We had a track team but no track at my high school, Randolph-Henry in Charlotte County, VA, and I was so skinny the coaches never paid much attention anyway, well, not much positive attention. Football, basketball, and baseball were the sports there. I did get a notion around 6th grade that I would like track and field, so I got a book from the Scholastic Paperback Book Club called How To Star In Track And Field. I didn't know what I was doing, so of course I picked high jump. I made the bars from bamboo and landed on cushions from the glider. Most times I came down on them. This was back before the "Fosbury flop". It's no wonder I have had lots of injuries over the years.

I went to William and Mary for college and my sophomore year I lived on Camm 3rd. Camm is a dorm across from then Cary Field, now called Zable Stadium. Most of the guys on my hall were on the swim team or the track team. A friend encouraged me to go out for the fencing team so I did, and I made it. I remember one afternoon that fall looking out my window over at the track and thinking I would like to run. I had been very self conscious about being so thin in high school, but there was a real acceptance for who you were at W&M, and I lost that self consciousness there. Hell, Camm 3rd had the first streakers on campus back then, and I was one of those who streaked several times. Anyway, I went over to the track and ran. Well, I ran as best as I could. It took me till the end of the week to get up to a mile. Once I got there, though, it seemed to come easy. I ran everyday to help with endurance for fencing. I ran a couple of meets - the 8 man mile relay at the ICAAAA meet and a two miler in intramurals. I did about 12 minutes in the two mile despite being up most of the night before breaking every training rule there is. Yeah, I wish I could do undergrad school again and pay more attention to the classes this time. I remember having a glass of Tang mixed with powdered protein and a couple of Tylenol just before walking across the street to the track for the two mile run. Running was fun. Friends and I would go out anytime of the day or night to run around campus or DOG street or the neighborhoods around campus or even to Jamestown. I sometimes wore 2.5 pound weights on each ankle so they could keep up. It was also during that time that I met Rick Platt. Rick used to come to fencing practice. He was working on getting his skills up to try out for the Olympics in the modern pentathlon. He also gave me an application for the Peninsula Track Club. Regretfully I didn't follow through. Somewhere back home I still have that application.

After graduation, most all of my friends moved away, I started graduate school here, started work, got married, and lived in an apartment that was in an area not really conducive to running. I pretty much quit. Other life things happened - my father was in the hospital for two years and I was going back and forth to Richmond everyday. There were times when I started to run again, but didn't stick with it for more than a week or two at a time. Injuries to the knees and lower back mounted up over the years. I found out about ten years ago that one leg is shorter than the other and the imbalance has ground away at my lower back and a couple of disks have fused on their own. I don't have the range of motion I used to. I do have orthotics and a lift now, and that has made a great difference.

I worked for many years as a counselor at a mental health center, and the last year I was a counselor, many of my clients had been in abusive relationships and/or had been sexually abused as children. They tend to have such resilience and strength and creativity. They were my favorites to work with. In late '99, my mother was being treated for cancer, and my wife was in kidney failure and waiting for a transplant. My mother beat cancer, and a friend of my wife's donated a kidney. I was tested but was disappointed when my blood type was not a match. Sandra, the donor, was literally a lifesaver. They were an inspiration. At the same time I was working with a client who was in an abusive relationship. She and her kids are pretty amazing. I was real concerned that she would be injured again or even killed. In helping her to rediscover strengths in herself, I began to rediscover them in me. (She is doing well now.) I began to write again, play guitar and sing again, take photos of nature again, began studying Buddhism and Taoism again, and I set a goal to run the Mental Health 5K. I had helped out a couple of times at that race. I really enjoyed it, but it was also difficult to watch the runners and not be a part of that. I have tried to stay fit over the years. I went to Nautilus and to the Rec Center. I stayed in touch with Rick that way, too. At Homecoming a couple of years before, I had gotten the email addresses of two of my best friends from Camm 3rd - Kevin Rumble and Keith Havens, and we stayed in touch. Kevin races with the Asheville Track Club and Keith (who was the swim coach at W&M for awhile) is the swim coach for Albion College in Michigan. They would run the Mental Health 5K with me. I wanted to do that before I hit 45. I had been stationary biking and NordicTracking and using a Health Rider and a rowing machine for some time. Before race day I had only run about three or four times, the farthest being about a mile and a half. It hurt physically to run. But I did it. Kevin talked me through it, taught me how to vector a course, how to "reel people ahead" in and pass them. Keith and Kevin let me cross the finish line first as I sprinted to it as best as I could. I did a 28:59.

