The White Whale

Unfortunately for anyone who happens to read this particular posting Mama has given up her "turn" for the time being and she has not posted for nearly a month. This means that you will be missing out on her cutting wit while you read a month's worth of LaDuke family adventures (we have had many worthy of reporting). I, Dada, will do my best to keep it from being a report, but when I think of all the many things worth mentioning I can't help but think that I won't begin to list, simply because it will take too long for me to figure out how to keep it interesting. I'm not sure I want to put in that kind of effort.
After returning home from our romp to Yankee Stadium the grim prospect of moving set in, and we began in earnest to pack. I took a number of trips to Home Depot, Staples, and our local Barnes&Noble to gather packing supplies. A neighbor and ward member, Jason Wallace, had informed us that Barnes&Noble had a surplus of cardboard boxes perfect for packing. Fittingly, many of those boxes were used to pack our own small library. I quit counting at box 12, but I am sure we had at least fifteen boxes of books, journal articles, and magazines. I tried to throw out as many journal articles as I could, but it felt like I was throwing money away since each piece of paper cost me fifteen cents. My disgust was followed by exasperation. "Why does a school with a 20 billion dollar endowment charge seven cents more a copy than I paid at Arizona State?" I felt even worse when I realized that I had made all those copies with borrowed money.
In order to make our move less stressful, since we really didn't know where we were going, and especially since I didn't want to drive a 22 ft. truck with a car in tow across the country again, Addie and I decided to rent a P.O.D. The nice thing about a P.O.D. is that the company P.O.D.S. delivers the P.O.D. to your doorstep (in our case Yale Lot 11, a good 100 feet from our doorstep), stores the P.O.D. as long as you need it stored, and drives the P.O.D. across the country at a reasonable price. Our P.O.D. arrived on Tuesday, June 26th with the understanding that it would be picked up Friday, June 29th, in the morning. This gave us three days to load our 16' by 8' by 8' P.O.D. One would think that this would be time and space enough to empty out a two bedroom, 625 sq. ft. apartment, occupied by two reasonable adults and a toddler. But Einstein's theory of relativity proved right in our case because the dense mass placed within that P.O.D. bent the time-space continuum in such a way that Friday morning arrived sooner than expected and we were quickly running out of space.
On Tuesday, when the P.O.D. arrived, it looked as if we were heading to the Sandra Day O'Connor School of Law at Arizona State University even though neither of us felt very good about that option. On Thursday, I received a call from the University of Arizona informing us that I had been moved from off their waiting list and into their pool of accepted applicants. I was excited but also sickened because now I had to make a real choice between two good schools close to family and friends. Before UofA called we felt driven to ASU by necessity, now we had agency. In addition, ASU wanted a firm answer of acceptance by Friday. The deadline added to the gravity of the situation which only brought Friday morning that much closer and made our P.O.D. that much more narrow. Somehow and sometime in the wee hours of Friday morning, and after some deliberation, Addie and I both felt like the University of Arizona was the right choice (On a different note, around three in the morning Addie and I saw a mother raccoon with three toddler raccoons walk past our P.O.D. They soon realized we were there and scampered off in a hurry. I had seen raccoons before on late walks home from the library. Apparently, they liked to rummage around in the dumpster. Maybe they thought our P.O.D. was a giant dumpster!).
Later, as the sun began to peak over the tree-filled horizon, I made my way over to the Divinity School to email my answer to ASU. Needing and wanting a break I browsed over my email and discovered that P.O.D.S. was expected to arrive at Yale Lot 11 between 2 and 4 in the afternoon! Too tired to be angry, I hobbled back over to our P.O.D., locked it up, and then dropped into bed for a not-so refreshing three hours of sleep. Perhaps this was the most fitting way for me to spend my last night at Yale University, a school which took more hours of sleep from me than pennies at the copy machine.
As it turned out we finished loading the P.O.D. in time, but only just as the P.O.D.S. truck driver pulled in to Lot 11 around 3:30 (Actually, we made him wait while we threw one last load of towels into the P.O.D.). Once the P.O.D. was gone we finished cleaning up our apartment, turned in our keys, and said goodbye to New Haven. I don't know if I have been that sad since I left Princeton, New Jersey as a missionary. Everyone knows what it is like to have your heart ache. Well, mine ached and still does when I think about it. We will both miss New Haven and all of the people we left behind there.
