Fractured

Valentine’s Day at Atlantic Beach this year turned out to be far different than we expected.  We had just enjoyed a four-day visit with Martha’s brother Scott, the first time we have ever had a guest with us here in the condo, and it was a good visit, sharing old family stories and introducing him to some of our favorite restaurants and places to see.  The day he arrived, we took him to Fort Macon and learned that he enjoyed local history as much as we did.  Sunday, our one sunny day, we had a chance to walk on the beach and Scott found some shells and sharks’ teeth.

That afternoon, we went to the Beaufort Historical Association’s Annual Valentine Party and visited the pretty Beaufort waterfront, then drove out to Harker’s Island to the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum.  Monday, we visited the Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores.  And on Tuesday, we took the ferry to Oriental, eating lunch at one of our favorite places, The Silos Restaurant, and then drove back for dinner at another favorite place, Amos Mosquito’s, before he left left for home on Wednesday morning.

The next day, we were anticipating a romantic Valentine’s Day dinner at another favorite restaurant, On The Rocks.  I had been feeling fine the past two weeks, increasing my mileage to 12 miles the week before Scott’s visit, and that morning I had a good workout at the Sports Center in Morehead City.  As it turned out, that would probably be the last time I would lift free weights or run for who-knows-how-long. 

We still don’t know the exact cause, but Thursday evening I began to feel nauseous.  I went to bed early, and thinking I might disturb Martha I slept in the guest bedroom recently vacated by Scott.  In no time at all, I found myself dashing to the guest bathroom and vomiting violently, and this continued throughout the night many, many times.  At one point, Martha found me on the floor barely conscious (I have since learned the word syncope), struggling to get to my feet again, and somehow amid this confusion, I must have fallen hard against the bathtub, toilet, or floor.  Martha had 911on the phone during the night, but I urged her to wait until the next day to visit the Urgent Care or the Emergency Room.  To make a long story short, Friday found me in the ER at Carteret Health Care, where they treated my nausea (which thankfully had subsided by then), and also found that I had fractured three ribs – numbers nine, ten, and eleven - in my lower back on the left side.  In addition to X-rays, they ordered a CT scan to insure no internal organs had been punctured.  I was released after five hours, and I have to say that without any exception all of the personnel, from the physicians to the nurses to the orderly who wheeled me in for the CT scan, could not have been more caring and professional.  

Martha contacted close family and friends and posted an abbreviated version on Facebook, and I was gratified for so many prayers from family and friends.  One of the most encouraging comments was from my old friend Dr. John Baumrucker, who said, “Six weeks and he will be fine.”  What a long time that seems to me!  But that time-frame is corroborated by the many articles I have read since then about rib fractures.  There is little that can be done to hasten the healing process – as one of the RNs said in the ER, the current treatment is to let the patient “just ride it out.”

So that is what I am doing:  riding it out.  I am slowly learning to accommodate to that painful area of my lower back, which has begun to display an ugly black-and-yellow bloom of a bruise.  I can stand up and sit down a little easier every day by learning to keep my back straight.  Lying down in bed is very painful, though, but thankfully my Saint of a wife, who has treated me with even more patience than usual, found a local business that rents lift recliners, which I have slept comfortably in for the past two nights.  Day by day, things are improving.  My appetite has returned, and following the advice of several physical therapists whose articles I have read, I am trying to move as much as possible, walking that fine line between pushing up to the pain (but not beyond it) and doing too much.  Baby steps.

And short-term goals.  We cancelled our reservations at On The Rocks, but I determined that we will not cancel those at The Island Grille for February 23, celebrating my 76^th birthday.  This afternoon, I walked up and down a corridor outside the small exercise room here at the condo, and then went inside and lifted five- and ten-pound weights in as many different ways as I could without causing pain.

Among the many lessons I have learned from all of this is, first and foremost, my gratitude to friends and family, my daughter (who offered to come here to help out), and especially Martha.  So, I suppose in a way it was a more rewarding Valentine’s Day than a nice dinner at On the Rocks, because I rediscovered the gratitude and forbearance and patience that are the hallmarks of a life-long love.  Thank you, Martha!  And in learning how to maneuver myself into and out of the passenger seat of our Honda, and how to sit and stand, I have a renewed appreciation for good health and fitness.  I wrote to our daughter on that first day back here in the condo:  “I have a renewed appreciation of how difficult it is to live with chronic pain, like you and Scott and Anne have for years.”  And she replied with a quote attributed to Robin Sharma:  “Good health is a crown on the head of a well person that only a sick person can see.”

Now the long struggle begins.  Will it really be as long as six weeks?  And will I “be fine?”  But as the title of this blog reminds me, I am a runner.  I have been in this place before.

