Duane Hale In ICU

I am publishing a chapter from the book that I wrote with Duane Hale, about his battle with Spinal Muscular Atrophy. Duane is in ICU at Mother Francis Hospital in Tyler, TX right now fighting to breathe. In 2011, the year Life Rolls On was published, Lindale lost Butch Almany and David Wilkerson. Both men touched Duane's life in different and equally special ways. Below is a chapter from Life Roles On about Duane's relationship with the legendary Lindale educator.

Our book is available on Amazon.com as a physical book or as a digital download. Click HERE to read the first two chapters of Life Rolls On.

Click HERE to like the Facebook page. Duane monitors his "likes" constantly, and today we hit 1000 likes!

The Leader of the Band

“His own disease causes his head to tilt downward. It’s like he was genetically engineered to look straight into my eyes as I sat in my wheelchair.”

--Duane [on Butch Almany]

If you grow up in the mountains of Colorado, you probably want to be a skier. If you grow up on the beach in Hawaii, you might dream of being a surfer. If you're a boy growing up in Texas, you most likely want to play high school football.

I certainly couldn’t play football so I always dreamed of being in the band.

I spent a good part of my childhood watching my friends compete. In first and second grade, I tried to get involved in some playground games but I just couldn’t keep up. I gave kickball a shot, but when it was my turn to kick, I couldn’t even kick the red, rubber ball back to the pitcher. Even if I could have kicked, I sure couldn’t run afterward.

I wasn’t able to throw any ball, except a tennis ball, more than a couple feet. So I spent school recess playing marbles and Hot Wheels under the big oak tree on the edge of the playground. Depending upon what else was happening, I might waddle over to watch my friends play football or basketball. For the most part I felt like Rudolph—excluded from the reindeer games.

Most boys were pretty focused on physical games, but every once in a while, Eric Bartley or Cary Johnson would come over and play marbles with me or just talk for a while.

One day, a new kid came over and started talking to me. “Hey, can I see your Hot Wheels?”

“Sure.” I said. “My name’s Duane.”

“Mine’s Ronald Bunch.”

A few days later, while everyone else was playing tag football, Ronald had me hold a plastic bat while he pitched me tennis balls. I gave a few weak swings but couldn’t make contact with the ball. Finally, Ronald had me hold the bat out while he threw. After about ten tries, the ball hit the bat that I was holding and dribbled out a few feet in front of me. That was the closest I’d ever come to hitting a home run.

I wanted to compete in something. Even if it wasn’t athletics, I wanted to be in contests to measure myself against others in something. I wanted to be part of some kind of team or unit. I’d never joined any organized group or competed in anything. That would all change in sixth grade.

In those days, nearly half the student body played in the band. For twenty-four years, the architect of the band’s success and popularity was its director, Butch Almany.

I wanted to be in that band, which meant I was eager to join the intermediate school band at the earliest opportunity—sixth grade. My parents didn’t make a lot of money. Although medical bills, wheelchairs, lifts, van, and all my other disease stuff had already put a financial strain on the family, my parents worked overtime and set money aside. In August, just before sixth grade, they bought me a cornet for my eleventh birthday. The instrument represented their approval and commitment to support me in joining the band. I chose the cornet mainly because it was light and easy to handle.

For a month before school started, I struggled first just to make a sound with my new instrument, then to play a note. I practiced simply holding the horn to my mouth for several minutes at a time.

On the first day of sixth grade, I carried my new cornet that I had no idea how to play into the band hall of one of the most iconic educators to ever grace my town. I hoped things that I’d heard about Mr. Almany were true. Could a man really take a kid with nothing but ambition—a kid who could barely get his instrument to make a noise—and train him how to play beautiful music? Would he really bring out the best in me, like everyone said he did for his students?

I wasn’t sure if I had the wind or the arm strength that it took to play an instrument, let alone any musical talent.

