Expect the unexpected because then it's not unexpected, it's expected.

My youngest daughter is now a junior in high school, so I only have another year or so to attend and savor school concerts. Therefore, it appears to be time for me to extract some overarching observations and perhaps even conclusions about them.

First of all, there is no sound as characteristic of an event as the slightly flat E played by every violin in every piece played in school concerts. It used to drive me crazy, but now I crave it because it makes the experience complete.

Last night's shindig featured vocal and instrumental groups. The performances break down as follows.

• Middle school singers can be incredibly cute when doing an upbeat, fun song (a highlight earlier this year was a quickly paced variation on do-re-mi, where the kids all stopped for a moments and called out, "Key change, wheee!") but maybe not so much on a more serious number.
• Performances of unexpected pieces has become so much the norm that it has lost its surprise value. Yes, it's initially amusing to hear "Bohemian Rhapsody" done by a group of flutists, but not all 7 minutes worth.
• Most disappointing, however, was a vocal rendition of the William Tell Overture. I love this piece of music- it's thrilling when done well, but part of what makes it great is how slowly it starts (and you know that part of the piece too, at least if you watch Bugs Bunny). As the slow part draws to an end, the fast, familiar part begins, almost out of the background, adding drama as it builds. It also has all kinds of crazy builds and climaxes. None of this was present. This same group had done a more successful version of the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy earlier in the year. That piece is much quirkier and lends itself well to the a capella treatment.

So if you should find yourself ever having to plan one of these things, and god help you if you do, keep this in mind: If you're doing a song or a piece of music that's untraditional for groups of your type, and doing it just because everyone in the group really likes it, you are almost guaranteed disappointing results. The objectives of a performing is group is giving performance, not enjoying practice time. If you don't understand why you like a piece and try to make it work regardless, you will probably fail.

Hotel review

Here's my TripAdvisor review of my stay at the Parker Meridien Hotel in New York last week:


I can't comment on the stay before summarizing perhaps the most chaotic and irritating reservation experience I've ever had. My daughter was performing with a choir at Carnegie Hall and the hotel was convenient. I reserved a room for her and my wife in my wife's name for Wednesday night checking out Sunday. I was going to join them on Friday and reserved a second room in my own (different last) name, all with sub-$300 AAA rates- decent for the neighborhood.

That was all fine, until they decided to arrive on Thursday instead. When I tried to change the date on the web site, the price jumped to $800. I decided that was insane and that human beings wouldn't stand for it, so I called the reservation line, where, after several minutes repeating that I did not want to move the whole reservation back a day but shorten it by a day, the agent said she couldn't fix it, put me on hold for about 5 minutes, then came back and told me that the hotel manager had made the change and kept the same rate, and also that she had requested connecting rooms as I'd asked. I thanked her and forgot about it for a while, but for some reason became concerned a few days later. I called the reservation line again and was told the reservation had not been changed and again got put on hold for 5 minutes and again was told it would be taken care of.

I figured things were fine until I got a pre-arrival e-mail still showing the original arrival date and I hit the roof. I called the hotel this time and they said there was a notation in the reservation saying the date should be changed but that nobody had actually made the change. They said not to worry and changed the date.

The next, day, my wife arrived, her reservation was fine, but no accommodation had been made for connecting rooms and that the clerk was insisting that nothing could be done about it. She called me from the front desk and I had to get on the phone with the Stepford Clerk and have her get the manager. Apparently, the notation for connecting rooms had neglected to mention who to connect to. The manager understood that it was unlikely that I had asked for a room connecting to some unknown party and that it was clearly their mistake, and though it was impossible to connect at that point that we could be next door and could check out at 4PM with no charge.

Once we got there the hotel was fine. New York hotels are allowed a certain quirkiness that would not be tolerated in less concentrated environments, and ours is no exception. With the advent of flat screens, the hotel took advantage of the opportunity to wall mount the TVs and eliminate the bulky furniture underneath. This leaves the rooms feeling almost expansive, with generous space between the end of the bed and the opposite wall. It also leaves the room without any place to store one's clothes, if one is inclined to unpack. My room had one small drawer to the right of the desk and a shelf to the left. That's it. But you do get the expansive feel and a wall that really looks like there should be a piece of furniture there, especially because there are no less than 3 sets of electrical outlets that were probably useful when TV was sitting on the dresser.

The beds were fine, there's an odd paucity of glasses and no fluffy robes, and the faucets in the bathroom are set about 1/4 too far back, so if you have the water on low pressure it lands on the counter instead of in the sink. Overall, though, I found it a pleasant, convenient place to stay. It's close to multiple subway lines and has 3 Starbucks, a Dean and Deluca cafe and a well-stocked fancy grocery store all within a block or so. I would certainly stay there again.

Viking Robots in Space!

I'm trying to figure out if my doing Twitter is damaging my blogging. I think blogging is more important because it allows me the time and space to develop ideas, but I'm not sure if fully developed ideas are passé.

What do I do, for instance, with this? I'm scanning through a page of news and see the headline: Viking Robots Discovered Life On Mars in 1976. This is fantastic! Who knew that the Vikings had robots? Or that the Vikings discovered life on Mars? I still find it kind astounding that they "discovered" North America. Or that there are still Vikings around in 1976?

There are two ways I can go with something like that. I can compress it into 140 characters or less and get it out quickly, or I can expand on it like I'm doing here.

So I'm trying to visualize what a Viking robot would look like. I guess it would be kind of hairy, for a robot anyway. Come to think of it, any hair on a robot would be kind of unusual. And the hat! Not only have I never seen a robot with a horned helmet, I've never seen robots with any sort of headware. So in spite of having been around for all these years, robot accessories are still not catching on.

And how did they get those awesome boats up into space? There must have been Viking rockets, or maybe a big slingshot or catapult. Were they disappointed that there was nothing to pillage when they arrived? Or were they searching for their gods? I don't even know if Vikings thought their gods lived in the sky the way we moderns do.

Okay, so maybe it's not the most significant thing I've ever written, but more fun and satisfying than what I could do on Twitter. And, by the way, I do remember when NASA launched the Viking space probes, though I hadn't realized that it was so long ago.

Spring of our discontent

It's an odd time for us Phillies fans. The team is injury-depleted and scuffled its way through spring training, never getting much offensive juice. And so far during the regular season, they team is 1-3, has scored once in 2 games, and a total of 6 more runs in the other two. I was at the game on Monday and it just had a weird vibe about it, with the crowd never having the chance to get into the action because there was no action.

All I want to say to everyone getting upset about all of this is, hey folks, chill out. And what I don't mean by that is that everything is going to be okay. I have no idea if everything is going to be okay. It's hard for me to come up with a team that lost its number 3 and 4 hitters and then went on to have a good year. I'm not giving up, but this year may just not work out.

It's an odd time to be a Phillies fan. Last year, aside from its bummer ending, was one long high point, six months of spectacularly good baseball, as good as I've seen in 50 years of following the game. The best record in team history. A gift to the fans. There really was nowhere to go but downhill. And I'm saying this as a fan who wants nothing more than continued success.

But continued success is hard. Notice what a big deal we make out of winning the division 5 straight years? Why is it a big deal? Because it's really really hard to do. Aside from the Braves' amazing 13 year run, the next best in history is 6. And that was done once by the Yankees. So the Phillies are now tied with the Yankees and Oakland A's of the early 70's for the 3rd longest streak of division titles since they first created divisions back in 1969. That's an amazing feat of sustained excellence.

So do I want to see a 6th? You bet. Am I confident it will happen? Not at all. Am I hopeful? Will I continue to go to the park and support them even if this year is disappointing? Will I still be proud to have this team represent this city that I almost but not quite live in? Absolutely. It's baseball. You never know what's going to happen next. And that's why I love it.

In my own head

Today I made coffee in the office and then realized that we had no milk. People sometimes seem curious about my internal dialogue, so here's a bit. All of what follows was actually spoken out loud to myself.

(Looking in English Department refrigerator) Hmmm, no milk, there's some salad dressing. It looks a bit like milk but probably not a good idea. 

(Science refrigerator) At the old building they sometimes had dead animals in the freezer. This fridge is too small for that. Okay, there's cream cheese, dairy, but too thick. There's somebody else's Starbucks coffee with some milk in it. Would that work? Don't know, but there must be a better option.

