. deaths – 928 deaths – up 146 in past 19 hours (a bit leveling)

Thursday, March 26, 2020

“We’ve got to get back to work, and I think we can start by opening up certain parts of the country.”

2:20 p.m. – U.S. cases – 79,082 cases, up 13,500 cases in the past 19 hours

            U.S. deaths – 1143, up 215 in the past 19 hours

It’s time to start breaking this down. These numbers are alarming, but they become more alarming when we realize that they aren’t spread evenly across the country. They tend to focus in large on specific “spots” – today those spots happen to be New York City, New Jersey, and New Orleans. NYC alone has 35,000 of the U.S. total 79,000 cases (and 385 of its deaths). New Jersey (6181 cases, but new cases beginning to spike, along with deaths, currently at 81. Louisiana, specifically New Orleans, just beginning to go critical: 2300 cases, 83 deaths, but saying their hospitals are already overwhelmed.

Michigan and Florida are both beginning to spike.

California with 3300 cases 68 deaths, but they seem to have peaked and leveled out.

And then there’s the governor of Mississippi (485 cases, 5 deaths) who yesterday announced that “Mississippi will never be China” and overrode the quarantine requirements put on by several city mayors. This is reckless and irresponsible. (Note: Republican governor)

Also reckless and irresponsible is President Trump’s declaration that he wants all of this to be over by Easter Sunday, so the churches can be filled for Easter services. As the numbers continue to climb, he will, of course rescind this statement (and probably deny that he made it), but the damage done can be demonstrated by our foster daughter Tiffany, who told us yesterday that “the president says this is all going to be over by Easter”. This leads her and others to continue to not take the virus seriously. For instance, the weekend before this last one she and her boyfriend went up to Milwaukee and partied. Unlike those us watching the news cycle 24/7, she represents most Americans who just catch the “headline”, and of course a president’s statement is going to be a headline.

This morning I made my second grocery run since our self-quarantine. There were significant differences from my last run a week and half ago. Maybe 10-15% of the customers were wearing masks of gloves. People clearly giving wide berths, trying to avoid each other in aisles. But STILL a disturbing number (clearly a tiny minority) of shoppers who just walked right past you, seemingly paying no heed to the social distancing announcements being put over the PA system every ten minutes or so. And of course it takes just one.

I wore latex gloves into the store and did all my shopping with them on. But… dilemma. When I got back to the car, do I open the car and handle the gearshift, the steering wheel and ignition with the possibly-contaminated gloves, thus possibly contaminating my car? Because I do need the glove on when I get back home and take the grocery bags *out* of the car and into the house.

My decision: took the gloves off after loading the car, then put them back on again when I got home and out of the car. But… where do you put the gloves in the car while you’re driving home? See how this virus can get into your head, lol?

WORLD

The U.S. now leads the world in the number of new cases. Still behind China and Italy in number of total cases, but by tomorrow we should be… NUMBER ONE!!

5:00 p.m. – Didn’t take til tomorrow. U.S. surpassed both Italy and China to surge into #1 in total Covid-19 cases. Now, per capita the U.S. is still in about 10^th place among nations of the world… but I’m afraid that’s going to change.

Friday, March 27, 2020

The U.S. sits today on a very precarious ledge. IF our social distancing measures make a difference, me *might* see our curve begin to flatten. On the other hand, our per capita numbers compared to other nations ahead of us on the curve are quite high.

1:30 p.m. – U.S. cases – 96,998, up 18,000 in the past 23 hours

            U.S. deaths – 1477, up 334 in the past 23 hours

Some possibly good news from NYC. Their case totals were doubling every two days last week. Then it doubled every three days, and now it’s doubling every four days – a sign that the curve might be flattening. But here’s the concern. Because neither the president nor many governors have either failed to act at all or have acted too late (like Pritzker in Illinois), the concern is that many states aren’t even seeing the front edge of the wave that’s going to grow and grow until it crests over the top of hospital ability to handle. Again, this comes down primarily to ventilators for those in critical respiratory distress who must have one or die.

So… Illinois, which did not order a lockdown until AFTER the big Saturday St. Pat’s Day celebrations in Chicago. Jam-packed bars. And then allowed the Illinois primary to occur on the 17^th – hundreds of thousands of Illinois citizens traipsing through the polling places.

Florida, where the governor closed the beaches… AFTER spring break… in a state filled to the brim with retirees.

Arizona, where to this date the governor (Republican) still has ordered no special precautions… in another state filled up with retirees.

California, where people flocked to the beaches AFTER the governor ordered a shelter-in-place order.

Louisiana, only because it’s happening right now already. Per capita, it’s the #1 hot spot in America right now.

4:30 p.m. – The U.S. just topped 100,000 cases, up 3000 in the past 3 hours.

            U.S. deaths – 1546, up 69 in the past three hours. (This extrapolates to 560/24 hrs. if it continues. This will be interesting to watch, to say the least.)

WORLD

U.S. now pulling away in number of cases worldwide

Italy in second, 86,500 cases, and 9100 deaths.

China in third at 81,000, which is where they’ve been for weeks (a good sign, but we must note that tho they started late, they instituted draconian measures to flatten the curve)

Spain in fourth, with a high number of new deaths (775 in the past day), but lagging behind U.S. in all numbers just because of per capita.

Then Germany (5), France (6), Iran (7), and UK (8), where the numbers seem to be growing. Somehow Germany with pretty high case numbers (51,000) has a pretty low death rate (351). Might be interesting to watch that.

U.S.

NYC still the American epicenter. Over 40% of all U.S. cases. (46,000/104,000)

9:00 p.m. – U.S. cases now at 123,578, up 23,500 since 4:30 p.m. We’re running away from the rest of the world now (due largely to our larger population)

            U.S deaths now 2221, up 675 since 4:30 p.m. We’re now moving into 1000/day territory. On March 23, five days ago, we were losing fewer than 100/day. (Ed. Note March 30: This seems to be an aberration caused perhaps by a surge in reporting lumped into just a few hours time. In any event, this figure has proven to be high… for now.)

Sunday, March 29, 2020

“On Easter, we probably think that could be a peak, that could be a peak period, that could be the peak number of deaths before it starts coming down.”

Excerpts from this morning’s Chicago Tribune: “Of the 75 senior positions at the Department of Homeland Security, 20 are either vacant or filled by acting officials, including Chad Wolf, the acting secretary who recently was unable to tell a Senate committee how many respirators and protective face masks were available in the United States….At the Department of Veteran Affairs, workers are scrambling to order medical supplies on Amazon after its leaders, lacking experience in disaster responses, failed to prepare for the onslaught of patients at its medical centers. Ever since President Donald Trump came into office, a record high turnover and unfilled jobs have resulted in empty offices across wide swaths of the federal bureaucracy. Now, current and former administration officials and disaster experts say the coronavirus has exposed those failings as never before….Some 80% of the senior positions in the White House below the Cabinet level have turned over during Trump’s administration, with about 500 people having departed since the inauguration. Trump is on his fourth chief of staff, his fourth national security adviser and his fifth secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.”

3:20 p.m. – U.S. cases, 138,908, up 13,500 since yesterday 9 p.m. (a slowing trend!)

            U.S deaths, 2438, up 271 since yesterday 9 p.m. (also a slowing trend!)

Monday, March 30, 2020

This could be very temporary, because both the news cycle and the medical experts all seem to indicate we’re on the very front end of this, but… we’ve seen a slowdown in both U.S. cases AND deaths over the past two days.

10:15 a.m. – U.S. cases, 144,565, up 5500 since 3:20 p.m. yesterday (more slowing!)

            U.S. deaths, 2602, up 164 in same time (and ditto)

To the point mentioned above, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who seems to be the only believable person on the stage at the daily presidential briefings, estimated on yesterday’s morning news shows that he expects the U.S. death rate to end up somewhere between 100 and 200,000. So… are we just in a lag spot here, where NYC is beginning to taper off but other cities have not begun their sharp upward spikes? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

In the meantime, “President” Trump, who just days ago was boosting the idea that the churches would all be filled for Easter Sunday (April 12), yesterday extended the “stay-at-home” advisory to the end of April. He simply cannot seem to understand anything other than what he wants to believe until it gets beat into him with a sledgehammer. His daily briefings have been a horror show of self-aggrandizement, lies, half-truths and misstatements, all of which have to be corrected by the other people on the dais with him (usually Fauci).

2:30 p.m. – U.S. cases, 158,290, up almost 14,000 in just under four hours (speeding up)

            U.S. deaths, 2933, up 331 in just under four hours (also speeding up)

I really should start keeping track of epicenters within the U.S. New York is our current hot spot, but I think Florida will explode and California and NJ seem to be upticking. Let’s see if we can start following their trends. I’ll put them in order of severity as of the time I check.

As of 2:30 p.m., Monday, March 30

1. New York – 66,497 cases, 1218 deaths
2. New Jersey – 16,636 cases, 198 deaths
3. Michigan – 6498 cases, 184 deaths
4. California – 6358 cases, 132 deaths (I read that this number doubled since yesterday)
5. Florida – 5473 cases, 63 deaths

10:00 p.m. – U.S. cases, 164,253, up 6000 since 2:30 (last 7.5 hrs.)

            U.S. deaths, 3165, up 430 in last 7.5 hrs.

Media reporting that this is the first 500-death day in the U.S. My math shows 26,000 new cases since 3:30 yesterday afternoon.

10 p.m. – On a statewide level, California has surged into third place in numbers of cases reported, followed now by Michigan, Massachusetts and Florida. Washington, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Louisiana

Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Trump at news conference: “This is going to be gone, it’ll be gone, hopefully gone for a loong time.”

VP Pence to CNN: “I don’t believe the president has ever belittled the threat of the coronavirus.”

Florida numbers now beginning to surge.

Big news on the networks today: 821 U.S. deaths… and the “president” say you can wear a scarf over your face in lieu of an N95 mask. Really.

9:15 p.m. – U.S. cases, 188,530, up 24,000 in past 23 hours

U.S. deaths, 3889, up 700 in past 23 hours (again, slightly different count time than the networks).

New York – 75,983 cases, 1550 deaths

New Jersey – 18,693 cases, 267 deaths

California – 8504 cases, 180 deaths

Michigan, Florida, Massachusetts, Illinois follow

Detroit and Chicago beginning to ramp up.

Perhaps the biggest story: the testing still is not there! Promises, promises, promises, and nothing seems to happen. To be clear, there is more testing than there was two weeks ago, but our testing is so far behind that we have no idea how many Americans are sick and where they’re located.

From March 27 Washington Post, “In a statement Friday, Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Health Brett P. ­Giroir said federal officials have been “actively involved in dozens” of mobile sites across the United States, providing supplies or personnel to roughly 30 of them.”

Thirty.

On March 13, the “president” promised testing areas in Walmart, RiteAid and Target parking lots all across America. The CEOs of those chains stood next to him.  There are collectively 26,400 of these stores across the nation.

As of tonight, there are exactly five testing stations in these parking lots.

This is gonna be bad.

The “president’s” briefing today is the first time he has taken a somber tone. I believe he told the American people the truth for the first time. He said the estimates now are that there will be between 100 and 200,000 American deaths before this is all over, and that we should prepare for a very difficult couple of weeks coming up.

In the same briefing, however, he said that wearing a scarf over your face when you went out would be fine. This is simply not true. It might be better than nothing, but he never qualifies his statements with anything other than his bluster.

There has been a lot of confusion about face masks. Many Asians simply cannot understand why Americans haven’t been wearing them: it’s a respiratory disease, after all. The biggest reason, of course, is that we have told not to wear them, but I suspect the reason we have been told that is because we face a critical shortage of them and the ones we do have are needed by medical personnel. Shades of “duck and cover”.

Wednesday, April 1, 2020

A glimmer of good news from the rest of the world. Italy’s case AND death numbers have remained steady over the past three days. Is this the plateau?

9:15 p.m. – U.S. cases 215,081, up 26,551 in 24 hours (single biggest day).

            U.S. deaths 5109, up 1220 in 24 hours (our first 1000-death day)

It appears that the president’s somber prediction yesterday is about to happen.

And yet today, the president’s briefing, in this time of increasing fear in the nation was on the topic of… foreign policy. Not a single reporter in the room had any advance knowledge that this was NOT going to be an update on the virus. The feeling is that Trump is now realizing how valuable these daily briefings are in terms of his ratings, and he’s now going to use them to advance his policy agendas.

THE WORLD

2. Italy now with half the cases as the U.S. and as noted above, steadying death totals.

3. Spain with 104,000 cases and 9400 deaths

4. China holding steady, but being the early leader, now dropped to 4^th in numbers simply because of its vast population

Germany, France, Iran and UK in next order, tho Germany and France appear to be holding (early quarantine and lots of testing), while Iran and UK look to be rising.

Thursday, April 2, 2020

We’re at the point now where we need to think about the fact that at some point in this next month we’re going to lose someone we either know or love, or both, to the virus. And that could include us.

If either I or Lois were to come down with it, we would both have to be quarantined, and that becomes a serious issue in this household, because all four of us would have to quarantine from each other. Food preparation and shopping become problematic.

9:00 p.m.- U.S. cases, 245,066 (more than twice the number now of any other nation – tho per capita cases should show a different number), up 30,000 cases in the past 24 hrs., a curve that continues to climb.

            U.S. deaths, 6075, up 966 in past 24 hrs., roughly holding steady the past few days. Then again, last Thursday, one week ago, we sat at 1143 deaths, a 5.3-fold increase in seven days. At this rate of 5.3-fold increase, on April 9 there would be 32,197 deaths and on April 16 there would be 160,987 deaths. Let’s hope the curve begins to flatten real soon.

We have more than tripled the number of cases in China (a nation of 1.3B, four times ours) and more than double China’s death rate. There is, of course, some doubt as to China’s veracity, but those questions didn’t start being asked until our numbers began surpassing China’s and Trump supporters looking for anywhere to place the blame besides Trump.

New York – 93,000 cases,  2500 deaths

New Jersey – 25,500 cases, 537 deaths

California – 11,000 cases, 239 deaths

Michigan – 10,739 cases, 417 deaths

Louisiana – 9150 cases, 310 deaths

Florida – 9008 cases, 144 deaths (just wait)

Massachusetts – 8966 cases, 154 deaths

Illinois – 7700 cases, 157 deaths

Friday, April 3, 2020

From today’s Chicago Trib: “DuPage County — with 392 residents testing positive — has a rate of 42 per 100,000 residents, or about 1 for every 2,400.

But, much like their counterparts across the region, county health officials caution that they’re probably missing many cases. “Due to the nature of COVID-19 community spread and testing, the number of positive cases is likely much higher than that listed as a result of unreported or untested cases in our community,” according to its website…. Naperville, with 31 residents testing positive….”

1:15 p.m. – Just off the phone with Tiffany (our foster daughter, now 30 and on her own). She works in a law firm and is being told that as of Tuesday she needs to report to work once a week as part of a skeleton crew to keep the firm running. She will be serving at least in part as replacement for a receptionist who is over 60. The firm is concluding that Tiff has a greater chance of surviving the virus if contracted than does this older woman. She will be given one pair of gloves and one mask, both of which she will need to re-use.

She also said that her brother has a high temp, no energy, a bad cough, and (FaceTime) looks like a ghost. The hospital wouldn’t admit him, but gave him an O2 device. He has no driver’s license so does he get himself to a drive-thru testing facility? At what point does he try the hospital again?

1:30 p.m. – U.S. cases at 266,000, up 21,000 since 9 p.m. last night.

            U.S. deaths at 6803, up almost 800 since last night

10:30 p.m. – U.S. cases at 277,467, up 11,500 since this afternoon and up 32,500 since last night. U.S. has almost 1/3 of all the cases in the world.

            U.S. deaths, 7402, up 600 since this afternoon and up almost 1500 since last night.

Michigan and Massachusetts have both jumped up in the U.S. ranking. NY and NJ still leading, with NY still with almost half the U.S. cases.

THE WORLD

Over one million cases worldwide now.

Italy, Spain, Germany, China, France and Iran in that order behind the U.S.

Saturday, April 4, 2020

“What do you have to lose? I’ll say it again, what do you have to lose? Take it. I really think they should take it. Hydroxychlorquine. Try it, if you’d like.”

Midnight, U.S. cases at 311,635, up 34,000 since yesterday evening. Curve is climbing.

            U.S. deaths 8454, up 1050. Over a thousand, but perhaps flattening?

The World

            Spain has now moved into 2^nd place in number of cases, nosing out Italy for the first time, but barely. Italy with 15,360 deaths, still 3500 ahead of Spain.

Realizing that the way I’m writing makes this sound like some kind of glorified race for the top. But each of these numbers represents a family whose lives have been upended and wrenched apart, usually quite suddenly. When a virus patient dies, they die alone. Family cannot be admitted to their side. No last exchanged words, hugs, tears. Priests cannot deliver Last Rites, or the pastor a prayer of comfort, a hand held.

I wrote a piece yesterday in our neighborhood NextDoor social network about my observations on a long bike ride and a visit to the Jewel about the lack of social distancing I observed among my fellow citizens. My goodness the replies it spurred! Mostly positive, but the negative ones? Where are these people coming from??

Sunday April 5, 2020, Palm Sunday

“Did anybody in this room think a thing like this could happen? But it happened….They don’t have to appreciate me at all. I don’t care about me.”

The churches of America will be empty today, with the exception of a few fanatical Trump-supporting ones, all of which will probably pay a heavy price from Christ the Scientist. Churches across America have gone to on-line services, which of course defies the very idea of corporate worship. I think especially of churches like my old one, Progressive Community in Chicago. The African-American worship experience relies heavily on its music, which is woven so tightly in and around the service that you sometimes aren’t even aware of its presence. The organist and the pastor are a team: the pastor leading and the organist following the mood, from quiet and reflective to crashing emphases of a pastor’s repeated phrases. And then there’s the fundamental aspect of the black church sermon going back to the days of slavery: call and response. These

CNN this morning says the U.S. had its most deadly day yesterday. Their figures come from the Johns Hopkins database, which posts once or twice a day, versus the Worldometer.com site I’ve been using.

CNN reports 1344 deaths yesterday (U.S.), with the death toll standing at 8503. The White House health team of Drs. Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci (the only two believable people) say that the coming two weeks are “extraordinarily important. This is the moment to not be going to the grocery store, not going to the pharmacy.”

Our governor, J.B. Pritzker, says re: testing, that Illinois is still significantly behind on testing our population: “Everything about the tests are very difficult to come by, and there’s no federal plan for this, so every state is on their own. As I’ve said, it’s the Wild West out here.” After over a month, only 126,000 tested in California.

And this is the summary of the disaster of our federal government’s response. Trump continues to blame the Obama administration for leaving him “outdated” tests and equipment, which of course is simply nonsense as Trump is in his fourth year as president and clearly has ignored all the warnings about pandemic danger. He has been able to bull***t his way out of every other malfeasance, criminal activity and incompetence to date. I don’t think he’ll survive this one.

Louisiana saw a big spike in cases yesterday – 12,500, and more than 400 deaths there now.

In his typical mastery of the English language, the “president” told the nation to expect “a lot of death” in the next couple of weeks. Very reassuring, Mr. President.

DuPage County and Naperville

            606 cases and 19 deaths in DuPage as of today.

            47 cases in Naperville

Monday, April 6, 2020

“I wish you’d ask the question differently. Why don’t you say it’s gotten off to a tremendous start, but there were some little glitches which, by the way, have been worked out. I wish we had a fair media in this country, and we really don’t. Speaking of unfair (pointing to a reporter), go ahead.”

6:45 a.m. Didn’t update stats yesterday, but this morning’s stats should reflect approximately last night’s numbers

U.S. cases, 336,851, up just shy of 35,000 since midnight Sat.

            U.S. deaths, 9620, up about 1200 since midnight Sat.

Our death total is doubling every three days now. Depending on when we peak, here are some simple mathematical projections based on this curve:

            By Thursday, April 9 – 19,000 deaths

            By Sunday, April 12 (Easter) – 38,000 deaths

            By Wednesday, April 15 – 72,000 deaths

            By Saturday, April 18 – 144,000 deaths

God help us if we haven’t peaked in two weeks.

Some good news. Our raw numbers look to be the worst in the world, but our deaths per million are significantly lower than many other nations that have been hit hard. The point is, though, that if the “president” had begun to address this issue seriously (in February he was calling it just “another Democrat hoax” to bring down his presidency) AND he had had an organizational plan in place with the triggers in place for what to do at every step of the way, our death totals would be much more like South Korea’s or other nations that acted early.

We have finally begun to move on testing. Almost 2 million Americans have now been tested for the virus, about 5300/million Americans. We still lag behind many other civilized nations, but we’re apparently catching up. This is the single most-unexcusable mistake by the Trump administration – not having testing ready to go. So many other nations were way ahead of us on this. Without testing, for the better part of the past two months, we’ve been flying blind on this disease.

The other unexcusable: the lack of coordination on getting ventilators and PPE to the states that need it most. Every state is in a bidding war against every other state AND our own national government now. This is an abysmal failure: our national government should be THE coordination point for this. What happened to FEMA??

Btw, almost every nation in the world has now been hit by the virus to some degree or other.

11 p.m. – U.S. cases – 367,385, up 31,000 since this morning.

            U.S. deaths – 10,876, up 1200 since this morning, and up 2422 since midnight

Saturday.

Tuesday, April 7, 2020

11:30 a.m. – In the past 12 hours, U.S. cases 380,734, up 13,400.

U.S. deaths 12,000, up 1200 in the same time span. On track for our first 2000-death day.

It’s a weird feeling, waiting to hear about your first family member or friend who contracts the virus, or dies from it. So far, we’ve only heard from the next circle out – friends of friends, or the grandfather of a former student, etc.

I’m going to go out for a bike ride this afternoon and while I’m out riding, hundreds of Americans will die of this virus. It’s a strange disconnect. (Bigger picture: on average, 7700 Americans die every day of old age, illness, accident, suicide, murder, etc. I don’t find myself writing a diary about that. Why? Because that’s the norm. This… isn’t.)

9:30 p.m. – U.S. cases, 400,412, up 33,000 in the past 23 hours

            U.S. deaths, 12,854, up 2000 in the past 23 hours – our first 2000-death day.

We’ll look today for the first time at not just raw # of deaths, but more importantly, deaths per million population of the leading states. Also, a trend that’s becoming clear: African-Americans are carrying the brunt of this disease. In states like Illinois, with 30% black population, they are 72% of the deaths. Numbers of reasons, most of which trace back to the Civil War and Jim Crow.

States                           Cases                           Deaths                                     deaths per million

New York                     142,384                       5489    (more than 9/11)         280

New Jersey                  44,416                         1232    (more than 9/11)         139

Michigan                     18,970                         845                                          85

California                    17,537                         447                                          11

Louisiana                    16,284                         582                                          125

Massachusetts             15,202                         356                                          52

Pennsylvania               14,945                         250                                          20

Florida                                    17,747                         296                                          14

Illinois                         15,539                         380                                          30

Wednesday, April 8, 2020

The big news today is that the WHO and CDC have downgraded the U.S. final death totals from “between 100 and 200 thousand” down to “60-80,000”. The big IF on this is if Americans continue to stay indoors and not rush outside now that they think we’re over the hump. We shall see.

In the meantime it looks (as of 6:00 p.m.) that we’re going to see our second 2000-death day in a row. I’ll check back later

Thursday, April 9, 2020

Well, I didn’t check back in last night, so here’s the morning numbers, which are basically the same as last night’s, since the website doesn’t start updating till later in the morning.

9:45 a.m. – U.S. cases, 435,780, up 35,000 in 36 hours (a bit of a slowdown)

            U.S. deaths, 14,865, up 2000 in 36 hours (this would also be a bit of a slowdown)

DuPage County today with 873 confirmed cases and 28 deaths. DuPage County part of Naperville with 71 cases. Edward Hospital with 33 patients, and 3 deaths (as of April 6). Will County Naperville with no numbers available, though Will County with 257 cases and 8 deaths.

 9:00 p.m. – U.S. cases, 468,566, up 33,000 in 11 hours, an uptick again

            U.S. deaths, 16,691, up 1800 in 11 hours, also an uptick

But… looking back at the projections I made on Monday, there would have been 19,000 deaths by the end of the day today, and 38,000 by Easter Sunday. We’ll be far short of that on Sunday.

 Things are looking up, but there’s a big IF on all of this. As we see the cases in our hot zones begin to level off, are we simply waiting for new hot zones, like Florida or Texas, to erupt. Will we see a May, June, July and August of cascading hot zones, where we’ll see the death toll top 100,000 but just not as quickly as if it happened all at once? Will we see wave after wave of the virus roll back and forth across the country for a year until we get a vaccine because of our uncoordinated responses or… have we really reached the apex and our social distancing is truly being effective from coast to coast? Time, and of course, the virus, will tell.

Friday, April 10, 2020 (Good Friday)

Trump: “We have to get our country open again.”

Reporter: Can you say, sir, what metrics you’ll use to make that decision?

Trump: (pointing to his head) “The metric’s right here. That’s my metrics. That’s all I can do.”

Trump: “There’s always a risk. This is genius we’re fighting. You know we’re fighting this hidden enemy which is genius, okay? It’s genius. The way it’s attacked so many countries.”

Did not post today.

Saturday, April 11, 2020

8:00 a.m. – U.S. cases 503,177, up 34,500 in past 36 hours, perhaps a downtick?

            U.S. deaths, 18,761, up 2000 in past 36 hours, also maybe a downtick.

Again, projections from Monday would have shown 38,000 by Easter Sunday (tomorrow) and this will definitely not be the case. This is some good news for Easter.

The question is now beginning to be asked – when do we open the country back up? There is talk of allowing people who have recovered to return to work, and perhaps a test that will show those others who won’t get the virus to also return to the work force.

Almost 20 million Americans have filed for unemployment in the past three weeks. By comparison, in the 2008 economic crisis, HALF that number filed… in TWO YEARS. One important difference: our economy this time has been put on hold by dictum, not by market vagaries. But similar in the sense that we’re not sure how and when it will return.

If I haven’t already explained (I’m beginning to lose track of my own thread here), virtually every American business has been shut down at their physical location. The Loop is virtually deserted as employees now are either furloughed (laid off) or they’re working from home. Restaurants and bars are closed. Schools are closed (Side note here: Gov. Ron DiSantis of Florida just re-opened Florida schools, stating that kids are not prone to the disease. This, of course, doesn’t take into account either the faculty and administration, or more importantly, or more importantly that kids can carry the disease from home, to home, to each other, to the faculty, etc. etc.

10:30 p.m. U.S. cases 532,879, up almost 31,000 since this morning at 8:00 a.m.

            U.S. deaths – 20,577 (a new benchmark), up about 1800 since this morning.

Sunday, April 12, 2020 (Easter Sunday)

The day the “president” said our churches would be filled… wasn’t.

9:30 p.m. – U.S. cases, 560,433, up 27,500 since 10:30 last night

            U.S. deaths 22,115, up 1600 since 10:30 last night (plateauing??)

Important to note: while the U.S. now is running away from the world in NUMBER of cases and deaths, our totals per million/pop. (67) do not put us even in the top ten. I think this is a telling statistic. Spain, Italy, France, Belgium, UK, Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Andorra, San Marino, St. Maarten, are all well ahead of us this regard. San Marino with over 1000/million is having a terrible time of it.

 Now, to watch US coverage of the virus, you’d never know any of this. The news cycle is the same repetition of U.S.-only news, you’d never know another nation in the world was having a problem. Really pathetic.

Monday, April 13, 2020

“All I’m saying is this – how do you close down the greatest economy in the history of the world when on January 17 you have no cases and no death. When on January 21^st, you have one case and no death. Think of that.”

(I’m thinking about it. What do those numbers have to do with ANYthing happening on April 13??)

“What we inherited from the previous administration was totally broken. We inherited broken testing. Now we have great testing.”

Ronald Klain, chief of staff to both VPs Al Gore and Joe Biden and coordinator of the US response team in the Ebola crisis: “We literally left them a 69-page Pandemic Playbook… that they ignored. And an office called the Pandemic Preparedness Office… that they abolished. And a global monitoring system called PREDICT… that they cut by 75%.”

6:00 p.m. – U.S. cases 585,290, up 25,000 since last night 9:30 p.m.

            U.S. deaths 23,577, up just over 1000 since last night 9:30 p.m.

As I write, the “president” is claiming once again that he inherited “nothing” by way of preparation for this pandemic. To be clear, this is an out and out lie. Also, he never addresses the 3 ½ years that he’s been in office where HE not only did nothing, but he ignored a transition team exercise in 2016-17, eliminated a specific pandemic response team in 2018, and ignored another tabletop exercise in 2018. All of these issued stark warnings that a pandemic HAD to be prepared for.

He says he has the power to re-open the country’s economy, even though he was saying the opposite when it came to closing it down – that this was up to the governors of each state.

Tuesday, April 14, 2020

“Today I’m instructing my administration to halt funding to the World Health Organization….”

Noon, – U.S. cases 598,687, up 13,500 since 6:00 p.m. last evening.

            U.S. deaths – 24,770, up 1200 in same time.

9:00 p.m. – U.S. cases 613,886, up 27,500 since last evening 6 p.m.

                U.S. deaths 26,067, up 2500 since last evening 6 p.m. (this is a jump)

The “president” today announced he was cutting off all funding to the World Health Organization. This is one more attempt to shift the blame for his failure onto anyone else he can possibly blame. That list now includes the Obama administration (of course), G W Bush administration, China, governors of various states, and other nations (Italy and Spain, and Europe in general). He announced last week that he “takes no responsibility” for anything that’s happened. His inaction during the entire month of February is unconscionable and has cost the U.S. thousands of lives.

Wednesday, April 15, 2020

10:00 p.m. – U.S. cases 644,089, up just over 30,000 since last evening 9 P.M. (highest number of one-day new cases since April 11)

            U.S. deaths – 28,529, up 1000 since yesterday (although a weird anomaly – all news agencies are reporting U.S. deaths now at almost 31,000, which would mean we’re up almost 4000 deaths in the past 25 hours, easily the worst day yet. Which of these stats is true?)

Which raises the issue of numerical reliability. Almost no one trusts China’s numbers because they’re, well… China. Our numbers can’t be even close to accurate because we are phenomenally under-tested. We have NO idea how many cases we have in the U.S. Thus we can’t predict when our curve is going to flatten because we have no curve. So if two of the largest nations in the world have fuzzy numbers….

Thursday, April 16, 2020

“It should have been told to us. It should have been told to us early. It should have been told to us a lot sooner. People knew it was happening, and people didn’t want to talk about it.”

6:30 p.m. – U.S. cases, 677,056, up 33,000 since 10 p.m. last night.

            U.S. deaths, 34,580, up 6000 since 10 p.m. last night (see yesterday’s discrepancy – did this jump just catch up with the other numbers, or was this a massive day?) – up 6000

Today we saw the beginnings of organized protests by Trump supporters, in states around the country with Democratic governors who have shut down their states. The point: government overreach into the lives of private citizens. Michigan had the largest, but a few other states had them as well, protesters congregating in front of state capitols or driving their pick-ups around the building. Many of them carrying Trump signs and waving American flags.

Friday, April 17, 2020

2:00 p.m. – U.S. cases 690,000, up 13,000 since yesterday 6:30 p.m. Marked slowdown.

            U.S. deaths 35,955, up 1300 in same time. Possible slowdown?

Surprise! China announced today that it’s reported numbers were significantly under-reported by approximately 50%. My question: why would I believe THESE numbers? Same with Russia or any other state that controls its media?

Saturday, April 18, 2020

6:00 p.m. – U.S. cases 736,790, up almost 37,000 cases in past 28 hrs.

            U.S. deaths 38,920, up 3000 in past 28 hrs.

 Sunday, April 19, 2020

“The head of a country doesn’t have to say ‘Stay in’. These people are smart people….Nobody ever thought this could have happened, a thing like this….We inherited a lot of garbage. They had tests that were no good, all this stuff was no good.”

11:30 p.m. – U.S. cases, 764,265, up, 28,500 in past 28 hours

            U.S. deaths, 40,565, up 1600 in past 28 hours.

Trump is now politicizing the re-opening of the nation. On Tuesday, he declared he and only he had “complete authority” to reopen the country. Apparently someone in the White House informed him there’s this Constitution-thingy that says he doesn’t have that power. On Wednesday he declared “the governors of each state have the “complete authority” to reopen their states when they feel their state is ready.

On Wednesday we saw the first protests by Trump supporters in Michigan “defending their freedom” to meet in whatever group they want to whenever they want to.

On Thursday, the “president” tweeted that governors should move to “liberate” their states as soon as possible, naming specific states (coincidently all with Democratic governors). The protests are now spreading. Usually small in size, but grabbing headlines wherever they occur. Many of these protesters are showing up with their guns – I guess that also shows their freedom? I don’t know.

But the “president” continues to tweet against any governor who is listening to the medical experts and scientists about continuing their states’ lockdowns. It’s not just madness – it’s dangerous madness, and as much as one never wants to see a life lost, I frankly hope we see cases mushroom among these idiots who are protesting and meeting in close approximation in defiance of not only their governors, but also of the experts in virology.

Monday, April 20, 2020

World update:

            2,745,000 cases, 170,000 deaths                                Deaths Per Million

U.S. – 790,000 cases, 42,300 deaths                                                   128

Spain – 200,200 cases, 20,800 deaths                                     446

Italy – 181,200 cases, 24,100 deaths                                                  399

France – 155,400 cases, 20,300 deaths                                              310

Germany – 146,700 cases, 4700 deaths                                             56

UK – 125,000 cases, 16,500 deaths                                                    243

Turkey – 91,000 cases, 2100 deaths                                                   25

Iran – 83,000 cases, 5200 deaths                                                       62

China – 83,000 cases, 4632 deaths                                                    3*

            (*They lie)

Very personal observation. This is the first day I felt no interest in watching the news. It’s not that the virus is diminishing, though it appears it might be**, but just that I’m so burned out and numb to the whole thing that I can’t take any more in right now.

**Also, it’s very difficult to see the lies and intentional obfuscation coming from the White House.

9:00 pm. – U.S. cases, 792,759, up 28,000 since last night

            U.S. deaths, 42,514, up 2000 since last night.

Georgia’s governor announced today that (per the “president’s” tweets, but against the “president’s” stated advice the day before the tweets) that he will be re-opening the state up to a large number of small businesses (tattoo parlors, gyms, fitness centers, bowling alleys and the like) this weekend. Georgia’s case and death numbers (20,000/775), while relatively small compared to a state like NY (252,000/19,000) are still spiking. There is no downward trend in their curve whatsoever, with more cases and deaths being reported daily. So it seems like politics and the economy have taken over from science and medicine, and I think we’re going to see this in more states all the time.

Bluntly speaking, Trump has nothing to lose by urging this re-opening. If he doesn’t get the nation open, he loses the election in November. If he re-opens and the numbers spike again nationally, he loses the election in November. But in spite of what the doctors and scientists are saying, IF he re-opens and the numbers don’t spike, he wins. It’s a gamble for him; a game. And American lives are the chips.

Wednesday, April 22, 2020

Today we’re going to begin tracking the states that are re-opening. To be clear, the models call for these states to open some time in June, but Trumper governors in them are bowing to pressure from their cracker constituents to open now. Protests have expanded across the nation. These protests are essentially Trump rallies, and it appears they are funded by the Koch Brothers.

So:

Georgia – 20,700 cases, 836 deaths, 81 deaths/million

South Carolina – 4761 cases, 140 deaths, 28 deaths/million

Florida – 28,300 cases, 893 deaths, 43 deaths/million

Arkansas (never closed) – 2276 cases, 43 deaths, 14 deaths/million

Texas – 21,000 cases, 543 deaths, 19 deaths/million

Kentucky – 3400 cases, 185 deaths, 42 deaths/million

You can see why governors of these states would look at their numbers and say, “Hey, WE’RE not New York! Let’s get ‘er open! So we’ll look at these numbers maybe every three or four days in the coming weeks.

4:30 p.m., U.S. cases, 844,400 cases, up 50,500 cases since Monday evening

47,277 deaths, up 4800 since Monday evening (that’s two 2000-death days in a row)

1. Spain
2. Italy
3. France
4. Germany
5. UK

I also want to start tracking Sweden, the only European nation to not impose any restrictions whatsoever. They are banking on herd immunity solving the problem. We’ll see.

