Six feet

What do you do if you have 3 children with bilateral clubfoot? Take them to Dr. Ponseti, and write a web site about the experience.

Bugling elk

This is the time of year when the elk in Rocky Mountain National Park put their mating ritual on display. The dominant bulls gather a harem of cows, and then spend lots of time and energy keeping the young upstart bulls from moving in. The park is home to hundreds, probably thousands, of elk which are habituated to humans and not at all afraid of them since they can't be hunted (legally) in the park. The result is quite a good show, despite the crowds. Two years ago we got really lucky and got to watch a 7-point bull lord over a harem of 25 or so cows and nearly as many calves. The bull was about a hundred yards from the trail, and some of the cows as close at 10 yards away. Our luck wasn't quite as good this weekend, but it was still a good show, and we heard lots of bugling. Didn't get any good photos of the elk, but here's a shot of the family at the end of our hike.

Burrito face

We gave Elizabeth a bean burrito for dinner tonight, with a predictable but amusing result.

New Ponseti web site

There is a new web site for the Ponseti International Association. According to their estimates, it costs only $100 to treat a child in a developing country using the Ponseti method. Thanks again to my friends and family who donated enough to treat 9 children!

Too early for fall colors

On Saturday, we joined our friends the Desmarteaus (Brian, Marnie, Katelyn, and Ethan) for a short hike and a picnic on 10,000 foot Kenosha pass. A few of the aspen trees are starting to put on their annual autumn spectacle of bright golden leaves, but not too many yet. By next weekend, I'm guessing they'll be in their prime at this elevation, but it will be a few more weeks until they turn at lower elevations.

Almost standing

Elizabeth is almost standing on her own now. She can easily pull herself up and enjoys standing while holding onto something. She'll step sideways around a table or chair, as long as she can hold on. She is still wearing her brace about 18 hours per day, and our doctor has recommended that we spend 5 minutes each day stretching her right ankle. I don't think it hurts her - it may be a bit uncomfortable, but she hates it anyway. Being immobile for 5 minutes may be the worst part.

Second tier amusement parks

Amy and I treated the kids to a 3 day weekend of kid-centric fun. Saturday's destination was Heritage Square, a rather odd jumble of separate attractions, owned by separate companies, anchored by a Victorian theme town. The highlight is the alpine slide, which is a lot of fun, and probably worth the $7 cost. Elizabeth thought zooming down the hill on a sled was the greatest thing ever. Her only disappointment was that the teenager and geezer on the 2 sleds in front of us seemed to be deathly afraid of breaking the 3 mile-per-hour barrier, so we had to wait for several minutes for them to get the hell out of the way so we could get some speed. We also rode the train that circles the place, which was rather lame but mildly enjoyable for the kids.

Sunday was lazy day at home. Andrew played most of the day with the neighbor kids, while mom and dad kept Elizabeth entertained.

Monday began with a 3-mile hike through Roxborough state park. This place has beautiful scenery, abundant wildlife, and great trails. Well worth the 30 minute drive from home. Our hike included a close encounter with a doe deer, who wandered within a few dozen yards of us as we rested on a bench, and then got spooked and bounced away after a couple of loud snorts in our direction.

Monday evening was the big event Andrew looked forward to all weekend: Lakeside amusement park. On their last weekend of the season, they offer 10-cent ride tickets, and kids' rides are only 1 ticket. That's cheap entertainment folks, even after you pay the $2.50 per person entry fee. It's probably no surprise that this somewhat dilapidated and very dated park doesn't attract the beautiful and well-heeled crowd. In fact, it seems to be a magnet for the obese, people with really bad teeth, and various other oddballs. It's really quite a freak show. My favorite sightings tonight were (1) the trashy-dressed young woman who used her cleavage as a cell phone holder, and (2) the overweight guy with a long red goatee wearing a kilt and an Iron Maiden T-shirt.

Ponseti Video

I found this video showing Dr. Ponseti receiving an award from the Children's Miracle Network. It has some good footage of his work, as well as his acceptance speech where he gives a summary of his long medical career. The most unfortunate aspect of his work is that not enough doctors are learning his technique. There is only 1 doctor in all of Colorado trained by Ponseti, and few American doctors are learning it. There seems to be more interest from doctors overseas. It would be sad if Americans had to travel to overseas to treat their childrens' clubfoot.

69th place on Pikes Peak

I finished the Pikes Peak Ascent on Saturday morning, and thanks to generous donations from friends and family, I raised about $900 for the Ponseti International Association for the Advancement of Clubfoot Treatment ! I can assure you it was the toughest 900 bucks I ever made.

