Running Dialogues

The title for this new blog came to me a couple of days ago when I was taking the walk something that I do most every day if I don't have an appointment in the morning. The title could mean two things I suppose, a running dialogue meaning a conversation that is ongoing would be one meaning. The second is what I actually mean for the purpose of this blog though and that is writings based on conversations that I have with myself on my daily runs or for the time being, walks. I have always found that some of my best thinking is done when I am running or walking and I'm away from distractions. For that reason I have tried to be more conscientious lately of coming back to the house or car and making notes of things that I thought in addition to things that I saw. Hopefully this blog will start where my last left off and continue telling the story of how I am living my life day to day.

Family Roots

I've mentioned in other blogs that the reason I write these is so that my children and grandchildren can know more about me. For this reason I write about the past as well as the present and plans for the future. I've said before how I regret not knowing my relatives better. For example my Grandfather Anstey died in the 50's and I wasn't even born until 1948. When he died he was living in New Mexico and we were in California. I can honestly say that I don't ever remember meeting him but I probably did. I can also say that the only thing I know about him is the little that was shared by my parents or some of my aunts and uncles and that wasn't much; I never spent much time around my aunts and uncles either because we moved around so much and spent most of our time in the west while all of my aunts and uncles except my Dad's brother Denny never left the east coast. Hopefully my grandchildren will feel that they know me better.


I knew my Grandmother Anstey better because she lived much longer and we visited her in New England and New Mexico and she visited us in California when I was in high school. She even spent a Christmas with us in California. Nana Anstey had a big influence on my interest in reading and in travel I think because she worked for a Methodist Missionary service of some sort and as a result she gave me hundreds of cancelled stamps from all over the world. I kept a stamp collection for many years and not to many years ago I sent the collection to my son Jeff in Florida. I remember that my grandmother sent me the book, Uncle Tom's Cabin. I don't remember what birthday or Christmas I received it for but I wasn't in high school yet.

I remember more about Nana and Papa Otis my Mom's parents because we lived very close to them when we lived in Tewksbury, Massachusetts when I was in 7th grade. What do I remember? Liver and Onions, a very small house, cases of canned goods if Papa won the gambling pool, iced coffee, a lot of cursing. I remember how much Nana loved swimming. And I remember when we were in trouble she would say, "Come here so I can hit you".

What I don't remember is going anywhere or doing anything fun with any of them. I'm not saying we didn't; I'm just saying that I don't remember.

Maybe as I look at more old pictures and talk with my sisters Donna and Carol more memories to share will come to me but in the meantime there really isn't much.

I want my grandchildren to have better memories of time spent with their grandparents.

Last month my Uncle Ronnie's oldest son David and his wife Mich' were in San Francisco for a conference so the came by to visit on a day off. It was nice visiting and catching up a little on what is going on back east. They have always lived in New Hampshire. The last time I saw them was at a family reunion in New Hampshire back in the 1980's.

Carol - Dana - Ron (David) - Donna

Ron and Mich'

The last race of my 67th year and the first race of my 68th year were similar in that I am still having to mostly walk when I "race" while my knee is getting stronger. My last race as a 67 year old was run the day before my birthday; I was hoping to find a race on my birthday but there wasn't anything around. I even traveled over an hour and a half for the one I did do. It was a beautiful 10K trail run by Santa Cruz. I took a bad fall in the first mile bur fortunately my brace protected my knee and I only scraped it up some. The worst damage from the fall was actually my right side ribs. By trying to protect my knee I landed hard on the right side. As I write this it has been 16 days and they are still sore but obviously getting better.

I did my first race as a 68 year old this past weekend and it was another trail run. It was the Cinderella Trail 5 mile in Oakland. I was amazed at how beautiful the part was just above Oakland. Simply driving through Oakland on either 580 or 880 certainly doesn't do it justice. It was a challenging course again and started uphill. The hardest part for me because of my knee though was the downhill single track on the actual Cinderella Trail. It was narrow and very slick. Additionally if you did start to lose control of your downhill speed you couldn't simply step off the trail into the weeds like you might normally do because the weeds were full of poison oak. It was another well run event in a beautiful location and I'm glad that I did it.

The last two weeks Donna and I have been busy treating the eye of one of the horses, Andre'. He got some type of eye infection that is to long to even try to remember and last week and this week we have had to clean and medicate his eye every four hours during the day. When we took him back to the vet last Friday she said that he was making very good progress and to just keep doing what we were doing until he goes back this Friday. Hopefully he'll be recovered then because on Friday I leave for a vacation to New Mexico, Missouri and Colorado.

It's always something it seems when you have a lot of animals and we sure have that.