12. Sweden – 1600 cases, 1937 deaths, 192 deaths/million

Thursday, April 23, 2020

(Trump to reporter). “It may not come back at all, Jeff. It might not come back at all.”

Fauci, later in same news conference: “We will have coronavirus in the fall. I am convinced of that.”

Trump, turning to Birx and his medical team: “…and then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning because you see it gets into the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that, you’ll have to use medical doctors, but it sounds, it sounds interesting to me.”

Response to press: “I’m not a doctor, but I’m like, a person who has a good (points to head) you-know-what

9:30 p.m. – U.S. cases 880,204, up almost 36,000 since yesterday 4:30 p.m. We seem to be plateauing??

            U.S. deaths 49,845, up 2600 since 4:30 yesterday. Maybe plateauing, but…

Here’s where we’re at. If some of the hardest-hit states like NY and NJ are beginning to plateau, the question is, will other states that are re-opening “too soon” pick up the slack and we’ll just have this ‘wave-after-wave’ thing until we get a vaccine in another year? Or not??

DuPage County today: 2075 cases, 118 deaths. 146 cases in Naperville. There seems to be no way to find out how many Naperville deaths, though our lovely mayor has announced he would like to re-open the city for business on May 1. To be clear, this would be a graduated opening. Details to come.

Friday, April 24, 2020

            10:00 p.m. – U.S. cases, 925,000, up 45,000 since yesterday. We’ve not had close to a day like this. Probably due to more testing…. Which has clearly come too late to stem the tide in the U.S. The damage is done and now all we can do is social distance (which nutjobs are protesting all over the country) and wait for a vaccine.

            U.S. deaths, 52,185, up 2400 since yesterday this time. We just keep marching along at around 2-3000 deaths per day now. We crossed the 50,000 milestone.

            At yesterday’s press conference, Trump (and you’re not going to actually believe this) touted the possibility of perhaps using ultraviolet rays inside the body to kill the virus. Wait, it gets better… or worse. He also suggested that “ingesting disinfectants” might also go a long way toward helping kill the virus. The CDC got over one hundred calls inquiring about disinfectants as a possible cure, and had to put out a statement that no, drinking disinfectants can only harm you. The manufacturers of Lysol and Clorox actually came out with statements telling the public to NOT in any way EVER ingest their products – that you can die by doing so.

            This morning, when asked to clarify that statement, to no one’s surprise, the “president” said… are you ready… that he was being “sarcastic” in replying to a question from a nasty reporter. But the video from yesterday clearly shows he was not addressing any reporter – he was opining directly to the two health experts on the stage with him, looking over at them for their approving nods, and being greeted with dumbfounded stares from one of them (the other was off-camera).

            At today’s presser, he came out, spoke briefly, had two sidekicks speak briefly, and all three left the room after twenty minutes, and for the first time taking no questions from the press. These rambling press conference/campaign rallies have lasted on average two hours and longer.

            Lost in this story: two days ago the doctor at the CDC in charge of developing the new vaccine was transferred out of his post. He wrote a public letter saying he felt strongly that the reason he was fired is because he refused to publicly approve Trump’s push for the public to begin using hydroxychloroquine, an unproven drug used for malaria and lupus, to cure the virus. Trump has over the past month been pushing this drug repeatedly (over fifty times by tweet or in the press conferences).

            When asked at Thursday’s press conference to comment, the “president” said, “I’ve never heard of the man.” But he rambled on for 2 or 3 minutes about how beautiful it was going to be to see the Navy Blue Angels perform over some of our cities – how they fly within 18 inches of each other! I looked it up and he’s right – they fly 18 inches from each other on certain maneuvers.

            So he had done his research on the Navy Blue Angels, but had no idea* who the man was who was responsible for developing the vaccine in the United States that will bring an end to the virus. (*Of course he lied because the story was about the only story of the day on every network – and all he does in watch the news networks. So take your pick with this guy: a liar or recklessly ignorant about perhaps the most important person in the world at the present time.

            And in the meantime, the FDA put out a warning against the use of Trump’s “miracle drug” chhoroquine outside of clinical trials. In other words, Trump: “what have you got to lose” vs. FDA: “don’t try this at home”. There have been deaths by heart attack of a statistically-significant number of those who have used it.

Saturday, April 25, 2020

10:00 p.m.  – U.S. cases 960,896, up 36,000 from last night this time. (We’re approaching the 1 million case mark, at which point approximately one in every 330 Americans will be diagnosed as currently having or having had coronavirus.

            U.S. deaths 54,265, up 2100 since last night this time. (Does 2000 deaths per day for a week mean the curve is flattening??)

            For perspective the “regular” flu since 2010 has averaged 9-45 million cases per year, with death totals ranging from 12-61,000. So it seems the regular flu hits many more Americans (up to 25-30%) each year, but the death totals of this coronavirus seem much higher (54,000 deaths in just five weeks).

Sunday, April 26, 2020

9:30 p.m. – U.S. cases 987,160, up 26,500 since last night (slowing??)

            U.S. deaths 55,413, up 1200 since last night (also slowing??)

Monday, April 27, 2020 – did not record

Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Noon – U.S. cases 1,017,155, up 30,000 in past 36 hours.

            U.S. deaths 57,203, up 1800 in past 36 hrs. (Is curve flattening?)

Illinois has now moved in fourth place in number of cases, behind NY, NJ and MA. We sit at just under 2000 deaths. But at 155 deaths/million (d/m) population we’re way down the list. NY by far the worst with over 1100, with nine other states with higher d/m numbers.

10:15 p.m. – US cases 1,035,765, up almost 35,000 cases since noon today. (Maybe the curve isn’t flattening.)

            U.S. deaths 59,266, up 2000 since noon (The sobering milestone of this day is that we surpassed the American death total for the Vietnam War… which lasted over 13 years.

Friday, May 1, 2020

            Missed the last two days due to traveling. More on that later.

10 p.m. – U.S. cases, 1,131,500 up 95,000 since Tuesday (about 47,000 per day.

            U.S. deaths, 65,800 deaths, up 6500 since Tuesday (about 3200 per day)

            While number of cases and deaths/day aren’t rising, they’re not dropping either. Until the numbers begin to drop we can expect 16-18,000 deaths per week.

            Re: traveling. With some trepidation, but also feeling confident enough that we could do it safely, we drove Mary Lou’s Mazda out to Denver for Sarah to have. We left just after 6:30 a.m., carrying all our food and drink for the day in our respective cars. We stopped only for gas, using a paper towel to punch the numbers on the gas pump and to hold the pump handle – no human contact, no going into the gas station. Restroom: we stopped twice at interstate rest areas. They were open. There would be a number of trucks parked, but the drivers sleeping. We ran into one other human being. Touched nothing except a toilet seat. Washed hands thoroughly.

            Arrived Denver at 9:00. Sarah had ordered pizza and made salad. No hugs, no touching. We walked to some picnic tables and had a nice dinner together outside (about 65 degrees), spaced apart. Then back to the condo, handed over the car, title and keys. Got back in the van and left. We stopped at the first rest area out of Denver (Wiggins) to use the toilet, then went on to Sterling rest area where we pulled in, climbed in the back of the van and slept till about 6:30. After toilet, cleaning up, getting gas, we’re on the road by 7:30 where we repeated the same drill as on the way to Denver. No incidences. One difference. We did do a drive-through Arby’s for lunch, then spread a blanket out on the grass and had a picnic lunch in the beautiful 75 degree weather, nobody nearby. Back in the car and home by 9:15 p.m. Two long days of driving, and tired yes, but not “exhausted”.

            Gas prices!! Amazing. We paid a high of $1.94 in Sterling (and that was just a few gallons because we knew we could get it for $1.27 in Ogallala. We got it again for $1.27 in eastern Iowa. Other fill-ups were between $1.45 and $1.55.

            Protests are breaking out all over the country. Most of them are essentially pro-Trump rallies organized by the “base” of his Base. Heavily armed, flak-jacketed, no masks, waving American flags, wearing MAGA hats. Yesterday a group of them stormed the Michigan state legislature. Trump’s response? These were “good people” and the Michigan governor (Democrat Christie Whitmer) should have met with them.

Saturday, May 2, 2020

Today we start to watch Sweden, which decided it would take limited actions to combat the virus. Sweden’s example is being used by the anti-quarantine protesters as the glowing example of “what we should have done instead of ruining our economy”. In fact, compared to its Scandinavian neighbors, both Sweden’s case and death counts are beginning to spiral upward. We’ll watch it here over the next few weeks.

Sweden – 21,520 cases, 2653 deaths, 263 deaths/million

Norway – 7783 cases, 210 deaths, 39 deaths/million

Denmark – 9300 cases, 460 deaths, 79 deaths/million

Finland – 5176 cases, 220 deaths, 40 deaths/million

10:00 p.m. – U.S. cases 1,160,774 up 29,000 since same time last night.

            U.S. deaths 67,444, up 1600 since same time last night. Both numbers significantly down.

            More and more states are re-opening. I believe Trump’s push to re-open combined with pressure from these protest groups has pushed governors of both parties to loosen, against their better judgments, and definitely against what the scientists are saying. All we can do is wait and see what happens.

            State Watch. On April 22, these were the numbers for the states that opened early:

Georgia – 20,700 cases, 836 deaths, 81 deaths/million

South Carolina – 4761 cases, 140 deaths, 28 deaths/million

Florida – 28,300 cases, 893 deaths, 43 deaths/million

Arkansas (never closed) – 2276 cases, 43 deaths, 14 deaths/million

Texas – 21,000 cases, 543 deaths, 19 deaths/million

Kentucky – 3400 cases, 185 deaths, 42 deaths/million

Tonight:

Georgia, 28,332 cases, 1174 deaths, 114 deaths/million

South Carolina, 6489 cases, 267 deaths, 54 deaths/million

Florida, 35,463 cases, 1364 deaths, 66 deaths/million

Arkansas, 3372 cases, 72 deaths, 24 deaths/million

Texas – 31,142 cases, 874 deaths, 31 deaths/million

Kentucky – 4879 cases, 248 deaths, 56 deaths/million

We’re approaching the two-week mark when we may see a sharp spike in numbers of cases, followed by deaths.

Tuesday, May 5, 2020

Have missed a few days here. What seems to be happening in the nation is that Americans are so tired of being cooped up, or so desperate at losing their jobs and businesses, or so philosophically anti-government that they are forcing state governors to act against what the scientists are telling them, and re-opening their states. This has not been helped one bit by the “president” who two weeks ago sided with the Michigan militia protestors who stormed the state capital with weapons drawn. His tweets in the ensuing days to “Liberate Michigan” (and other states, using the same word), have certainly not helped science.

Trump is desperate. He knows the combination of deaths to virus plus crashed economy mean he loses in November. So he is taking the only course of action he knows (because it’s always only about him). If he re-opens and by some miracle the deaths diminish, then the economy recovers and it’s a win-win… and more importantly, the win in November. If he continues to support the science and state lockdowns, the economy remains crushed even though tens of thousands of lives would be saved. So that’s where we are today. Many states are re-opening, despite the fact that our national death totals keep climbing.

8:00 a.m. – U.S. cases 1,213,000, up 53,000 since Sat. night

            U.S. deaths, 70,000, up 2500 since Sat. night. (averaging 1250/day for the past few days. This is a drop in the daily average, which is a good sign.)

Sweden’s numbers keep climbing, but slowly. 23,000 cases, 2883 deaths, 283 deaths/million

Finally, the DuPage County Covid-19 website includes data on “deaths by municipality”.

Naperville at 242 confirmed cases, and 17 deaths. About a 7% rate.

8:30 p.m. – 1,237,633 cases, up 24,500 in past 12 hours.

            U.S. deaths, 72,271, up 2200 in past 12 hours.

This is a discouraging day. 2200 deaths in the past 12 hours! And nobody seems to give a shit anymore. I really think America has concluded the following: “It’s only old people, black people, and prisoners, so I don’t care anymore. I’ve sacrificed my job, I can’t pay the rent, nobody I know has died, I think the whole thing is overblown, and I just wanna go outside again. Trump and Fox News are not helping. As I’ve theorized, Trump is absolutely desperate to restart the economy and is willing to sacrifice the nation in order to get re-elected.

This on the very day that the CDC and National Institute of Health have revised their projected death total to almost double the original estimates. Between 130,000 and 230,000 dead by August and 3000 deaths/day by June 1. And apparently either nobody is paying attention to them or nobody cares.

Trump today announced the disbanding of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, and he’s not allowing Dr. Fauci to testify before the House. It’s surreal, but that’s been the rule for this “presidency”.

Thursday, May 7, 2020

6:30 p.m. – U.S. cases 1,297,000, up almost 50,000 since Tuesday evening. No slowing down.

            U.S. deaths 76,895, up 4500 since Tues. evening. No slowing.

But… nothing to see here, folks. This thing’s over! Put on a happy face, get out there and get back to work.

Saturday, May 9, 2020

8:00 a.m. – U.S. cases, 1,322,233, up 20,000 since Thurs. evening.

            U.S. deaths, 78,622, up 1800 since Thursday evening.

States May 2:

Georgia, 28,332 cases, 1174 deaths, 114 deaths/million

South Carolina, 6489 cases, 267 deaths, 54 deaths/million

Florida, 35,463 cases, 1364 deaths, 66 deaths/million

Arkansas, 3372 cases, 72 deaths, 24 deaths/million

Texas – 31,142 cases, 874 deaths, 31 deaths/million

Kentucky – 4879 cases, 248 deaths, 56 deaths/million

Today:

Georgia, 32,193 cases, 1400 deaths, 132 deaths/million

South Carolina, 7367 cases, 320 deaths, 62 deaths/million

Florida, 39,199 cases, 1669 deaths, 78 deaths/million

Arkansas, 3747 cases, 88 deaths, 29 deaths/million

Texas, 37,727 cases, 1079 deaths, 37 deaths/million

Kentucky, 6288 cases, 298 deaths, 67 deaths/million

In every case, these states totals are ramping up, but.. not spiking out of control.

By comparison, Illinois now with 73,760 cases, 3241 deaths, 256 deaths/million.

The states with the largest cities (NY, Illinois) are carrying the bulk of the cases.

It also appears now that it wasn’t necessarily the Chinese virus that came here, but rather a newer strain that came over from Europe. Thus, American international travel hubs with larger European immigrant populations hit the hardest?

10:00 p.m. – US cases, 1,347,309, up 25,000 since this morning

            U.S. deaths, 80, 037, up 1500 since this morning.

Sweden: 26,322 cases, 3225 deaths, 319 deaths/million

Norway: 8099 cases, 219 deaths, 40 deaths/million

Finland: 5962 cases, 267 deaths, 48 deaths/million

Denmark: 10,429 cases, 529 deaths, 91 deaths/million

Sunday, May 10, 2020

            10 p.m. – U.S. deaths, 80,787, up 750 in past 24 hours. FIRST TIME UNDER 1000/day since April 3!

Monday, May 11, 2020 – no posting

Tuesday, May 12, 2020

Interesting comparison of the day, made by Sen. Tim Kaine at the Senate hearings this morning: USA v S. Korea

On March 3, the unemployment rates, case rates, and death rates were very similar.

By May 11, S. Korea stood at 3.4% unemployment, 258 deaths, a 5/million rate.

            U.S. at 20% unemployment, 81,000 deaths, 248 deaths/million.

10 p.m. – U.S. cases 1,408,636, up 82,000 since Saturday morning (approx. 20,000/day)

            U.S. deaths 83,425, up 2500 since Sunday night (1250/day for past two days)

Wednesday, May 13, 2020

3:30 p.m. – U.S. cases 1,423,641, up 15,000 since last evening

            U.S. deaths 84,747, up 1300 since last evening

States:

NY – 350,500 cases, 27,280 deaths, 1400 deaths/million

NJ – 142,700 cases, 9700 deaths, 1100 deaths/million

IL – 84,700 cases, 3800 deaths, 299 deaths/million

MA – 80,500 cases, 5315 deaths, 771 deaths/million

Other states with high deaths/million:

CT – 853

LA – 512

MI – 472

RI – 436

DC – 496

Thursday, May 14, 2020

And suddenly Russia jumps up to third in the world in numbers of cases at 252,000

U.S. still leading the world with 1,430,000, and Spain in 2^nd with almost 273,000 (which Russia will probably surpass in the next day or so, pending honest reporting.

In other news, can’t confirm this yet, but have heard that Florida has said it simply isn’t going to report its numbers anymore.

6 p.m. – US cases 1,454,320, up 30,000 since last evening

            U.S. deaths 86,821, up 2100 since last evening

As New York finally begins to ramp down, without doing a deep search yet, I think we’re starting to see smaller hot spots jump up “out in the country”. When I have time I’ll hunt down the numbers.

Why are we still between 1500 and 2000 deaths per day?

Friday, May 15, 2020

9:15 p.m. – U.S. cases 1,484,285, up 30,000 since last evening.

            U.S. deaths 88,507, up 1700 since last evening.

At what point will I get to write, “down 200 since last evening”?

Texas now beginning to climb. A thousand new cases a day for the past seven days straight.

Saturday, May 16, 2020

9 p.m. – U.S. cases 1,507.773, up 23,500 since last evening.

            U.S. deaths 90,113, up 1600 from last evening.

I need to begin to dig into which states are now the new hot spots, and possibly try to figure out why.

Meanwhile, the political lines have hardened into concrete. Trumpers: you’re a wuss if you wear a mask in a public place. The rest of us: you’re a fool if you don’t. We’re basing our stance on science. They’re basing their stance on some imagined Deep State conspiracy to take away their freedom, combined with economic hardship (a very real thing).

Sunday, May 17, 2020

9:30 p.m. – U.S. cases 1,527,664, up 20,000 since last evening.

            U.S. deaths 90,978, up 850 since last evening (the second time in a month we’ve been under 1000 deaths in a day)

Trump announced Operation “Warp Speed”, a combined public/private partnership to speed up production of counter-measures to combat the virus. May 17. Operation Warp Speed. May 17.

May 9 stats (May 17 stats in bold type):

Georgia, 32,193 cases, 1400 deaths, 132 deaths/million

            37,701 cases, 1609 deaths, 152 deaths/million

South Carolina, 7367 cases, 320 deaths, 62 deaths/million

            8816 cases, 385 deaths, 75 deaths/million

Florida, 39,199 cases, 1669 deaths, 78 deaths/million

            45,588 cases, 1973 deaths, 92 deaths/million

Arkansas, 3747 cases, 88 deaths, 29 deaths/million

            4759 cases, 98 deaths, 32 deaths/million

Texas, 37,727 cases, 1079 deaths, 37 deaths/million

            Texas – 48,677 cases, 1360 deaths, 47 deaths/million

Kentucky, 6288 cases, 298 deaths, 67 deaths/million

            7688 cases, 334 deaths, 75 deaths/million

On the one hand, these numbers are quite low, and growing very slowly. On the other hand, the CDC guidelines for states to re-open their economies calls for these numbers to begin going DOWN before re-opening.

But every one of these states is a red state, so…

Monday, May 18, 2020

May 9 in bold type. Today in regular font:

Sweden: 30,377 cases (up 4000), 3698 deaths (up 475), 366 deaths/million (up 47)

Sweden: 26,322 cases, 3225 deaths, 319 deaths/million

Norway: 8257 cases (up 158), 233 deaths (up 14), 43 deaths/million (up 3)

Norway: 8099 cases, 219 deaths, 40 deaths/million

Finland: 6380 cases (up 418), 300 deaths (up 33), 54 deaths/million (up 6)

Finland: 5962 cases, 267 deaths, 48 deaths/million

Denmark: 10,968 cases (up 539), 548 deaths (up 19), 95 deaths/million (up 4)

Denmark: 10,429 cases, 529 deaths, 91 deaths/million

Tuesday, May 19, 2020

10 p.m. – U.S. cases 1,570,583, up 48,000 cases from 2 nights ago (24,000/day av.)

            U.S. deaths 93,533, up 2500 since 2 nights ago (1750/day av.)

Russia has now jumped all the way up to 2^nd place in the world with 300,000 cases. “Only” 2800 deaths (reported), but with that many cases, the death totals will jump.

Thursday, May 21, 2020

11:30 a.m. – U.S. cases 1,601,000, up 29,500 in the past day and a half

            U.S. deaths 95,304, up 1800 in past day and a half. We should reach the 100,000 mark by Sunday or Monday.

Brazil now jumps into third place behind Russia.

9:30 p.m. – U.S. cases 1,621,000, up 20,000 in the past 10 hours!

            U.S. deaths 96,354, up 1000 in past 10 hours! Whoa!

Saturday, May 23, 2020

10 p.m. – U.S. cases 1,667,000, up 46,000 since Thursday 9:30 p.m. (av. 23,000/day)

            U.S. deaths 98,683, up 2300 since Thurs. 9:30 p.m. (1150/day average)

Brazil (22,165 deaths) leapfrogs over Russia into second place. Russia in third (3338 deaths, but just wait). India beginning to move up the ladder – currently 11^th.

Sunday, May 24, 2020

            U.S. deaths 99,300 up 600 since last evening, the smallest number in weeks and weeks.

But incredibly disturbing video today of people crowding into public spaces all over the country! I put this squarely on the shoulders of the “president”, who instead of squelching this irresponsible behavior, has done nothing but encourage it. He knows that a miracle is his only chance for re-election in November.

Monday, May 25, 2020 (Memorial Day)

9 p.m. – 1,706,200 cases, up 19,700 since last evening.

– I was wrong. I said we’d be at 100,000 deaths by today. We’re only at 99,800 (up 500 since last evening. Once again, a new low in deaths. But just wait.

Tuesday, May 26, 2020

10:15 p.m. U.S. cases 1,725,275, up 19,000 since last evening.

And there we are. The milestone. U.S. deaths 100,572. To compare, on March 26 we sat at 1143 deaths and the “president” said, “We’ve got to get back to work, and I think we can start by opening up certain parts of the country.” This is also the day he said he wanted all the churches back open by Easter.

Wednesday, May 27, 2020

9:30 p.m. – U.S. cases, 1,745,803, up 25,000 since last evening.

            U.S. deaths, 102,107, up 1600 since last evening.

New York and NJ still #1 and 2 respectively. Illinois 3^rd in number of cases, with 114,300, and just over 5000 deaths (401 deaths/million)

CT (1067) and MA (950) still well ahead in deaths/million.

NY (1519) and NJ (1277) the national leaders.

Thursday, May 28, 2020

10:15 p.m. – U.S. cases 1,768,400, up 23,400 since last evening.

            U.S. deaths 103,330, up 1200 since last evening.

Saturday, May 30, 2020

7:00 a.m. – U.S. cases 1,794,553, up 25,000 since Thurs. night

            U.S. deaths 104,550, up 1200 since Thursday night

Time for an “early-opening states” update.

May 9 stats (May 17 stats in bold type) (May 30 stats in italics):

Georgia, 32,193 cases, 1400 deaths, 132 deaths/million

            37,701 cases, 1609 deaths, 152 deaths/million

            45,863 cases, 1984 deaths, 187 deaths/million

South Carolina, 7367 cases, 320 deaths, 62 deaths/million

            8816 cases, 385 deaths, 75 deaths/million

            11,131 cases, 483 deaths, 94 deaths/million

Florida, 39,199 cases, 1669 deaths, 78 deaths/million

            45,588 cases, 1973 deaths, 92 deaths/million

            54,497, 2413 deaths, 112 deaths/million*

            (*Florida announced in the past two weeks that they have stopped providing statistics, because….????)

Arkansas, 3747 cases, 88 deaths, 29 deaths/million

            4759 cases, 98 deaths, 32 deaths/million

            6777 cases, 132 deaths, 44 deaths/million

Texas, 37,727 cases, 1079 deaths, 37 deaths/million

 48,677 cases, 1360 deaths, 47 deaths/million

            62,126 cases, 1654 deaths, 57 deaths/million

Kentucky, 6288 cases, 298 deaths, 67 deaths/million

            7688 cases, 334 deaths, 75 deaths/million

            9464 cases, 418 deaths, 94 deaths/million

10:30 p.m. – 1,816,820 cases, up 25,000 since last evening.

            U.S. deaths 105,557, up 1000 since last evening.

Unrelated, but possibly related: riots have been breaking out all over the U.S. in response to the murder by police of a Minneapolis black man. Virtually every major city has seen thousands of people protesting. Many are wearing masks, but many are not. Will this lead to a spike in cases??

Monday, June 1, 2020

Have been distracted by the nationwide violence in reaction to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Pandemic, and now this. Downtown Naperville (Naperville!!) was looted tonight. Lots of smashed windows. Count on the “president” to deal with the situation in exactly the wrong way: he’s calling for law and order, and threatening to bring the US military to any state that can’t control its own problem (read “Democratic states”). Aye, yi, yii.

Midnight – 1,859,323 cases, up 54,500 since Saturday evening (roughly 27,000/day)

            U.S. deaths 106,925, up 1400 since Sat. evening (roughly 700/day).

Thousands have been protesting coast to coast, and many of them without masks. Not good. This just adds to my feeling that we’re in for a rough summer, starting end of this month.

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

11 p.m. – 1,881,205 cases, up 22,000 since last night

            108,059 deaths, up 1100 since last night

We are in the eighth day of riots and protests over the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis last week. They show no sign of letting up. NYC and Chicago were trashed last night. Protests are peaceful during the day, then the cockroaches come out at night.

Brazil now in solid 2^nd place in number of cases at 550,000, but expected to be over a million by this weekend. That’s a big jump. Mexico now also showing signs of perhaps being a major hot spot. Russia in third, but I’m suspicious of their reporting.

Wednesday, June 3, 2020

The virus does not dominate the news today. It has not dominated the news for the past eight days since George Floyd was killed. Today the AG of Minnesota announced that the charges against the killing officer have been raised to Murder 2, and the other three officers present are charged with the felony of ‘aiding and abetting’ the murder. This is pretty much a first in the United States.

Thursday, June 4, 2020

9:30 p.m. – U.S. cases 1,924,051, up 43,000 since Tuesday evening (21,500/day)

            U.S. deaths 110,173, up 2100 since Tuesday evening (1050/day)

Friday, June 5, 2020

10:30 p.m. – U.S. cases 1,965,708, up almost 42,000 since last night. Big jump.

            U.S. deaths 111,390, up 1200 since last night.

Saturday, June 6, 2020

10:30 p.m. – U.S. cases 1,988,540, up almost 23,000 since last night. Back to “normal”.

            U.S. deaths 112,096, up 800 since last night.

Brazil now in solid second place in the world behind the U.S. with 676,000 cases and 36,000 deaths, followed by Russia.

Spain and Italy are dropping down in the charts.

In the U.S., Texas now climbing more rapidly, but still significantly behind Illinois in deaths/million.

Sunday, June 7, 2020

10:15 p.m. – U.S. cases, 2,007,449 (a new benchmark), up 19,000 since last evening

            U.S. deaths 112, 469, up 375 since last night. Lowest 24-hour death total since the end of March! Is this a watershed moment? Or just an aberration?

Tuesday, June 9, 2020

2:45 p.m. – U.S. cases 2,038,033, up 31,000 since Sunday night.

            U.S. deaths 113,835, up 1400 since Sunday night.

Let’s take a look at how our early-opening states are doing.

May 9 stats (May 17 stats in bold type) (May 30 stats in italics) (June 9 stats in 14):

Georgia, 32,193 cases, 1400 deaths, 132 deaths/million

            37,701 cases, 1609 deaths, 152 deaths/million

            45,863 cases, 1984 deaths, 187 deaths/million

            53,249 cases, 2285 deaths, 215 deaths/million

South Carolina, 7367 cases, 320 deaths, 62 deaths/million

            8816 cases, 385 deaths, 75 deaths/million

            11,131 cases, 483 deaths, 94 deaths/million

            14,800 cases, 557 deaths, 108 deaths/million

Florida, 39,199 cases, 1669 deaths, 78 deaths/million

            45,588 cases, 1973 deaths, 92 deaths/million

            54,497, 2413 deaths, 112 deaths/million*

            (*Florida announced in the past two weeks that they have stopped providing statistics, because….????)

            66,000 cases, 2769 deaths, 129 deaths/million

Arkansas, 3747 cases, 88 deaths, 29 deaths/million

            4759 cases, 98 deaths, 32 deaths/million

            6777 cases, 132 deaths, 44 deaths/million

            9740 cases, 155 deaths, 51 deaths/million

Texas, 37,727 cases, 1079 deaths, 37 deaths/million

 48,677 cases, 1360 deaths, 47 deaths/million

            62,126 cases, 1654 deaths, 57 deaths/million

            77,579 cases, 1879 deaths, 65 deaths/million

Kentucky, 6288 cases, 298 deaths, 67 deaths/million

            7688 cases, 334 deaths, 75 deaths/million

            9464 cases, 418 deaths, 94 deaths/million

            11,491 cases, 474 deaths, 106 deaths/million

In every case, all numbers up. In fairness, numbers up everywhere, but higher in these states. Still, though, not a massive spike…. Yet.

One new factor. Coast-to-coast protests over the death of George Floyd for 14 consecutive days, people packed together in the streets for hours at a time, most with masks. Not all, and in any event, very little attempt at social spacing.

We will need to watch the numbers here starting in about another week.

Thursday, June 11, 2020

6:00 p.m. – US cases 2,088,358, up 50,000 since Tuesday aft. (25,000/day)

            US deaths 116,016, up 2000 since Tues. aft (1000/day)

Saturday, June 13, 2020

5:30 p.m.- U.S. cases 2,141,000, up 43,000 since Thursday (21,500/day)

            US deaths 117,500, up 1500 since Thursday (750/day)

New reality. The “biggest” states (NY, NJ, MA) are beginning to drop significantly, but a number of smaller states are starting to spike. So smaller numbers, until you look at per capita. So a place like New Mexico, though rising, seems relatively okay until you look a the Navajo reservation. Or Oklahoma until you look at Tulsa. (Guess where the “president” has his first “
post-coronavirus” rally this coming Friday!)

Sunday, June 14, 2020

9:45 p.m. – U.S. cases 2,162,144, up 21,000 since yesterday afternoon

            U.S. deaths 117,853, up 350 since yesterday afternoon. Another new low since early March.

Tuesday, June 16, 2020

9:30 a.m. – U.S. cases 2,184,120, up 22,000 in past 36 hours.

            U.S. deaths 118,379, up 750 in past 36 hours.

Strange phenomena now. Death rates are falling overall, but there are pockets of spiking cases happening in many parts of the US that opened early. In some cases, not necessarily “state-122

World-wide, the virus seems to have been brought under control overall, with exceptions like Brazil and Russia, where things seem to be ramping up in a serious way. Europe, overall, seems to have brought things under control.

 The U.S. has ¼ of all the world’s cases, and ¼ the world’s death total. Somehow these numbers are acceptable to a large portion of the U.S. population. It baffles me. I guess getting the economy going again actually IS more important than human life.

Wednesday, June 17, 2020

10 p.m. – U.S. cases 2,234,471, up almost 50,000 in past 36 hours.

            U.S. deaths 119,941, up 1600 in past 36 hours.

Saturday, June 20, 2020

My goodness, the time slipped away. Well, let’s see where we’re headed here in this nation. Before looking at today’s numbers, the trend seems to be holding steady at about 20,000 new cases per day and 1000 deaths per day. Let’s see if that trend is changing since Wednesday.

10 p.m. – U.S. cases 2,330,500, up 96,000 since Wed. eve (33,000/day). Not good.

            U.S. deaths 122,000, up 2000 since Wed. eve. (670/day, roughly). Holding, but… the death total always lags behind the hospitalizations and case by a week or more, so…

Trump held his first big rally tonight in Tulsa, OK. He said 1 million ticket requests had come in, and that 100,000 would come to Tulsa – 19,000 inside the arena and another 80,000 outside. The outside number was downgraded to 40,000. In reality, the inside crowd didn’t fill the arena and the outside crowd was so low they just moved everyone inside and canceled Trump and Pences’ speeches to the “overflow” crowd. Meanwhile, inside most of the arena’s upper deck was empty. My estimate would be 10-12,000 in attendance. Total. That means 96-98,000 no-shows. Which means, even Trump supporters are smarter than the president, and that ain’t saying much.

Probably the best feel-good in a very long time. This was a disastrous kick-off to Trump’s re-election. He feasts on massive rallies (a la Hitler), and this one was tepid at best. (City of Tulsa Fire Department says crowd size was 6200… in a 19,000-seat arena!)

Reports coming out that masses of American young people on Tik-Tok purchased thousands and thousands of tickets in order to troll the “president”. America at its best.

Meanwhile, on the world scene, Brazil may well overtake the U.S. in all categories a #1 in the world. Their president, very much like Trump, a major denier of science.

Sunday, June 21, 2020

10 p.m. – U.S. cases, 2,356,657, up 26,100 since last evening same time.

            U.S. deaths 122,247, up 247 since last evening, same time. This is a new low!

However… record numbers of one-day cases in Florida, Oklahoma, Arizona. So just wait.

New estimates of 250,000 American deaths by mid-July. No other country is close to us (I’ll check on a per-capita basis sometime soon)

Thursday, June 25, 2020

5 a.m. – U.S. cases, 2,462,713, up 106,000 since Sunday eve. (approx. 34,000/day). Uh-oh.

            U.S. deaths , 124,282, up 2000 since Sunday eve. (approx. 675/day)

Florida, Texas, Arizona, California are all spiking now. Half the U.S. states are seeing rising numbers of both cases and deaths.

The “president” boasts that “nobody has done the number of tests we’ve done” and he’s right… in raw numbers. But per capita basis, we’re #25 in the world in tests run. Granted, many of the nations ahead of us per capita are the tiny ones. But Russia, the UK, Spain, Portugal and Belarus are significantly ahead of us.

In other ‘per capita’ news, deaths/million: UK, Spain, Italy, France, Sweden, Belgium, Andorra and San Marino are all ahead of us.

Heads UP India. Massive population, very little testing, fast-rising number of cases.

Friday, June 26, 2020

As feared, we’re now seeing massive new numbers. Florida yesterday with an all-time one day total of new cases just shy of 9000, bringing their total cases to 123,000.

California, Texas and Arizona are the big spikes.

California now with 200,000 cases, to take over second in the U.S.

Texas with 1400 cases yesterday.

Let’s look at our “early opening” states between June 9 and today:

Georgia – June 9 -53,000 cases, 2250 deaths

            Today – 73,000 cases, 2990 deaths

S. Carolina – June 9 – 14,800 cases, 557 deaths

            Today – 29,000 cases, 653 deaths (big jump in cases – will deaths follow?)

Florida – June 7, 54,500 cases (last reported date), 2413 deaths

            Today – 123,000 cases, 3366 deaths

Arkansas – June 7 – 9740 cases, 155 deaths

            Today – 18,062 cases, 240 deaths

Texas – June 7 – 77,579 cases, 1879 deaths

            Today – 138,500 cases, 2347 deaths

I don’t have June stats for California. They were a state lauded for having it all under control inMay, but something has definitely gone haywire out there. I’m guessing the population just said ‘the hell with it’.

The stats seem to be showing that the virus is moving down in age now, to the 25-40 crowd. These would be the very people who jammed the beaches and the bars in those states whose governors followed Trump’s advice and opened up to, you know, get the economy going again.

So at the very time when death totals nationwide are dropping, even dropping precipitously, it’s clear we’re on the cusp of another major outbreak. One sign? The White House Coronavirus Task Force met today for a press conference. It’s the first time we’ve seen them in a month. That speaks volumes – they know we’re in for it.

8:30 p.m. – US cases 2,552,990, up 90,000 since yesterday morning. Big jump!

            U.S. deaths – 127,640, up 3300 since yesterday morning. Also a big jump. It feels like we’re on the eve of destruction.

Saturday, June 27, 2020

5:00 p.m. – U.S. cases 2,590,266, up almost 38,000 since last evening. Whoa.

            U.S. deaths 128,108, up 700 since last evening. Wait another week or two.