I heard Mr. Almany was tough on his students, that he was a perfectionist. Rumor had it that he only taught sixth grade because he wanted to weed out the underachievers before they got to high school. Several older kids told me he tended to call people out individually in front of the whole band. I feared I’d be one of those people—that I would be the first one. I imagined him stopping down in the middle of our very first practice to humiliate me. I could picture it in my mind. “Stop! Stop! Duane Hale, is that you making that God-awful racket? Go to the office and tell them I said to put you in study hall because your cornet is hurting my ears. I can’t have that noise in my band.” I worried my band experiment would have a humiliating end. Would it be the same as me trying to kick a ball? Would I lag behind in band just as I had on the playground?

Within weeks, I was at ease. Although he never seemed to treat me any different than anyone else, the fact that Mr. Almany was also a frail cornet player with a degenerative disease, Anklyosing Spondilitis (AS), might have made him sensitive to my condition. His AS, which is an arthritic disease, caused him to walk with a gimp. But more than that, it contorted his body toward a forward lean and a downward tilt to his head. Because of his lean and head tilt, Mr. Almany, like me, also looked up at the world. To me, his posture made him appear inviting because he leaned toward people during conversation, almost like he was bending in to hear a secret.

I was amazed at how fast I learned to play. It was one of the most exciting learning experiences of my life.  He pushed me, like he pushed everyone. He had an amazing ear. I quickly learned there was no fooling Mr. Almany. I couldn’t claim to have practiced a piece when I hadn’t. He always knew. He had this aura about him that made us students not want to be the one to disappoint him. You wanted to please Mr. Almany. You want him to approve of your sound.

Mr. Almany’s high school bands received Sweepstakes awards twenty consecutive years. They played for the President and for the Governor of Texas.  They were the pride of Lindale. When I started in sixth grade I hoped that I would be good enough three years later to play for him again in the Lindale High School Marching Band.

When I went into my wheelchair, I realized our diseases brought us a unique point-of-view of each other—one that nobody else shared. Ironically, the combinations of our conditions brought us eye-to-eye in the physical sense. Of all the people he dealt with, only my eyes landed in is natural line of sight. Mr. Almany’s head tilt was humble, yet his gaze was intimidating. Because of his posture I had the unique experience of connecting with him eye-to-eye more than anyone else. I was the only person he could talk to whom he didn’t have to look up at. In the physical sense, and as a mentor, Mr. Almany had me in his sights.

In high school, Mr. Almany encouraged me to join his prestigious stage band. My parents came through again, this time buying me a shiny, silver trumpet. By then I needed to raise the support arms on my wheelchair so I could rest my elbows and forearms on them while I held my trumpet.

After one of my performance solos, he nicknamed me “iceman” because he said I was so cool and collected on stage.

During our stage band rehearsals, Mr. Almany made a few jokes about how hidden I was from the audience’s perspective in my wheelchair. “Iceman, I think we’re going to have to start calling you “Invisible man.” I can’t see you. You better make sure I can hear you or I’m counting you absent.”

Not that I ever complained, but it did bum me out to know that my face was two feet below the other trumpets in my row, and the woodwind section hid almost my whole body from the crowd. I was proud of being in the stage band and I wanted people to see me.

When I showed up in the auditorium before our first performance for our high school classmates, Mr. Almany greeted me with a smile. “Hey Duane, follow me, please.”

He gimped unevenly toward the stage as I wheeled behind him. He glanced me a smile as he pointed to a square wooden riser sitting on the stage, about two feet high with a ramp leading up to it. There was gray skirting around the front of the platform. It was a stage on a stage. He pointed at the ramp. “Can you wheel up to the platform and see if you fit?”

It took me a moment to figure it out; then I realized. Mr. Almany had a platform built for me. That ramp became part of our regular stage rigging and at our concerts my head would be at the same level as the other trumpets. To the audience, I would appear the same height as everybody else.

Mr. Almany put music in my soul and made me feel like a rockstar in his stage band. Mr. Almany quenched that childhood yearning to belong to a team. 


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The Day Before the Night Before Christmas

After an absence of almost two years, I've finally managed to update my blog. Hope you enjoy this scene from my day.