Our original plan was to have everything packed by Thursday and then spend the next day in New York City before making our way across the country. But seeing as we were unable to alter the laws of astrophysics we drove to Albany, NY that night and found a hotel. The next day we were off to Palmyra, NY to visit the birthplace of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Well, not literally the place where the Church was started, that was Fayette, NY, but the foundations of the church began in Palmyra). Although I had been to Palmyra years before this visit was much more memorable. I think Addie and Callie (and perhaps my more sentimental mood) made the difference. A couple weeks before we left New Haven, Addie and I began showing Callie a short DVD about Joseph Smith's vision in the Sacred Grove in Palmyra (It remained a smash hit with her until she got to Reno and saw Disney's "Cocopontas", which most people know by the title of Pocohontas. Now she gets John Smith and Joseph Smith confused). After each viewing we would tell her how we were going to visit the places she saw on the DVD.
In addition to visiting the Sacred Grove we went to the Hill Cumorah, E.B. Grandin's print shop where the Book of Mormon was published, and the Smith Homestead. Addie and I both marveled over the size of the Smith's living quarters. Eleven people lived in their home which wasn't much bigger than our New Haven apartment. Three boys slept together in a bed no bigger than a twin. At the print shop we learned how people published books in the nineteenth century. It is too painstaking and detailed to recount or remember here (In all honesty, I can't remember very well now, and my mind is fading as it gets later in the night. Perhaps, "Mama", who is usually better at remembering and being more interested in technical stuff like this, will fill in the gaps I leave here when she takes up her "turn" again). Suffice it to say, they had no I-Phone there. We were also impressed with how far the Hill Cumorah was from the Smith home. We remembered how Joseph was chased by mobsters while on the Hill. It must have been difficult to escape carrying such a heavy load.
The next day we went to Niagara Falls and rode the Maid of the Mist into the face of the mighty Horseshoe Falls (The American Falls paled in comparison). Callie seemed most unimpressed and uninterested. After the boat docked we quickly made our way to an ice cream shop, in which Callie was more interested, and then got back on the road.
The next day we stopped in Kirtland, Ohio where the Saints gathered in the early 1830's. We toured the Whitney home and Store where the School of the Prophets was held. It was there that Emma Smith had the most disgusting job of cleaning the men's tobacco spit from off the wood floors which led to the wonderful Word of Wisdom. We also toured the Kirtland Temple, the first temple built by the Church, which is now owned by the Community of Christ (or the Re-organized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints).
On our way from Kirtland to Chicago we drove through Cleveland, a notable landmark in LaDuke family lore. There, in the smoke-stacked filled horizon, two LaDuke siblings (Courtney and Bill) were born and Papa LaDuke was granted the degree of D.D.S. from Case Western Reserve University. It was also there, according to legend (a legend Addie and I heard at a wedding reception from CWR Dental Grads two years ahead of Papa in the program), that Papa LaDuke carried a large wooden desk, a desk two men together could not carry, on his back in order to furnish the home of Grandma LaDuke. A feat that still lives on in the minds of two exasperated and amazed dentists. Move over Magnus ver Magnusson, there is a new World's Strongest Man in town.
In Chicago I dropped Addie and Callie off at the airport so that they could fly the rest of the way to Reno while I drove our car. Before we left New Haven two different friends, Nick Buehner and Justin Collings, suggested that I buy a book on tape to listen to as I made my way across the Great Plains. Apparently, the Great Plains are not so great to look at and the monotony of cornfields is best broken up by a good book on tape. The day we left from New Haven I went to Barnes&Noble to select a book, and my eye was immediately drawn to Moby Dick, or the White Whale by Herman Melville. Happy with my choice I stashed it away knowing that I would not listen to it until Addie and Callie boarded a plane in Chicago. Once they had boarded I began my 18 CD's and 21 hours' worth of listening pleasure. A more serendipitous choice of a book on tape could not have been made. The storyline of Moby Dick paralleled the literature I had studied for the past two years (with differences of course, differences that reflect modern values and modern questions about life and God), a storyline about sea monsters (whales qualify as sea monsters here), heroes, gods, fate, free will, chaos, and order; a storyline in biblical studies called the Combat Myth. As I listened, I felt that Melville more aptly and more interestingly expressed in 21 hours ideas I had only partially considered in two years of incessant studying. The next time somebody asks me what I studied in school I will tell them to read Moby Dick. Of course, when I arrived in Reno one of the first things I did was to purchase a copy of Moby Dick; a copy I am now reading.