After that, I kept at it. I track what I do every day on a calendar. I measured the streets in my neighborhood, which are good for running. I count laps to get the distance I want. It is discouraging at times that I am still nowhere nearly as fast as I was almost 30 years and 30 pounds ago. Back then I could get up to speed and increase distances very quickly with minimal effort. This struggle now is teaching me patience. The following year I tried too much too soon and got injured after running one race. I had already entered three, and I intended to run the Seafare 8 K in Seattle that summer. Due to a groin pull I had to be content with watching it. However, the pull was aggravated when I had to bolt down about 40 flights of stairs when the fire alarm went off in my hotel. So I took it easier after all that. (I do take my running shoes with me when I travel now and have gotten to run on Maui. You get a different perspective of a place when you run it.) That fall, Kevin came up from Asheville and we did the Homecoming run. I did the slowest time I have ever done in a 5K (just over 30 minutes), but it felt good to be back out there.

The following year I was able to run 17 races and despite an ankle injury, I got faster as the year went along. I did Buckroe on my birthday with the winds so heavy that they blew over the port-a-john and the stage. I went down to Asheville and did the Thomas Wolfe 8K and up to Varina to run the Battlefield Half Marathon on Labor Day. I hadn't been able to do the long runs I needed to because of the ankle and blisters and black toenail, and I didn't decide till the last minute to do it. It was a beautiful day and a beautiful course. I went out too fast and hit a wall about mile 9 going up a hill into the wind. That was the first time in a race I ever walked. I tried never to walk even on fun runs. I remember the one time prior to that when I had to walk. I had been playing volleyball back around 1982 as a part of Recreation Therapy at the residential treatment center where I worked and stretched or tore a muscle in my abdomen. I went out running later that day and aggravated it and was just about bent over double when the pain hit. But I did finish the Battlefield and I finished it running. That was a strange feeling to be running as hard as you could and folks were still passing. I remembered Kevin saying it is better to pass than be passed - always start slow. I remembered it a little too late. Also at the start of the year, I decided to use my web space I had at my ISP by putting together a web site to help me keep up with the local running schedule. I did it on the web so I would have ready access to it wherever I had Internet access. It fairly quickly evolved to a site to give information to runners in the Williamsburg area, then into the Colonial Road Runner's web site as I began to get results and articles from Rick. I am still hoping that people will use the message board and discussion list more as well as the other space and features available on the groups' sites, and add to the descriptions of places to run locally. I really enjoy reading the message boards on the other running clubs' sites. When I travel now, I always use the web to find places to run wherever I am going before I even leave. By the end of 2002, the injuries were better, I was training for the marathon, and I did a 23:20 in the 5K at Governor's Land. That really felt good.

