CCFA Walk and Saturday Flair Up

At around 12:30 pm today I got Honey ready for a road trip and headed over to my daughters house to pick up my grandson, granddaughter and a friend of theirs for a short trip up to the Warren G. Magnuson Park in North Seattle.  This was a U.S. Naval Air Station when I was a kid and was my home base during my short stint in the Naval Air Reserve.  Back then it was called Sandpoint Naval Air Station.  I spent several weekends on duty and training at this air station and went there for my four week boot camp during the summer of my junior year in High School.  With a little over a week to go I was hit with an issue that left me unable to stand up or walk.  I landed in the hospital for a couple of days before being ordered to go home and await further orders.  The orders came shortly after my senior school year began.

I was to report to Bremerton Naval Ship Yard to the Naval Hospital where I was interviewed and examined by at Naval doctor.  He gave me some big long medical term and said that I had what was called stress failure of the knee.  Anytime my knee was under stress (this case a 12 hour forced march) I could find myself having issues with swelling and pain.  Both knees were involved and he simply could not sign off on letting me go on to a ship for fear I might get trampled to death should an incident occur during general quarters.  Sadly I was discharged from the Navy with an honorable discharge for medical reasons.  I was not real happy about having to leave the Navy without having served.  They said they could do surgery and replace the knees but it was a 50/50 chance I would be stiff legged after they were done so I opted out of the surgery.  At the time I was told that I was not eligible for any benefits since I had not been on active duty so I basically got nothing.

Back to the reason for the trip to the old military base, now a Seattle park.  Each year the CCFA (Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America sponsors a fund raising walk of roughly 3 miles through the beautiful park that lies right next to Lake Washington, Seattle's biggest body of fresh water.



The family that own's the business that I work for, has several members who are living with this disease and they participate in helping the foundation raise money towards the hope that one day someone will discover a cure.  We always support the family in this walk.  We have gone every year since I started working for them.

While I was unable to do the walk because of my current health issues, I did go out of respect for my boss and his family.  Mia and Zach participated in the walk and they were the first two walkers that I saw cross the finish line.  We left shortly after they finished as we had some other projects to accomplish.

Corvettes do attract the lookers

Chaplin's tent, Mr Chaplin in dark glasses to the right, you can see his head behind the lady with the red hair.

A large crowd gathered at our tent

Other tents on the way to the start line

The back side of our tent.  Mia in the yellow coat and Zach with his back to you in the hat and grey sweatshirt