Today I’ll start specifically following Florida, Texas, Arizona and California. These are the states that now seem to be careening out of control. Hospitals are reaching their ICU capacities, with no slowing down in sight. So:

Florida – Cases: 132,500 (up 8500 since yesterday – – Deaths: 3392 (#6 in cases – 6171/million)

Texas – Cases: 146,792 (up 8500 since yesterday) – – Deaths: 2403 (#4 in cases – 5063/million)

Arizona – Cases: 70,051 – – Deaths: 1579 (#10 in cases – 9624/million)

California – Cases: 208,207 (up 8000 since yesterday) – – Deaths: 5881 (#2 in cases –

5269/million)

Sunday, June 28, 2020

11:30 p.m. – U.S. cases 2,637,077, up 47,000 cases since yesterday aft. Double Whoa!

            U.S. deaths 128, 437, up 300 since yesterday aft. (See yesterday’s comment… with a caveat: IF we are getting better at understanding how to address this disease, we MAY see our death totals hold steady. I don’t think that’s what we’re going to see, but that’s the hope.

I will be taking a hiatus from this diary until around the middle of July. I will be driving to Colorado where I’ll be doing a remote mountain bike tour (Tour Divide route) for a little over a week. Will be social distancing and seeing very few humans in that time. “Driving” means eating/drinking what I bring in the cooler or eating at drive-up windows, gassing up without touching the gas pump (Clorox wipe or paper towel), peeing on the side of the road, sleeping in a tent off the side of the road. For #2, will probably use a rest area toilet unless the rest area is too crowded in which case I’ll find a bush with my TP.

Thursday, July 23, 2020

A great deal has happened in my absence. In short, cases are exploding, especially across the south and in California, which today surpassed NY for the most virus cases (granted, double the population, but Calif. looked like it had everything under control in June). Florida, Texas and Arizona seem to be the worst hit. These are states with Republican governors who defied the scientists. California’s Democratic governor followed the science, but his people did not. I would love to know how many Trumpers were the cause of California’s problems, but that kind of tracing isn’t possible.

Yesterday, Trump resumed the WH virus task force live briefings… without a single scientist on the stage. He appeared alone. He said all the right things – how he’s always been in favor of mask-wearing (this is a lie) and that we should all be wearing them. Fact is, his poll numbers during this devastating month (July alone has seen ¼ of all America’s virus cases) have plummeted, largely due to his handling of the pandemic, so now he’s trying to salvage his re-election. It won’t work because it’s too late. Already, the death numbers are beginning to creep up toward the 1000/day mark again, and I think we’ll be over that mark very soon and for a pretty long time.

Everybody said there would be a second wave in the fall that would be worse than the first wave… and we’re still in the first wave because irresponsible Americans couldn’t do the one simple thing that would have saved tens of thousands of lives: wear a mask in public. Why didn’t they? To be very clear, because the leader of the nation scoffed at the idea, making it a political issue that he thought would play well with his base. It did. Hope he’s happy with the result.

U.S. cases – 4,169,991, up 1.53 million since June 28. (average 61,000 cases/day)

U.S. deaths – 147,333, up 19,000 since June 28 (average 760/day, but started lower, moving higher now by the day)

New York and New Jersey still lead in the death count (32,600 and 15,800 respectively). We’ll start keeping track of the “hot” states now.

California – 432,300 cases/8200 deaths

Florida – 390,000 cases/5500 deaths

Texas – 377,400 cases/4760 deaths

Arizona – 153,000 cases, 3000 deaths

Note: other states (Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and others) are also spiking in cases. Will deaths follow? If the new cases are among the reckless young, they may recover at a higher rate, but… will they track the virus into their homes and other places where the vulnerable will be exposed all over again? Stay tuned.

WORLD

Brazil now checks in at #2 with 2,300,000 cases/84,000 deaths. Their science-denying president Bolsinaro, tested positiupve last week.

India at #3 and look out there! 1,288,000 cases/30,600 deaths.

Russia #4.

Others: Mexico a real hot spot.

Saturday, July 25, 2020

9 a.m. – US cases 4,252,490, up 72,000 since Thursday evening

US deaths 148, 541, up 1200 since Thursday evening

California – 442,938 (up 10,000), 8340 (up 140)

Florida – 402,312 (up 12,000), 5653 (up 150)

Texas – 395,550 (up 18,000), 4930 (up 180)

Arizona – 156,300 (up 3000), 3140 (up 140)

Monday, July 27, 2020

5:30 a.m. – U.S. cases 4,372,000, up 120,000 cases since Sat. a.m. (60,000/day)

U.S. deaths, 149,850, up 1300 since Thurs. a.m. (650/day)

Places like North Dakota and Nebraska now spiking in cases.

California – 459,195 (up 8000/day), 8455 (up 60/day) – now more cases than NY which has led the US from the start. Note: significantly higher population.

Florida – 423,855 (up 10,500/day), 5855 (up 100/day)

Texas – 398,000 (up 1250/day), 5155 (up 100/day)

Arizona – 162,000 (up 3000/day), 3305 (up 75/day)

NOTE: In hottest states, both case AND death totals have dropped.

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

8 p.m. – U.S. cases 4,498,200, up 126,000 cases since yesterday morning.

U.S. deaths 152,300, up 2500 since yesterday morning.

Sunday, August 2, 2020

9 p.m. – U.S. cases 4,813,650, up 315,400 since Tuesday evening (approx. 63,000/day)

U.S. deaths 158,360, up 6000 since Tuesday evening (approx. 1200/day)

California – 515,700 (up 55,000), …….

Monday, August 24, 2020

Been in Colorado for the better part of the month. So… what has happened in the meantime? Did the virus magically disappear? Did the summer heat kill it off?

6 p.m. – U.S. cases 5,900,000 cases, up 1,100,000 since Aug. 2. (avg. 50,000/day)

U.S. deaths 181,000, up 23,000 since Aug. 2 (avg. just over 1000/day)

Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2020

Very discouraging times. The president and Republicans are simply pretending the virus is no longer a problem. Trump is facing re-election in 61 days and he knows his handling of this crisis is foremost in people’s minds, so he is hoping to deflect. This deflection, of course, just hardens his supporters into continuing to not observe the most basic of safety protocols (mainly masking and social distancing), which will do nothing but keep the numbers climbing. His culpability is tantamount to murder.

7 a.m. – U.S. cases, 6,259,000, up 359,000 in past 7 days (51,000 cases/day av).

U.S. deaths 189,000, up 8000 in past seven days (1150 deaths/day av.)

While it’s true that, as Trump constantly boasts, the US has tested by the millions more than any other nation, he’s talking only raw numbers. Our tests/million population (251,500) aren’t that much different from a number of other major nations (Russia 254,200, UK 239,500, Israel 256,000, Portugal 200,000, Spain 197,000, for example).

But the statistic that doesn’t lie (or does it?) is deaths. We are 4% of the world’s population but account for 22% of the world’s deaths from this disease. Stunning number… which the Trump administration is now trying to throw into doubt. He re-tweeted a viral post from QAnon last week that the CDC is now reporting that only 6% of the reported death figure is from Covid-19 alone.

But that is a gross and willful misinterpretation of the CDC statement, which is, to quote ABC News (Aug. 31): “The CDC data table is based on an analysis of death certificates that mention COVID-19 as a cause. For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned, the CDC notes.

The other 94% list COVID-19 and other conditions together. Among those deaths, there were, on average, 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death, the public health agency said.”

So 6% of American deaths can be attributed to Covid ONLY. 94% of those who died had some kind of pre-existing health issue (heart disease, diabetes, etc. etc. etc. – my God, show me a healthy American these days!!) who contracted the virus, which finished them off.

And conservatives have the audacity to be saying, “See, those aren’t Covid deaths!”

The fact of the matter, Trump HAS to somehow get the Covid off his back or it will destroy his chances for re-election. Lying and distorting the truth have never been a problem for him, so he’s doing his best.

State Updates

It’s been awhile (July 27 to be exact – 37 days ago), so let’s get some numbers.

I’ll divide all differences between today and July 27 by 37 to arrive at the per day average.

California – 717,000 cases (up 258,000 – 7000/day av.)  13,000 deaths (up 4550 –

123/day av.)

Double the numbers of July 27

Texas – 648,000 cases (up 250,000 – 6750/day av.)   13,000 deaths (up 7900 – 214/day av.)

            Double the numbers of July 27

Florida – 631,000 cases (up 207,000 – 5600/day av.)  11,400 deaths (up 5550, 150/day av.)

            Up 50% since July 27

Arizona – 202,000 cases (up 40,000, 1100/day av.)  5000 deaths (up 1700, 46/day av.)

            Down by half since July 27

Monday, Sept. 14, 2020

About two weeks since last update. In that time, Trump has begun to hold mass indoor campaign rallies at which virtually no one wears a mask. These people are making a clear political statement. They are also telling the world they 1. Don’t believe in science and 2. Don’t care about other human beings. Trump, when asked about the safety issues responded by saying he isn’t worried because HE is up on a platform very far away from everyone. Nice man.

Also, Bob Woodward’s book “Rage” will be released tomorrow. In 19 interviews with the president, Trump tells Woodward in early February that the virus will be very bad. This is the opposite of what he was telling the American people then and is still telling the American people to this very day.

U.S. cases – 6,750,000, up 491,000 since Sept. 2 (41,000/day average)

U.S. deaths – 199,000, up 10,000 since Sept. 2 (833/day average).

Of note, DuPage County and Naperville cases and deaths are beginning to climb after a lull.

I would love to know how many of the new cases and deaths in the US are Trump supporters who refuse to mask. Is there any way to get this information??

US is far and away the number one nation in cases, but India and Brazil are catching up. Russia in fourth. Brazil is #2 in deaths, and it should be noted that its leader, like Trump, is a science denier.

Saturday, October 3, 2020

Well, it’s been quite a couple of days. Donald Trump is at Bethesda Naval Hospital, having contracted the coronavirus. The announcement came Thursday night late and he was taken in yesterday afternoon around 5 pm. As expected in his administration, not only was his diagnosis not announced by the WH (we heard about it as a leak), but there has yet to be any press conference with a doctor associated with the president. That leaves everything open to speculation regarding his condition, which the WH reports as “very good”.

But not only the president. The First Lady, the chair of the RNC, his campaign manager, two Republican Senators, Hope Hicks (president’s closest advisor), president of Notre Dame, and three White House reporters in the press pool. To date.

With an incubation period of up to five days, there will be more. The event that ties most of these cases together was the Saturday (last) Rose Garden celebration of Trump’s nominee to fill the Supreme Court position left vacant by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg last week.

Something I just wrote out and sent to some close friends:

The word “unprecedented” has been overused these past four years, but here we are again. The president of the United States taken by helicopter yesterday afternoon to Bethesda with what is apparently a worsening case of coronavirus and the “epidemic within the epidemic” exploding within the top echelons of the Republican Party and the White House staff..

 I’m curious about your feelings on all these events.

 Here’s a few of mine.

1. “Pride goeth before a fall.”

2. Karma’s a bitch.

3. Hubris

4. I keep wanting to be the better person and feel some, any, ounce of compassion for these people, but it’s not there. They are now finally reaping the whirlwind they’ve recklessly sown for the past seven months that has cost us probably 150,000 American lives that never had to be lost.

5. I want to see more of them pay for their sins. I don’t want them to die, but I do want them to suffer enough pain that they will atone and perhaps come through it with the humility to admit publicly how wrong they were so we can get this disaster finally moving in the right direction.

Topping my list: Eric and Don Jr., Ivanka, Jared, Bill Barr, Mitch McConnell, Jim Jordan, and Franklin Graham. It appears from the videos I’ve seen that all have a solid chance of carrying the virus right now (maybe not Jordan). We’ll know one way or another in a few days or less.

6. I don’t want Trump to die (tho I do want his primary physicians to be Stella Immanuel and Scott Atlas). If he dies, it will only fuel the QAnon conspirators and armed crazies out there, and gin up the Base with a sympathy vote for whoever is on the ticket, be it the Human Bowling Pin or some other last-minute replacement. Also, I want him to live to see what happens on November 3, then watch the collapse of his mythical empire, and spend the rest of his life either fighting a hundred and fifty separate lawsuits (civil, federal, and criminal), or in prison.

I also do not want a quick recovery. As I said above, these people need to suffer and suffer a lot to compensate for what they’ve done. A quick recovery would allow him and the Cult to brag about how see? it’s nothing more than the flu, and go on completely disregarding the fact that they’ve murdered over 100,000 Americans. No, they need to be brought to their knees.

7. Which brings me finally to the “abundance of caution” that led to the decision to get Trump to Bethesda. If we had started hearing that phrase out of the president’s mouth back in February, things would be much different today. But as is so typical of these people,they simply cannot see an issue until it hits them or their family (Cheney on the gay issue, as an example), which is why I am hoping it hits hard and is widespread in the top echelon of the Republican Party.

I don’t know what the next 30 days is going to bring, but we have all got to get every single person we know to vote and do whatever we can in our respective communities to ACTIVELY get out the vote. There’s a lot at stake. There are powerful forces at work to stifle Democratic votes and they’re not going to stop because Trump is in the hospital. If you’ve never been actively involved in a political campaign before, this is the month to do it.

Now let’s see what the rest of October brings.

In the meantime, Americans keep dying at a rate that far exceeds any other place on earth.

8 a.m. – US cases now at 7,550,000, up 800,000 since Sept. 14 (42,000/day average)

US deaths now at 213,500, up 14,500 since Sept. 14 (763/day).

These numbers don’t accurately tell the story of the past week or so. I’ll try to update more frequently again so we can see more immediate trending.

But what is happening now is that as the weather is beginning to turn colder in the northern states, cases are climbing. 26 states are reporting a rise in cases over the past few days, and most of these are in rural Red states with Republican governors, most of whom have given in to the wishes of business owners to re-open. Combine that with the fact that Lois and I have witnessed as we traveled through Iowa and Nebraska and Colorado this summer that Trump Country is simply following the lead of the president in denying that a virus problem even exists.

So now the chickens are coming home to roost not only in the White House, but in the states that have followed the lead of the White House.

Wisconsin in particular is spiking the worst right now. (For the record a Democratic governor… but a Republican statehouse that blocks him)

And that’s why we’re facing a long, ugly winter with no end in sight to our “new lifestyle” until sometime well into next year AT THE EARLIEST.

If Joe Biden is elected next month, that will help a lot.

But sadly, we live in a nation where we have been groomed for decades on the concept of immediate gratification. We “sacrificed” for a couple of months, but that was apparently our limit. People just couldn’t refrain from partying for any longer than that.

So here we are.

Sunday, October 4, 2020

Trump still at Walter Reed/Bethesda. The official reports on his condition are, predictable, FUBAR. No one knows how he’s doing. The WH Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, says he’s in worse shape than the doctors at Walter Reed are letting on. No WHY would he say that?? No one knows.

In the meantime,

(My stats were wrong. See tomorrow.)

U.S. deaths 214,600, up 1100 since yesterday

Monday, October 5, 2020, 9 p.m.

US Cases 7,680,000, up 130,000 since Saturday morning 8 a.m. (52,000/day average)

US Deaths 215,000, up 400 since yesterday evening.

Monday, October 12, 2020, 5 p.m.

US cases, 8 million (up 320,000 since last Monday, or 47,500/day average – going up)

US deaths, 220,000 (up 5000 since last Monday, or 715/day)

Monday, October 26, 2020

Ok, here we go. As predicted, the virus is taking off again as the weather turns colder and as more Americans follow the president’s lead and deny the science of distancing and mask wearing. This is now an absolutely political/partisan issue in this country. The early pandemic struck the “Democratic” cities before anyone knew how to control it. But the virus is now hitting the “Republican” rural areas, exactly those areas where Trump supporters have followed his lead (and vice versa) in “demanding our freedom!” and denying science. The President is doing massive political rallies at which out of thousands of attendees packed into tight spaces, very few are wearing masks. They revel in this. They mock mask-wearers as pussies.

Yesterday, Mark Meadows, the White House Chief of Staff announced that “we are not going to control the virus.” Yes. Read that again. “We are not going to control the virus.” It’s beyond belief. A virus that *can* be controlled, as has been done in many nations around the world. The White House has just given up on trying to control it because “it’s a contagious virus just like the flu” (emphasis mine). This virus is NOT just like the flu, and the White House knew this in January.

Three days ago, the nation saw its greatest single day of new cases, over 83,000. That followed a day that broke the record THAT day, 72,000. Deaths are still below 1000/day average, but how long do you think it will be before those numbers start jumping?

“We are not going to control the virus.”

The election is in eight days. God, spare us from this pestilence (and I don’t mean the virus).

US cases, 8,970,000 (up 970,000 since Oct. 12, fourteen days ago – 69,300 cases/day average, but as noted, this past weekend spiking up to 83,000 cases/day)

US deaths, 231,000 – (up 11,000 since Oct. 12 – 785 deaths/day average. This daily average will spike within two weeks or less, although the doctors have learned a great deal about mitigating the virus since March, so maybe, maybe…)

Tuesday, October 27, 2020

U.S. cases 9,032,400 (up 62,400 since yesterday)

U.S. deaths 232,000 (up 1000 since yesterday)

Election in seven days

I haven’t focused on the rest of the world recently because the U.S. has been the world’s worst example of handling the virus, and thus the U.S. has the worst record in terms of results. But it should be noted that while most of the rest of the world numbers were down significantly in the summer (while US was having a large upswing), European case numbers are now exceeding US case numbers per capita.

Wednesday, October 28, 2020

U.S. cases 9,120,750 (up 88,350 cases since yesterday)

U.S. deaths 233,130 (up 1130 since yesterday)

Election in six days

Thursday, October 29, 2020

U.S. cases 9,213,000 (up 92,250 cases since yesterday – a new all-time high in the U.S.)

U.S. deaths 234,177 (up 1047 since yesterday – looks like we’re arriving at the 1000/day plateau as a norm now)

Election in five days

Saturday, October 31, 2020

U.S. cases 9,336,000 (up 123,000 since Thursday evening)

U.S. deaths 235,450 (up 1270 since Thursday evening)

Three days

Monday, November 2, 2020

Very frustrating. My entry yesterday, showing, by my memory, 113,000 new cases and 890 new deaths, is not here. I have wanted to keep a careful daily count.

U.S. cases 9,489,450 (up 153,450 since Saturday – 76,725/day average)

U.S. deaths 236,572 (up 1122 since Saturday – 561/day average.

One day

Tuesday, November 3, 2020 – Election Day

U.S. cases 9,571,000 (up 81,550 since yesterday)

U.S. deaths 237,000 (up 428 since yesterday)

Tonight, we find out what our nation is

Thursday, November 5, 2020

As it turns out, we still aren’t sure what our nation is, but Biden should clinch either overnight tonight or tomorrow sometime. Possibly not, but his path to victory seems assured, whenever it happens.

An explosion of new cases.

Two days ago, our first 100,000 case day (104,000). Yesterday, 118,000 cases

Cases: 9,919,500

Deaths: 240,950

Friday, November 6, 2020 – 12:30 p.m.

Yesterday’s totals were from late last night. This is 14 hours later

U.S. deaths 241,291 (up 350)

Saturday, November 7, 202

Joe Biden is declared the winner of the presidential election. Our four-year national nightmare is over. He will be announcing the formation of a coronavirus task force on Monday.

Sunday, November 8, 2020, 8 a.m.

U.S. deaths – 243,290 (up 2000 since Friday noon)

Monday, November 9, 2020 9 a.m.

I’ve done a hasty job for the past several days. The biggest story is the number of new cases skyrocketing. Our charts are going straight up. Way more new cases than anything we’ve seen before, including March and July. Hospitals in parts of the country are beginning to be overwhelmed.

U.S. cases – 10,296,000 (up 376,500 since Thursday – over 100,000 cases per day for the past four days)

U.S. deaths – 243,797 (up 500 since yesterday morning)

Tuesday, November 10, 2020

Explosion of new cases in the past 24 hours.

U.S. cases 10,559,000 (up 263,000 in past 36 hours). 263,000!! Massive day and a half.

U.S. deaths 245,800 (up 2000 in past 36 hours). Biggest one day yet.

We are in trouble. Word from a scientist I heard today: our cases are probably closer to 400,000/day because we simply don’t have the testing we need. So things are much worse than the horrible they already appear to be.

Hospitals in various states are beginning to be overwhelmed. El Paso, Texas is having a nightmare, their morgues so overflowing they’ve had to bring in refrigerated trailer supplements.

The virus creeps closer to our family. Brother-in-law showing all the signs. Tested yesterday. Will almost guarantee he has it. Fran (wife) will certainly follow. The girls are both out of the house.

Wednesday, November 11, 2020

1:30 – U.S. cases 10,628,000 (up 69,000 since last night)

U.S. deaths 246,500 (up 700 since last night)

6:00 – U.S. cases – 10,698,000 (up 139,000 since last evening)

U.S. deaths 247,200 (up 1400 since last evening)

Naperville mayor Steve Chirico (R) says he will not enforce Governor Pritzker’s (D) order to limit numbers of patrons in restaurants. Illinois numbers going through the roof.

Thursday, November 12, 2020

5:30 p.m. – U.S. cases 10,860,400 (up 162,400 since last evening)

U.S. deaths – 248,500 (up 1300 since last evening)

Trump has been invisible since Election Day. Not a word about the virus. States left to fend for theirselves. He had ONE meeting with the WH virus task force, on Monday, and that was only because Biden announced HIS task force that day. VP Mike Pence, the head of the WH task force… left on vacation yesterday. I cannot make this stuff up.

In the meantime, Trump still continues to insist there has been massive election fraud, though there has been zero evidence of it, and he continues to refuse to concede the election. My guess is he’ll never concede.

Saturday, November 14, 2020 – 11:30 a.m.

It took 98 days to go from zero cases to 1 million. It took six days to go from 10 million to 11 million.

U.S. cases 11,115,000 (up 254,600 since Thursday evening 5:30 – 6528 case/hour or 156,676 cases in any 24 hour period of the past 40 hours)

U.S. deaths 250,360 (up 1860 since Thursday evening 5:30 – 1115 in any 24 of the past 40 hours)

Illinois is spiking. We’re on of the worst. The entire upper Midwest is bad.

Sunday, November 15, 2020, 12:30 p.m.

U.S. cases 11,271,800 (up 156,800 in past 24 hours)

U.S. deaths 251,450 (up 1,090 in past 24 hours)

So much emphasis now on the U.S. The rest of the world is also seeing a fall spike, but nothing like the spike we’re having here in the U.S. The virus has been so politicized that I believe it’s now hopeless to get it under control. Too many people deny that it’s a problem. This is unbelievable to any rational person, but our nation has been so heavily influenced now by the irrational that we’re doomed.

This is going to get really bad.

Lois’s brother Ken got his test back yesterday. He’s positive, but feels like he’s over the worst, and his worst symptom was the cough he couldn’t shake.

We lost an old friend, Jim Mizener, to the virus yesterday. In his 80s, retired from DGS, Jim was the PA announcer at our soccer games. Consummate professional who respected our sport as “major” at a time when many did not. Genuinely nice man who took an interest in everyone he met. May he rest in peace.

Monday, November 16, 2020 – 1:30 p.m.

U.S. cases 11,435,600 – up 163,800 since yesterday noon

U.S. deaths 252, 170 – up 720 since yesterday noon

Tuesday, November 17, 2020 – 10 p.m.

U.S. cases 11,695,700 (up 260,100 since yesterday)

U.S. deaths 254,250 – up 2080 since yesterday

Read today that 1 out of every 1000 citizens of North Dakota has now died of the virus.

Brazil, Spain and Belgium still lead us in deaths/million population… but that’s a far cry from where we were back in April/May. And we’re catching up.

President Trump has not met with his White House virus task force in more than five weeks now, and hasn’t said one word about it (let alone a word of sympathy) since losing the election back on the 3^rd.

Should point out here that he is refusing to concede the election, which President-Elect Biden won with the same number of Electoral votes as Trump defeated Hillary Clinton with back in ’16. He is claiming (and was claiming it for months *before* the election) that it was rigged. This is a president of the United States, a clear loser, calling into question the very foundation on which our entire nation’s history rests: peaceful transfer of power. He has no idea, nor cares to, of the damage he is doing the very idea of democracy around the world.

Illinois, DuPage County, and Naperville are seeing cases skyrocket now. We continue to be as careful as we can, limiting trips out of the house, keeping our distance from people, wearing masks any time there is contact with another person.

Wednesday, November 18, 2020 – 3:00 p.m.

U.S. cases – 11,824,850, up 128,550 since 10 p.m. last night

U.S. deaths – 255,700, up 1450 since 10 p.m. last night

Thursday, November 19, 2020, 8:30 p.m.

U.S. cases – 12,070,700, up 245,850 since 3 p.m. yesterday. We’re heading into the stratosphere.

U.S. deaths – 258,300, up 2600 since yesterday. Our single most tragic day. Yet.

Since losing the election, Trump has been seen publicly on exactly one occasion, laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on November 11 (These would be the very people he called “losers” and “suckers”. I wanted God to strike him dead on the spot).

Saturday, November 21, 2020 – 3:00 p.m.

U.S. cases – 12,415,750 – up 345,050 in past 48 hours (172,525 per day)

U.S. deaths – 261,600 – up 3300 in past 48 hours (1650 per day)

Sunday, November 22, 2020, 10:30 p.m.

U.S. cases – 12,588,700, up 173,000 in past 32 hours

U.S. deaths – 262,700, up 1100 in past 32 hours

Monday, November 23, 2020 – 3:00 p.m.

U.S. cases 12,701,700, up 113,000 since last evening

U.S. deaths 263,300, up 600 since last evening (a decline!)

Got word today that my brother-in-law, Don Duff, in his 80s and healthy, has a cough and a 99.5 fever. He’s getting tested. Praying.

Tuesday, November 24, 2020 – 6:30 p.m.

U.S. cases 12,949,200, up 247,500 since yesterday 3:00 p.m

U.S. deaths 265,850, up 2550 since yesterday 3:00 p.m. We’re breaking records every day now.

Today, the Trump administration officially allowed the Biden transition team access to all the materials they will need to have an orderly transition to January 20. It’s shameful they waited this long. Trump still has not conceded, and his millions of Twitter followers are getting dozens of emails every day claiming the election was stolen (and please send money). This is so destructive to the essence of democracy. I don’t know how we ever have an undisputed election again. Maybe Trump was an aberration: such a disgusting human being that we’ll never see the likes of him again. Or… maybe not.

Wednesday, November 25, 2020 – 2:00 p.m

U.S. cases 13,075,000, up 125,800 since 3:00 yesterday

U.S. deaths 267,500, up 1650 since yesterday.

Going into the Thanksgiving weekend, millions of Americans seem to just be ignoring the problem and traveling to be with extended family. Airports are crowded, highways crowded. Less than normal, but still waaay too much for the time we’re in. It’s like Americans assume the Covid restrictions apply to someone else.

They call it Covid Fatigue: we’re just too tired of it all and want to get back to normal, so we just are. Hang the consequences. Add this to the number of Trump Covid/Science deniers and they say this weekend could be the superspreader event of superspreader events. We’ll know in about two weeks time.

Saturday, November 28, 2020 – 5:45 p.m.

U.S. cases 13,605,000, up 655,800 since Wed aft. (218,600/day average)

U.S. deaths 272,250, up 4750 since Wed. aft. (1580/day average)

U.S. hospitals are reaching critical mass in many states. Rural areas, which have small hospitals with few or no ICU beds are being strained to the maximum.

Sunday, November 29, 2020

U.S. cases 13,750,400, up 135,400 since 5:45 p.m. yesterday

U.S. deaths 273,100, up 850 since yesterday. (Down. A trend, or a blip?)

Thursday, December 3, 2020 – 3:30 p.m.

So discouraging. America has no discipline. The Democratic mayors of San Francisco, Austin TX and the Democratic governor of California all traveled to family gatherings over Thanksgiving after telling the citizens they govern that they must stay home and not visit family. So hypocritical. WHAT are they THINKING??? Terrible role modeling, and just leading more and more Americans to ignore the obvious: this pandemic is killing us in growing numbers.

Yesterday, the number of dead in the 24-hour period was 2800. Today it looks like that number will be exceeded, and by next week that number may be a distant memory. NONE of this had to happen.

And Trump continues to not only recognize the disease or those who have died in any way, but he refuses to concede the election, is adamant that it was stolen from him and that he won by millions of votes. It’s beyond belief.

More cases, more deaths, more hospitalizations today than our peak day in April.

U.S. cases 14,476,300, up 725,900 since Sunday (181,475 new cases/day av.)

U.S. deaths 282,000, up 8900 since Sunday (2225/day average)

Friday, December 4, 2020 – 9 p.m.

U.S. cases 14,772,535, up 296,200 since yesterday. WHOA

U.S. deaths 285,550, up 3550 since yesterday.

Saturday, December 5, 2020, 11:15 p.m.

U.S. cases 14,983,400, up 210,865 since yesterday evening

U.S. deaths 287,800, up 2250 since yesterday evening

Friday, December 11, 2020, 6:30 p.m.

It’s been a very bad week. The worst yet. And it will get worse over the next three months.

First, the good news. The FDA today has authorized the use of the Pfizer vaccine, which will begin to be put into people’s arms within another week. Other vaccine makers will join, and the hope is that by mid-spring (maybe at the earliest), we may start to see the vanquishing of this pandemic. Great Britain began vaccinating yesterday, and most of the rest of the world will follow soon.

The bad news. We are now averaging over 3000 deaths per day, and that number will climb to… well, we just don’t know, before this is over. Hospitals in many states now are reporting shortages of ICU beds and First Responder staff are exhausted.

The worst areas, of course, are Trump Country, where they have followed his lead in denial of the most basic safety measures in response to the virus, most notably, the simple act of wearing a mask. Trump will be remembered in history for this, the most reckless act of his reckless presidency. An act that cost anywhere from 100,000-200,000 needless deaths of his countrymen.

In other news today, the Supreme Court refused to hear a case filed by the Texas states attorney general and signed onto by 17 other states as well as 106 Republican Congressmen, that attempted to overthrow the results of the presidential election in the states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona. You read that right: one state suing another state for… doing exactly what the Constitution says states have the right to do – determining how they will run their election. The case was thrown out without a hearing, and with no objecting statements by any Justice. This would be laughable except for the fact of the great damage it is doing to American and world democracy.

U.S. cases – 16, 261,000, up 1,277,600 in the past six days (213,000 new cases/day)

U.S. deaths – 302,500, up 14,700 in the past six days (2450 new deaths/day)

Get ready. It’s going to be a grim few months.

Sunday, December 13, 2020 – 6:00 p.m.

U.S. cases – 16,726,800, up 465,800 since Friday 6 p.m. (233,000/day)

We have jumped one million cases just in the past week.

Michelle called last night. She thinks she has it… apparently again. Thinks she may have gotten it through the ventilation system of her apartment, as the couple in the flat below her are both positive. She’s feeling much worse than first time. Can you get it twice?

My brother-in-law Don, in his 80s, had it but has apparently recovered. I’m still holding my breath.

We lost another former colleague yesterday. Scott Helton, currently the superintendent in Dist. 88, got the Covid two weeks ago, then suffered a life-ending stroke.

We lost Alene Ackerman, 57 years old, a secondary Covid victim. She began feeling sick and weak in mid-June. Covid meant no doctor visit. They called, he said ‘get tested and if you don’t feel better in six weeks, call me’. She and Mark got tested. Negative. Still felt crappy. Getting weaker. Got tested again. Negative. Finally called the doctor back in late July. Went in, got blood tests. Pancreatic cancer, spread all over. Alene died the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. We couldn’t visit her, couldn’t visit Mark, couldn’t attend a funeral.

U.S. deaths 306,400, up 3900 since Friday 6 p.m. (1950/day)

This is a little better, but it’s still the equivalent of seven jumbo jets going down every day.

Trump, meanwhile, continues to insist he won the election. There were mass rallies in Washington, D.C. Saturday in support of him. He will be the reason a significant portion of the nation will refuse to get the vaccine.

Tuesday, December 15, 2020 – 6:30 p.m.

U.S. cases 17,134,000, up 407.200 since Sunday, 6 p.m. (203,600/day av.)

U.S. deaths 310,800, up 4400 since Sunday 6 p.m. (2200/day av.)

Trump’s White House security chief contracted the Covid in September, and recently had his lower leg amputated. The family is broke and started a GoFundMe page to help with expenses. They have not heard a word from Trump, who with 80M Twitter followers could do a lot to help him. (“The WH security chief just had to have his leg amputated. Let’s chip in $1 each to help him out.”) Particularly infuriating when you realize how many WH personnel were exposed to the virus due to Trump and his staff refusing to follow protocols in the WH. You were perceived as being against Trump if you wore a mask.

Thursday, January 14, 2021

It’s been a month. A very bad month. Both for the covid and politically. More later on the political.

But covid is running wild, not to anyone but a Covid-denier’s surprise. (Of course, the Covid deniers deny there’s Covid, so it’s all good by them).

U.S. cases – 23,850,000, up 6,716,000 in the past month

U.S. deaths – 398,000, up 87,200 (average of 2900/day since Dec. 15, but more importantly, averaging 4000/day for the past seven straight days). The current estimates by the CDC are that we will lose 100,000 more lives in the next month.

The U.S. leads the world in cases and deaths, which is why you haven’t seen too much other than US numbers recently. We are an international disaster AND embarrassment.

August 16, 2021

I simply had to stop writing. On January 6, thousands of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 election. They were chanting to kill Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D) and Vice President Mike Pence (R), who was presiding over the official Senate vote confirming the 2020 election results. They came close to getting both of them, but were eventually driven back.

Between this insurrection, the most serious against the United States since the Civil War, and the ever-increasing Covid numbers, I was just worn out.

But Joe Biden, the new president, began following the scientists, urging vaccinations, and organizing an amazing vaccination drive that by the end of May sees almost half the US population vaccinated now.

But the bad news is that we needed to have a 70% vaccination rate to reach herd immunity. Why the low rate when the vaccine was available on every corner by the end of May?

Because the vaccine, like the virus, got politicized by the Republican Party. This will be a permanent stain on their legacy. It’s almost beyond comprehension, but this is actually the country we live in now: a country that wiped out one disease after another after another (smallpox to polio) and now tens of millions of Americans believe someone on YouTube rather than epidemiologists who have spent their lives studying virus behaviors.

It’s Biblical.

Because of these willfully ignorant Americans (no other nation on earth has this problem to this degree), the virus has now been able to take hold again, mutating into what is being called “D Variant”.

The states of Texas and Florida, the capitals of our national ignorance, led by governors who are not just not promoting masking but passing executive orders that schools that mandate masks for their students will lose their state funding.

If you’re reading this in the future (if there is one), you may find it hard to believe what you’re reading, but it’s true.

As of today:

US deaths: 639,000 (probably 400,000+ absolutely unnecessary)

75,000 new cases today

264 deaths today

Cicero, Illinois and Sparta Athletic and Benevolent Association

NOTE: This post is waiting editing by several people who have more knowledge of Sparta history than I do. I will make additions and corrections as necessary.

NOTE #2: This is a long posting. The more I researched Sparta A.B.A., the more I realized that understanding both their physical and cultural setting was important to understanding the club. And… it was so much fun to keep turning up new information. And… it’s my blog, so… there!

This is a follow-up post to “An American Tragedy”, which dealt with the tragic loss of the two sons of the family of my Sparta teammate Miro Rys, Sr. I’d like now to write about the semi-pro club team Miro and I played for in the 1970s. “Semi-pro” means that clubs could pay players. I assume Sparta did pay some players. If so, Mr. Rys would have been one. Having speed but little skill, I was not.