After the Thomas Wolfe 8K in Asheville last year, I decided that I wanted to run a marathon before I hit 50. I have wanted to run one since I was 19. I even tried to figure how to do one on my own back then by running from my hometown of Keysville up Route 40 to Farmville and back to Hampden-Sydney, but I never could get the logistics down. I decided on Shamrock for several reasons: it is close to Williamsburg, the course is pretty flat, the entry fee was reasonable and you could enter right up till race day, and it was in the spring. If I didn't make it in that one, I would still have Richmond, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, and Shamrock again before my 50th birthday. I bought several books just on marathons - Hal Higdon's Marathon: The Ultimate Training Guide, Joe Henderson's Marathon Training, and Marathon Manual, by Cathy Shipton and Liz McColgan. I also went over material on Jeff Galloway's web site - "Run Injury Free." I re-read Running Within, by Jerry Lynch and Warren Scott in its entirety and parts of Higdon's Run Fast, Jack Heggie's Running With the Whole Body, Thomas Miller's Programmed to Run George Sheehan's Running and Being, and Jean Couch's Yoga For Runners. I read "Runners World" magazine and message boards on running club web sites. I subscribed to running electronic newsletters. I constantly consulted Kevin for running advice by email. I put together a booklet with a map of the Shamrock course on the cover and several articles by Jeff Galloway. I took all my race times from last year and used a race calculator to get some idea of possible times. They ranged from 3:43:47 to 4:34: 29. I also noticed that as the distances got further, the predictions were less accurate, and my actual time would most likely be slower. [I put a course map of Shamrock on the wall above my desk at work. That was a constant reminder of the goal. I work with a couple of runners, one who has run some races with me, and we talk about running a lot.] I also used a computer spreadsheet program to put together a grid of morning and evening trainings that would cover from November right up to race day, complete with a day to day countdown. The first week of training was in Tucson, AZ. I love it there, and I knew the hotel where I was staying had a nature trail with a hill, so each day I would run that repeating as many times as I had to to get the distance I needed. I remember a guy shouting out to me one day asking if I was just running or if I was training for something specific. I called back over my shoulder that I was getting ready for a marathon. I could hear him going, "Weee Heeee!" That was like the first cheer, and it was pretty cool. My wife, Shelley, and I also did a lot of hiking there for further training. And I bought a couple of Yoga Journals and started to do the poses in the athlete's section, which were geared to running in those particular issues. I also took to watching what track coverage I could find on TV to try to watch the form of the runners. I really like watching Hicham El Guerrouj. Sometimes when I run I will have rhymes like the military marching lines (like Billy Murray in "Stripes" or the sarge in "Full Metal Jacket") or just mantras going in my head. One goes, "Wapoosh El Guerrouj, Run Easy, Run Free." Wapoosh is a word a 14 year old I know made up for me when she found out I was doing this. Anything with rhythm. Sometimes it is just counting steps in my head - "one two, one two", and that settles me and gets me focused on arm swing and stride and controlling leg turnover with the arms, and tends to take away whatever nausea I may get when I drink a lot at a water station. Music goes through my head a lot, too. Music has gotten me through this life. Sometimes when I just need to get calm, I play and sing. I also used thoughts when I was getting back into running like imagining that a street light was the moon (I generally run about 5 AM because of work hours) and would think of the early Apollo missions where the moon's gravity would draw the craft closer conserving energy and fuel for the craft, and then they would sling shot around the moon and get slung back towards earth. I would be the space craft and the light would draw me in and then sling shot me past. I didn't use that in the marathon, but there were a couple of times I pictured helium balloons picking my feet effortlessly up and moving them along. I tried to have a smooth stride with minimum effort maximum output. I said that to myself a lot during the marathon. About November of last year, I entered a fitness program at work that was sponsored by York County and had to track the time I worked out and report it each week. That was added incentive.

The weather cooperated up until the last few weeks. On the day of my scheduled 26 mile run, it snowed and sleeted. I ended up shoveling snow for 2 hours. I also NordicTracked for an hour, stationary biked for an hour and lifted with a BowFlex for a little over an hour. I was still concerned that I missed that last long one, but there wasn't time to make it up. I did the Colonial Half Marathon as a tune up, and to see how it compared to the Battlefield. I did it faster with less effort and felt great the whole way through, going faster in the second half than the first despite the wind. I then did the Swamp Run as a jog and to again get used to running with people and in race conditions again. I was concerned afterwards as to how my shoes would be after they dried out because I was wearing the shoes designated for Shamrock. (They were fine.) My last 10 miler I felt so great I did it much faster than intended and got a small blister, which healed quickly and nicely, but still I think it caused me to take it easier the last couple of weeks before Shamrock, which was a good thing. Each day I read from Henderson's book, his guide and thoughts for that day, and from the daily passages of 365 Tao and 365 Zen.

I didn't do much different with my diet. I became a vegetarian on March 15, 1990 (so the Shamrock date had that significance for me, too.). I did increase calories as workouts increased and had about six meals a day, and included more fruit. I also increased liquid intake. A few days after the Colonial 3 Miler in 2002 I developed a kidney stone. I ran 4.4 miles with it the first morning, but was out a couple days after that. I think the running did help me to get rid of it quickly. I stated drinking lots of lemonade and switched from grape juice to grapefruit juice after that. I experimented with what to eat the mornings of long runs so that I would know what would do well on race day. I ended up eating two and a half Harvest Power Bars - oatmeal raisin flavor. I had read that raisins help with recovery if you eat them just before a workout. I also had 12 ounces of Accelerade to drink. (After races and after long runs, I also drink 12 to 16 ounces of Endurox, and I generally feel pretty good the next day). The final week before the race I made it a point to have pasta every day. The night before, I had spaghetti with marinara sauce at Doughboys. Had it again the night of the race. I also started using GU during long runs last fall and liked it. Then I read on the Shamrock message board that Carb Boom would be used at Shamrock, so I looked for it so I could try it to check its effect on my stomach. Couldn't find any at a store in Williamsburg, so Kevin sent me some up from Asheville he got at the same store where I got the shoes I wore for the marathon - Jus Running.