I did eventually find someone with leftover half and half minis.

New York Touristic

I was born in Brooklyn and lived in New York until I was 30, so I consider myself a native, but since I'm here for the weekend staying in a hotel, this gives me a perspective with which to evaluate New York as a tourist spot.

First of all, New York is crowded and busy. I'm guessing this is not surprising information, but I'm serious. Try arriving at Penn Station on Friday 6PM and then attempting to get from the south side of the concourse over to the subway. Try to do this quickly and without touching anyone else. Simply not possible. You can do one or the other but not both. It's interesting to me that although I haven't lived here for 25 years, I have not at all lost my ability to navigate crowds. You show me a hoard of people headed for a bank of stairs or a subway entrance and I'll show you the quickest way to get there. My traveling companion, a fit, recent college grad, struggled mightily to keep up with me as we wove through the waiting room, even though I was exhausted and running a fever.

Second, there are a lot of Starbucks here. I know there are a lot of Starbucks everywhere, but again, New York has to one-up everyone else. My hotel is in the middle of the block on 56th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues and there is one Starbucks directly across the street, one on the corner of 56th and 6th and another between 55th and 56th on 7th. While traveling from the 6th to 7th Avenue outposts, you will also pass 4 other coffee shops as well.

That's another thing about New York. Proximity to competition is no impediment. There are coffee shops next to coffee shops, delis next to delis next to other sorts of restaurants, and rows of souvenir shops on the same block. How can this be? See my first point. The streets are too full for a single outlet of anything important to city life to be sufficient. We need superfluity (which may or may not be a word but should be) just to accomodate everyone.

New York hotels are allowed a certain quirkiness that would not be tolerated in less concentrated environments, and ours is no exception. With the advent of flat screens, the hotel took advantage of the opportunity to wall mount the TVs and eliminate the bulky furniture underneath. This leaves the rooms feeling almost expansive, with generous space between the end of the bed and the opposite wall. It also leaves the room without any place to store one's clothes, if one is inclined to unpack. My room had one small drawer to the right of the desk and a shelf to the left. That's it. But you do get the expansive feel and a wall that really looks like there should be a piece of furniture there, especially because there are no less than 3 sets of electrical outlets that were probably useful when TV was sitting on the dresser.

We went to Chinatown for dinner last night. Try to choose a good place in Chinatown using Yelp. I dare you. It is an extremely helpful guide to where to eat at 3AM after a night of heavy drinking. It seemed like every other comment said something of that nature. The place we picked was fine (My favorite review comment: "Service is wham bam thank you ma'am, without the thank you"), but I learned far too much about the interaction of alcohol and fried food and about the health code grades that are posted on the door of every establishment. Don't worry, all of the Starbucks are graded A, which means 7 or fewer code violations on the most recent inspection. Most of Chinatown is graded B or, for the truly brave, C (below C means shut down).

Breakfast this morning was at the famous Carnegie Deli, where a corned beef sandwich costs as much as our dinner for three at The Great NY Noodle House, and is so large that the one time I had lunch there when I was working in the neighborhood, I got 4 full meals out of it. I had salami and eggs, which was yummy, and one of my wife's cheese blintzes (you have to order 3 and each one weighs about half a pound) which was even yummier. It amazing how deep frying improves everything.

Every inch of wall space is covered with autographed 8-by-10 pictures. Within my sight were David Hasselhoff, Bobby Murcer, Billy Joel, Chris Noth, Miss Teen USA 1996 and too many more to remember. Our favorite moment there was when the group of 2 adults and 6 middle school-age kids sitting to our left got their sandwiches, both of the adults sat straight up, agape and unsure how to deal with the massiveness of it all, while the 13 year old boy next to them gave it a quick glance and a squirt of mustard and dug right in without any change in facial expression.

Me at Starbucks

I never know if people are entertained or annoyed by my behavior.

Me:  May I have this coffee ground for automatic drip?
Starbucks Guy: What kind of filter?
Me: Cone
SG: Paper or permanent?
Me: Waffle

Easter Egg Punt

Sometimes it's hard to overcome a basic pessimism about the future of American society. I am by nature pretty optimistic, but it's hard to look at societal trends and hold to that spirit. In my usual fashion, I am expounding on this topic based on a news story that I have not read nor have any intention of reading. This one is about the Easter Egg hunt gone awry (and by the way, I've always favored pronouncing that word aw'-ree).

In general, I hate the presence of stories like that in my newspaper, real or virtual. Why do I care about some stupid ritual in Colorado Springs? I don't, but I feel like a big part of what's screwing up this country is parents seeking to cushion every possible blow their kids might receive. I've certainly been guilty of this at times, but I've learned my lesson. Not only can't it be done, it shouldn't be done. If a kid doesn't learn how to cope with the searing psychic pain of not finding an Easter egg, how are they going to be able to cope when something bad actually happens, like if their best friend moves to Des Moines or they get a B on a history term paper.

Parents, of course, have the right to psychologically cripple their kids; it's so difficult to avoid that inflicting some kind of damage is almost a job requirement. But whatever mistakes I've made have at least come as a mistaken conclusion to some thinking process. It's the lack of thought by what seems like a vast segment of Americans that scares the bejeezus out of me (always wanted to use that phrase...).

This is kind of a deep and complicated topic for this blog, and I don't have time to follow through on it right now, but I will in the near future.

Day three

This day, I must say, made the whole trip worthwhile. I got up not to early, had breakfast and checked out of the motel. Since I now seem to be able to handle long walks, I wanted to find a place where I could be on the beach for a bit, but didn’t feel like doing the whole same thing again, so I headed in the other direction and quickly found myself on a bridge to a little island called Sand Key. I didn’t know anything about Sand Key, but something led me to believe there would be a beach there. Once over the bridge I saw a sign pointing to a beach/park, so in I went and found this wide and almost shockingly underpopulated expanse of sand. I walked its entire length until I was standing at the edge of the island directly across from the motel.

It was absolutely perfect out- maybe 80 degrees with a breeze. I couldn’t believe my good fortune being there. After a couple of minutes, I made my way back down the beach and to the bridge. As I approached the main part of Clearwater Beach I could see pelicans diving into the bay. By the time I got close to the end of the bridge I could hear the splash as they hit the water.

The walk took over an hour, so I got in my car and headed back to the ballpark. I found the main approach from the south side kind of unpleasant, so I tried coming from the north this time, and found a remote parking lot in the woods for half the price of the regular lot. I realized as I walked out that these woods comprised a disk golf course. I’d never watched people play disk golf before- it was pretty impressive. I almost got hit with a stray disk, leading to a conversation with a couple of other parkers about whether disk golfers said “fore” to alert others. We decided “look out dude!” was more likely.

Today’s game was again mildly diverting. I never spent a moment in my seat, but hung out either on the grassy knoll in centerfield or somewhere in the shade. By this point, although I wasn’t seriously burnt I had been in the sun for most of the peak hours for the past 2 days. So once the game was over (it ended in a tie, a charming result that happens only during spring training), I decided not to return to the beach, but found a Starbucks to get some work done. Even this was kind of calming, because it meant I wouldn’t be stressing out about for the rest of the day.

The flight back was uneventful, just the way you like them. The one oddity is that I bought a salad to eat on the plane for dinner. First the gate agent, then each of the flight attendants tried to get it away from me. I’m not sure they’re feeding those people enough.

I was sitting next to two guys who were talking business the entire flight. After about 20 minutes of office politics and how they were facing up to their challenges and their incompetent supervisors I had to put music on LOUD to drown them out.  I’m so glad I don’t do that stuff any more. It sounds so frustrating and dreary.  These people feel like their problems are unique, but every single thing they said was something I’d heard (or said) a dozen times before.

Finally got to eat my salad undisturbed and arrived in Philly right on time. Nice trip.

Day two

Today I really wanted beach time, so as soon as I got up and eat some breakfast and then headed up to the nice part of the island. The sand in Clearwater is absolutely spectacular and it's wonderful just to feel it under my feet.

While I was lying on the beach I had a suddenly realization about why I ‘d been feeling so crappy and hadn’t felt like writing anything during the prior week. I was so busy and stressed out that my mind never had a moment to wander and free associate. Everybody needs something to keep them centered, and my stream of consciousness is what keeps me going and makes me feel alive. I have a very active and chatty inner voice and when I can’t hear it I kind of lose myself. Lying on the beach, with nothing around except the sun and the sound of the Gulf’s mini-waves, I could wander. I need to make sure that I take some time for that no matter what is going on.