Also, One of my books, One Way Ticket to Anywhere kindle download is discounted during the Christmas holidays. "Almost Free". Click on the book and get it on your Kindle...

Rich





From: Post Alley Court & Marketside Flats (no reply) <noreply@activebuilding.com>
Date: Mon, Dec 23, 2013 at 10:42 AM
Subject: Santa's Helper
To: Rich Ochoa <richochoa@gmail.com>

Post Alley Court & Marketside Flats - Santa's Helper

From: Tracy Moesch (Manager) December 23, 2013 10:41 AM Subject: Santa's Helper Hello Valued Resident, You have a package waiting for pick-up in the leasing office. We want everyone to get their holiday goodies on time so Santa's helper (Jake) will be making deliveries today, MONDAY Dec 23rd. If you would like your package delivered please let us know by 3pm today. The leasing office will be open until 2pm tomorrow, Dec 24th, for last minute packages but Santa's helper will not be here to deliver them. Happy Holidays, Tracy & Jake To reply to this message follow this link

This message was intended for richochoa@gmail.com. Want to control which emails you receive from ActiveBuilding? Go to the Notifications Settings page.

Just got finished with bizzare conversation with the manager at my apt complex office today after receiving the above email:

Rich: Hi Tracy, I hear Santa played a visit today... [Smile spreads acorss my face]

Tracy [all businesslike, while wrapping up gift packs of cookies and candies]: Oh...were you expecting something?

Rich: Uhm...yeah...I got an email from you.

Tracy [Surveys the UPS and Fedex boxes that are always stacked in the corner of the office]: Uhm...sorry. I don't see anything for you.

Rich[straight face, thinking this must be a gag, then a smile and a glace at the table full of cookies and candies. No verbal response]

Tracy: Were you expecting something?

Rich: Well...the email from you was addressed to "valued resident"

Tracy[Look of contemplation, then immediate recognition]: Ohhh...I wonder who I meant to send that to?

Rich: Well...ahhh...Merry Christmas

Tracy [Continues to wrap cookie packs]: yeah. Merry Christmas

Rich [Exit stage left]

Lake Giribaldi - Whistler B.C. (Canada)

The drive between Vancouver and Whistler on the Sea to Sky highway is renowned for it's beauty. As stunning as it is, it gets better when you get out of your car.

As a veteran Vancouver/Whistler business traveler (seriously I was really working at least some of the time), I advise outdoor enthusiasts to allow a full day for the drive. When you see the signs for Brandywine Falls or Shannon Falls don't blow past them. Pull over and spend a few minutes to view two stunning waterfalls, especially during spring and summer months when the snowmelt brings out the splendor in the falls.

One of the true dayhiking gems in the Whistler area is the Lake Giribaldi trail.

http://www.vancouvertrails.com/trails/garibaldi-lake/


While You are hiking on this trail, don't forget your Kindle


Lake Giribaldi itself is every bit as awe-inspiring as Lake Louise. I say this about a lot of lakes in the Canadian Rockies. Lake O'hara, Bow Lake, Lake Oesa, to name a few. There is only one reason these lakes are not household names and not featured in American Airlines flight magazines. They are not as accessible, which is exactly why you should target these lakes for a visit, perhaps even ahead of Lake Louise. If you wanna fight tour buses full or camera-wielding Asians and old people for parking spots so you can weave through city-like pedestrian traffic, just so you can go back to the office and brag about seeing Lake Louise alongside 2000 other people, then I think you should go to Lake Louise. In high season, there will be more visitors at Lake Louise during the one hour you are there, than Lake Giribaldi will see in a year.

The hike in is a strenuous climb. You'll do switchbacks as you gain elevation.
If you're bringing your dog on this hike, make your pouch carry his own food and water:

Aspen CO - Margy's Hut via Johnson Creek Trail Cross Country Ski Trip

Margy's Hut is a great hiking or cross country skiing destination. There are routes that lead to the hut, you need to understand I am describing my experience using the Johnson Creek Trail.  Hutski has done a fine job describing how to navigate your car to get to trailhead and the mileage milestones of the trail.




