Deliberate excitement

For some reason I've had a lot of difficulty writing about this particular experience. I flew out to Seattle and spent a couple days in the company of some really rich people want to make the world a better place. In ways I like this, because I do have some things in common with them in that everyone there has parents who accumulated a tremendous amount of wealth and have pledged to give a huge portion of it away to charities. On the other hand, it's foreign to me for personal reasons.

So not only am I in with this group, which sets me apart just by being there, but I also feel apart from that group while I'm there. So where do you go with that? Just being in the group is alienating in some way and I feel alienated from the group as well. I guess that happens to everybody in one sense or another unless they're one of those rare people feels completely integrated and engaged in their own life. I don't know many people like that.

I guess my difficulty in writing about this is that it's hard to be lighthearted about it, when the main theme was alienation. But it wasn't without its moments. First of all, it was in Seattle, which is a nice city. You've probably heard of it. I spent as much time as I could walking around, as I tend to do anyway.  It's hillier than I'd imagined. To get to downtown from our hotel, which is rightfully called the Edgewater, you had to not only walk away from the water's edge (they have fences to keep you from going in the wrong direction) but up a steep hill.

I really noticed that when I decided to take public transportation to the airport when coming home. They said it was only a 15 minutes walk, which it is, but they neglected to say that the entire walk was uphill, which is no fun with a rolling bag. And it seemed very inefficient because when I got to the train station, I had to go down several flights of stairs to get to the platform. Why did I have to climb all that way just to go down all those stairs?

I went to the famous Pike Place Market, which I think was nice but it was hard to tell with so many people in it. Call someplace paradise, kiss it goodbye. It's also a little hard to walk around because, first of all, there are some very busy train tracks that at one point had me waiting for over 10 minutes to cross. Second, there are elevated highways and on/off ramps interrupting streets with some frequency (supposedly they are doing a big dig like in Boston to put all of that underground- that would be an improvement). Nice stores though, and a good place to buy (legal) weed called Herban Legend. No, I did not buy any weed, but I certainly smelled it with some frequency.

As for the meeting that I was there to attend, it was interesting at times. People do very creative things with their money, and many are very passionate about what they're doing. It may be a little hard for me to related to a 25 year-old woman who spends most of her time in Africa combatting slavery, but it's admirable and cool to hear about.

We also did an exercise that divided the group into 4 different learning styles that was eerily accurate. There are 4 styles (though the program is called 5 Dynamics- I guess everyone has the 5th dynamic).

I do not know what it means to excite deliberately

So I'm an extreme Explorer. There are a bunch of characteristics implied by this. The clearest example is when they divided us by style and asked each group to write common themes on a pad, the Explorers were the only group that didn't write anything. My people.

Here I am mapped by style with some family members. Yes, I'm the purple one. This did not come as a surprise to anyone in my family.

The highlight was definitely a late afternoon boat ride on Lake Union, where Tom Hanks supposedly lived with his son in Sleepless in Seattle. I will tell you that if you go to this lake you'll see what an implausible and even stupid idea this is. All of the houses on the lake are party houses and what single man would have a house where his 10 year-old could wander off into the lake, especially a kid capable of flying to New York by himself? His character is suddenly much less attractive to me and that Meg Ryan should have known better. Also, it seemed very peaceful in the movie, which it is not. There are big and little boats and sea planes everywhere.

We were riding in a 10 passenger electric boat. I was selected to be the driver and was given a captain's hat as a way of establishing my authority.

That's Cap'n Frank to you

Dinner after the boat ride was fun. The next day there seemed to be plenty of substantive discussions going on that I was not an active party to. I listened a lot and tried to feel a part of things, but ultimately I couldn't sustain it. I'll have to see if I want to do it again next year.

Snapshots of Seattle

On my way back after 48 hours in Seattle. So here's what I know about Seattle. There's a lot of water around. They have an interesting way of doing no parking signs. They like neon.

Lake Union

Do not park in Seattle if you do not have a good sense of direction

Of course they like coffee too. Many many many coffee shops, mostly promising that they have the strongest coffee. The Starbucks stores, of which there are many of course, are modest by comparison.

Frank E

While I ponder the deeper truths (deeper than what? I have no idea), I try to remain present, the better to appreciate the little things that happen each day.

I'm scanning slides that my father took when we lived in Africa in the late 1950's. A lot of them are of things (trees, buildings, you know, things as opposed to people) and look like any other vaycay photos. But some of them are much better because they have me in them.

I was interested in seeing these because I have very few photos from that time. Color photography wasn't really a thing yet until the mid 1960's, but you could take photos that could be turned into what were called positive images [Note: as opposed to negative images, and I can't really explain this without a thorough review of how traditional (as opposed to digital) photography works, but the general idea is that light reflecting off an image reacts with chemicals on a piece of plastic film and darkens it. The more light reflected, the darker the film gets, so it's a negative image because light things are dark and dark light. When you then shine a light through this image onto a light-sensitive piece of paper, the darker parts of the negative block the most light, so the paper stays lighter, the process is reversed and the result is a positive print, which are all the things your parents have in albums]. These were small transparencies that were viewed by projecting them onto a screen and called "slides."