I lay in the sand until around noon, and then decided I would go see another ball game after all. So off I went to Dunedin.

I was going to see the Atlanta Braves play the Toronto Blue Jays at their stadium in Dunedin, so I put Toronto Blue Jays Dunedin to my phone and followed the directions. Much to my annoyance, unlike every other team in Florida. The Toronto Blue Jays do not have to stadium anywhere near their offices which is where I arrived about 10 minutes before gametime.

Muttering under my breath, I tried another way of finding where the game was and found out I had to go back in the direction I had already come. This displeased me. Didn't help that half the roads were closed and I had to detour everywhere.

Call the parking lot attendants I saw this weekend were really pleasant and chatty. When that guy asked me how I was doing I said I was glad to be here after swinging buy the offices first. He nodded knowingly, and I said "it's especially annoying because I came right by here." He said, I know, I saw you. Cute.

Actually the whole thing was cute. They play in a municipal ballpark with the snappy name of Florida Auto Trader Stadium. It was generically pleasant and had one of my favorite minor league ballpark features, the Rotary Club barbecue. I had some grilled chicken and baked beans, so I was on my way.

At Bright House Field they serve Yuengling for the Philly folks, so here they have Labatts Blue for Canadians. Both parks had a new beer dispensing gimmick where the bottom of the cup has a magnetic seal which opens when inserted in a special apparatus, allowing the cup to be filled for the bottom up. Cool to watch.

The game itself was mildly diverting, with Toronto absolutely pummeling the Braves’ rookie pitcher. The most notable thing was that because of the preponderance of left-handed hitters in both lineups, the right field stands where I was sitting was getting peppered with baseballs. I nearly got hit when I had my back turned coming back from the bathroom.

Usually I like to stay until the end of games, but spring training doesn’t have rael games. They’re glorified practice sessions and the teams typically start taking their regular players after 6 innings or so. When the Phillies do that I’m usually interested in seeing the minor league replacements, but here I could care less, so I left after 7 innings. I cruised back through downtown Dunedin, which had the main street block off for what seemed to be a junk festival. Kind of like a two block-long yard sale.

The town was cute and I wouldn’t have minded hanging out, but it was difficult to get around with all the piles of knick-knacks lining the street. So I headed back to my room to ready myself for another night of beachness. I decided to walk this time, taking advantage of how much better my leg has been feeling to feel the air and see the people milling about. It was incredibly busy, not so much with spring breakers, but with what seemed like local families. My motel was full of such weekenders, large groups of large, loud people.

After about an hour of walking around, I decided to have dinner and went to the local landmark known as Crabby Bill’s. As I had the night before, I used my special party-of-one powers to sit at the bar right away while the hoards of larger parties waited outside. The food was informal and tasty and the bartender was surprisingly pleasant for a place called crabby. I hung out and watched basketball for a while and then walked back to my room and eventually went to bed.

The Florida trip- Day one

Once again, I am off traveling solo. My wife and daughter are on the road looking at colleges and I have a 3 day weekend, so I decided to hop a flight down to Florida and enjoy the sun and a few baseball games. It seemed like a nice relaxing type trip, which I definitely needed.

I happened to be flying first class on the way down, thanks to the general idiocy of airline fares. I made the reservation kind of late, and at that particular moment first class tickets were $170 cheaper than coach, so I wasn't going to argue. The fortuitousness of this selection did not hit me until I got to the airport and saw the security line stretching nearly all the way to the parking garage. Note: this is not an exaggeration; the line went beyond the far end of the moving sidewalk. But the First Class security line was about 15 people.

I've had my issues going through security recently, mostly because on a couple of occasions I had my garage door opener, which seems to set off all kinds of alerts, in my jacket pocket. One time, they ran it through the x-ray 3 times and then went off to manually inspect it.

Then last time I flew they wanted to put me in a glass cylinder and irradiate me. When I refused I was scolded by the TSA agent for saying "I ain't going in that thing." when apparently I'm supposed to say "I request a hand screening." Pardon me for speaking like a human being instead of a robot, or someone just out of TSA training.

The hand screenings are a bit time-consuming but I haven't found them to be particularly unpleasant, especially since they've been patting me down every time I've entered a sporting event lately. At least these guys seem to know what they're doing. My favorite part was he decided that he had to run one of those bomb detecting swabs all around the Ace bandage that I have on my calf these days.

The flight itself was fine, and I got to the Phillies park well before the game. I went to my first spring training in 1976 and it's gotten a lot slicker since then, but it's still nice to see big league ballplayers in small parks when nobody is taking the proceedings too seriously.

From there I went to my hotel, which is laughingly called a Resort. It's not like there's anything wrong with it. The rooms are large and well equipped, but to me a Resort is a place where there's a variety of activities and amenities. Here, they have a pool, but the only activity I can find is doing laundry. It's a motel. There's miniature golf a block away and the beach is across the street, but you have to make your own fun. Then again, as David Mamet notes in State and Main, if you don't make it yourself, it isn't fun, it's entertainment.

In the interest of making some fun, I took the little trolley up to the main beach area and lay on the sand for an hour or so. And then when I got up to head back, I suddenly realized that my wallet was missing.

I completely freaked. At home it would be an irritation, but on the road by yourself with no credit cards and no money? I retraced all my steps in and around the beach but found nothing. As I got back close to the street, trying to figure out what to do, I saw a trolley go by and went running after it, (note to those who have been following the adventures of me and my reluctant right leg,yes, I actually ran). I flagged it down and asked the driver if someone had left a wallet on a trolley and she replied musically, to my ears anyway, "Are you Frank?"

So yes, I'd left it on the trolley and another driver was driving around with it. He was all the way on the other end of the island, so I had to wait a half hour for him to make his way back, but he had it and nothing was missing. Amazing. Completely lucky.

I headed over to Frenchy's Rockaway Grill, my favorite spot around here, and had a grouper sandwich to celebrate my good fortune. Then back to my room for a night's sleep with nothing planned for the morning.

Getting back online

Headed for Florida tomorrow for a weekend of baseball. Will have some time to write while I'm there.

Just checking in

I know I haven't written anything for a while. I am respecting the privacy of others, and it prevents me from giving any details of what I've been doing.

For myself, I'm fine. I'm even walking pretty much normally. Things are going as well as one might expect and I will be back at work next week.

Promenade with your partner

The origin of the prom is in an old fashioned promenade, a leisurely stroll around the parlour where you show off your partner to the assembled nobility. I'm not sure if they still do it but when I went to the Kirov Ballet in 1977, between acts everyone would promenade. They had a big long room with no purpose other than for walking around the perimeter (there was a carpet ringing the room), which is what the entire audience did. It was quite charming actually.

Now, of course, proms have taken on an exaggerated importance because people just don't hold balls the way they used to in all those Jane Austen books. Plus, now as part of the Global War on Fun (TM), everything about proms is tightly controlled. Nobody can arrive late or leave early. In some cases the students are detained afterwards for a mandatory group activity until early the next morning. This means that if anyone is intent on getting a buzz or some nookie, they'll need to be very surreptitious and creative. I have no suggestions to make in this regard, but I'm guessing today's youth is up to the challenge.

Tonight we had one of the Junior Pre-Proms for my daughter's school here. As I noted to one of the parents, this was the most kids we'd ever had at the house when we were home and aware that there were kids there (so sorry, no beer pong this time).

The scene was really quite entertaining. There were about a dozen couples and then one or more parent for each of them, armed with one or more cameras apiece. I can't even guess how many pictures were taken all told. I brought out a stool so that the shorter people could see what was going on. And the scene was happily chaotic, so much so that our dog, who's a herder and usually actively involved with whatever is going on, finally gave up and lay down under the dining room table.

Fortunately, there were no mishaps. One girl caught a heel on her dress on the stairs but fortunately just fell onto the half-landing. Nobody spilled anything on themselves or had a hair mishap. Nobody got stuck with a corsage or boutonniere pin. We overbought food but there were enough boys there to use most of it up.

