absolute happiness

Today marks yet another a date that I've been dreading - our one year wedding anniversary. However, rather than dwell on the sadness of not celebrating it with Karen, I've been thinking about how happy we were one year ago today and how it was an occasion that I never, EVER imagined would happen until it did. I know I've told it so many times, but please indulge me repeating our story again and remembering August 17, 2008 as the absolute happiness that it was....

Karen and I first met at Packer, where we both went to middle school and upper (high) school. Our class was small - we graduated with 42 other people - everyone pretty much knew everyone else. Because of the size, the school really didn't have the cliques and social groups that most people associate with high school. However, while we all knew each other and would hang out together in social situations, there were of course people who were closer to each other and people who were mostly acquaintances. Karen and I were more of the latter toward each other and I spent most of my time admiring her from afar in a John Hughesian kind of way.

That's right. I spent much of high school imagining just being out on a date with Karen Rothman and daydreaming about her. I even took a job for in-school community service (we needed to volunteer a certain number of hours in order to graduate) managing the girls varsity basketball team because she played on it. Not only did I get to know her a little better, but managed to put myself next to her in the team picture of our senior yearbook...pretty slick, no?

The picture was about as close as I got to her during high school; never did get that date. I would have to wait eighteen years, three months, and fourteen days from our graduation on June 14, 1989, to get the chance and I didn't waste it. After reconnecting on MySpace.com and exchanging a few emails we met on September 27, 2007. When she walked into the bar that evening she look as good - no, make that better...much better - than she did when we were classmates. We had a couple drinks at The Gate where, while we goofed around throwing darts in the general vicinity of the board, I confessed my high school crush to her. Always direct with her statements, Karen said I should have made a move back then and seized the moment. Well, after a couple more drinks and change of bars, I did. While we were shooting pool in the backroom there was a lull in the game and the conversation turned in a direction that gave me an opening that, based on what she had said earlier, I wasn't about to let pass me by again. So I took her in my arms and kissed her. Right there in the bar, right there against the pool table.

That night was a dream come true. What I couldn't have imagined was that it was the beginning of the dream and not the end of it. All I had wanted in high school was to be on a date with Karen, to kiss her, to feel her in my arms. In my wildest, high school mind I could never have conceived that ten months and 22 days after that kiss I would be standing next to her and under the chuppa at the the Prospect Park Boathouse for our wedding. But there we were and she never looked more beautiful than she did that evening.

She was radiant. Tonight I have been looking back through almost all of the pictures from the day, in each she has a smile stretching from ear to ear and a sparkle in her eye. It was a perfect day. I can still remember with absolute clarity what it was like standing at the end of the aisle watching her walk down arm in arm with her parents. She had to navigate stairs draped with fabric, a floor length dress, and high-heels, but the whole time she was walking she was staring straight at me with those sparkle filled eyes. When I close my eyes now I can see that image perfectly.

As she walked toward me I couldn't help but thinking it was all a dream. How on earth did I get so lucky. How did the "it" girl from high school end up saying yes to me when I asked her to marry me at a club in New York City without even a ring to offer her? Whatever it was, I knew that it was a perfect moment and that her gaze held all the love, support, and beauty that any man could hope to have. We decided to write our own vows but didn't share them until we read them to each other in front of our friends and family. I thought I lost hers and tore my apartment apart looking for the piece of paper. Thankfully, her mother had taken both to put them in a scrapbook. Friday she returned them to me and the words Karen wrote made clear that my happiness was matched by hers. As I read them over and over again the last few days, each time I can hear her voice reading them to me as she did that day. This is what she wrote and said:

Andrew

From the day we re-met you have surrounded me with your love warmth and kindness
With you I feel completely myself
With you I feel understood, heard

Andrew, you share yourself with me without reservation.
You confide in my your joys fears and wonderings

You look and listen at the world
with clear open eyes
the eyes of wisdom

Everyone who has met me today has remarked at how calm & relaxed I appear. How can I be anything else when I know that our marriage is the most natural and organic paths our lives can take.

I am for you and you for me
My love for eternity.
Ani li dodi, v dodi li.





As part of our wedding program we used a lithograph from Andy Warhol with his quote "I wonder if it's possible to have a love affair that lasts forever." When we put it in the program, we gave our own answer for all the world to see - "we KNOW it is." I think about that often, especially because we have the print next to our bed. How could we have ever imagined that forever would be only one year, one month and twenty-one days or that the eternity Karen wrote about would come so soon and so suddenly. Even with that, I look back on August 17, 2008 and remember the happiness and joy we shared, albeit far too briefly.