My Background Before Sparta And What Sparta Did For Me

I was born in Berkeley, California in 1949 and lived in the all-white/All-American East Bay suburb of El Cerrito for six years, at which time we moved to a small town near Harrisburg, Pa. Middletown was an idyllic place for a little kid to grow up. I could go anywhere on my bike all day long in the summers, knew the best sledding hills in the winter, played Little League for the local VFW, swam in Swatara Creek. I lived in an almost all-white All-American world there, though I do remember encountering for the first time some, a very few, African-American kids around town: it was like they came from a foreign land, a feeling backed by a kind of benign racism in my own home that I think was very very typical of the times. At age 12 (1961) we moved to Chula Vista, California, a lovely suburb of about 50,000 just south of San Diego and bumping up against the Mexican border. My junior high and high schools were made up of virtually all-white All-American suburban kids like me, and a smattering of Mexican-American kids who all spoke perfect English. My contact with Mexican culture was limited to occasional trips across the border to the touristy parts of Tijuana – all other parts were “dangerous”. I could not have asked to be in a better place as a teenager: the center of Southern California tanned, blonde All-American beach culture, of which I was a part, spending as many hours as possible body-surfing in the summer and skateboarding in the winter. I graduated in 1967 and went to Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. Again, almost all-white community, and literally an All-American city according to the “Welcome to Wheaton” signage, with maybe the strongest “foreign” flavor coming from the (white) missionary kids who had been raised in exotic places around the world. I both wrestled and played soccer at Wheaton, playing against other Division III Midwestern teams composed mostly of white All-American type young men.

So, are you seeing a trend?

And then… after graduation from Wheaton I played for Sparta A.B.A. of Chicago’s National Soccer League between 1973 and 1980 and was exposed for the first time in my life to the broad swath of Chicago ethnicities which all had soccer teams (the world’s sport) representing their Chicago national enclaves: Croatians, Serbs, Jamaicans, Greeks, Lithuanians, Poles, Germans, Italians, Slovaks, Ukrainians, Swedes, Irish, Saudis. If Chicago was represented by a soccer-playing nation, they had a team in the National Soccer League. The exception? Latin America. There were so many LatinX teams they had their own league, the Chicago Latin American Soccer Association (CLASA). Formed in 1967 with ten teams, it now (2025) boasts over 150 across all ages and genders.) NSL and CLASA teams never played one another, to the best of my memory.

I reveled in this immersion into Chicago’s multi-ethnicity, but never really understood the depth of it all. I do remember envying my Czech teammates their sense of belonging and close community, their cultural traditions/music/dance/foods that I, as a generic “American” could never feel. So this post is my effort to express my appreciation for the “post-graduate” education afforded me by Sparta, which began to open the doors of my heart to the greatness of the City of Chicago.

WARNING! The rest of this post has a lot of Chicago history rabbitholes you can find yourself investigating, if you’re that sort of person. Or you can just scroll down to the section titled “And Finally… Sparta A.B.A.” and skip all the things that led to the club being why, what, and where it was. But if you bear with me you’ll realize that to understand Sparta we first have to understand…

Czech Chicago

The earliest Czech immigrants moved to Chicago in the mid-1800s, products of some combination of dissatisfaction living under Hapsburg rule, drought/famine, mandatory conscription, and high taxation. Once here, they settled near Dekoven and Halsted, basically the same neighborhood occupied later by the famous Irish woman Mrs. O’Leary (and her cow).

As that area became more urbanized, the Czechs, most of them in this early era of immigration being farmers from the south of their region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, moved a little farther west and south, and settled into a rural area along 18th St. that became known as Pilsen, named after a Czech city (from whence cometh Pilsner Urquell Beer). As more and more Czechs emigrated to Chicago, Pilsen became overcrowded and the Czechs began filling the corridor to the west, along 18th and 22nd Streets, through Lawndale and by the early 20th century, into Cicero and Berwyn. At one point in the early 20th century, Chicago was second only to to Prague in Czech population.

The other U.S. cities with significant Czech immigrant populations were Cleveland, New York and Baltimore. The Czech communities in these cities formed a kind of Olympics competition and Czechs from the four great cities would compete against one another.

Czech immigrants were generally better-educated than most immigrants coming from Eastern Europe in the late 1800s. They had better than a 98% literacy rate, for instance, and by 1900 many of them were skilled industrial workers. Chicago saw them as hard-working shop-owners and factory workers. They saved scrupulously, as could be seen by the number of banks lining 22nd St. in Cicero.

Former Czech bank on 22nd St.

Western State Bank

Sokol

The Sokol movement was brought from the homeland to Czech strongholds in the U.S. Sokol (“falcon” in Czech – “a symbol of strength, beauty, harmony, and freedom“) was a Czech gymnastics organization based on the concept of a “strong mind in a strong body”. Copied in part on the German Turnverein movement which preceded it, Sokol played an important role in encouraging the idea of Czech national pride – and in the States with the added benefit of reinforcing Czech traditions in a new world. In the old country, Sokol was recognized, first by the Hapsburgs, later by the German invaders of WWI, then the Nazis, and finally the Communists, as a dangerously nationalistic group. In the 19th century the Czechs had no nationality – they were part of the Hapsburg Austro-Hungarian Empire. (Nationhood was a very big deal for many European cultures in the 19th century. Czech composers, like Dvorak and Smetana, and German composers, like Wagner, were instrumental {see what I did there?} in ramping up nationalistic feelings in their peoples.) So organizations like Sokol had definite nationalistic intentions. “If it wasn’t for Sokol, there wouldn’t be a Czechlosavkia,” – Robert Tomanek, PhD., University of Iowa.

Sokol on parade in Chicago Pilsen neighborhood, 1920s

American Sokol group at Sparta Field, 21st and Kostner, 1938

Olympic Theater and Sokol building on 22nd St., 1920s (maybe early 1930s?), looking east

This picture is of the Sokol Slavsky Building that occupied the 6100 block of 22nd St. (Cermak Rd.) in Cicero. Indicative of the importance of Cicero in the Czech universe, it was the largest Sokol in the world, containing a full size gym, an Olympic swimming pool, a ballroom/theater that sat 2000, the Olympic Restaurant, apartments for single men, offices and storefronts.

The following four pictures demonstrate just how tightly the Sokol movement was connected to the Czech community as it grew and moved over the decades of the 19th and 20th centuries. Picture 1: the Sokol building in the original DeKoven neighborhood. Picture 2: the Sokol building in the Pilsen neighborhood. Picture 3: the Sokol building in the North Lawndale neighborhood, and finally, the massive Sokol Slavsky building on 22nd St. in Cicero.

Sokol – DeKoven neighborhood

Sokol – Pilsen neighborhood

Sokol – North Lawndale

And finally, in 1927…

The Hawthorne Works

In 1905, the mammoth Western Electric Hawthorne Works (named for the original town name) opened, spanning 109 acres the between 22nd and 26th Sts. at 48th Ave. (later renamed Cicero Blvd.). Comprised of 86 buildings and 3,000,000 feet of floor space, it was originally in the business of manufacturing electrical power equipment (generators, etc.) and inventing new sound systems for the talking pictures. Cicero was known at this time as “The Electrical Capital of America”. Hawthorne eventually became the number one producer of telephones and telephone switching equipment in the country, as Western Electric’s parent company, Bell Telephone, had the monopoly on phone service in the U.S.. At its peak during WWII, it employed over 48,000 employees, many of them the well-trained and educated Czechs who lived in the surrounding neighborhoods. And of course, more Czechs came.

1907

Hawthorne Works, 1910

A major attraction of Hawthorne for many immigrants was its promise of lifetime employment. Women working here on telephone wiring.

Hawthorne, 1940s

Hawthorne, looking west on 22nd St. (Cermak Rd.), 1950s

Some notable Hawthorne moments:

Eastland Disaster

In 1915, the company sponsored a summer outing on a Lake Michigan steamer, the Eastland. As employees, a quarter of them Cicero Czechs, boarded the ship, docked in the Chicago River at LaSalle St., it capsized, turning on its side and trapping hundreds who had gone below decks.

There were over 800 casualties, making it to this day the second-worst U.S. maritime disaster, behind the sinking of the Titanic just a few years earlier. It all happened right there in downtown Chicago, at Wacker and LaSalle. Women were the number one casualties, as the combination of their heavy dresses and inability to swim was a death sentence. Children were the second-greatest victims. Hundreds were trapped below decks, and welding crews spent the better part of a week cutting holes in the hull, following the haunting sounds of tapping. Soon there was no more tapping.

Temporary Morgue at 2nd Regiment Armory, Washington Blvd.

If you’d like to go down an Eastland rabbit-hole a bit, here is an excellent YouTube video

The Hawthorne Effect

In the 1920s, the Hawthorne Works was the focus of motion efficiency studies determining work habits of industrial workers. The results were largely discounted, as it was later postulated that the workers’ rate of production had more to do with the fact that they were being observed than by any of the means (change of lighting, placement of objects, etc.) which the studies were supposedly measuring. This famously came to be called The Hawthorne Effect and became a standard by which future observational experiments were conducted.

Anton Cermak

The election of Anton Cermak, son of Czech immigrants, as mayor of Chicago in 1931 was a high point in Chicago Czech history. Cermak, a Democrat, had worked his way up from working as a streetcar horse handler to recognizing the potential of Chicago’s immigrant community as a voting bloc. The Irish had controlled Chicago politics to this point. Cermak’s opponent in 1931 was Republican William Hale “Big Bill” Thompson, who wrote this “clever” little ditty about Cermak:

“I won’t take a back seat to that Bohunk, Chairmock, Chermack, or whatever his name is. Tony, Tony, where’s your pushcart at? Can you picture a World’s Fair mayor with a name like that?”

Cermak won, and two years later was the victim of a botched assassination attempt in Miami on the life of Franklin Roosevelt. Cermak was shaking FDR’s hand on stage when in the crowd Giuseppe Zangara pulled a revolver. The woman next to him saw this and swung her handbag, throwing off the shot and saving FDR’s life. Cermak died several weeks later from the shot that entered his lung.

22nd St., which runs east from Pilsen right through Cicero, was renamed Cermak Rd. in his honor.

There has never been a Republican mayor of Chicago since.

Capone

When in 1926 a reform mayor was elected in Chicago, Al Capone famously moved his headquarters just across the city limits to Cicero, taking up residence at the Hawthorne Inn, just west of Cicero Blvd. on 22nd St. You can see from this picture its proximity to the Hawthorne Works (large tower on the corner).

Hawthorne Hotel (Hawthorne Inn) – Capone HQ from 1926-28

I wrote about Capone’s Cicero activities in a post a few years back. In a nutshell, while I cannot confirm this historically, the “word on the street” is that Capone tried to muscle Western Electric into letting him have a say in the running of the race track they had built* (south on Cicero Blvd.) for the enjoyment of their employees and other residents of Cicero and surrounding areas. Turns out that while Capone could bully Chicago politicians and cops, Western Electric was a bridge too far; they told him to take a hike. Maybe a 3 million sq. ft. factory with 86 buildings was too much for a bottle filled with gasoline and a tommy gun. Whatever the reason, Capone turned to another solution: he bought the property literally next door to Hawthorne Race Track and built his own racetrack, Sportsman’s Park, where he could fix any race at any time, and did so. (*Read “My Visits With Al Capone” for details)

Below is the only picture I could find of the two parks, taken in the early 2000s just before Sportsman’s was razed. Hawthorne to the upper right, and what was left of the old Sportsman’s Park to the lower left. Sportsman’s ended it’s horse racing days in 1999 and was turned into the Chicago Motor Speedway, hosting CART and NASCAR truck races. This picture was taken when even that venture failed. The grandstands are being torn down and soon the property would become a distribution center for the Wirtz Beverage Group, a huge liquor distributor (a nice full circle for Al Capone, don’t you think?) and a Walmart. Hawthorne is now (2025) what’s called a racino, combining thoroughbred racing with other casino gambling.

* other histories I’ve read call Hawthorne the oldest family-run track in America (in other words, NOT run by The Hawthorne Works, which would discount the above story.

Sportsman’s Park on the left, Hawthorne Race Track on the right

Martin Luther King, Jr. and Cicero

A not-so-illustrious Cicero chapter. The Chicago city limits were marked by the railroad that ran north/south along the eastern edge of the Hawthorne Works. Directly east of Cicero, the first Chicago neighborhood was North Lawndale, originally inhabited by Czech immigrants who had moved west from Pilsen when McCormick Reaper built a large plant there after the 1871 Chicago Fire burned down its Chicago factory, and when Sears Roebuck built its headquarters on Homan Ave. As they moved further west to Cicero (toward the “new” Hawthorne Works), North Lawndale became a largely Jewish community, occupied by Jews leaving the crowded Maxwell St. area in Chicago (at one point in the 1930s, housing 25% of Chicago’s Jews), and then in the mid-1950s realtors used racist “blockbusting” techniques to scare out the Jews and North Lawndale became an African-American community as blacks were trying to move away from the overcrowded, “red-lined” Chicago Bronzeville district. In the space of ten years, the white population of North Lawndale fell from 87% to less than 5%… but the overall population of N. Lawndale actually increased. Housing conditions and overcrowding, attended by predatory lending practices and slum landlordship, became so bad that Martin Luther King, Jr. stayed in an apartment in the community in June, 1966 to bring attention to the problems. This led to a compromise agreement with Mayor Daley, but members of C.O.R.E., fueled by the killing a young Chicago black teen, felt a march was needed.

In September, Congress of Racial Equality (C.O.R.E.) leader Robert Lucas, a proponent of non-violence, led a march of African-American citizens west on 22nd St., under the railroad overpass, past the Hawthorne Works, and on into Cicero. That railroad underpass, which marked the eastern edge of the Hawthorne Works, was also the Chicago city limits. North Lawndale was a Chicago neighborhood; Cicero was its own incorporated city. By the early 60s, you did not go under that underpass into Cicero after dark if you were black, and you did not go east under it if you were white.

Notably, Martin Luther King did not participate in this march, though it was his earlier actions that led to it. Cicero residents did not, shall we say, take kindly to the march. It was a combination of racism (which I witnessed first-hand in Czech Cicero not too many years later) and a fear of the block-busting techniques which would force Czechs to sell their property at below value. But it was ugly. Rocks and bricks were thrown by bystanders into the marching civil rights workers. The whole thing brought attention to the cause, resulting in passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968. (You can watch an 8-minute “live” video of the march which gives a good feel for the hateful and vitriolic reception. The 0:39 second mark of the video shows the railroad underpass that separated (and still does) North Lawndale from Cicero. Walking through that underpass as a black person took an immense amount of courage. The 4:54 mark of this video gives a very quick glimpse of the Hawthorne Works.)

When King was assassinated in April, 1968, Lawndale went up in flames. Lois (my wife) had two great aunts and her grandmother who were shopping that day in the Loop. The family in Naperville were concerned about their getting home safely (the Burlington line goes through Lawndale) because of rumors (completely unconfirmed, btw) that Blacks were shooting at the trains. Lois remembers the family going down to meet them at the Naperville station.

Two women returning from church view what is left of a Chicago west side business district after it was torn by fires, sniping and rioting following the assassination of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The west side of Chicago is on fire during riots following the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Chicago, Illinois, April 1968. (Photo by Underwood Archives/Getty Images)

By the early 1970s, the McCormick Reaper plant (now International Harvester) closed and moved its headquarters to Naperville. Sears, which in 1904 had opened the “largest mercantile institution in the world” on Homan Ave. (see picture below) closed and moved it’s headquarters to the Loop (Sears Tower), a seeming world away from “troubled” North Lawndale. Finally, with the breakup of Ma Bell, the Hawthorne Works began shutting down its massive plant, closing it entirely by 1983 (there’s now a strip mall at the corner of Cicero and Cermak).

Jobs dried up and Lawndale suffered a 57% unemployment rate. By the late 1980s the neighborhood was dominated by the three great institutions of hope in poverty-stricken neighborhoods: liquor stores, beauty parlors and storefront churches. (This is also the period that saw the beginnings of the Czech diaspora from Cicero.)

Sears Headquarters on Homan Ave. in North Lawndale – employed tens of thousands… until closed in 1974 when they moved downtown to the new Sears Tower

But a ray of sunshine. In 1975, a Wheaton College graduate, Wayne Gordon, got a job teaching at North Lawndale’s Farragut High School. He moved there with his wife and raised his children there… and then started a little ministry called the Lawndale Community Church. The church opened a desperately-needed health clinic. Both grew and prospered. Today they occupy a full block along the north side of Ogden Ave. and are a vital center for good in the community. The church purchases deteriorating properties, rehabs them, then sells them at no profit to families needing housing.

Wayne knew a guy named Lou Malnati, the man who with his father was involved in originating Chicago Deep Dish pizza at Pizzeria Uno that he managed in the city. Wayne convinced Lou to make a major bet on North Lawndale and open one of his pizza restaurants there. Lou took the gamble in 1995, teaming with Lawndale Community Church, and becoming the first significant business to invest in North Lawndale since 1968. Mayor Richard M. Daley was at the ribbon-cutting. They turned their first profit in 2011, and as promised, gave those profits back to the community. Several years later, Ervin “Magic” Johnson made big news by opening a cineplex in North Lawndale. When you drive through North Lawndale today (2025) you can still see empty blocks that were burned out in 1968, but you can also see signs of a revitalizing neighborhood.

And finally… Sparta A.B.A.

Okay, here we go.

Founded in 1915, Chicago Sparta took its name and colors (maroon and white) from Sparta Praha, the first division team from Prague that was established in 1893. Sparta Chicago moved rapidly to become one of the city’s top teams. In 1922 they won Chicago’s International Soccer Football League title.

In 1926 three players from Sparta Praha (Prague) visited Chicago and were hosted by Sparta Chicago.

In 1926 they joined the Chicago International League and won nine consecutive titles. In 1937 they joined a new Chicago league, the National Soccer League (NSL). (It was this league I played in with them in the 1970s.)

Page from a book celebrating the 25th anniversary of the National Soccer League, 1945

They won their first and only NSL title in 1937, but they won the Peel Cup (later called the Governor’s Cup) which designated the best team in Illinois, every year between 1928 and 1933, then again in 1937, then 1946-48, and for the last time in 1969. This competition saw as many as one hundred Illinois teams compete, most from the Chicago area with its ethnic populations (although there were many teams sponsored by industries like the Pullman Works, labor unions like Bricklayers and Masons FC, or even department stores, like Weiboldts. These teams, however, were composed almost 100% of immigrant Americans of one nationality or another.)

Peel Cup being awarded, circa 1930

But bigger things awaited. In 1938 they won the U.S. Open Cup, at that time designating the best soccer team in the nation, over Brooklyn St. Mary’s and in 1940 they were co-champions with Baltimore S.C. after tying both legs of the home and away championship series. In 1947 they lost in the final to Ponta Delgada, a Portuguese team from Fall River, Massachusetts (see picture below). Sparta was one of the top soccer teams in the nation. And by 2015 they had ceased to exist.

This is their story

Sparta was, specifically, a Bohemian team, comprised of immigrants from the northwest of Czechoslovakia. The other Czech team in the league was Slovaks from the east. Bohemians considered themselves the more-cultured, more-educated city-dwelling Czechs. Slovaks were farmers/rural dwellers. There was a bit of snobbishness. Our game against Slovaks was the most important game of the year*. Sparta won every year I played. Proof of this cultural divide is found in the fact that despite being one nation when Communism fell, today the Czech Republic (Czechia) and Slovakia are now two different nations.(*It’s also possible that Slovaks was our most important game because Coach Jerry Fajkus first played for Slovaks when he came to the States.)

“World War II hit the NSL hard as most of the top players were inducted in the armed forces. However, the end of the war brought a renaissance when those men returned from the military, to be quickly followed by western and central European immigrants fleeing the devastation caused by the war. A few years later, another wave of immigrants, this time Eastern Europeans fleeing communism, brought another fresh group of talented players into the NSL”. (Kirsch, G.B.; Harris, O.; Nolte, C.E. (2000). Encyclopedia of Ethnicity and Sports in the United States)

After World War II, Czech immigration had virtually everything to do with fleeing Communism and Cicero (and the Hawthorne Works) was a major landing place for many of these “DPs” (Displaced Persons), who were waiting for their U.S. citizenship. Sparta was loaded with them. But by the late 1960s a couple of things were happening: 1. fewer Czechs were getting out of the homeland, and 2. Cicero Czechs were beginning to disperse to other suburbs as the big factories began winding down their operations.

My Sparta coach, Jerry Fajkus, is an example. (You’ll be able to read his story in my next blog post.) He fled Czechoslovakia to Germany after the war. There he met his wife. They emigrated to the States in the early 1950s and Jerry began working at Hawthorne. But in the late ’60s, as Hawthorne was down-sizing, Jerry was transferred to a smaller Western Electric facility in West Chicago (about 20 miles farther west). Jerry moved his family to Wheaton, Illinois… which is where Jerry found me in 1973. With fewer Czechs in Cicero to choose from, Jerry began casting a wider net.

Another example would be George Tomek, who fled the Homeland, got himself to Canada and then was sponsored by a family who got him to the States. He found himself in Cicero, playing for Sparta. George saved his money and opened his own business, a foundry, on the near north side of the City. With the business finding success, he moved with his wife (Pat) to a lovely home in Wheaton that was large enough to hold the family they planned. George and Pat raised five children in that house, and several of them became athletes of note: oldest brother Dave wrestled at Northwestern, youngest brother Phil wrestled at Michigan and was a national AAU freestyle champion. Little sister Annie played soccer for the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Middle sister Chris took up soccer. I saw her play when she was 12 years old, running the midfield for a team of women from five to ten years older than her. Chris played on the boys’ varsity team at Wheaton Central High School in the late 1970s, and when Wheaton Central made the State Finals, George and Pat successfully sued the Illinois High School Association, which was not going to allow a girl to play on a boys team in a state tournament. Chris got no soccer scholarship offers, and took a full ride in softball at University of Iowa where she batted over .700 and was a phenomenal left fielder. But her heart was with soccer, and by her junior year she was offered a scholarship to play for George Mason University in Virginia. She helped lead George Mason to an NCAA championship that year, breaking a long string held by the University of North Carolina , whose coach, Anson Dorrance, was also the newly-named coach of our brand-new US Women’s National Soccer Team. Chris so impressed him that he invited her to join the National Team, which she did, leaving the team in 1991 when a young 16-year-old by the name of Kristine Lilly took her spot.

Jerry’s son, Charlie, played for the first team, I believe when he was still in high school. Charlie was born here in the U.S. after Jerry and Betty emigrated in the early 50s. Charlie was bilingual, with English his first language. George Vesely is another example. A second generation Czech, George came up through the Sparta Youth Team, went to Aurora College, and played for the first team. There were some other bilingual players, but all of them spoke Czech on the field because every player was Czech… except me.

By 1969 the National Soccer League of Chicago came to the realization that immigration was beginning to dry up (at least European immigration – Latino immigration was another matter, but they had their own league).

To ensure its existence, the league mandated that each team must have two additional teams: a second team and a youth team. The second team played the Sunday afternoon game immediately following the first team game. When our second team was short players Coach Fajkus would “ask” me to play for the second team, meaning there were times I played two games back-to-back.

But, who would make up these teams? Either second-generation Czechs and other immigrants, or… Americans, who were by the 1970s just beginning to come into their own in the sport. The three pictures below tell a tale of Sparta’s evolution.

Sparta A.B.A., circa 1970 – The team is virtually 100% Czech. Laddie Gajda, who later coached the team to a league championship in 1986, is lower left. Miro Rys, Sr. lower right with son Miro Jr. behind him.

Sparta A.B.A., maybe 1973 or 1974: I came on the team in ’73. I’m fourth from left, Charlie Fajkus sixth from left, Miro Sr. sixth from right. Laddie Gajka, who coached the team in the 1980s third from right next to American goalkeeper Roger ____. (Is that American Rudy Keller 5th from right?)

60th Anniversary team picture, 1975. By this time there are two, possibly three, American players: myself, upper left, Rudy Keller, Aurora University DIII All-American – lower right, kneeling – and perhaps the American-looking backup keeper, kneeling lighter shirt, but I do not remember his name – Roger?? Add American sons of Czech fathers Charlie Fajkus, Indiana University All-American, and Miro Rys, Jr., 2nd player upper right next to his father, Miro Sr. Coach Jerry Fajkus, upper left. (Alex Mihailovic on my left)

My Sparta

I was one of the first “100% American” players to play for Sparta. This would have been 1973. I graduated from Wheaton College in ’72. My memory that first year is of playing and not understanding anything spoken by my teammates except the word “Dobre!” It meant, “Good!” and when I heard “Dobre, Bobby!!” I knew I had done something my teammates approved of. (I never needed to know the meanings of the words of disapproval.)

Having just graduated, I was still in the Wheaton area and Sparta coach Jerry Fajkus somehow got ahold of my name. I was far from the best player on Wheaton’s team (started most, but not all games my senior year), but most of my better teammates were from out of state and after graduation, moved back home. I was recently-married and had made my home in Wheaton. So there I was, living in the same town as Jerry. Kismet. I was excited to be able to continue my playing career as there weren’t many options to continue playing the game in the early 1970s. It was a gift.

It was only later that I realized the real gift was my immersion into ethnic Chicago. I saw things I never saw in my Wheaton College playing days: head-butting, in general a much more physical game, players changing clothes on the sideline before games, players pissing in the shower room drains at half-time (even when urinals were available – I guess a drain is a drain?), ice cold Pilsners in the Sparta clubhouse after the games.

Our home games were usually played on the south field at Morton West High School, occasionally on the football field with the bleachers. All games were played on Sunday afternoons at 1:00. Away games were all over the city: From Hanson Stadium and Winnemac Park in the north, to Gately Stadium in the south, and Marquette and Washington Parks in between. Most of these fields were terribly over-used and the goal mouths would be an absolute mess, especially after other games were played in the rain on a Saturday. By Sunday the mud had hardened into a dangerous, ankle-breaking No Man’s Land. Our goalie, Bobby Pospisil, was heroic in these games. Marquette Park was notable for its field having two raised manhole covers centered at about each 35 yard line. They were career-ending injuries waiting for one lapse in attention. Definitely an added element to our games there against the Lithuanians. Almost all these fields are astroturf today.

In the late 1970s, many of our American players were still playing in college, meaning they couldn’t play for Sparta in the fall. We were always and older team in the fall with more Czech players, then better in the spring season when the younger Americans joined us, but we still got beat by the Croatians, Wisla, Eagles, and maybe Kickers and Schwaben

How could we have been so ordinary? My teammates were Charlie Fajkus, Jerry’s son, who played for Indiana University and then the Chicago Sting and win an NASL championship with them. Angelo DiBernardo, who along with Charlie formed the nucleus of Indiana University’s first nationally-ranked team under Jerry Yeagley. (Indiana is now coached by Yeagley’s son and to this day is a national powerhouse, with eight NCAA championships behind them.) Angelo, a Hermann Award winner at Indiana, went on to play striker for the New York Cosmos. (His teammates on the front line? Guys name Pele and Giorgio Chinaglia. Johan Neeskens was in his midfield. Franz Beckenbauer was the sweeper.) Rudy Keller, NAIA All-American defender at Aurora University was our outside right back (I was left back and sometime midfielder). Val Bohl, 6’2″ defender for Aurora, anchored our defense with Mr. Rys. Bret Hall, Wheaton College All-American and an NASL All-Star member of the Sting with Charlie (called the Toy Bulldog by the press for his stature and tenacity).Terry Rock, Aurora College lightning quick speedster (and I think Sparta’s first African-American player). Alex Mihailovic, the egotistical Serb who somehow played for a Czech team (and whose son Djordje now plays for the Colorado Rapids)..

New York Cosmos, 1980ish – L-R: Franz Beckenbauer, Pele, Giorgio Chinaglia, Julio Cesar Romero, Vladislav Bogicevic, and Angelo DiBernardo

Angelo with NASL champions New York Cosmos (I hope he still has that uniform)

Charlie Fajkus with NASL Champions Chicago Sting

Bret Hall, “The Toy Bulldog”, Chicago’s FIRST #23

First row: Charlie Fajkus far left, Bret Hall, 3rd from left, Steve Long, far right

I left the team in 1980 when my first daughter was born. In 1986, with a team composed by now of almost all Americans, some of whom came from Wheaton College’s 1984 NCAA Div. III national champions, Sparta won the league championship, their first since 1938. Jamie Brabenec, defender on that championship team, remembers the deep emotions shown by Coach Laddie Gajda (“He was running around like a crazy man!”) and Manager Bob Sedlak after this game. As one who has read this far, you can understand how those emotions ran so deep.

Sparta A.B.A. 1986, Metro League Champions – Coach Laddie Gajda, standing right. Wheaton College graduates Jamie Brabenec (3rd from left bottom), Chris Hagemann (goalkeeper, center), David Kouwe (bottom second from right). Willie Fajkus (standing, 3rd player from left), George Vesely (two to Willy’s left)

Sparta A.B.A., 1989 – Coach Jerry Fajkus, standing left, Willy Fajkus, standing 3rd from right. George Vesely to Willy’s right. Not many Czech players on this team.

By 2015 (?) Sparta was no more. I’m not sure if it was because they couldn’t find a coach to take the team, or the talent pool was drying up, or as I more likely suspect, because Cicero was no longer Czech. The team played its last few years at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, thanks in part at least to the fact that Willy Fajkus, Jerry’s son, worked there and was able to get the field.

Sparta A.B.A., with no Czech roots left in Cicero, folded. The clubhouse closed its doors and was sold. The Czechs had all moved out and Cicero was now a “western suburb” of Pilsen, the former Czech neighborhood that long ago had turned Mexican.

Sparta Stadium

They built their own stadium at 21st and Kostner, seating 10,000 spectators with two sections of wooden covered bleachers. As early as 1920 the Chicago Tribune reported games being played there. Sparta’s fortunes ebbed in the 1950s, and as the surrounding North Lawndale neighborhood was evolving to African-American, the stadium was sold, eventually torn down and is now used as a parking lot for a transportation company.

Sparta v Palestrata (Italy), 1928 in front of 5000+ at Sparta Stadium. Sparta won 5-1.

Sparta v Fall River (Ponte Delgades)
1947 U.S. Open Cup Final at Sparta Stadium – Joe Rego of Fall River heads the ball away from Sparta’s Henry Kuhn. Delgades won the game 3-2.

1938 aerial view of Sparta Stadium. Bleachers lined the south and east sides

Sparta Stadium layout

The Clubhouse

“There wasn’t much to do in those days but all the ethnic clubs had their own clubhouse. We had the St. Pauli Bar and we really looked forward to practices on Tuesday and Thursday and the games on Sunday, After the games, we went to the clubhouse – It was all a part of it.” – Willy Roy, quoted in USsoccer.com, on his days in the 1960s playing for Hansa Chicago of the National Soccer League

When I started playing for Sparta in 1973, Cicero was still Little Czechoslovakia, and 22nd St. (Cermak Rd.) was known as Czech Wall Street. It was lined with Czech restaurants, banks, businesses, funeral homes… and the Sparta clubhouse.

After every game, home or away, the team met at the clubhouse at 5700 W. Cermak where we would eat pork and dumplings with gravy served from the kitchen. Now pork and dumplings with gravy was not exactly the meal I was looking for after a game (or two) in 90 degree heat and 90 percent humidity, but I was young and always hungry, and there was always as much ice cold Pilsner Urquell in bottles from the bar as we wanted. and that helped wash the pork down.

5700 W. Cermak – Sparta Clubhouse today – a doctor’s office (could find no pictures from its time as owned by Sparta A.B.A.)

In Sparta’s early days the team met at the Old Prague Restaurant for their post-game meals. The restaurant, owned by man named Vala, was nice, but Sparta, seeing an opportunity to add revenue to the club, wanted their own place. Not wanting to hurt the feelings of their benefactor, they waited until he went back to the Old Country for a six-month vacation, whereupon the club collected $500 each from 25 supporters and purchased the 2-story building at 5700 W. Cermak, at the corner of Cermak and 57th Avenue. They rented three second-floor apartments and used the first floor as their new clubhouse. It was complete with a kitchen. The club leased the kitchen for a monthly rate to someone who would take as his profit anything he could make from the sale of meals and liquor at the bar. Between the kitchen/bar lease and the apartment leases, the clubhouse was paid for in a few years and everyone got their money back. During the time I was playing (1970s) the kitchen was run by Dennis, the owner of the Plaza Restaurant across from the Cermak Plaza shopping center (The Plaza closed in 2021). The menu in general was best-described as “Czech bar food”, but for us after every game, it was pork, dumplings and gravy.

Every once in awhile I would go into the mysterious side room at the clubhouse with it’s long table, and walls plastered with pictures of Sparta teams from the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s. The room was dark and the pictures to me were of ancient times. There were banners from the older teams, as well as teams from around the country. There were trophies, a lot of trophies. There were pictures of the ’38 team holding the U.S. Open Cup. There were pictures of Sparta’s two Czech National Team players in the 1950s: Břetislav Dolejší – Czech national goalkeeper who played for Czechoslovakia in the 1958 World Cup, and then played for Sparta Chicago after he emigrated. He and ____ Swoboda, also a Czech national team player, played on rival teams in the homeland. There was a signed picture of former Sparta player Miro Roder, who was currently (early 1970s) kicking field goals for the Chicago Bears.

This room was like a sanctuary. I felt subconsciously then, only getting into words now, that the reason we didn’t have our post-game meals in that room is because it was a shrine to the days of Sparta’s greatness. And our current Sparta team wasn’t great. Mr. Fajkus’s goal with the current team was singular: stay in the Major Division. Do NOT get relegated to the First Division. And we always managed to stay, sometimes by the skin of our teeth.

Addendum

The Czechs were a frugal people. Sparta was no exception. Our uniforms, solid white home jerseys, maroon aways, were matched with the same white shorts and either white or maroon socks. There were no sweats, no cold-weather gear, no rain gear. The kits were handed out before every game and religiously collected after every game, going home to be washed in Mrs. Sedlak’s home washing machine where the stains in the white shorts almost came out, accumulating through the season… and seasons. Mr. and Mrs. Sedlak earned $5/week as managers of the team. Bob and Margaret had no children: Sparta’s young players were their kids. One of the most unforgettable “duties” performed by Mr. Sedlak was offering each player a stick of gum at the end of every game. (Czech accent, please – “Bobby, you want some gum?”) It stands in my memory like the kindest of small gestures by a genuinely nice man. Later in his life, Bob (Bohumir) Sedlak moved to the Tabor Hills Community in Naperville and I had the good fortune to visit him with former players Dave Kouwe, Kurt Wise… and Coach Fajkus.

L-R – Dave Kouwe, Bob Sedlak, Bob Graham

jerry Fajkus and Bob Sedlak, 2015

Bob died in 2019 , age 99, and is buried in the Chicago’s Bohemian Cemetery. Jerry died in 2017, age 93.

Post Script

As the Czechs moved out of Pilsen toward Cicero and the west in the early 20th century, the Mexicans moved in. By 2000 Pilsen was 89% Mexican/Latino. As Mexican immigrants continued to move to Chicago in the 21st century, they, like the Czechs before them, moved west along the 22nd St. corridor. By the 1980s the Czechs were moving out of Cicero and Berwyn and dispersing to any number of other Chicago suburbs. As with a number of other Chicago immigrant populations (Germans, Swedes, Dutch, to name a few) there is no particular Czech area of Chicago anymore.

Following the pattern set by the Czechs before them, by the late 1980s Cicero had become a Mexican community. Go to GoogleEarth and drop yourself on streetview down onto 22nd St. in Cicero. You’ll see one lavanderia, supermercado, and taqueria after another. Cicero’s Latino population today? 89%. (Interestingly, Pilsen’s Latino population is now (2024-5) beginning to decline, currently at 71%, as that neighborhood begins to gentrify).

Like the huge ethnic shift in Cicero since I played there, my birthplace home of El Cerrito, California is now 45% white. At the time of my birth it was 85% white. No surprise that the small town of Middletown, Pennsylvania where I lived as a small boy is still largely (88%) white. Chula Vista, California, my junior high and high school years, is now 17% white, down from 98% when I lived there. Wheaton, Illinois. my college town and home until 1994, is still 78% white.

Post Mortem

Demolition – Hawthorne Works, 1983

Aerial view via GoogleEarth of Hawthorne Works today, looking north. Major street running north/south on left side of picture is Cicero Blvd. Major east/west street running through center of picture is 22nd St. (Cermak Rd.) Large tower of the original Hawthorne Works stood at southeast corner of 22nd and Cicero. Railroad tracks formed eastern boundary. Single remaining tower of the old Works is near bottom of picture just to left of railroad tracks. Old Sparta Stadium location is to right side of picture, north of 22nd St. where the railroad track curves to the southwest.

