2021- Nov 29 – From Bremen Germany, triathlon on pause, wife back surgery is a go!

Triathlon

Sometimes, life comes first. And after about 14 months of planning, the trip has arrived. More will be posted below. So, training is currently on pause until we return on or about December 16 and I will formally determine next steps then. I have receive my Ironman California deferral sign up and will be doing that while we are here in Germany. We are staying in Bremen, at a little hotel found here:

So far, everything has been pretty well arranged and straight forward. The only blip has been the correct communication of dietary restrictions that Liz had communicated and were not ready for when we arrived. However after a quick phone call, options were offered.

Our experience thus far has paralleled much of what I try to do during a training build up and an event. Some things go exactly to plan and others well, not so much!

I do hope to get some walks in with Lucas, which I have already gotten one short night walk in, however I intend to get more in as we go. I am glad to have thought of and did bring my trusty Noxgear 360 vest. Their cyber Monday deal is wrapping up and offering it at approx 49.95 – this is their gen 2 model, I currently have the gen 1 model – battery operated. Anyway, it worked wonders as it brought the 2 cars that came by in deep German street covered in darkness to an almost stop to assure they weren’t going to destroy anything. I appreciated the courtesy I don’t often see while in my own running areas at home.

Travel

Well, we did our best. We set up everything in advance and did all the things including:

• Booking early
• Scheduling special meals with Delta airlines
• Using the Delta Fly Ready stuff
• Filling out Amsterdam attestation documents
• Readying passports
• Covid 19 updated testing
• Following the protocols defined by the clinic Liz is receiving Back disc replacement surgery

The meals ont he Delta flight were the most difficult thus far. I called a week in advance to arrange a gluten free and dairy free meal option for Liz. In flight – Liz was informed quite abrupt;y by the flight crew that on flight they have either dairy free or gluten free. The attendant whom I recognized from previous travel was very abrupt and trying to head Liz off, a bit too much. The frustration from Liz, was that I called ahead to arrange something and onl flight she and Lucas were then left with limited options. To the attendant’s credit, he circled back with apologies and options – mainly left over fruits and salads. This is where not travelling and having lost status is a bit painful, but in hte end options were offered, not a perfect experience, b t the efforts were appreciated. He lastly circled back toward the end of hte flight asking if we were returning or moving so that he could suggest us calling ahead and ordering a dairy free and a gluten free option for flight home for best offerings. Well, I paid for first class and hope its much better as I often am upgraded not paying for the 1st class experience.

The journey through the AMS airport was the most difficult. It was just far and for Liz and I had to make a choice and I just ran ahead. We had a small hiccup in the lines getting through passport control. Unbeknownst to us the new Covid-19 variant had 13 cases pass through the Schiphol airport so many precautions and protocols were occurring. In the end, a forward thinking person, doing her awesomest as an employee and human started calling out to those in a time crunch. That was us and she moved us up and after watching two folks get through it was our turn. Gratefully all of our pre-trip efforts worked. We just had to show passports, unmask to be validated, then show our vaccine cards, and I was off.

Pre-trip we determined we would check the car seat and the new Osprey back Back (poco Plus). Just before the trip we purchased it at Al’s Sporting Goods next to us. During our flight we determined as we tracked the flight and we were delayed about 1 hour getting out, that should we need to, I would go ahead. Well we did that, as I left the passport control I got up to a point until I came to a change. It wasn’t necessarily clear, so I held up for Liz. Thankfully when we got to the boarding area, the bus was about 5 minutes away from picking folks up to go out to the KLM City hoppers.

The flight attendant had the most curious English accent, and it was striking to me it was English first followed up by spoken German. We even got to add a fly belt to Mr. Lucas for safety, a novel feature not necessarily granted on use operated flights. Anyway, not stealing the details Liz may post about in the future (will link here later), but we ended up arriving, meeting our taxi service and being whisked off after a declarations Polizei asked if I had a coat. It’s 0 degrees Celsius and recent Utah weather had me prepped for that.

Liz Back surgery

Well the whole reason we are here is for Liz to receive a spinal disc replacement from https://www.dr-ritter-lang.com/. You can link back to 2blog posts for more info until she writes a detailed blog post detailing and journaling her person experience:

• Shane blog post 1
• Shane blog post 2
• Liz personal post

In summary from my perspective. The pre trip handling was pretty good. The hotel part, is a bit sketchy but we are working it through. The travel, well that’s the unfortunate norms of the game of travel and we are crazy for bring little Lucas, but we felt we needed too. MOre to come on the back surgery details from Liz.

General thoughts

You know. I thought this would cause a ton more stress. Sure there have been a few unanticipated hiccups and we are indebted and grateful to Liz’s aging mother and father for pivoting and helping. Liz’s mom will be there alone with the kiddos from December 9th on. A lot of faith is being extended as she has had a kidney transplant and a back surgery to help her scoliosis. However, when you choose to live away from family, as we chose to do, we had to work through and coordinate things months in advance. When things came forward that we couldn’t control, we sought alternatives and options and moved forward adapting the best we could no matter how frustrated we were in our efforts.

Leaving the kidlets behind is not an easy thing. you can see Liz’s thoughts on Facebook here If you are friends with me or Liz on facebook, the link should work):

https://www.facebook.com/zentriathlete/posts/10223358917735300

I guess the biggest thing that comes to mind is gratitude. Thinking back to when i was 16 like my eldest son, Dennis. I never thought I’d be able to be in a position where I could manage a self-funded, not insurance supported, medical expence with travel in a foreign land. Albeit Germany, this is where the best options currently exist. In the USA, this option isn’t available and the closest option is much more expensive. The most common question we currently encounter is : Why Germany? Why not in the USA. Why not insurance funded?

