“Aye, There’s the Rub!”

The beat just goes on for South African Springbok and Blue Bull fly half Morné Steyn. This past weekend he took part in his fourth major win of the 2009 season, a veritable rugby grand slam: Super 14 title, a series victory against the touring British Lions, a Springbok victory in the Tri-Nations, and this past weekend in Pretoria, a Currie Cup (The South African National Championship) victory in a thrilling  36-24 win against the Free State Cheetahs.

The blue-clad crowd at Loftus Versfeld had hardly settled into their seats when the Blue Bulls took advantage of some individual brilliance to take a quick  14-0 lead. At one point, they led this match 24-0, but the gritty team from Bloemfontain fought back and more than made a game of this match.

Steyn showed great leadership and poise, along with his tactical acumen. He scored a key drop goal and also hit a monster 50+ meter penalty to keep the Cheetahs at bay. It cannot be underestimated just how much it has to mess with the pysche of an opponenent, when you know that any little penalty like holding onto the ball, going off your feet or from the sides in a ruck from anywhere on your side of the pitch can get punished by giving up three points. Playing in great conditions at altitude only added to the likely conversion of penalties by the Blue Bulls number 10.

Steyn’s great year also mirrored those of teamates Fourie Du Preez, Bryan Habana (in his last game in a Blue Bulls Jersey), Pierre Spies, Bakkies Botha and Victor Matfield, who all got to sample this special vintage of a year with a rare grand slam of international club and national team victories.

The scary thing for Blue Bulls and Springbok opponents is that he will only get better, and by the 2011 World Cup, should be at the height of his game.(Barring injuries, of course)

It’s been a very busy month, between my wife healing up from her concussion, and going back to phone triage through the Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota. I still pick up at least two shifts a month on the Spinal Cord Injury/Disorder’s unit at the VA Medical Center in Minneapolis.

To say work has been busy would be an understatement on the order of saying that Morné Steyn has been a decent fly-half for the Blue Bulls and Springboks.

The health care workplace has been nothing short of insane this past month-due in no small measure to the H1N1 Virus (Sometimes called “The Swine Flu”). Every night at work, we are so busy, that we have patients waiting anywhere from two to 8 hours for a phone triage nurse to get back to them to go through their or their child’s symptoms(And this, after my work hired several new nurses to man the phones). In the world of phone triage, handling over 50 calls a night was a busy night-about 6 an hour with the odd bathroom and snack break. This past two weeks, I have been averaging over 70 calls per 8 hour shift.

It has been the perfect storm brewing: many people in Minnesota were already getting flu symptoms back in early September, there are a lot of people with flu-like illness out there, but in my opinion the biggest driving force has been the media in the US, to say nothing of the media here in the Twin Cities, which has parents absolutely white with fear that the minute their child has the sniffles, they are going to die after news of a person who died of flu complications hits the airwaves(Most fatalities, by the way, the person had an underlying health issue). Add all of this together, and it has made the perfect Halloween season witch’s brew of panic here in the upper Midwest. As crazy as it has been at work, the people I really feel sorry for are the nurses and doctors working in the packed Emergency Rooms and Urgent Cares, who are having to deal with this mass of coughing, sneezing and febrile humanity. The thing is, most people don’t need to be going to the ER. Sure, there are people who are having respiratory distress symptoms who should be there, but most people don’t realize that this is a VIRUS-antibiotics don’t work. There is an antiviral drug called Tamiflu, but contrary to what some parents think, it is NOT a cure-it should help decrease the severity of the symptoms and may lesson the flu by a day to a day and a half.

The people who SHOULD be on the Tamiflu are people within the first hours of onset of flu-like symptoms(Fever, cough, sneezing, sore throat, headache, bodyaches are the most common) are people under the age of two, people with diminished immune symptoms and chronic illnesses like asthma, heart problems and diabetes and pregnant women(Women’s immune systems take a hit when they are pregnant)-to name a few. For most healthy people, it’s a question of giving over the counter medicines for fever and bodyaches, pushing fluids and riding the flu out.

The one thing that people are forgetting in these panicked times is that the fatality rate of H1N1 influenza is THE SAME as regular seasonal flu.

I guess that I should not complain, I am not actually having people cough all over me like those in the ER’s, UCC’s and clinics, and as one of my co workers pointed out during a particularly busy evening this week: “At least we have job security”. A sliver lining to think about during these tough times.

