If you remember from last year Brainerd was the site of the annual golf trip for me and my buddies. This year there was no golf trip. In life we seem to get reality checks when we least expect them. One of my best buddies earlier in the year felt some discomfort in his knee after playing a few days in a row during a golf tournament. upon visiting his doctor to find out the culprit we were all stunned to hear the reason: there was a tumor in his knee.
After undergoing chemotherapy and knee replacement and seemingly on the road to recovery, he developed a blood infection incurred from the final treatments after the knee replacement and just like that he was gone. One week after developing the infection and putting up a fight he passed away.
Reality check #1.
Unfortunately there would be reality check #2.
The son of another member of our group had battled something called OTC deficiency, Urea cycle disorder. While most of these medical terms are hard to understand, what I know about this is it affects the liver and causes increased ammonia levels in your blood. While I am not a doctor I am now aware that that is not a good thing. On a family vacation he complained of not feeling well and they returned back to Atlanta and took him to the Children's hospital. (The Children's Healthcare group of hospitals in Atlanta is one of the best in the country and also is the benefactor of the Vandergriff Foundation.)
In what must be described as hard to comprehend, about a week or so after checking him into the hospital and undergoing various forms of treatment such as dialysis and various medications my buddy's 11-year-old son suffered a massive stroke relating to the medication ... again, just like that he was gone.
Needless to say there was no golf trip this year. It just didn't seem important. I write this blog as a reminder to all of us, even though our season has not been as successful as we had all hoped in life it can always be worse. As bad as I want to win races and get frustrated when we don't, perspective is very important and I am very lucky to have a wonderful wife, two healthy children, and my own health as well.
So in writing this I say enjoy your friends, and hug your kids every chance you get. Life can change in an instant.
Getting back to the race, we seem to be making some progress, although not as fast as we all would like. In qualifying we struggled a bit, ending up 11th. The car was showing some signs early in the run. We were just having problems getting it to the finish line on all eight cylinders. We studied the data and made some changes to help keep all the cylinders lit and got ready for Sunday. Our opponent would be David Grubnic and the dreaded DHL team. It's always nice to win a round but winning one against the DHL car would be very sweet.
As luck would have it the changes we made worked! The car ran on eight cylinders and we made a great run, and actually ran the top speed of eliminations in the process. A round win and putting the DHL car away, things were looking up.
Our second round opponent would be Cory McClenathan and we headed for the starting line pretty confident. We didn't change anything on our set up and just like that our luck reverts back.
Leaving the starting line with an eight hundreths of a second advantage usually means victory, but for some reason our car decided to smoke the tires down track and we lost. To say I was frustrated would be an understatement!
As we run out of time to get ourselves into the countdown we need to take advantage of these opportunities and for whatever reason this year we are not doing that. I can assure everyone that it is not for lack of effort. The UPS team is a very hardworking bunch, they will not be outworked by anyone and when effort translates into results we have a lot in the bank to collect off of.
We will dust ourselves off and head for Reading.
Thanks for reading,