Note that the slide says Kodachrome. Kodak had a monopoly, not on the film but on the processing.

I am not aware of ever having seen these things actually slide anywhere, but I'm sure the name means something.

Long story shortened only slightly, I knew that most of the pictures my dad took when we were in Africa were like this because I remember seeing them when I was a kid, so I slidenapped them from my father's house and am scanning the interesting ones.

Aside from noticing how cute I was, one thing that is clear is that I was not Frank when I was little, I was Frankie. Every picture of me says Frankie. I've always wondered about having a single syllable for first and last names (and no middle name to add an initial, hence the titular E). If my parents wanted me to have a two syllable first name they could have just given me one. Maybe it was some kind of buyer's regret because they clearly did not call me Frank. Frankie seemed to have liked climbing and drinking, based on the slide labels.

These days, my father mostly calls me Frankie when he's going to scold or lecture me. Okay, that's most of the times he talks to me, but he does call me Frank from time to time as well.

There's all kinds of other interesting stuff in the 2 boxes I took. I will share it as the summer goes on.

Aside from scanning, I've been riding my bike, even in the heat, and am enjoying it as much as ever. I love the breeze and it's meditative for me. Because you're doing this repetitive motion and yet at the same time have to pay really close attention to everything going on around you if you're trying to avoid that death thing. There really are a lot of ways to kill or maim yourself riding a bicycle, from hitting a pothole and flying off the bike to getting pancaked by a car either ignoring/not seeing you or deciding to do something to get around you. My favorite move was the guy who passed me on the left in order to make a right turn in front of me when I was going straight. How did that idea even occur to them, much less get acted upon?

Today a woman just blew through a stop sign. I could have hit her, but I was watching her and I could see she hadn't even looked in my direction. She was totally focused on where she was going and what she wanted to do. But that's the kind of thing you have to do on a bicycle. You have to see everything. At least I do, and I think that's why I've been riding regularly for nearly 20 years and never even came close to getting in an accident.

One last question. Why are there signs on traffic lights that say "Wait For Green?" When is that not the case? Are there times I can just go because I feel like it. I don't like this kind of confusion.

And now the way home

While our trip to Martha's Vineyard was not without its hiccups, the way home has been far more challenging. First my older daughter and her boyfriend had their flight canceled because of fog. That wasn't the worst thing, because they got to stay an extra day. We, on the other hand, were not quite as lucky.

There are a bunch of ways to get from Martha's Vineyard to Philadelphia and they're all lousy, involving either 2 flights or multimodal transport. There are no direct flights at all, ever. The closest we ever got to that was the late Continental Airlines used to fly out of Newark, 90 minutes away, but they stopped that years ago. Now the closest place is JFK airport, which is more like 2 hours and far more prone to being subject to traffic.

We also are limited to some extent by the fact that peak airfares to the Vineyard, as people who are either in the know or too impatient to say or write the whole name call it, are typically over $500 each way (to go about 265 miles all told). So we've tried everything. They're cheaper but it's hard to say they're better. They all take significantly longer.

We decided to make this trip at the last moment because we were in Boston for my daughter's birthday and decided while we were there to go. So for the way back, we were scheduled to do a ferry to Rhode Island and then a train back to Philly. We've done this before. It's long, but if you train first class it's reasonably comfortable, and half the price. So we were standing in the line to get on the ferry. We saw it go by, and I thought it was just going to turn around and back in. But we never saw it.

Eventually, the guy managing the line told us that they'd lost their steering and were trying to fix it and that they would update us shortly. About 15 minutes later there came a new announcement, that rather than steering loss the boat had suffered what they called "catastrophic engine failure" and would not be making the trip. I don't even want to know what's become of the people who were on that boat, if they ever got to the Vineyard or if they had to get towed back to Rhode Island or what.

What they offered us was transport on a ferry to Cape Cod and then a bus to Rhode Island (from which point we would take another shuttle bus and then a train. We wanted no part of that, so instead we're on our way, still by bus, to Boston Airport, from which point we can fly home.

Once we made the decision to do this, there really weren't any problems, aside from the passage of time. The whole trip, door to door, is going to end up taking over 11 hours. To give you an idea of how slow that progress is, in 11 hours I could have bicycled more than halfway back. Assuming that I could ride a bicycle on water that is.

Now our plane is getting ready to land and hopefully we can get our luggage reasonably quickly and get home to our normal house and our very cute dog and our non-working upstairs air conditioner. It hasn't been an awful day, just a wasted one.

The summer place

For some people, the idea of having a summer house somewhere conjures up bucolic if hazy recollections and a warm glow.  I can't count myself among them.  Some of you may know I have this kind of weird double life with 98% of it lived in a typical upper middle class way, but the other 2% is kind of over the top.