Although I had never cross country skied before, I'm an expert downhill skier and always looking for a challenge, so I thought it might be a good idea to take my new girlfriend on a cross country ski vacation. Once in a while I treat myself to a backcountry hike that has me staying in a remote hut. I wanted her to have that experience as well. I had never been to Aspen before. Wanting to cover all three objectives, (cross country skiing, staying in a hut, and visiting Aspen) I choose to make our first cross country ski outing a 2700 ft vertical ascent. I didn't plan on it being through deep powder. I was surprised none of the ski rental shops in Glenwood Springs included skins as part of the cross country ski rental package. The cost of buying skins for our four skis would come to a total of about $300. I convinced my girlfriend we'd be fine without the skins. To see how my decision worked out, check out this two minute video story in which my girlfriend cries tears of relief when she realizes she will not be spending the night in a snow cave.

The Mist Trail (Nevada Falls, Vernal Falls) - Yosemite National Park, CA

If you only have one day in Yosemite, I'd spend it on the Mist Trail. To find the trailhead, get a good map and follow it until you see this amazing sign.

The hike from Curry Village up to Nevada Falls is part of the legendary Mist Trail. A lot of people have died on this trail. If you want to read more on that, you can check out the book, Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite. In terms of lives claimed, it's the deadliest single day hike in the United States. That doesn't mean it's reckless to hike this trail. Rarely do folks buy the farm because of treachery on the trail. The hike itself is no more dangerous than most other trails. Almost every death occurs  as a result of bad judgment off the trail--swimming in the river above the falls, taking pictures on ledges, slipping on slimy rocks above the falls, after ignoring danger signs, etc. Just don't do anything stupid, and you'll be fine on this hike. Don't let your wife talk you out of it.

There are several variations of this loop. I describe a commonly-used loop version, climbing in on the Mist Trail until you reach the top of Nevada Falls and descending on the John Muir Trail until it rejoins the Mist. Although the top of Nevada Falls is a destination in itself, you will be sharing this trail with Half Domers, some of whom start long before dawn using the Mist Trail as the first segment of their ambitious plan to bag Half Dome as a one-day, out-and-back event. Other Half Domers break their experience into a two, even three day event by hiking in past Nevada Falls, over-nighting in Little Yosemite Valley back-country camp site.

The Mist trail is a very popular trail with diverse users. The lower part of the trail is quite scenic with water features and is easily accessible from the Curry Village parking lot, which means it will likely be inundated with seven-year-old girls running around in sandals, seven-year-old boys throwing rocks at each other, and Asians with over-sized cameras traveling in large packs. Like most hikes, the more you climb the Mist Trail, the more it thins out. This rule does not apply to Half Dome. The queue on that single-file ascent can be longer than the line to the ladies's restroom at a Bon Jovi concert. I'm not guiding you up Half Dome, only to Nevada Falls. You can find tons of other resources about Half Dome, but it won't be as funny as my guide.

Vernal Falls will look very different depending upon what season you view it. The photo here, was taken in October, and you see one thread of water.

More too come about Nevada Falls

Olympic National Park - Shi Shi Beach

I've slept on a beach twice. In 1983, me and some Navy buddies drove out to Ocean City, Maryland on Fourth of July weekend. After discovering every bed in town was accounted for at 7 p.m. on Friday night, we decided we'd just head to the bars, pick up some girls, and crash with them. At 3 a.m.,  having not spoken to any girls all night, we stumbled out of a bar, across the boardwalk and flopped on the sand. After one of us puked, we staggered twenty yards away, took off our shirts and shoes, and used them as pillows and hunkered down. Tip: New Balance shoes make for suck-ass pillows. Around dawn, a cop jabbed his nightstick into my back. The camping trip was abruptly over.