It’s been a tough flu season, but to try to put this into some level of historical perspective, I would strongly recommend the book “The Great Influenza” by John M. Barry. This is a book that dealt with the great Influenza Pandemic of 1918-19. (This flu killed more American Soldiers than German bullets and artillery during WWI) If you read this book, it gives a whole level of perspective to the current flu season that we are having.

I used a little of my birthday money to get John Carlin’s book, “Playing the Enemy-Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation.”

I strongly  recommend this book. It’s not so much a rugby book, it’s really a bit of history with rugby as a very important supporting character.

John Carlin interviewed many of the important figures from diverse backgrounds as Nelson Mandela, François Peinaar, ANC political figures, De Klerk, Viljoen, Mark Andrews,  Bernard, and Louis Luyt-among others.

The thing that really struck me in reading this book was just HOW close South Africa very easily could have descended into chaos and civil war-particularly after the assassination of Chris Hani. Unlike US President Barack Obama’s recent awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize, President Mandela REALLY earned his Nobel Peace Prize. When you think of how Mandela had to win the hearts and minds of Afrikaners and members of his own ANC, it was an amazing, and tenous balancing act. For most black South Africans, rugby was the white man’s game, and even more than that, the game of the Afrikaners who wanted to keep the status quo of the Apartheid system. For white South Africans, they had a very real fear of the unknown of what would happen when the ANC achieved power.  Mandela used the 1995 Rugby World Cup as a way to try to unite his nation in very stressful times. Carlin weaves amazing images of Mandela wearing the Springbok Jersey, of other black South Africans cheering for the Springboks, of this mostly white team singing the new national anthem, Nkosi Sikelel iAfrika, whith real emotion, and of the mostly white crowd at Ellis Park singing the Zulu song “Shosholoza”-a miner’s song more associated with black fans at soccer games.

Mandela used the game of rugby at the 1995 Rugby World Cup as sort of a carrot on the stick to create his vision of a multi-racial South Africa united under a new flag and a new spirit of forgiveness and redemption. “Playing the Enemy” is a fantastic story of perseverance and the power of the human spirit to overcome obstacles. It’s a great read that I think rugby fans and students of history will both enjoy.

I am 49 years old today. I have a lot to think about on  this , the beginning of my last year of being in my 40’s.  I count my blessings that I am in good health(Hope to be off the blood thinner Coumadin so I can play rugby next year), I am happily married, I have two great kids, a fantastic grandson, a phenomenal daughter-in-law-to-be in Andrea(My son proposed to her last week, and she accepted), I have a job(which has been insane thanks to the H1N1 influenza, and the media scaring the shit out of parents) and it’s a sunny, fantastic fall day here in Minnesota-something we have not had too much of this October in the upper midwest.

I guess age is relative. I don’t feel any different, but when I look into the mirror, I see a few more wisps of grey hair. I guess maybe that is part of the secret is that at the heart of the matter, I still am a kid at heart-albeit a prop-sized kid.

I confess that this week has found me more stressed out and in a much more foul mood than usual. I think between the stress involving my wife’s accident, financial costs related to it, the time crunch having to drive my wife to multiple appointments every day, very busy and stressful evenings at work, and a damp, grey and wet October where we actually have had two snowfalls in the Twin Cities (Even for us, mid October is really early to get snow)…well, I’ve been in a shitty state of mind. It took a cartoon to remind of the addage from the movie “The Life of Brian”: Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.

Some things in life are bad
They can really make you mad
Other things just make you swear and curse.
When you’re chewing on life’s gristle
Don’t grumble, give a whistle
And this’ll help things turn out for the best…

If life seems jolly rotten
There’s something you’ve forgotten
And that’s to laugh and smile and dance and sing.
When you’re feeling in the dumps
Don’t be silly chumps
Just purse your lips and whistle - that’s the thing.

So always look on the bright side of death
Just before you draw your terminal brea th

Life’s a piece of shit
When you look at it
Life’s a laugh and death’s a joke, it’s true.
You’ll see it’s all a show
Keep ‘em laughing as you go
Just remember that the last laugh is on you.

And always look on the bright side of life…
Always look on the right side of life…
(Come on guys, cheer up!)
Always look on the bright side of life…
Always look on the bright side of life…
(Worse things happen at sea, you know.)
Always look on the bright side of life…
(I mean - what have you got to lose?)
(You know, you come from nothing - you’re going back to nothing.
What have you lost? Nothing!)
Always look on the right side of life…

Words to live by.

