Dear Family,
Certain events of actual consequence (the birth of our first granddaughter and multiple family reunions, just to name all of them) overtook a couple of items that otherwise would have made it into last month’s letter, and so I’ll open this month’s with those. Knowing myself, I probably won’t get to much else, but it’s okay — I can always get to this month’s adventures in next month’s letter.
My smiling countenance in the photos of me running alongside Jeff Huber in Zion National Park last month belies a fair bit of hip pain I had been experiencing whenever I ran during most of July and August. The pain ranged from a dull ache while running to something so acute that I could barely run at all.
And so, shortly after returning home from last month’s reunions in Southern Utah and North Idaho, I visited the hip specialist at the orthopedist practice where I usually go (and where, if they had a loyalty program, I think I’d’ve earned multiple free sandwiches by now). The doctor did not see anything abnormal on the x-ray, and so he ordered an MRI.
I dutifully made my MRI appointment for the following Tuesday morning.
On the Monday evening before my Tuesday-morning MRI, I was biking home from work, coasting down the final hill, less than a quarter-mile from our house in the back of the cul-de-sac that our narrow street dead-ends into.
If you are unfamiliar with our street, it is lined with old trees and what can be characterized as modest 1960s-era homes that look mostly alike. No one has a garage, and most of the driveways are just long enough to accommodate a single car.
This configuration may have made sense in the sixties (I don’t remember — I wasn’t alive then). But in 2026 America, where pretty much every household owns at least three absurdly large “cars” (if “cars” is even the right term for what what people drive nowadays) it means that our already-narrow street is continually choked by what can seem like an unbroken line of parked vehicles on either side.
We love our neighborhood — we’ve lived here for 26 years — and we love our beautiful, leafy street. But navigating it requires a certain confidence. The parked cars create what amounts to a single-lane luge run right down the middle, resulting in death-defying games of chicken whenever cars approach from opposite directions. As a cyclist, I always feel like I have the right of way in these encounters because (unlike the big, fat, stupid killing machine coming in the opposite direction) my skinny bike and I are always capable of remaining entirely on our half of the street. Motorists don’t always share this ironclad logic (because they’re morons) and so I’m always vigilant about paying attention to what’s coming toward me.
Unfortunately, I apparently do not always pay sufficient attention to what’s going on alongside me.
Because, on the Monday in question, while I was coasting down the hill at a smooth 20 mph, the driver of a pickup truck parked in the endless line of cars to my right suddenly decided he did not want to be parked anymore. Instead of being parked, he wanted to be driving in the opposite direction.
To accomplish this, the driver began executing a three-point turn by abruptly pulling his truck across the entire width of the luge run directly in front of me. With literally nowhere to go and no time to do anything other than loudly utter some bad words, I had no option other than to slam into the driver’s side of the truck’s extended cab, somewhere between the door and the bumper.
As I lay on the asphalt regaining my bearings, the (appropriately contrite) truck driver and a bystander quickly converged on me to ask if I was ok. One of them asked if he should call an ambulance. I told him I didn’t know yet. I went through my standard self-diagnostic in these situations — checked to see if I still had full use of my limbs and made sure I wasn’t bleeding too badly. Check and check.
I told them I didn’t think I needed an ambulance and quickly turned my attention to the state of my bike. My handlebars had been twisted about 45 degrees off center and my saddle had been completely sheared off the top of the seat post, but the frame and the all the components (i.e., the expensive parts) looked okay. The offending driver put my bike in the back of his truck and drove me the rest of the way down the hill to my house. I didn’t know him before, but we’re neighbors, and I like to think we’re friends now.
Fresh road rash often makes the first night after a bike crash uncomfortable, but mine wasn’t too bad and I slept fine. I awoke the next morning, however, with a sore lower back that quickly worsened. Getting out of a chair had become painful by the time I arrived at my early-morning MRI appointment, and I considered asking the technician if he could aim the magnets (or whatever they are) at my back while I was in there. (“You’re looking at my hip anyway, and my back is right there…”)
I did not have the courage to ask him to do that.
My back was still sore when I returned to the orthopedist to learn his interpretation of my hip MRI. I asked the receptionist if someone could look at my back since I was there anyway but was told I’d need to make another appointment (with the back specialist). Annoying, but I understood.
[I did subsequently return to see the back guy. He looked at my x-rays, examined me, and told me I would get better. He was right. Within three weeks of the crash, my back felt fine — good enough to run again. It still feels fine]
The hip specialist’s diagnosis was that I have arthritis, that it will only get worse, and that I will hasten its worsening if I continue running. He then said something like, “I’m not going to tell you to stop running because I know you won’t.” (Sounds like a guy who’s dealt with a lot of runners.) But he said I would need to “make some decisions” about what I subject my body to.
It somehow seems fitting that I would become a grandfather and be diagnosed with an arthritic hip in the same week.
I listened to the doctor’s counsel and told him I would consider it. I did not feel it would be productive to point out that what he was telling me ran counter to the collective wisdom of pretty much the entire internet — which holds that not only does running not cause or exacerbate arthritis, but if anything, it’s mildly protective against it. I did not feel it would be productive to point out that I’ve had arthritis in both of my knees for years, that the knee specialist in the same orthopedic practice has never told me I should stop running, and, indeed the only time I ever feel pain in my knees is when I go for any significant period without running.