Corner of 22nd and Cicero today, looking south on Cicero Blvd., 22nd St. running east-west in foreground of picture. Remaining tower of Hawthorne Works in background left. In the foreground stands the remarkably accurate homage (sarcasm) to its twin, that used to stand on this corner.

Old Prague Restaurant demolition, 1993

Sparta Stadium location today (2025) from GoogleEarth screengrab, looking north. Kostner is the street running north to south to the right of the field location, running across 22nd St. at the bottom of the picture. 21st St. dead-ended into the field from the east. The field was laid out diagonally, northeast to southwest, following the line of the railroad tracks. Semi-trailer parking lot today. The tracks running north south on the left of this picture are the line that went through the east end of the Hawthorne Works, one block to the south.

Location of Sparta Field, Looking west/southwest at 21st and Kostner on Google Streetview, 2025
Just to the right of the farthest-left tree you can see the single remaining tower of the old Hawthorne Works.

Sokol Slavsky/Olympic Theater, Cicero today

Sokol Slavsky Cicero gymnasium today

Addendum II

From Chicago Soccer History: some games played at Sparta Stadium

Palestra Italia v. Sparta (1-5)
9/2/1928 Attendance 5,000

Mexican Army v. Bricklayers (3-5)
6/13/1930 Attendance 5,000

Audax (Chile) v.Sparta (2-0)
9/17/1933 Attendance 4,000

SK Kladno (Czech) v. Sparta (4-0)
9/9/1934 Attendance 9,000

SK Kladno v Wonderbolts (4-4)
9/23/1934 Attendance 6,000

Tel-Aviv Maccabees v. Sparta (1-1)
9/15/1936 Attendance 7,000

Charlton Athletic v. Illinois Stars (4-1)
9/6/1937 Attendance 6,500

1938 – Sparta beat St. Mary’s 3-0 at Sparta Stadium to win the National Challenge Cup (US Open Cup) title.

Sources

https://uofi.app.box.com/s/r6z619jq6s7lut96pjo0a6yes86eqeyb

https://jenniferlamontleo.com/the-rose-keeper-day-8-cermak-road/

https://uofi.app.box.com/s/r6z619jq6s7lut96pjo0a6yes86eqeybhttps://uofi.app.box.com/s/r6z619jq6s7lut96pjo0a6yes86eqeyb

https://chicagology.com/skyscrapers/skyscrapers116/

Home

https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/nfr-this-is-sparta-a-piece-of-chicago-soccer-history.1923782/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Sparta

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._Open_Cup_finals

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Cermak

https://www.chicagocacc.org/the-historical-czech-chicagoland

New York, Cleveland, Baltimore and Chicago – “SVAZ” – mini-Olympics among cities.

(Wells Park, north side,

Milan (Glen Ellyn by Arboretum) and Vera, and Vera daughter (Zenith, laid off, worked clubhouse kitchen)

Chicago Soccer History Maps https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?msa=0&mid=1byADJEp-5w51X8KCxUSybqDAlb0&ll=41.852897%2C-87.734553&z=11

Frank S. Magallon Collection

https://johnamallin.com/project/olympic-theater-ballroom/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR0tzkEDzvuOWK82wh-9sbJq6E0NLD6dLgs1dRNVxa8tLrJSjyFw5eyoxfA_aem_HX1wZKrOiWID6iURvMUZsA

https://chicago.curbed.com/2019/6/14/18677823/pilsen-historic-district-czech-sokols-preservation

https://chicago.curbed.com/2019/6/14/18677823/pilsen-historic-district-czech-sokols-preservation

An American Tragedy

I’m on a Chicago history Facebook group and just before Christmas (2024) someone posted this 2021 article from, of all places, the Guardian about the death of the brilliant young American soccer player, Miro Rys. Miro was my teammate for a little less than two years on a Chicago semi-pro team when he was given a contract at age 17 to play with the Chicago Sting of the North American Soccer League. Miro’s death was on my lists of things to write about, but I haven’t added anything to this blog since 2019 so hadn’t gotten around to Miro yet. But the Guardian article revived the memories. What follows is the tragic story of the family of Miro Rys, written from my point of view as his teammate.

Background

I played varsity soccer at Wheaton College my junior and senior years (1971 and 1972). I had minimal skills and even less tactical understanding, but I was fast. and these were the days when someone like me could find a place on a very good Division III team. I came to love the game, and after graduation I was (again blessed/lucky) to be asked by Jerry Fajkus, the coach, to play for Sparta A.B.A., of the National Soccer League of Chicago, a semi-pro league (“Semi” meaning the best players on the team got some money. Guys like me played for the love of the game.)

Sparta A.B.A. (Athletic and Benevolent Association) was founded in 1915 and had a storied history. It’s strongest years were the late 1920s-early 1940s when they won two U.S. Open Cups, and more than ten National Soccer League, and ten Illinois state championships. Cicero was a Czech enclave, and Sparta was a Czech team. The clubhouse, on 22nd St (Cermak Road) at 49th Ave. had a bar, tables, a pool table, and back room whose walls and shelves were loaded with pictures and trophies from the glory years.

I was Sparta’s first “true” American (that is, with no Czech connections). Prior to my joining the team Sparta was composed completely of Czech immigrants (see 1966 picture below) who had either fled Communism in Eastern Europe in the late 40s and 50s, or had come earlier to the U.S. to work at the massive Western Electric Hawthorne Works plant earlier in the century. One of these was Miro Rys, a professional athlete in Czechoslovakia, who emigrated to the U.S. in 1968 with his wife and two sons. The Works made every one of America’s telephones. And wire. And anything else that had anything to do with calling your neighbor to check the recipe for apple pie.

The Rys Family

Mr. Rys was a multi-sport athlete, a star in Czechoslovakia. We heard that he once played two games in one day for two Czech national teams, one in ice hockey, the other in soccer – in those years Czechoslovakia’s two biggest sports. I don’t know if that’s true. But there was one thing, his wife, that indicated that it was. She was a Slavic beauty, the kind star athletes tend to attract. The acronym MILF hadn’t been created yet, but, well, you get the idea. Both she and her husband had those chiseled Slavic features. They were a couple who stood out walking down the street.

If in Czechoslovakia he was a star, in Cicero he was a mechanic, at The Works. But he and his family were free. They lived in a nice apartment at 21st St. and 50th Ave. just a few blocks from the clubhouse. The future for their two boys, Miro Jr. and Roman, was unlimited. And he could play the sport he loved on a team of fellow Czechs. Life was good.

Miro was Sparta’s middle defender (sweeper) when I joined the team in 1972 (73?). I played on his left side and was close witness to his excellence. We called him “Old Man” (but never to his face). He was approaching 40, ancient in high-level soccer, but he was still a rock in the middle of the Sparta defense, and a fierce competitor. After a hard tackle on an opposing forward, I once saw that forward make the mistake of jumping up and getting in the Old Man’s face. The referee had begun to run to the other end of the field, following the play. After an exchange of words I didn’t understand, Mr. Rys headbutted this guy – Boom! Fast and efficient. The guy staggered back, blood streamed down his nose. End of conversation. This was the National Soccer League, and it was what it was. Playing for Sparta against all the other nationalities represented in Chicago was a huge cultural education for me, having attended a white-bread Christian college in a white-bread suburb, and incidents like that head-butt were a part of the broadening of my soccer education, having come off the sportsmanlike soccer field of Wheaton College where we played a gentleman’s game: hard and competitive, yes, but above all clean.

In the coming years Mr. Fajkus began bringing in more west suburban American players, recent college grads, or in the spring season, current college players in their off-seasons, mostly the best from Wheaton and Aurora Colleges. I think Mr. Rys was always suspicious of where these Americans’ loyalties lay. He would come up to each of us on the field in the minutes before kick-off, grab a bicep between his thumb and forefinger, squeeze until his fingers met behind the bicep and in front of the tricep, look into our eyes with deadly seriousness, and say, “Bobby, you play hard for Sparta today?!” I was never sure if it was a question or a command, but the answer was always the promise that I would, yes, yes, I would! If Mr. Rys found the answer satisfactory, he would release his grip and move on to the next American.

The Old Man’s oldest son, Miro, Jr. showed talent at a young age. The picture below is the Sparta team circa 1968. Miro Sr. is in first row, far right and Miro Jr., circa age 10 is standing behind him. I have no information about this team picture but it may be a sign of young Miro’s budding talent that he is in it with his father. Or possibly Miro Sr. simply saying, “My son is in this picture” and no one on the team having the courage to tell him, “No, sorry, he’s too young.”

Sparta, 1968 (Not a native-born American on the team)

Close-up of the above picture, highlighting father and son

You never saw a prouder father than when a few years later Miro Jr., was brought up to the senior team as a sophomore in high school. While Miro Sr. was a stalwart defender, Miro Jr. had “the gift” – he was a natural striker, that rarity in soccer – a player who could find the back of the net.

1975 Sparta 60th Anniversary Team picture: Miro Sr. standing, right side next to team manager with brief case. Miro Jr. standing next to his father. I’m standing far left next to assistant coach in white jacket. Coach Jerry Fajkus standing in white jacket, far left

I played with father and son for Sparta for a little less than two years when the rumor came: Miro Jr. was going to be drafted by the Chicago Sting, Chicago’s fledgling professional team. And sure enough, by the spring of his junior year at Morton East High School (which had no soccer team), Miro was suited up as a professional soccer player, contract in hand. His future was unlimited. If the Old Man’s buttons were popping when Miro was brought to the senior team, they were blown off his coat like shot from a shotgun now.

Despite getting some good minutes with our U.S. National Team, scoring an important goal for them, and seeming to have a future with them, Miro got very limited playing time with the Sting. The answer might be found in the quotes in the Guardian article above from Willy Roy, the Sting’s assistant coach at that time who clearly didn’t think much of him. A transfer to the Los Angeles Aztecs ensued, and then in the summer of 1977 L.A. sent him to Germany for seasoning and maturing.

And it was there, in Dortmund, on the way to practice one day in a car driven by a coach and with another teammate as passenger, that it ended. All three were killed in an accident whose details I don’t know.

Miro, 20 years old and on the cusp of athletic greatness, was dead. The Rys family’s world had collapsed.

The Funeral

The funeral was held at one of the Czech funeral homes on Cermak Rd. I can’t remember which one, maybe Svec and Sons. People lined up around the walls, into the foyer and out onto the street. Lee Stern, the owner of the Chicago Sting and a Chicago Mercantile king, was there. Everyone in the Chicago soccer community was there. The Chicago media was there. I was there with all my teammates. The background music playing softly from the recessed ceiling speakers was Dvorak (of course) – the beautiful Largo 2nd movement of his 9th symphony (“The New World”). I am at the funeral again every time I’ve heard it since, seeing Miro in his casket. I would recommend opening the link and having this music accompany the rest of your reading.

The long line crept toward Miro’s casket. Mr. and Mrs. Rys were greeting people on the other side. I had no idea what to say. As the casket came closer, I saw first Miro’s face, then his hands folded over his chest. The finality of death was never more obvious to me than it was that day. Of the numbers of deceased human beings I’ve viewed in caskets in my own living years, none has ever been more dead than Miro, this boy who should have been running around a soccer field, scoring goals, laughing with friends, going to parties, getting girls, driving fast.

I walked past, numb. And there was the Old Man and Mrs. Rys. I didn’t know it at the time, but he had recently been laid off at The Works. It turns out that Miro’s salary as a professional soccer player had been supporting his family.

And now Miro Jr. was gone.

I stepped past the casket and waited for the person in front of me to be done saying his few words of condolence. I have no memory of what I said to him, but I’m sure it was a repetition of what hundreds had already said, some words that had zero impact on a broken heart. He took me in a bear hug and I will never forget exactly what he said to me in his Czech accent: “Bobby, Bobby, now Roman will have to play.” I remember my instant (and silent) reaction to that statement: “Uh oh.” Roman was Miro Jr’s little brother, 12 years old. As I took my first steps away from Mr. and Mrs. Rys, I turned to look at Roman who was sitting crumpled up in the first row of seats in front of his brother’s casket. I had never met Roman. I had never seen Roman until then, meaning I never saw him near a Sparta soccer game or practice.

I stopped playing for Sparta in 1980 when my first daughter was born. My life was filled with the busy-ness of fatherhood and work. I lost track of Sparta.

Roman

Four years later, in June, 1984, my wife and I were watching the 10 o’clock news and one of the lead stories struck like a thunderbolt. Miro’s little brother, Roman, the one who “will have to play now”, was gunned down and killed in a gang shooting in Cicero, just a few blocks from his home. Roman was, according to police, the leader of a gang called the 22-Boys (for 22nd St/Cermak Road). His street name was Tutor. He was 18.

From https://casetext.com/case/people-v-bujdud:

“On June 8, 1984, Roman Rys was standing on a street corner with his girlfriend when defendant and codefendant, Gustavo Bujdud, approached the corner, each carrying a weapon. Defendant and Bujdud pointed their weapons at a group of teenagers gathered in a nearby parking lot and then proceeded further, toward the corner. They next encountered John Odle, who was standing in an alley near the corner. They pointed their weapons at Odle and defendant told him to move. The pair then crossed the street and stopped approximately 15 feet from Rys and his girlfriend. Defendant and Bujdud shot and killed Rys.”

I have no idea what the motive was, but a follow-up article several years later gives perhaps a clue: Roman’s death was avenged by the killing of a gang member reputed to be a member of the gang who killed Roman. I would conjecture that Roman was killed as retaliation for a member of that gang killed by Roman’s gang… or Roman himself?

Aftermath

The Rys’s had now lost both their sons. Roman was laid to rest next to Miro at Woodlawn Cemetery on Cermak just west of Harlem Ave.

I have always wondered since if the burden of his brother’s death was too much for Roman to carry. I have no idea how much pressure was put on him by the Old Man to fill Miro, Jr’s. shoes. I hope not much if any. But of what I know of the Old Man, I have a feeling maybe a lot. I have a feeling Roman lived a very difficult life in the years after his brother’s death.

By the 80’s Cicero was changing. The Czechs were dispersing to suburbs further west and north and the Mexicans were moving in. Sparta as a soccer club ended its illustrious 75-year run in the early 90s. An era was ending. (See my post titled “Sparta” for the story of a great Chicago soccer team.)

In 1989 Communism began to collapse and soon after, Miro Sr. and his wife moved back to the Old Country, leaving America, and its promise of a better life for them and their sons.

“You have two sons and then you don’t have anybody. They came here for a better life. You have freedom and all that, but now the home is empty.” – Michael Kucera, family friend.

Notes: Wikipedia page on Miro Rys, Jr. (There is no Wikipedia page on Roman.)

Coronado Beach, 1967

Just back from the beach – 1966 or 67

Lying on the beach at Coronado, the “Hotel Del” shimmering in the heat of the sand to the south, Navy fighter jets on their Vietnam training runs dropping in right over the top of us every 15 minutes to touch down at North Island. Girls in bikinis slathered with Coppertone sprawled delicately on their beach towels all around. (Were there guys there? I guess there must have been. Who could know?) Those days where you bodysurfed until you were either so tired from catching waves you couldn’t lift your arms, let alone swim, or you were so cold your entire body was shaking uncontrollably while you treaded water, waiting for the next wave – the perfect one. You’d catch one more, any one, the next one that came along, and instead of turning hard right to fly down the face and then turning under to catch another, you just plowed straight ahead, head down, eyes squeezed shut, one arm thrust straight ahead, through the shore break until your belly hit sand, if the wave carried you that far. Then you stood up, dripping and shivering and walked to your towel in the middle of that sea of brown bodies, laying down flat to get underneath that on-shore afternoon breeze.

All the transistor radios were tuned to KGB (yes, you read that right), because the other rock station in San Diego, KCBQ, was uncool. And then… you weren’t quite sure you were hearing it, but… yes – yes it was – the gentle opening chords of “White Rabbit”, thrumming over the beach, soft, but unmistakable, a massive, tinny sound system coming at you from all directions – . Two minutes later Grace had wound it up like no one ever before, belting into “… Re-ee-MEM-ber.. what the dormouse said…Feed your head…. Feed your head!!” dun dun dun dun dunn dunnn DUNNNNN!!!!!, and then the ad for Frito’s reminded you that it wasn’t actually a holy moment.

You laid there soaking up the sun, maybe twenty minutes, maybe catching the Chambers Brothers on the same sound system, until you just got too hot to stand it anymore, and you got up and made a run for it across the hot sucking sand to the cool firmness where the shorebreak had just receded. A calm walk into the water to waist-deep, turning sideways as the shorebreaks slapped against you, and finally at waist or chest-deep a dive straight under the next wall of onrushing shorebreak, that first chest-tightening “HUH!” of 68 degrees hitting 110 degrees, eyes shut tight, swimming, wiggling with all your might against the pull to shore, then bursting up, lungs empty, hoping you timed it right, and you’re able to grab another lungful of air before diving under the next wall of water, two times, three times, and finally… past the break to calm water, body acclimated now, ocean water cold on the skin, but you still warm inside – a great feeling… treading as the swells carried you up, craning your neck at the top of each one, looking west for the set of the day (they usually come in threes), waiting for that perfect wave.

You let many waves go by – they’re not good enough. (Small thing, but feeling yourself rise and slide over the top of a wave is awesome. Also, at the top you have the best view of oncoming waves.) And then… you see it out there, like Nessie’s humps. You wait for the third one, adrenalin pumping. And on it comes. You know to start swimming early, earlier than the tourists who can never seem to figure out why they can’t catch a wave – see video below. (You know another reason they never catch one – they always keep their heads up… to see where they’re going, I guess. Again, see video below.) You feel yourself rising up the face, but you set yourself right in the pocket, stroking as hard as you can, face down in the water, and then… one of the greatest feelings on this earth – that moment when your own power becomes powerless, and the wave takes you, and you go over the falls and you stick the arm out and make your turn and for those precious seconds while flying down the face of the wall, you touch God. And if it all goes the way it should, you turn toward the beach, tuck your head and somersault underneath the wave, letting it go on without you – you got the sweet meat of it, and besides, who wants to plow through all that shorebreak again.

And then you do it again. And again. And again….until you were so tired from catching waves that you couldn’t lift your arms, let alone swim, and you head back to the hot sand, the brown bodies, and the Hotel Del shimmering in the distance. You flop down on your towel, and then… twenty minutes later….

(Here’s a short body-cam video that shows the nice tight fast little Coronado Beach waves… taken by someone and his friends who ummm… need way more practice catching waves.)

And just a short P.S. here: You remember all that birther nonsense about Obama? About how he wasn’t born in or ever lived in Hawaii? You want to know why that’s total BS? First, look at this Tripadvisor website. There IS no bodysurfing on Kenya’s Indian Ocean coastline. The reef prevents any kind of significant wave formation.

Now look at this picture. This man knows how to bodysurf. Not just “catching a wave” (which as you can see from the bodycam video above doesn’t come naturally), but knowing what to do AFTER you catch it. He didn’t learn that in Kenya. Nuff said on the “birther” movement.

Report from Leadville 2017

 Preface

In my seven years of Leadville experience, I’ve made many new friends. This year, a group of eight of us from the Chicago west suburbs entered the LT100 as a team. This doesn’t mean anything other than a name on the entry form and that if one is accepted, all are accepted, and that it enabled us to feel a common bond as we trained for the race, sometimes together, mostly still on our own, through the spring and summer. On race day, it’s still every person riding his/her own race. The team was Carlos Sintes, Carlos’s son, Nick, Mark Ackerman, Ben Fischer, Paul Meier, Jeff Bolam, Craig McKenzie and me. Nick got mono during the summer, never got his training down and didn’t participate. Jeff had serious back issues in the spring, was recovered, but not enough to race. So there were six of us who lined up on race day.

My wife, Lois, has never been fully on board with my racing Leadville. Let me put it in her words: “If you go down and break your neck, I’m just putting you straight in a convalescent center and getting on with my life.” So, no pressure of any kind as I crossed the starting line this year for my fourth LT100. But I did make a determination that this would be my last one… if I buckled. Having buckled in my first two attempts (2011, 2013), I DNF’d in 2015 (see “Report from Leadville 2015” for that story). I felt if I could earn one more buckle, I would have proved everything there was to prove from this race: one buckle could be a fluke, two buckles probably not a fluke. But three buckles? There’s no questioning someone who’s earned three Leadville buckles. Anything after three is gravy. So the question today was: can I get that third buckle? Answer: Can you say “storybook finish”?

Race Day, August 12, 2017

Writing at 5:04 a.m. Sat. August 12, 2017 – Race Day – In bed by 8:30 last night, read for about 15 minutes, then… gone. Woke at 2:30 to pee, then laid in bed trying my best to “rest”, kind of on the edge of sleep until the alarm went off at 4:00. Then up, the traditional double shot of oatmeal with loads of raisins and a big glass of chocolate milk. Took a calcium pill, and 3 Aleve (for the ankles). Good hot shower, dressed and ready to go. JJ had bacon and eggs, and was sitting at the table, calmly reading Blake poetry.

Feeling good. Good little spin behind the lakes yesterday to scatter Rufus’s ashes. Legs feel ready. Just keep the cramps away.

5:10 a. m. – We’re out the door. JJ hopes to be near 7 hours. I hope for a buckle. Let’s see what the day brings, eh?

Race Report

A few days before the race I took this picture of a wall mural near downtown Leadville. I thought, “Perfect for Saturday.”

Okay, I will!

Written 4:02 p.m. Sunday, August 13, 2017 (edited Feb. 1, 2018) – JJ, Cheryl (JJ’s girlfriend) and I rode into Leadville, parked behind the Opera House and got our duds on.

Selfie with JJ behind the Opera House, 6:10 a.m.

I went down to the Race Store to use the bathroom and stretch. Just like 2013, there wasn’t another soul in there. Great spot to prep: warm, and “far from the madding crowd”. I hate stretching, but I took a good twenty minutes on the hams and the sartorials.

Suiting up with JJ

This was JJ’s first LT100. He didn’t know how he’d do, but he had already established some “beast” credentials: 3rd in Race Across the West in 2016 and later that year 3rd in the World Endurance Time Trials out in the Mojave Desert. He was hoping for something between a 7-8 hour finish. Me? My hope was anything under 12 hours: I wanted that third buckle. Note how differently we dressed for the day: he for speed, me layered up for the long haul: he would be getting warm a lot faster than me (See how that yellow jacket makes me look like I weigh a lot more than him? You see that, right?) JJ would carry one bottle. I’ve got one bottle on my downtube AND a 72 oz. camelbak. But he’ll be at Twin Lakes while I’m still descending Powerline.

We headed over to our corrals around 6:15. I knew I was in the last corral, so it made no difference to me, and JJ didn’t seem to care about getting into his corral early. As it was, we were both in the very back of our respective corrals.

I’ve made a lot of friends over my years with the Leadville 100 – today I made a point of not finding any of them before the race. No distractions. I felt sharp/focused in the corral, unlike both 2013 and 2015 (when I felt relaxed, but “fuzzy”). Not nervous at all. The day would bring what it would bring.

 

Drone view of the start

To give some idea of our respective starting positions, in this picture JJ, at the back of the red corral, was right on Harrison St, which would be the line of buildings you see toward the back end of the pack you see. Of course, that’s not the real back of the race, because 6th Ave. jogs there at Harrison, and the rest of the corrals extend up the hill past the gym, which is the large roof you see just below and to the right of the steeple. So where was I?

Five minutes before the start, the sun comes up over Mt. Massive

Selfie – two minutes before the gun.

Miles 1-10 – The gun went off and it was 3 ½ minutes before I crossed the start line. Ha! Turns out there were 1440* racers present (does that mean there’s 560 no-shows?? Seems crazy to pay all that money and not race.) (* Editor note:  according to official race stats, 1261. Seems crazy low – maybe that’s how many actually finished??)

And we’re off!

This picture is proof of just HOW far back I started the race. It’s the official photo of the very last corral just after going across the starting line. I’m the guy in the yellow jacket on the right, so as this picture shows, there’s exactly ONE racer who crossed the starting line behind me. But I didn’t care. It’s a chip time race, and I was mellow. (One other thing: you can’t roll down 6th Avenue at 6:30 in the morning with 1500 fellow cyclists and friends on a crisp 40 degree morning at the start of an epic adventure with that view of the sun hitting Mt. Massive, and feel bad about anything.)

The usual spin down 6^th Avenue and I could tell on that first little 6^th Ave. rise that my legs were in a whole different place than they were for the past month. JJ’s advice to rest them all week was good.

After turning onto the dirt, the road was so jammed it was impossible to make speed. Every little hill heard the tumbling calls of “Slowing!!”. I dreaded thinking of what was happening to my time. Maybe my back-of-white-corral start would kill my chances for a buckle.

Somewhere early in the race – still cold

I stopped at the turn for the climb and took off my yellow rain shell, pulling the arm warmers down. That was a good move – the sun was shining and you don’t want to overheat on the Kevin’s climb.

That left turn onto the St. Kevin’s climb saw no diminishing of the crowd. Wall-to-wall riders all creeping along, but… miraculously I was able to ride to the hairpin without having to dismount once. It was a snail’s pace, which as a result made for the easiest ascent to the hairpin of all time.

Now another test of the legs on the rollers behind the hairpin. And they were rock solid. Those little climbs that I remember from 2011 as being so easy… were easy again today, unlike every training ride over the past three weeks. I rocked every one of them, and pulled into Carter Summit with what my Garmin said was a time of 1:07. Wow! That shocked me, considering the slow start. Only two minutes off my split. This was going to be a fun day.

Mile 10-25 – I rocketed down the Carter Summit descent to May Queen in full crouch at speeds topping 40 mph, faster than I thought possible on this bike (I bought a Giant XTC Advanced in 2016 – less range in the gears than my old Trek 8000), and the climb up the south side of the lake to Hagerman Pass Rd. was “easy”, as was the 2-mile stretch of Hagerman Rd. that I have come to despise so much. Effortless.

I stopped for my “traditional” pee at the Sugarloaf turn and then jumped on the bike for my favorite climb. It didn’t let me down, and on this day, unlike every training ride this year except one, it was also the “easy” and enjoyable climb I remember from days of yore. I was having a blast.

As I topped the summit I did a shout-out to Scott Ellis, who died up there in 2015, and to Tom Bryant, whose ashes are scattered and memorialized by a sunken ore shovel.

Tom Bryant, LT100 veteran and friend to all – his ashes are scattered just off the trail on the Sugarloaf summit (picture taken a week before the race)

And now the Powerline descent, which is what did me in in 2015. With my usual “Focus Focus Focus” mantra I began the descent. Traffic had thinned considerably by now, but there were still many riders in front and behind. I made sure not to do a crazy descent (but I did have the pleasure of catching air at three different places :-)) and as usual by the steep last decline the line was slowed to a snail’s pace as the first-timers scraped their way down the final ridge line, the sound of squealing brakes and back tires skidding on the pulverized granite.

25% grade -stay sharp and keep your line

I saw several riders go into the ditches but I was able to maneuver around them, making that final big curve at the very bottom before letting it fly down the straight-away to the old creek crossing road. I slayed the 2015 dragon. I was having a ball.

Had to stop to pee. Again!! I guess I was hydrating okay, but come ON!

Powerline behind me – on to the Pipeline!

The turn onto the pavement that leads to those little climbs over to the fish hatchery is also one of my depressing moments on the course. In training, they just seem to take so much energy for such little tiny bumps. There are so many “small” climbs on the course that impose obstacles for racers like me that aren’t even mentioned in race lore. Not today. I flew over to the fish hatchery, on the way gathering up (more like ordering up) a pace line of four guys for when we left the trees and hit the open space. And off we went. The pace line was amazing. We were in sync with each other, each pulling for 30 seconds or so and by the time we reached the turn off of 300 the line had grown to about a dozen riders. We made the turn and just hauled over to the dirt cut-off. I looked down once and we were running at 25 mph. No way I’d have been at that speed riding alone. I had one of those great little “This is SO much fun!!” moments. Once again, those “hills” on the blacktop you hit just before turning onto the connector were NOTHING today. I felt on fire. What a gift.

I THINK this is on the blacktop near the fish hatchery

The little double-track connector over to the Pipeline flew by (I was doing this at 5-7 mph in training – today my speedometer said 10-14 – go figure), and I hit the Pipeline at 2:40:54, right on my target time. I stopped briefly to tell Donna and Marie, wives of my Chicago friends, to call ahead to Twin Lakes and tell them I was on my splits, then took off.

Mile 25-40 – The Pipeline was so much fun. I can’t really describe that feeling of cycling with no pain or discomfort up hills, but I was being given this gift today. It was especially sweet considering how bad all my training rides had felt). There’s one particularly steep little climb on the Pipeline and several moderately long climbs. Today they were fun.

I’ll add here that in addition to having my legs, I also had that athlete’s “in-syncness” that meant I was hitting my lines perfectly, avoiding every unnecessary rock – perfect combination of seeing what was immediately in front of me while also seeing my next line ahead, whether it was picking my way up Sugarloaf at 5 mph or flying along the Pipeline at 20.

Due to traffic, I ran the single track section slower than I probably would have if I’d had it to myself. Near the top the guy behind me says, “Hey man, can I pass you?” I said, “Why? There’s another 25 people in front of me you’d have to pass.” He actually attempted to pass me once, which is just stupid, let alone endangering to others (like me), but he pulled back and got in line like a good boy when I gave my bike a little bump in his direction. If he had passed me he would have tried to pass more, and that was going to lead to a crash involving how many bikes? Dumb. Especially since the single track is what, five minutes?

Single track outbound, Mile 34

Single track outbound circa Mile 35

Rte. 10 over the hills to Twin Lakes was the same pleasant “gift of the legs”. They had all the strength they needed to push me over the top, and soon enough I was flying down the hill in full crouch with the beautiful view of the lakes to the right and the medieval tent pageantry of the Twin Lakes Aid Station stretching to the left and across the dam, flags fluttering and the sound of cowbells in the distance growing louder by the second.

Down past the state troopers holding traffic on Hwy. 82, down that little ditch and into the cacophony of the Twin Lakes circus. Nonstop cowbells now, right in your ears. I flew past the First Descents tent with a shoutout to them, then across the dam (new this year – tents leading from the yellow gates by the road all the way to the dam gates) and skidded into our team tent, where Cheryl was ready with my Garmin refills. My time was 3:36:51, three minutes ahead on my splits). In any event, I was having another of those “time of my life” races. I pulled off my arm warmers and left them and my phone with her, telling her to call Lois and tell her I was doing great. I had to pee again! – went over to the porta-johns right behind the tent to take care of that. Cheryl had me all ready to go when I got back, so I pulled on my gloves and took off.

At Twin Lakes, pulling the gloves back on (photo credit: Cheryl Walker)

Mile 40-50 – The Four Stooges were no problem today and I flew into the back valley, heading across to the base of the Columbine climb. Approaching the tents in “New Twin Lakes” I heard a voice call out from a tent, “Go get it, Bob.” I realized just after passing, it was Brian Feddema, the owner of Cycles of Life. But I was gone before I could respond.

Columbine. This is where things start getting fuzzy for me regarding split times. Not so much because my brain was getting fuzzy, but that I couldn’t remember what the splits were supposed to be. I could remember my target time of 2 ½ hours to the top, but couldn’t do the addition in my head based on the day’s stats.

Near the base of the first steep climb into the trees on lower Columbine, JJ flew past, heading back to Twin Lakes. Holy crap!! I hadn’t been counting exactly, but pretty sure he was in the top 25. I gave him a huge shout. Holy crap. Top 25?? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

I’ll throw in several pictures of JJ here. He finished in 7 hours, 32 minutes, in 27th place overall, 3rd in his age group.

JJ on St. Kevin’s

JJ near Columbine summit

JJ on the single track

Ok, back to the reality of a 67-year-old Leadville racer.

Columbine felt somewhat better than my training rides, but not nearly as good as the “old days” when I had legs. I recall average speeds on lower Columbine in the 5-6 mph range. My training rides had been in the 2-3 mph range (discouraging), and today I was in the 3-4 mph range. Meh.

Somewhere on “upper” lower Columbine I stopped to put on my jacket, as it was getting pretty nippy. No rain in sight, just cold, which I don’t like being.

Also another harbinger of what was to come. When I’m feeling “good” on lower Columbine, that “Army base encampment” with the Don’t Tread on Me flag and the no trespassing signs at the last hairpin comes sooner than I expect. Not today. Discouraging.

I rode the first steep section after the A-frame as far as I could before dismounting due to traffic, but unlike a couple of training rides this year where I cleaned both early climbs all the way to the Goat Trail chip mat, today I had my first inkling that maybe my legs might be giving out: I could not have made these two climbs today even if there had been no traffic. Hmm.

So up I hiked. I had taken 3 Aleve and I think that really helped lessen the pain of walking. I got back on the bike for the short stretch over to the Goat Trail, and then…  cramps. Adductor, inside left thigh. I was able to ride through it by doing an exaggerated full extension on every pedal stroke, plus I knew I wasn’t going to be riding far. This was a concern, however, and the cramps would crop up throughout the rest of the day, on and off, all the way to the top of Powerline (Mile 83). They were a worry every single time (they can end a race), and every single time I was able to back off a bit and pedal right through them. I also made a point of taking two or three full mouthfuls of liquid through the camelbak as soon as I felt one coming one, and whether placebo or not, the immediacy of the relief was surprising. Maybe because the liquid went (more or less) straight to the muscle.

I dismounted again before I usually do, then began the long dreary march up the hill. It’s simply one foot in front of the other, picking which rock you’re going to use as push-off leverage, and making sure your front wheel doesn’t get halted by a rock, which means energy expelled unnecessarily by having to stop the rhythm of your trudging and lift the front wheel over that rock. Doesn’t sound like a big deal, does it? Well, get up there yourself and you’ll know what it’s like.  Experience tells you it’s easier hike-a-bike to be on the high side of the bike… but on Columbine you must be on the right side of your bike – if a descending rider either loses control or brushes too close at 25 mph you want them to hit your bike, not you. (Luckily, the high side is usually on the right side.)

Today, my back hurt more than my legs or feet. I think it’s either the camelbak putting stress on the muscles in the middle back, or else the pressure on those muscles leaning over and pushing the bike. In any event, if felt good to get back on the bike at that little level-ish stretch before the big curve to the right where you have to get off again and join the march. Columbine was having its effect.

I walked that “second hike-a-bike” much farther than I usually do, with the understanding that 1. I was walking just about as fast as I would be riding it (meaning closer to 2.5 mph than 1.5 mph – thank you, Aleve), and 2. that I was feeling pretty good about my split times.

When I finally got back on my bike, I was relieved to see that the cramps were gone, and I cleaned those final small hills up to the summit like they were nothing (again, a wonderful gift compared to every single one of my Columbine training rides. I can’t begin to describe the mental/emotional difference between being in pain ALL the time in this race as opposed to at just the most difficult times).

Back on the bike for the final leg of the Columbine climb – Mile 49

I topped Columbine at 12:45 (clock time, not chip time!), and a return trip of 45 minutes would mean I was right on my splits after 60 miles. This meant my Twin Lakes-Columbine split was 2 hours 40 minutes, slowest ever. (In 2011 it was 2 hours 26 minutes. In 2013 I was 2 hours 36, and 2015 was 2 hours 28 minutes – with a broken wrist and a knee bleeding like a stuck pig. So go figure.)

Top of Columbine, 12,500 ft. That aid station is the 50-mile turnaround. Head on home!

Mile 50-60 – I made the wide turn at the Columbine aid station and never stopped, turning right back around for that slow slog back up to the summit before beginning the wonderful descent. Again, that trudge was pretty decent, but I was beginning to understand that today short climbs (even steep), flats, and descents were not a problem, while steeper, long climbs were going to be problematic.

Down, down, and down to the base at speeds around 30 mph, taking the hairpins beautifully (if I do say so), and then flying out onto the flats. When I turned left to go through the ranch, I stopped at the Cycles of Life tent. Brian immediately asked “what’s wrong with the bike?” I said it was operating perfectly – I was just stopping to take off my jacket. He spun the rear tire a little, checked things over, got his chain lube and did a good squirt and spin, saying, “You always go faster when the chain is lubed.” Brian understands the psychology of endurance racing.