A Winter Beach Update

On a winter beach, sparsely populated,
the surf is too cold for children’s toes,
the children of summer with their bright plastic pails.

That’s what I wrote last year in the final poem in my upcoming poetry collection, The Continental Divide.  I have always enjoyed the winter beach, despite the absence of children and their bright plastic pails.  The average temperature in Atlantic Beach in January is a high of 56 degrees and a low of 36 degrees, which is almost balmy in comparison to Highlands in January, despite the ever-present wind.  But this year it has been much colder, 15 degrees colder on average.  It has been too cold even for the surf fishermen, who usually bundle up and collapse in a chair and drink beer all day.  And the kite-flyers, too, have been absent except for two days early in the month.  I have always loved that the kite-flyers are adults, pursuing what many would call a childish activity, but they are as serious about fishing in the sky as the surf fishermen.  The point is not in catching anything.  It is in simply enjoying the soothing sound of the ocean, and time and the tide and the endless surprises you may find left behind in the surf.

It wasn’t especially cold when we arrived on December 31.  We had booked New Year’s Eve reservations at one of our favorite restaurants, Amos Mosquito’s, named by the owner for a knock-knock joke she had always misremembered when she was a child (Amos who?  Amos Mosquito). 

We toasted the New Year at our favorite table sound-side, and then we hurried out to Fort Macon State Park to watch an event we had never seen before, the firing of the entire battery of cannons, the big ones you first see lined up facing Beaufort Harbor when you visit the Fort.

It was spectacular – all nine of them, one at a time – and very loud indeed, a worthy sound for celebrating a New Year, clouds of gunpowder-smoke rolling down across the road and forewarned children with index fingers stuck in their ears.

We returned to the Fort the next day to complete the First Day Hike, a tradition for many families in the area and very well-attended, a three-mile hike on the Elliott Coues Nature Trail.  The trail starts at the Fort and winds its way westward across high sand dunes overlooking the ocean (sand dunes built up by the careful placement of Christmas trees there every year), then back eastward through a maritime forest along the sound.  I held my tongue when we saw that one of the hikers, a woman with a New York accent, was wearing a TRUMP 2024 cap.  Give us a break!  We’re on a hike.  It’s bad enough that the Inauguration will be taking place in less than three weeks, a dark reality that looms in the background threatening to disturb the peace and quiet of our annual Sabbatical.

It was a good way to start 2025, and I followed it up with a three-mile run on Friday morning.  On Saturday, we drove the mile or so to one of our favorite places out here in the winter, Crystal Coast Brewing Company, where for a number of years we have attended a yoga class originally called Bend and Brew, now Yoga and Beers.  Martha had pointed out to me that the advertisement included a photo from last year where a class was just finishing up with Shavasana, and the two of us were shown in the foreground, poster children for yoga.

We had a wonderful class, followed by a good Crystal Coast IPA, but unfortunately learned that the Brewery was closing in only a day or two – its lease had not been renewed – and there would be no more yoga, or beer, in the modern, attractive building we had come to love (although they will be looking for a new location).  We had met some nice people there, including a fit young man named Steven, who was there for the final day and joined us in bemoaning the loss.

With every disappointing piece of news (including, a few days later, a fire at one of our other favorite places, BT’s Bar and Grill, almost next door), there is sometimes some good news.  We learned that our Medicare Supplement included free membership in something called FitOn Health, which covered the entire cost of attending the Sports Center in Morehead Center, which had included among other features yoga classes, swimming pools, and three large rooms of exercise equipment (both machines and free weights), which ordinarily would cost $15.00 per day.  We attended a yoga class there a few days later and it was a good one, and one of our friends from Bend and Brew was there, too, but alas there was no beer afterward (well, on-site anyway).

Another thing we like about our winter getaway is attending church regularly, where the Senior Pastor is a gifted preacher named Powell Osteen.  We have joined the Methodist Church in Highlands, and this long-time Presbyterian has even gotten used to saying “trespasses” instead of “debts” in the Lord’s Prayer, and “Holy Spirit” instead of “Holy Ghost.”  But we learned that last year the church voted to “disaffiliate” and is now a Global Methodist Church instead of a United Methodist Church.  Pastor Powell is still there, together with the same assistant pastors and choir members and liturgy, and as with many denominations the issue is over marrying and ordaining LGBTQ Christians, which makes me uncomfortable except that Powell still preaches the same thoughtful sermons and the hymnal is still the United one with that wonderful first page written by Wesley, “Directions for Singing” ("sing lustily and with good courage,” etc.)  Which is worth a blog post of its own one of these days.

