Enjoy the shots.

Rare showy snow...

Not going 20 today - not at all...

Climbed up to the Sherman Reservation - a quite forgotten spot along the ridge. Even the history succumbed to the snow ...

Sadly I found the reservation defaced by some four - wheelers. Talk about Trail etiquitte..

After that - it was up Missionary Ridge proper to get a view of the whole city.
Someone wasn't as lucky as me in the winter weather. (look close). I just kept it slow and steady - climbing the crest.

And there she was - Old lady Lookout - with white hair.

The Cross family invited us to join their First Lego League team - Team Terastorm. Antonio has loved legos for as long as I can remember, so was up from the get go. Elena has really taken to programming, and the more she was able to get the machine to do what she wanted, the more excited we got.

So on Saturday, December 4 after weeks of preparation we went up to Crossville TN to the state championship.

First Lego League is a great program, introducing kids to real world technology project work through fun inventions and sports like competition. Technology projects are about more than design and programming. So much is gained and lost from effective teamwork, good presentation, communication, etc. These factors are valued in the competition just as much as the programming and robot design. And our team brought a good mix. Teddy Cross has been doing this programming for 3 years, and he is very good. But Antonio, in his first year, became the PR spokesman for our team and charmed the MC so much that we got great spirit points.

The tournament lasted the whole day, and included lots of subplots.

The robot failed in its first two runs and the team was despairing. But in the third and final run it performed almost perfectly - attaining almost all the designed tasks. Prayers were answered.

Independent home-schoolers are not very good team players. And there were challenges in the weeks leading up to the tournament. But when facing a common opponent the team came together in a tremendous fashion and showed both a generous respect for each other and a willingness to hold personal hopes lightly. These two elements made for lots of gracious professionalism in the tournament day.

But the moment we waited for were the prizes. The team was called down for 4th place in the robot points competition. And against all odds, was called down for 3rd place in the overall. This means that we didn't just do a good job in the programming and design, but in the communication and teamwork aspects. Great job guys!

The winners

Concluding word of thanks
I've got to say one more thing. If it were not for the Chattanooga Engineers Club and Ed Chapin none of this would have been possible. These guys very generously funded our participation in the competition (and lots of other Chattanooga teams.) This stuff isn't cheap - it would have probably cost us more than $1000 to participate as a team without their sponsorship. Ed showed up at the event with a truckload of water and snacks to fuel all participants. Their very generous assistance will doubtlessly lead to an explosion in creative technology coming from Chattanooga in the next generation. Thanks again!

Elena has always been crafty, but recently she has found friends who are showing her some tips and tricks about art. She has been drawing more cards, more pictures of her friends and more fairies. (girl that she is...) We've always been proud of her craft, but its been harder to share knitting and bracelets on a blog than it is pictures.

So below we present a set of princesses .....

I think she needs to develop a set of character cards (like Pokemon...) I think she would be very successful with the under 14 crowd..

This ride didn't have any climbs to speak of, mostly long flats and gentle rollers, but it felt good. The bike club has such a great mix of abilities and strengths - and I fell right in, sometimes feeling like I was going to snap from the pace, and other times feeling strong enough to fly off the front.

A smaller group opened up the pace nicely on Birchwood pike as we crested down around Skull Island. We rode hard together from there all the way to our designated store stop. Maybe 10 miles. I had forgotten how much I enjoy the paceline. The reward of digging deep and working really hard to get on someone's wheel is that when you arrive, suddenly the aerodynamics make it really easy to stay there. It feels a lot like you are floating or flying. In addition, the tight coordination of riding 8 inches off a wheel brings a focus and a purpose to your riding that just doesn't need to be there when alone. And then you ease off together and get to talk. And that is fun too.

The legs feel a little less toasted tonight, and the heart churned right along - even though I was worried that I was pushing a little too hard too fast. We did about 2 1/2 hours of riding and all was good. This year's goal is to figure out the balance between riding hard and staying within my heart's limits. I've pushed the riding part these weeks and I'm pleased with the feeling.