The dreaded Four Stooges loomed across the valley. One of my least-favorite parts of the entire race. The hills are so small but they come at you one after another after another on the return, and how can they be THAT steep? As I’ve noted in other posts, I think it’s because for the last 40 minutes of descending Columbine, the legs have been mostly unused, and now when asked to actually work, they feel drained. But… another gift today. I cleaned them pretty effortlessly and that put me on that short fast descent back to Twin Lakes. Be careful of that spot where you endo-ed on the 2011 training ride. Be careful of that spot where you went down in 2015.

And back to the Twin Lakes feed zone. Cheryl was gone to the finish line for JJ, but I got a refill from Chris Zebrowski. And there was Randy!! What a wonderful surprise. You can’t describe how good it is to see loved ones along the course. We had a little trouble getting the camelbak cap off and back on, but it was a short aid stop and then I was off across the dam. Don’t know chip time here. Was I behind? Ahead? Didn’t know. Just knew I was going as fast as I could, so what more can you do.

Mile 60-75 – What I did know crossing the dam was that I felt pretty confident about a buckle, and also that there was nothing I could but ride as fast as I could in any event. So I spent no time, like in 2013, fretting about the hurdles ahead because they were going to be what they were going to be. Enjoy the day. Which I did… for awhile.

The pavement climb up to the Twin Lakes overlook was a little slower than I would have liked, but again, it was all I had to give it. And then my old nemesis: the dreaded headwind. I remember thinking uh-oh for about ten seconds, and then I never thought about it again until twenty miles later on the pavement to the fish hatchery. As I crested the hill I saw Doc Wenmark off his bike by the side of the road. From the looks of it, a mechanical issue. I exchanged a quick greeting as I went past, but no time to stop and chat. I flew pretty fast back down 10 to the pavement and over to the singletrack. This was the first place where my mind was asking, “Do I have the singletrack in me?” Turns out I did, as once again I got into line and the pace was just perfect, maybe even pushing me a little to keep on the back wheel of the guy in front (you don’t want to be “that guy” who holds up a huge line behind you).

On the single track – Mile 63

Sucking down the fuel – on the edge of cramps

You get on a wheel and don’t look up

Went across the roots and through the pines and out onto the ridge before diving down to Lil Stinker. First disappointment of the day. I can usually slingshot at least a third to half-way up Lil Stinker, but today there was a logjam of dismounting cyclists at the very bottom, meaning I was going to have to hike-a-bike the whole hill. Ugh.

But on a positive note, when I got to the top of the hill I was able to immediately get back on my bike and pedal away, unlike previous years where I’m leaned over my bike seat, gasping for breath for about 30 seconds. (Note here: I moved my Garmin Heart Rate screen away from my first screen, and I’m glad I did. I checked it once during the race when I thought I was running in the low 140s. It read 155. Oh well.)

Back on the Pipeline and the riding was fun. As in outbound, there wasn’t a single one of those climbs in there that gave me any problem at all. That Pipeline ride was another gift. So much fun. I stopped again at the Chicago “team” Pipeline tent just to exchange a few words, and then I was off again. My chip time will reflect that extra minute I stopped at the tent. I was feeling very confident about being on a good pace. (Note: 1 hour 22 minutes from Twin Lakes to Pipeline. (1:13 in 2011, 1:21 in 2013, 1:21 in 2015)

Mile 75-90 – And then another gift. After flying down the doubletrack to the pavement, now exposed to the wind in the open on the way to the fish hatchery where you once again get into the protection of the trees, I hooked up with several pacelines until I found the one that worked best. Another piece of the race no one talks about, but it’s as psychologically difficult as any climb. The headwind on that road was blowing hard from about 10 o’clock, and I had to “train” the lead rider to get more toward the centerline of the road because we couldn’t just line up straight behind him; we all had to tuck behind each other at about 4 o’clock. I was able to paceline all the way to the trees by the hatchery. Wow!! What a difference a paceline makes. That stretch was “easy” compared to what I had been mentally bracing for… and compared to some past years, notably 2013 when it seemed it would never end.

And now another wonderful surprise – JJ and Cheryl were right by the fish hatchery, clapping and cheering and calling my name. JJ handed me off a bottle of cold ice water on the fly! As I went past I asked how he did. “26^th!” Holy Crap!!! His first Leadville! I zoomed on past the crowd, pointing back and yelling “That guy just finished 26^th!!”

The hills past the fish hatchery were nothing (again, so different from my training rides) and I zoomed down to the turn-in to the Powerline climb. By this point I had made “friends” with a young first-timer in my paceline. As we turned to face the first leg of the Columbine climb, he looked up and asked, “is that the whole thing?” Ummmmm. I hated to tell him the truth… but I did.

Only the first of five false summits on Powerline

Bryan was at that corner filming. I don’t know how far he was able to film. I think I gave him a good positive wave, but truth is I was having inner doubts. How far would the legs hold out? Would it be overall fatigue, or cramps that would do me in? Of course you can’t dwell on those kinds of thoughts, but they do enter your mind. At the same time, by this point in the race, you’re pretty far past singing “Oh What a Beautiful Morning!” In any event, the Powerline ascent should, from past experience in training and races, take me about an hour. You can do anything for an hour, right?

Lower Powerline was… well… lower Powerline. I was off the bike significantly lower than usual, by my choice I’m afraid. Not a good sign. The trudge up the hill was the usual awful, but maybe not the worst ever. Sounds strange, but you need to choose the right line to walk. I saw people “choose poorly”, and they found themselves two feet deep in a rut trying to push their bike waaaayyy above them, having eventually to pick their bike up and carry it over to the “straight and narrow”. (Hmm, is this race a Pilgrim’s Progress analogy? If so, Powerline was my Slough of Despond.)

Close-up of the Powerline terrain

At the top of the first hike-a-bike hill I mounted up and flew down the back of the hill, slingshotting as far as possible up the first climb of upper Powerline. So depressing how fast a bike slows from 25 mph to 3 mph.

I felt pretty good on that first hill, but then, slowly and inexorably… Powerline began to sap me. I rode as much as I could, eventually walking way more than I ever have, again figuring that my walking was as fast as my riding. That should not have been the case, but today, I simply could not ride any faster than walking pace. This was either age catching up with me, or my fitness level being lower than previous years. In any event Leadville, a race of attrition, was catching up to me. In many cases I was riding behind walkers at the very same pace, but I rode whenever I could because I don’t do real well with walking: otherwise I might have walked a lot more. My average speed on that section was around 2.5 mph. Not good. There’s no chip mat at the top of Powerline and I didn’t check my watch (I think the lack of oxygen was now really beginning to affect my thinking), so I don’t know how long that “one-hour” climb took. (Note: considerably longer than one hour, I’m sure)

Another fatigue factor began to creep in. I do more standing than most riders, which takes a lot of arm strength, so by somewhere on Powerline it was my arms giving out on standing pulls before the thighs burned out. It was identical to the feeling of having no leg strength left with which to push the pedals. Only arms. This meant I was going to have to stay in the saddle longer, which meant losing more leg strength. Just one of those juggling acts from here to the finish line. Attrition! (please sing that like Tevye sings “Tradition!” in Fiddler on the Roof)

Somewhere near the top I caught up with Frank Gepfrich. It was like old times, my first Leadville friend, the two of us climbing Powerline together, as we had done on a beautiful morning training ride in 2015. But neither of us was in a jovial mood today. We pretended, but were both pretty deep in our respective pain caves. He’d ride ahead, I’d catch him, and so on. We crested the top, having been riding the last ten minutes in a light, chilly rain (amazing how Leadville weather tends to come at the worst times). Nothing that soaked us, but cold. I asked Frank, “how are we doing for a buckle do you think?” He said, “I think we’re okay.” I asked, “Should we stop and put on our jackets?” because I really wanted to – I don’t like riding cold. He said, “Nah, we’ll be down at May Queen in a little bit and then we’ll just get hot on the Turquoise Lake climb.” Darn. I really wanted my jacket. I was cold. (In retrospect, this jacket-donning minute was vitally important.)

At the peak, Frank took off on his 29er, flying down Sugarloaf. I had no thought for either Tommy or Scott now. This was hammer time with a buckle on the line. I couldn’t stay with Frank. He has become a MUCH better descender, that’s for sure. And I guess I was seeing the difference in those 29” wheels vs. my 27.5” wheels – they just roll over obstacles better. I followed as best I could, but he was out of sight by the time I turned out onto Hagerman Rd. My wristwatch was now telling me a story I didn’t like seeing. It was 5:00 and I had a good 45 minutes up to Carter Summit (IF my legs held) and more than an hour to the finish line from there. That would be 6:45 p.m., if my addled brain was doing the math right. And I needed to cross the line by 6:30 to get a buckle. I was feeling apprehensive now and really stamped the pedals down Hagerman and then down the Turquoise Rd. to May Queen. 25-35mph. Still raining, maybe 50 degrees now. It was cold! Darn you, Frank.

Strangely, I caught up with Frank on that pavement descent and we rode together around May Queen over to the beginning of the Carter Summit ascent where I pulled ahead of him. After a few minutes of climbing I heard him right on my wheel. I called, “Frank?” two times with no response. The third time, a voice said, “I’m not Frank.” A quick look over my shoulder saw no sign of him coming around the curve. Where had Frank gone? My wristwatch told me I couldn’t wait for him. Had to go. This was gonna be close.

The 3-mile Turquoise Lake climb was simply no fun. Sure not as much fun as ten hours earlier screaming down it at 40+ mph in the other direction. Now… maybe a 4 mph average on what should have been at least 6 mph. But it’s all I could do.

And then another gift: unlike 2013 when I was in a similar position and so frustrated at the thought of not buckling. Today, a peace came over me: I’m going to try as hard as I can to get a buckle, but if I don’t, I’m no less of a human being, friend, father, husband, grandfather. It was just a good feeling.

The climb seemed interminable, certainly because of everything at stake. Bless their hearts, Randy and Bryan, JJ and Cheryl were at the summit. So good! Thank you!! As in 2013, I didn’t dare stop. Unlike 2013 when I had an hour 15 to the finish line in what I’ve done in an hour and five minutes on my best short training rides, today as I made the turn I looked at my watch and it said 5:25: I had…. an hour and five minutes to the finish line. I was feeling pretty toasted and my face showed it. I passed them, saying, “I’m on the bubble.” They said later I looked pretty grim; JJ told them it wasn’t a good sign. He knows the look. Would the cramps stay away? What did my legs have left in them?  I simply didn’t know. My job now was to turn the pedals as fast as I could – every second counted.

Mile 90-104 – I pulled off the first climb back to St. Kevin’s pretty well –not anything like the outbound trip, but okay enough to give me heart. Approaching the second short steep climb I was slingshotting in my big front chainring, then jumped down to the small as I hit the steep, and… the pedals wouldn’t turn. Chainsuck. Well, that did it. I didn’t have a minute to spare and this was going to take at least a minute to dismount, get the chain back on the small ring, and remount. Uh-oh. Couldn’t remount – too steep. I walked the top as fast as I could (15 seconds??), then jumped on and flew to Ken’s Corner, where the last steep climb starts. To make the hard left turn onto the climb you have to slow to about 5 mph – no slingshotting – and the climb is steep and maybe 150 yards long. It’s so demoralizing. I pedaled about 20 feet and was done. I’ve cleaned this hill in every previous race AND training ride. But today… Attrition!! Nothing to do but walk. Again. Trudged to the top and jumped back on. I was now going to have to make up time. I flew (and I mean flew – how many times did I catch air? One time came down so hard on the seat I heard a cracking sound: seat post? frame? seat?) down to the hairpin and flew down St. Kevins like I’d never done before. Prudence says take it easy on the Kevin’s descent at Mile 96 because you don’t want to end your race so close to the finish line. But no time for caution today. Out onto the flats and amazingly, had the legs to fly to the pavement. It’s mostly 2-3% decline and you can cut it loose, but I really wondered if there was going to be ANYthing left in the tank. Turning onto the pavement a guy was yelling “31 minutes! You got it.” I knew I needed 30 from the base of the Boulevard (and I was still five minutes from there), but I also figured I had about 2 ½ minutes of chip time. (Editor note: chip time was actually 3 ½ minutes) I flew the pavement, 22-25 mph, and as I hit the dirt leading to the Boulevard the volunteer there was yelling “29 minutes!!!” I followed right behind two guys who were as desperate as I was, all three of us flying through that weird road that leads to the Boulevard. At one point you ride a center ridge about 6 inches wide with two huge mud puddles on either side. Nailed it at 20 mph. Had to.

Then that hard left turn onto the steep, rocky Boulevard. You have to slow way down just to make the turn and you’re dropping from your big chainring/smallest cassette to your small chainring/biggest cassette as you hit soft sand, then the rocks. I rode the whole thing, but the legs simply weren’t there. Attrition!! Hit the smooth road back to town, thinking to myself at one point, “I can’t believe I’ve actually done this entire thing!” And then a minor miracle. I found myself cranking the pedals at 10-14 mph up the Boulevard, faster than my normal speed. I had had no cramps, zero!, since the Powerline ascent. My legs were numb. At the second RR crossing there’s a little tiny hill at which I slowed way down because there wasn’t anything left in the tank (Attrition!!). Suddenly, like an angel from heaven, there was Brian Feddema and the Cycles of Life crew and other friends, maybe about ten people. And Brian knows the clock. He’s out on the road, yelling at me: “You gotta go, Bob, you gotta go, smash those pedals, smash those fuckers, smash those fuckers!!!!!” and he stepped out and gave me a huge push up the hill. Like I said before, Brian understands endurance cycling. What a lift!! Wish I had a video of that, but the memory will last.

The Boulevard becomes steeper as Leadville comes into sight – just another little soul crusher for those of us on the bubble. But I got to the blacktop, and now my watch was saying 6:25. I had timed this section, and on a slow day I was five minutes to the finish line. Add my chip time, and… holy crap!!! I had myself a buckle!

As I turned onto Sixth (I almost can’t believe those words as I write), I stood on the pedals until my arms gave out, then settled in for the 3 mph grind up that last hill. And then another gift: there was a family alongside the road cheering like crazy. They also knew the time situation. One after another, at least three of them, they came out and gave me huge pushes up the hill, accompanied by shouts of encouragement. Oh my gosh – what a lift. I’m sure there’s something in the handbook about illegal assists, but it sure got me up the worst psychological part of that hill. I cleaned the rest, saw that wonderful finish line six blocks away, broke into a huge grin because I knew now for sure I had the buckle, because I knew that even though I might not make 12 hours on the clock, I knew my chip time was all good. And then began that last wonderful descent to the finish line. I was hammering now, because why not? You can do anything for six blocks.  I knew it was close on the clock. But who cares? I had my buckle. And then… there was the banner stretched across the street, a huge crowd in the bleachers and crowding the street for an entire block before the finish line. Ah yes, the “12-hour crowd”. I’ve been in it a number of times, cheering for that “Last Ass Over the Pass” to get over that line before Ken fired off the shotgun and the clock chimed midnight.

The gauntlet approaching the finish line – from 2016

As I began the final grind uphill toward the finish line, there was a gauntlet of people cheering wildly. JJ and Cheryl were at the front of the pack, going crazy. This picture doesn’t show the frenzy of the 12-hour crowd, but it’s all I could find.  My experience was like the Tour de France when they’re approaching the summit of the Col du Tourmalet – the crowd like a wall in front of you, blocking the way, then magically melting to each side like the Red Sea, reaching out to clap you on the back, give you a shove, screaming, yelling, cheering. I was grinning like a fool.

Ken Chlouber, locking and loading

Race founder Ken Chlouber appears at the finish line as the 12-hour mark approaches and fires a shotgun (he also starts the race the same way) at exactly 12:00:00. But I wasn’t paying attention to that.

The PA system came into hearing, and it became clear as I pedaled through the crowd that the clock was winding down to 12 hours and me and one other guy were vying for the coveted “last ass over the pass”. I heard the countdown, “10-9-8-7”. I smashed those fuckers. The crowd was cheering wildly, and I mean wildly – you just want that rider to get across that line before it hits 12:00.

6 – 5 – 4 …

People pumping their fists, screaming at us. iPhones recording. Somebody gave me a push. “5-4-3”. I hit the red carpet. “2-1” and saw 11:59:59. I flashed across the finish line (well, maybe “flashed” is the wrong word) just as Ken Chlouber fired the “12-hour” shotgun. The guy next to me nosed me out, but that just meant I was literally the last guy in under 12 hours. Huge cheer from the crowd. (Editor note: a lady posted her iPhone video of this scene on FB, saying she was in tears watching it happen. It’s not the first time I’ve brought a woman to tears.) I’ll let the pictures tell the story.

3 – 2- ….

 

1 – BANG!!

I was pedaling so hard I almost crashed into a photographer sitting on the ground about five feet behind the finish line. (Editor note: videotape evidence seems to indicate he was at least 15 ft. behind the line, lol.) He better have got the greatest shot of my athletic career, me crossing the line with a huge grin on my face, hundreds of cheering people going crazy behind me, or I’m gonna be mad at him. (Note: he did.)

Got that buckle, baby

I had my buckle.

Finis

I walked the bike about five yards behind the red carpet and collapsed over the handlebars, breathing heavily and laughing. And then a parting gift. That woman in the red fuzzy sweater who cuts you off at the Pipeline with a huge hug and a the smootchy kiss while she’s taking off your number plate chip strip – Suzy, or something like that – she’s in the movie – came over and put the finisher medal around my neck and asked if I was alright. I told her I was more than alright. Before the race, I distinctly remember thinking to myself, “There is no way that lady (I actually had another word in my mind) is going to remove my chip strip at Pipeline. I don’t mind dnf-ing as much as I just can’t stand her huggie/kissie thing.” And there she was, NOT taking my dnf, but putting the finisher medal around my neck. Ha!

After I recovered enough to look around, I saw Stephen Rodgers standing to my right. We chatted a bit. I had seen him coming through Twin Lakes on the return; he got pulled there.

At the finish line with Stephen Rodgers

That thing hanging around my neck is a finisher’s medal: you get one if you finish the race in under 13 hours. You get the buckle if you finish under 12. I now owned three finisher medals and three buckles.

Stephen had been talking to Doc Wenmark’s crew who were worried that the 18-time buckler wasn’t in yet. I told them I had passed Doc way back at Twin Lakes. He was stopped by the side of the road, straddling his bike, and that he hadn’t passed me again. As we talked, Doc pulled in. He missed a buckle by maybe ten minutes. He had flatted twice and had some kind of valve stem issue. I felt sorry for his mechanic (yes, Doc has a mechanic), sort of.

Frank pulled in right behind Doc. I saw him cross the finish line, but by now I was engaged in my own victory, talking with Bryan on film and spotting JJ, Cheryl and Randy behind the fencing. I couldn’t stop grinning. I remember hoisting my bike over my head and shaking it up and down. I called Lois, who of course had told me, per pre-race tradition, to either come home either with my buckle, or on my buckle.

After about a half hour at the finish line, Bryan took me to his truck where he had a quart of chocolate milk waiting. Cheryl and JJ took the bike and camelbak to their car, and then all of us went to the Grill where they ate well. I was simply not hungry, but forced down a beef taco a la carte and about four glasses of water.

Home and in bed by 10:30 or so, wondering how bad my cramps would be that night and how many times I’d be hopping out of bed, teeth clenched, foaming at the mouth, trying not to cry. JJ suggested taking ibuprofen. I took three, and had zero cramps during the night. J (Note: or the next, or the next!)

Sunday morning

We got up at 6:00 a.m. (oh man!) and headed into Leadville to get our buckles and jackets. JJ was a podium finisher in his age group, so he got to get up in front of the whole gym and stand on that podium. I know JJ: he’s not satisfied with that small plate. (Little story about his 27th place finish: the guy who finished ahead of him in his age group cheated, and JJ witnessed it. The two of them got to the top of Lil Stinker and there was a guy waiting in a van who pulled out a bike. He proceeded to lead, with this other guy drafting. They dropped JJ. At the ceremony, this guy didn’t show up to get his 2nd place plate. Scumbag.)

JJ with his 3rd place in age group platter

Hooked up for pictures with Ben Fischer and Carlos Sintes, the only other racers of the “Chicago Eight” to buckle.

Bob, Ben and Carlos

Carlos: 11:53 (despite getting whacked with a rock that broke six spokes and flatted his rear tire at Mile 92. He descended St. Kevins at breakneck speed to beat the clock on a wheel that could have collapsed on him at any time. You do what you have to do.) Carlos was an Olympics-caliber racer when he was younger. His major claim to fame, though – he played one of the bad guys on the Italian National racing team in the 1979 cult classic film, Breaking Away.

Ben: 10:45 (a little slower than he would have liked, but not bad for his first LT100)

Bob: 11:56:37

Mark: missed the Twin Lakes outbound cut-off by one minute

Paul: got pulled, I believe, at Pipeline inbound

Craig: dropped out at Mile 66 at base of the single track

Jeff: did not race due to long recovery from his back injury

Nick: did not race due to long recovery from mono

Garmin Stats

11 hours, 56 minutes, 37 seconds on the bike

103.21 TOTAL MILES

8.6 mph av. speed, 42.4 mph max speed

142 bpm av. HR (this is good!), 169 bpm max HR (didn’t know I could go that high anymore!)

11,800 feet of climbing (this beats Warrenville’s Mt. Trashmore hill repeats)

5313 calories burned

Third buckle earned

Ranking

Age group 60-69 – 41^st/52 finishers ( 12^th percentile) 41^st/69 starters (17 dnfs) (41^st  percentile – makes me feel a LITTLE better)

Overall – 1158^th/1261 (8^th percentile)

(both indicators of two things: my increasing age, but even moreso the attraction to the race of better and better riders each year)

Gun time – 12:00:03 (although pictures clearly show my number plate across the line at 11:59:59)

Chip time – 11:56:38 (and never more proud of any of my Leadville finishes)

 

Split Times

 

Start to Carter Summit (11 miles) – 1:07:20 – target time 1:05-1:10 – pretty much right on track

Start to Pipeline outbound (26 miles) – 2:40:54 – target time 2:40 – doing great

Start to Twin Lakes outbound (40 miles) – 3:36:51 – target time 3:35-3:45 – exactly on my 2011 split, actually at the front edge of my window

Start to Columbine Summit (50 miles) – 6:15:50 – target time 6:00-6:15 – Oops, now on the back edge of that window – lost 15 minutes

Start to Twin Lakes inbound (60 miles) – 6:59:55 – target time 6:45-7:00 – still on that back edge – the very back edge

Start to Pipeline inbound (74 miles) – 8:22:15 – target time 8:00-8:15 – losing time when I was feeling “fast”. I can’t account for losing seven minutes in this stretch.

Powerline ascent – approx. 1:20 – should be an hour or so. Lost even more time.

Start to Carter Summit inbound (89 miles) – 10:53:03 – target time 10:30-10:45 – Uh-oh. On the other hand, 10:30 to Carter makes for an 11:35 finish. 10:45 to Carter makes for an 11:50 finish. 10:53 to Carter makes for an…. Uh oh. Better get my ass in gear.

Carter Summit to Finish (103 miles) – 1:03:35 – ties my fastest time in any race or training ride

Post-mortem: Talked with Frank on the phone Monday morning in the car driving home through eastern Colorado. I asked him what happened. He said when he got to the bottom of the Sugar Loaf-to-May Queen descent he had goose bumps and was shivering all over. Couldn’t stop shivering, so he felt he had to stop and put on his rain shell. He also felt he had to eat something. This is why he wasn’t there when I looked back over my shoulder. When he got back on the bike to begin the Carter Summit climb, he just didn’t have it. I told him I felt bad about leaving him, but I knew I was on the bubble, and I hoped he would have done the same thing if he were in my shoes.

About two hours after talking with Frank, I got a call from Stephen Rodgers saying that Frank’s girlfriend, Christina, had had a stroke and was airlifted from Leadville to Denver!

As the day went on, I talked with Frank, who had driven down to Denver while Christina was being airlifted. When he got there they had determined that it wasn’t a stroke, but a “non-medical” condition called complex migraine, which has stroke-like symptoms. They gave her blood thinners. By the late afternoon, Christina was home with full recovery.

They had gone out Sunday evening, had a few drinks, tipsy but not drunk, came home, went to bed. In the morning Christina threw up. Odd because not really enough to drink the night before to warrant. As is the case, she felt a lot better after throwing up and Frank started to make her breakfast. She was standing next to him when she started to pass out. Frank got her over to the couch, and she said she couldn’t feel anything on her left side. Frank helped her to the car and drove her to the emergency room (one minute away) where their quick diagnosis was stroke, and they called for the Denver airlift. Frank was impressed by the professionalism of the Leadville hospital.

(Feb. 2018 – Christina is fine today, but it was a heckuva scare.)

Post-Post-Mortem August 29, 2017

Physical stuff. Upon returning to Naperville, I had the usual several days of “god-like” fitness. I went out on the bike several days later and it was a pure joy to just pound hills with no sense of fatigue. This, plus no kinds of aches or pains in general, plus feeling as fit and trim as I’ve ever felt, made for a great first week home. Simple things, like putting on socks effortlessly and reaching more of my back in the shower. I was thrilled to get on the scale a week after the race and weigh less than on race day. Our scale here is about ten pounds light, but I know to adjust for reality, which meant I was under 170 pounds. My previously-recorded race day weights of 165 were in reality a shade over 170. In any event, I’m pleased that for the first year in four LT100s that I’m keeping the weight off. Past history saw me work so hard to get fit and lose weight for race day that the day after the race I’d start “rewarding myself” for my labors, and the downward (or upward) slide would begin. I’m determined not to let that happen again, and to never return to the 205 pounds of my retirement year. In fact, I have another ten pounds I could lose, and it would be lovely to do that.

After a week or so reality began to set in. I read an article in Smithsonian about Astronaut Mark Kelly’s return from the ISS. He talked about gravity feeling like a 10-ton weight. I’m wondering if there’s a bit of that same feeling when you return to sea level from 10,000 ft. I first noticed the feet and ankles. It’s not that they didn’t bother me at the cabin, but by comparison they were much better up there than down here. Humidity? Altitude?

And then it was other minor aggravations that began to return one by one, particularly on the bike. The hamstring issue that plagued me all year but had disappeared in Leadville and was not an issue of any kind on race day. The adductors that gave me no problems in training at altitude, (although they cramped up on race day).

Post-Post-Post Mortem – August 31, 2017

The end of a great month.

Unlike previous LT100s where I let all the work I’d done to get my weight down go right down the drain as I “celebrated” the whole thing being over, I’m determined this year to keep the weight off, and I’m pleased that my weight today is just a few pounds over my race day weight. I’ve got Chequamegon on Sept. 16 and my 50^th reunion in mid-October and Iceman in early November as incentives, plus Lois as inspiration. She’s lost 25 pounds this summer and is hell-bent on losing another thirty. She’s looking good and I’d like to look good beside her.

Upon reflection, it’s a pretty amazing thing to reach the kind of peak fitness needed for Leadville. All kinds of things you thought were “routine aches and pains of aging” simply disappear in the urgency of the race. For instance:

• By early summer I was noticing a clicking in my left knee when I stood on the pedals. Was going to have Steve Baker look at it when he was visiting the cabin in August, but forgot to. Disappeared on race day.
• I was using toe spacers between the big and second toes on my right foot as the bunion there pushed my toes over to the right, irritating them. I quit using them.
• The hamstring issue – never entered my mind on race day.
• The Achilles heel issue – never entered my mind on race day.
• Lower back pain. Definitely felt it on the hike-a-bikes, and I think it did slow me down
• The ankles. Not until Powerline did the left ankle really give out (see below)

 

I am particularly grateful that on race day I was able to focus on the right things and not the wrong things:

• that weird clicking that had developed in Colorado in my left knee when under load climbing. It was a non-factor on race day or since. Go figger.
• an even weirder thing that happened with my jaw on its right “hinge”. I noticed one day in training about a week before the race that it was really sore. I thought, man, I must be really clenching my jaw while climbing… but I wasn’t. I had taken a minor fall a few days before – had I somehow jarred my jawbone? What was the deal? TMJ? Cancer?? (only because my cousin Jim died of throat/tongue/jaw cancer). It was a non-factor on race day and two weeks later now I can feel only the faintest trace of pain and that only when I open my jaw wide.
• My ankles. I took three Alleve race morning. Did that help? By the Powerline climb I did have to do that awkward “right foot straight ahead, left foot 90 degrees to the left” thing because I couldn’t put weight on it, and I did walk more in this race than any other, but it was just one more pain that had to be dealt with, as opposed to a (mentally and physically) crippling handicap. Fortunately I was able to push off the right foot all day.
• the week-old road rash on my right hip (I fell hard in training at the top of Powerline – a silly fall that makes you realize you can fall at any moment), still kind of “fresh”. It stung when I slid my shorts on in the morning. End of story.
• leg cramps. None in the calves (never have had those), zero problem with my left hamstring that had given me problems for the past couple of years. None of those “tennis ball” cramps on the quads just above the knees. The adductor cramps that came and went and fortunately never really took me off the bike. I don’t believe I lost any time due to them. Super lucky. (As mentioned, because of the amount of standing I do, my triceps were toast by the 80th mile. My arms gave out before my legs on standing stretches, and they were so sore the next day.)
• taint issues. JJ’s bike seat did the trick and I rode 103 miles with only the slightest chafing the next day. I don’t think I even added butt lube at any point in the race.
• lower back muscles. I really felt the lower back muscles tightening up on the upper Columbine climb (my first hike-a-bike) and they grew more uncomfortable with each successive hike-a-bike, particularly the steep ones where it feels like you’re pushing your bike over your head. I tried to keep on the high side of the bike whenever possible, which helped, but the muscles never cramped (thankfully).
• I made very few mistakes on the bike, in fact I felt absolutely locked in finding the right lines, whether picking my way through rocks on ascents or descending fast. –
• I remember in 2011 being so concerned about the morning cold. That year my solution was the poncho. In 2013 I had leg warmers, arm warmers, a jacket and two layers of gloves. In 2015 it was pretty much the same. This year, no leg warmers, the yellow rain shell, arm warmers and a single pair of full-finger gloves. The cold lasts, what, 20 minutes out of 12 hours?
• I had prepared a bottle of HEED/NUUN mix to leave with Donna in the morning to take to their Pipeline aid tent. The idea being that I usually run out of hydration by the end of the race, so I’d add that bottle to the camelbak at Pipeline and be good for the rest of the race. But I forgot to give it to them. Rather than have it bother me for the entire race, I didn’t give it a second thought. Grateful for that, especially since I didn’t need it.
• I didn’t completely drain any of the three camelbaks all day long. This could have been a deep concern. It wasn’t. (Maybe it should have been.)
• Heart rate. In light of the death of Scott Ellis in 2015, you might think it would be high on my list of things to keep track of. I remember being very aware of it on my Garmin in previous races. Too aware. So this year I moved it off my first Garmin screen (I ran with ‘mph’ and ‘time elapsed’ – mph because I wanted to know if I felt like I was flying along whether I actually was flying along, and elapsed time because that’s the critical factor in a buckle. I figured by now I know when I’m blowing up so why bother constantly monitoring it as I ride.
• My contacts. A combination of the dry climate and the speed and jarring of descents on training rides meant a contact lens would pop out, usually at the worst of times. Rather than worry about losing one or taking the time to put one back in I chose to race without them. It was a non-issue on race day. One more thing I could have worried about that I never gave a thought to.
• Pedal squeak. Okay, yes it’s minor on a 10-minute ride, but not for 12 hours. My right pedal for some reason “squinches” on every turn. A little oil in there makes it go away. Except I kept forgetting to do it, and on race day there it was. It could drive you crazy if you let it, but it was one more thing that just didn’t get in the way of the race.

 

.

Report From Leadville 2015

Part I – The Race

 My third Leadville race provided a new experience: failure. Epic failure, as it turned out. I earned the silver belt buckle for my first two Leadville races, but today, well…

 August 15 – Race Day

When you prepare mentally and physically for a particular day for the better part of nine months, the tendency on that day is to “over-emote”. But this was my third Leadville and while I had been feeling more nervous than ever during the preceding week (I think because I had two buckles and didn’t want to not get a third), when  race day arrived I felt great.

Got up later than usual – 4:00 instead of 3:30. Ate my usual double oatmeal with raisins and glass of chocolate milk and got suited up. Alex, my friend and fellow Chicagoan, came over from our neighbors where he had been staying, we put the bikes on the Subaru, and headed for Leadville at 4:45. Matthew (my soon-to-be son-in-law) and Alyce (my daughter) drove with us and we (or least I) psyched up listening to my iPod playlist through the radio all the way to town. Saw one more shooting star on the way in. Alex was unusually quiet; at one point he seemed almost out of it. Can’t remember the detail of it, but at one point as we neared Leadville he said something that was out of left field.

Got to town and parked right in front of the race store on Harrison. Perfect spot. Used the nice warm bathroom in the store (nobody there), and also used the store (nobody there) to do my stretching. Made a point of stretching for a good 10-15 minutes: hams especially, but also the sartorials and quads. It would turn out to be a very good move.

I glanced at the bank time/temp before going over to my corral: it read 48 degrees.  Warm! Temps are usually in the mid-30s at the start of the race. I’d be comfortable in my jersey, arm warmers, the black vest plus my blue Gore vest, leg warmers and one pair of fingered gloves (I usually wear fingerless while riding, but decided to wear full-fingered this year). This temperature should have been a warning to sign to many of us, but I took it only as the good news it represented at that time of day: a warm start to the race.

Got over to my corral about 15 minutes before the gun, settled in, said hellos and good lucks to my friends Kirsten McDaniel, Bob Tuma, Paul from Palo Alto, Rob Bernhard from San Diego (brother of John and Larry, my high school classmates), Frank, and other friends I’ve made along the way. Felt focused, ready to go. My big question: what would my legs feel like when I hit the dirt to St. Kevins? Two years ago I knew it was going to be a painful day when I hit the dirt and just didn’t seem to have it. What would happen today??

Because I was racing this year for First Descents, I was in the Blue Corral, right up against the fencing on the left. Waited for the gun to go off, feeling calm, cool and collected. No nerves. In what would be a sign of things to come, it seemed to take forever to cross the starting line… and I was in the Blue Corral, ahead of 50% of the racers! Had to actually walk the bike all the way to Harrison, at which point it was a creep across the line.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, I crossed the starting line within 15 feet of Downers North High School graduate (where I taught until my retirement in 2010) and endurance athletics legend Rebecca Rusch, four-time winner of the Leadville 100.

The Start – Me in the blue vest – so serious! (See Rebecca over there?)

This year she was racing with Ride-To-Recovery athlete Matt Carpenter, an Iraq war veteran double amputee. Rebecca was in the process at this time of her life of reconnecting with her own history, having lost her father, shot down over the Ho Chi Minh Trail in 1972 when she was a toddler. (2018 note: Red Bull Media released the beautiful film about Rebecca’s bike trek on the Ho Chi Minh Trail in 2015 to find the spot where her father’s plane went down. It’s quite remarkable.) Rebecca, in her mid-40s now, was at a stage in her professional life where younger, faster women were taking the podium. This was a way for her to stay in touch with the race she loved, and to connect with a terrific movement while at the same time beginning to reconnect with her father. The week before the race, I ran into Rebecca with a group of the Ride-To-Recovery racers at the base of the Powerline. Take a look at Matt’s bike. Notice there are no brakes or shifters on those handlebars. His prosthetics grip the handlebars to steer. To brake, he skootches his butt back on his seat to contact a brake lever. To shift he presses in with either his left leg (front derailleur) or right leg (rear derailleur). Amazing.

Rebecca and Matt DeWitt, double amputee

Miles 1-10. We finally got moving, and the ride down to the dirt was the usual good pace and uneventful. I hit the dirt and soon got my answer: my legs felt not just good – they felt great! I just knew this was going to be a good day. Once again, as I crested the first small hills, I took in the beauty of the pack of riders stretching ahead as far as the eye could see. Today there was a beautiful layer of mist drifting across the valley and sliding over onto the trail that gave an ethereal beauty to the whole experience. Simply beautiful. The sun made its first appearance, peeking over the Mosquito Range, and all was well with the world…

…until the turn onto the St. Kevin’s (again, that’s pronounced ‘Keevins’) climb. What a mess! It’s always crowded, but for some reason this year it just seemed ridiculous. I’m not a fast climber, but there were just way too many slow riders, and walkers, and people coming off their bikes on that narrow, steep ascent. Somehow I managed to weave my way through the mess to the hairpin, being forced off my bike only once, and fortunately being able to get right back on.

