I ran to the store during my lunch break to knock some holiday gifts off my list. Both leaving and entering the Trust building, I passed smokers huddled outside the door, teeth chattering and cigarettes gripped with blue fingers. I know that routine all too well.

It was 6 degrees F when I got up this morning and we hit a high for the day of 18 degrees. Well, whoopee. I did have the pleasure of not standing outside smoking a cigarette.

It was the same way yesterday and, shivering in my car on the way to work, it occurred to me once again that Wisconsin’s climate is one of the most extreme we could choose. I checked temperatures in Europe; St. Petersburg, Stockholm, Berlin, Oslo, Frankfurt were all considerably warmer than Madison, Wisconsin. Only Siberia was colder!

On the other end of the extreme, Wisconsin summers are hot and humid. A steamy day in July isn’t much different in Madison than in New Orleans. We do have tornadoes instead of hurricanes.

Agony of Lafitte

One way to get relief in the summer is to head out on one of Madison’s lakes. The summer between my brother’s surgery, chemo and radiation for esophageal cancer and the summer of his final illness, John came up from Chicago for a day. Sweat-drenched and uncomfortable in the garden, we decided to head out on our pirate ship, Agony of Lafitte. Our daughter Libby and her boyfriend joined us.

Now, Agony truly is a pirate ship, with wooden sides, a crow’s nest, treasure chest overflowing with booty, cannons, ropes and nets–and a large Jolly Roger. We take her out on Lake Mendota, Madison’s largest, to pillage and plunder, our specially made pirate soundtrack blaring.

If you get the concept of Agony of Lafitte, you’ll understand how much fun we’ve had on that tub yare craft. She’s been followed all over the lakes, made the news several times and has been called the “best d–n boat on the lake” by more than a few yachtsmen in quite expensive boats.

We’re All Going to Die!

John was already roaring hilariously by the time we got out of the marina and had the pirate music going. The day was gorgeous, not a cloud was in the sky and the weather report continued predict it would be “sunny and hot” when we stopped for lunch at a dockside restaurant.

As we headed over to the locks after lunch, I looked around and spotted ugly black clouds blowing in from the north. After a quick consult, we decided it would be prudent to head back early.

Jeff steered the boat across a wide expanse of lake–the most direct route to the marina–and clouds became a solid black wall which now stood between us and our destination.

OK, pirates or not, we were getting scared and I asked Jeff if we could move close to shore, just in case. He snarled, pirate-like and grumbled something about how much longer it would take us as he turned toward shore.

As it ballooned, the wall began spitting lightening bolts and the waves heaved. Jeff stopped grumbling. John, a storm-lover and photography buff, grinned ear-to-ear as he stood in the middle of Agony taking shots of the storm. Libby began wailing, “We’re all going to die! We’re all going to die!”

We approached a private pier at the bottom of a bluff, tantalizingly close to safety, when the motor cut out. Libby wailed all the louder. Suddenly it occurred to me that, after all John had been through, our parents would spit on my grave if I let him drown.

I jumped in the lake.

I had the thought that I’d tow the blasted boat to the pier, but, tugging as hard as I could, while trying to stay afloat in the pitching water, I couldn’t budge the lousy barge. After looking at me in disbelief and cursing, Jeff jumped in too and grabbed another line. When we could touch bottom, we had enough leverage to pull Agony in and we rapidly got her to the pier and tied up soundly. Everyone scurried up the bluff and we found a home where we could call a cab.

That evening, when the storm had passed, we went to check the boat. It seems the owner of the pier and his friends had been caught in the storm as well. They were directly across the bay in the friends’ house when one of the wives turned to her husband and said, “Honey, I think there’s a pirate ship tied up to our dock.”

I’m getting closer to dropping that daily cigarette–I feel my original motivation starting to come back.

Why? Well, sometimes I smoke half a cigarette and enjoy it far too much. Other times, after only a couple of puffs, I get light-headed and a little nauseous. That’s when I start to feel very, very foolish–a positive reaction given this situation.

If carbon monoxide from the cigarette is depriving my brain of oxygen and causing the swooning feeling, or if nicotine is giving me a buzz or rush, then why didn’t I experience these symptoms when I smoked a lot?

I certainly did feel very dizzy and sick when I first started smoking. I remember it well, even though it happened light years ago. If only I’d had the wisdom of foresight when I struggled to learn tolerate smoking.

I really enjoy a good spy story–you know, the kind you’re reading into the wee hours when you’ve got work the next day. You know you’ll feel lousy but you just can’t put the book down. (Reading continues to be a way for me to decompress and banish the thought of smoking.)

That’s why the Russian poisonings have captured my interest. International intrigue. The KGB. A mysterious, impossible-to-get radioactive substance. High level politicians. And the sad, miserable death of a youthful former Russian spy. And it’s the real thing.

300 Chest X-Rays

The murder weapon that did in Alexander Litvinenko was radioactive polonium 210, an ingredient used in weapons of mass destruction. And what do you think is the greatest source of polonium ingested by the American public? According to the National Institutes of Health, the culprit is cigarettes. In fact, a person who smokes a 1 1/2 packs a day, is exposed to radiation from polonium that’s equal to 300 chest x-rays.

Polonium finds its way into tobacco via the soil and phosphate fertilizers. Declassified internal memos show the Philip Morris folks have known this since 1964, however they found it too expensive to switch to a safer fertilizer.

Polonium 210 is thousands of times more radioactive than the polonium used to bomb Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Former surgeon general of the U.S., C. Everett Koop, has said it’s conceivable that 90 percent of smoking-related deaths are due to the polonium content in cigarettes.

I admit to doing a certain amount of living through books, but I don’t want to live–or die–a spy story like that of former KGB spy, Alexander Litvinenko.