The climb up the stair steps on Hwy 41 was tougher than I remembered, but then we hammered back around the grand canyon of the Tennessee river. The river shone through bare trees in stark winter fashion. The mountain ranges hemming the river in tight and even framed the sky. I kept looking for the break where Hwy 41 climbs out of the canyon to go over to Tiftonia. I was wearing shorts (in February no less) and my knees felt the cold. They started really hurting on every climb. I thought about bailing in Tiftonia after we climbed back over the ridge on Hwy 41 by Racoon mountain, but when we came down to the old Bi-Lo parking lot I felt good enough to go back over the butt of Lookout to Stelmo.

About 45 miles, little more then 3 hours, longest and hardest ride since October 2007. The heart felt great, the legs sucked. No power at all. My knees have hurt all evening, but its hurt good.

Hope the power and the pain switch places over the next few months.

Here are the images from last year.

Winter

Summer

Fall

Canoeing on the lake
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Losing the Life Jacket

Me and my dad were having a canoe ride and were going to the peninsula when we got there I took off my life jacket off and I put it under a rock. and then we went to look at a cemetery for a while and then we skipped rocks for a little bit then we left

By Antonio Hatch 11/18/2008

(What Antonio doesn't say is that we left without the life jacket... So the next day the adventure continued...)

Hiking up the hill

Adventure to Find the Life Jacket

When we went to get the life jacket at the peninsula we rode the canoe across the lake with Papi and waited for him to bring Lili and Mami. We left them with the canoe. Papi, Antonio and I went into the woods on a steep trail. We went up at very fast pace. It was really tiring. Finally we got to the top of the hill to the next road. Then we took a rest and I lay down on the road. When we started walking again, it was down hill so it was much easier. We walked down the road until we got to the cemetery. Antonio and I ran the rest of the way. When we got to the peninsula Mami and Lili were already there. we found the life jacket, skipped stones and threw stones. Then I went in the canoe with Mami and Lili while Antonio and Papi walked on the shore of the lake back to the cabin.

By Elena Hatch 11/18/2008

Pic 4
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Finding the Life Jacket

Mami and I got into a canoe to meet my brother and sister and dad at a rocky, sandy place where we thought they had left the life jacket. On our canoe ride we saw two fish, one blue bird and some hawks and very pretty leaves on the trees. Then I thought we would get lost or go to the wrong place. But when we got to the rocky, sandy place we got out of the canoe and found the life jacket under a big rock. We skipped some rocks and soon the others came through the woods. I was elated to see them.

By Liliana Hatch 11/18/2008

. .

Cabin on the hill...

Writing about these incidents now I find myself reflecting on what it means to tell a story like this. It certainly is full of drama, full of excitement. It's got lots of elements of a great story. But I think I miss the point. When I get wrapped up in the storytelling, I'm not sure I deal honestly with the truth behind the story. I'm not sure I deal well with the impact of what happened to me. Talking up the story as a big adventure minimizes what happened. Its a form of pretending that it really was not a big deal.

But honestly, I'm not sure what the appropriate response really is... The reactions I get to all these stories are usually slack jawed amazement, or horror. Neither of which I really want. On Sunday at church I spoke for 2 minutes to Greg Bagby and he ran away. I was not impacted or particularly dismayed at his reaction, but he was shaken. Shaken enough that he could not continue to talk to me. He returned later that afternoon (making a special trip on his bike no less) to ask an apology. He told me that he really felt sorry for me and for what had happened and wanted to give the event the gravitas it deserved. He felt really bad that he wasn't able to stand and comfort me in church during the moment when I had been telling him what was happening. But he simply could not and he was sorry.

I just don't get it. I'm ok. I'm here. I'm fine. It's a good story. There is no real reason to be overwhelmed.... Or is there.