I ran the Colonial Half Marathon as a warm up a few weeks before. That felt great. I practiced the walk breaks at the water stations and Carb Boom intake. I also did a negative split running the second half into the wind. I bettered my time from the Battlefield Half Marathon, but at the end of this one, passed 113 people in the last couple of miles, instead of being passed. The week before, I ran the Swamp Run in the mud and muck. The mire helped my right knee feel better, but then my right hip started to ache. The day before Shamrock I wasn't sure I was even going to be able to run it. I walked to loosen it up, used the Stick extensively, and put a heating pad on it for an hour. It felt fine the morning of the marathon. I was also a little paranoid the last couple of weeks about catching a cold. Bronchitis was going around. I didn't want to work for months and then get sick at the last minute and not be able to do it. But I know those things happen and didn't sweat it too much. I was wondering, too, if Bush would attack Iraq before the Ides of March and the race would be canceled, especially since part of it is on Ft. Story grounds.

Shelley and I got a room at the Double Tree next door to the Pavilion so we would be right by the start line. I discovered in Asheville how nice it is to stay right by the start - you can rest a little longer, you don't have to worry about traffic, and you don't have to worry about a line at the port-a-john. I slept pretty well the night before, had a couple of race dreams - trying to find the course in one. I watched from my window as the walkers started and loved the music - Dire Straits' "Walk of Life" and The Proclaimers' "I'm Gonna Be" as they called, "I Would Walk 500 Miles." I had been checking the weather forecast several times a day for two weeks and still had trouble deciding what to wear that day. Ended up with shorts and a singlet, then put on loose tights and a long sleeved tee. None of it was green, and the singlet was orange. You can't wear orange with no green to offset it for anything to do with Ireland. I had pondered that ahead of time, too. A couple of days before the marathon, I remembered how Irish brigades in the Civil War wore sprigs of evergreen pinned to their hats. The morning we left for the Beach, I cut a sprig of pine from a tree in my front yard and Saturday morning just before start time, I pinned it to my racing hat. And I wore a Celtic knot earring. The Celtic knot is one of my favorite symbols - no beginning and no end. And I decided what to wear - singlet and shorts and the long sleeved shirt and pants. I heard one guy say he changed four times that morning because of the changing weather report. A guy from the Annapolis Track Club left the building when we did then immediately went back inside to change when he got an outside weather check. There were times in the run when it felt chilly, usually in the shade, and I was glad for the long sleeves. In the sun, though, I was pushing the sleeves up, and wishing I was in shorts and singlet. Then I would hit another shady spot.