Four hours outside of Chicago I took a planned detour through Nauvoo, Illinois. Although I didn't have much time to tour (I was supposed to meet Nick Buehner in Lincoln, Nebraska that night) I stopped by the temple and did some temple work. I also went by Joseph Smith's mansion house (it's not really a mansion, it might be the size of Bill and Alicia LaDuke's home) and the burial sites of Joseph, Hyrum, Emma, Joseph Sr., and Lucy Mack Smith.
That night I met Nick in Lincoln, and the next day we were on our way to Salt Lake City. On the way to Salt Lake I realized that I was tracing in my car the path the early Saints walked. I had been to Palmyra, Kirtland, Nauvoo, and then Salt Lake (I was only missing the Missouri sites). I thought about the persecution, the rape, the murder, and the hatred that drove those people from Palmyra to Salt Lake City. I thought about the months it took them to walk and the hours it took me to drive. I thought about the sacrifices they made and were willing to make because they had a witness that Joseph Smith was the prophet of the Lord Jesus Christ. Addie and I both felt that same witness in Palmyra and in Kirtland as we walked the grounds of the Hill Cumorah and the Sacred Grove (as cheesy and over the top as it sounds we had so much fun on this trip because of the discussions we had and sites we saw). I felt it again in Nauvoo when I stood before Joseph Smith's burial plot, and in the temple. And as others watched fireworks on the fourth of July, I went to Temple Square and looked at the great Salt Lake Temple and the Tabernacle and felt it there, too. Even as I write this I can feel it again. Joseph Smith was and is a servant and prophet of the Lord Jesus Christ. It makes me sad that so many people misunderstand what he did and who he was.
I arrived in Reno on July 5th and discovered that I had nothing to do. I had no classes, no books to read (I hadn't purchased Moby Dick, yet), no deadlines, nothing. But as luck would have it Addie's sisters (Sarah and Erin) informed me that they were participating in the Donner Lake (Yes, it is named after the infamous Donner Party; a somewhat portentous coincidence as you will see) Triathlon on July 15th. Seeing that I had nothing to do, and that I had turned into a fat slug while at Yale, I decided that I, too, would become a Tri-athlete. Only I would do what is called the "Sprint" triathlon, a shortened form of the real thing, while Erin and Sarah would do the International triathlon. For my part, I would swim 1/4 mile, bike 6 miles, and run 2 at an elevation of 6,000 feet and higher (The first three miles of the bike ride went from the lake at 6,000 feet nearly to the top of the valley at 7,000 feet, then one turned around and came back down. For someone who has been living at sea level for a while this kind of elevation makes a difference.). The girls would swim 1 mile, bike 24, and run 6 (Yes, they are amazing).
So I began a strict workout regiment hoping that I would be ready within a week and a half. Both of Addie's parents belong to clubs with pools so I had the facilities necessary to prepare, but I wasn't sure if I had the time. I made rapid improvement over the few days I had and by Thursday, the 12th, I could do all three events in a row at the required distances. But I had no idea what lay in store for me at the real triathlon. You see, Donner Lake is surrounded by the steep walls of mountains on every side but one. And as the fates would have it the bike ride was not planned to take place on that wall-less side. No, instead I was destined to ride 1,000 feet up a switchback road on the side of a mountain. The swim was fine, and the bike ride was fine for the first fifteen minutes. But after thirty-five minutes of constant uphill pedaling I was at the point of swearing, quitting, and screaming in agony at the same time. Thankfully, I didn't have to pedal once on the way down (in fact, I had to brake the whole way down to keep from going too fast) and I avoided the fate of others who could not find their way out of those dreaded mountains. Back in the transition zone after the bike ride I ate some energizing and caffeineted Goo, given to me by my sister-in-law Sarah, and commenced with the run at nearly a snail's pace (O.K., I am exaggerating, but not by much). Nonetheless, as I neared the finish line and could hear the announcer calling out people's names as they finished and saw spectators lining the fences of the finish line, I picked up my pace and crossed the line going at a decent clip. Perhaps, I thought, I could fool those who didn't see me in the back country into thinking I had run like that the whole way. I swam, biked, and ran 8 1/4 miles in 1 hour and 31 minutes. My sisters-in-law on the other hand swam, biked, and ran 31 miles in a little over three hours. Yes, they are amazing.