Lost in Hawaii
The Hartford, the company that’s been so good to me and the US Paralympic Team over the years, sent me to Honolulu late last week to represent at three speaking gigs. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like this job.
While there wasn’t a ton of time to play, I did spent some quality hours with my very good friend Joel Sampson and his family. Joel—a congenital right foot amputee—and I met at the Gimpy Triathlon World Champs in 1998; we’ve been thick as thieves ever since. We kinda look alike, too, and ten years back when a woman approached us at a night club and asked if we were brothers, we each yanked up our respective pant legs and said we were Siamese twins attached at the foot. She swallowed it…clearly after swallowing a lotta liquor. Sh then professed to being intimate once with an amputee “and it was allllllright.”
Dropping it back into third…
I spoke to a group of insurance brokers at The Hartford office on Thursday, then to the entire staff at ProService, a local payroll company, on Friday morning. The focus of the trip was a Friday afternoon talk with the National Association of Social Workers Assurance Services, Inc: NASW-ASI. This final presentation was a great fun and ended with wonderful questions along with an invitation to visit some women transitioning out of prison; I had to decline due to other plans, regretfully missing what I would expect to be some seriously stimulating conversation.
I talked up going on a long trail run the following morning; I was fortunate that the president of ProService was a runner and he pointed me in the direction of a gorgeous, fairly technical, muddy, duck-under-humongous-ferns trail that weaved along side of whatever mountains backdrop Honolulu.
Round trip was 3.5 hours and 15 miles. I’ll need to keep not only keep training hard, but race hard at least once more in the next few weeks—I discovered while on this trip that last weekend’s 50 plus kilometer trail race wasn’t fast enough to qualify me for Comrades Marathon. Looks like I’ll be marathoning somewhere soon…
(Speaking of the run, if you’re the least bit into fitness—or reading—you gotta read Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. I finished it on the flight home and was so fired up when I got home that I ran 20 miles yesterday at a pace 20 seconds faster than any of my recent long runs.)
Joel came to get me and we headed back to Waikiki Beach, just across from the Hyatt Regency where I was staying.
I made a solemn attempt to paddle board with limited success. After 30 minutes the paddle was dropped back at the beach in hopes of surfing-surfing but the lack of waves turned my quest into a float fest. Joel and his kids, Lauren and Carter, were also out there floating around in the sunshine so there was little to complain about.
Until dinner … when it finally became clear why my hands felt so naked: my wedding ring now resides in the same waters where Sharon and I honeymooned and where we lost our surfing virginity …
In the end, with the theme I drilled into the audiences over and over again in the previous days—”Make your adversities work for you, not against you”—Sharon and I have already agreed to renew our vows a scant five years into marriage with the diamond I’ve yet to buy her and the replacement ring the fine folks at J. Albrecht Jewelers in Boulder will be happy to sell me. They’re cool like that.
All in a week’s work
Today, my flight was delayed. Again. That was good. Because the alternator went on the drive to the airport. In the cab.
Just a little twist to cap off a great week. Three states, two speeches and one golf game later, I’m flying home, currently somewhere over Jersey, I’m guessing.
It began on Monday with a trip to Tulsa to do my thing Tuesday morning in front of the attendees of the Oklahoma Society of Association Executives Annual Convention. Went well, no tomatoes, eggs or the like.
Home late Tuesday night, got to bed around midnight. At 5:30am Sharon woke me up to say good-bye, off to work a 24-hour shift. I fell back asleep. At six-thirty Luke and Jack woke me up with, “Daddy, get me outta bed!” That’s a direct quote from Jack. Luke was just, “Daddyyyyy!” Love it. Love it. Love it.
Spent the majority of my day feeding, changing, reading to, etc, with a mid-day break to Doug Pond for Jack’s swim lesson and Luke’s fearless aqua antics. Throughout the day, when I got a chance, I took care of business and packed for my trip that night. Grandma came over to cover for the night since Sharon was on call ‘til Thursday morning. After putting the boys to bed, I departed for Connecticut at 9:30 for The Hartford’s Paralympic fundraiser golf outing the next day. My job Thursday morning was to say a few welcoming words to the wonderful employees of the company’s Group Benefit Division who willfully took a personal day to support our nation’s world-class challenged athletes. Then I was obliged to play golf. Good work if you can get it. I played OK—a few good shots, a few bad shots, typical.
Straight from the golf course to Hartford’s Bradley airport for a trip to Destin, FL via Atlanta and the Ft Walton Beach airport. I scored a earlier standby flight for the latter leg and was in my bed at the fabulous Sandestin Hilton by 11pm. Ninety minutes ahead of schedule.
Up at 6:30, enjoying fabulous blackberry sauce-covered crepes by 7:15 and addressing the Mississippi Bar’s Young Lawyer Division’s Annual Conference by 8:30. That, too, went well, and like the Oklahoma gig, the audience was kind to buy nearly all the books I’d shipped in ahead of time and a couple of CDs to boot.
Never made it outside to enjoy the white sandy beaches. Never made it outside for anything until I got back into a cab at 11:15 for a trip back to the Ft Walton Beach airport. That’s when the cab broke down. As mentioned, the flight, which I actually would have been on time for, was delayed 40 minutes. Back up cab was there in 15 minutes and my week continued to come together.
Life is good when you give it a chance.