As I got ready that morning, the song running through my head as "God, Part 2" from U2's Rattle and Hum, sort of a Rock and Run thing. I just tried to focus on the moment and stay calm. I made sure I put on the Body Glide and Vaseline on my toes and fitted my feet carefully into my shoes. One thing I have learned is that you can't over emphasize the importance of the shoes. We went down to the start area not long before we were due to line up. I did pretty minimal stretching in the room and figured the first few miles would be the warm up. I wanted to conserve as much energy as possible. My number was 71 and when I heard that runners with bib numbers below 100 were seeded and could start up front, I figured it must be only because I was on the CRR team. I signed up for the team to give me even more incentive. I was thinking though, that there would be at least 6 or 7 guys on the team and my time wouldn't matter so much, I just had to finish. When I filled out my entry form (which I kept till the last couple days before the fee went up to see how I was doing before putting up the money), I put 5-18-54 as my predicted time. I had no idea what to put really (just wasn't sure about those prediction calculators), but the time blanks were right below the birthday blanks, so I figured, hey, I'll run my birthday. And I hoped I would do it a little faster. So I stayed at the back of the pack where I most always start. The speakers welcomed us, and one (I think the mayor of VA Beach) gave us the Irish blessing, "May the road rise to meet you and the wind always be at your back." (As it turned out, the breeze was sometimes in my face, but felt good, and on that flat course, it looked like the road was always rising to meet me.) I got really pumped when U2's "Beautiful Day" started to play. U2 is my favorite band and has been for a long time. At start time it was 40 degrees and was a beautiful day. We headed out at 7:30 AM to the tune of "Get Ready 4 This," by 2 Unlimited. Shades of ESPN! I started my watch as I crossed the start line and mat. It took over a minute to get there. At the first mile I was already a couple of minutes ahead of the pace I wanted. I wore a wristband to help me keep track. At mile 2, I was pushing towards 4 minutes ahead. The whole time I was telling myself to slow down. For every second too fast at the beginning you will be 5 seconds a mile slower at the end. So I made myself take walk breaks. I take them at the water stations anyway because I have yet to master the art of drinking from a cup and running at the same time. It goes up my nose and in my lungs and down my shirt and sometimes into my eyes, but not much seems to go into my belly. I kept track of when to drink water and when to drink Gatorade, and I had gone to the Carb Boom web site and used their calculator to see when to start taking that and how often. (It seems to work better for me than GU. I am hoping a local store will start carrying it soon.) I also took note of the runners around me who seemed to be going the same pace and kept track of when we went by each other. I looked at the ocean and the people along the way watching and cheering. Many had their dogs along. I made a conscious effort to thank all the volunteers I could as I went by including those at the intersections. There would be no race without them. Almost all my running is alone. Long races are interesting because it is almost like being at a story tellers convention - as you move from group to group you hear all sorts of interesting tales. I was a therapist for about 25 years and part of what I did was helping people change their stories. Listening on the run is amazing to me in some ways. Running to me is like meditation and the outdoors is the temple. Races are like a sangha. I try to remember to run for the sake of the run and not for my own ego. To quote Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: "Any effort that has self-glorification as its final end point is bound to end in disaster. When you climb a mountain to prove how big you are, you almost never make it. And even if you do, it is a hollow victory. In order to sustain the victory, you have to prove yourself again and again in some other way, driven forever to fill a false image, haunted by the fear it is not true and someone will find out. That's never the way… (Those) who reached the mountain probably sensed the holiness of the mountain so intensely that each footstep was an act of devotion, an act of submission to this holiness. The holiness of the mountain infused into their own spirits enabled them to endure…" (If I were running for my ego, I would really be in sad shape. Invariably after almost every race, Rick announces, "And the toughest age group is the men 45-49…" The only time I placed all year was the Carter's Grove 5K. Jim Bates and company were over doing the 8 Miler.) You hear stories but you also help each other. We encourage each other. The more I race the better runner I am. Running also brings out the emotions. As I trained for this and thought about actually running it, there were times on the road when I was laughing and there were times when I teared up. That happened during the race too. I remembered all the encouragement from friends whom I love and who love me and believe in me. They were with me the whole way. I have no brothers and sisters, so I have adopted some along the way, like Kevin and Keith from Camm days, and my sister, Barbara, who encourages me and is an inspiration her own right. Her daughter, Mia, has also encouraged me and is like the kid I never had. I thought of friends I know who have run marathons, especially Debby at the Library with whom I work when I volunteer there. And I thought of a friend who had to learn to walk again after having her back broken. It took months. Somehow she walks with very little feeling in her legs. I think I first believed I would do it when I mentioned Shamrock to her and she said, "Oh, I have no doubt you will do it." I also thought of singer/songwriter, Susan Greenbaum, in Richmond who gave up her day job and is pursuing her dream. I really admire her for that. She is a runner and also encouraged me. (What really amazes me is that she