Cheating death is not a good story. The adventure may be amazing, but the reality is much more sober. I think my own default mode is one of ignoring the defeat. Silence has been the valued partner over these months... and that is the only response I can get that makes sense. Not very satisfying, but its what I can do.

On July 16th I had ridden my bike to work and was planning to ride home as well. There were two things I hadn't planned. First - I had forgotten that Wednesday is the day we picked up our CSA vegetable bag - a big sack full of organic veggies from the good folks at Crabtree farms. Second - I had forgotten my exercise medicine at home. I'd taken it in the morning, but hadn't put it in the bags for the bike.

No big deal I thought. I'll just extend the ride and get the veggies, and be careful for the first 10 minutes. All should be good. So at 5:00 I headed off to get the veggies.

This ride extended my normal home commute by about 8 miles and went over one big hill that I'd have to climb both going and coming (Stringer's Ridge by the Chattanooga High School for the performing arts). Its not as bad as Missionary Ridge, but it's a climb. It happened about 13 minutes into my ride. The climb goes in three stages with some flat between each one. I was watching the heart rate through each stage and it kept climbing, while holding steady in the flats. In the second flat it was steady at 120. I hoped it would come down but it didn't. No big deal, I thought. .

So I turned off Mississippi, onto North Market street to ease up over the final hump by the high school and I got 3 cranks turned when the buzz started.

The next thing I felt was a hard crack on my helmet, my peaceful tranquility of cool Caribbean beach-side paradise was invaded by the hot smell of pavement. What!! Where am I?? What just happened???

Reality started flooding back. I groggily sat up, and then stumbled to grab my bike and get out of the road. A motorcycle rider coming the other way yelled at me... "Are you all right?? I saw you stop on the hill. I thought you'd put your foot down, but you just fell over. You laid there for like 10 seconds..." He turned around to come see. I sat down on the sidewalk, pulled off my helmet and watched my heart-rate. It was at 150 or 160.

A cop drove up; "Do you want to call an ambulance?" At first I said no, but then my heart rate jumped back up above 190, the buzzing came back and I tensed for a shock. None came, but I recanted. "You better call...."

It started to get crowded. Someone else came up and tapped me on the shoulder. It was Greg Wilhelm, a friend from church who is a police officer and patrols that North Chattanooga neighborhood. Soon the sirens sounded, and the fire truck roared up. They really didn't know what to do with me and were glad with the real pros came in the ambulance.

By the time the took me to the back of their van, my heart rate was back in the 50's slow, steady and uncompromising. I refused a ride to the hospital and signed a bunch of waivers. I called Marialice, who was on the other side of town at the swimming pool. She said to sit and wait - she would come.

So everyone left, I rode down to a shady spot with some steps by the middle school and waited. Again, I was filled with the wonder. What was happening? Why had I been so foolish to forget my exercise medicine? Why did I not stop and wait it out when the heart rate didn't drop in that last flat? I had passed out this time. Not gotten shocked... but passed out in the road.... What did that mean. What should I have done? Was it worse? I don't know. I still don't know.

We are changing things up this week and doing an all-American ride on
Friday morning (instead of a non-American ride on Saturday morning). So,
I submit to you a contest: Come up with the most American route for a
new ride. The winner will lead us on it.

I responded:

To be All American I think the route needs to take in cannons and biscuits - violence and overconsumption, victory and bounty, the agony of defeat and the thrill of a grits and gravy, the haunting memory of gunshot and the prospect of heavenly praising.

In other words - lets do the battlefield loop and finish by praising the lord.

We started before the sun. Five of us off shortly after 6.

Rode through the country - this land that we love to explore and expose...
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Then to the Park. The battlefield where so many lost their lives defending different ways of understanding what this country means. Where it is hard to imagine the grit of war when the pastoral is so lush and the riding so cool and refreshing..

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Then on into the city. A different sort of riding.

Our anticipated southern overconsumption was dashed by someone else's concept of a holiday. What? How can freedom mean that? Its just not American... We couldn't praise the lord and thank him for this country. Oh well.

