Getting out of town

Considering how hard it is to walk in Amsterdam, you can just imagine how intimidating the idea of driving was. We had a car reserved somewhat nearby, but the prospect of dealing with driving back from the rental place to the hotel and then out of town was incredibly unattractive. So I checked with the concierge and we decided that it would be best just to check out and take a taxi to the rental car agency.

This turned out to be an excellent choice. The rental car place turned out to be a significant drive and it was perfectly pleasant picking up our car and heading off to Bruges. We had discussed possibly taking some back roads and making a stop or two along the way, but ultimately Ronnie suggested that we just get to Bruges so we could have more time here. I agreed and ultimately it was a smart move.

The drive was unremarkable. One doesn't necessarily remark on drives anyway, and since nothing bad happened, we'll follow suit here.

Bruges, on the other hand, is remarkable. It's a well-preserved medieval town that's been transformed into a tourist haven. It's somewhat reminiscent of the Italian hill towns, except larger, Siena is a reasonable analog. But this place has way more eye candy that Siena can dream about. Not sure why. Siena is pretty. But this is one of those places where every time you turn a corner you see something beautiful.

Now that I think about it, Verona is maybe a better comparison, though they don't have marble sidewalks here. Just cobblestones. Lots and lots of cobblestones. Someone in the vicinity must have been doing some serious cobbling to come up with all these stones. I understand why it seemed like a good idea back in the day. It's cheap material, I presume, and extremely durable. It's also ridiculously tiring to try to walk on because it's very hard and very uneven, and making both the sidewalk and streets out of the same material makes them indistinguishable and kind of defeats the purpose of the whole thing, don't you think? But I suppose back in the 13th century when people only lived 30 or 40 years it wan't a big deal. Not much vehicular traffic back then. But for 60 year-old knees and feet, it's tough going.

The good news is, it's worth it. Our hotel is a couple of blocks from the main square. Okay, I should stop here and note that Ronnie and I are huge fans of the movie, In Bruges. This is a movie that requires a particular sensibility to really enjoy. It's not for everyone, but it's definitely for us. So we will eventually hit all the key sites from the movie. But for today we "settled" for a gorgeous walkaround hitting a number of the main attractions.

Aside from the attractiveness of the place, it's got a wide variety of nice shops and restaurants. Combine that with a small scale the fact that it's very safe, and I can see it being a great family destination. That being said, after a few minutes, we couldn't wait to get out of the crowded part of town and into the quiet, pretty edges.

Fortunately, we're here on a Thursday and not the weekend, because if it's this crowded today, I can only imagine what will be on Saturday. We'll tour around more tomorrow. I'm getting up early to climb the bell tower.

Morning walk on the last day.

I went for a long walk this morning. On purpose this time. It's easy to make your walks overly long in Amsterdam. The whole concentric semicircle thing makes it all very confusing to plan routes. I wanted to talk over to the old Portuguese Synagogue. We've been there before, but it's pretty spectacular.

The shortest route over there was straight and I knew from experience that it was kind of crowded and unattractive, so I went for the innermost canal and minimized first my circumference and then my time spent walking straight. I walked through the so-called flower market, which had lots and lots and lots of bulbs, but no flowers to speak of. All the way I'm dodging bikes and cars and scooters. But not trams. Nobody screws with the trams; they are the badasses of public transit and to be honest, everyone not on them is terrified of them. They are huge and go fast and of course can't stop very quickly. Nearly saw someone trying to get a stroller across the tracks get stuck and nailed yesterday.

I took some videos while I was walking here's a couple

So you get the idea. Amsterdam is impossible and marvelous at the same time. On the live here/not live here scale I would put it solidly in the live here column, but with some reservations.

Speaking of which, let me describe the hotel to you a bit, now that we've left it. Excellent location. It's a partial block of canal houses all connected, so you go up and down stairs to get from one part to the other. Our room faces the canal and it's beautiful, and the bed is among the most comfortable we've ever encountered. The downside is that the room and the bathroom are both small, and there wasn't enough room to put all of our clothing. It worked out okay, because I'm okay using my suitcase as a drawer. The staff is uniformly great.

I'll post a full review on TripAdvisor. I'd say we really liked it but didn't absolutely love it. Four stars out of five.

Third day, which is enough

Can't way we woke up today excited. We were both very tired and we not really sure what to do this morning. I went to the gym and did what is perhaps the stupidest thing one could do in Amsterdam, that being riding an exercise bicycle. This is a city that thrives on people getting from here to there on bicycles, so what business have I pretending to ride a bike while listening to awful dance music in a small room, laughingly referred to as a gym? Whatever. i didn't feel like going out and renting a bike. So sue me.

We got up late, had breakfast, and went to explore a new neighborhood that supposedly had shopping possibilities. Not. Didn't even get cheese this time. And then when we came home, we rode on a tram for part of the way, and then I asked the driver if we could transfer to the bus at a convenient spot. What he neglected to mention was that the busses and trams are different companies and yes, you can transfer, but you have to pay again. Even though they stop at the same stops. Does this make any sense at all? The Dutch are usually so logical about this kind of stuff.

But we got back. Had a quick bite to eat and then went to have a massage. The hotel that we're staying in is very nice but is mall and does not have have a spa. So they booked us massages at a nearby day spa. That was different. Don't get me wrong, it was very nice and the massage was good, but compared to what happens in a US spa there's no easy comparison. First of all, no matter what spa you enter in the US you have to sign a waiver of liability, so if the massage therapist does something that kills you and you have even a hint of a preexisting condition, you can't sue them

Second thing, one locker room. There is a little toilet room if you don't want to get naked in a co-ed room, but nobody else seemed to mind. The waiting room was like the salon of a grand house. It was a really beautiful building with all kinds of art nouveau decor inside, and the massage rooms were fine.

In any event, we walked home more relaxed and then took a pleasant cruise around the Amsterdam canals on a beautifully preserved old boat.

It's quite a remarkable city, and a lot quieter and less hectic on the water. The canals are lined with houseboats and apparently just a space to park a boat costs a quarter of a million Euros (that's what they call their money here, even though we all know dollars are the only real money). The boat is extra, and some of them are pretty amazing. Kind of like a nicer version of a double-wide trailer with a much nicer ambience to boat. I mean, to boot.

After the ride we rested a bit until dinner, which was at a local restaurant called Envy. If you want to know the whole story, you can read my TripAdvisor review once I've posted it. But it was a ridiculous meal in many ways. Everything except the food was incompetent and the food was very very good.

