Staphanie and Marcus got back on Monday and offered to meet us half way to return Braxton. They were going to be in town the following weekend were going to borrow our Focus while Marcus’ car was in the shop since Stephanie’s Honda is unreliable and parked and we could keep Braxton until then, so we took that option. He has kept our girls playing almost non-stop for 11 days now. I think both our Golden Retrievers really like him, but they are going to sleep for a couple of days after he is gone while recovering. He was constantly active and several times a day has the crazies and just tears around the house cutting back and forth. I think he enjoys the carpeting as Stephanie and Marcus have hardwood floors throughout the apartment. It was nice having him for so long. I think he is going to miss having the playmates when he goes back to Stephanie and Marcus.
He was really happy to see Stephanie and Marcus and got excited and tore around for a while. When Nikki and I returned home, both girls were looking for him. Later that evening the girls appeared more playful with each other and I think they already missed his active lifestyle.
Stephanie and Marcus are going to Michigan to do some camping and have asked Nikki and I to watch Braxton. We agreed and picked him up on Wednesday as tomorrow, Thursday, we have to drive up to Kent State to pick up Jonny. I went from work to meet Stephanie to pick him up as that was going to save me an extra hour of driving. When I got home Zoey and Penny were so surprised and happy to see him. The dogs all played well, but Penny had to be put away a couple of times because when she is done playing Braxton just keeps trying to harass her into playing more and Penny shows her teeth and growls. We don’t know how far Penny would go, but never want it to go beyond that anyway. After a bit of rest Penny is usually ready to play with him again for a while.
[Update 5-14-2018]
All the dogs have gotten along great. Both of our dogs play with Braxton and sometimes they are both against him, but they are all having fun and he is so quick he can fend them both off at the same time. Nikki and I just sit and watch them play and its very entertaining. Braxton is a runner, so we have had to keep him on a leash every time he goes out. Stephanie left a 30 foot training leash and I have been able to let all the dogs out and tether Penny and Braxton together. Penny and Braxton both understand and happily walk around together. There are times when Penny lays down and when Braxton gets near the end of his leash she gets up and walks around with him. She wanted to come in house once and it turned into a tug of war and she pulled him closed enough to the house where she could lay down and “keep an eye” on him.
We were taking Jonny back to Kent State University and had just started our trip on SR-16 eastbound just past the Longaberger Basket Building and were stopped in heavy traffic at the light at Marne Road about 15-20 cars back. We had been stopped for about 5 seconds when we were rear ended. There wasn’t much visible damage other than the bumper cover panel had a puncture in it as well as some scratches and the panel had popped out of the quarter panels. We had Jonny call the police since Nikki was complaining about neck pain. We wanted an official report. Nikki was upset and the other drive had nothing but excuses. No Appology, asking if everyone was OK, or anything like that. She had told me she was messing around putting her sunglasses on when she looked up traffic was stopped so she changed lanes to avoid hitting the car in front of her and hit us instead. The funny thing about that story is that it was raining hard enough to have the wipers on high and it was dark due to the cloud cover. Not sure why she felt she needed sunglasses on. I think she was texting. Within minutes her husband shows up to the accident scene and starts pounding on the back of my car to pop the panels back in to make it look like there was less damage before the police showed up. I got our of my car and asked him to stop because he was most likely breaking tabs off the panels if everything isn’t lined up perfectly. He also popped in all the panels on her vehicle as well. Luckily I took some pictures of the panel on my side before he popped them back in. I felt like popping him in the head as he wasn’t respecting my wishes to stop.
The Sheriff showed up and took our statements and I showed him pictures of the damage caused before the other drivers husband without my permission started punching my car. We got our police report and are definitely taking the car in to get it looked at and at least fix the minor damage.
After the Tennessee Relays Jonny was able to spend some time of Nikki, Stephanie and I. We waited for him to finish cheering on his team and get back to his hotel and shower. We finally left around 10:30PM and headed for Pigeon Forge where we had reservations at The Inn at Christmas Place. It was a Bavarian hotel with a Christmas Theme year around. Other than the Christmas decorations everywhere the hotel was nice and the room and beds were comfortable. The omelets, bacon and sausage were good, and after we all ate we packed up and headed out to the The Great Smoky Mountain National Park. The concierge at the hotel gave us a couple of recommendations and we decided on the Grotto Falls trail which is 2.6 miles round trip to the Falls and back. We headed into Gatlinburg and because it was early and shops were still closed, we drove through without any issues. We turned left at light #8 and headed out to the trailhead. As soon as we left town and were in the National Park, we saw wild turkey everywhere and even saw a few whitetail deer.
Turkey were seen everywhere in the park.
The scenery was beautiful although we could still see the scars from the fire which started in November of 2016. We stopped along a lookout and took a few pictures and headed up the rest of the way.
Lookout on the way to the trailhead to Grotto Falls
We make it up to stop #5 which was the trailhead to Grotto Falls. We say lots of beautiful streams and running water on the way to the falls and saw a few local species of birds and insects.
Little stream coming out of the undergrowth
Jonny climbing off the trail
The falls were pretty and as they were posing for pictures, Jonny got a hand full of water and splashed Stephanie which you can see in the video.
Stephanie returned the favor which you can see in the photos below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BacJtqg-ce4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BacJtqg-ce4
Just below the falls
We continued on beyond the falls for a bit and then headed back down where we spotted this guy sunning on a log.