The rest of the St. Kevin’s climb to Carter Summit was relatively uneventful and I was able for the most part to ride my pace. Course knowledge pays off here by being able to slingshot some hills, thus passing dozens of riders who have to gear down and grunt.

Because of the traffic, I felt my Carter Summit split was slow. It wasn’t. At 1 hour, 2 minutes, I was 8 minutes ahead of my split time. A sign that I was either going out too strong, or that it was going to be a very good day.

Somewhere on the Hagerman Pass Rd, circa Mile 15

Miles 10-22. The 3-mile Carter Summit descent is always fun and today was no exception. I hit 42 mph, my high speed for the day, in the tuck position for most of the hill. On the climb past May Queen up the back side of Turquoise Lake, I noticed my heart rate was higher than I’d like, but my legs felt so very strong, I just discounted it as the adrenalin rush of race day’s first 15 miles. Certainly it would drop as the race progressed, just as it had in previous years. The 5-mile climb to the base of Sugarloaf was easy. I stopped to pee at the turn, and also to remove the leg warmers. Unzipped the blue and black vests, but kept them both on. Leg warmers and arm warmers both off now.

            Headed up the bumpy Sugar Loaf fire road, which was fun, but somehow not as fun as usual. The legs, however, were still strong to the top, and I hit the summit in great spirits. I looked for the memorial to Tom Bryant as I went by, but missed it. Then, with my traditional “self-warning” to “Concentrate, Concentrate, Concentrate” I began the descent of Powerline.

You never know what you’re going to get by way of traffic on Powerline, but I was pleased that it had thinned enough that I was able for the most part to descend at my own pace. I started off behind a group of very fast descenders, but resisted the temptation to try to keep up with them. You have to find your own pace on Powerline descent or you can be in trouble very quickly. I was feeling very, very good about my descent until…

…about ¾ of the way down I came up behind a rider on one of the flatter parts, a part where you shouldn’t be on your brakes too much. I was right on his wheel when he inexplicably hit his brakes. My front wheel touched his back wheel and in that instant cyclists all know, I went over my handlebars over to the left. Really? Mile 20?? I landed, hard, on some large rocks beside the trail. All the contact was on the heel of my left hand and on my left kneecap, so there was very little distribution of force. I got up as quickly as I could, got my bike off the trail, did a quick head-to-toe check, and a quick bike check (which are frankly meaningless when your brains are scrambled), and got back on the bike as quickly as possible. I was grateful for my full-finger gloves, which prevented my hands and fingers from being bloodied. My knee hurt, badly, (broken kneecap?) but I didn’t even want to look at it. Only thing to do is get back on the bike and find out if it works. As is often the case, it hurt for a hundred yards or so, but then began to find its rhythm, and I finished the Powerline with no further mishaps. (One nice thing about the timing of this accident is that the concentration level on Powerline has to be so great that there’s no space in your brain to think about an injury: your levers and joints are either going to work or not. If they work, you keep going. If they don’t, your race is over. Mine worked: I was happy.)

At the base of Powerline, as we approached the blacktop, it was strange to “cross the creek” now with no creek, no plank “bridge”. The landowners had filled it in and put a culvert beneath for the creek. This is a little piece of LT100 that is so much a part of the event that it’s truly weird for it to not be there.

Miles 23-28. So up on the blacktop, around the fish hatchery and on to the Pipeline. Again, legs feeling great, and I remember a moment of being grateful to God for being able to be a part of such a beautiful and crazy adventure.

You’re supposed to find a paceline on this exposed blacktop stretch over to the Pipeline, but I made the mistake two years ago of latching onto a line that was moving too fast for me. I kept up, but spent too much energy I needed later. This year, a paceline moved by me very fast and I resisted the temptation to jump on. There was no wind at all, so I decided to just move at my own pace (low 20s-mph) and I’m glad I did.

Miles 28-40. I crossed the Pipeline chip mat at 2 hours, 34 minutes. Six minutes ahead of split time despite my crash. And feeling very good. The 12 miles from Pipeline Aid to Twin Lakes was just as good as the first 28. My legs felt SO good. Heart rate still high, but I figured, “it is what it is” and kept moving at my pace. Again I found myself almost out-of-body, being so thankful for how much fun I was having. Despite the crash, I felt I was in tune with the world; hitting the lines perfectly, gearing up or down exactly right, everything in sync. Somewhere in here I stopped to remove my two vests. For the first time I was racing in just the First Descents shorts and jersey.

On the singletrack (approx. Mile 35), I smiled for the official photographer, but he apparently caught me in that instant just “before” smile, so I look like Edward G. Robinson in “The Ten Commandments” taunting “Where’s your God now, Moses?”

This was actually the beginning of a smile for the camera – not a smirk!

The more disconcerting thing about this photo, though is the knee. This is roughly an hour after the fall, and it was still bleeding fresh blood. Not good.

Not good

On the moraine on the last hill before Twin Lakes I caught up with Alex, who had started in the corral in front of mine. You pass and get passed by a lot of riders in this race, so it was almost startling to look over and see my friend.  “Alex! How you doing?” I got a blank stare and a shake of his head. Uh-oh. Not good. He said he didn’t know what was wrong – he just never had it right from the start today. He looked terribly discouraged. It sucks to put in nine months of training and have nothing in the tank. I tried to pep him up with the usual bromides, but ended up pulling away and going on my own.

As I flew down the hill and across Highway 82, I thought of that day about ten years before when Lois and I were stopped in our van right there on that highway, backed up in traffic, wondering what the heck was going on with all these guys riding across the highway on their bikes. That was my first twinge of curiosity about the Leadville 100. Now here I was, zooming across Highway 82.

Across the road and down the little drop onto the gravel. There was the First Descents aid stop, and a bunch of people cheering for every FD rider coming through. I had decided not to make this my stop since it was before the chip mat and I thought I might need every minute to beat the 4-hour cut-off.  I was wrong today, but you never know. So I waved, gave a shout, and kept going across the dam.

Flying past the First Descents tent at Mile 39

3 hours, 28 minutes into Twin Lakes! Better than 2011! Seventeen minutes ahead of split time!! Alyce and Matthew were there, determined to hold me to my goal of 2-minute stops. They came close, but in the haste of the stop I made a critical error that would haunt me later, and just might have led to my day ending early. More on that later.

I’ll mention here that perhaps another mistake in retrospect was switching out the camelbaks. My big one is 70 ounces. The one I took up Columbine was 50 ounces. In training I had never come close to using a whole 70 ounces, so I figured why carry the extra weight. I did have an extra bottle of water/NUNN mix (no HEED left), just in case. But it was a deceptively hot day: air temp felt fine, even cool, but ground temp was another thing, and it was sapping riders more than they (or I) realized. Lots of racers were still wearing arm and leg warmers, or vests. Many of us paid consequences for not hydrating enough.

Before leaving I mentioned to Alyce that “something was wrong from the elbow on down, but as long as I can grip I’m alright”. This was the left hand I’d landed on at Mile 20 on Powerline. By now I was also paying attention to my knee, which was still running blood. I’ve fallen before and these kinds of things usually dry up within 10-15 minutes. Not today. But it felt okay, and that’s all that mattered to me.

Miles 40-50. I pulled away from Twin Lakes and I think this is where I began to feel different. Hard to exactly put my finger on it, but even though I had no trouble pulling over the Four Stooges (the first set of small hills before the real Columbine climb begins), I know I wasn’t feeling the same “joy” I was feeling earlier. The ascent of lower Columbine felt interminably slow. I was remembering the relative “speed” of 4-5 mph I was hitting in training, compared to what seemed to be about 3 mph today. I could turn the pedals fine; it just didn’t seem like I had the same oomph. Lower Columbine seemed a long, hard slog.

I hit the A-Frame (Mile 48), which is where you begin to move above treeline and the trail steepens sharply, and decided to ride as much of the first steep ascent as I could. In training, I ride this section all the way to the Goat Trail chip mat (Mile 49). But per Art’s advice, on race day I usually don’t in order to conserve energy. So I decided to split the difference: I’d ride as much as I could before being forced off.  There’s a place where you have to go to the left side of the road in order to avoid a rockpile that will otherwise force you (okay, maybe not you, but I’m not a great technical rider) off your bike. On race day, there are riders descending at high speed; you don’t want to go left, so I figured that would be my hike-a-bike start. And it was. I hiked to the top of the first hill, then got back on to ride, when…

…both my hamstrings and my left Sartorius seized. It was instant. Almost no time to even jump off the bike. But I did, thinking to myself, “Ok, that’s it. Race over.” With more than a mile of hike-a-bike and riding ahead before turning around at Mile 50, all above 11,500, this seemed a certainty. You simply don’t get your legs back if you have more climbing.  But I did the only thing I could do at that moment: got off the trail, stood in a position where I didn’t cramp up any further, and began sucking long draughts from the camelbak. I looked for those magic “no-cramp” pills (SportLegs) I carried with me ever since they worked so instantly in May in Illinois. And realized with a jolt they were in the top pocket of my blue Gore vest… which I had left with Alyce and Matthew at Twin Lakes. Possibly a race-ending mistake; the kind you never make twice.

Not sure how long I waited – maybe 2 minutes, maybe 3?? – but I got back on the bike, and miracle of miracles, I was able to find a seat position that worked. Hallelujah! How long would it work? Who knew? I just knew I was so grateful for whatever it was going to give me.

Upper Columbine was simply crazy, a repeat of St. Kevins. Pieces I could ride in training required walking today simply because the line of walking riders would allow nothing else. And as I said before, you couldn’t pass on the left because of descending riders. And so I walked. And walked. And walked. It got old.

But I finally reached that point about a half-mile from the 50-mile turn-around where you can get on the bike again. Many were still walking. Not me. My feet hurt; I was ready to ride.

Approaching the Columbine summit at 12,500 ft

The knee though, while not causing any issues, wasn’t drying up.

Not good

But the cramps held off and I was able to make the 50-mile turn-around. For the first time in my three races, I stopped at the Columbine Aid Station to ask if anybody had any of the leg cramp pills. Nope.

Miles 50-60. I got back on the bike, made the U-turn for “home” and the little discouraging climb back to the summit, legs still holding, and then the long descent back to Twin Lakes. My legs would now get a 30-minute reprieve from serious work, with maybe a chance to regroup and finish the race. But that reprieve has another side: it’s a 10-mile drop in which you’re on your brakes constantly for 30 minutes until you reach the valley. By the time I reached the bottom I was having real trouble with my left hand. In addition, I had sucked the 50-oz. camelbak dry by the time I reached the Stooges, those four “little” stubborn hills coming out of the hot valley, my least favorite part of the course, the part that never gets mentioned by anyone. It takes just a few minutes to get over them, but for some reason, probably because you haven’t really used your legs for 40 minutes, they just seem to suck all life from your legs. When you get over the Stooges, you’re within minutes of Twin Lakes again. But as I said, my camelbak was drained, and now my oxygen-deprived brain arrived at an oxygen-deprived decision. Here’s how it went: “My legs have cramped up, I’ll need them again real soon, I haven’t had a drink in a good ten minutes, Camelbak is empty, MUST hydrate, which means using my downtube bottle. Can’t grip bottle with left hand so must grab it with right hand.” So I proceed to grab bottle with right hand, while holding the handlebar over a bumpy/sandy 5% downslope… with a hand that can’t grip. Not good. Finish drinking, try to put bottle back into cage… and front wheel caught a rock, jerking the handlebar out of a weak left hand. The bike crumpled and I went down, hard, landing this time on my right thigh/hip and arm. You know something? When you’re twenty and you hit the ground, it may not even phase you. But when you’re in your sixties, it’s another thing. Took me a few minutes to unscramble both my brains and my handlebars, which got caught in my brake cable (the handlebars, not the brains). But got back on the bike again, pretty road-rashed up on my right side (forearm, upper thigh and buttock – shorts ripped in a couple of places). I rode the remaining minute to the Twin Lakes aid station and Alyce and Matthew, in a daze. This crash never had to happen – I never should have reached for that bottle. I was going to be at the aid station in less than one stinking minute. But lack of oxygen leads to bad decisions, a lesson I should know: you have to really focus on thinking clearly after 60 miles on the bike at altitude.

I pulled into Twin Lakes to the welcome sight of Alyce and Matthew. (Alyce was awesome. At both Twin Lakes stops I heard her voice calling, “Dad! Dad! Dad!” before I saw our tent.) Bryan was there filming at both Twin Lakes stops, so we have a record by which to compare. Doc Wenmark was there, encouraging, telling me I was way ahead of my times, (despite my sense of being extremely slow and losing time on Columbine, once again I was somehow ahead of my splits – in fact I had now gained time – a little more than 20 minutes ahead of my split now), that I was doing great, that I mustn’t quit. “No quit, no quit,” I said. But in fact, as I look back on it now, I was out of it. I don’t remember this conversation with Doc. I don’t remember much. I do remember at one point bending over, putting my hands on my knees for a minute, then knowing I had to sit down. I walked over to our tent, found a chair, and sat. And sat. My addled brain (math-challenged even without accidents and altitude) figured that since I was so far ahead of my split that I had time to sit and collect myself and still be on my splits. Right? I sat there for 17 minutes! before I collected myself enough to get back on the bike. This was now the first time I got to take a good look at my knee – still oozing fresh blood – not a good sign. There was a solid caked stream of blood down my leg and into my sock. My left wrist was goofy – not really painful, but something was definitely wrong in there. Trouble making a fist. The fall minutes before left me with stinging road rash on my right thigh, hip and forearm, also oozing.

Miles 60-75. When I finally climbed back on the bike and plodded over the dam and onward, leaving the comfort of family, friends, and humanity for the solitude of my own mind games, I was still either on or only slightly behind my originally-planned split times. The third buckle was still within reach.

I climbed the first hill after the dam, feeling pretty good. But by the time I got to the singletrack climb (Mile 65), I was feeling the legs empty out. Not only that, but my grip issues were now more serious: I couldn’t shift the front derailleur with my thumb, but had to take my hand off the grip and shove the palm against the shifter. (Pulling back the other way wasn’t an issue.) I made it to the top of the singletrack, but began to now think in sinking realities. I know what it takes to get up Powerline (the next major climb at Mile 80) and the blacktop climb behind Turquoise Lake (Mile 87) and the smaller climbs after Carter Summit (Miles 91-93, and the Boulevard back into town (Mile 100). And I knew that if I didn’t get my legs back, I couldn’t do it. At the same time, I knew that in every race you reach a point where the legs just aren’t there, but you just have to keep going until they come back. I made a decision that I’d give my legs the next ten miles to the Pipeline Aid Station at Mile 75. If they didn’t come back, I wouldn’t have what it takes to do the last 25 miles of the race.

Add to that a non-functioning wrist: how would the remaining descents be? Would I be able to grip enough? Shift? Brake? Would I be a threat to myself and the safety of other riders?

I continued along the Pipeline, but I was fading – an 1 hour, 20 minutes from Twin Lakes to Pipeline, fifteen minutes off my split – only the first time all day I was behind my split: between my long stop at Twin Lakes and my slowing, slowing time from Twin Lakes to Pipeline, I was now 20 minutes behind my overall split as I approached Pipeline (Mile 75). If there was any good news, it was the fact that I was still 50 minutes ahead of the Pipeline cut-off time, meaning I could still get a buckle.  But I was done and I knew it. This wasn’t a matter of “digging deep”. I was already at the bottom of the well. I was, however, determined to ride across the Pipeline chip mat to get my time recorded. A seventy-five mile day; 55 of it pretty busted up.

As I rode into the Pipeline feed zone I saw Frank’s girlfriend Anne Nevitt sitting under her little canopy on the right. I stopped and told her I was done – that I was going to ride ahead and go across the chip mat, but I’d be back to borrow her phone. It felt surreal. I got back on the bike and rode the hundred yards and crossed the chip mat, then turned back. I was immediately approached by race officials who asked me if I was done. “Yes.” They took my number plate and pulled the timing strips off. Now I was officially done. This was a new Leadville experience for me.

Out of nowhere, Mark Ackerman came up. He had DNF’d at Twin Lakes and had come with his friend Paul to the Pipeline to watch everyone come through. Mark took a look at me and told me I needed to go to the medical tent. I think it was the look on my face more than anything. He called Lois in order to get Alyce’s number. (Another case of oxygen-deprived thinking: Alyce had MY phone – I never even needed Alyce’s number.) I told him not to tell Lois I fell. Lois asked him if I was okay. He lied, and Lois knew it because she knew I wouldn’t be quitting the race unless I had to.  Mark called Alyce and Matthew, who were on their way to see cheer me on at Carter Summit (Mile 90). They turned back and came to the Pipeline aid station.

After sitting down on the med tent cot for about two seconds I felt my whole body drain of energy and I knew I had made the right call. No regrets. I didn’t know it until that moment, but I had nothing left in the tank.

The med folks wanted to clean the road rash in the med tent, but I had had such a bad experience with that in 2011 at the end of that race that I said no (emphatically). They looked at the knee. I now looked at the knee seriously for really the first time. It was a pretty deep cut; they said at least a couple of stitches. There was still a lot of fresh blood.  They wrapped up the knee and said I should go to the hospital to get the hand x-rayed. They were worried about the bruising on the inside of the wrist and the loss of function.

Alyce and Matthew arrived and we loaded the bike and headed for St. Vincent Hospital, just blocks from the finish line. And thus begins Part Two of this story.

Part II – The Hospital

I checked in and got a bed where a doctor looked me over and arranged for an xray. In the bed next to me was a woman who was in the top 15 when she went down on lower Columbine descent. She ripped a whole flap of her upper arm open to the tune of 25 stitches. She was hurting.

And so it went. As the minutes went by, more and more riders checked in. The hospital became more a triage or M.A.S.H. unit than a hospital. Doctors, nurses, interns would check in on me, apologize for the delay, then bolt from the room. They told us there had been six airlifts off the course – three to St. Vincent, three to Denver. At least two cardiac arrests. I had to go to the bathroom just down the hall, and looked into a room where they were doing the cardiac paddles on a rider. I told Alyce, “it’s got to be at least an hour since they brought him off the mountain; if they’re still doing paddles, that’s not good.” This patient turned out to be Scott Ellis, 55-year-old 18-time LT100 veteran, and he would be the race’s first casualty in 22 years. He had gone down just after summiting Powerline; just got off his bike and sat down. People asked if he was okay. He said he was, then fell over and stopped breathing. People stopped and began doing chest compressions, taking turns. Other riders rode both up and downhill to get help or to try to get into cell. This took precious time. Eventually they airlifted Scott off the hill and got him to town. I don’t think they ever got him back. Here’s the “Men’s Journal” article. And here’s a picture of Scott taken at the 75-mile mark, coming through the Pipeline Aid Station. Less than ten miles later he was dead.

Scott Ellis at Mile 75

As the day turned into evening, more hospital personnel kept ducking into my room and apologizing. One doctor told us they had never seen a race day like it: almost double their usual patients. Matthew went over to High Mountain Pie and got us a large pepperoni and black olive pizza. Bless his soul. I had two pieces. It was enough. Delicious. Matthew and Alyce polished off the rest.

Food!!

More and more riders were coming in. The waiting room ran out of chairs. They were sitting on the floor. The arm woman next to me was checked out and replaced with an early-20s guy with no body fat who finished the race under 9 hours, went home… and began throwing up. Serious dehydration. And so it continued for hours: cuts, scrapes, stitches,  xrays, but mostly dehydration. I waited to be cleaned up and xrayed.

At the hospital

Four hours later I got my xrays. The doctor came in with them and said it looked like I had a buckle fracture of the distal radius. “A WHAT??” That’s right – a buckle fracture. We all laughed: I got my buckle after all!

Another doctor came in to do the stitches. First stitches of my life. She stuck the knee with a hypodermic no less than 20 times (okay, maybe four) and it numbed up almost immediately. Then she used a suction cup thing to pull any gravel out of the deepest part of the cut (which went to the bone). Then the stitching began. There was no pain for any of this after the needle. She did a great job. Turns out she was the doctor who had put Doc Wenmark’s shoulder back together two weeks before. Then they tackled the road rash, which was my least-favorite part of the whole thing. I frankly don’t remember any of it.

Alyce and Matthew react to the situation (while having pizza)

I was stitched and wrapped. My wrist was held in place with a Velcro splint. My right thigh, hip and forearm were wrapped in gauze. I looked something like The Mummy. We checked out of the hospital around 9:30 and were home by 10:00. I didn’t shower that night or the next (I did washcloth sponge baths – very unsatisfactory). I didn’t shower until my motel in Kearney, Nebraska on the way back to Chicago. That was Tuesday morning.

Debrief: Looking back, I think a combination of things led to this being a bad day not only for me but for many riders. Frank Gepfrich dnf’ed at Mile 85. Mark Ackerman didn’t make the Twin Lakes cut-off. Alex Derderian pulled himself out of the race at Twin Lakes outbound (Mile 40) after trying to go on, but turning back. Jeff Bolis cramped up on Columbine and dnf’ed at Twin Lakes inbound. Carlos Sintes finished the race, but didn’t buckle. Many friends who buckled, had times an hour slower than normal. There were bloody knees and arms all over the course, according to many spectators. And of course, the hospital. And… Scott Ellis.

The 48 degree start temp should have been a warning sign for all of us. The air temp was good all day, but it was the ground temp that snuck up on you and, imo, made all the difference. We all needed to hydrate much more than we did. Of course, if you’re only planning on a normal “day at the races” with a 70-oz. camelback, then what do you do?

The second factor was the dry condition of the course. That decomposed Rocky Mountain granite is best when it’s a little tacky/wet, and dangerously fast and loose when it’s dry. And it was very dry. (But note: it was very dry in 2011 and again in 2013.)

So the first factor led to dehydration and cramping issues; the second led to crashes. I believe neither of my crashes was due to inexperience or reckless riding. What I’ll never know is whether my legs going out was due to dehydration or to a 65-year-old man crashing hard twice, and maybe even to a loss of blood (altho I don’t want to overdramatize that). I tend to believe it was more the crashes that did me in over the long run, not dehydration.

Other factors. Was I in shape for this race? Oh yes. I was concerned about the ten days in Europe in June. Non-factor, as it turned out. I was a little worried in July when I just didn’t seem to have the strength, but about ten days before the race I went to another level, and I was having a good race – no- a great race… until the second crash. That one really scrambled my brains.

One caveat to that. Is it possible that I didn’t do enough long training rides? After arriving in Leadville, I seldom put two pieces of the course together. I think my longest Leadville training ride was 60 miles. Maybe I needed a couple between 70-80?? Perhaps more importantly, I think I had only one century ride in Illinois (that day with Carlos and the gang) and the 95-mile day in Kearney. Could that be a reason why my legs gave out after 60 miles?? As Art has always said, Leadville is as much about the distance as it is about the climbing and the altitude.

Another caveat. Did I commit the ultimate rookie sin of going out too fast. I thought I was feeling great… up until the Columbine ascent. Did my legs go because of the crashes, or were my record split times up to Mile 60 actually foolhardy and should have been warning signs to take my foot off the pedal just a bit? Or was it the crashes that did me in? Without the crashes, would I have “breezed” to the finish line in 11 hours?

Or… did the crashes save my life? Could it have been me with the heart attack on Powerline at Mile 83 instead of withdrawing from the race at Mile 75?

 

So… what now? This year’s race was sobering in a way I’ve never experienced. A cardiac death. Two crashes for me. Racers like Doc and the Ride to Recovery woman, both of whom crashed out of the race with serious injuries in the weeks prior to the race. I don’t want to sound macabre, but how long can I go on dodging bullets? Or death? I told Alyce that all the talk of Scott Ellis would be of how he went out doing something he loved, that he couldn’t have chosen a better way to die, etc. etc. etc. Alyce’s response: What about the 30 quality years he would have had with his wife and children and grandchildren? Wouldn’t he have rather had those years than to die on a mountain in a silly bicycle race? And wouldn’t his wife, children and grandchildren rather had him around for the next 30 years? Doc said he died “living large”. Apparently his wife said all the “right things” at the funeral. Yeah, ok.

Me? I have to think about this. I seem to have a race day crash syndrome. I crashed in the 2011 LT100. Came out with knee, hip and arm road rash. Lucky. No broken hip. I crashed in the 2014 Iceman. Went over the handlebars and face first into mud. Lucky. No broken collarbone or neck injury. I crashed in this year’s LT100. Twice. Once over the handlebars with 4 stitches in the left knee. Came out with some kind of left hand injury, either a bone bruise or possible fracture. Lucky. No broken collarbone or neck, head or spinal injury. And then crashing again, this time down hard on the right hip and forearm. Came out with road rash on the leg and arm, and a good-size hematoma on the hip. Lucky. No broken hip or other bones. (It’s all that chocolate milk.) Add these to a number of smaller, less-serious dings and scrapes in training, as well as two collisions with automobiles (lucky both times – no significant injuries at all!), and the question seems legit: how long does one’s luck hold out?

I feel death all around me this year. Our friend Brett Foster is dying of cancer as I write. He’s in his early 40s. Carol Welch is dying of cancer as I write. She’s 70. (Update Dec. 29 – both died in November) A former student, Ben Silver, committed suicide this summer. Another, Andrew Zajac, died in the Washington State wildfire that took the lives of four firefighters. Our neighbor of 20 years, Pat Smith, who contributed each year to my fundraising, died suddenly in November. Heck, our parakeet died in November! Death is closing in.

And yet, the race is so compelling. I’ve made a lot of really nice friends in my years there, and more all the time. I simply love riding my bicycle. I love being in shape – not just kind of in shape, but in race day shape.

I stepped on the scale the morning after the race: I reached my race day goal of 160 pounds. Okay, it was a day late. I raced at 165 pounds. But I haven’t been 160 in more than twenty years. That feels good.

Garmin Statistics: First – Hooray! I actually remembered to turn it on crossing the start line and turn it off at the end. Second – Boo!!! My Garmin calculates distance incorrectly. I know I rode 75 miles, but it says… 71.82 TOTAL MILES,  7 hours, 9 minutes on the bike, 10 mph av. speed, 42.9 mph max speed (that lovely Carter Summit descent), 147 bpm av. HR, 171 bpm max HR, 3518 calories burned (this seems significantly low), 7890 ft. of climbing.

Addendum

As I write this on January 31, 2018, two and a half years after this race, I have something more than just the memories of it with me all the time. I’m not sure if it qualifies as “badge of honor”, but every time I see it I’m reminded of this great adventure of my life – the Leadville 100.

The knee

P.S. It works fine.

 

 

 

 

Entertaining Assassins

Hebrews 13:2 – “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”

Serbian Sniper

It was October, 1993 or ’94. I was teaching in my 3rd floor social studies classroom at Downers Grove North High School (Downers Grove). It was the middle of the period when a tall young man with a blonde crew cut stuck his head in the door of my classroom and asked in an eastern European accent, “Are you Mr. Graham?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“Can I see you for a few minutes?”
He stepped into my classroom. I had never seen this person before, and thought it might be obvious to him that I was in the middle of a class, but apparently it wasn’t.
There was an urgency. He said, “Piotr Brodowski said I might be able to find you here.”
Piotr had been an exchange student from Poland both Lois and I had taught the year before. He had become a friend.
I asked him to wait for me in the social studies office – that I would be able to speak with him in about twenty minutes – and continued teaching.
At the end of the period, with other things on my mind and much to do on my free period, I stopped in quickly to find out what this guy wanted… and didn’t leave his side for the next fifty minutes. Twenty years later I can’t remember his name, but I’ll never forget his story. Here it is.

He had met Piotr at a party in Chicago a few days before. Piotr suggested he find me. I’m still not sure why. He told me he and his friend had recently gone AWOL from the Serbian army. They could no longer do what they were being asked to do.
He was at least 6’5” tall, chiseled features, in his mid-20s. It was his eyes I remember best. They were pale blue, and empty.
When he had joined the army the year before he had scored very high in marksmanship, and was put into training as a sniper. After his training was completed, he was told by his superior officer to get himself across the border to a little village in Bosnia and to find a certain man. That man was in charge of what essentially was a defacto Serbian army unit in Bosnia. (The Serbian army, of course, wasn’t in Bosnia, as Slobodan Milosovic repeatedly told the world.)
And here’s what they did. A village of Muslims would be targeted. One day the village would be flooded with handbills informing the people that they have one week to leave their village or they will all be killed. After a couple of days, this young man was sent into the hills around the village. He was on his own, with his tent, provisions, and rifle with night-vision telescopic lens. His job was to begin to encourage villagers to leave. He did this by waiting until dark, then singling out individuals on the streets of the village… and killing them.
He would shoot one each night, then move quickly to another hiding place where the next night he would shoot one more. The idea was that by the time the week was up, the population would need no more “convincing” and would evacuate the village. Those who didn’t were killed (justifiably, right?) when the rest of the Serbian unit would enter the town.
This was what the world eventually came to know of as ethnic cleansing.
His friend was in the unit that entered the town to “clean up”.
I tried to wrap my head around what he was telling me. Here was an 18-year-old young man whose life and soul were used in a horrible way. A few months (weeks?) before we sat talking, he was lying on the ground, scanning through a night-vision scope, choosing a victim, and pulling the trigger.
I invited him and his friend to come and talk to my classes. They sat in the front of the room, telling their stories. He described in clinical terms what it was like to target a human being through the telescopic lens. He said he couldn’t really make out individual facial characteristics; just the frame of body and head. I wonder.
I was so intrigued by the story of this young sniper that I didn’t ask many questions of his friend who did the follow-up work. For one thing, he was not nearly as striking physically, and was quieter (less ready to talk?). But I’m thinking these years later that his stories might have been even more horrifying. I’m sorry I didn’t ask more of him.
The stories were so far beyond the comprehension of the 16-year-olds from suburban Downers Grove that I believe the horrifying nature of their stories simply couldn’t register in the brain or heart or soul of my students. They asked very few questions. It was clear, in the two or three classes these young men spoke to, that I was going to have to carry the questioning. I’m guessing that twenty-plus years later, none of them even remember these “guests” in their Social Studies class.
But I think about these two young men (now in their forties). We invited them for Thanksgiving dinner at our house later that week. They came, bearing a gift of vodka. They were genuinely nice boys. We tried to help them with their asylum problem with Lois’s brother Ken, who works for the U.S. Dept. of Immigration. They had paid a lawyer a lot of money (memory says at least $10,000) to help them. Ken said that money was probably wasted.
And then we never heard from them again.

“We are not angels. Nor are we the devils you have made us out to be.” – Slobodan Milosevic

The Way We Teach

(Written originally on Sept. 12, 2013 in response to a Michael J. Fox Facebook meme stating “If the child can’t learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn.”)

I disagree, Michael. Schools, at least public schools, were never designed to be private tutoring agencies. They were designed to be socializing agents, meaning the student was taught how to fit what society felt were the important things a person needed to know and also about being a member of that society. This was done using what was called a classical education…. which all began to change in the 1960s, as we abandoned the concept that there could be any absolute truths, and began to see the world as a mass of relativity. What has resulted is a world in which there are no truths any more, and that your truth is just as valid as my truth, even though yours (or mine) might be far, far away from anything remotely reasonable, let alone the Truth.*
Relativity has impacted the educational community by evolving to the conclusion that there can be no set standards by which to measure a child since each child is measurable only to him/herself, and thus must be taught individually. As a career teacher, now retired, I found myself asking the question, how can I possibly write 30 individual lesson plans for every student in my class (times 5 classes)? Nor is it possible for school districts to hire one-on-one teachers for every student (although by being forced to try, the Special Education budgets in many districts are sinking them, and the regular ed students are on the receiving end of the cuts). It would all be nice in theory, yes, but it’s not only physically impossible, it’s fundamentally a bad idea because it destroys the very essence of public education. Bottom line, we have devolved to a point where the school must fit the child, and abandoned the much-healthier concept of the child fitting the school (and therefore their society).

February, 2015 addendum
*Thus, Wisconsin Governor (and presidential candidate) Scott Walker’s recent attempt to strike “search for Truth” from the Wisconsin state universities’ mission statement of 19th century origin makes a certain amount of sense. It also exposes the schizophrenic nature of today’s Republican party philosophy, which constantly spouts Christianity, but when it comes down to it seems to want to deny the possibility of finding any Truth.

Who Really Benefits?

I came up with this question while teaching Sociology a number of years back, and I think it’s a good one. It was an evolutionary process; I had for years been trying to get at the essence of what was wrong with what I saw as predatory capitalism. One day it hit me: Who Really Benefits?
Who really benefits from marketing to children? Who really benefits from casino gambling? Who really benefits from liquor sales? Who really benefits from televangelism? Who really benefits from the sale of violent video games? And on and on.
I challenged my students to ask this question prior to every purchase, or even every decision. But in order to ask the question, they had to understand who all the players in the game were: Who were the beneficiaries involved in every purchase they made? You’re buying a house? The bank is a beneficiary, the real estate agent is a beneficiary, the builder perhaps, the home inspector, the closing lawyers, and on and on. But hopefully, so are you, and so you purchase the house because you’re buying a home. You really benefit. The trade-off is worth it (unless you buy a money pit). You could say the same about the purchase of a car and many of other things.
But who really benefits from the increase in the sale of vices, like gambling? Who really benefits from the 50% sales at the discount malls? Who really benefits from an overflowing plate and unlimited refills for just a dollar more? Who really benefits from convincing people that the outdoors is a bad place to get fit for free?
It’s a good question to ask in our personal lives as well. Who really benefits from our having sex together at age 15? Who really benefits if I take this first marijuana hit? Who really benefits when I get drunk on Friday night?

This could probably go other places, but I’ll just throw it out there for starters.

Report from Leadville 2013

Here’s my race report from the 2013 race, written in the days shortly after the race in August. My two Leadville experiences are a “tale of two cities”. My first LT100 was a dream day. My second one was much less so. I have two buckles. I earned them both, but boy, that second one wasn’t pretty.
At the end of this post is a list of post-race reflections on why the 2013 race was so much more difficult. Not on that list: every day is a different day – sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you.