My daughter, who had been fretting about her hair for weeks, got a wonderful up-do that she loved. Her date was a very nice young man with hearty handshake. He's one of those guys who shakes your hand by swinging his arm around and slapping his hand into yours. It's very pre-professional (the girls referred to it as being a CEO handshake). I was just wondering where a kid learns to do that. I couldn't find lessons on Youtube anywhere.

After a half hour of groups forming dissolving and reassembling, they all at once decided it was time to leave, and off they went. I stayed at home to clean up, of which my favorite part was finding empty corsage and boutonniere boxes in every conceivable place. Two were under the couch, one was behind the TV. The rest were stashed on every available horizontal surface. But within an hour the house was back to normal and it was time to go pick them up.

Getting there

Following up on a discussion I had recently, I would like to present the definitive essay on the Interstate Highway System (IHS). By definitive I mean researched in a thoroughly cursory manner and embellished by amplifications, selective use of data, statistically unsupportable extrapolations and my own opinions. That is what definitive means, right?

Like most important parts of 21st century life, the IHS was developed during my lifetime. I saw numerous pieces of it evolve from plans to concrete. When I moved to Philadelphia, one of the first things I read in the Inquirer was a humorous essay about I-95 in the Sunday Magazine, which is no longer published. It was done in a Q&A format and the first question was simply, "What is I-95?" Answer: "I-95 is a highway that runs from Maine to Girard Avenue and from the Philadelphia Airport to Florida."

The IHS was born in the aftermath of WWII from the mankind's typical instinct to develop strategies to fight the previous war. Then-President Eisenhower, a military guy by trade, decided he needed a system of limited access roads (as in, have entrances and exits rather than intersections with streets) with which we could move troops and equipment by road from, say Los Angeles to Washington DC without stopping at 15,000 traffic lights on the way. Building began in the early 1950s and continues to this day.

Although many parts of the Interstates have names, (the entire system is named after Eisenhower), most are known only by their number. The numbering system was designed to complement the US Highway system, keeping odd numbers going North-South and evens East-West, but reversing the direction of numbering. For example, I-95 is the easternmost interstate and US 1 the easternmost US route. The only oddities in this system are in the middle of the country, where they skip numbers to avoid having, for example, both US Route and Interstate 60 in the same state. We the people are presumed to be unable to distinguish one from the other, yet another way the government restricts our first amendment right to worship the religion of automobile usage.

Also, because the country irregularly shaped, not all the roads go all the way from east to west. I-90, for example, starts  in Massachusetts, but when the Great Lakes push the northern border south, it merges with I-80, only to reappear in Chicago and continue to Seattle.

The numbering of the main routes is a model of simplicity compared to the numbering of the connecting routes. In this area, the main connectors are I-476 and I-676. In Pennsylvania, both of these connect I's 76 and 95, but one runs east-west and the other north south. To make things more confusing I-476 also connects 276, 78, 80, 84 and 81. And east-west 676 disappears at the Delaware River and reappears in New Jersey, running north-south and connecting 295 and another piece of 76.

The code for numbering connectors, which is more guidelines than an actual code, are that connectors that intersect interstates at both ends get even numbers and those that don't have odd numbers. This code is violated frequently depending on convenience. New Jersey's version of 676 has no connector on its north end, but I-195, the road to Great Adventure in New Jersey, is more the way it should work.

The IHS was build with either willful ignorance or blatant disregard of the consequences of road building. The first rule is that new roads attract new traffic, and the consequence is that they almost never alleviate traffic problems. The most common mistake is the notion that building interstates to funnel traffic into a city are counterproductive. Roads that connect, for example, northern and southern suburbs to an urban core also allow people to commute from the north to the south as well. Locally, the Schuyllkill Expressway, now I-76, was built solely for the purpose of bringing people from the suburbs into Center City. But it didn't take long for people to figure out that they could also use it to commute from South Jersey to King of Prussia. Hence more traffic than anticipated.

Even more tragic is when the interstate merely passes by a city or town, cutting it off from the traffic and starving it economically. But that's a long, sad, complicated story and not one I care to expound on right now.

A little hectic

Been a bit too busy to blog recently. My main activity, aside from school stuff, has been to make all of the reservations for my daughter's college visiting trip. This means finding hotels in a bunch of places ranging from small midwestern towns to big northeastern cities. It's pretty remarkable how many pretty much identical-looking places you can find.

When I was a kid, chain motels didn't really exist. Motels were typically somewhat shabby little places owned by some guy or some family. Then at some point, around 1950 or so, someone realized that the lack of any kind of consistency was an opportunity. His idea was that travelers want predictability, an idea that has been borne out in many forms (for example, McDonalds or Starbucks). So he built a few motels, developed standards and franchised the idea nationally as Holiday Inns. His timing was excellent. The Interstate Highway System was being built and Americans were taking increasing numbers of driving vacations over increasing distances.

Holiday Inns were so revolutionary that the guy (Mr. Wilson, I think) was featured on the cover of Time Magazine. Now, of course, there are a huge number of chains offering precisely calibrated different levels of service. Holiday Inn itself has 3 different levels (that I've stayed in, anyway) and owns a luxury hotel chain as well.

So making these reservations, I'm barraged by an almost incomprehensible array of places to sleep. In even a decent size city there are usually at least 3 types of Hiltons, Marriotts and Holiday Inns, along with all the usual suspects. How do I choose between a Hilton Garden Inn (none of the hotel photos ever show a garden) or Courtyard by Marriott (likewise for courtyard photos)? Or a Holiday Inn Express, whatever that means. I understand what an express train or bus is. I even understand the black-is-white logic of calling US Airways' local partners US Airways Express even though there's nothing "express" about them. But what in the world is an express motel? I am genuinely befuddled. I don't think that word means what they think it means.

The funny thing, of course, is now that the vast majority of motels are part of chains, the older, more individual places have more attraction, at least for me. The vast majority of the places I picked are not chains. I always keep in mind that Stevie Wonder, the blind singer, always stayed in Holiday Inns on tour because every room was identical and he could find his way around easily. That just never seemed attractive to me, but it appears I'm in the minority.

Update from gimp central (Warning: Viewer discretion is advised)

Yesterday after school I went directly to the doctor, arriving about 2:45. I got home around 8. That should tell you how well things went.

First I saw my internist. He felt my leg, which, I must admit, has endured less abuse than Angelina's leg, and said the could feel where the muscle was torn. As in he could feel the ends of the two separate pieces of muscle. Good thing I don't get squeamish, because that's pretty gross. He sent me down to radiology to get an ultrasound to try to determine the size of the tear and to see if I had any blood clots. (By the way, I've heard that blood clots are dangerous, but isn't blood supposed to clot?)

I got to radiology at 3:15, got in a gown and sat, alone, in the waiting room until 4:50. The good news is that I got to watch several episodes of Barefoot Contessa, so I'm ready to whip up hors d'oeuvres of mini grilled cheese sandwiches and spinach-fontina crisps, a gourmet dinner of lemony chicken breasts with brown rice and green beans, with dessert of french toast bread pudding and a sticky caramel tart, (though if you scroll down a bit you'll see it would probably take me half a day to assemble the ingredients).

Finally got into the ultrasound room, which had a very comfortable table/chair/bed for me to lie down on. Having never been pregnant I'd not had an ultrasound before. It was painless and took about 10 minutes. The technician then went off to go over the results with the radiologist (this immediate evaluation is charmingly called a "wet read" in reference to reading x-ray films immediately before they had time to dry. So wet pixels and all, they read the ultrasound and told me that I had a small blood clot and that I should call my doctor ASAP.

To give an idea of my current slow motion world, I called the doctor's answering service as I left radiology and had him paged, and he called me back 10 minutes later, and I hadn't gotten to my car yet.

The doctor told me I had to go on blood thinners and called in a prescription. There's a pill, which takes about 4 days to reach full effectiveness, so in the meantime I have to give myself an injection every day. Not surprisingly, not every pharmacy has self-injectable blood thinners, so I spent a half hour running (not literally) around getting the medicine. The doctor, though he didn't say so, was clearly unhappy that I had been active without blood thinner.

Once home, I got to shoot up this stuff, which was not as hard or as painful as I thought. I now have to live in fear of getting a cut or a bad bruise. And by then I was too beat to go to the supermarket.