It could very well be that the hip doctor is right and the internet is wrong. But we’re never going to find out for sure (at least not in my case) because I’m pretty sure arthritis always gets worse no matter what you do (the doctor and the internet agree on that much), and I’m unlikely to give up running until I am literally physically incapable of doing it.
The Utah kids are all right
We’ve gotten to see an unusual amount of our Utah children and their spouses this month.
Much of this was occasioned by Crystal’s and my weeklong trip to Provo where we slept in Sophie and Luke’s spare bedroom and spent most of our waking hours looking at baby Felicity, who is now a month old.
I’ll do my best not to turn this letter (and future ones) into granddaughter photo albums, but I’m going to need a little runway on that.
We happened to be in town on the Sunday when Felicity was blessed at church. I was glad to have been able to participate in that. I did not take any pictures of the blessing (though I briefly considered pulling my phone out in the circle) but we did take this one in her car seat afterward:
We took a Labor Day walk to the duck pond at the south end of BYU campus…
And then over to the Creamery on Ninth (which has recently expanded from its humble origins into what is basically now a full-blown restaurant) with some new, righteous ice cream flavors.
That night, the Porters (Emma’s parents) had us all over for a barbecue. Sadly, I did not take pictures of them, but they have some really big vegetables in their yard. (Hannah and Emma, who live just up the road in Orem, joined us for all of these and other adventures. We loved being with them, too.)
Luke and Sophie live in a pretty ideal location that is convenient to lots of great stuff. Maybe a little too close to State Street for my liking. (In a nation full of awful stroads, State Street — at least the part running through Provo and Orem — is quite possibly the worst stroad I’ve ever seen — I can’t believe that any human being could have designed something so horrific or that it somehow manages to kill fewer than 10,000 people a year. Every time I drive on it — or, heaven forbid, attempt to turn left mid-block from it — I’m literally afraid I’m going to die.)
But they are just two blocks from the Provo Rec Center (walking distance if you’re willing to risk your life crossing State Street). By far the most amazing rec center I’ve ever seen, I got over there to swim a couple of times. It’s just an incredible facility. I started to type out all the reasons why but decided that’s a waste of time when you can just ask Gemini:
The population of Provo is disproportionately young and fit, judging by the line of people waiting to get into the rec center at 4:57 a.m.!
I also managed to squeeze a few sunrise runs in (which got tricky since I had 9:00 a.m. (7:00 MT) work calls every morning) — including one run from Sophie and Luke’s house to the top of the “Y” on the mountain and back (about an 8-mile round trip with 1,700 feet of climbing that my sea-level legs were not ready for (and, to be honest, there wasn’t much “running” going on by the time I started climbing the actual mountain) but, happily, my hip held up!
…and a 10-mile run with Luke from their house to Utah Lake and back via the beautiful Provo River Trail. They live in a truly lovely place!
Meanwhile, this weekend, Hannah and Emma are back here staying with us so they can attend D.C.’s annual music festival “All Things Go” at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia. It’s fun having them around.
Mom’s 80th
In contrast to the recent 80th birthday celebrations for Crystal’s parents, both of which were blockbuster, nearly-weeklong affairs involving lots of people and large boats, we somehow managed to mark my mother’s 80th birthday earlier this month in a single quiet evening.
A dozen or so relatives joined a dozen or so friends and neighbors at Grant and Jen’s house to celebrate the woman to whom several of us owe our lives and so much more. To give but one example: Whatever musical abilities you think I might possess, I owe it entirely to my mother. Without her, I would have quit the piano at age 5. And again at age 6. And then at 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 11 and a half, 12 and 13. At least once a year (until I reached high school and decided I both liked and was reasonably competent at it) I tried to quit. She never let me. I don’t know how she “didn’t let me.” But somehow she did it. I am forever grateful to her for that.
The catering was from The Big Greek Cafe (the same good folks who did Sophie and Luke’s wedding reception). A week or two before the party, I asked Mom what kind of birthday cake she wanted (hoping against hope it would be something I could pick up from Costco). I can’t remember what she told me initially, but she texted me a couple of days later to tell me not to get a cake at all. She said she wanted her carrot cake and wanted to make it herself.
Which means she either did not want to burden me with making it or lacked confidence that what I produced would be any good. Probably both. But it reminded me immediately of Crystal, who has been making her own birthday cakes for years because she knows it’ll be better than anything I can make or would buy.
Dad turned 80 four and a half years ago, I guess during the waning months of covid craziness. We must have marked the occasion somehow, but maybe we didn’t. My letter from April 2022 (the month Dad turned 80) does not even mention him at all. (But I did enjoy re-reading it just now — it’s mostly a recap of Crystal’s and my experience as tour guides at the Washington DC Temple open house that month and, perhaps fittingly, includes a picture of me steering a bicycle on the beach at Hilton Head with my right arm while my broken left one was bound up in a cast as a result of the last time I got a hit by a car on my bike. I think that was the last time. There may have another one in between. It’s hard to keep track. (The exciting story of my 2022 car-vs-bike adventure is chronicled here.)
If I make it to 80, which seems increasingly unlikely in light of my proclivity for urban cycling — unless I can manage to survive until we finally banish all humans from driver’s seats — I think my children understand that I’ll be perfectly content with something between what we did for Mom and whatever we did (or didn’t do) for Dad.
It will be lovely in any event. A Costco cake will more than suffice.
Love,
Tim
Managing Editor of The Famlet Monthly