Happy anniversary Karen - my eternal love, my wife forever.

Fear of Flying

I have been flying almost since I was born. In fact my first flight was back from Seoul, South Korea when I was just little more than a year old. (I don't want to brag, but I had one of the cutest passport photo ever...) Throughout my life I have flown hundreds of times to places exotic - Palau, The Maldives, Tbilisi, and Yerevan, to name a few - and many more less so - Detroit, Baltimore, New Haven, etc. For all those flights, I was never scared or worried and in fact loved the whole act of flying. I was always excited and thrilled by being so high above the ground, and trusted in the technology conveying me almost entirely.

Recently, however, that has changed.

I think the change began when Karen and I flew to St. Martin in February 2008. I wouldn't say that I was particularly afraid while in the plane, but there was a level of relief unlike I experienced in the past when we returned to terra firma . At the time I passed it off as nothing more a fluke, the excitement of being on vacation with Karen rather than any real nervousness, and said nothing to her. But when the same, but more acute feeling came over me when we flew to Montreal for our honeymoon I told her. At first I was somewhat hesitant to mention it. Not because I thought Karen would think any less of me, but because we had so many travel plans in our minds and I didn't want her to feel like we should cancel them if I was uncomfortable. When I told her how I was suddenly getting nervous flying she gently hugged me and said simply that "it was because now we have something to live for." I will never forget that moment.

In the past months, my fear has grown. At first I found it was odd, since the things in my life that gave rise to my nervousness were no longer with me. Why hadn't my thinking about flying simply returned to my previous feeling, the one guided by my aeronautics understanding and former enjoyment of being in the air. It was until a recent weekend, while talking to a friend about it, that I realized from where my new fear, or at least concern, is derived.

If the events of November 16 has taught me anything, it is that almost anything, even the most remote, far-fetched, and unbelievably unimaginable things can happen. I'm not talking about things of such infinite possibilities, like nuclear missiles metamorphosing into sperm whales and bowls of petunias, but about those things of natural life that you just can't - or don't want to - imagine happening, happening.

For so much of my life I have taken for granted the efficacy and functionality of the "machine" known as the human body. Sure, I've experienced deaths and had even heard those tragic stories of people loosing loved ones prematurely and horrifically. But I'd always convinced myself that, just as I never expect to win the MegaMillions lottery, so too did I never imagine that I would ever have the most negative odds fall against me. The human body, as far as I was concerned, was a complex, mechanical and biological machine, that we expect to function as expected until during its normal time of existence. Despite all my prior experiences and knowledge of illness and bodily frailty, I continued to believe and live that way. That one's body could so suddenly and unexpectedly cease its function shocked me to my core.

That shock and new realization, I see now, transferred to airplanes. I now find myself sitting in my seat with an acute feeling that in a blink of an eye something unforeseen and unimaginable could happen; and there is nothing I or anyone else could do, just as there wasn't anything that could have been done for Karen when the paramedics arrived. The possibility of such a catastrophic system failure, for lack of a better description, is something that I used to only imagine could happen in fiction.

It also isn't only airplanes I envision failing, but other people as well. I find myself looking at individuals - whether on the subway, at a bar, on the street, etc. - with the horribly morbid thought of what could happen to them in an instant. It is a feeling that alternates between that and a feeling of complete injustice that nothing does happen to them but it did to Karen and me.

What it all comes back to is that, despite all my efforts to remember the 14 months we had together and focus as hard as I can on the happiness that was in Karen's eyes while we had that lunch together, the images of what happened replay uncontrollably through my mind more times each day than I can count. It is an unending loop of my fear, helplessness, and loneliness.

I am trying to pause the cycle of imagery. Not to forget it, as if that were even a possibility, but to create a space between the replays in which I can continue the process of constructing a new life from the shards of what once was. And I do find moments of happiness and laughter, but never far away are those memories. Much like now, when I sit in seat 16B of a Boeing 737 I can't seem to shake the fear of the improbable happening despite my rational understanding of the thousands of flights that take off, travel between destinations, and land without incident.

Will I eventually loose my new found fear of flying? I don't know, but it is yet another thing, like everything else from this past seven (almost eight) months, that I will have to learn to incorporate and process into my life as I move forward.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I've spoken about Emerson's essay Experience, and specifically this section, to several people over the past months. Before November 16, I think I'd only read excerpts of his work in high school English class and never do I think I came across this essay - or at least I don't recall reading it if it was assigned. I found myself re-reading it last night and was once again drawn to this passage.

