Bill Roper's Journal

I've just picked up Dorotha from the El station after she worked crew for the suicide prevention walk here in Chicago. We've had breakfast and now she's cleaning up before catching her flight back to DC.

Due to an irreconcilable scheduling conflict, I'm ending up not doing the Overnight suicide prevention walk this year. However, my friend, Dorotha (who appears on Seven Miles a Second) is still doing the walk and I'm sure would appreciate your support.

If you wanted to contribute to support Dorotha's walk, you could go to the Overnight website and look her up.

Or you could just click on this handy link.

If you read this post about the terrible accident near where I had lunch last week, this article tells more about what happened.

A 21-year old woman decided "to end it all" and drove her Mustang convertible at 70 miles per hour down Dempster. She ran at least two lights, then piled into the cars that were waiting for the light at Niles Center Road. Two people were injured -- they were lucky. But the three men riding in one of the cars that she hit were killed. They worked at Shure, the microphone maker just a bit south of there. They were all musicians, all in different bands.

She lived.

She's in the hospital now, being held on three counts of first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated battery.

Damn it.

Well, yes, it was a long walk, although it turned out to be slightly shorter than planned.
( One Overnight walk inside... )
At closing ceremonies, they announced that we'd collectively raised over a million dollars for suicide prevention. That's not too shabby. And thanks to all of you who donated to my walk. We've already raised over $1000 there, and I'll be kicking in some of my own too. When there's a final total, I'll let you know.

And the walk made the front page of today's Chicago Tribune with a big picture centered on the page and the story just below the fold.

And that's good too.

Yes, once again our friend, Time, is failing at its basic mission of keeping everything from happening at once.

I'm chasing an ugly little bug at work. I've got a WindyCon meeting tonight. Dorotha is flying in for tomorrow's suicide prevention walk. That's just today. Yesterday was suitably chaotic as well.

Ah, well. Sleep is for the weak and sickly.

I went to Hot Dog Island for lunch and arrived just before the police showed up and barricaded the side street that leads to the parking lot. The main street was already blocked by a police car, because there was a terrible accident at Dempster and Niles Center Road. I'm told by an employee of one of the nearby stores that a Mustang convertible was traveling at high speed eastbound on Dempster and plowed into a number of cars that were waiting for the light to change. Cars flipped as a result and if no one is dead, it's a miracle. The impression I got was that there hadn't been any miracles forthcoming.

When I left, the street was still blocked and I had to go down an alley and out through the Skokie Swift parking lot. I suspect it'll be blocked for a good while longer.

Walked 10.25 miles today training for the suicide prevention walk next weekend. Now, daisy_knotwise and I are heading up to Milwaukee for the Howard Ashby Kranz house concert at Barb's. See some of you there!

The overnight walk for suicide prevention is coming up in two weeks and I needed to stretch out my walking mileage ahead of the date. So I decided to walk to work today.

10.17 miles and a bit over 3 hours and 20 minutes later, I'm here. And it's definitely time for some breakfast.

More later.

It seems only fair. After all, Bilbo started it.
( Saturday, mostly not in the park... )

So after considerable confusion, Dr. Bob's office faxed me the medical clearance for me to take part in the Out of the Darkness walk for suicide prevention. (I had to check a couple of boxes on the form that make them want a doctor's opinion that I'm not doing something that would be actively dangerous for me.) This apparently required Dr. Bob to have a discussion with someone about faxing things on a timely basis, since it had been sitting in his office since last Wednesday, but it was on my desk at work this morning.

I stuffed it in an envelope and headed downstairs to drop it in the mail. The elevator doors opened, the postman walked by, saw the envelope, and held out an empty bucket that he was carrying toward the mailbox, I tossed the envelope in, then turned around, and took the elevator back up to my office.