Garter Snake sunning.
The kids wanted to see a black bear and we didn’t see any along the trail so before heading back to drop Jonny off with his team at the meet, we drove over to Cade’s Cove and took the auto tour. The entire loop is 11 miles, but we got stuck in a terrible traffic jam along the single lane one way road. We got up to where all the excitement was and the kids and Nikki got out to view the Mama bear and her cubs. We stayed for a few minutes and then headed back on the paved road to finish our trip. We got caught behind some people leisurely driving along at under 5 MPH and it was going to take way to long to get back. We got off the main loop and took a dirt road shortcut over to a place where we could take Rich Mountain Road out of the park. Rich Mountain Road is nothing more than a forest road that is gravel and switchbacks and another one way. We decided to take the chance and headed out of the park using that road. It wasn’t bad as there were no ruts or anything and my car handled it well as long as we kept it under 25 MPH. Along the way we saw a pack of wild boar and 100 feet further down the road down the ravine there was another mother bear and cubs.
Wild boar on Rich Mountain Road
Shortly thereafter we got out of the park and to a paved two way road. We had Jonny back to the University of Tennessee an hour before his bus left and we headed out of Knoxville for home. We dropped Stephanie at home and said hello to Marcus and Braxton again. We at dinner with Stephanie and Marcus and then headed home and arrived after 11:00PM where we were greeted by happy dogs that we didn’t totally abandon them.
I have an appointment to see my neurosurgeons PA on Monday, but the pain was so severe and relentless yesterday that I requested Nikki take me to the ER at OSU. I was admitted for observation overnight and scheduled for an MRI overnight. I will get the results later this morning and I should be discharged tomorrow morning as well.
This Christmas I didn’t get to see Nikki or the kids. It seems everyone is busy with their own lives and the only time they could schedule a gathering was the only time of the year I get to see my cousins and Aunts and Uncles and I had already planned on seeing them several month before. I hope this isn’t going to be a new trend.
My back started causing me problems again when I woke up on the 17th of December with severe pain in my back and my sciatica. It appears to be the same type of pain I was experiencing from two years ago that lead to me having surgery at the end of April in 2016. Let’s hope this time it doesn’t require surgery
This Thanksgiving was different than most. We traveled down to Cincinnati the Sunday before Thanksgiving to visit with them. Ashley came along as well and we brought our dogs for the first time to visit Braxton at his home. I was scheduled 2 months ago to work on an upgrade to production that day and my tasks were running late and I ended up driving myself later. As soon as I finished my migration tasks, I left and wasn’t 20 minutes on the road when the team I was helping out was reporting an error and asking for my help determining the cause. I ended spending most of my time at Stephanie’s and Marcus’ on my laptop trying to figure out their issue, which later turned out to be a missed task on their end which prevented their system from talking to our system.
We had beef that Nikki cooked up before we left and it was delicious. I then was able to enjoy a little time socializing with the family and watching the dogs play. Braxton has so much energy he wears our girls out! I was the first one to head out as we were still trying to figure the production issue and I had to get to bed as I worked at 6:00 am the following morning. Almost the entire time traveling down and back, I was on support calls. I had originally told the family the only day I couldn’t go was the 19th. But it was determined that was the only day they could do Thanksgiving and it was miserable for me as I was unable to participate much and made it easy for everyone on the team to point fingers at me at the time, even though the issue was unrelated to our team.
Jonny came home Tuesday night and he ran in the Annual Granville Turkey Trot race. There were almost 2689 runners in the race and Jonny got to see a lot of his old High School team mates. He took 2nd place behind Tyler Otterstead who was Jonny’s team mate in high school when he was a freshman and Tyler was a senior. Tyler runs for Columbia University now.
Jonny then went over to Alyssa’s for Thanksgiving dinner and Nikki and I were home alone for the rest of Thanksgiving day with the dogs.
It’s the end of the season for Jonny as he ran in the Mid American Conference Cross Country Championships held at Miami University in Oxford, Oh. This time in Oxford was very different than when we were there earlier in the season. Earlier is so hot they ran early to try to avoid the 90 degree heat. This time it was windy wet and low 40’s. Parts of the course had standing water from the rain the had gotten leading up to race time. At least it didn’t rain during the race.
Jonny completed the 8K course in 27:11.7 and placed 74th out of 81 participants. The official results can be found here at TFRRS.
This completes Jonny’s career as a cross country runner as his coach is going to take the mid distance track runners out of competing in the fall in cross country in the upcoming years. We are going to miss watching and cheering him on in races in the fall. He has always been fun to watch run.
Jonny ran at the Penn State Nation Open today in State College, PA at Penn State. The campus was very nice and beautiful and the event was held on the Blue and White Gold Course.
This race was a 5.2 mile race instead of an 8K race which is 4.97 miles, so this would be Jonny’s longest race yet. He was racing against schools all across the country including Penn State, Oklahoma State, Villanova, Cornell, North Carolina, University of California Davis, Akron, Bucknell, Lehigh, Duquesne, Loyola, William and Mary, and Kent State.
Jonny ended up 113 out of 131 runners with a time of 27:57. At the 5K mark he was 119, so he passed 6 more runners in the final 3+ Kilometers of the race. The official results can be found here on Athletic.net.
After the race he said he wasn’t feeling well and thought he may have been sick.