* * *

The only thing grief has taught me, is to know how shallow it is. That, like all the rest, plays about the surface, and never introduces me into the reality, for contact with which, we would even pay the costly price of sons and lovers. Was it Boscovich who found out that bodies never come in contact? Well, souls, never touch their objects. An unnavigable sea washes silent waves between us and the things we aim at and converse with. Grief too will make us idealists. In the death of my son, now more than two years ago, I seem to have lost a beautiful estate - no more. I cannot get it nearer to me. If to-morrow I should be informed of the bankruptcy of my principal debtors, the loss of my property would be a great inconvenience to me, perhaps, for many years; but it would leave me as it found me - neither better nor worse. So is it with this calamity: it does not touch me: something which I fancied was a part of me, which could be torn away without tearing me, nor enlarged without enriching me, falls from me, and leaves no scar. It was caducous. I grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into the real nature. The Indian who was laid under a curse, that the wind should not blow him, nor water flow to him, nor fire burn him, is a type of us all. The dearest events are summer-rain, and we the Para coats that shed every drop. Nothing is left us now but death. We look to that with a grim satisfaction, saying, there at last is reality that will not dodge us.

Father's Day

I knew this day was coming, just as so many others I'm dreading. I've tried many times in the last day or so to write something to share my memories about Karen getting pregnant, but every time I do the words seem too melodramatic and cliched. Instead my thoughts keep turning to how I'm feeling now on this day.

First of all, until I met Karen I never really envisioned myself as a father. I thought it was something I wanted, but never really was able to see myself as being one.

When Karen got pregnant all that changed. Experiencing it with her and watching James grow brought a joy to my day I'd never imagined. The first time I went with her to the doctor for a sonogram was amazing. It was the visit to the doctor when we found out that he was a he. As we watched the monitor, James moved around and then, before our eyes, opened his mouth and let out a big yawn. I held onto Karen and kissed her with tears in my eyes.

To say I was looking forward to being James' father is an understatement. I was more excited for it than anything, except for being married to Karen, in my life. While I never held James in life, I felt him and his presence. Not just from the sonograms or from what Karen was saying she was feeling, but in the weeks before her death I was starting to feel him. Not just gentle, what was that kind of feeling on Karen's stomach, but several forceful and unmistakable movements. In fact on one occasion, as we were sitting on the sofa, I had my hand on her belly and felt him press against my hand with such strength that it was as if he was saying hello to me. I'd never felt anything like that in my life and it brought such joy and pride to me. I could think of nothing more than being his father and raising him with Karen.

I cradled James in my arms once but, as many of you know already, tragically I never held him in life. It is something I think about almost as often as I do about loosing Karen. Just as I ask over and over again why Karen was taken from me, I ask why was James never given a chance? Why would I never see him grow and be a father to him in life? Never seeing the boy, teen, man and, perhaps eventually, father he would become?

But I was his father. I am his father. This Father's Day should have been full of joy for me, but it isn't. I am James' father and will always be, but cannot find or even imagine any of the happiness that should be there. This is yet another day that all I can contemplate is getting through it and, like all the others, I will because it is what I need to do for him, for her, and for me.

A fearful thing to love

Today during Shabbat services I was reading some of the poems in the Aleinu and Mourner's Kaddish section of our Mishkan T'filah. I thought I'd read them all over the past seven months of going to services, but guess I missed this one by Chaim Stern. It really touched something in me:

It is a fearful thing to love
what death can touch.

A fearful thing to love,
hope, dream: to be --
to be, and oh! to lose.

A thing for fools this, and
a holy thing,
a holy thing to love.

For
your life has lived in me,
your laugh once lifted me,
your word was gift to me.

To remember this brings a painful joy.
'Tis a human thing, love,
a holy thing,
to love
what death has touched.

The hits that hit from outta nowhere

In the past, I've called it ambush grief: those moments of memory and sadness that come upon you when you're not expecting it. Lately I've been thinking about the various significant dates I've yet to cross - our one year wedding anniversary being the biggest one after the obvious - but as much as I can prepare for those, it is the little moments that surprise me out of nowhere that seem hardest. Perhaps this is specifically because they're occurrence comes as a surprise.