The waitstaff seemed to be stumbling over each other a bit, and we were chuckling with the German people at the next table about it. At the table beyond the Germans, there was a very attractive young couple who were pawing at each other the whole time and at one point both just leaned over the table and started kissing and did not stop until their waiter came with food.

Once we were done with dinner, we tried to pay the check. In Europe, they use these little wireless charge machines that they bring to the table. Theirs was literally taped together and simply refused to work. Eventually someone decided to restart it and it finally worked, but Ronnie and I and the Germans were laughing so hard at that point it was hard to take the restaurant seriously, even  though they clearly want to be so.

Enough of Amsterdam. Off the Bruges tomorrow.

Rest of the second day.

We got back from Keukenhof with a kind of "what now?" kind of feeling.  I mean, after this, where can you possibly go?

We've been here before, we hit the sights we wanted to. Amsterdam is a cool place, but I've been surprised at how many people who recently arrived here are asking us questions looking things to do. The conclusion I draw here is that Amsterdam is a great place to hang out. There are countless young, aimless-looking sorts everywhere, but there isn't that much to actually do. I mean, unless you include drinking or smoking, only one of which I'm doing and neither of which actually constitutes an activity (though some frequenting the Coffee Shops may disagree).

So we fell back on the old standby, shopping. We'd exhausted the local streets, so we headed for another area, which was very nice. We didn't buy anything. except cheese and some apple cake, but it was still pleasant.

Back to the hotel for a nap and then out to dinner. I wanted something slightly more upscale this go round, so we went to a nice restaurant not too far from here. The food was fine, but overall it's hard not to draw the conclusion that this isn't a foodie destination. You don't see a lot of Dutch restaurants elsewhere.

Regardless, it was a perfectly nice dinner. When we got back, I had kind of an anxiety thing where I'd been sitting around too much and had to go out for a walk. This happens to me occasionally; I'm not very good at sitting still for a long time, and though we'd been out and about some, I needed to move.

So I went out for a walk. At 11:00 at night. Fortunately, this is a good town to do that kind of thing in. It's very very safe, and as I said to Ronnie, I was more afraid of being run over by a bike or scooter than of being mugged, for example. The streets were very busy and active, though I was probably the oldest person still out there.

Stopped paying attention at one point, which is a bad idea here, and ended up walking much further than I wanted to, but it was beautiful out and not in any way bad.

Keukenhof

Today, after a bit of discussion on how to pronounce our destination, to Keukenhof, the premier bulb garden in the world, I suppose. Thirty-five hectares planted with 7 million bulbs. I continue to deny the existence of a hectare as an actual unit of measurement and believe it to be purposely indecipherable and therefore seemingly impressive.

North Holland, like the Northeastern US, had a very cool, grey, damp spring, which means that the full bulb display was not yet to be seen. But for a partial showing, this was pretty darned impressive. You enter the place through the usual big attraction gates and you get kind of a Disneyland feel right off the bat. Maybe that's because you have a calliope in the entrance plaza playing calliope versions of classic rock songs. Actually, I'm kind of bummed that I didn't buy the CD they were offering there, because what could be better to liven up a party than some calliope.

Saying something has a Disneyland feel can sound pejorative, but it wasn't really like that. It's a beautifully designed garden full of a variety of plantings, some permanent, some torn up every year and replanted. Because of the weather, the main tulip show was not to be seen, including the tulip mosaic of a Van Gogh self-portrait. But there we still thousands and thousands of flowers everywhere, and an huge indoor pavilion that had every kind of tulip imaginable.

I mean, I knew there were a lot of kinds of tulips, but really?

We walked around for a couple of hours and saw a lot of wonderful flowers and plants ready to have flowers. It was really pleasant and a fun trip, as you can see.

I'll fill in the rest of the morning (it's about 1 AM now).

Second day in Amsterdam.

The second day after a multi-time zone trip is when it really hits, at least for me. I always feel kind of borderline lousy all day. Not enough to hole up in the hotel room, but enough to get in the way of total enjoyment of the experience.

As an aftermath to my walking this morning, I should point out that as nicely scaled and attractive as this town is, it's an impossible place to walk. I can handle the brick sidewalks; they're uneven but there's rarely anything to trip on. The problem is that in many places they are simply too narrow. Combine that with the fact that both bicycles and motor scooters ride whichever way they want on the street or the sidewalk if they so choose, regardless of one-wayness, and there's simply no sure way to maneuver. It's not so much of a problem if you're walking by yourself, but you simply can't walk side-by-side with someone with any level of comfort.

That's a problem because I am here with someone and we walk around a lot together. Today we went to the Rijk Museum. All the signs make that one word but the museum itself seems to separate them. I don't get it and I don't care. The language here is opaque. I know English is ridiculous too, but they just use so many damned letters to spell anything here. It seems incompatible with the whole Dutch aura, which is to take it as it comes and make money off it, whatever it is. They're traders, but I guess they have their own language so as to have something incomprehensible to foreigners, all of whose languages they understand. It's a ploy, clearly.

We took the bus there, which was quick and easy and we liked what Ronnie referred to as the "time-out chair."

Last time we were here, the museum was under renovation and they had a kind of "greatest hits" thing in what felt to me a small and kind of cramped place. The actual museum as a whole is huge and rambling to the point of being unamangeable, kind of like the Louvre, where you can't get from one place to another without having to backtrack. The other thing is that there's nothing international about this place, even though it's one of the world's great museums. It's all Dutch. If you don't like Dutch painting, do not any under any circumstances go there, because there ain't nothing else. There's plenty of great Dutch painting, don't get me wrong, but don't expect to find a Monet or DaVinci or even Rubens, who can't have been from more than 100 miles from here.

Anyway, we saw what we wanted to see and then walked back, first on one of the most crowded, tackiest shopping streets I've ever been to. I was surprised to find a couple of places where we'd eaten last time visiting still there, as was the sports bar where we watched the famous Zinedine Zidane headbutt game with a huge crowd of French and Italian football fans. Which reminds me, the other thing I learned today at the museum is why all their athletic teams, soccer and Olympic most notable, where orange. It's because of William of Orange, whom I presume never wore anything orange in his life, but who led the rebellion agains the Spanish that led to Dutch independence. So there.

We escaped that street and headed back for the hotel, where we did some more sedate shopping and had lunch. Then back to the room for a nap and then suddenly it was time for dinner.

Dinner was at a trendy-type place with DJ and a guy occasionally accompanying him badly on a keyboard. Not really sure what the deal was there. The food was uneven but it was fun. It seemed like everyone there knew each other. Then back to the hotel to wind down for bedtime. Off to the botanical gardens tomorrow. Should be amazing.