After my previous downer posting, I thought that I should comment on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decision to add golf(no real surpise) and rugby 7’s to the 2016 Summer Olympic Games that will be held in Rio de Janiero, Brazil. The final yes vote was a very pleasant surprise to me-Interestingly enough, rugby actually had more yes votes than golf.

For people who are curious about my feelings about the place where the 2016 Olympics will be held, on the one hand, I was a bit disappointed in that Chicago did not even make it out of the first round of voting. President Obama’s political home base is a 6 and a half hour drive from Minneapolis-it would have been really cool having the games in my wife’s home town. The other part of me feels like South America was way overdue to host an Olympic Games. South America has not hosted a really major sporting event since the very controversial 1978 FIFA World Cup in Argentina-and has never hosted an Olympic Games.(Mexico, believe it or not, is in North America) President Obama tried to use his international star power(Witness his recent Nobel Peace Prize…can somebody please tell me WHAT he did exactly to earn such an award?) to sway and schmooze IOC  delegates-to no avail. I think in the end, It was a brave decision to bring the Olympics to South America.

I think the only downer about venue, is that it is going to be a really hot place in which the rugby players will running, rucking and mauling.

The one thing that the bid for rugby’s inclusion re-instatement into the Olympic games  had going for it, is that some traditional  Olympic powers: the USA, China, Russia, Germany, Japan, South Korea are minor players in the game of rugby worldwide(Although Japan is making big strides and getting the 2019 Rugby World Cup will continue to grow the game there). Teams like Samoa and Fiji may actually have their flags flown on an Olympic podium…fans outside of the rugby community may actually get to see these flags for the first time ever. A lot of teams who have succes in the rugby world are teams that don’t always rack up a lot of medals in the Olympics.

The other thing that doing a 7’s tournament has going for it is the format:

It will be a four-day tournament involving 12 men’s and 12 women’s teams. Each country will bring 12 players to the games.

Of note, the traditional 15-a-side game of rugby was played at the Olympics in 1900, 1908, 1920 and 1924.

Traditional rugby fans may be shocked to find out that The United States won the last rugby gold medal at the 1924 Paris Games, beating France 17-3 in a contentious final that included fighting in the stands and police protection for the Americans as they left the field.

The inclusion of rugby in the Olympics will only continue to help the growth and develpment of the sport in the US. It’s a pretty safe bet that the suits with the IRB were doing their version of a happy dance, just like the Rio citizens were doing with their bit of good news.

Wow….It has been awhile since I have been able to blog. it’s not for a lack of news in the world of the Oval ball:Rugby was added as an official sport in the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio. (The Seven’s version of the game), we had the first weekend of Heineken Cup matches this weekend(with some interesting results, not the least of which was Perpignian’s shocking loss in Treviso and Toulouse’s big win against Sale), as well as locally, my Metropolis club lost a game to Pearl City on the snowy field at Columbia Park( Yup, the earliest snowfall in the Minneapolis/St.Paul area in 24 years)

You know, when you watch sports news on sites like Sky TV, Setanta, or ESPN, you hear the term “Concussion” tossed about like a simple flesh wound. This is particularly true in sports like American Football, rugby, boxing and mixed martial arts. Here in the U.S, University of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow played this past weekend against Louisiana State Universtity(LSU) in the Gators 13-3 win. This win happening a couple of weeks after Tebow suffered a concussion in a game against the University of Kentucky.

Two weeks ago, while I was out in Colorado visiting my mom,  my wife was on her way to a charity event when our minivan got hit from behind while my wife was at a stop light by an elderly driver. The crash totally caved in the rear hatch of our minivan and knocked the rear seats loose. The guy had to be going at least 40-45 miles an hour to do that kind of damage. My wife initially was seen in the emergency room at North Memorial Medical Center for back and neck injuries.

I got back from Colorado late on Sunday night. I thought that my wife’s mental and verbal sluggishness was due to fatigue. On Monday morning, I noticed that my wife was having a hard time tracking simple conversation, had thick speech and was having trouble with fine motor movement. I brought her back to the emergency room, as she obviously was not quite right. She was diagnosed with post concussion syndrome, and has missed work the last 2 weeks, and will miss this week as well, under the orders of the neurologist who is following her.

