June 12, 2009 — As Father’s Day approaches, June 21, how about giving something extra special? Let Dad know how you feel, in writing. Ashley Thompson, aka, Mrs. Chopper, is organizing an essay contest about a memorable experience you’ve had with Dad. The winner gets a Teleflora bouquet sent to the recipient of their choice. Below is the skinny from her blogsite.
BTW, if you haven’t yet visited Ashley’s blogsite, Everyday Life, please, do. This is a young woman who knows her mind and speaks right up. My kinda gal. . .Your friend in baseball.
I have something exciting to share with all of my followers! Teleflora has approached me [Ashley] to participate in a Father’s Day Giveaway!
You may be asking, why in the world would she be doing a giveaway, with a florist, for Father’s Day?! Well, they have informed me that they are teaming up with the Prostate Cancer Foundation to help raise awareness for prostate cancer and raise funds for research. Did you know that prostate cancer strikes out one of six American men? That is an alarming statistic! As part of the partnership, in conjunction with the launch of Teleflora’s new baseball-themed bouquets, Teleflora will be making a donation to the Foundation. There is an additional sweepstakes through Teleflora, as well.
About the giveaway: The winner will get one of two bouquets sent to them, or their desired recipient. Here are the two choices. . .
Teleflora’s Big Hit Bouquet
Teleflora’s Play Ball Bouquet
To participate: E-mail me [Ashley]<everydaylifeblog@hotmail.com> with your best story about a memorable experience you have had with your Dad. (By Dad I mean, any male father-figure in your life; uncle, brother, step-dad, grandfather, etc.) The catch? The story has to be baseball related. You didn’t think this was just about being gushy did you? The story can be sentimental, funny… whatever!
The top 3 stories, picked by me [Ashley], will be posted on the blog and all the readers will get to vote on their favorite. All e-mails should include: 1) the story
2) your full name
3) telephone number that you can be contacted at
5) name of bouquet recipient
4) address where the bouquet should be sent
5) the name of the specific bouquet you like should you win
* This information will only be seen by me [Ashley], with the exception of the winner who’s info will also be given to Teleflora for delivery purposes.
The deadline for all e-mails is midnight of June 16th.The top three winners will be posted on the blog on June 17th-18th for voting. The winner will be officially announced and their information sent in to Teleflora on June 19th for a June 20th delivery.
About Teleflora: Teleflora has been connecting customers with the nation’s best florists for more than 70 years and is affiliated with 20,000 member florists throughout the US and Canada. They use the freshest flowers and personally deliver the bouquet to you in a vase. Teleflora guarantees satisfaction with every gift which is why they are personally designed by a florist in your recipients area. This means there’s no risk of damage or dehydration.
May 31, 2009 — Death. Life’s ever-present companion. Of course, the reverse is true as well. Take, for example, the reminder I received to close out the month of April. Had this event made the news, the lede might have been:
A girl and her dog became trapped within a powerful eddy after misjudging the intensity of the spring melt and had to be rescued by two other women. Rescue efforts were delayed for a few minutes when one of the rescuers went for an impromptu swim down the churning, snow-fed rapids. Fortunately, the tale had a happy ending, incurring the death only of two cell phones.
Yes, it was yours truly taking the unscheduled dip. I’m a decent swimmer and I’ve done some whitewater kayaking. That doesn’t mean I would normally attempt to negotiate a Class 3 rapid without a boat, paddle, PFD and helmet.
There is a wonderful off-leash dog park about 20 minutes from my home. The park is in a canyon at the edge of town, right before the highway climbs the mountains to Park City. Molly loves the place and so do I. There’s running water year-round and a foot trail. The trail follows the water upstream to the point where it comes out of a huge drainage pipe that tunnels under the highway.
The mouth of the 8-foot-diameter drainage pipe is set into a concrete retaining wall. The water spills out of the pipe and forms a pool about 20 feet in diameter before spilling over into a shallow streambed. For most of the year, the pool is only a few feet deep and the streambed about a foot. On warm days during the spring, however, fed by rapidly melting snow, the flow becomes a foaming, surging torrent of flood water.
Thursday was one of those days. The kind of gorgeous afternoon when the temperature spiked up into the high-70s. There were a couple dozen cars in the parking lot when I arrived. Not far from the parking lot, Molly and I caught up with a girl accompanied by four dogs, all clustered around her. I’d guess she was around 18 years old.
She was chatting away on her phone, “Oh, I’m here at the dog park. Probably for about half-an-hour. OK. Yeah, I’ll come over. . .” her voice faded away as we got ahead of the pack.