Waking up

I actually slept pretty well considering it was absolutely the wrong time to go to sleep and wake up in the morning. Second day of a trip like this is when the jet lag really hits, and you have to force your way through the day. You may not feel horrible, but you never feel really good. It's also gray and ever so slightly drizzly. Sounds like the perfect day for a museum.

Which is what we're doing today. I got myself out of bed around eight, had some coffee to set my body clock and then went for a walk. The hotel is a block from the Anne Frank house. As I walked along the street I could see that at 8:30 in the morning the line was already halfway around the block to get in. I don't know if we just got lucky last time, but I don't remember waiting anything like that to get in. 

Because of the cold drizzly thing, I didn't want to go to far from the hotel, so I zigzagged through local streets. It's very pretty here, not pretty the way French somehow managed to do it. It's more utilitarian, but still with a little bit of an eye for what might be attractive. Also bicycles friggin everywhere. There's a pretty good number with people riding them and thousands more chained to every conceivable immovable object and to each other.

What I remember of the first day

We got to Amsterdam about 45 minutes early. This is the only kind of flight where you don't want to get in early. Flights from them US go overnight and get in early morning, before rooms are customarily available at hotels, so early means more time at the hotel uncomfortably and at times desperately waiting. Even on the best of flights, and this one was fine, you sleep maybe a couple of hours, and when you get in you're dying to just lie down.

Ronnie and I both got a bit of sleep on the flight, which kept us from being completely miserable the moment we got here. Nonetheless, I've spent more enjoyable times on my vacations than waiting in a lobby for a room to become available. The Hotel Pulitzer, recommended by a friend, is a very nice hotel, and we were able to pass the time in not too uncomfortable circumstances.

I was concerned, though, because, as we Jews are inclined to forget, there's a segment of the population that thinks the Sunday after the first day of Passover is special in some way. And when we asked the concierge at the hotel, he thought that most things would be closed today. So the combination of no room and nothing to do was not too palatable. But was it turned out, there were a pretty decent number of things open. The Dutch are definitely not what you would describe as a devout people. In fact, when looking into what you could do on Easter, one thing I saw that you almost certainly couldn't do was go to church. Most churches here have been closed and put to other use.

So we got a canal view room

and took a nap, and it took me only about 10 minutes to find something that looked like fun. There's a Sunday market the first Sunday of each month, and they had lots of special activities planned, as translated from Dutch inimitably by Google,

Inside:
Making Easter workshop Candy Cottage at The Bread Art Club 
Easter workshop Chickens Hooks "and" Chick PomPom tinkering 'at Mill Girls 
Eggs painting in the kids corner 
Chocolate egg hunt over the terrain 
3D printing of egg cups at Foundation CRE8 
Free Buttons the designs of Nik-Nak design 
Live draw Luigi Jansen 
Let portraits in manga style signs in Tokyo Doll 
Have your face painted at Nida Jut 
let you predict future Karin Rabbit 
Let your funky cut by Judith 

Let feather extensions in your hair put in Feathers by Marieke 

Yes. Hairstyling. But ultimately, it was a big  indoor/outdoor street market with a least a couple of hundred stalls selling everything from kids' clothing to lamb skins to Tupperware to glassware and pottery and a bunch of food stands, which featured foods from around the world. We each had a plate of pinxtos, which are the Basque version of tapas. Very yummy. And we spent a very pleasant hour walking around the market and adjoining park.

Afterwards, we came back to the hotel and strolled around the neighborhood, which was about 50-50 open-closed. It was chilly out, but very pleasant. Back then, for another nap, after which I went for a long walk, past lots of Coffee Shops, which were 100% open. It ended up being a very nice day for an arrival day after an overnight flight that I'd expected to be nightmarish.

Dinner was at a local joint that we'd seen recommended that offered typical Dutch food. This, of course, brought up the inevitable question of what the actual name of this country is. Apparently, it's The Netherlands, which is a kingdom, of which North and South Holland are part. Amsterdam is in North Holland. Why the people are then called Dutch is another matter and far too confusing for this writer after this particularly long day.

So I had that typical Dutch main course, spare ribs, which by the way, was by far the most popular dish in the place based on what I saw the waiters carrying. They were fine. I also had a Dutch shrimp cocktail (hey, it's Easter, no kosher stuff for me) which was quite good and made up of a couple hundred of the tiniest shrimp I've ever seen. And of course, an indigenous beverage served in its indigenous flagon.

So all in all, a pretty decent day for a first day in Amsterdam. Off to the museum tomorrow.

Off to Amsterdam

Of course we got to the airport too early. I always do that. I don’t like missing flights and I’ve never arrived at my originating airport too late to make a flight. I read something recently that said that on the basis of cost-benefit analysis, if you never miss a flight then you are getting to the airport too early. On one hand, my family is consistently annoyed that we get to the airport and are then sitting around for up to an hour. On the other hand, on the occasion that we hit traffic or a long line at security, we’re always happy that we had the cushion.

This time, we definitely got to the airport too soon. Maybe it was the time I decided to leave, maybe it was the total lack of traffic, maybe it was the Jesus-loving fast-driving cabbie, who so doused the cab with odorizing spray that you could see the droplets hanging in the air and forced us to ride the whole way on the expressway at 70 miles per hour with the windows open. Or maybe it was the fact that, in spite of all people’s bitching, airline check-in is much quicker and more efficient than it ever was in the so-called good old days. Bur we got to the airport and through security an hour before your flight began boarding.

This really wasn’t so bad. It gave us an opportunity to sit in an unused and uncrowded gate area close to our actual gate and consider our food options. We bought sandwiches at a place called Guava Java, a nonsensically named airport stand that I’ve never seen anywhere else just to ensure that we didn’t starve to death between here and Amsterdam.

Our flight, which was mercifully not very full, left right on time and will deposit us in Amsterdam just around the time we would normally go to bed. This is always a difficult problem with overseas travel and I’m surprised more hotels have not taken advantage of the opportunity to make rooms available in the morning. Only one hotel I contacted had that kind of thing, and we opted not to stay there. Hopefully we can find a place to lie down at the hotel we’ll be using. I may try to sleep a bit.

New and improved!

There are a lot of kind of dog treats, and my working hypothesis is that dogs don't really need them. My dog will chew on virtually anything that is smeared with even the slightest touch of cheese or peanut butter, and if that's not available she's perfectly happy to chew on whatever she thinks she isn't allowed to chew on. Rugs, paper, coins, napkins, pillows, tassels on pillows, table legs, pens, fingers, you get the idea.