To be frank, we have those questions too. And some of the simple responses. Because this is where the surgery with cutting edge technology and materials and physicians are. Should you happen upon this blog post and go to this link about https://www.dr-ritter-lang.com/ . You will be able to blush over hte info at first glance, or be like my wife, who has a degree in journalism and was taught how to research and distinguish information. She learned and was taught by one of the best professors who recently passed this last year – Penny Byrne – who despite her tough as nails in the classroom persona – was an absolute gem of a human that was endeared to Liz from the moment she was pregnant to the few times she had to bring baby Dennis to class. We even made it to their always invite list and were even welcomed on a Christmas Eve. I mention this because after being married and together approaching almost 20 years, this is one of the main reasons I chose to fall in love with her. I chose to pursue her as she did me. Eventually, we agreed to be married in the Church of Jesus Christ Washington DC temple on July 16, 2004. We dated far too long, almost 2 years, and we should have trusted our guts and just eloped. Oh well. One of the many lessons learned in our catalogue of life, is that we study things out, we research them almost exhaustibly and then when we feel prompted we take action – at times that means to let the decision go and times like this, we take a leap of faith – fait is action, and we stoically move forward. My girls have been listening to the Taylor Swift song – “Shake it Off” :

IF you pay attention to the lyrics, TS is often perceived by her public audience in two majors ways. Clueless, and or Brilliant. Its not often both, and she has indeed been quite an interesting celebrity. Liz and I seem to have a similar reception to family, friends, colleagues acquaintances. What I find most interesting is the circle of influence we have in Team Zoot – and their absolute genuine love and support for Team Livingston. So yes, we have researched this option. Yes, we thought about back fusions and have been doing a myriad of other options for the last 15 years. But unlike the 16 year old (me and Dennis – see above) with many lessons learned and the skeptical confidence we both have acquired through the year via empathy, we are now in Germany ready to move forward.

We are indeed grateful to all the general support to those that are closest to us and those that are just learning or folks stopping to now truly understand what we have been sharing on the socials for about the last 14 or so months, since we first started down the rabbit hole. We are grateful to Liz’s parents for coming from Philly and doing their best with our 3 left back with them. So far, it appears to be going well, but we and they have many days ahead of them. Each of our children are AWESOME! We love our circus of dragons. They truly are delightful, until their fury comes forward. Much like any parent will say, but even in their general challenges they have come so far and grown so much. The best feedback we receive from those outside our closest of friends is when we receive reports of just how great they are. Unfortunately, Liz and I don’t often get out and away from them much, so we adapt and choose different alternatives to help Liz and I first stay close and together and then include the kidlets. Some days we are good at it other days we are not. At the end of the day, we try to focus on the consistency and the approach of

To that end, we are doing our best. We have found the best approach. One of our biggest faith-based lessons in our together life is that the universe has a great way of propelling us forward or kindly and often not so kindly alerting us of our mistake. Growth mindset and our faith-based approach to life, has afforded us wisdom and many lessons learned along the way. As we are on the brink of having Liz undergo this surgery, I am grateful to her trust in me, and mine in her (I’m sitting in Bremen Germany 2 minutes away from where this all occurs on Thursday).

The intersection of Triathlon and Life from above

Most of triathlon training and life wisdom and lessons learned is anything but sexy. It happens often in isolation. it happens outside of the watchful eye of critics or other supporters. It is relentless forward progress. It requires what I call the 4 D’s:

• Desire
• Determination
• Discipline
• Dedication

Once on that path, it can be very lonely. We become available to lessons learned (mistakes) or wisdom earned (opportunities or success). We must defend from becoming ‘prisoners of the moment’ and/or losing sight of what we are trying to personally accomplish and achieve. What I love when life and triathlon intersect is learning how unbalanced either is. For example, I can be mindfully very present and low key in triathlon and an absolute psycho in life (ask Liz she has a few examples I imagine). For me life is full of family, my life needs, goals, aspirations and stuff. Then comes work. Work is not who I am and neither is my hobby of triathlon. Triathlon is there for me to do, but I am a Husband and life partner first. I have been blessed with 4 wonderfully imperfect children and I am their imperfect Father. My wife trusts me mostly and I trust her too. Life and triathlon always intersect for us, and we try not to lose sight of Family first. At times it occurs, and we takes those instances and try to understand the lessons learned. One of my absolutely favorite memories of triathlon was at a 70.3 in St. George. I stopped on the run, said hi to my wife, and then knelt down to Juniper and Astrid at the time. Astrid was a baby and Dennis gave me a high 5. My father caught the moment of me kneeling with Juniper and Astrid.

As I got up and ran off, a lady holding an obnoxious sign also quipped “ain’t got time for that”. Well, this event I had no goals other than being strong and finishing strong. It wasn’t my fastest overall time, but looking back, my swim and bike to this point was the fastest to date. This made a very difficult upcoming run more bearable and I was able to track down and catch my friend Cevan and cross the finishing stripe with him. Now, I share this because just a day or two later it was brought to my attention by a facebook friend, that a pro did similar. What a great lesson learned that someone I esteem as a great triathlete (it was either Ben Hoffman or Tim Don) would do similar at an event to which they represent many things other than themselves, and family was important enough to warranted a few seconds with their offspring – yup. Pretty darned cool.

Well it’s late, I need to wrap this up and we’re a go to start the intake processes in the morning. Giddy up!