Le Loup-Garou -A John Dimon Story
wow, 4 comments on the last post! it must be the John Dimon Magic…. since my next post is still in mental rumination format (i.e. been thinking about it, but haven’t written it yet, it has to do with silly putty & coaches) I will reprint a John Dimon Story I wrote down a ong time ago, and that originally existed elsewhere on the web. I think many of the lifetime athlete crowd of traveling sweat-gypsies have unique & weird road trip racing stories, but I have met few who have such a plethora of stories as John Dimon, here is one of my favorites (and the weirdest):
In the late 70’s a couple of US Olympic Biathlon team hopefuls were traveling the Northeast, doing cross country ski races and generally having way too much fun. As this was cross country skiing in the 70’s, lets just say these young, spunky, extremely fit fellows were just a little on the furry side. In fact John Dimon back then sported quite the viking beard (see the picture below). He learned the hard way that when carrying a pair of skis over your shoulder, keep the klister AWAY from your full beard, it was only 3/4 of a beard after that incident.
So these extra furry guys were at a race and staying in a cabin next door to a cabin containing a bunch of French Canadian racers. During the night a rat got into the Canadian’s cabin, and after running around and scaring the bejesus out of the Canadians, it climbed into a bag of potato chips someone had left on the floor and started munching away. Awakened by all the racket, a bleary eyed John Dimon appeared at the door of the Canadian’s cabin in his underwear. Figuring out what the source of all the noise was, and being only half awake, he took a flying leap through the air and landed with both feet directly on the potato chip bag! Without a word he chucked the bag containing the now rat flavored potato chips out the door, and stalked off without a word back to bed. The Canadians were speechless, This american was crazy! They liked him right away.
The next day at the races, the brutal XC ski race course contained a lot of switchback climbing through the woods. John and the other Americans were in such a mood after the rat incident (and maybe suffering a bit of testosterone poisoning that is so common to 20 year olds), that they were howling like wolves at various parts of the climb, to encourage each other, and to see where they were on the course in relation to each other.
That was confirmation enough to the Canadians, After this race weekend, the Quebec racers began to call John Le Loup-Garou. That is french for “The werewolf”. The name stuck.
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My father is a photographer, and as a kid, I always had a camera in my hands. Starting out with plasticy 110mm cheapos, evolving to a chunky East German made SLR, then finally now one of the highly evolved canon digital elphs, my father has given me every camera I own, and now, looking at a lifetime of photos. I feel completely wealthy with memory!! Thanks Dad!! On the right is my first time ever on a geared bike (look, I’m already reaching for a bigger gear!! I must be 8ish in that photo, hey dad, do you remember??)
From the outside it’s a gentle collection of curves and windows flowing together, on the inside, standing in the central open area, the glass ceiling rises 6 stories above you, staircases wind along one wall like strands of DNA, 3 glass elevators silently zip up and down with their massive counterweights exposed; on the other side of this open space tiers of shops give way to endless study nooks & reading couches. This feels more like it could be a sci-fi set from 
The mystical MRI magnets swept across my knee on Monday, today the experienced eyes of Dr. Anderson made sense of the pictures, and gave me the best possible news. There is no visible damage at all to my ligaments, ACL, or my meniscus!!!! There is some inflammation in the kneecap, indicating overuse & that there is trauma, but nothing really abnormal in the essential structures. 
Well, here is an opportunity to take that metaphor one step further, as here is an image from my MRI this morning! The bones of my thigh and shin are clearly visible, as well as my ACL in the center. This is a cross section, somewhere behind the kneecap. The Doctor suspects an injury to either the Pleica or the Meniscus, both are soft tissues that cushion and guide the bones, and the Meniscus is clearly visible here as the separation between the bones.
My friend Carla described the sound of an MRI machine as like “giant ladybugs walking across the earth”. The MRI I spent the better part of an hour underneath sounded to me like the yammering of WWI era machine guns, firing at each other across an echoing valley (weird associations, as these are both things neither Carla or I have ever experienced). The very nice MRI tech said that one patient described an an MRI as sounding like “an antique John Deere tractor”. That works too.
MRIs use extremely powerful magnets to work their visual magic, magnets that evidently can do things like pull pins out of repaired bones, metal slivers from skin, or destroy pacemakers. I had to remove all the metal from my body before I squiggled myself under this MRI (belts/zippers/keys). But I did forget to take off my titanium wedding ring, and although I did not feel it actually move, my ring finger tingled in the same way as the tissues of my knee. The kneecap looks so empty here, fragile like its filled with crepe paper, not like the meaty head of my calf muscle crawling upward from the right. Or the toughened X of my ACL linking the bones.
Jess and I went for a really lovely tandem ride this morning (knee 100% normal). This picture, she shot over my shoulder as we were engaged in typical Ithaca climbing. We had been steeply and gradually climbing for a solid twenty minutes when she took this, and we still had some ways to go till we got to the top (this is waterwagon road, for Ithacan reference) . 