She does like actual dog treats though, and since she likes to chew we try to find things that will keep her away from the rugs. So I bought these things made by a company called Nylabone. Nylabone is the colossus of dog treatdom and makes more kinds of treats than Kelloggs makes cereal, and I forget what this kind was called; I only remember that they have a sticker on them that says "Longer Lasting." Put a sticker like that on something and on flames my advertising bullshit detector.

Longer lasting? They might as well have said "Even more awesome" or "Better than ever" " or maybe even "More Better." Or "Longer-lasting than the previous iteration of this product which lasted about as long a sliver of cesium in a beaker of water"

In spite of all the available options, I'd be pretty surprised if it didn't mean simply "Longer lasting than the kind of dog chew that doesn't last quite as long as this one does."

Homeward bound

We went to Boston for the weekend to visit our daughter who goes to school there. This is what might be called a fool’s errand. Lots of old phrases have strange origins (beyond the pale?) but this one still seems plain as day, just like plain as day itself does.

Even though the weather in Boston was fine while we were there- cold but normal for this time of year, we were clearly still courting a weather disaster by trying to go there. So I wasn’t completely shocked to overhear on the Starbucks line this morning that all the flights in and out of Baltimore and Philadelphia had been canceled. Or cancelled as US Airways put it- apparently either spelling is permitted (note to self: that should apply to more words).

Well, to be accurate, and I am a math teacher after all, only Ronnie’s flight was cancelled. Mine was a “reaccommodation.”  Yes, instead of flying directly from Boston to Philadelphia at 4:30 and arriving at 6, I could fly to New York at 6, arriving at 7:30, then catch a 9:23 flight to Philadelphia, arriving at 10:30. The really is quite accommodating.

So I made a reservation on a train instead, after waiting on hold for 35 minutes to tell US Airways to stuff their reaccommodation and refund my money. Which is how I find myself now on the train, a bit outside of New York still, making my way back home.

Alright, enough of this cutesy stuff. I like traveling by train, but the only thing this particular train trip is less sucky than is all the other ways of trying to get home. The roads are a total mess, flights are canceled. What’s left? Will the train be late? Of course. But not as late as 10:30 as they said, or never, as it turned out, because that other flight ultimately got canceled too. If we get into Philly within a half hour of schedule I’ll be thrilled.

Of course I’ll still have to go to the airport tomorrow to get my car, but that seems a small price to pay. I wouldn’t care so much about missing a day of school, but I’m already going to be out the following day on a field trip and ironically it takes more work to miss a day and create a lesson plan from home than it does to just go to work.

This brings back wonderful memories of my day at the old Pittsburgh airport back in the early 80’s, when it was far from the modern (if underutilized) marvel it is today. I had a union meeting to attend that day, and because the participants were coming from various parts of the northeast, we would meet in a conference room at the Pittsburgh Airport Hotel. I have no idea if that thing still exists and I don’t care.

We had our meeting, a few guys drove off or snuck onto flights before my 5:30 non-stop, and then the fog rolled it, thick as you’ve ever seen. Nothing arrived or left the airport for hours on end. This being a day trip, I had brought no change of clothes or anything to do beyond some work and a newspaper (this was a good 10 years before laptops or the Web had been developed). So what did I do? I put my briefcase into a storage locker (they had those then) and walked around the airport, stopping at every bar in the place, some more than once. Finally, around 9:30, it cleared a bit and planes started making their way in and out. The lines at the airline counters to re-book were immense. I was booked on US Air, which had most of the flights, so the line had a couple of hundred people in it, so I had no chance of getting onto any of the flights that were left there to go. My brainstorm was to call another airline that was known for overbooking and get a reservation. I gathered up my stuff (which involved airport security, because they had (redundantly, it seems to me) locked off the room where the lockers were) and then make sure I was one of the first to the empty gate, soon to be occupied by the last plane out to New York. 

I made it. We took off at 11:30 and I got home at 1-something. I had spent from 9:30 AM to 11:30 PM in the Pittsburgh airport. Gone but not forgotten.

Hopefully tonight will end earlier but at home as well.

New Year's resolutions

It's January 1, and my resolutions for today are as follows:

2 lb. 85% ground beef
2 green peppers
3 medium onions
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can kidney beans

Yes, I know that sounds more like a shopping list than a resolution. But I'm resolved to making chili tomorrow and that makes acquiring the ingredients a resolution.

Like many of you (I presume), I've always thought making New Year's resolutions is stupid. I mean, they're not any stupider than making resolutions on January 2 or March 11 or whenever. Making resolutions is always dumb unless you are actually resolved to doing something. It's not the same as saying you want to do something.

When I resolved to lose weight, I was ready to completely change the way I ate permanently. I had to be, or it would have been a wanna do and not a resolution. It was and still is an every day, every snack and meal project. I've lost 15 pounds and kept them off for nearly 2 years, but the food is still there.

So here are my New Year's resolutions. They're roughly in order of priority

1. Drink 33% less alcohol. I like to drink alcoholic beverages of many sorts. I have done so for the past 40 years. I don't like to and therefore virtually never get drunk and I don't let it interfere with my functioning, but according to the statistics, I am drinking 50% more than is good for my long term health. Fortunately, thanks to the way percentages work, changing that only requires that I drink 33% less. I've come to this because I've done virtually everything else possible to improve my health and this is what is left.
2. Read more, especially fiction. I've already started doing this and am pleased with how it takes me out of my own head. So also good for my health I think.
3. Write more. Either blogging or some other form.
4. Make my math tests way way harder. No, not really.

I think that's it for actual resolutions. Wanna do's are unchanged from the past- see more live music, go to New York more frequently, see friends and close family more often, get more sleep, that kind of thing.

I wouldn't say that 2014 was an especially good or bad year. It was eventful and quiet and happy and sad, like you'd expect a large collection of days to be. I'm looking forward to 2015.

Home today

For some reason, I didn't  really want to spend a lot of time walking in San Francisco. That may have to do with the fact that the only times available to me were late at night and very early (like 5AM early) in the morning. This is not quite the same as a leisurely stroll up Nob Hill on a sunny afternoon.

Just to refer back to an earlier post, the important thing about San Francisco is that it is very very very hilly. And not any of those wimpy-ass normal hills. These are real nasty buggers and I wasn't into the climbing thing.