wrote me back after I sent her a fan mail. Pretty cool.) And Shelley told me when I first got started mapping out how to do this that she admired me for this. I don't remember her ever saying she admired me before. I had several people say that later on. The praise felt good, but what I'm thinking is that most anyone could do this. It just takes the follow through. I tried to pay attention to my body the whole way, too. When my right hamstring started to tighten up I heard my yoga teacher's voice tell me to soften that muscle, and it worked. After trying to teach myself yoga off and on since I was about 16, I finally started taking lessons about 2 months ago from fellow CRR member Charlotte Lorentson. She has been great and has worked with me on poses and breathing techniques geared to runners. I also would hear her tell me to breathe if my breathing got out of synch. About mile 8, my throat started to hurt. I have had some problems lately from overdoing one of my yoga stretches, the one where you try to put your chin in the notch at the base of your throat as you tilt your head forward. That made it hard to swallow. I just tried not to panic and not worry about whether it would make it hard to breathe or swallow. Also tried to relax as I swallowed with the water and Gatorade and Carb Boom so that my reflux didn't kick in. I felt like I was going to hiccup once, but again, I concentrated on relaxing those muscles. As I went along and focused elsewhere, it got better. I had read about inexperienced marathoners being more at risk for hypernatremia, so I also watched my water and Gatorade intake, and hit the port-a-johns at about mile 10 and 16. The first one I ran back to when I realized it was open. I didn't want to lose time standing in line. I tried to listen to the sound of my footsteps, I try to run almost silently, so that I am light footed and not banging my legs and feet. As I went along, I noticed that I was holding steady with my time and felt good, I concentrated on when my next walk break would be and to stay slow but not too slow and to keep good from - relaxed, especially the facial muscles. ("Frowns bring you down, smiles take you miles," is one affirmation.) I loved getting to see Ft. Story and the lighthouses, which had a trio of pelicans flying in formation above them as I went between them. I also thought about the soldiers I saw there and wondered what would happen to them if war begins. Had one scary moment when I saw a car skid in the dirt as it was about to turn onto the highway - stopping quickly to miss a woman running he had not seen. I saw her as she came towards me and spoke to her briefly. She was okay. A little after that I heard a car coming up behind me and so I shouted "Car!" to the woman in front who was close to the center lines. She said, "right now I could be a hood ornament," and smiled. She was tired. I started trying to encourage every runner and walker I saw with "way to go." I had been cheering others the whole way. Everybody I knew from CRR was faster than me, so I got to cheer Michael and John and Jim and Jennifer by name as they whizzed by my shoulder after they passed the turn around. That seemed to give me more energy, too. The folks at the water stations were great. Early on, I heard one of the women at one chuckle and ask the two women with her if they thought it would be okay to sexually harass the guy runners. I grinned at her as I took the cup of water and said, "Hellooo!" Got a great blush from her. I was singing when there was music and getting high fives. At mile 20 I felt great and was dancing a little at the last DJ's. "Get Ready 4 This" was playing again. I thought about the 20-mile wall, but I felt great, like the race starts now. A mile or two later, a cheerleader ran with me for a bit and gave me encouraging words. I got more excited as I got nearer the finish - only a 10K to go, only a 5K to go, you are going to do this. I would have to bring myself back to focus. As we came back into town I decided to just start to crank it up a little. I started laughing and singing when I caught the sounds of "Hurts So Good" at the last water station. Those last few miles I started passing people, too. I used the Kevin technique of hooking them with your line and then reeling yourself to them. I made the turn onto 19th and started to stretch out my stride to try to get by everyone between me and the finish line. Okay, sometimes the ego gets involved. I was just determined to get faster as I got closer to the finish. That helped me measure it. Folks were really encouraging along the way then and actually complimenting me on my stride. I turned the corner to the finish to the tune of "The Authority Song" (one of my favorites) and heard my name called over the loud speaker. I was a little teary and had a grin as I sprinted with what I had left. I was wishing that there were another few miles at that point. I felt good and I didn't want it to end yet. Shelley found me pretty quickly. In a way, we ran this together. I couldn't have done this without her support. In the past year she has almost become a fixture at the CRR finish lines with a clipboard in hand. My medal was put around my neck, my picture was taken and I got a bottle of water. I spent most of the next hour or so walking around inside the Pavilion eating Bavarian pretzels and drinking water. Then I got one of the $5 massages. That felt really good. I drank my Endurox when I got back to the room and used the Stick to massage my legs. I did wake up at 1 AM for about an hour and felt like I wanted to go running and was reliving the race in my head. I am going to take it easy for a few days, though. I haven't been sore, just a little tired. And I know my time is really slow, but it was my first marathon and my goal was to finish and to have fun, and if possible have negative splits. My chip time was 4:50:36 and my first half was 2:25:40 and my second half was 2:24:57. After a winter of long slow runs, it will be time to work on speed after I recover. Patience is the key, and remembering that it is possible. The words my father told me so many years ago helped as a guide, "'Can't' can't do anything." You have to try.

Stan Rockwell