Halloween is still months away, but this evening my mind turned to it. It was getting late and I was watching a movie, when I decided to make myself a snack. I pulled a new bag of edamame, which has become my movie watching snack of choice, from the freezer. It was all so normal and natural, but when I went to open the bag things changed. I opened the drawer and reached for the handle of what I thought was the scissors I paused. Instead of the scissors I was holding the pumpkin carving tool we bought at Pathmark off of 2nd avenue on the night of October 30, 2008.

Karen, as I'm sure most if not all teachers, was having an Halloween party the next day and we were picking up a few last minute supplies. Two of which were pumpkins to be carved into Jack-o-Lanterns. The carving tool was almost an afterthought of a purchase, but having tried in the past to carve pumpkins with regular knifes I suggested we invest in one. It was, in my opinion, well worth it. That night, while Karen rested and worked on her lesson plan for the abbreviated day, I carved the two pumpkins into the best Jack-o-Lanterns I could. Then, after the carving was done, I rinsed, roasted, and salted the seeds so that she could take them to class and let the kids try them.

The roasting, however, took longer than I thought and by the time I was done Karen had already gone off to bed. I tried to pack everything up as best I could and then joined her. The next morning, as we had been doing nearly every morning, I walked with her to school, the two of us carrying the pumpkins, food, and decorations for the party. I only heard later from parents about how she greeted the class at the door that morning wearing her Mardi Gras mask and explaining to them that she was Karen's European cousin Katarina, in town to cover the class.

While I never saw her playing that role, I can see it clearly in my mind. Her joie de vivre matched only by her theatrics and character acting, which came across as effortlessly as her students own playful nature. I picture her standing at the door, greeting each costumed student in her lilting faux-French-accented English, joyously describing the little town in, perhaps southern France where she came from and how excited she was to meet Karen's class. I think back on that and on the things I knew about her as a teacher and think, she is the kind of teacher I would have loved. She loved her class and loved teaching. For her it was a chance to leave the adult world for the day and be a kid again. That isn't to say she didn't take her responsibilities seriously, she did almost to a fault. She recognized the importance of her job and her effect on the students, but she also knew that kids needed to be kids and made sure they HAD FUN even while they were learning.

I know that Karen would have been an amazing mother. She positively radiated it. As I stood in the kitchen this evening, bag of frozen edamame on the counter and pumpkin cutting tool in my hand, I knew that James had a mother that would have done anything for him. She would have made sure he grew up surround by unconditional love, with the encouragement to be whatever he wanted to be, and most of all with the encouragement to experience the wonders of the world as she did and beyond.

It is strange how a simple $2.39 piece of plastic and metal from a supermarket can become such a power item and evoke so many feelings. Yet that is how the memories flow, triggered by the seemingly ordinary or routine things and instances.

Memories of the day until...

Shortly after I spoke about Karen and James at the Havdalah service during the Israel ride, one of the other participants approached me to offer his condolences. He also asked me how often I think about Karen. It was, truth be told, an odd question to hear. Rather than say anything about the question, I simply replied: "When I wake up in the morning, Karen is the first thing to cross my mind. Later, when I am laying in bed waiting for sleep to come, she is the last thought that I have. Between those two moments, however, she is in my constant and continued thoughts, as is James." It is not about how often I think about her and him, but how often I don't.

Lately, I (and perhaps others) have noticed that my posts have had a bleakness to them and maybe the impression has been given that the thoughts I have of Karen are in some way sad ones and that in turn it may be these sad thoughts that contribute to my feeling. Quite the contrary. My thoughts tend to be of the wonderful things during our all to brief time together. I don't talk necessarily about specifics because some are private, personal treasures I keep for myself while many others are of such seemingly ordinary and nondescript moments in time that to share them would be trite but for the circumstances as they are now. These moments, which I think about constantly, are things like driving to Long Island, New Jersey, or the Adirondacks with Karen in the passenger seat, shoes off and feet on the dash board; walking to PS 321 in the morning; watching her prepare to break in pool and then the graceful follow-through where she extends the cue upward part ballerina, part hustler; or the calm expression on her face and glowing skin after finishing a Yoga class. These are just a small glimpse of the hundreds, if not thousands, of beautiful memories that fill my mind between my waking thought of her and moment before I drift off to sleep.

In the last couple of days, however, I have been thinking a lot about the day she died. Unlike how I've previously been thinking about that day, these thoughts have been about everything we did before that horrible moment. All the fun and love we shared in those final hours. Of course there was no way to know (at least not cognitively) these would be our last moments together, but even without the events later in the day they are some of the happiest I can recall.