I have worked with head injury patients in my work as a nurse. I have to say that living with somebody with TBI(Truamtic Brain Injury) has been a real eye-opener. My wife is doing better than she was-but what really strikes me is that as messed up as my wife is with one concussion, I know that there are proffessional rugby  and American Football players with multiple head injuries and concussions. I still don’t know what the long term prognosis is going to be for my wife, if she will be OK to drive a car or do her job as a funeral director…what about professional athletes with their head injuries? There was a recent study here in the US that showed a very stroing link with head injuries suffered by NFL players and with Alzheimers later in life.

I guess my point in this posting, is that there really is no such thing as a “minor” concussion, and it’s something that really needs to be taken seriously by coaches of rugby players and American football coaches.

Awhile back I did a posting about Maanihera, the young man from New Zealand for whom I am his AFS Liaison. Well, Maani made the sports section of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The young man who is a flanker playing rugby back in the North Island is among the leaders in the state of Minnesota in tackles and sacks playing American football at South High School in Minneapolis. Pretty heady stuff for a young man who had not seen an American Football until a month and a half ago.

http://www.startribune.com/sports/preps/63205227.html?elr=KArksi8cyaiUeyD8_o8cyaiUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUU

Way back when I signed up for vacation time for 2009 with my job at the VA Medical Center, I had hoped to play in the Aspen Ruggerfest in September. More than a few members of my Metropolis Rugby club have been out there, and they assured me that a good time is had by all. I was able to get two weeks off in September, but since I have been on the blood thinner Coumadin since May, any contact sports are out for me-hopefully I can be off them so that I can get a run in some games next year.

Since I still had the time off from work, I decided that since I have not seen my mom in two years, it might be a good idea to go back out to where she lives in Montrose, Colorado to pay her a visit. When I last went to see her two years ago, she had a car that was barely running. I rented a car that had the proviso that nobody could smoke in the car. As my mom smokes to a level that would make a French sailor shake his head, it meant that we had to stop. A lot. Many, many times…all of this so my mom could grab a heater every 10-15 minutes. When we drove down to the Ute Mountain Casino and Resort in Tawoac, Colorado; what should have been a 3 hour trip, took 5 hours. I thought that I was going to lose my mind.

My mom has not been in the best of health the last couple of years. The farthest that she has gone recently has been to Ridgeway, about a half hour drive from Montrose.  I have to admit that I like the drive from Montrose to the Four Corners area for it’s scenary. It can be a scary drive with some of the hairpin turns near Telluride, but the beauty of the mountains giving way to desert rock formations and landscapes, is a very striking sight, indeed.

My mom had a new car-well, a used Cadillac, but it was in great shape for the drive. The great thing with this, was that my mom was able to smoke in her own car(meaning I had to have my window partially open for most of the trip), this meant fewer stops, so what took us 5 hours of stop and go driving two years ago, took just a bit over 3 hours. The Caddy really was a smooth ride-I can see why mom LOVES her car.

I did not think that there would be much autumn color in south west Colorado, but I was very pleasantly surprised to see the mountains and hills ringed with bright autumn foliage. The day temps were in the high 70’s in Montrose, high 80’s down by Cortez and the Four Corners area.

I don’t play cards or black jack like my mom, but I was lucky enough to have a chance to chat up a variety of people who were in the Casino: a Navajo social worker, a Ute who does pottery and raises quarter horses, a Navajo grandfather looking after his lively 12 month old granddaughter(This was in the Hotel lobby, not in the Casino) and a young Navajo fighter  from Farmington, New Mexico who was at the Casino for some mixed martial art fights that were to take place on Saturday.

My mom has a new member in her house since I last saw her: she has a mixed-breed dog named Misha that my mom inherited from one of her regular poker-player buddies. Misha, who just adores my mom, is a great watchdog and an even better companion for my mom, who talks to her just like somebody would speak to a best friend or mate. I had to get on my mom for overfeeding her dog, and took Misha out for walks, along with my sister Wendy’s dog, Dakota.(Misha is on the left, Dakota on the right) I sometimes wonder if Misha has the signs of black lung yet from being around my mom’s incessant cloud of tars and nicotine’s.

Still, it was somewhat sobering seeing that my mom is really having some health issues(which her 3 pack a day smoke habit does not help). She’s 70 years old now..it does not seem that long ago when I was giving her a hard time about turning 40. She has no interest in health advice from her son the nurse in cutting back on smoking or changing anything in her life. Part of living in Colorado away from all 4 of her kdis means that she is going to do what she wants, when she wants it, and how often she wants to do it.