This morning, we still needed the groceries, so I went to Acme. It took me an hour to collect about 15 things scattered around the store. On the way out I asked the manager if I was allowed to use the electric scooters they keep near the entrance. She said, "Sure. They should be all charged up and they corner very well." I can hardly wait.

At this point, my main problem is that every routine little thing has become arduous, so by early evening I am exhausted. My leg is very stiff and kind of sore. I'm not even to get into how crabby I was at school. We'll have to see how well I hold up for the rest of the week.

I am so f-ing bored

I'm not going to go on and on about how tired I am of sitting on the couch with my leg elevated, but let me say one last thing about it. I am tired of sitting on the couch with my leg elevated.

It doesn't help matters that my dad scared the crap out of me on the phone today, telling me I should beware of fatal blood clots. I try to make a point of avoiding blood clots, especially the fatal kind, except when I get a cut and then I want a non-fatal blood clot. I know that lower leg blood clots are a serious matter and tend to happen on airplanes if you don't move around enough on a long flight. I never heard of it with a muscle pull or tear, but if I'm suddenly dead tomorrow I guess we'll all know why.

At least I got a bit of work done today. I felt ingenious because I took an ottoman from a living room chair and put it under the dining room table so I could put my leg up on it there. It's weird to have one's whole day revolve around trying to not stand up. I guess it could be worse; I could have a pulled or torn glute that would make it impossible for me to sit down. And wow, what if I had both and couldn't stand up or sit down?

Respiration Wars

I am a TV pacifist. This has become increasingly difficult recently, what with all of the different kinds of wars offered to you on a daily basis.

What kinds of wars? Storage, Parking, Prom, Swamp, Border (oh wait, that's a real war), Cupcake, Monster Bug, Shipping, Design.

I've wondered from time to time why "war" has become such a commonplace descriptor of relatively peaceful, even mundane activities, and I've decided it's just plain laziness. The Storage Wars show can actually be kind of fun, but you'd have to work hard to come up with a snappy title that somewhat describes what actually happens. Some people bid sight unseen for the contents of a storage locker. Then the winner inspects and appraises the contents. That's it. Anything in there sound even remotely warlike? Of course not, but war is a convenient if almost crazily exaggerated shorthand for a competition.

I'm not going to assert that this represents a metaphor for societal trends, but there has been an escalation of rhetorical bombast in both the political and entertainment spheres. The political part is mostly perpetrated by Republican hardliners who feel the need to cast everything they don't agree with in terms of something not just undesirable, but so-horrifying-you-should-buy-a-gun-and-then-go-hide-under-your bed. This is needlessly extreme and annoying, (wait, is Obama a Nazi or an Islamic terrorist or a socialist? All 3?), but is much more easily accomplished than building a logical case based on sound policy. Similarly, in entertainment, bombast is usually found in the realm of so-called reality shows, because even artificially manipulated reality just isn't compelling enough to attract viewers. This requires either a truly creative message or, failing that, sensationalism.

Personally, I detest laziness and excess in communications, so it makes reading the TV listings kind of disheartening.  I wish I could see a path to a more articulate and less over the top communications, but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting.

Living la vida lenta

I don't mind moving slowly. Sometimes it's nice to saunter along and consider everything going on around me. What I don't like is not having any choice in the matter. If I try to take more than about a third of my normal stride length I get a shot of pain in my leg (note to self: maybe I can find a way to make a drinking game out of this). Even driving hurts.

Today I was in the supermarket. I had never really paid attention to how big supermarkets are, but if you're moving at quarter speed they're huge- I am so not going to Target or Costco while dealing with this injury. It was kind of frustrating how long the whole thing was taking, but my overwhelming feeling was one of complete boredom.

I'm seldom bored. It's pretty hard to find something in which I don't have at least a passing interest. But walking all the way down the bread aisle to get to the peanut butter was excruciatingly dull. I think if bread makers can't make their product more interesting looking (c'mon guys, can't you come up with any colors other than brown and white?), they definitely need to jazz up their packaging. Otherwise, by the time people like me make it past the 20th kind of whole wheat bread (and we need this why?) they'll be ready to kill themselves.

After shopping I realized it was taking me as long to walk back to the car as it usually does to walk from my house to the supermarket without using the car. I had to step aside on the path so that an old lady with a shopping cart could zip past me.

Moving this slowly sets up a whole new set of decision points during the day, most of which are along the lines of "Is it worth going all the way over there to do that?" It's amazing how many little things I do every day without thinking about them that I now have to consider. Do I really need that drink of water? Should I have that water or will it make me have to get up an extra time to go to the bathroom?Should I go upstairs to change clothes now or should I wait until I have more reasons to make the trek? Should I even try to get to the phone before it stops ringing? It's amazing how many of my routine actions require rethinking. But amazing doesn't make it interesting.

TMI from Uncle Gimpster

I highly doubt that anyone is really interested in the details of my (or anyone else's) injury, but it's pretty much all I've got going on right now, so read on if you like. Not quite two days since getting hurt, there's not that much clarity. My calf is noticeably swollen, which indicates a real injury, but it's not black and blue, which means it's probably not a tear. Aside from the walking very slowly thing, the biggest problem at the moment is that if I don't keep my leg elevated it swells more.

I've had stuff like this before. I once played in a weekend-long softball tournament with a pulled quad and then woke up Monday morning with my right thigh twice the size of my left. A calf strain is a different problem, because there's no room to swell on that part of the body and so if swelling is attempted it pulls the skin over my shin so tight that it feels like it's on fire. I'm already trying to picture myself teaching and keeping my right leg 3 feet off the ground at the same time. I'm not sure what it'll look like but I'll definitely want the video.

Part of the problem with getting hurt at my advanced age is that you start to lose the total confidence that whatever you hurt will get better. When you're young, you just assume that something will hurt for a while and then eventually will heal and you'll forget about it. When you're older, there's always the sneaking suspicion that whatever hurt this is will never go away.

We don't come by this conclusion randomly. A few years ago my shoulder was aching even though I hadn't injured it in any way. I asked my doctor why my shoulder hurt and he replied,"Because you didn't die when you were 40." I tore a muscle in my back over 20 years ago and though I rarely notice it, if I lift something too heavy the wrong way, it still barks at me.

It's not the worst thing in the world. It makes you more careful and gives you incentive to take better care of yourself. But unfortunately it makes you re-examine what you're doing whenever you hurt yourself. I'm not going to stop skiing or anything. I'm a good, careful skier and it was a freak injury that will probably heal 100 or 99%, so though I'm probably done for what passes as this ski season, I'll be back at it next year.

Uncle Mister Papa

So I got hurt skiing yesterday. This is frustrating in many ways, not the least of which is that I've been skiing for over 40 years and have never gotten hurt. This one wasn't even one of those "the fall didn't hurt at all, it's the stopping that hurts" kind of thing. I was skiing on some bad snow and my skis caught on something and spun me around. I slid along the ground for a bit and then my skis caught on something and popped off. I didn't feel a thing. Until I stood up and I couldn't put any weight on my right leg.

Fortunately, it wasn't a knee or ankle. It was my calf. It felt kind of like when you get one of those awful leg cramps, but this wasn't a cramp and it wasn't going away. Fortunately, I was able to get back into my skis, which were damaged by whatever made them pop off, and make my way to the lodge and back to town. So I can walk, but try walking without tugging on your calf muscle and see it's pretty lopsided. I can't let my right leg extend behind me so that part of each step gets shortened abruptly, and it gets irritated if I don't keep it up, so I'm spending most of my time sitting up in bed.

This is just awful. I like being outside in this place more than any other and I normally walk around the lake every day. Now it takes me 10 minutes to walk to the lobby of the hotel. I'll give my family props for trying to cheer me up by calling me Mister Gimpy or Papa Gimpy, and even getting my cute little niece to call me Uncle Gimpy. But there's not much they can do. I can't ski, sled, skate or walk, so Uncle Gimpy it is.

In-room "Coffee"

Note the beautiful translucence.

Have I been missing out?

Am I the only one who didn't know that the procedure by which doctors determine the severity of sinus infections is called the SNOT-16?  Sinonasal Outcome Test-16. You can look it up. Not to be undone, gastrointerologists are re-naming their test for levels of nausea the... Nah, just making stuff up now.