We did have a pleasant enough stay, with one walk through the tackiest part of Chinatown. Then a good dinner at a place called Waterbar, which, in no real order of importance, had great food, sat below the Bay Bridge, which is now a light show as well as a crucial transportation link (when they were designing the thing, was the spec combined? "We want a great light show for the tourists, but let's use it to connect San Francisco to the East Bay"), had floor-to-ceiling fish tanks and was the first place to serve an alcoholic beverage to my 20 and 178/365 year-old daughter. It was a nice way to end.

As I originally stated, this wasn't a vacation of any sort. It was a visit, and a very successful one. I got to spend some good time with people I love, which sounds corny but is actually important. I could have done without the 400 miles of driving, but this is California, after all.

Our trip back was too easy to be called routine. We left right on time and arrived an hour early. And even though our destination was Philadelphia, we were able to park at our gate within a few minutes of arrival. Of course, it took almost 30 minutes for the baggage to show up (I always wonder if the people at PHL are surprised when these flights arrive or if they're just understaffed). Whatever. We were home 30 minutes after our scheduled arrival time. I even had time to go buy a mattress for my daughter's apartment.

The first half of today was devoted to getting whatever last-minute stuff needs to get done to move my daughter to New York on Friday. The second half was devoted to drinking wine and trying to stay upright.

Happy new year!

Place to place

I'm sitting at my cousin JoAnn's house in Grass Valley, watching the sun come up. Well, not actually watching because that's bad for your eyes, but watching the light change and shift and gradually take over from the bluish glow that greeted me when I woke up.

I've thus far pretty successfully stayed on some semblance of east coast time, getting up around 6 and going to bed around 10. Hopefully I can adjust back pretty quickly when we return. I have a few days.

Yesterday we drove up into the hills to visit another one of my cousins, who lives up here in the Sierra foothills. It's really beautiful, and we spent part of the day just hanging out, then headed into two local towns.

For some reason, I had purposely not looked into these places at all. One can either say that I was allowing myself to experience them completely on my own terms, unfettered by others' opinions. Or you could say I was too lazy to do the research. Either way, even though I suspected that they might be old mining towns, since this is gold and silver mining countries, I was struck by how well preserved Nevada City was and what a wide variety of places you could buy really nice things that you don't need.

You've probably all been in these stores- accessories and home furnishings. The number of unusual cookbooks and bits of kitchenware and barware and decorative items, purportedly functional or not, available is pretty remarkable, as you can guess from my choosing to remark on it here. A lot of it was hippyish and new agey, but with nice clothes and lots of places to eat. All with what appears to be original buildings from back in the gold rush days.

We spent most of the afternoon there, then went to Grass Valley, which is not nearly as cute but is also stuffed with shops and restaurants. I was no chain places, including no chain hotels. Ronnie and I were wondering where all the visitors come from, because they are clearly tourist-oriented.

I can take a certain amount of the clothing/home furnishing shopping, but at this point I (and Celia) opted to check out the kitchen store across the street from the boutique. This was an unexpected and kind of mind boggling experience. Tess' Kitchen Shop is simply the best kitchen shop I've ever seen. Nothing else even comes close.

We stayed in there until it was closed, had dinner, came home and watched Guardians of the Galaxy and then had a nice long sleep.

Since then, I've been back to Sacramento and now on to San Francisco, where I now sit. A long, fun, disorienting day. Time for some good seafood and then home in the morning.

The Important thing

One of my favorite kid's books just popped into my head. It's The Important Book, by Margaret Wise Brown. The book is written from the perspective of a child, full of descriptions that begin and end with the statement "the most important thing about ______ is ______."  The narrator says that the most important thing about a daisy is that it is white. Other characteristics are mentioned, but the ultimate statement is repeated and definite. It's a brilliant way of starting an open-ended discussion with a child about the world.

Well for me, the most important thing about travel is that you are somewhere else. On Sunday morning at this time I am usually sitting in my den with my puppy, watching soccer. Today I'm not doing that at all. I am in a place called Rancho Cordova. And the most important thing about Rancho Cordova is that it is not a ranch. Unless of course the most important thing about a ranch is that it be filled with nothing but strip malls and chain hotels.

Okay, I'll drop that conceit for the moment, because it's not what I meant to write about. I'm here for the purpose of being here. That's different from the rest of my life, where I am where I am either because I own this house or have this job or something along those lines. Today I'm here intentionally, with intent, by choice.

This trip is a visit, rather than a vacation. A vacation is obviously about vacating something, about leaving, getting away and not being somewhere. A visit is about being somewhere, and in this case, being with someone. It's much more positive, don't you think? I'm here to visit my cousins and my 100 year-old uncle. Unlike other trips, where I fret about itinerary and time management, all I cared about here was getting here. Once in this place, where I've visited many times before, everything would work out.

My cousin and uncle live in the same house in suburban Sacramento that they've had since before I knew of their existence. She's a couple of years younger than me and we've been close since we were kids. We've spent time at their house (they have chickens),

gone out to walk around a cute little town, and talked and talked. I got to spend time with her kids and get a feel for what her life is. I did this with and without my wife and daughter who came along. It was a visit.

This turned out to be just the thing. I have been in a rut, as literally as one can be without finding a rut and getting in it. Since mid-November it's been head down and straight ahead in everything- midterms, new class, school administration, puppy care, Thanksgiving, one kid done with semester, one kid done with college and getting an apartment, school. Nonstop. Without even a moment to look up and see where it might end. It's an awful way to be and not at all what I try to do and to be. And I was feeling it would never end.

But it did end, and just the little break of getting here, hard as it was to arrange and execute, and visiting rather than vacating is restorative in a way I was not confident it would be. Part of that is just seeing my family and part of it is just the whack-upside-the-headness of doing something different.

And lame as it sounds, the most important thing about today is that I am someplace else.

Routine car rental, except for the car part. And everything else.

The whole scene was unlike anything I’ve ever encountered, though it’s completely plausible, so that makes it kind of unnerving.

We’d arrived in San Francisco on a nonstop flight from Philadelphia at around 1:30. This was all according to plan. San Francisco, like a number of airports, has a little train system that takes you from terminal to terminal and to parking and rental cars. It also meets up with BART, the mass transit system, so it’s all very handy. Unlike Miami’s execrable system, which requires you to walk the entire length of the airport in order to access the train, this one is just up a couple of escalators.

Its a pretty long ride to the rental car center, which in turn is almost shockingly poorly designed. Or maybe it was perfectly designed and somebody just misread the scale. “Oh, that was 1:100? I thought it was 1:10!” The train dumps you by this room that is about the length of the train and about the depth of it as well. This would work perfectly if there were nobody there when the train arrived, but that doesn’t seem likely, does it?