Molly and I made a couple side-trips off trail and meandered in the general direction of the pool. I kept an eye on her as we walked near the stream, using voice commands to keep her from clambering down to her favorite splash pools. The water was too deep and too fast, and Molly is quite possibly the lousiest canine swimmer I’ve ever seen.*
*Seriously. She swims like an old lady frantically trying to keep her new perm from getting wet. Once, a bystander watched her flail around for a few seconds and asked, “Wow. That’s a lot of splashing. Is she alright?”
“Oh sure, as long as she only has to swim for a few feet.”
We were about 75 feet from the pool and I could see the girl and her dogs were already there ahead of us. Then I noticed something odd. She was in the water, swimming. And then I heard screaming, “Oh god, help me! Please, help!”
I started running and yelling, “Hang on! I’m coming, I’m coming!”
When I arrived at the pool I could see what had happened. One of her dogs, a yellow lab, had gotten trapped in the swirling eddy near the mouth of the drainage pipe. Next to him the girl was treading water and thankfully, still screaming.
There was another woman standing on the rocks nearby. I edged by her and started wading out. She apologized, “I’m sorry, I can’t swim.”
“Don’t worry. Stay there.”
I looked over at the eddy. It takes experience to understand the mysterious and quixotic nature of river currents. The key is remembering they have three dimensions: length, breadth and depth. Eddies can be particularly treacherous. Their calm surface belies a powerful current that pushes away from land and sucks under the surface. Think whirlpool. It is hard not to panic when you feel such immense forces pulling at your body. Come to think of it, in the natural order of things, humans are lousy swimmers too.
The dog and girl seemed to be staying above water, although the girl was clearly panicked. What she should have done was push the dog away from the wall and towards the main current, where the flow would straighten out and kick them right into the shallow water at the spillover end of the pool. The problem is it’s counter-intuitive to swim towards the strongest part of the current where the water is roaring and churning. It’s loud and scary. So instead, she kept trying to shove the dog closer to shore along the retaining wall, which is the strongest part of the backcurrent.
The girl was a few feet away from me with the dog right beside her. I was standing in water that barely reached mid-thigh but the current was already incredibly strong. Maybe with the woman’s help, I could reach the girl via a human chain. I turned my head back to shore for orientation, and felt my feet slip out from under me.
I barely had time to think, “Oh cr*p” and grab a quick breath, and I was under. I tried to relax and turn towards where I thought the main current was. When I hit foamy water, I swam, kicking hard. Sure enough, in a few seconds I clanged my knee and shin against the boulders. Ouch. I sat up to find myself in barely 2 feet of water.
Thankfully, the girl had managed to swim out as well. I looked at the dog. He seemed calm but clearly he was stuck.
I stood and started calling him towards me, “Come on! Come on! Here boy!”
I energetically gestured with both hands in the universal sign of “come to me.” I was standing much closer to the main current and hoped he would angle towards me enough to get caught in it. He looked at me but didn’t move over. Of course not, since he didn’t know me.
I turned to the girl and shouted above the roaring water, “I need to you to walk over towards me. Come this way. We need to get your dog to swim towards me.”
I started calling again, and gesturing. The girl didn’t understand and started calling from her spot, still in line with the powerful backcurrent. The dog looked at me and looked at her. This was only confusing him.
“NO! Come to me and call from here. COME OVER HERE.”
She remained frozen to her spot. I could barely hear her voice, quivering and thin. She was losing strength and more critically, hope. I looked at the dog. I had no idea how long he’d been swimming. Dogs rely on the strength of the social bond within the pack, and look to us humans as the pack leaders. It’s why they make such great companions. Without his owner’s encouragement, he’d soon give up. I watched him. . .paddling, paddling, paddling. I called again. The dog looked over at me, a bit longer glance this time. I felt a heartsickening wrench flash through my gut; I realized I couldn’t bear to watch him drown.
I started a mental inventory of objects at hand. I noticed Molly’s leash draped over my neck, which is where I often carry it in order to keep my hands free. Miraculously, it had stayed in place during my swim. A light bulb went off inside my head. I pulled the leash over my head, folded it over once and held it in my left hand.
“Where’s your leash?!” I shouted at the girl.
She half-turned and pointed somewhere on shore. I couldn’t hear her but clearly it was out of reach. She started to wade totteringly towards the direction she’d pointed.
“NO! Stay here. Forget it!”