Xeno's butter dish

You can't get purer than nothing

In the course of my journey through pop music I've noticed a new type of song, joining whiny boy rock and 100%-rhythm-and-blues-free R&B and overwrought ballads as a radio staple. It's a genre I call "I recorded this in the janitor's closet during coffee break and then finished it in Garage Band" music. The voice is autotuned, the instruments are all synthesized, there's nothing real in the entire production.

There's a certain purity in something so blatantly artificial. It reminds me a bit of the kinds of work we did at advertising, where groups of really smart, creative young people work really hard developing stuff that ranges from pure bulls--t to forgettable, like when the Sprite team had to develop TV commercial designed to convince people that Sprite tasted better than 7-Up.

Talking about taste is always fun in the soda biz, because Sprite and 7-Up are both lemon-lime sodas that taste almost identical. But around that time, Coca-Cola, which makes Sprite, was getting hammered by something called The Pepsi Challenge, where people were given small cups of Coke and Pepsi and more people preferred Pepsi. This turned out to be somewhat deceptive, because you don't normally drink 1 ounce of soda, and while Pepsi is slightly sweeter than Coke and therefore tastes "better" in small doses, for a full 12 ounces, people prefer Coke. But not to leave any stone unturned, some research guy, knowing that Sprite is slightly sweeter than 7-Up, did a scientific blind taste test. The approximate results were as follows:

Which soda tastes better?

Sprite                                   10.1% 

7-Up                                      9.9%

No difference/no preference   80% 

This led to the development of a commercial where a cute kid walks into a store and asks to trade his 7-Up in for a Sprite, because Sprite tastes better. This was a legit commercial, shot on film in a real store on Bleecker Street int he West Village, and designed to run in prime time and on major sporting events. We then brought it, as is done with all commercials, to the network Standards and Practices department for approval. These are the people who decide whether an ad meets the network's standard of truthfulness and they have the power to block anything from going on the air, and they ruled that this ad was deceptive. Remember, you can say your product is "best" as long as all products are the same, but you can't say "better" without proof.

In came the lawyers. There's always pressure at this point because the company has spent a lot of money for time to run their new commercial and they don't want to use it to run the same old one for the 100th time. The company and ad agency lawyers negotiate with the Standards people to see what can be done to get the ad to meet the guidelines. Occasionally a spot actually has to be pulled (cue loud sound of money being flushed), but most often things can be hedged. Sometimes the wording can be changed, but in this case we needed a way to say "better" or there was no point to the ad.

Let's talk statistics a bit. Let's say those numbers that I made up for the percentages were out of 1000 people (I have no idea what the number of samplers or the precise percentages are). That means that 800/1000 said no preference, which is pretty overwhelming, and 101 chose Sprite and 99 chose 7-Up. Two out of a thousand is not very much. If, however, you ignore the 80%, you have 101/200 (50.5%) versus 99/100 (49.5%). Depending on how many people they asked, that can be a statistically significant difference, which means roughly that there's a 95% probability that the difference can't be explained by random chance.

Using that logic (which is pretty widely accepted), we were able to get the Standards folks to approve the ad if, while the little boy says, "Sprite tastes better than 7-Up," we run what they call a "super," some white type superimposed on the lower part of the picture. The super began with "Among those stating a preference" and had some reference to the majority lack thereof.

Next discussion is how long he super must appear on the screen. There are standards and practices for that as well- 2.5 to 5.0 seconds depending on the length. Finally, we were told that the background in the lower part of the screen was too light, and there wasn't enough contrast to actually see the super. Back to the studio where we superimposed a grey shadow behind the superimposed white type. And the spot aired. For about a month until a new idea was developed and we started all over again.

That, my friends, is purity.

Superb Owl, etc.

I can't remember the last time I paid so little attention to the Super Bowl and the accompanying ads. I guess hype fatigue has finally gotten to me. I really really didn't care who won (I know in Philly I'm supposed to hate the Giants more but I'm from New York, of course) and I instinctively knew that the ads wouldn't be worth my time.

Anybody else checking out the dating service called ChristianMingle? Tagline is "Find God's match for you." I get banner ads for it all the time. I know that the Internet is doing this to me because I'm not allowing web sites to collect any browsing information, and they even warn me that the ads I see will not be as relevant as otherwise. So this is their backup plan, to barrage me with possible the least relevant ad possibly imaginable to show me what a miserable online existence I shall endure unless I submit.

Because I have felt out of touch the past few months, I've decided that I will listen to only top 40 radio for the foreseeable future. So far, this has been only a limited success, because of the 30-or-so songs I've heard in the past few days, 6 have been something called "Ass Back Home." by Gym Class Heroes and 4 times each for "Lonely Boy" by the Black Keys and "Set Fire to the Rain" by Adele.

I'll hold back on any detailed comment for the moment, but I will say that for the most part it was all listenable aside from the repetition. I do remember when I was in my young teens that when a new song by a band I liked came out that I did want to hear it over and over, but at that point I didn't have instant access to new music in the same way we do now.

In the course of a related exploration, I happened upon a phenomenon called "Moving Like Bernie." Go to Youtube and search if you want to know more.

History Lesson

I know this is kind of eccentric, but I always read the supermarket circulars. I'm not really sure why, since I don't ever make a special trip to the market based on what I see. I guess it's left over from my marketing days. This week, the Acme circular had a special insert celebrating Black History Month. 

I'm not an expert on Black History, so I'm counting on Acme to choose items of historical significance. Here, offered in no particular order and without comment, are the products by which Acme celebrates Black History Month:

• Honey Nut Cheerios
• Hamburger Helper
• Kraft Macaroni and Cheese
• Glory Foods Seasoned Greens
• Hunt's Pasta Sauce
• Peter Pan Peanut Butter
• Bisquick
• Glory Collard Greens
• Fresh Baked Fruit Pies
• Pillsbury biscuits
• Marie Callender's canned soup
• Green Giant frozen vegetables
• Chef Boyardee canned pasta
• Hunt's Tomato Paste
• Colgate Toothpaste
• Wesson Canola Oil
• Softsoap Bodywash

Sorry, but this is a bit of a rant

I went to the movies last night. I used to go to the movies a lot, even went to several film festivals, but we got out of the habit when the kids were little and haven't gotten back in the groove. It's important when you're at my stage of life, that being later middle age when the kids are kind of on their way out, to make sure that you don't just keep doing what became normal when you had greater responsibility for your childrens' moment-to-moment well being. Because ultimately you end up depriving yourself for no good reason.

The particular result of not going to the movies much is that I don't see many movies. I know, I know, but I don't particularly like watching them on TV, so I really never see them. I'm not sure how big a loss this is, but I know I used to enjoy it.

In any event, we went to a movie called The Artist. It was in black and white and I liked it except I couldn't hear a damn thing anybody was saying. But it's nominated for a bunch of Academy Awards, so we went.

Seriously, it was a good movie and it was nice to see someone playing with the classic silent genre. But it got gimmicky at times and although it's unique I didn't see it as quite being worth all the fuss, except that so many major movies are just so downright dull that it looks like a masterpiece by comparison.

My perspective is clearly different now than when I was younger, but it seems to me that movies may be following a similar path as music. With music, you can clearly see that the mainstream is congealing into a soulless mush- stuff called R&B that has neither, whiny-boy rock that sounds no different from any other, Nickelback. Need I say more? At the same time, as it's become easier to produce and distribute music independently, interesting things are happening around the edges. But the general effect is that of a slow slide into mediocrity. Maybe the same thing is happening in movies.

It's easy to make the case that both rock music and movies are just plain tired. Rock has a fairly uncomplicated format and for the most part its output is limited to a bunch of 3-4 minute pieces. Maybe there's only so much one can do with an electric guitar, keyboard, bass and drums. And how many interesting ideas for movies could there possibly be? Are there an unlimited number?

What's interesting for me is that while the technology of delivering visual entertainment and music and any sort of popular art has advanced and dissolved and re-formed in sometimes revolutionary ways, the types of expression has changed very little. Yeah, 3-D movies, mashups, more realistic shooter games. But so what? There is clearly nothing revolutionary about that. It may not even be evolutionary.

 And yet the underlying themes are just as powerful as ever. I always thought movies were abut storytelling. And so is a good song. So are we out of stories or are we just being stupid about it? Or maybe lazy is a better word. I'm afraid the advanced technology is mostly being used to make it easier to make crap, rather than to expand horizons.

