It's All Dad's Fault

I went trail running Sunday and while I was out there I got to thinking about my father. He introduced me to hiking when I was a little kid back in about 1965. Our family vacationed in Vermont for two weeks every summer. We'd rent a cabin with a dock on Lake Bomoseen or Lake Dunmore and spend two weeks eating off paper plates, fishing and reading all the books we took out of the library before we left New Jersey.

Lake Dunmore From Rattlesnake Point

Before 1965, my sister and I were really too little to do much else. That summer, Dad wanted to try something different, so he decided we would tackle The Moose. Mt Moosalamoo juts a full 2,600 feet into the rarified atmosphere over central Vermont. 

The whole family went on that first expedition. We packed hot dogs and potatoes wrapped in foil into an old Army rucksack. I carried my Army surplus canteen on my kid-sized web belt. We hiked up to Rattlesnake Point, collected sticks for a campfire, burnt our lunch, laid around in the grass and then walked back down.

It wasn’t more than 3.5 miles round trip and less than 1,000 ft of elevation change, but for a seven year old kid, it was grand adventure into the high country. We ate food we cooked over a fire! That was the first time I remember being on a (real) trail in the woods.

My father also introduced me to running – jogging was his preferred term. He invented jogging, you know. In 1964. I’m not kidding. It was on his resume.

Dad got into an exercise routine when he was in the Army during the Korean War and never got out of the habit. Each morning he’d do calisthenics in the bedroom before going to the office. Sit-ups, push-ups, jumping jacks. Like that. Usually he’d finish by running in place for five minutes.

We moved from Staten Island, NY to Morris County, NJ on Norm’s thirty-seventh birthday. November 22, 1963 - it was quite a day. After we moved to Jersey, the running in place morphed into running around the house. Out the bedroom, down the stairs, through the living room, and a couple laps of the dining room table.

One day in that spring of ’64, the morning trot through the house dodging furniture and small children became prosaic, and Norm ran out the front door. He ran down the driveway and up the street. This is how jogging was invented.

Exercise couture was not important to Norm in the infancy of jogging. He usually ran in a pair of old gray dress slacks, a polo shirt and sneakers from Woolworths or A&P. When it was cold he added a sweater and a beret. Sometimes we kids went with him, but he was serious and it was hard for our little legs to keep up so we typically turned back pretty quickly.

He got picked up by the cops, too. They wanted to know what he was running from. He said it was for exercise. They asked for ID. He didn’t have any. They asked him where he lived, put him in the back of the cop car, took him home and turned him over to my mother. It happened twice with the cops. After that he became known as Crazy Norm, the nut who runs through the neighborhood each morning. They laughed at Columbus, too.

So Dad got me started hiking and running, but not trail running. That started in the early 80’s on the Appalachian Trail with Gary Borysewicz and it’s a story for another day.

Sunday I did about seven miles on muddy horse trails out to the west of our place. I was supposed to do nine, but trail running is a lot tougher than road running, and all that freaking mud made it even tougher. Kicked my butt. I have to do a lot more work on the quads. JFK 50 Mile has almost 14 miles of Appalachian Trail and you climb the ridge twice.

All this running and blogging is fun and games for me, but it’s really about reminding everyone to support our Injured Service Members through the Semper-Fi Fund.

The Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are winding down, and many of these great Americans who’ve lost limbs or become critically injured or ill in other ways will need our help for a long time – possibly the rest of their lives. I’m dedicating my running this year to help these service members and their families because we owe it to them and they deserve it. Come on and jump on my bandwagon!