Having overcome my fear of speaking to them years before, I now prefer to take women as hiking partners. They tend to accept being to bossed around and are easier to impress using the skills I learned from Man vs. Wild. Plus, if we're attacked by a wild animal, I can generally outrun my girl hiking partners, which gives me some piece of mind in the backcountry. So I got that going for me...which is nice.  Twenty-five years after Ocean City Beach, I tried camping on the Pacific Ocean with another buddy. We were in Seattle for our friend's wedding. The groom had plans for the honeymoon that didn't involve us, so we took off for the Olympic Peninsula with a backpack full of tiny corn on the cobs, celery with cream cheese, crackers, and other wedding h'dorves.

The Shi Shi beach trail, in in the Olympic National Park in Washington, is short and easy. You'll stroll about 2 miles through a rain forest to get from the trailhead to the beach. Ferns will brush your legs. Waterlogged treefall and moss surround you.  Moss hangs from old growth evergreens like a scene from a scary movie. Unless it's July or August, most likely it will be overcast, dreary, moist, cool. You won't see much sky anyway, the tree-cover is thick. You might come across toads or salamanders, and maybe some dear.



The trail descends toward it's end before the forest opens up abruptly and gives way to the beach. You see sand, ocean, and billions and billions of tree trunks turned driftwood. You'll have to log hop or Wallenda your way through the maze of logs to get to the breakwater.







Before you do anything, pause to consider you are further west than anyone else in the US except for a handful of American Indians a few miles up the coast. After pondering the enormity of that, find a place to pitch your tent. Here's a tip: when you pitch your tent, remember tides come in and can turn your tent into boat.  It's hard to swim inside a tent, especially when it's dark. Remember all those logs you walked across to get to your campsite? They weren't carried there by lumberjacks. The ocean moved them and it can move you while you sleep. So, if you see a bunch of tents lined up one-hundred meters from the water, don't be a wise-ass and setup fifty meters closer than them, unless you wanna end up further west than the Indians.

As you pitch the tent, send your girl out to convert driftwood into use-able sized pieces of firewood. Give her your overpriced, inadequate, multitool with its 2-inch saw blade and see what she comes back with. When you're relaxing on a log, sipping some rum you packed in, with the tent already setup, she'll probably come back with a couple twigs saying your tool is too short to do the job. Don't take it personally.

To get your firewood, show her how to snap branches off tree trunks by jumping off logs onto the branches. Then watch as she tries.

Or, come prepared with a really cool human-powered chain saw

Having pitched your Sierra designs tent and collected firewood, take off your hiking boots and don some water shoes and explore the beach.
















Enjoy the smoke-stacked cliffs and














the sea creatures which look like vaginas glued to rocks.

Go back to the tent, build a fire, cook up some food, and sip on that rum.











If you have an harmonica, do your fellow hikers a favor--keep it in your backpack. There's nothing more annoying than bad harmonica on a hiking trip. If you're with another dude instead of a girl, try not to think about how gay it is for two guys to camp together on a cold romantic beach, and bring a warm Mountain Hardware sleeping bag to head off any hypothermia-induced spooning.

And to mitigate the gay factor to the extent possible, under no circumstances, take photos together...

Crowds can be bad in the summer. I hear during high season weekends, tents are twenty meters apart. We went on a Sunday night in June and saw one other tent a hundred meters away. The highlight of this trip is beach combing.

See ya on the trail...

Indian Peaks Colorado - Isabelle Glacier

Where: Indian Peaks Colorado. About two hours from Denver. Head for the Brainard Lake Recreation area. There aren't many services near here. There's a grocery store in Nederland about a half hour from the trailhead.

On your map, you'll see a town close to the trailhead, Ward. It's not really a town. It's a dirt road to a post office, which passes a bunch of dilapidated trailers.  "Your car don't run no more?" No problem, push it up against your camper, line up the doors, get some plywood and duck tape and you've just added a bedroom to your house. Ward looks like a junkyard. It's collection of Ford Pintos, Dodge Darts, and Kingswood Estate Station Wagons (the one with the brown wood-grain panel on the side) far outnumber  the 165 residents, most of whom don't seem to mind not having access to any stores which carry shirts, shoes, or toothbrushes.  Subject of many Internet rumors, if you read it's a free-sex commune, don't get your hopes up--I can assure you there's nothing worth dragging out of the one bar in this town. The residents, well...I guess they can be summed up with one word--Deliverance. Visit Ward with your windows up and in a reliable vehicle. You don't wanna break down in this place. Take pictures when people aren't looking. Then blow outta there and head for Brainard Lake.