We felt we could park next door despite the sign.
Jeff had us covered with the super hair.
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So that was it. 45 miles of American glory. Happy fourth of July. Thanks for the riding.

On a personal note, this weekend represents a different form of celebration for me. After the first four months of the year each having some heart episode. Today I celebrated 3 months with no heart episodes. I haven't gone to the emergency room, I haven't had to struggle with the anxiety of wondering every day. The reality of my heart condition is still very present, but today is a wonderful milestone of freedom. And I'm grateful. I'm grateful that I can hug my kids, climb my stairs, kiss my wife, pray to my God and ride my bike. Life is rich. Life is good. Free.

The comfort of time, the easing of anxiety, the confidence in knowledge and consistent practice.

After the drama of the first weekend of April, the Doctor tweaked some things, he asked me to take another dose of medication at night. And I tweaked some things. I stopped thinking much at all about exercise. And when I did, I took an additional medication before working and then started off with a long slow warm up - maybe 10 or 15 minutes ensuring that I was not rising above 100 beats per minute. I don't know if it was those things, or a more supernatural intervention, but I haven't gotten shocked again. I started counting weeks, then months. Things calmed down.

In February and March I had become captive to a significant anxiety that struck almost every day when I would be walking. My chest would tighten and I would feel some shortness of breath. Worrying that something might be happening made things feel worse. There were days when all I wanted to do was sit at my desk in silence.

But as weeks passed in April and May, I became more comfortable with what was happening. One day as I walked down the hall and felt bad, I reminded myself - "You've felt this way before and nothing happened." That truth seemed to stop the cycle, seemed to take the spin down. I started resting in the memory of the past - "I felt this way before and it went away rather than getting worse."

Then there were days when I didn't think about it at all. There came a day when I got all the way through my normal pattern of work without ever feeling the worrying constriction and the anxiety it flashed. I started being able to live again.

On Saturday April 5th, I was working in my yard. It was a warm humid day that invited one to stay outside. I was trimming grass around the driveway when I felt the familiar disassociation. The buzzing dizziness. Light-headedness. I stood up and took a deep breath, but the shock came. It rocked me down onto my knees and I felt my heart thumping wildly. For a minute it settled some, but I did not feel peaceful, things were not ok. I stood up again and the shock returned, two more times. This time it sat me all the way down onto the driveway. I sat bewildered, humiliated, angry. I saw an earthworm, squirming on the wet pavement. I yelled, "Damn it, I'm not an earthworm, God why are you treating me this way. I just want a new heart." All I could think was to swear.

Eventually, I made it inside. Friends came to take the kids and take me to the hospital. Marialice hadn't been home, but was called and came to find me. Our pastor came. They ran all the normal tests at the hospital. The nurse said, "you're much to young to have a defibrillator". Things were stabilized.

When the techs in the ER read out the information on the device, they said the words V Fib. These are words I didn't remember hearing before. Ventricular Fibrillation is much scarier than Tachycardia - which is what I faced in October. Fibrillation can't sustain life very long. We assume that a VFib episode is what killed my Dad. This felt new and different, worse and worrying.

Marialice and I were much more raw as we faced this episode. I think we were able to express our emotions much more directly. She was able to express fear and anger to me because my initial thought had been to drive myself (and the kids) to the hospital, even when we have dozens of folks who are willing to help us out. The next day, I found I had to leave the church in the middle of worship. I couldn't sing "If it had not been for the Lord on my side, where would I be" and really mean it. I was really mad at God. Later that night we faced each other in prayer and cried as we called out to God for my life. The emotions were close to the surface, they weren't very easily managed away, they disrupted life in a powerful, hard way.

But when we talked to the nurse on Monday and she looked at the records found in my defibrillator, she told me that the episode was similar to the other 2 episodes I've had when the device has shocked me more than once. The V-Fib was not a new episode. That was good news. She also showed me that there have only been one or two episodes where my device has paced, and not actually gone into the full shock mode. Almost every day I have wondered "did something happen? What did I just feel? Should I sit down?" But the records show that very rarely, I mean very rarely, has something actually been happening. That really helps manage the fairly regular struggle with anxiety - which I struggle against every day.