My father has a house on Martha's Vineyard. It's a very beautiful spot and the house is spectacular. There have been some easy, relaxing times, but those are just part of my cumulative memory. I like coming here, but there's a lot of baggage involved. I really enjoyed my time here last year and am mostly enjoying it this time as well, but my guess is that if you dig deep enough, you will find that many people with family summer homes have similar feelings, if for no other reason then because of family dynamics.

For the sake of privacy, I'll avoid that aspect of it and focus on how the design of this place contributes to my memories. Part of it is the design of the house. My parents, my father in particular I think, went through a stage where they resisted the idea of walls. I mean, there are walls around the outside, but the main part of the house is open-plan.

The room is a combination living room-den-dining room flowing into a large open kitchen. There is no cozy spot to curl up and read quietly if there are other people around. Or to have any privacy unless you want to retreat to your bedroom, which is down a very long hallway. They're nice-sized rooms, but not a place you want to just hang out. The outside is beautiful.

As you can see, it's huge. More like a resort than a cottage. The size worked very well when we used to have immense parties here, back in the late 80's and early 90's. Now it just feels kind of big. That's nobody's fault and it's not like there's anything bad about it. Just not a cozy cottage.

The thing I love doing here most is riding a bike. My sister, who lives closer and spends much more time here than I do, is an avid bike rider as well and keeps a good bike up here just to have something available for people to accompany her on her rides. I went out once before she arrived and then for a 25 mile ride together yesterday. She and I are well matched in speed and endurance, and a decent portion of that ride is on quiet roads where we can ride side-by-side and talk. Those rides are always a highlight.

Both of our kids and their boyfriends were here. That was nice. The days follow a general pattern where everyone does their own thing for a large portion of the day. I go out for a ride before others are up. We hang around the house, go to the pool, maybe the beach. If the weather is lousy we often will go to one of the cute towns and walk around. Sometimes we go to the local fish market (shout out to Larsens!) and do shellfish for lunch. In any event, by late afternoon there is always a trip to buy some fish for dinner. We eat a lot of fish here. I've heard that's good for you.

So now we're on our way home (which unfortunately gets its own entry). Even lacking a warm glow, it was a nice trip.

Boston for the 4th

My daughter's birthday is July 4th, so we always find a way to have a holidayish get together. This year we came up here this morning and are spending the evening. Tomorrow we will go to Martha's Vineyard for a few days.

July 4th is one of those holidays that make cities kind of unbalanced. Depending on where you are, it's either really crowded or completely deserted. The area where we are hanging out, near Fenway Park, is mostly deserted with a decent-sized group of people clearly going someplace in a hurry. We're not too far from the river, where they are currently having a patriotic type concert leading up to a fireworks show. The hotel has a rooftop terrace, where we were eventually able to go up and watch the fireworks.

One thing with a fireworks show compared to any other kind of show is that nobody ever shushes anyone at a fireworks show. You can talk or comment, and the goings on are noisy enough that nobody really cares. The Boston fireworks were good. They were fireworks. You shoot stuff into the air and it explodes. Sometimes accompanied by a loud bang. I don't mean to sound blasé. It's cool, but there's a certain sameness about it.

One fun thing about watching from where we were was that you could see reflections on a nearby building.

That was cool. And I could record that while looking at the actual fireworks.

We had a nice dinner tonight at a restaurant called Row 34. It was a seafood place that had a great beer selection. I had something called the Cat's Meow, an unfiltered IPA that went very well with my extremely unkosher cold seafood plate.

I did not take a picture of the oysters that preceded this. Nothing I ate was even kosher style this evening. Perhaps that will cause God to smote me. I like shrimp, but I'm always on guard for the watery shrimp cocktail. I guessed that this place would have a good one and I was correct.

We're staying at a Marriott Residence Inn. It's an extended stay type hotel, meaning it has a kitchenette with a stove and dishwasher and full sized refrigerator. And more than one place to sit, unlike most hotel rooms. This room, while not huge, has 3 different places to sit. For someone who does not like sitting in bed, this is extremely important so I will give this hotel a very nice review. There's nothing fancy about it, which is fine because I don't care about that. Clean and functional works for me, and this is a very well designed place.

I'd include a picture, but in my usual fashion I've trashed the place. I guess Ronnie participated but I am a highly skilled trasher of hotel rooms. When I used to travel for business a lot, I couldn't help but marvel at how I could explode into a room within 15 minutes of arriving. Lord help me if there was a second bed in the room because that would be covered with stuff strewn about instantly. This isn't like that because I have someone else here with me.

It's been a good day overall. My daughter was grateful because we came and cleaned her apartment as a birthday present. I got to clean the refrigerator, which was without a doubt the worst I've ever smelled. It didn't look that bad, but I'm surprised the neighbors hadn't complained. I've changed diapers so I'm never too concerned about what I get on my hands, but this contained a number of former vegetables that time had melted, plus something so moldy that the mold had gotten moldy, if you can imagine that. It therefore required rubber gloves and a cleaner with bleach, but it's bright and shiny and clean inside now.

Off to Martha's Vineyard tomorrow. Will have both girls and boyfriends there as well, and hopefully my sister too. I'll check in from there tomorrow.