In this case, it drops us in a room 200- something feet wide, with about 20 feet between the entrance wall and the counters. When we arrived, it was completely filled with people. All of the companies had those awful but inevitable back and forth lines set up but with another line twice that length waiting outside the velvet ropes. Every car company had this.

I had Ronnie and Celia stand in line because although I thought I might have signed up as a so-called Fastbreak customer, which is Budget’s version of preferred service where everything is all ready for you when you arrive, I wasn’t 100% sure. That counter was on another floor. Another marvelous design element. There were not many people there, either on line or at the counter. I stood in line for a while. even though there was nobody in front of me, and by the time I got to the counter, I was starting to suspect that something was amiss. 

First, the the agent asked if I wanted a Mercedes. I said fine, as long as I didn’t have to pay extra. He responded, “How about a Mini Cooper?’ Much as I love the idea of a 150 mile freeway ride in a toy car, I said no. Finally, I asked what was going on and he replied that they pretty much had no cars. None of the people who were supposed to return cars had done so, so those people upstairs were all waiting for nothing. 

Finally, after quite a bit of scurrying around, they found something for us and pointed us out to the lot. We went outside and saw, well, a empty parking lot the size of an entire city block. There were literally no cars on the entire floor of the lot, except of course for a Mercedes and a Mini Cooper. They really had no cars. This is Budget and Avis combined, since they’re the same company. We walked to where the car was supposed to be parked, but nothing was there. Finally, someone drove up with our car, and off we went. The car was wet and had pretty clearly just been returned, washed, fueled, and sent back out.

We spent most of our drive to Sacramento wondering what was going to happen to all those people upstairs. There were at least 200 people on a line that wasn’t moving (I guess lines get long when none of the people at the counter can be served). I was still wondering this morning.

Disjointed afterthoughts (Written early on the morning of November 11).

It was a blur. It's still a blur and it's the next morning. I don't know that I've ever talked to that many people that I wanted to talk to or who wanted to talk to me. My brain is still spinning from all of the thoughts, my own and those of others, all the words, all the faces all of the pictures of my mother projected up on the big screen.

We all kept saying my mom would've love this. I'm not sure if she would've liked all the focus on her, but it wasn't like she hated having any focus on her. She just didn't think it was all about her. Which this wasn't either, it was about all of us getting together to talk about and celebrate the life of someone who affected many people.

People who came to this thing knew my mom for different lengths of time and with different levels of closeness. Those who have known her the longest were not surprised by much of anything anyone said. Those who knew her less well must've been shaking their heads in amazement.

A lot of people really really really loved my mom. On the surface of all it was a simple as that. But with her openness and her positive outlook, she affected everyone in different ways. She affected them in whatever way made sense for them. She knew it wan't about her, She was just a facilitator.

It seemed to start earlier faster than I had anticipated. Ronnie and I got to the city around 1:30 and walked over to the theater. It's a beautiful little theater, with a lovely lobby with a bar in the middle that made for a great receiving area.

I went inside the theater to get used to the space and run through what I was going to say, and by the time I came out to the lobby, it seems as if people were already coming.

Although I knew off the bat that my remarks would be inspired by all of the pictures that I scanned, it took me a very long time to actually come up what I want to say. It's complicated, you know, it was my mother. And like most parent child relationships it had its ups and downs, some lefts, some rights, some spins around that seemed random and needless and dumb but end up adding up to a life of some sort.

It was people I'd seen last week, people I'd seen last month, people I've seen last year, and people I've seen in the last century. Literally seeing people who I had not seen in probably 20-30 years. They all recognize me, want to talk to me and for the most part, I recognized them. I knew their connection with my mom and with my family and with me. There were just a ton of them.

The thing is, we never had a funeral or wanted to have a funeral. My mom’s end of life came in such a way that it didn't seem proper or I don't know, it didn't seem right to have a funeral. Plus my dad would have none of it, because we decided at the time the last thing mom would want to be a bunch of people sitting around morning her. That would have been completely antithetical to everything she stood for and everything she was. So we decided to plan a celebration, my brother, my sister, my father and I. We all decided how we are going to contribute to make it happen. As I mentioned, my main part was to scan all the old photos.

My brother focused mostly on picking the venue and deciding what the program would be. We would have a few key people speak- family and close friends, a half-dozen of them. And then we would open up the mic for anybody who wanted to speak as well. And the tone was not to be mournful at all. It was to be light, fun, uplifting if possible, but the kind of thing my mom would've enjoyed.

We started planning in the summer, and decided to do it in early November, before the holidays really got going and weather might interfere with people getting here, because people were going to come from all over. My sister had the task of whittling down the guest list, and cajoling my father into not inviting every single person my mom ever knew, because the theater only held 300 people.

So we settled the time, place, and guest list. wWe invited people; they RSVPed. it was happening some time in the future. Then suddenly it was time. The programs were printed, with people arranged to speak in a particular order, attendees made their travel plans, all that stuff.

Strip it down to the bare minimum and this is what it was. I stood in the lobby of the theater, greeted over 200 people. Then it was into the auditorium, where I sat down and waited my turn, got up onstage said some stuff. It was very bight on the stage- I couldn’t see anyone. 

Then I came down off the stage and watched the rest of the people speak. Some were serious and heartfelt. Some were funny, some were both. And mine, I think, was kind of raw and unhinged, but people seemed to like it. Then we showed a video with a montage of the photos I’d scanned. And the program was over. Right on time. About an hour and a half all told. We took some photos and then out to the lobby again, where I got to talk to all of the people I'd spoken to on the way in and many many more. For another hour and a half.

At this point, around 7:00, a select few, 70 of us all told, gathered for dinner upstairs. I sat with my wife and cousin and made no effort to circulate because everyone was coming to me.

Dinner was good, I think, though I don't really remember the food or eating. Talking, talking, talking and then about an hour after it was supposed to end, it finally ended at 10:00. And we came back to the hotel, I went out and bought a beer but didn't drink it and fell asleep on the end of the bed while Ronnie and Celia sat in bed and watched TV.

Looking back, that was one of the most intense experiences of my life. Not everything that everyone said was an emotional outpouring or deeply meaningful, but the cumulative effect was as if it had been. I feel completely wrung out. And now I'm left waiting for the blur to clear somehow.  All those people and all the stuff they said. It's simply overwhelming and pretty damned wonderful.

I'm one of those now.

I bought a car a few weeks ago. It’s not a new car, but it’s much newer than the car I traded in for it. And it’s much nicer too. I bought a 2011 BMW 328, which is classified as an “entry-level luxury” vehicle, whatever the hell that means. I guess it means that I’ve entered something somehow. I’m in the world of luxury vehicles and I can never leave.

