We Like the Hospital

Nigel and I had Thanksgiving dinner together in his room.  

Mine is in the paper plate in the foreground.  

My son Nigel has been in the hospital for the past week. He should be out in a couple of days, but he came in very sick. He has diabetes. We don't know which type yet, but the symptoms he had and all of the tests point to this diagnosis. 

Despite his diagnosis Nigel is happy in the hospital.  He likes structure and he likes to be around people, even the people who woke him every hour for four days in the Intensive Care Unit.  

In the world COVID has made, Nigel can have only one visitor for his entire hospital stay. That's me. Now that he is mostly free of IVs, we can walk together. Tomorrow we will watch the Grand Prix of Bahrain. We both cheer for Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton and he is on pole. 

Like Nigel, I never minded being in the hospital.  The several times I have stayed in the hospital for two days to two weeks, I needed to be there. Every time I have been in the hospital, I have had something (or many things) wrong that would most likely get better. And I very much wanted to get better.  

Most people who get into medicine want to get people well. I am a a good patient in that way. I come in really messed up and I leave happy and on the way to healing.  

Many well wishers hoped Nigel could get out of the hospital as soon as possible.  They were, of course, projecting. Nigel, like his Dad, is okay with being in the hospital if he needs to be.  

While Nigel's diagnosis is not clear, he came to the hospital through the emergency room, was very sick and is now very much better. 

The Movies in Paris

 

A year ago on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, I drove southwest of Paris on a cold, cloudy day to visit the Circuit de Sarthe, the site of the annual 24 Hour Race at Lemans, France.  

In a delightful coincidence I had just seen the movie "Ford v Ferrari" ("Lemans 66" was the title outside America) in a Paris theater. It is a great movie that was nominated for Best Picture.

When I arrived at the track, I hoped to walk the 8-mile circuit, but found in another delightful surprise, that there was a 24-hour race nearing it's end and I could watch an amateur competition at Lemans. I visited the museum and saw many laps of the race.   

In another coincidence of timing the movie "Midway" debuted in theaters while I was on the trip.  I saw both movies in their original format with French subtitles.  With "Ford vs Ferrari" this gave me a chance for some French practice and some extra laughs with the translations of Carroll Shelby's Texan English.  

In the movie "Midway" the Japanese sailors spoke in their own language, sometimes in complex speeches. The subtitles were, of course, in French.  My French definitely got a workout trying to follow translated Japanese dialogue.    

It is strange to think how much the world has changed in the past 12 months.  No more movie theaters, the annual race at Lemans was delayed for months and who knows when I will travel across the ocean again.  

But with all that, the memories are wonderful. 

Returning from Ukraine with Canadian Cyclists Going to Auschwitz

Ride for the Living, Auschwitz 

In June of 2017, I rode from Belgrade, Serbia, to Lviv, Ukraine. Along the way, I rode in Bosnia, Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia, The Czech Republic and Poland. I rode through beautiful country, up and down long hills and through the home country of my favorite pro cyclist Peter Sagan.

Peter Sagan, World Champion

After crossing into Poland, I rode to Auschwitz and spent a day there wandering through a place of terror I cannot fathom. I wrote about the visit here. 

After leaving Auschwitz, I was glad to be riding alone to think and to process what I saw. I had no problems until the border crossing into Ukraine from Poland. Usually at the borders, I rode past the long lines of cars and trucks waiting to cross and up to a checkpoint with a guard outside the booth. Once there, I point at the bike and ask where I should go. At most border crossings the guard sends me through the next open lane. They don’t get a lot of bikes.

Ukraine-Poland border crossing The Polish guards stopped me and sent me to the pedestrian line. It took more than three hours to get through the long line of people walking from Poland back home with all kinds of consumer electronics and other goods. When I left Lviv, I decided to take a train to the other side of the border rather than struggle with customs on foot pushing a bike. 

In the station I met a group of Canadian cyclists who were in Ukraine for the same reason I was: to visit Holocaust sites. They were on the way to the annual Ride for the Living at Auschwitz. They had done the 100 km ride before, but this was the first time they had visited Ukraine. I had ridden from Auschwitz a few days before. 

We talked about how the Lviv and Auschwitz were among the worst site of the Holocaust, but very different. About half the Jews murdered by the Nazis were already dead when Auschwitz went into full operation in 1942. Most had been murdered by shooting over pits as in Lviv and Kiev. German police were sent to conquered lands to murder Jews with rifles and pistols. In Auschwitz Jews were gassed and the burnt in ovens. 

Then we talked about bicycles, riding in Europe and even about motorcycles. One of the Canadian riders had ridden sport bikes in the 1980s. We both had ridden Honda 500 Interceptors and talked for half the train ride about our former bikes. The rest of the group left us alone.

Honda 500 Interceptor 

At the border station, the Canadians stayed on the train and continued to Krakow. I left the train and started riding. The customs check on the train took an hour, but it was a comfortable hour in a train seat instead of in a pedestrian line. I was happy.