It was a good visit, with some great scenery, but it really made me wonder just what will be the circumstances of my next trip to see her: will it be a social visit, or will it involve making decisions about her health or last wishes if my mom cannot make them for herself?

This past weekend I took part in another one of those most American of activities: My high school reunion. In my case, it was my 30 year high school reunion of the class of 1979 from Cooper High School, in New Hope, Minnesota.

My class was the last of what was called “The Baby Boomers”, those born in this country from 1946-1961. We had roughly 775 kids in my graduating class. Cooper High school now has maybe 250 to 300 kids in their graduating classes now, tops, to put this into some kind of modern perspective.

High school is a time that conjures up all kinds of memories. I know for a lot of people, high school is kind of like Turkish prison in that you just hope that the time passes quickly before you get on with the real world. For other people, usually the star athletes(called Jocks, as in jock-strap), high school WAS the high-water mark in their lives, not too unlike the Bruce Springsteen song, Glory Days.  In our world, there were all sorts of cliques and sub-divisions of humanity: Jocks, theater-geeks, “brains”, burn-outs(as the name implied, those who smoked pot and did a variety of pharmaceuticals) and almost everybody in-between. In my case, I was able to walk amongst several worlds, as I had friends in almost every group-maybe that’s how I got elected as Student Council President. I played American Football(middle guard, or nose tackle on defense-that’s me in the white wearing #60 in this page from my yearbook), wrestled and ran track.(The half mile…yeah, that was quite a few pounds ago) I was a good student, and was always willing to to raise a ruckus and have a good time while attending other school sporting events. It was really a good time to have gone to Cooper, most of our sports were really good, and we had soome really good teachers, and I went to school with some great people. Since I did not have such a jaundiced view of school, like so many people, this means that I am one of those rare individuals whe really enjoy my class reunions and seeing how everybody is doing.

My only downer during high school, was that since I did not get my drivers license while in high school, it meant that dating was pretty non-existent for me: It’s tough to ask somebody out when you have to say, ” Can you drive? I don’t have my license.” Not a great way to score points with the ladies. In retrospect,  it turned out to be a good thing, because it saved me a ton of money and prevented quite a few headaches.

When you get together at these reunions, you see how some people have not really physically changed at all-you can recognize them in a hearbeat. For other people, as the years have changed their hairlines, waistlines and hair color, you have to look at their nametag to realize who they are. The nightmare scenario is when you are talking with somebody who has recognized you, then your spouse comes along, and good manners dictate that you introduce the still unknown person to your spouse.  I was fortunate that I was able to avoid that embarrassing situation on Saturday. Luckily for me, my wife had a party for her work that she had to go on Saturday, so that she did not have to feel like a 5th wheel and be bored to death.

The years have been kind to many of my classmates. I have to say that generally, my female classmates have aged a whole lot better than my male classmates(A few looked better now than when we were IN high school). For others, I can only say that it’s amazing how much alcohol and cigarettes can age a person. Some of my former classmates travelled great distances to get to the reunion: New Jersey, California, Arizona, and Texas were some of the places some of my classmates call home. Me? I did the opposite thing: I went to college in Iowa, and lived in Texas and Illinois before moving back to buy my house…right accross the street from my old high school. It’s like the same instinct that makes fish go back to die in the same stream that they were spawned in.While many of my classmates moved further out to the western or northern suburbs, I’m one of the few who actually had one of my own kids graduate from Cooper, as well. Many of my classmates were on second marriages or divorced. We had a wide range of ages of our kids. I know a couple of people who had kids the summer of 1979, who are now 30. A couple of us, like me and my insurance agent(and former football teammate) Jeff Petersen, are grandparents. I have to say, it’s one thing being a grandparent, I could not imagine HAVING a baby at my age(48), but a couple of my classmates have pre-school aged kids. YIKES!

One thing that you see in some American movies talking about reunions is the one-upmanship, or “Look at how successful I am now!” kind of phenomena. I have to say that I have not really seen that at any of our reunions. The only sad news was that I found out from Saturday, was that one of my football teamates, Tom Fahey, our co-captain and middle linebacker on our football team, recently got killed in a car accident.

Technology has also changed the nature of keeping up with classmates, thanks to the Internet and sites like Facebook. I have actually been able to add a few Class of ‘79 members to my friends list since Saturday. There is talk about doing a 35 year reunion in 5 years. That sounds like a long time, but time marches on. It did not seem that long ago when I see my classmates at our 25 year reunion.

Ah nostalgia…gotta love it.