August 10, 2013 – Race Day 

I woke up before the alarm clock (set for 3:30), after a fitful four hours of “sleep”. I laid in bed for the ten or fifteen minutes until the alarm went off, then up to make the “traditional” double oatmeal with raisins breakfast – this after the daily glass of chocolate milk. Then suit up and run down the checklist. My son-in-law and daughter, Mike and Ruth, bless their hearts, were up by 4:00, and we all headed down the hill to pick up Alex in Twin Lakes at 5:00 and head for Leadville.
It looked like it was going to be a beautiful day – deep purple sky giving way to lighter shades as we drove in. NO CLOUDS!!
We got to town about 5:40, finding a parking place on Harrison less than a block from 6th. The bank time/temp read 39 degrees. I jumped on the bike and rode up the street back to where we had seen a Leadville cop had pulled over an SUV right at the curve coming into town? Really? Is that the way you want your race day to start? I thought I’d offer a word of encouragement. Got there and it was a non-racer pulled over, so I left it alone.
Back to the car, where we got shoes, gloves, etc. on and got our bikes over to our corral. Alex and I got a pretty good spot toward the front of what was going to be the single largest corral of riders. They really seemed serious about somebody being with the bikes at all times, so we took turns, one of us staying with the bikes, the other using the porta-potty. I was able to say my goodbyes to Ruth and Mike and then lost sight of them as they moved on down the street for a better view of the start.
I don’t remember much of the last few minutes before the gun went off. For some reason, the scene seemed surreal, and I had a feeling at one point like that dream we all have of being on stage at a packed Carnegie Hall, just sitting down at the Steinway in our tails, and realizing we have no idea how to play the piano. What was I doing here?
In fact, I didn’t feel sharp, in focus, and that feeling would be with me all day. Slightly fuzzy. The 2011 race day lives in much more vivid memory for me today than this race of just a few weeks ago.
After the national anthem, which was actually sung acapella, beautifully and non-country-musically, by a female soloist, the final countdown was inaudible to those of us in the cheap seats. As two years ago, I never heard the shotgun, just a distant shout that informed us the race had started, and then the now-customary wait to be able to move. Unlike two years ago, this year there was no joking around about this waiting to move, and this was my first inkling that the back corral contained more seasoned riders than 2011. Just a lot of serious faces, focused ahead of them on their start, very little group feeling. Okay then.
And then, off we went, creeping along for a block or so before the start line, having at one point to put feet on the ground, but finally able to get a little movement and sweep across the start and begin my chip time. I had the presence of mind this year to start my Garmin at the start line so I’d get accurate stats.
I remember at some point as we swept down 6th Avenue toward the first little hill thinking, “this just doesn’t feel the same as 2011”. My, how true that would prove to be.
The three miles down the hill toward the Arkansas were uneventful. I was better-equipped this year. I was wearing good fleece gloves over my fingerless gloves and my hands felt much warmer, even though the temp was colder. And of course, this year I was wearing my yellow rain jacket, zipped and velcroed to the max, as opposed to the “unique” green poncho of 2011. In addition, Alex had lent me a set of arm and leg warmers. I had never used these before and they would prove to be very valuable assets as the day wore on.
As we crossed the river and made the turn to go over the tracks, there was the customary logjam as not only is there a 90 degree turn onto the dirt, but the dirt road is significantly narrower than the blacktop. It was another point where I had to unclip and put my feet on the ground for a few seconds before traffic began moving again. I expected this, and more to come on the flats leading toward the St. Kevin’s climb (and let’s make sure we’re pronouncing this right – it’s Keevin’s- and no, I have no idea why).
But for whatever reason, there was nowhere near the tight traffic this year as 2011 on this 3-mile dirt road, and I was able to move at whatever speed I wanted. This may have led to my first feeling of the day that I was slower than the others in my corral. I felt like I was pushing to keep up, and I don’t like that feeling. And it’s not like I was racing their race; I was pushing to maintain the speed that I knew I had to maintain in order to make my cut-off to Carter Summit. This was not a good sign. In 2011 I had felt like I was master of my domain, riding better than most, or at least WITH, most others in my corral, helping out, advising a lot of newbie riders (even though I was a newbie myself, I had spent a month prior to the race training on the course, so I knew it well). Today, I felt like a stranger in a strange land, riding with a lot of people who were flat out faster and more fit than me. The month off in June began to weigh on my mind.
As I rode along, however, I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the moment. I remember the moment the sun broke over the Mosquitos to our right and began flooding the valley. It brightened the color of the hundreds of jerseys and jackets in the long line of riders ahead of me, and brought a cheer to the day. And then it got better. Ahead of us I could see the most beautiful bank of mist laying across the valley, reaching its fingers across the road where it met the trees. I’ll never forget cresting one hill and seeing the unbroken line of jerseys, hundreds and hundreds of them, moving for a mile ahead of me into that mist through which the sun was now shining. A lifetime moment… which was unfortunately the highlight of the day.
At the turn to begin the St. Kevin’s climb, where I often stop to pee, I had no need to do so, and so began the slog up the hill that just keeps getting steeper and steeper. And now the traffic increased exponentially, just like on any highway at rush hour when you begin to climb even the slightest hill. I believe I was forced off the bike two separate times because I just couldn’t make it through the riders ahead of me. In both cases I was able to remount after just a few steps and keep going. Unlike two years ago, I suffered on St. Kevin’s, but never dismounted of my own volition, largely because my pride wouldn’t allow it, not because I didn’t want to.
Again, I realized that this wasn’t 2011. By the time I reached the hairpin, that short but amazingly-long 15 minutes later of grades up to 21%, my heart rate was in the 170s, a problem that would stay with me for the next 50 miles. Unlike 2011, traffic thinned out after the hairpin and I was able to ride my race all the way to Carter Summit. And again, unlike 2011, it was a much more difficult piece of the race. Those little climbs after the hairpin just weren’t fun this year.
I got to Carter Summit in 1 hour, 5 minutes. I’m pleased with anything under 1:10, but again, somehow it just seemed to be so much harder than 2011 and not nearly as fun. And I just didn’t feel “in” it. Why?
From Carter Summit it’s that wonderful 3-mile sprint downhill on the pavement behind Turquoise Lake. As in 2011 I achieved my fastest time of the day here: 41 mph in the full racer crouch most of the way. Unlike two years ago, I left my jacket on because it was still chilly with a bite to it. Down, down, down and then the grind two miles uphill to the Hagerman Pass Rd. and another two miles of light climb on the newly-graded, almost-pavement-like Hagerman road. No washboard! Good going up at 10 mph, but it would be even better news for the return at twice that speed.
I forced myself to pee at the turn onto the Sugarloaf climb, even though I didn’t really feel like I had to. This in itself was a bit alarming, as not peeing usually means improper hydration. But what’s this??? My urine was burning as it passed from my body. This is a heck of a time to be passing a gallstone. It was really painful. No time to worry about it – it would be what it would be. Although I had felt like I had been hydrating regularly, I began to wonder. (In hindsight of a month later, I’m thinking that my hydration was insufficient in the weeks before the race, not necessarily on race day itself. More on this later.)

Near Sugarloaf summit, Mile 15 – (note photo-bomb guy taking leak in background)

And there it was again. I should have been cruising up the Hagerman road at 10-12 mph. Instead I was struggling at 8-9. The Sugarloaf climb, which I usually look forward to, was less enjoyable, and more of a struggle than any time in the past, including the 3 or 4 times I had done it in the previous three weeks. I was just expending too much energy, and my heart rate in the 160s on a relatively minor climb was proving it in numbers.

And I was still cold. The jacket stayed on.
And now… the Powerline. It was a highlight of the day. Unlike 2011, I was never obstructed from going as fast as I felt I could, and hopefully I didn’t hold anyone up. I knew by the top of Sugarloaf that this day was going to be a struggle, and that one advantage I had over a lot of racers around me was knowledge of the course. I also knew that I had descended Powerline without dismounting (somehow) three weeks before in what Art Fleming described as the worst condition he had ever seen it in his 10-plus years here. So I knew I was going to have to get my buckle on descending, contrary to what all the experts say.
So I let it fly on Powerline. No, not in Alban Lakata/Todd Wells fashion, but I’m guessing as fast as anybody in my age group, maybe faster. For whatever the reason, I’m a good descender, and feel confident in letting my bike take the lead. I just stay back as far as I can on the saddle and let ‘er buck. I had no incidents of any kind, not even a little “scare”, on the Powerline descent this year, and I felt very, very good at the bottom of the run, all fifteen thrilling minutes of it.
Powerline is very difficult to describe to anyone who hasn’t ridden a mountain bike. And the YouTube helmet cams just don’t do it justice. There are certainly more technically-challenging descents in the mountain biking world, but there is something about the raw physicality of the Leadville Powerline that I think makes it unique. The wheel-eating ruts that run vertically along with you can be as much as two feet deep. One momentary lapse of concentration and your day is over. The bowling ball-sized rockpiles you have to navigate through at speed also present the challenge of knowing that one wrong decision two seconds ago will result in you going over the handlebars. Now put rockpile and ruts together. Now multiply that by a good five or six places like it. Think you can let up near the bottom? It’s like those Colorado highway signs on I-70 for truckers: “Don’t relax! Six more miles of danger!” The wrong move near the bottom on the 90 degree turn while you’re navigating down an 18% grade along a foot-wide strip of loose Rocky Mountain composite granite with a gully on your right and a 50-foot hillside on your left… well, you get the idea. And finally, you have to maintain an intense level of concentration for the entire descent. This is not like going down some 50-foot drop at your local singletrack park. This is a solid fifteen minutes of brow-furrowing, laser-stare, no-blink concentration. One micro-second lapse equals the end of your day. With 1500 racers, there are some who do end their day here. If you’re reading this and aren’t a rider, you’re thinking it’s crazy, but it’s not. It’s doable, but it’s not for the faint of heart. You have to look forward to it. If you’re afraid of it, it’s either going to eat you alive or you’re going to creep along at a rate so slow as to infuriate the hundred riders behind you.
At the bottom of Powerline, you head across the new “ABC” bridge (built by Art, and two other guys starting with a ‘B’ and a ‘C’) across the creek (the bridge is now widened to at least two feet – it’s like an interstate for cryin’ out loud), and then you climb up onto the pavement and head over to the fish hatchery and on toward the Pipeline.
For the record, I maintained my concentration this year and did NOT fall off my bike ten feet after crossing the bridge.
After rounding the curve on 300 by the fish hatchery, I caught up with a pace line that was frankly moving too fast for me. Looking back, it was probably a mistake. There was almost no wind, and I would have been smarter to go it on my own. But the common wisdom is that you “must find or create a pace line between the fish hatchery and the Pipeline.” And so I did.
The good news is that we averaged 23-25 mph for the approximately five mile distance. But by the time we broke off onto the dirt doubletrack that leads over to the Pipeline, I was pretty gassed. And I never took the lead once! Again, my heart rate was soaring – in the low 160s!! This is CRAZY high! Should be 130s, maybe low 140s at tops. What was going on? My legs were hurting too much, but more to the point I was feeling gassed. Just no “oomph”, no kick, no ability to take it up to the next notch. And I wasn’t to Mile 30 yet.
And now my mind began to enter the picture. I began doing what you never must do – I began looking ahead. “I’ve got 15 miles of the Pipeline, then the 10-mile Columbine climb, then I’m only at the half-way mark…”, and I began to settle to the realization that it wasn’t going to be my day.
I crossed the Pipeline chip mat at 2 hours, 39 minutes, almost dead on my interval of 2:40. But I was in trouble and I knew it. The rest of the Pipeline to Twin Lakes was a struggle. It’s pretty flat (as flat as it gets anyway – in fact, there are six climbs that the Sunday bike rider might well be walking), and then there’s a 2-mile steady ascent on good gravel over the moraine just before descending into Twin Lakes. Again, no ability to kick it up to the next level. Just plodding, plodding. Hurting.
Add to this, at some point on the Pipeline my left hamstring began acting up. The back story is that I had been struggling with this hamstring for months. It never got bad; just “there”. But now, here I was at Mile 35 and it’s starting to twinge. But wait, now my quads were beginning to ball up! What??? The only time that EVER happened to me was last year in the Iceman, at Mile 25 of 30 after I was just pushing so hard and was so unfit, that it felt like two tennis balls that were at some point going to force me off the bike and onto the ground. Fortunately, that course leveled out and I was able to finish the race. But here I was at Mile 35 with Columbine, not to mention the Powerline ascent ahead, miles ahead. But WAIT! now my stomach was beginning to feel queasy!!! This could NOT be good! Too many miles ahead of me. A bad stomach forces many, many riders to end their races (http://fuzzyblackdog.wordpress.com/). Between the ham, the quads and the stomach, I was really becoming even more convinced now that this was simply NOT my day today. I had NONE of these issues two years ago.

On the Pipeline outbound – Mile 35 or so

Hamstring, quads, stomach issues…

Even crossing the dam was a struggle. And what’s this!? The leaders, three of them, came tearing across the dam, nose to tail. There was such a long line of us heading outbound on the “good” packed-down gravel that they were just ripping toward us through the loose stuff on our left. It didn’t seem to be slowing them down. Holy crap! Two years ago I didn’t see the leaders until I was over the Stooges and on my way across the flats to Columbine (another 2 miles ahead). I was on my splits, so it was clear that these guys were on their way to a course record… but that was their world. I had a long way to go and I was hurting.
Again this year, thanks to Frank Gepfrich, (http://www.herbalife24basecamp.com/2012/08/herbalife24-frank-gepfrich-rider-spotlight/), the friend I made and trained with back in 2011, my crew was under the HerbaLife “umbrella”. I assumed the big black and green HerbaLife tent would be highly visible right near the dam; they’re a major sponsor, after all. But I had never seen the dam so chaotic and so crowded- a sea of tents and flags… and I simply couldn’t find HerbaLife. About halfway down the road there was a big ambulance blocking the entire road. I couldn’t see around it, but surely HerbaLife wasn’t THAT far from the dam – they’re a prime race sponsor! I must have missed it. I circled back toward the dam, somewhat frantic and frustrated, asking at the main LRS feeder tent, “Where’s HerbaLife, where’s HerbaLife????” Thank goodness someone understood me, and said they were way down on the right. I headed back down, but volunteers were blocking the right side of the ambulance, and the left side was being kept open for outbound leaders. As I approached it looked like I was going to have to actually stop for this traffic issue. It’s an indicator of my increasingly frustrating state of mind that this was bothering me as much as it did – that I was already beginning to realize that every second might count.
Just as I approached the ambulance, it began moving, then stopped abruptly. The guy in front of me actually hit the rear bumper and came off his bike. But I saw an opening to the left; the volunteer waved me through and I tore around the ambulance and quickly saw the HerbaLife tent on the right. (I later discovered that that ambulance was there for a spectator who had had a seizure. By coincidence, she was the girlfriend of one of my Chicago friends, Carlos Sintes, who I had trained with back in the spring. She ended up okay, but it finished Carlos’ race. Even though he eventually went on, he lost 45 minutes and didn’t make the 9-hour cut at Pipeline.)
I pulled in, skidding to a halt and there were Ruth and Mike! And Roger and Sandy! And Frank’s friend, Dave, who I hadn’t seen since 2011. Can’t begin to explain how GOOD it is to see people you know at the aid stations. One of my goals was to make my aid stops much faster than 2011 by staying on my bike, not getting off and sitting down under the tent like I did before. And I really felt I was doing that. Bryan has this entire stop on video. Comparing this stop with the aid stop in 2011, there’s just a completely different feel. In 2011 I gushed about how much FUN this was – and I was bleeding in three places then!! This year I stated quite early in the stop that I was worried about my heart rate, that I was having problems with my legs, and there’s somewhat of a haunted, detached look on my face pretty much the whole time. I was panting; couldn’t catch my breath. I thought the stop was fast; in fact the video shows that I pulled away from Twin Lakes aid after – are you ready – 4 minutes, 26 seconds!!! Granted, the camelbak had to be adjusted a couple of times, and there was some fumbling about my rain jacket (Sandy was semi-insisting that I wouldn’t need it any more. I had to insist that I did – it was going to get cold on that mountain. I had only taken the jacket off about fifteen minutes earlier – at the base of the singletrack, I think – and I was still wearing the arm and leg warmers up). (I also got a bit upset at Sandy because she said I was behind my time of two years ago. I corrected her sharply; that in fact I was ahead of my time of two years ago. I was into Twin Lakes at 3 hours, 38 minutes, just a little ahead of where I was in 2011. But I think the real reason I was cross with Sandy is because I was just cross: I knew how much trouble I was in.)
And now…Columbine. I left the comfort of family and friends and headed up the hill toward the Stooges. Unlike 2011, I was able this year to climb right up and over them without a struggler in front of me forcing me off the bike. And then it was across the broad valley ranchlands to the base of the Columbine climb. I kept looking for Rebecca (Rusch), but never did see her. Saw what I thought was a woman pass by, but again, that was their world.
Passed through a mini-Twin Lakes dam scene where the road comes in from Granite. Amazing the number of tents now set up at this alternate/impromptu/unofficial aid station. Must have been 100 yards of tents lining the road here. Lots of cowbells and waving and cheering. I wasn’t in the mood. I knew what was waiting. And I figured Columbine was going to be where either my hamstring and/or quads and/or stomach and/or dead legs were going to do me in… or not.
Somehow that first steep incline right at the start of lower Columbine was okay, but then I fell into my “new” pattern: simply no get-up-and-go. I plugged away up the hill at speeds mostly in the 3-4 mph range, significantly slower than my 5-6 mph training average. Importantly, I never got off the bike, but part of the reason for that is that it’s more painful for me to walk than ride: so, lesser of two evils.
And now something ELSE: a headache began to form itself around my temples. Oh great. I’m just above 9000. What’s this going to be like in two hours at 12,000? What *else* could go wrong? I had NONE of this in 2011.
After what seemed hours (because it was) I finally felt the tripod (it’s what I call that metal mining structure just before the first steep climb that signals the beginning of “upper Columbine”) nearing, but not before a frustrating experience. There was a guy ahead of me, walking… and I simply couldn’t catch him. I’ll say in my defense that I have never seen a guy walk this fast, but still, I mean, come ON! This was so demoralizing. I must have followed him for two miles before finally passing. Sheesh.
I got to the tripod and stopped to pee (more pain!!) and put my jacket back on. The quad issue had dissipated to nothing. The hamstring hadn’t sprung. My stomach issue was gone. The headache was minimal. Even my heart rate had dropped into the 140s now, where it should have been tens of miles ago. I should have felt more thankful than I did. It was sunny, but cold. Decision time. Jacket or no? Decided no – I’d use the leg and arm warmers. What to ride and what to hike-a-bike now. I decided, again against most advice (you’ll waste energy that you need to have later), to try to ride the first steep section. So I did, and made it probably ¾ of the way up before getting off the bike. This is when I found out that, true to the day, my feet were going to be problematic. I have been having some issues with the toes on my right foot, and I now found that I simply couldn’t place full weight on that foot in a “straight-ahead” gait. I had to turn the right foot almost 90 degrees to the left and just use it as a “place-holder” while I pushed off with my left. One-legged hike-a-biker.
I got back on the bike whenever I could, but there’s probably a good mile (?) of hike-a-bike, along with everybody else, and it was, in fact, painful. I thought briefly about what got me through two years ago – comparing my self-imposed “misery” with the real misery of 18th and 19th century American slaves. I tried that this year and just didn’t have the mind for it. Fuck that, just walk and get it over with. I do remember at one point glancing up and seeing the line stretching up and up what seemed like Jacob’s Ladder to the heavens. It was discouraging. I was cold. Everybody else raved about what a perfect day it was. I was cold.
Finally, I reached that point where I could get back on the bike and grind away to the summit. I was not enjoying the “beauty” above treeline this year. My feet were appreciating being back on the bike again. And again, the remaining climb to 12,600 feet was a slow grind. So discouraging to be so much slower than any training ride. What was going on???

Ascending Columbine, about 12,500 ft., Mile 49. Lost 20 minutes on this climb. Disaster.

I reached the summit and coasted down the hill to the turn-around, which I barely noticed. I felt like I was in a mental fog. I knew I had taken too much time getting to the summit, but I was unclear on just how much time I had lost. I just knew it was time I didn’t have to lose. (In fact, my time from Twin Lakes to Columbine turn-around was 2 hours, 35 minutes. This was the first split time I missed, and I missed it by a LOT. My target was somewhere between 2:05-2:15, so I lost somewhere between 20 or 30 minutes here… and I was shooting for splits that would give me an 11:30 finish. This is where I knew I was done for the day. Again that little voice began taking control: “If I just lost a half hour on Columbine at Miles 40-50, how much more am I going to lose on Powerline at Mile 80, or on the climb to Carter Summit at Mile 90? I’m done.”) I gave no thought to stopping at the Columbine summit aid station. Seemed senseless in light of the 45-minute “rest” I was about to get on the way back downhill to Twin Lakes.

Trying to put the best face on for the camera, just past the Columbine turn-around at Mile 50. Homeward bound. (I beat that guy to the finish line by seven minutes.)

Now the word “rest” is a very relative term, because descending Columbine is a test. It’s not anything as technical as Powerline, with the exception of a few short steep spots on the upper reaches. The test comes in its length. I descend pretty well, so I knew I could cut it loose here. But it’s a test of physical strength, especially the arms and hands. Forty-five straight minutes of high-speed (for me, that’s 20-25 mph) descending. The road is quite rough at the top and you feel like the eyeballs are going to get jarred loose from their sockets. Everything’s a blur, literally, on the upper section (2 miles), but again you have to trust the bike and your instincts. Once “lower” Columbine is reached (8 miles), the road “smooths” into decent fire road, but you’re always braking. There are about six hairpins you don’t want to over-shoot or lose your traction on. So it’s alternatively letting the bike run out, but then knowing you’ve got to get it under control for the next hairpin, then letting the bike run, etc. etc. etc. For 45 minutes. By the time you get back down to the ranchland, the forearms, wrists and neck are pretty sore from maintaining the same position for so long.
Also, I knew that my time up Columbine was poor, so I felt I had to get what I could on the descent. So I was probably a shade more reckless than I should have been. What did it get me? Two minutes. I made it down in 43 minutes, two minutes faster than my desired split time. Whoopee.
I was in trouble.
And I REALLY knew I was in trouble when I pulled into Twin Lakes again. The HerbaLife tent was down. This meant that ALL their riders had come and gone and they were packing up to go home! THAT was depressing.
The demeanor of my crew was subdued. Though they tried not to show it, I knew they had been expecting me a lot earlier. Heck, I had been expecting me a lot earlier. I don’t remember anything from this aid station stop other than a feeling of impending doom. We changed out the camelbak and I hit the road. There was a little less enthusiasm in Ruth’s “You got this, Dad”. I’m pretty sure they, like me, were thinking I didn’t.
As I rode away, I created a new, “realistic” goal. “Ok, I’m not going to buckle. There, I’ve said it. So just give it everything you’ve got until you either give out or cross the finish line. You should be able to get a finisher medal (for an under-13-hour finish) if your legs don’t give out on you before then. In any event, just keep going until you can’t go any more.” In fact, although I felt bad for disappointing Mike and Ruth, who came all the way from New Hampshire, this re-adjusted goal set my mind at ease for the first time in many, many miles of worry.
Things didn’t get any easier physically, but I at least now had a new approach: keep going until you physically can’t go any more. I was not going to allow myself to be defeated mentally.
So across the dam and up the moraine and over to the single track. Okay.

The start of the single-track, inbound, Mile 65

Up the single track, through the woods, over to Lil’ Stinker, the short but super steep hike-a-bike, and wheeled onto the Pipeline. Okay. Not fun, but okay.
Up and down the swales and across the Pipeline. Barely conscious of riders around me or the environment, or the circumstances. Somewhere I stopped to take off the jacket again. I don’t know where. (2014 note: Where did I put it on? I’m not wearing it in picture on Singletrack.)
I barreled through Pipeline aid station, wondering not so much if, but how and when Powerline was going to do me in. I knew I didn’t have much left in the tank, so it would probably be Powerline where I went down.
I crossed the Pipeline chip mat 1 hour, 19 minutes after leaving Twin Lakes. This was a good fifteen minutes behind my planned split time. In 2011 I did this split in 1 hour, 5 minutes. And that was the FLAT part of the course! Now I was a MINIMUM 35 minutes off my splits for an 11 hour, 30 minute finish. If you’re doing the math, that’s a 12 hour, 5 minute finish. No buckle.
But for some strange and absolutely irrational reason, I felt for the first time since very early in the race, that I might have a chance to buckle. After all, I was close. But I was also keenly aware that I was on the bubble, and so did every rider around me from that point on. Two years ago, I was riding from Pipeline to the finish line (last 28 miles) with a certain degree of comfort, knowing I had a pretty good time cushion. This year, I was exactly where I had hoped I never would be at that point: riding desperately on the border of Buckle Land. On the other hand, having any chance was a lot better than my feeling 15 miles earlier of having no chance.
Of course, the headwind had started back at the dam, but Pipeline is rather sheltered in the trees so you don’t get it too bad. But after Pipeline aid, you head out to the blacktop and there’s not a tree in sight. It was approaching mid-afternoon now and the wind really picked up. Serious headwind. Of course. I scrounged a pace line: all two of us. And then we found Dave, another “old guy” I had trained with on several of Art’s rides. Very nice man. He was hurting, like me, so we joined up and encouraged each other. Our third rider soon dropped us two old, tired guys, so for most of the blacktop all the way to the hatchery, it was Dave and me, trading leads about every 30 seconds. I felt like the stronger of the two, and that gave me strength: I had to lead – Dave was counting on me. At one point, Dave told me he couldn’t take his turn, and it was alright. I pulled another turn. I knew we were going to make the shelter of the trees pretty soon. And we did. At that point, I moved on ahead, and my gut feeling was that Dave just might not make it. (So it was one of the great pleasures of the day to see him cross the finish line just a few minutes after me and get his buckle. He told me he couldn’t have done it without me, but I think it’s just as much the reverse.)
And now… Powerline. There simply wasn’t anything to do but do it, right? I mean, you don’t train for a year to quit at the base of the Powerline. I made a point of riding at least a few feet farther up the steep base than I rode in 2011 (maybe 2/3 of the way to the 90 degree left turn). Then off the bike, again the feet really hurting. So much that I actually got back on the bike for what is probably a 20-yard rideable section on that first steep hill. I remember getting to the top of that first false summit, the steepest behind me now, stopping to rest, and thinking, “Thank Goodness! I will NOT have to walk again until the finish line.”
Or will I? I still had forty-five minutes of Powerline ascent ahead of me. Tricky, rock-strewn, gullied, and still steep enough. In other words, not just climbing, but pulling the front wheel over rocks and across gullies for another three miles. Two years ago I rode the entire rest of the Powerline without stopping. But two years ago I had energy. Today, I didn’t know how I’d even gotten this far. I peed, then stepped over the center bar, clipped in, took a deep breath and went after it.
I remember a few things. I know I was forced off the bike several times by technical mistakes compounded by the fact that I was going so slow that my front wheel could have hit a pebble and it would have grounded me. How slow? My Garmin kept ‘beeping’ off because it was reading 0 mph, that’s how slow. It irritated me, because I knew I was moving, but I bet it happened more than thirty times in the next hour. And then… NOOO!!! There was that walking guy again!!!! Ahead of me again!!! Same guy!!!!! And I couldn’t catch him…. Again!!!!! This was a revoltin’ development (that’s an age-appropriate joke). After what seemed ages, I finally did catch up with him and remarked on his amazing walking pace. He told me he hadn’t really trained for the race, but he was a big hiker, so his race plan was to walk every hill and then descend like crazy. He didn’t say this in a friendly way; almost like I was bothering him by asking. He took off on me again, and in moments was a good ten yards ahead of me. Grrrrrr.
Finally I passed him just as we summited. When? Just about an hour after starting the ascent. Like the descent of Powerline, there’s a mystique on the ascent. It becomes timeless. You want to keep track of the false summits, but by this point in the race your oxygen-deprived brain isn’t able to remember the number. Was that the third one, or the fourth one? Oh, forget it, just keep climbing. You know it’s going to end, but it’s like a form of hell – there simply is no time attached to the pain. You just keep going, knowing only that it’s going to end SOME time. (I guess that’s not like hell, then.)
I don’t remember any particular stab of joy upon summiting. There was no time for emotion. I had to get my ass down Sugarloaf, and I tore it up. I don’t have a specific Sugarloaf split, but I know I descended that hill faster than I had ever done before. It was a blur. It was desperation time and I knew this was my last real chance to go real fast for any amount of time. Every minute counted now, and I had minutes to make up if I was going to buckle.
Sugarloaf isn’t technical, but it’s also not smooth. That same eyeballs jarring out of sockets feeling (I don’t ride one of them new-fangled 29” full-suspension bikes that just roll over everything like your grandpa’s Caddy. Mine is a 13-year-old 26er hardtail, emphasis on the HARD, feeling every little rock, like your great-great grandpa’s covered wagon. And I was feeling every jolt on my 63-year-old spine on this descent.)
But it was a thrill, I have to say. And I knew that the newly-graded Hagerman road was going to work in my favor. Two years ago I coasted down Hagerman road, resting. Today, I put the hammer down and hit the mid-20s for most of the two miles. Same thing on the 2-mile descent behind Turquoise Lake.
And then… the big 3 miles of steady pavement climb to Carter Summit. It’s Mile 87. What’s in the tank?
Turns out, enough. One of the main things that pulled me up that hill is that I knew Mike and Ruth were waiting at the top. I had had the foresight to anticipate that Mile 90 might be a good time to see family again. I remember wishing two years ago that I had seen Lois again somewhere between Twin Lakes and the finish line. So I asked Mike and Ruth to make the effort. And they did. And knowing they were going to be up there at Carter Summit is exactly what I needed.
I’ll be honest, it was a long, grind up that hill, but I seemed to be making my training speed of 5-7 mph. In any case, I couldn’t have gone any faster, so it was going to be what it was going to be. As I neared Carter Summit, my watch read 5:15 p.m. Once in training I had specifically timed myself from Carter to the Finish Line. I had heard you should make it in an hour. I did it on relatively fresh legs as fast as I could: 1 hour, 3 minutes. But that was after only twenty miles, not ninety. I now had 1 hour 15 minutes. This was going to be close.
Mike saw me approaching the summit and ran to the turn-off with me. I saw Ruth there. My heart felt good. I had been planning on stopping at the aid station. I was needing to pee. Badly. I was low on hydration. But I simply couldn’t afford to stop. I yelled something to the effect, “I’ve got to keep moving. Can’t stop!” and I never slowed down as I turned off the pavement for the haul across to St. Kevin’s. I hoped they knew how much their being there meant.
I’m not going to say it was easy, but I was motivated now. There are three “grunts” on the way to the Kevin’s descent, and they were no fun, especially the 100-yard one after the sharp left turn at Ken’s Corner. But I stayed on the bike the whole way. No more walking.
When I passed the old mine tailings I knew it was a long downhill ahead of me. Again, I had to throw caution to the wind and let it rip down St. Kevin’s. You don’t want to crash your race at Mile 95, but I had to take chances.
I hit the flats at the bottom of Kevin’s, that place where a half a day ago (or was it months) I had ridden in the other direction through the magical morning mist. And now it began to rain. As far as I can tell, I’m the only rider it rained on all day. But it was after 6:00 now and it was a cold rain. My jacket was in my camelbak and I simply was not going to take the chance of losing a buckle because I stopped to put it on.
I was flying now. Unconscious. Can’t say I was feeling no pain, but the finish line was within reach and maybe, just maybe…
I crossed the river and headed over to the Boulevard, that last little kick in the teeth they throw at you just so you know it’s not going to be easy. I remember very little of the Boulevard except checking my watch. A lot. I did not like being on the bubble, but now, for the first time, it was becoming increasingly clear that barring sudden collapse I was going to get a buckle. I remember not being quite able to digest the fact. For the better part of eleven hours I was resigned to the fact that I wasn’t. Now, in what seemed the space of a relatively few minutes, I was having to deal with the fact that I was. I couldn’t wrap my fuzzy-headed mind around it. It wasn’t really registering as anything other than a “fact”. I’m glad I’d ridden the Boulevard a number of times before race day; otherwise it can get to you mentally, as in “Will this *&#@&-ing thing ever end??” In fact, that slow, smooth climb on good gravel was painful, but at Mile 101 of 104, what is pain?
I made the last climb up 6th Avenue, looking for my marker pick-up truck in the driveway on the right that told me I had summited my last hill. On training rides I always looked for it – even saw the owner once who assured me it would be there on race day. I figured at Mile At the top, you get your first view of the finish line. I picked up speed and pedaled as fast as I could down the hill toward it.
And now, because I was one of those riders on the bubble, there was an amazing sight as I neared the finish line. There was a gauntlet of people for about a half-block before the red carpet, cheering on any of us who were trying to beat the 12-hour deadline. There was a “center aisle” through the crowd maybe five feet wide and I headed for it, the cheering, clapping, cowbells growing louder by the second. I smiled for I think the first time all day as people reached out and clapped my shoulders and arms. Maybe it was a kind of teeth-clenched, grim kind of “damn-it-I-DID-it” smile, but it was the best I could muster. And then the crowd dissipated and the last twenty feet before the red carpet it was just me, alone, smiling.

Mile 104 – The Red Carpet
I took a quick look around – nobody right behind me. Did I have the energy to do it?
I found the last reserve of energy and picked up the necessary speed to hit the red carpet with both hands in the air. The clock read 11:48 as I crossed the finish line. I had ridden from Carter Summit to the finish line in 1 hour, 3 minutes. Same as my training time.

The Finish Line (that’s Mike running up from behind)

Merilee put the finisher medal around my neck and I collapsed over my handlebars.
Mike came up from behind me and Ruth got there moments later. Hugs all around. Frank and Tim showed up, and then Rebecca Rusch, who gave me a big hug and high five.
Done. Somewhere, somehow, I’m still not sure, I had made up my lost time. My official chip time was 11:48:37. I got the buckle.

Post-Mortem

So why was this race so much more difficult than 2011? Race day conditions were perfect. After three weeks of rainy, cold, crappy weather, race day was perfect, if not a tad chilly. Sunny, the course was that perfect, tacky, slightly damp granulated granite, many of the rough spots either graded by machine, like Hagerman, or beaten down by all the bike traffic in the two weeks prior to race day. Powerline being a perfect example: it was SO much better than it was in mid-July. Here’s some variables, any one of which could have made the difference, but probably more like the combination of them all:
1. Family vacation in June. I knew I might be sacrificing my race by essentially taking the month of June off from training. I was on my bike a total of three times in three-plus weeks, and those three rides combined totaled less than six hours. This had to be a factor. In 2011 I remember riding much of the course, especially the flats and the smaller hills “effortlessly”, meaning no leg discomfort. FUN. This year my legs hurt all day.
2. Pre-race hydration. I had been noticing for a couple of weeks that when I urinated it was a darker yellow than usual. In fact, I usually run almost clear. In hindsight, I think perhaps I wasn’t drinking enough good liquid (too much diet Coke) in the weeks prior to race day, and perhaps that had a cumulative effect. It could explain almost all the race-day symptoms I experienced: quad cramps, hamstring, stomach, headache, stinging urination – am I forgetting something?
3. Race day hydration. I THINK I was drinking regularly, but unlike 2011 I don’t think I completely drained any of my three 70-oz. camelbak bladders. The cooler weather may have had something to do with this, but fact is, you’ve GOT to drain those things even if it IS cold. An indicator that I may not have been hydrating properly would be the fact that I peed significantly fewer times this year than in 2011. And this also may have had something to do with the pain – don’t know. (The painful urination ended after the first discharge the next morning. Never returned.)
4. Age? I just felt mentally fuzzy all day; not the laser sharp focus of 2011. On the other hand I was sharp “in the moment” this year: no falls, accidents, mental errors. I ran a really clean race, so I’m not as sure about this one. Overall, fuzzy, but sharp “per second”.
5. Lack of excitement. I never was quite AS excited about this race as I was the first one. Then again, I’ve never had a more sustained excitement about any athletic event in my life as that first race. There could be several reasons: 1. “Second race” syndrome. I don’t even know if this exists, but I know I thought often along the lines of “how could this race possibly top my “perfect day” in 2011?” How do you get better than perfect? 2. Lois not on board. It’s hard to say this, but it’s difficult to mentally gear up for a race your spouse doesn’t want you to be gearing up for, especially when you love that spouse as much as I love Lois. Hand in hand with this is 3. The feeling that by going to Colorado for a month I was abandoning not only Lois, but also Anna.
6. Bad taper. Not in riding as much as in fatigue-inducing activity. Volunteering to course mark and do registration so early on the two days prior to race day at 7:00 a.m. – just too much for my ankles. I was in real pain leading into this race, and I think that may have had something to do with the pain I experience on the hike-a-bike sections.
7. Serious lack of sleep not just on Friday night, but for most of the week prior. Somewhat hand-in-hand with #6. I slept poorly for several nights prior to the race, and then got a maximum of four hours of definitely-not-deep sleep the night before. I remember seeing the clock say “11:30”, with a 3:30 alarm set. Way different than 2011 when I slept like a baby the night before, a good 6-plus hours.
8. Lack of cross-training. Because of the ankles, I can’t run or do most gym machines, so I’m limited to bike riding. But unlike two years ago where I alternated road and mountain bike training, this year I trained exclusively on my mountain bike. I wonder if I so overused those specific muscle groups (and gave no other muscle groups a chance to work) that by race day I was worn out before the race started. My journal indicates all spring and summer long how much my quads and hams were hurting on training rides.
9. Hosting – From Wednesday night through race day I was host, first to Tim, Frank, and Alex, then on Thursday to Roger and Sandy, then Friday evening Ruth and Mike came in at about the time I should have been in bed. Just a lot going on mentally in terms of having the right amount of food, cooking, and determining where everyone was going to sleep. Would have been much better to be isolated those last few days. Lois would have been a big help here.