I shouted over to the woman, “Do you have your leash?”
“It’s just a tiny one. It’s no good. Sorry.”
I looked back at the dog. Still swimming. That’s good.
The mind is a funny thing. As I stood there thinking about what to do, I noticed I’d lost my hat. I watched as it rapidly traced out the eddy’s circular current. It floated past going clockwise, drifted by the dog and circled back towards me a second time. I reached down, grabbed it and stuffed it into my back pocket. OK, well, at least I saved my hat.
I looked down at Molly’s folded leash in my hand. Four feet of heavy duty nylon strapping. It might be enough. I turned back to the girl.
“How strong are you?” I shouted.
“I’m. . .oh, right now, not very strong. I’m so tired.” She had dark blond hair, was about my height and slightly overweight, not at all athletic. I hoped she was stronger than she looked. I waded over to stand by her.
“That’s OK. Here, take this and hang on tight.” I handed her the loop end of the leash. I was counting on the muscle memory of a familiar task to help her remember to hang on. I took a firm grip of the snap end in my left hand.
The woman on shore watched as I handed the young girl the leash. She had dark hair and looked about my age. She was shorter and much more slender, I’d guess at most 100 pounds. I was the biggest and strongest of the group; all 5’5″ 135 pounds of me. Well, here goes.
“OK, now hold on tight and don’t let go. OK?” I looked at the young girl, holding my gaze until I got eye contact.
She nodded quickly, “OK.”
I looked at the dark-haired woman and nodded. I started wading out. I took a couple steps and turned back to make sure the girl was holding on. In her shock, she was following me into deeper water.
“Stop RIGHT THERE! Don’t move! ” I commanded in my most authoritative voice.
I thrust my forefinger forcefully through the air, as if I was going to ram it all the way through her chest to a place 6 inches behind her.
I bellowed, “DON’T YOU DARE COME OUT HERE. YOU. . . STAY. . . .RIGHT. . .THERE!”
The girl stumbled backwards and half-fell, half-sat in the shallow water.
“NOW. . . .DON’T MOVE. AND DON’T LET GO OF THE LEASH.”
The dark-haired woman seemed to understand what I had in mind. She was saying something, although I couldn’t hear above the roaring of the water. She waved the girl over and grabbed the leash a bit further down. They were set.
I turned and started slowly wading back out towards the dog. The current was grabbing hard at the backs of my thighs. More odd thoughts. The water seemed awfully warm for snowmelt. My feet weren’t even numb, although I’d been standing in water all this time.
I waited for a bit, judging how much further I could go before I lost my footing. Just then, a ripple of current pushed the dog over towards me slightly. I lunged for his collar with my right hand. I felt my feet floating up and the leash go tight in my other hand. I rolled over onto my left side.
I turned my head, “I got him!”
I slipped my right arm around the dog’s chest and felt him stop paddling. Yup, he was tired.
Hand over hand, the woman and girl hauled us to shore against the backcurrent. There wasn’t much I could do to help because the cement wall was slick with algae and I couldn’t get any firm footing. Thinking back, I have no idea how they managed to pull us out. The dog was probably 60 lbs. That’s nearly 200 pounds of waterlogged woman and dog being sucked by thousands of pounds of water.
The dark-haired woman was shouting over encouragement. “How are you doing? OK?” She was awesome.
“Yup, fine! Keep pulling. That’s good! ”
I felt my left knee touch the rocky bottom. I loosened my grip on the dog but immediately tightened up again because he wasn’t even trying to swim. I crawled on one hand and both knees until I felt the dog’s feet push against the bottom. I let go and watched him crawl up the rocks.
I crawled up after him. I reached out for a handhold, and suddenly realized I was reaching for the dark-haired woman’s leg. I pulled back, not wanting to pull her in. She grabbed under my armpit to pull me farther onto dry land.
“It’s OK, go ahead and grab onto me. Are you alright?”
I couldn’t help it, I laughed. “Yes, fine. Thanks. Where’s the dog?”
I looked over and saw him mingling with his furry friends. Too tired to even shake off the water. I stood up slowly and smiled at the woman, “Thanks.”
“I’m so sorry. I can’t swim.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m a pretty good swimmer. But that,” I jerked my thumb back over my shoulder, “is not swimmable. And for god’s sake please don’t ever do what I just did.”
I was soaked from the top of my head to the soles of my shoes. Water was streaming from my hair and down my back. I looked at the girl. She was shaky but smiling.