But that’s okay I guess. Part of me feels a little sheepish- I’m not and have never been a car person. I mean I am in that I own cars and drive them, but they’ve never been anything I really cared about beyond their ability to take me from place to place. I’d been driving a 2007 Toyota Camry for nearly 8 years and had loved it. But one of my kids cracked it up and a few years later the windshield seal failed causing a leak that left the car with a permanent musty smell. It was old and beat and I was tired of it.

But a BMW? I only know one thing about people who drive BMWs and that is that they’re assholes. They zip around in their sportily little luxury car and make veryone else crazy. I hate them. And now I’m one of them.

And why wouldn’t I stick with the kind of car I’ve always bought? I guess I decided that at this point I deserved something a little nicer. I focused on finding a low-mileage used car at a reputable dealer. I had a list of several cars that I was going to try and looked at the BMW first because the dealer is 3 blocks from my house. And as soon as I started driving the car I knew that was it. There was no need to look any further. It’s 3 years old and has 16,000 miles on it, so it fit that part of the checklist. But what made it easy was the driving part.

I’ve mostly driven mid-level Japanese cars- Hondas and Toyotas. Very reliable and not unpleasant. They felt like they were designed from the point of view of creating a reliable, safe machine for transportation. The BMW feels like it was designed from a driver’s perspective, where the driving experience leads to the engineering, rather than the other way around. But really I’m not sure. What I do know is that the car feels completely intuitive to drive. I feel connected to it instead of just sitting in it.

That probably sounds weird. It feels weird to write. But it’s very much like how it felt when I got my bicycle last summer. As soon as I sat down and started pedaling I knew it was right, and I knew this was right too.

That said, it still feels weird to think it’s my car. It feels too grown up for me, though I’m nearly 60. And now I’m one of those people who drives a BMW. But as my daughter told me, my wife got a puppy and I got a BMW, so we must be officially empty nesters now. So I guess I’m one of those too.

Nothing about Derek Jeter

I've been in hibernation. Well, not exactly. I've not been passing the winter in a torpid or resting state. And how annoying is it to look up a definition and find that you then need to look of the definition of one of the words in the definition? I can kind of guess what torpid means, but has anyone ever actually used that word?

Oh good, I start writing again and already I'm ranting about something. So I wasn't hibernating; it only feels that way. I could blame it on the puppy. One of the best reasons to have a dog is that you can blame stuff on them. Or that I haven't done anything. But I have. I just haven't gotten myself sat down to write.

This takes me back to my college days. By the time I'd gotten to junior year and had figured out how college worked, I specifically took classes that had final exams instead of papers. Because exams happen no matter what you do. Papers only happen if you write them. Same with any other writing, apparently. No matter how brilliant my thoughts may have been, unless I write them down and publish them, nobody will ever read them.

So I'll eventually circle back to the other stuff I've done (buy a car, go to the next-to-last Allman Bros. concert, that kind of thing), but first I want to write about nothing about Derek Jeter.

My mom, as many of you know, passed away this summer after suffering with ALS for nearly 15 years. My parents have been major supporters of the ALS Association since finding out the nature of my mom's illness, and the New York chapter's main fundraiser is a sports dinner banquet thing that they do every year a week or so after the World Series. The MC is Bob Costas and they always have great guests. Sometimes I get autographs, sometimes I chat with the athletes (I went up to the tennis player Pam Shriver to tell her how much I enjoyed watching her play doubles and all she did was whine to me about her kids) and sometimes I just eat and drink and hang out with my dad.

Last year was a huge deal, because the guest of honor was Mariano Rivera, whom I got to meet and have my picture taken with. Because my dad is a big sponsor, we have a table right up front, and Mariano (we're tight now so I can call him by his first name) was at the next table. They always have security for the special guests. They keep you from asking for autographs while the speaking program is going on or when they're eating. Mariano had a guy stationed behind him and if you asked at the wrong time, they'd politely say that you should wait until after dinner or whatever.

So this year, Derek Jeter was an unannounced guest. I'm honestly not sure why he was there. He helped present something to someone, and he donated some items for auction (to quote the auctioneer, "Who wants to bid on some shit Derek Jeter doesn't want anymore?"), which I bid on in rather spirited fashion. He didn't utter a word that was audible to anyone. And he sat at the table right next to us with his post-adolescent girlfriend.

For this occasion, Mr. Derek Jeter was assigned not one, but three security guards. One stood behind, one to the left and one to the right. And you were not allowed to even walk past that side of the table. Now mind you, I think the lowest price of admission was $250 per ticket and the sponsors' tables were $25,000 for 10 tickets. That may actually be understating it. So it wasn't exactly a bunch of rabble there. It was a crowd of rich white guys in suits. The president of the Bank of New York, for instance, was the one who outbid me for the Jeter items. Business people and some sports people as well. This was not the tailgate crowd in Silver Linings Playbook.

So I was there for 2 1/2 hours and Mr. Jeter was kept apart from the other attendees for the entire time, though if you were persistent enough you might have been able to get the security guard to pass him something to autograph. I guess eventually they loosened up a bit because my daughter got her picture taken with him. But I never saw it.

So why was this guy even there? I'd call him a jerk, but this post is nothing about Derek Jeter.

Not quite as long as the actual ride

I've ridden the MS City to Shore ride a few times before. It's a supposedly 75 mile ride from Cherry Hill to Ocean City, NJ. It's actually 79 miles, but who's counting? The last two years I've signed up and prepared to ride their "century" route. This means adding some distance to make it a 100 mile ride. Centuries are a thing for cyclists. And it really is pretty miraculous that a person can do that, travel 100 miles under their own power in a matter of hours. 

Two years ago I got shingles two weeks before the ride and last year we decided to go away for a long weekend, so I never did it. This year, I had been preparing all summer to do the Century this year. I was trained really well as August ended, and then came Hurricane Ruby. The arrival of our puppy threw our schedules into a tizzy and my training into a wagging tailspin. 

So in the past couple of weeks I'd been wavering as to whether I was up for it. But ultimately I decided that, especially given that the previous two years hadn't worked, I should go for it. Because I could. 

On the plus side, since last time I rode this thing I've lost about 15 points and bought a lighter, faster, more comfortable bike. On the minus side, I'm older. But in the end, the fact that I'm almost 59 was additional incentive to get it done.