I beat my personal goal by about 1 minute, finishing the 13.3 miles and 7,815 vertical feet in 3:05:03.

Some stats
I finished in 69th place overall (out of 1647 finishers), and 63rd place (out of 1162) among male runners. That's close to the top 4th percentile overall, and in the top 6th percentile for the men. In the 35-to-39-year-old-male category, I was 12th out of 189, which is in the top 7th percentile.

The 1st place finisher was Matt Carpenter (a perennial favorite) at 2:12:56.

Results from the race are posted here.

Play by play
Mile 1: a relatively easy stroll up a gently sloped & paved road through Manitou Springs.

Miles 2-5: "The W's" at the foot of the Barr trail. So-named for the way the dozens of switchbacks look on a map as they climb a steep 2500 feet or so above Manitou. This is a single track trail crowded with runners, and little room to pass. At about mile 3, I started tracking my position - the number of people I passed, the number who passed me. By mile 4, the pack thinned out enough that passing wasn't a problem anymore. In most races, mile markers tell you how far you've run so far. In the Ascent, they did it backwards - they tell you how much distance to the finish line. Its was rather disheartening to see the "11 miles to finish" sign when I was already tired and gasping for air.

Miles 6-9: Finally, a break from the steeps. Still uphill, for sure - there are no significant flat sections on the trail, much less downhill, but it's a welcome break from the W's. Beautiful trail, too. It'd be nice to come back sometime when I could enjoy the scenery.

Mile 10: "We're baaaack!" (the steeps and switchbacks, that is). This is the last mile of tree cover. It's also where I got passed by a skirt. Literally. A woman wearing a pink running skirt passed me here.

Miles 11-12: You break through tree line at 11,800 feet of elevation, right at the "3 miles left" sign. Staring down at me is the east face of Pikes Peak - 2,300 vertical feet to go! At this point my heart is literally in pain from pumping so hard. Except for the top few dozen runners, no one is actually running at this point in the race. It's a fast hike at best. The trail gets really steep again, but now it's also more rugged and uneven, with big rock steps to boot. This is a high-altitude, voluntary version of the Bataan death march, with hundreds of stick-thin runners trudging forward in pain.

Mile 13: No rest for the weary. They saved the steepest, rockiest terrain for last - the Golden Steps! For a few brief moments here and there, I feel light headed, and the pain in my chest (that would be my heart) isn't letting up. I pass a few people who've run out of gas, and a few others who reserved some juice for the end pass by me. I think I improved my overall position by 1 place since I started keeping track about 10 miles ago. I crossed the finish line at 3:05:03, a minute faster than my personal goal.

If that doesn't sound fun, then just imagine turning around and running back down the same trail again. That's what hundreds of people did on Sunday morning for the Pikes Peak marathon. About 70 ridiculously fit and insane runners did what's known as "The Double" - running the Ascent on Saturday and then the full marathon the very next day. And you thought I was crazy!

Less than 2 weeks til race day

It's less than 2 weeks until I race in the Pikes Peak Ascent. I've turned the race into a fundraiser for the Ponseti Foundation, which seeks to improve treatment for clubfoot. So far I've raised about $500 in donations, and I'm hoping to double that amount. I've been training hard, including an adventurous 4 hour solo run up a trail on Mt. Evans. After getting lost and going the wrong direction for several miles, the seldom-used trail got progressively more steep and rocky, then turned into nothing more than alpine meadow with rock cairns to mark the way, then alpine swamp (yes, my feet were soaked), before reaching summit lake at 12,000 feet. From there I kept marching up the road toward the summit. Amy dropped me off at the trailhead (approximately 9000 feet elevation) in the morning, and picked me up near the summit 4 hours later.

Many thanks to all my friends and family who have supported the cause. If you'd like to support the cause, click here for more info.

Chinese tattoos

Chinese characters and themes are en vogue as tattoos these days. Here's a bit of advice: if you're gonna get some Chinese characters permanently tattooed on your body, make really sure you know what they mean.

Some of my Chinese former co-workers are in Denver now, and one of them went to the Dragon Boat Festival a week ago at Sloan's Lake. He was working at a booth for the Chinese American Council when an American guy approach and showed him the tattoo of a Chinese character prominently displayed on his leg. He asked, "can you tell me what this means"? The character on his leg was the Chinese word for "stupid".

How appropriate!