“Omigod, you’re all wet. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s OK. I’m just glad everyone’s alright. Now, do we have all of our dogs?”
During all the excitement, of course, all the other dogs including Molly had been running back and forth along the boulders. Molly was particularly distressed by my shouting. I caught occasional glimpses of her running into the water and looking at me. At one point she actually jumped in and quickly thrashed back to safe ground. Thank goodness she didn’t follow me.
Suddenly I heard the dark-haired woman gasp, “Oh no!”
I jerked around to see a different dog, another yellow lab mix, leap after a tennis ball that had dropped into the water during our scrambling around. The woman instinctively made a move towards the edge and I put my arm out across her chest. Fortunately, the momentum of the dog’s leap carried him right to the far edge of the eddy. He got the ball into his mouth just as the main current grabbed him.
“Good. See? that’s exactly where we want him.” I kept my arm blocking the way and pointed to the current with my other hand.
The dog looked as though he was one of those fake logs at a waterpark ride. The current literally spit him up over the surging water, where he perched atop a foaming, standing wave for just a moment, before landing on his feet in a foot of water, . . .with the ball still in his mouth. He ran quickly over to us.
I turned back to the girl, “OK. Do we have all of our dogs NOW?”
“Yes. Oh, thank you so much for saving my dog.” The girl was a disheveled mess of sagging clothes and tangled hair.
I gave her a bear hug. “You’re welcome. I’m glad everything turned out alright. So, keep the dogs out of the water, right?”
I turned up the trail and headed back to the car. Amazingly, despite all the people in the park that afternoon, not a single other person showed up throughout this entire adventure. I walked about 30 feet up the trail and met a pair of 20-something men walking towards the pool.
I threw my hands in the air and exclaimed, “Where were you when we needed you?”
“Huh?”
“Never mind. Word of warning. The water’s really high today.” I held out my arms straight so they could see my soaked shirt clinging to my arms.
“Um, OK. Thanks.”
I slogged back to the car. Molly kept close, uncharacteristically subdued. I wasn’t the only one feeling the effects of the post-adrenaline phase. Somewhere along the way, I felt my back pocket and discovered my hat. I pulled it out and put it on my soggy head. A thought came that made me smile. I was too tired to laugh. Nature is wild, wonderful and powerful. And if you don’t show some respect, she will kick your *ss.
When we got to the car I pulled out Molly’s brush. I wasn’t quite steady enough to drive just yet. I knelt down by the car and took my time brushing my best pal from nose to tail. Molly was lying on her side, fully extended, eyes half closed. Dog Heaven must be like this. I clucked out the usual compliments about how smart and gorgeous she was. And complained about what a hairball she was, and spoiled. Slowly, muscle memory brought me back to this world. When I stood up, I saw two small puddles of water in the grass where my knees had been.
Looks like I didn’t get giardia. D*mn, it is wonderful to be alive. . .Your friend in baseball.
Postscript. . .Two public service announcements. . .
One. Please be extra cautious around rivers and streams during the spring melt. People can and do drown in streams as shallow as four feet because they underestimate the force of the current.
Two.I made a choice. One that easily could have ended disastrously. Please do not use my case as any sort of “how-to.” River rescue should be left to fully trained and well-equipped experts.
May 24, 2009 — I love the annual Kid’s Day at the ballpark. Every year, the Bees schedule a morning game and donate tickets to various youth organizations, who ride the bus in from all over the Wasatch Front. This spring, the theme was “S. N. A. P. (Student Neighborhood Access Program)” sponsored by the Utah State Department of Health. Lt. Governor Gary Herbert threw out the first pitch. Bumble and the Jazz Bear were in the house. Every kid got a free snack. The morning was filled with pre-game and in-game festivities, PSAs and promotions. In short, this was one big party. Where you there? . . .Your friend in baseball.
Thursday was one of those days. The kind of gorgeous afternoon when the temperature spiked up into the high-70s. There were a couple dozen cars in the parking lot when I arrived. Not far from the parking lot, Molly and I caught up with a girl accompanied by four dogs, all clustered around her. I’d guess she was around 18 years old.
The dog and girl seemed to be staying above water, although the girl was clearly panicked. What she should have done was push the dog away from the wall and towards the main current, where the flow would straighten out and kick them right into the shallow water at the spillover end of the pool. The problem is it’s counter-intuitive to swim towards the strongest part of the current where the water is roaring and churning. It’s loud and scary. So instead, she kept trying to shove the dog closer to shore along the retaining wall, which is the strongest part of the backcurrent.