This is all a comfort. It helps me to understand more about what is happening in my heart. I think I really can feel the pacing function when it happens. I know that the defibrillator is really working, and I know my heart isn't doing anything new, or more dangerous. This is all a comfort.

But this is all a really rotten situation. I live every day with fear, that my heart will go into a rhythm that can not be rectified. Every day I feel some tightness or pain in my chest and have to talk myself out of panic. My heart is sick, and though so much of myself is healthy, I am limited. This makes me mad.

But this has also been a rich time. I've prayed for years that I'd be more emotionally connected and genuine in my expression of what was going on inside. God is answering my prayers. I wasn't thinking of all this when I asked him to break my heart, but he is. I still feel like the disciples in the boat, in the middle of the sea of Galilee, very afraid in the middle of the storm. "Oh you of little faith" is still a very relevant challenge. But in the midst of my fear and my faithlessness I am crying out in new and deeper ways. I seen it with Marialice and I've seen it with my God. There is richness in this suffering.

Lots has happened in the last 4 weeks. Lots of items that I haven�t really thought through or confronted emotionally. This will be an accounting of the facts and a more general introduction to emotional themes. I really need to come back to some of these themes and reflect on them more deeply.

1. February 6: A Wednesday morning. I got up at 5:45 a.m. and rode to work. It was really cold, but a great ride. I jumped back on my bike that evening and started hammering home. I had been on the bike 5 minutes and was riding down McCallie avenue when I felt the buzzing faintness, blurred vision and dizziness that was all too familiar. I got off the street as soon as I could. And there on the sidewalk the defibrillator shocked me 3 times. I called Marialice and she came to get me. We ate dinner and then went to the ER. By the time she arrived in the car I was feeling fine.

I met with Dr Salerno that week and he suggested that the incidents I have had are connected with the beginning of exercise. The heart works very hard at the beginning of exercise, before the blood system gets warmed up and is ready to send more volume to the muscles. It seems that this initial period is where I have problems. So the plan is to warm up more carefully, and to take some more intensive adrenaline blockers � hour before exercise to control heart rate in that risk period.

As a result of Dr Salerno�s recommendation and my understanding of the emotional impact on Marialice, I decided after that to stop riding to work on McCallie avenue. I have not yet worked through the emotional impact of this decision, but it�s the end of something that has defined me for the last 5 years.

2. February 15: I read about a Friday lunch ride up Suck Creek Mountain. This seemed like a great first ride back. It was with good friends who knew my condition, and it would be a chance to test the �warm up plan�. Well I didn�t get a chance to follow the plan. The deck seemed stacked against me. I left the more aggressive medication in the truck and so couldn�t take it � hour before my planned exercise. I got several last minute phone calls and so wasn�t able to leave the office with enough time to get changed, and warmed up at the Y before we rode out. And then I rushed out of the office building and up the stairs into the parking garage. As I walked back to my truck, I could tell I was breathing hard (to soon to fast) and by the time I got to my truck the dizzy, sweaty feeling returned. I had driven 15 feet when the defibrillator shocked me. I pulled into the nearest parking spot, called Marialice and walked slowly back into the office.

I felt stupid for not being able to follow the plan, for not doing the things I knew would be required to avoid the heart problem. I knew the plan, but couldn�t follow it.

I also felt really angry at the limitations this reality seem to impose. Can�t I fly up 2 flights of stairs on a whim? Will I be able to chase down my kids if I need to? Can I not be the fairly strong, active person I have always been? I started taking the elevator at work more consistently, changing yet another item of fairly significant personal identity. Even though I worked on the 5th floor, I always took the stairs. Now, even two flights of stairs seems too much � I take the elevator.