Running for a good cause

On August 18, I'll be running the Pikes Peak Ascent to raise money for the Ponseti International Association for the Advancement of Clubfoot Treatment. You can support this great cause by making a donation to the association in honor of my masochistic endeavor - racing 13.32 miles and 7,815 vertical feet! Information on how to donate is below, but first, here is some info about club foot.

Club foot is one of the most common birth defects, affecting approximately 150,000 children each year. Although the condition is treatable, many children in poor countries don't receive treatment and are disabled for life. Dr. Ignacio Ponseti pioneered a non-surgical method of correcting club foot, and this association is committed to advancing the treatment of children with clubfoot deformity through education, improved care, and research.

My daughter Elizabeth was born with club feet, and thanks to Dr. Ponseti, she is well on the way to a full recovery. Some day, I hope she can hike - or even run - up Pikes Peak with me.

More about the race:
The Pikes Peak Ascent is 13.32 miles long and climbs 7,815 vertical feet (1.5 vertical miles!), ending at the 14,115 foot summit of Pikes Peak. If you're curious to see the race route, here is a link to a very cool Google Earth map showing the trail. Here is how the high-altitude portion of the course is described on the race's web site:

There’s a reason trees don’t bother growing above 12,000' on Pikes Peak. They can’t! Makes one wonder if trees are smarter than runners. Above treeline most runners take 30 minutes or more, some much more, just to cover a mile. What little air remains can’t satisfy the endless stream of zombies hoping only to survive their next step—a death march right out of a scene from Dawn of the Dead. Adding insult to injury, it might start to snow!

My personal goal is to finish in 3 hours, 6 minutes, which would put me in the top 7% of finishers with an average pace of about 14 minutes per mile.

I would appreciate your generous donation! Since I don't have any other way to know how much money my friends will raise, I would appreciate it if you would leave a comment on this blog or send an email telling me how much you donated.

You can make a secure online donation at this link to the Ponseti International Association for the Advancement of Clubfoot Treatment. If you'd rather send a check, please make it payable to: Univ. of Iowa - Ponseti Fund and send it here:

Ponseti Fund for Advancement of Clubfoot Treatment
c/o The University of Iowa Foundation
P.O. Box 4550
Iowa City, IA 52244-4550

I very much appreciate your support in raising money for this great cause!

No more casts

Elizabeth is out of her casts now! We took the casts off both of her legs on Saturday morning after about 14 weeks of casts. She sat in the bathtub for a while to soften the plaster, and then Amy cut through with an old butter knife, which takes a long time, but it means we don't have to worry too much about cutting her. Her feet look almost normal now! Not only that, but now we can give her proper baths and let her play in the pool.

She still has a long road of treatment ahead of here, though. For the next 3 months, she'll be wearing a specially designed brace and shoes for 18 hours per day, and then she'll wear a similar brace at nighttime until she is about 4 years old. These photos show her feet before the casts, after the casts, and with her new brace contraption.

Above: before the casts

Above: after the Ponseti treatment

Above: the new-fangled brace contraption. Doesn't she look thrilled???

10 years

Amy and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary last Friday. We saved a bottle of wine from our wedding day and opened it over the weekend. It was a little past it's prime, but still drinkable.
Ten years sounds like such a long time, but it doesn't feel like a long time. I love you, Amy!

Camping - with 2 kids

Amy and I are camping veterans, and Andrew spent his first night in a tent when he was just over 1 year old. This weekend, we eased our way into a new level of outdoor accommodations, with a 4-year-old and a 1-year-old joining us in the tent. This experiment was somewhat complicated by the Elizabeth's two full-leg casts. We decided to spend just a single night in case the experiment went horribly, horribly wrong. Fortunately, it all worked out. We even had fun, I would say. We camped at about 9000 feet elevation near Keystone, and the toughest part was keeping the kids warm overnight. I'd guess the low temperature was around 40. We bundled them up in hats and gloves, and covered them with multiple layers. Now we're ready for a longer stay in the great outdoors.

Based on a tip from my brother, we drove to Lower Cataract Lake after leaving camp this morning. The aptly named lake, on the east flank of the Gore range, has an impressive cataract feeding into it. The waterfall tumbles several hundred feed down a jumble of boulders and into the lake.