The Hike: Parking at Brainard Lake is horrible, but at least it's better than leaving your car in Ward and returning to find a small family living in it. During high season, get there at daybreak or expect to walk a mile or two on the street to the Long Lake Trailhead. There's a little Warden shack at the trailhead. Pass it on the right as you step onto one of the most scenic trails you'll ever hike.

The trail starts flat and easy as you skirt along the shore of Long Lake sometimes under cover of sub-alpine conifers. Even is the trail is busy, there's secluded ponds and small meadows off to the right just a few paces. After you leave the Long Lake area, the views open up and you understand you are in a valley. Niwot Ridge is to your left. The ridge on the right tops out at Pawnee Peak. There will be a trail sign that takes you over Pawnee pass. If you take that option, read someone else's blog, because you will be looking down on all the stuff I write about, instead of being in it. You'll walk over several creeks, see meadows of rainbow-colored wildflowers (July), and gain some decent elevation as you head toward a classic alpine lake--Lake Isabelle.

Snow melt

Creek below Lake Isabelle

Before you get to the lake, if the season is right, you may be treated to some small waterfalls or raging creeks passing under snowbridges.

Snowbridge

Snow melt just below Lake Isabelle

You're just below the treeline here. Perch yourself on a boulder on the shoreline and have a picnic lunch (or at least a Power Bar) while you admire the jagged peaks all around you.

Lake Isabelle - Caught Nothing

Most casual day-hikers turn around here. Unless you're already sinking in snow, or your girlfriend is in panic mode about the possibility of encountering afternoon hail and lightning storms the wardens and the park literature warns you about, keep going.

Past Lake Isabelle, even in deep summer, you may benefit from mountaineering equipment as you cross hard snowpack, fields of boulders and possibly muddy trails. We used our trekking poles, crampons and ice-axes. Although we were passed by an older couple whose equipment consisted of walking sticks. The climbing is not technical though it can become so if you fall on the snow pack and need to self-arrest. If there's snowpack, it can obscure the trail as you climb, but the valley is so narrow, I never worried about getting lost.

As you get close to your turnaround point, Isabelle glacier, keep an eye open for marmots as they scurry around on and under the rocks.

Yeah - He's cute

 The boulder hopping seems to last forever, but it doesn't.

Boulder field

If your girlfriend starts nagging while in the endless boulder field, keep telling her it's only a half mile more. If you're not there in a half mile, when she asks how much further, cut the distance in half. "A quarter mile".
She may protest. "It seems like we've already walked half a mile."
Don't admit your mistake. You're the man, she's the woman, she will defer to you on matters of distance, but only if you sound confident. Try this: "No Babe, we've only walked a quarter mile."
Ten minutes later, when you're still not there, tell her it's an eighth of a mile.
Ten minutes later, tell her, "it's just over that ridge."

You may have to hop boulders over creeks. You may hear a rushing river under all the rocks you are walking on.Keep going, you're almost there, you only have a quarter mile to go. How do you know when you're there? The view.

You're There

I'm there

You'll come over a ridge, and a glacier will be hanging in front of your face. Below Isabelle glacier, icebergs will be floating in a small pond. Ice and snow will be all around you. The wind will blow like you're in San Francisco. There will be chill in the air, even in August. There will be no more trail. You are there. Enjoy some time taking pictures of your girlfriend in front of icebergs, tell her how beautiful the pictures will be, shove a granola bar in her mouth and hike back the way you came.

We got caught in a hail and lightning storm on the hike back. We huddled against a boulder pulled a rainfly over our heads and waited five minutes for the sky to turn blue.

This is a long day hike. I like it because it's a nice climb, without endless switchbacks. Hit the trail early to maximize picture taking and most importantly to get back below the treeline by 2ish when the storms tend to hit. And don't spend the night in Ward.