The Train Experience, Part 2- Conclusional

Or maybe delusional. It's hard to tell, at least on the train because I was by myself and had no way to know if anything I was seeing or doing was real. That isn't unique to train travel; anytime you're alone for an extended period you start to lose context for your life and you can become doubtful or confused. That's also part of the pleasure, for me at least. You have a lot of "wait, what?" moments. I'm always so moored in all the stuff of life that it's refreshing to be completely free of it. What strikes me is that being able to do this kind of trip requires one to be pretty comfortable with one's self. You spend the major portion of your time inside your own head, so you'd better be able to stand being there.

Before I go further, here are the routes I took:

Southwest Chief (Los Angeles to Chicago- you can click for more information if you want. I boarded in Flagstaff, AZ)

Capitol Limited (Chicago to Washington)

When I last took a long train trip, around 1980, it was much more solitary than it is now. In 1980, scientists were just demonstrating that cellular phone service could possibly work- the idea of being able to seamlessly move from one transmission tower to another was radical at the time. They weren't really available for several years and weren't useful outside of big cities until well into the 90's, so the only time you could talk to people not on the train was when they would stop to change crews or gas up (long distance trains run on diesel, they're only electric around a few big cities) and stay in a station for 20 minutes or so. So the time a flood washed out a bridge in North Dakota and my train from Seattle to Chicago had to back up 50 miles and reroute 100 miles south, it wasn't until we were in Minneapolis almost 24 hours later that I could call my friend and tell her not to bother trying to pick me up at 6 PM because we would be arriving around 7 the next morning. Now, of course, I could call home at most, though not all, times and update my progress.

The relative lack of solitude, though not ideal when the point was to get some quiet, didn't really bother me. What kept running through my head the entire trip was how everyone needs to get out and take a look around. There's lots of discussion about how technology and the flood of information makes us less able to concentrate, interferes with this and that, is ruining our children, blah, blah blah. I think the real danger is if it draws us inward and stops us from exploring outside of our personal bubbles. I like to stay in my comfort zone as much as anyone, but going outside that zone has provided many of the best experiences of my life, and if you're resourceful can expand it as you go. I used to be able to do that and I was glad to see that I still could.

This country is vast. Traveling even through fewer than a quarter of the states gives you a perspective that's impossible otherwise. Every place I passed through had intrinsic beauty. Clearly, the Southwest and Cumberland areas are especially scenic, but I don't accept that the flatlands of Kansas are not beautiful in their own right. A grassy hillside looks like nothing among soaring peaks, but if it's the only hill for a mile, it can be graceful and attractive and welcoming. I spent nearly every waking minute on a 55 hour trip just looking out the window, and feeling guilty for every moment I didn't. There is always something to see.

So should you do this? It depends. Going by yourself is not for everyone. It doesn't seem odd to me, but I seem to have a much higher tolerance for solitude than most. Going with a friend or child or grandchild? Could work. Don't get a Roomette for more than one person, they're too small; the bedrooms are much roomier, but someone's still gotta sleep on the upper bunk, which scarily drops down from the wall like the changing table in an airplane bathroom. Don't do it if you're fidgety, or perhaps more important don't do it if your companion is fidgety. There no escaping that or anything else that's on the train, though of course you do escape everything that isn't on the train.

Finally, I guess the question is did the trip serve its purpose, did it help clear my head? I'd have to say that it did. I was able to renew my sense of myself a bit and get back to the day-to-day. I got some quiet and didn't have to drive 2000 miles to get it. And I hope I have another chance to take another trip like this before too long.

The state of my life

If you want to know about my family dynamic, my wife got an iPhone and is doing custom ringtones for all of us. For my HS Junior, it's "I'm sexy and I know it;" for my 20 year-old classic rock fan it's "Baba O'Reilly." For me? "Sir Robin's Song" from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

The Train Experience-Part 1, Anecdotal

I continue to be inspired by my National Archives Experience brochure and will for the time being try to describe everything I do as an Experience. I think I will start with the random recollections and observations that didn't make it into the travelogue. And then I'll try to pull it all together in another post if that ends up being possible.

Although I mentioned communal seating earlier, I forgot to mention the main benefit for a solo traveler like myself. If I didn't sit at a meal table with other people, I could go for the 36 hours I was on the train without talking to anyone. Not that I have a problem with that. I know from past experience that it's hard to return to life where you do have to talk to people if you don't do any of that for a while. I was alone from Tuesday afternoon until Friday evening, so it could have been bad.

On a related topic, a couple of people asked me what I did with myself for that long a time. Part of the way I keep myself occupied is to talk to myself. I do this almost constantly. I have a running monologue going on in my head almost all the time that gets woven into everyday conversation. In this kind of situation, though, it's very much exaggerated and I feel the need to comment (to myself) on almost everything that happens and everything I do and consciously think. That and I look out the window.

I forgot to mention that I took a shower on the train. The larger sleeping compartments have their own very tiny showers, but the roomettes share a single shower on the lower level. I regret that I don't have a picture of it, but it's actually a fairly normal looking shower with decent water pressure and enough hot water. I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who used it for the duration of the trip, which is a frightening thought. I'm ashamed to admit that I did not do this while the train was moving, but rather while we were sitting the station in Kansas City. This reminded of the train trip I did 30-something years ago, where the bathrooms all had prominent warnings not to flush the toilet while the train is standing in the station. This is because flushing was pretty much just opening a trap door. You could see the tracks going by down below. Some bathrooms were missing the trap door.

Since train travel doesn't necessarily attract the mainstream, you get a cast of characters who tend to appear and reappear in your small range of movement (Compartment, dining car, Observation/lounge car). Both trains had an extended Mennonite family, with several young men, a couple of young women and an extremely well-behaved baby. They pretty much kept to themselves in the lounge car, ate food they'd brought, played cards and dice and did embroidery. I did chat with one of them who was telling me about a Mennonite man who figured out how to use the stars to design a train tunnel such that you could start from both sides and meet perfectly in the middle. They got off in Pittsburgh to go to Lancaster. The Brazilians were more out and about, but nobody could understand them (one sat briefly at my lunch table and took his food to go). The rest of the train broke into 5 main groups: budget/student, fear of flying, retired couples chilling, natives of towns not served by airlines, and train junkies. I guess I fit best into that last category, though the real hardcores frame every reference in terms of a train trip they've taken.

One of my favorite characters that I didn't really have anything to do with was Philosophy Girl, 20-ish, tall, thin, mousy/pretty, bangs, big glasses, fuzzy clothing and boots, wool hat with pom-poms hanging down. She spent the entire Chicago-Washington run sitting at a lounge car table reading Hegel and occasionally writing something. One of the young Brazilian men (OK, I've held back for a long time but here goes: Presidential Aide: Three Brazilians were killed in a military exercise yesterday. GWB: How many is a brazillion? Sorry.) seemed to be chatting with her for a little while during the evening but otherwise I never saw her move or speak.

Saw some bald eagles out the window at various points. Also went by a plowed, unplanted field where many of the rows were filled with white birds just sitting together with more swooping in and joining them. My breakfast companions wondered what gulls were doing in a place like that and I blurted out, "Maybe they're free range chickens." They looked at me and said, "That fly?" Honestly, I wasn't serious but still.

Finally (for now, anyway) on the last leg of the trip, one entire car was filled with a bunch of girls, high school seniors or maybe college freshmen, on their way to New York to go to plays. I stood behind them on the snack car line and one asked the attendant, "Can I have a cup of coffee?" Then, "Do you have different kinds or just regular coffee?" The guy behind me and I started to chuckle and he said, "There's the Starbucks generation for you. Looking for a frappucino in the train snack car." I was tempted to ask the attendant the same thing but did not.

Be back later with conclusions.

End of the (rail)Road

 It’s 9:40 in the morning on Friday and we have stopped. Even though the train is over an hour late already, we have stopped to do a routine inspection. I could overhear the conductor telling her assistant to check every wheel- not just look but touch (I guess to see if it’s overheated or maybe just so the guy would know what train wheels feel like). This is a long train and it could take a while. It’s a safety thing, so tough to complain.  Five minutes later we started again.