These things start crazy early in the morning, because it takes a long time to ride even 79 miles, much less 100. For me, anything above 15 miles an hour is great for that distance. I can do 20-30 miles averaging closer to 17, but then I'm wiped out. So do the math; 79 miles at 15 miles per hour is a shade under 5 hours and 20 minutes, not including stopping to rest, eat, drink and take, as they say, a nature break. So it's six hours or so. You need to start a 6 hour ride early. And 100 miles is a 7 hour ride. So Century folks start first. At 6:30 AM. 

Who doesn't want to go for a nice bike ride at 6:30? There were at least 1000 people leaving in that early group, and another 6000 or so to follow, though I guess some of them start further along if they just want to ride 25 or 50 miles.

These big group rides take a little while to develop. You start off in a big mass and everybody's going very slowly except for a few people racing around madly. The first dozen miles are through suburban neighborhoods and then you get out into the less populated area.

First rest area. One hour 17 minutes 19.9 miles. The rest areas consist of 5 main area. Portapotties, snacks, drinks, first aid and bike repair. I've yet to need the last two, for which I am thankful. At this point I'm feeling pretty good. The riding is easy- one of the reasons I picked this for my first Century is that it's flat. There are a few places where you're sort of climbing, but nothing that would qualify as a real hill. 

One thing I notice as I ride along is that there's never just one pothole. They definitely come in groups. On a ride like this, if you encounter a pothole you are supposed to call it out, kind of like a game of telephone. You're also supposed to call out gravel, water and road kill. Always fun to hear a sequence of "road kill!" callouts.  going to come up from time to time, mostly rest areas and sometimes at red lights.

Second rest area, 31 1/2 miles two hours flat. 9:07 AM. The times I'm reporting are times riding. They don't include when I'm at the rest areas. Just beginning to feel this a bit. I rode 30 miles or so several times over the summer, but my usual is more in the 20-25 mile range and 30 is never that easy.

Once you're past the second rest area, the race (I'm sorry it's a ride not a race) begins to stratify. The fastest riders are all ahead and the slower ones are lagging. This is when I'm happiest because it means there's not people whizzing around like at the beginning, when the fast riders who started late feel the need to get by everybody else in a hurry. You can start to feel the miles accumulating and the toll it's taking, but you're not in any tremendous discomfort.

Third rest area 46 miles 2 hours 55 minutes. After this rest area I have to commit to the Century. I'm ready!

56 miles three hours 34 minutes. This is a rest area only for the Century cyclists. It's smaller, in the parking lot of a volunteer fire department rather than a school or park.

67 miles 4:15. The Century loop ends back at the previous rest area. The essential pointlessness of this is not uncommon for bikers. We usually start and end at the same point. But to throw a 20 mile loop into the middle of what is already a very very long ride seems senseless to my legs and butt, if not my head.

78 miles four hours 58 minutes. At this point, by body is asking me a simple question. Why is this not over? 

89 miles five hours 42 minutes. Ok, I'll admit it. At this point, I'm questioning my sanity, though I haven't considering abandoning the ride. You can. At each of the rest area, something called the SAG Wagon makes regular stops. SAG supposedly stands for Supplies And Gear, but we all know that it mean for people who are sagging. They will load you and your bike in the back and drive you to the finish. From about mile 70 until now, it's been a matter of deciding which hurts most, legs, feet (all the pressure is on the balls of your feet if you're wearing shoes with cleats) back, hands or butt. 

Everyone says to keep changing positions to avoid pain. This probably helps, but certainly doesn't prevent anything. The one thing that is really encouraging is that even though I have continual discomfort, my legs keep recovering and seem able to muster whatever power is necessary to keep going at a decent pace. There were a few times where it required constant conscious effort, but I never it a point where I felt like I couldn't.

At this rest area they're giving out Biofreeze, which is a cooling gel for muscle pain relief. I'd use it, but there's not enough to cover my entire body. But amazingly, and not for any particular reason that I could imagine, I completely rallied after this last rest area. Stuff still kind of hurt, but my energy level improved overall and I no longer felt like I was dragging myself across the miles. Maybe it was just that I knew it was only 10 more miles and I hadn't been sure if there even was a rest area at that stage. And this was a good thing, because the bridges beckoned.

The trap of this ride is that the first 75 (or 95, depending) miles are pretty much completely flat. Then there are 2 arch bridges that span the sound on the way from the mainland to Ocean City. They are high and windy. on one hand, you like to see them, because it means you're almost done. On the other hand, not if you don't go over them.

Fortunately, one thing I've always had confidence in is my ability to climb a hill when need be, and I've been over those bridges a few times before. So I gathered myself and flew up one and then the other. I'm not exaggerating when I say I probably passed 400 people who were struggling or walking up. I have no patience for that stuff. Go up them fast and they don't take so long is what I live by.

Finish 102 miles 6 hours 42 minutes. Done! The finish is a little anticlimactic (not anticlimatic, which mean being agains weather). I guess if you have your family waiting for you and cheering it's different, but I do this by myself, which is a whole 'nother story. So I had some food and headed for the buses back to Cherry Hill. I was home around 6.

Long day. happy ending

Things change

There's been a lot in the media recently about how people are never alone anymore. The ubiquity of cell phones and other connected devices means people are never in a position of quiet solitude. And of course how this means the end of the world.  The reasons, about which they really can go on and on and on, is that the lack of any time for quiet solitude has been removed, and that therefore people will never get all the benefits that accrue from that. And most of that is mostly true.

The question really is does it matter? The answer to that is clearly, we have no idea. None, zip. Drawing conclusions when lacking perspective is a fool's business. One of the "scolds" who's article I read makes that point accidentally.

The historical comparison is usually the invention of the printing press, which changed access to written materials from the few to the many. He notes that compared to now, when smart phones and connected devices have become ubiquitous almost immediately, when Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 15th century, it took for centuries for much of the world to be literate. Okay, so one of the major consequences of the mission of the printing press was not really obvious for 400 years. And we presume to know what's going on with connected devices now? That's just plain silly.

There will clearly be negative consequences of all of this. It's rare that things happen where there are no negative consequences whatsoever. The important question really is how do we make sure that we minimize the negative consequences and maximize the positive consequences. That's the money shot.

My wife notes, as does one of the writers whose rankings I read, that we are the last of our generation to even be aware that this is a thing. Nobody born from the 1990's on will know that there was ever a time that not everybody was connected all the time. The kids in my classes can't even conceive of the world without plastic, which is most of history.

The point is that this is likely to not be the end of the world. Things will change, people will change, and yeah, the rapidity of the change makes the consequences less predictable. But so what? All we know is that this is happening. Quit whining and make the best of it.