As I written about before, the day started with brunch at my mother's apartment. As we were getting ready to go downstairs (my mother lives in the same apartment building as we did) I noticed Karen was putting on a dress and her high boots and mentioned to her that it was just a casual brunch with my family and that after we were just going to run some errands. Her response was classic Karen. She didn't care how the other mothers and expectant mothers in Park Slope dressed on a Sunday, she was going to dress in style. Her style. With that we were off to brunch.

Brunch was really special. At the time, my brother and his family was living with my mother while their new house was being renovated. Because of this, Karen and I saw them and my mom quite often. But on this particular day my father and step-mother had come from the upper west side for brunch. I don't know what the occasion was, or if there even was one, but when we walked in my entire family was there. Karen and I easily slid into the conversation and commotion that, pleasantly, marks meals and gatherings in my family. It was a traditional New York Jewish brunch with bagels, lox, herring, etc. Karen and I spent at least an hour or two basking and enjoying the time. Eventually, however, we announced we were going to leave to take a walk and run some errands.

I can remember nearly ever step and word of conversation we had. From our apartment we walked down Carroll Street and turned right on Seventh Avenue. At Union Street we made a left so that we could pass by the Park Slope Yoga studio and pick up a schedule of classes. Our thought was to run our errand and be back in time for a class before going out for my birthday dinner with my family.

When we got to Sixth Avenue we turned right. We walked and talked, passing PS 282 where I accompanied Karen last year to watch a coral concert being performed by several of her students. Then we stood at the intersection of Sixth Avenue and St. Marks Place looking at the building on the corner. The second floor of which had at some point been converted into a commercial space that stood vacant. We debated first what kind of business we, if we could, would open in the space and then whether the window were true bay windows or some other architectural style. Our conclusion was that no, the windows weren't bay windows and a funky coffee shop would be a fitting business (this despite a cafe of sorts being on the first floor).

Our destination was Pintchik Hardware store on Bergen Street and Flatbush Avenue where we were going to look at window treatments and paint colors for the renovation of Karen's apartment at 75 Henry Street. It had been our intention to sell it and find a two bedroom apartment in Park Slope, but the market being what it was (and is) decided it would be more prudent to renovate it and live there for a couple years until the market rebounded.

Pintchik was crowded, as you would expect on a weekend. We spent a little time looking at paint but then while I was ordering some samples for my brother, Karen went to the window treatment section. She returned a few minutes later to tell me there wasn't much of a selection and she found only one that she liked. She wouldn't tell me which one it was, but rather asked which one I liked. I wandered through looking at each one, settling on a Roman-esque cotton blind. It was the same one that she picked. That was how we were together. Without even trying, we almost always picked the same things. It wasn't that we selected thinking what the other one would like or want, but rather it just happened organically. The things I liked were the things she liked and vice-a-versa. This would happen at restaurants, stores, and many other times when there were choices to be made; it was quite uncanny.

Done with that errand, we walked down Bergen Street toward Fifth Avenue. Some how fittingly, next door to Babeland (an adult store) is Bump, a materinity clothing boutique. As most people who knew Karen know, she wasn't one to take herself shopping so as we passed the store I suggested we stop in and see if there was anything she liked. She had only moments earlier mentioned how much she preferred wearing dresses now that her belly had gotten so big with James. As first when we went inside she took a cursory turn through the racks, chatting away to me the whole time, and said she found nothing. However, on a second, slower sweep of the store she started finding things, and things, and more things. Next thing I knew, I was sitting in the designated dude-chair while Karen tried on dress after dress, all the while having the saleswoman/owner of the store find different sizes and styles. She was in rare form, truly enjoying shopping and getting a kick out of each new dress she put in the we'll-take-it pile. All in all we bought six dresses that day.

Dresses in hand, we wandered along Fifth Avenue. As I mentioned, we had dinner plans for the evening but we were both feeling a bit hungry so when when we walked by Bogota Bistro we decided to go in for a bite. We'd looked at the menu several times before but always chose to go someplace else, each time saying that next time we would try it. Well this was next time.