Mid-week, it turned cold and windy, colder than usual.  Still, when the wind is out of the north, we can sit in the sun on our balcony looking out at the view of the dunes and the dune-top deck (where I do my morning Tai Chi), and I can be warm enough to take off my shirt, even when the temperature is in the 40s.  I have gone out there almost every morning to witness the sunrise, and it is different every time, and always just as beautiful even when sometimes partially obscured by clouds.

And the sunsets can also be seen from the same place on this south-facing beach.  There are not many places where you can see the sun set over the ocean in North Carolina.  Despite the colder than usual temperatures, we are still walking on the beach whenever we can.  We even saw dolphins one day, arcing up out of the water, black dorsal fin flashing in the sunlight.  You never know what you will find on the big, wide beach, flat enough to run there at low tide.

And we went on another group hike, a so-called Nature Hike at Fort Macon last week, although the same woman with a TRUMP 2024 hat was there.  I felt like saying, Look, I know you won, but do you have to rub it in our faces?  I am still wrapping my head around the fact that more than half of the electorate, including some of our friends and relatives, made what I consider a terrible decision to elect the host of The Apprentice to another term.

My running is going well after a five-week hiatus in November when we went to Italy, where I did plenty of walking but no running.  I’ve done a “long” run of five miles so far, and I even did some interval training last week, four fast repeats at the Fort Macon Picnic Area, halfway between here and the fort two-and-a-half miles away.  I like to have races on the agenda, and if the weather and my training progress continues, my first race of the year will be the Cocoa 5-K on February 1, which we have both completed many times over the years and is held in Morehead City in conjunction with the annual Carolina Chocolate Festival.  The race seems to be almost kept a secret, I suppose because running is in a way the exact opposite of attending a Chocolate Festival – “Are you ready for a weekend of pure chocolate bliss? Get ready for the Carolina Chocolate Festival!” the website announces.  Participants in the Cocoa 5-K are given a ticket to the event, and one year we actually attended, amused among other things by the Pudding Eating Contest – “ALL AGES ARE INVITED TO ENTER!” 

You never know what to expect when you run the Cocoa 5-K.  One year, huddling in an enclosed tent sipping (naturally) hot cocoa, the Race Director left, taking the results with him, and we had to look them up on-line the next day.  Last year, I crossed the finish line and went inside a building (the new venue) and waited for the awards,  only to learn that there were only two awards bestowed upon participants – the first overall, and the youngest.  “Oh, we don’t have any age group awards,” the Race Director told me when I asked.  “It’s just a Fun Run.”  If I decide to run it this year it will be because it is on a measured 5-K course (and a new, improved course) and because it is, awards or not, a race after all.

We always discover new adventures while we are out here, and this year is no exception.  The Hotel Alice and its wonderful bar and friendly manager, Amy, where we attended a wine tasting last January, is entirely different, with an unfriendly desk clerk and a bar open only one day a week.  But Mug Shot is still there, a little coffee shop and wine bar just over the bridge, and the same young man was pouring generous glasses of wine when we stopped by last week.  The hole-in-the-wall place is decorated with large mug shots of famous celebrities who have been arrested (Johnny Cash, Frank Sinatra, Mick Jagger, David Bowie) and features interesting drinks, such as The Misdemeanor, The Arsonist, and The Serial Pain Killer.   We also discovered a new restaurant in Morehead City that just opened this year called Tower 7, where they have $4.00 tacos and $4.00 margaritas on Tuesdays.

And the annual Clam Chowder Cookoff still takes place in the Harvey W. Smith Watercraft Center (where they actually build boats), which is across the street from the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort.

Four chefs prepare clam chowder and cornbread in the big building, and participants vote on the best one.  We do love clam chowder, especially “Downeast Chowder,” made from a clear broth by chef Dawn Freeman (in the blue cup) and the perennial winner.

Last Sunday, we drove to New Bern to see the RiverTowne Players' production of the musical Memphis.  We have seen many of the Players performances before and they are always top-notch, and the venue is the Masonic Theater, a fine old playhouse with a lot of character (though not enough restrooms for the ladies).  The play was “a vibrant, high-energy production that tells the story of the birth of rock 'n' roll in the segregated American South during the 1950s” and did a fine job of portraying the struggle for racial equality, concluding by being both hopeful and inspirational.

Ironically enough, the next day, Monday, was Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and also, even more ironically, the day when Donald J. Trump was inaugurated as the 47^th President.  And I still find it hard to believe that I just typed those words.  We did not watch the felon, although I understand he failed to place his hand on the Bible, and I later heard only snippets of his dark, grievance-filled speech.  So much for being “hopeful and inspirational."  What a strange and terrible time to be alive in America!  The first two days (only 1,459 more to go) of this President's term were filled with Nazi salutes, blanket pardons for criminal Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, and wild talk about buying Greenland and taking back the Panama Canal.  The Circus is back in town. 