I haven�t gotten back on the bike since that day. 3 weeks. That is a long time for me�

3. February 19: On my way to work in my truck I was overcome with a sense of dizzy congestion, sweaty palms, short breath, warmth around the defibrillator. I started to panic, expecting to get shocked. I didn�t and it passed. I wondered whether I should just go to the ER, but made it to work and walked slowly into the office. But once I had been at my desk for 15 minutes it returned. I asked Melanie Roberts to walk with my to the medical facility. They could find nothing wrong with me, but recognized the reaction I was having. I was pale, shaking, sweaty. We called the ambulance, as no-one could face the risk of going by myself. I had to call Marialice again. She cried.

At the ER the waves of dizziness increased, and became worse. They grew into a buzzing feeling in my chest and abdomen, a difficulty speaking and finally, a visual aura that I normally associate with a migraine. Marialice tells me that during this time I was as intense as she has ever seen me, trying to communicate every symptom and feeling, almost as if no one believed what was going on.

The doctors could not find any source of problem. My heart was running fine, except for its normal funky thumping (Premature ventricular contraction). The defibrillator had not done anything (even the pacing function that I can�t detect). They gave me an anti-nausea / migraine shot and that seemed to solve all the problems. But we still don�t know what happened.

Marialice told me later that day that she wondered whether it was a panic attack. That was hard to hear because it made me doubt my own sanity. I haven�t tried to worry too much about the implications. But it is again evidence of weakness, of a lack of physical control over my own situation. Just as I have known I am powerless to know and control my emotions, I am now feeling powerless to know and control my body. Lord help me.

The experience has given me a new sense of self awareness, knowledge of when to simply take a deep breath and move on, and when to be more concerned. Its been pretty regular since then to feel a sudden change, and jump thinking its my heart � jump right into a panic, almost right into the sense that I am being shocked. I�m starting to be able to recognize those moments and breathe through them, rather than let them overwhelm me. Again though � it feels like I can�t trust my body, or maybe my mind.

Again we went to the doctors, and again they discussed more radical treatment � expanded medication, riskier surgery, other diseases that may be causing this. More uncertainty, more questions of control.

A theme throughout this is losing control. I feel like I'm losing the sense we all want of being able to control my own fate. I am not able to be and do what I want. I fight that new reality with anger and insolence. But it is a reality.

Several weeks ago on Sunday I was struck with amazing force by the scriptures. with messages that hit me hard.

In the gospel of Mark the story is told of Jesus and his disciples on an ocean crossing:

On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, "Let us go across to the other side." And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. He said to them, "Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?" And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?"

I heard this in a Sunday School class, and it struck me how completely I identified with the disciples. Christ has called me to a path, and along that path has brought this great storm into my life. I am in the midst of a storm and I really need Jesus to show up. I need to see the clarity of the quiet sky on the horizon behind the storm, but Jesus is asleep on a pillow in the stern. Silent, Absent, Un-voicing. And so I cry out against him, accusing, recriminating: “Don’t you care about me?” or maybe truer “I don’t feel you care for me, you almost kill me and then you don’t do anything..” That is where I am.

After calming the storm, Jesus turns to his disciples and asks why they fear, whether they still have faith. These are pretty amazing and difficult questions. In the face of death, rocked by a storm... fear.... faith? It seems so very normal to be consumed by fear and have not faith. But I think what Jesus is getting at in that comment is that in a storm our call needs to be “help me in this moment of need!”

What keeps me in anger rather than breaking down in need. Is it maybe because there is not enough fear? Am I rightfully aware of the fear in my heart toward what might lie ahead, or is my fear aroused when I face the truth of my savior? When everything in my heart wants to cower in fear, or shutter itself in isolation I am being asked about my faith, about my willingness to step out in trust, asking for help. I fear that! What if nothing happens. I fear that.

So I continue identified in my storm, identified in my angry recriminations, conscious of my faithless fear, asking God to help me believe, asking for an end to my unbelief.