We ordered a couple light dishes to share: a pair of empanadas and bowl of tortilla soup. Both were amazing. The empanadas were served with a creamy garlic sauce and spicy pico de gallo, which we both ate with impunity. I had a Colombian beer, Karen water only. Toward the end of the meal I took a picture with my iPhone of the beer and sent it to a friend who moved from Colombia to Queens when he was young. In my message I made a comment about sitting and enjoying such amazing Colombian cuisine and beer without ever leaving Brooklyn.

I was all smiles. Karen was absolutely glowing. We sat making small talk, staring at each other, stealing a kiss or two across the table and holding hands.

The bill came and everything changed.

Regardless of everything tragic and painful that happened from that point forward, all the memories and emotions leading up to that moment continues to fill my heart with absolute joy and unparalleled love.

Some days things just get worse

This weekend was a tough one for me. The six month mark (I'm loathe to call it an anniversary) took a toll on my on Saturday. Then, on Sunday, when I tried to get some work done, I entered into a new world of panic attack that I never before knew. First I became stressed over the work I had to do and all that went along with it. As a relief, or so I thought, I decided to take a walk in Prospect Park.

After a few minutes of sitting on Karen's bench I continued along the path until I got to the baseball fields. There I ran into my brother and nieces who were finishing/starting their games. For a little while my anxieties subsided, but then as I began home a new and intense level of panic began flooding over me. At first I thought I was getting chilled since it was a bit cold as the sun set, but as it increased I realized that the shivering, numbness, and near paranoia that was taking hold of me was something altogether different.

As soon as I got home I took a long, hot shower. Still feeling chilled I put on thermal underwear - top and bottom - and sweatpants and shirt. Capped off with wool socks. Feeling slightly warmer, and a little like a neurotic Michelin Man, I climbed into bed at 8:30 and was asleep almost immediately. It wasn't the most restful night sleep I've had, but I was able to sleep through the night and wake nearly 11 hours later.

I felt better in the morning. Not good, but better. It is all about increments I'm finding. I could write an entire entry about work and my frustrations there, but suffice to say that I made it through yet another day. But what I found in my mailbox when I got home pushed me back to where I was over the weekend.

Junk mail sucks and bills are generally bad enough. Advertisements for baby products and free Similac samples I'd thought were the worst. Nothing, however, compares to getting the proof of Karen's and James' grave marker for final approval. I felt the air literally suck out of my body and but for the kitchen counter to grab hold of I'm not sure my legs could have held me up much longer.

So there I was, standing in the kitchen, the waves of pain from the prior 48 hours, not to mention the prior six months, hitting me square in the face while looking down at the proof. It was difficult to see the plaque on the bench, but this was a magnitude more of despondency. Just as I thought things were difficult with the weekend, work, and my general emotions, this arrives and throws everything down a couple levels.

I think a hot shower, thermals, and sweats might have to happen again tonight and just maybe tomorrow will see an increment back upward for me.

Six Months

Six months ago today was the worst day of my life.

Six months ago today my wife, my love died in front of me.

Six months ago today I became a father only to be told my son died.

Six months ago today I fell on the floor in tears.

Six months ago today my family, overcome by their own grief, enveloped me with their love and support.

Six months ago today I last kissed Karen, caressed her hair, felt her skin against mine, and wept.

Six months ago today I felt my life ended, my future lost, and the world crashed down around me.

Six months ago today I sat numbly in my rabbi's office vainly trying to make sense of what happened.

Today, six months later, I still cannot make sense of what happened and live day to day with the horrible memories of that day, memories which I press out of my mind however temporarily by remembering the indescribably wonderful fourteen months we had together.

Today, six months later, I am living - getting out of bed each morning and trying to create something new from the shards of the shattered life I once had.

It is hard, but I press on with my journey.

It is what she would have wanted me to do. It is what I need to do to honor her memory.

I miss her so much.

2009 Israel Ride, post script -- the sand storm

One of the crew members from the ride found these pictures of the dust storm that cut short our final day of riding. They were taken by a pilot flying at about 8000 feet near the city of Be'er Sheva, about 90 miles north of where we were riding. We were told during the pre-ride safety briefing that sand storms can occur 5 to 10 times a year in the Negev, but one like this hadn't been seen in many years. The height of the dust/sand wall was approximately 4000 feet and it was moving at almost 40 miles per hour. The storm originated in the Sinai and covered the entire Negev.

Its pretty obvious when you look at the storm why the decision was made to suspend the ride until the worst of it blew past us. Of course that decision didn't prevent dust and sand from infiltrating nearly every part of my bicycle, which has a date with the technicians at Dixon's for an overhaul and cleaning.