I’ve been trying to avoid the news because it is so depressing.  We have both been reading books every evening, Martha has been preparing delicious and healthy lunches and dinners, and we have been staying busy.  But it has been cold, and this week an unprecedented thing happened out here:  SNOW! The forecasts were hard to believe at first – I cynically told a woman in the checkout line at Harris Teeter Monday, “I’ll believe it when I see it,” and she answered, “Same.”  But Tuesday night the cold intensified and the weather apps on our phones kept predicting snow.  And just after sunset, around 7:00 pm or so, we began to see flakes, big flakes, sticking on the balcony rail, and snow laying on the lawn between the building and the swimming pool.  And the wind howled through the door as it does out here, all night long.

Wednesday morning revealed a sight we have never seen before, although one year there was a dusting of snow and in 2022 there was an ice storm.  I measured somewhere between three and five inches when I went out to investigate, but some drifts were knee-high.  And I have high knees.  What a beautiful sight!  Snow on the sand dunes, snow on the beach.  And today, as I complete this blog update, it is Thursday afternoon and not much of it has melted.  I have not run a step since Monday.  How am I supposed to train for a race?

Martha has returned from a walk on the beach which she says was extraordinary, made even more magical by sighting dolphins again, out in the ocean.   

We stocked up on groceries in plenty of time, we are warm, and we have books to read.  Tomorrow I will try to get the Honda out and see if I can get across the big Atlantic Beach Bridge.  But in the meantime, it has not been at all difficult to be snowbound at the beach.

Arrivederci Italia

This was the fourth Thursday in November, a significant date for the Americans on the tour with us, but it did not seem like Thanksgiving at all.  It was warm and cloudy as we left Florence and drove south toward Rome instead of heading over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house.  We stopped on the way at the American Cemetery, where 4400 US soldiers who were killed in Italy during World War II are buried.  It was a sobering but beautiful place, as most cemeteries are, filled with cypress trees and row upon row of gravestones.

 
Our next stop was San Gimignano, the second time we had visited this city, and the streets seemed familiar to us. The views looking out over the rolling hills of Tuscany are beautiful, and we had a relaxing time, buying some gifts and enjoying a cappuccino at an outdoor café.

Next we boarded the coach for a wine tasting and lunch out in the countryside, and to our surprise we recognized the familiar gates to Tenuta Torciana, which we had visited on our first tour exactly one month ago (on another American holiday, Halloween).  The wine and the food were delicious – salami, cheese, and bruschetta, instead of turkey and dressing.

After lunch, we returned to Rome for a farewell dinner – we would be leaving the next morning for the airport and our return flight.  There was some kind of “stomach bug” going around, and several of our fellow travelers said they were affected.  So we joined two or three other couples and returned straight to our hotel, the Shangri La, rather than exposing ourselves to something like that at a dinner the day before boarding our flight.  Thankfully we succeeded in staying well, and the next morning we took a coach to the airport, and in what seemed like no time at all, we were in the air, making that long transatlantic flight, first to Philadelphia and then to Charlotte.

Martha had been posting on Facebook nearly every day, and we were often surprised by how many people back home were following us.  She posted one final comment as we were boarding our flight, which perfectly expresses how I felt, as well, as we concluded another wonderful journey!

"Farewell Italy!  We have enjoyed sharing our trip with our Facebook friends.  Thanks to the “armchair travelers” for your special comments along the way.  We hope our adventures have inspired some of you to travel and brought back wonderful memories for others."

Arrivederci Italia!

Florence

The tour we were on took us back to Florence today, one of the few places the two tours overlapped.  We felt as if we were very familiar with the city by then, so while the rest of our fellow travelers left on the coach for the city center for a walking tour to see Michelangelo’s David and the Duomo, we decided to go our own way. 

We made our way across the city from our hotel, which was near the Ponte Veccho, and spent some time in the Duomo area, revisiting the favorite places we had discovered:  Tijuana Grill for lunch, cappuccino in the rooftop café of the Biblioteca della Oblate, a glass of wine at our rooftop bar, and finally dinner at Melotti Risotteria.  We took a taxi from the restaurant back to the hotel, grateful that we had spent this full day in Florence on our own.  It was truly the city which we had enjoyed the most in Italy and would return to again, perhaps on some future special occasion.