The western train made a test stop as well, this one mandated by the track owners. Amtrak does not own any track except the northeast corridor. They lease most of it from freight companies. Those companies have the right to stop trains and make sure they’re following all the rules and that was some kind of signal check. That took almost half an hour, but they build so much slack into the schedule that they were able to catch up in the flats of Kansas.

No such luck this morning. We’re in the hills of western Pennsylvania, headed toward Cumberland, MD and the country is too rolling to give the people who build the railway much of a choice, they have to follow rivers, which with few exceptions proceed in a fairly orderly, though often curvy, right of way. The terrain limits what kinds of speeds you can attain. Trains are bad at hills and curves. 

We haven’t had a lick of cellular service for the last 45 minutes, so I can’t check my map to see where we are exactly. It’s very isolated and very pretty there are occasional rustic houses (with outhouses) and a road here and there, though I haven’t seen any cars today. It’s not the limitless expanse of the west, but beautiful and peaceful nonetheless.

Even after the stop we crawled for about a half hour. Apparently there was not one, but two minor derailments of freight trains here yesterday and there are still workmen around. As the conductor said, if we hit one of them we’d get delayed for another 2 or 3 hours minimum. At this point we started going through a series of tunnels, which I guess is another way of cracking the topographic challenges.

I had breakfast with an older guy who did not look in the best of health, but he was among the liveliest company I’ve had this trip. He seems to like to travel everywhere, or at least anywhere he can drive or take a train, and we spent a while talking about Alaska.

Spent most of the morning in the observation car, listening to the extended family of Brazilians chatter on in Portuguese. We were tracking along the Youghiogheny River (pronounced yokageny or yok for short), which heads north into the Monongahela at a place called, conveniently enough, Confluence, PA. It’s a very nice river, with lots of dramatic views. There’s also a bike/walking trail that runs along a converted railroad right of way.

The train was supposed to arrive at 12:40 so there wasn’t supposed to be lunch served, but since we were well over an hour late at that point, we were provided with a meal if we wished. My tablemate was another guy traveling alone. He had a slow, kind of reluctant manner, but ultimately was good company. He’s from Terre Haute, IN, says he owns a farm but doesn’t farm it, and has been an adjunct professor of a variety of miscellaneous subjects at nearby colleges. I never did find out what he did for a living or if he did anything. I said I knew there was someone famous from Terre Haute, and though he wasn’t originally from there, Larry Bird went to school there, of course.

The main attraction at lunch was sitting across from us, a set of twin old ladies, dressed identically, who were busy regaling their tablemates with stories of their travels. Apparently they’re performers of some kind, because I’d heard from a conductor that they had been dancing in the Observation Car. At lunch, all they did was sing along with synchronized hand motions, while the Brazilians took video of them. They were very cute and it appeared that that was what they did with their time, travel around, be cute, and maybe perform.  Nice work if you can get it.

After lunch it was time to clean up my little roomette and get ready to arrive in Washington. There’s a huge amount of slack in the last part of the schedule, so rather than arrive the expected 2 hours late, we were a mere hour and 20 minutes.

This gave me enough time to stroll around the lovely Washington train station, swinging through the food court, which I’d not seen before. It was truly impressive- almost every kind of food was available at the stands, ranging from Cajun to Indian to Jamaican to BarBQ to plain old pizza and deli. I was sorry I’d eaten on the train. If I’d know I’d have time I would have waited.

Finally got on my train northbound for the quick, routine hop up to Philadelphia, Or not. A few minutes out of the station we stopped, then began to back up. At first I was afraid there was a mechanical problem, which would force us all off the train. But instead it turned out that the train in front of us had had the problems, and we had to back up to a switch where we could get onto another track. From there on the trip was routine, Good trip. A few reflections later.

Day two on the train(s)

When I woke up we had magically changed from half an hour late to half an hour early and we were in Kansas City. I’ve been in Kansas City before and like it. I’d like to go back. There are lots of places I’d like to go back to.

It was cold there, so I was forewarned for what Chicago might be like. We arrived a few minutes early, so I had a couple of hours to walk around, which pleased me greatly. I love Chicago. If you like architecture it’s a place where every place you turn is a new bit of eye candy. It is also unspeakably cold in the winter. I bundled up properly but forgot one thing, well, ten things, actually- my toes. I stupidly wore my sneakers instead of my more protective hiking shoes. I learned a couple of years ago at a baseball game that sneakers and extended exposure to cold do not mix.

It was 14 degrees with a slight but noticeable breeze, which made for a lively walk, punctuated with frequent ducking into lobbies and stores to ward off frostbite. The city is just glorious. I saw a building I’d never seen before- the public library, which although partially obscured by the El, was spectacular. 

Every building had some interesting design element. You think of Chicago was just blue collar and to an extent I guess it is, but the Fire left the city barren at a very rich time for architecture and building technology (skyscrapers, for instance, require such things as elevators), and a tradition of design ranging from thoughtful to spectacular was begun.

By the time I was done walking, I was fully refrigerated and ready to stay inside. Chicago’s Union Station is a maze and at rush hour a very busy one. There’s a decent food court that is hard to get to because during the evening rush all the escalators are running down and some portals have no stairs. I eventually found my way up there via a secret-looking escalator that I guess is there solely to run the opposite direction from what every other escalator is doing.

The train got to the station late and we were boarded quickly. The train began to pull out and suddenly over the PA system we hear “Judith’s not on the train! Judith’s not on the train!” Apparently, the dining car manager had gotten off to pick up some cash and the train started to leave without her. She still sounded out of breath when she called us for dinner 15 minutes later.

My dinner companions this evening are a couple from Baltimore. She doesn’t like to fly and he puts up with it. They’re slightly odd. They have salad dressing in packets and after she finished her salad she kept squeezing bits of dressing onto her finger and licking it off.

Nobody to talk to in the lounge car this time. Most of the people in there are Brazilian and barely speak English. I went to bed on the early side.

Intersections and diversions

Yesterday was the school ski trip. I've been chaperoning this trip for the past 6 or 7 years because I like to ski and it's a fun day, and in this case had the added benefit of allowing me to miss a day of meetings. This trip proceeded through the usual routine for most of the day. We loaded up the bus, left 15 minutes late, and had an easy trip up.

By the time everyone was checked in and ready to go it was around 11 AM and I got my skis on and headed up the mountain. It was decent snow, considering that there was no snow for 100 miles in any direction except for what was on the trails. I had new boots which hurt but I could tell were much better than my previous boots and which saved me from falling at one point because of their betterness.

As sometimes happens, I met up with a bunch of kids that I knew who asked if I wanted to ski with them. I never ask in because I don't want to intrude, but I'm usually happy to join, and I knew these were good skiers who I'd enjoy being with. We skied for a while and then decided to have lunch. Lunch can be a bit awkward in these cases, because I never know if the kids want a teacher sitting there with them, but in this case I put my stuff down on a table and everyone else did too.

It was fun sitting with a pretty big group with a good-sized age range. Lots of back and forth silliness a lot of laughing. I joined in (though not for the grosser stuff) and really enjoyed it. And as we were packing up to go back out a thought hit me.

I've occasionally pondered the relationship between teachers (me in particular) and students. Our lives intersect at various points, usually in class and occasionally on trips or other events as well, but we're not friends, no matter how friendly we are. We're never going to each other's house or going to the movies together. This is neither good nor bad; it's just the way things are. So I was thinking, here we are, a bunch of people who know each other pretty well,  doing the same thing together and all having fun. But our lives could hardly be more dissimilar. My perspective is necessarily completely different from theirs. At any given moment, even if we're sitting on a ski lift together, there is practically no chance that we're thinking about the same thing at any point.

So we were, in fact, sitting on the lift while I'm congratulating myself for this profound revelation, when I check my phone as part of my chaperon duties, and there was a missed call from the bus driver. I'm on the ski lift, what's up? I texted him. He texted back A kid is injured. He's at First Aid . I tell my companions that I've gotta go and I say to myself "Bingo! This is exactly what I was thinking." Not only is there no way any of these kids are getting that phone call, but none of them can even conceive of getting that kind of call and being expected to act on it.

So, my profound realization in hand, I head off to the first aid center and ultimately to a local hospital where the kid, who broke his arm but is otherwise fine, was treated and picked up by his father, who drove me home as well. Very full and interesting day indeed.

Happy New Year