Mt. Evans Ascent

A lot of people think runners are crazy. Call me crazy then, because this morning I joined about 350 runners at Echo Lake, at 10,640 feet elevation, and raced them from there to the summit of Mt. Evans at 14,264 feet. Ok, that's an exaggeration - the finish line for the Mt. Evans Ascent was about 100 feet below the summit. I ran the 14.5 miles and approximately 3600 vertical feet in a time of 2:25:15 - I think that was 21st place overall, although I haven't seen the official results yet. My average pace of 10:01 per mile was one #@$%*! second short of my personal goal. I thought I was on track to meet it, but in the last mile, I lost track of the time. I'll blame it on the lack of oxygen. There ain't much of that stuff up there, and every heaving gasp I took in the last few miles was a painful reminder of the low atmospheric pressure. I did pass one guy in the last few hundred yards of the race, so that makes up for it, I suppose.

It was the perfect morning for a race, though. Clear skies, nice temperatures, and no wind, which is very rare in those environs.

The lunacy doesn't end there, however. The Mt. Evans Ascent is just a training run on my preparation for the Pike's Peak Ascent in 2 months. That one will be more of a fast hike than a run though. With more than twice the elevation gain over just 13.1 miles of dirt trails, Pike's Peak will be much tougher.

Dr. Ponseti

We met with Dr. Ponseti yesterday and from all the glowing reports I’d heard about him I practically expected him to walk on water. He didn’t do this for us, but I can see a definite improvement in the position of Elizabeth’s foot in the cast. He expects to change the cast on Monday and then have a tenotomy (a procedure to improve the up/down motion of the foot) performed next Friday. After this procedure we will be able to return home.

There are at least 4 families staying in the Ronald McDonald House that are here to see Dr. Ponseti; one from Canada, one from the Domenican Republic, and one from Mississippi. Add in our Colorado family with the Chinese born baby and it’s quite a crew.

The local media was at the hospital doing a piece on Dr. Ponseti yesterday and we were asked to sign a media waiver and all that good stuff. I doubt we will make it on TV though since Elizabeth screamed like a banshee through most of the visit. Everybody loves a 93 year old doctor curing the world’s children, but nobody wants to listen to my daughter scream.

I’ve heard that crying during the casting is pretty unusual and I believe it. Elizabeth cries whenever I touch her right foot – even if it is just to play “This little piggy”. I know that this does not cause her pain and I’ve felt what the doctors do and I’m sure it is not painful either. Uncomfortable, maybe, but not painful.

Iowa City is a pleasant enough town. We went to a concert in the park this evening and had a good time. The town has a nice everyone-knows-everyone feel and the parks are really nice. We also went to the children’s museum today and Andrew had a lot of fun there.

Iowa City

We made it to Iowa and managed to keep our sanity. I think this is in large part to the portable DVD player that my brother loaned us - Thanks Jason! We'll see Dr. Ponseti today and are staying at the Ronald McDonald House in Iowa City. The facilities are perfect for families and are open to the families of any child under 18 being seen at the hospital here. We have a room of our own which is like any hotel room - except with a sleep number bed. However, there are also shared facilities that make things much more like being at home. There is a playground, several shared kitchens and a big dining room, a play room with tons of toys and a staff that really knows how to take care of people. The Lions Club brought in dinner for everybody last night which was a relief after being in the car so long to not have to brave a restaurant or cook.

Off to Iowa to see Dr. Ponseti

After 6 weeks of casts, Elizabeth's right foot, which was more deformed than the left, isn't making the progress we hoped for with her club foot treatment using the Ponseti method. Her doctor, Daniel Hatch, recommended that we visit the man himself: Dr. Ignacio Ponseti, who pioneered the method decades ago. The good doc is 93 years old - that's right - ninety three! And still practicing medicine. Now there's someone who loves his job. He does have another doctor working with him now, at least.

The good news is that the expert doctor is available to work this us. The bad news is that he's in Iowa. Iowa City in fact. Amy, her mom, Andrew, and Liz all loaded into the family wagon this afternoon and headed east. That's 15 hours of driving with 2 kids in the car, and no scenery worth seeing. I won't be surprised if the 2 adults need some professional help after they arrive, too. Fortunately, Iowa City has more physicians per capita than any city in the US.

The clan will probably be in Iowa for a few weeks, and I'll be living a bachelor's life back home.

Big Head Todd at Red Rocks

Last night, Amy and I went to see Big Head Todd and the Monsters at Red Rocks - the world's best concert venue. Jeremy Lawton, who plays keyboards and a mean slide guitar for the band, is my college roommate and fraternity brother, so and it was great to see him on stage in front of a big crowd. The Samples had a good opening set as lightning storms lit up the sky over the city, and as soon as they left the stage, the skies opened up over the amphitheater, pounding us with a 10-minute hailstorm. Someone in the row in front of us brought a big tarp, which we crowded under to wait out the storm. It was great show!