The Cinque Terre

We crossed the Apennine Mountains this morning, known for its Carrara marble quarries, and passed through at least 50 tunnels on the way.  The road was an amazing feat of engineering, and this whole region, known as the Cinque Terre, is known for cliffside hiking trails and sea vistas.  It was raining most of the way, a good day for traveling.

 
In Pisa, we stopped for the obligatory view of the leaning tower again, which we had already seen on our first tour.  We went to the same place we had gone on that tour, a little café not far from the tower, for a light lunch, and also a local specialty we had seen on menus everywhere, a spritz.  This is an Italian wine-based drink consisting of Prosecco, digestive bitters, and soda water.  It was very refreshing – the rain had stopped, and it had turned warmer as we traveled south.

Our dinner that evening was in a farmhouse in the Tuscan hills called il Poggio, in a large, open dining room where another tour group was also eating dinner.  They were a little farther along in the consumption of wine than our group, and as they wrapped things up, their very happy tour director sang an impromptu karaoke song.  Not to be undone, our tour director, Lino, delivered a creditable version of the Sinatra classic I Did it My Way.

Wandering among the tables was Bruno, a St. Bernard dog that the owners referred to as an overgrown “Chihuahua.”  Bruno would bump into legs under the tables and occasionally emerge to stare dolefully (or hungrily?) at we diners.

Lake Como and Lugano

I awoke early on Monday morning, and inspired perhaps by the runners I had seen in Milan the day before, ran a mile or so around the parking lot of our hotel in the dark.  I realized this was the first run I had completed since October 30, and I felt surprisingly good after such a long lay-off.  I have heard that elite marathon runners routinely take an entire month off after a big event without losing any fitness (in fact, it seems to help them), so perhaps it will work for an old broken-down marathon runner like me.

From our room we had beautiful views of Lake Varese below us, and the breakfast bar had an extraordinary variety of food, including strange things like cold pizza, and something we had never seen in any hotel, ever, bottles of champagne for making our own mimosas.  Not your usual fare at a Holiday Inn.

Our destination after breakfast was Lake Como, very close to the border to Switzerland.  We went for a cruise on the famous lake with Anna, a local specialist, who pointed out the many very expensive homes around the shore which were owned by Saudi princes, Russian oligarchs, and other wealthy owners, including George Clooney who owns three homes.  An average home costs between eight and ten million euros, but we were told you could rent a villa for (only) €175,000 per week.

We had some time on our own for exploring, and saw the Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta, yet another magnificent cathedral. 

From Lake Como we boarded the coach again and crossed the border into Switzerland.  Our tour director had told us to bring our passports with us just in case we were asked for them, although tours like ours were rarely stopped.  We spent quite some time in Lugana in the Italian-speaking Ticino region of the country.  Lake Lugano was a beautiful city built on the side of a mountain - you would exit the fourth floor of a department store and find yourself on street level, high above the lake.  In the distance we could see snow-capped mountains.

We had plenty of time to explore, so we had a cappuccino and pastry on a rooftop market, and then made our way back to the coach and returned to the Grand Hotel, where we had dinner.

Milan and Varese

It was Sunday morning when we checked out of our hotel in Venice and took a water taxi back to our coach for Milan, “the middle” of Italy according to our tour director, Lino.  As we entered the city, he told us that there had been a marathon that morning and he hoped the streets had all been opened again.  A search on my phone confirmed that there had been a race, the Milano21 Half Marathon.  There were some stray runners out on the tree-lined streets, but they were not wearing race bibs so I thought they were just out for a run - it was a perfect morning for it, cool and overcast.

Milan is in Italy's northern Lombardy region, and is known as the capital of fashion and design.  Lino dropped us off at a huge, covered mall, and it was indeed lined with every imaginable high-end clothing store I had ever heard of - Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton.  There was also a very good book store, one of the largest that I had seen, and it even had a section of books in English.

The city was crowded, perhaps the usual state of things on a Sunday afternoon or perhaps because of the shopping season.  We enjoyed a very good pizza at a place just around the corner from the big mall, and we saw the gothic Duomo, as well as the most world’s most famous opera house, La Scala, where Maria Callas had performed.

It was a little chilly by now, a big difference from our first days in Italy, and we were all a little glad to see Lino, who took us to the coach waiting around the corner.  We left Milan for Varese, a city in mountainous northern Italy, not from the border to Switzerland  Our hotel was perhaps the most beautiful one we had stayed in, the Palace Grand Hotel, high on a hill overlooking the city.  Our driver, Alberto, somehow made all of the hairpin curves to the top of the hill and earned a round of applause.

Dinner afterward was at a local restaurant in the city, Il Melograno, translated as “The Pomegranate,” because the fruit is grown in this area.