In the end, hospitals just kind of suck

I don't like using that word, not just because it's graphic and obscene, which it really is more than things you're not supposed to say, but because it's used in place of using probably 100 other words that would be more useful and descriptive. An excuse for not giving any thought into what you say.

I tend to save it for situations like this, where the whole combination of time warp and constant beeping and gurgling and hissing and families sleeping for night after night in brightly lit waiting rooms is so unpleasant as to defy any kind of shorthand description. There's an episode of House where they're trying to get him to come to work when there's a meningitis outbreak where he says something like, "Hospitals? Nooo, lots of sick people there." That's kind of how I feel.

It's around 1:00PM now and I haven't been outside yet. We'll have some visitors later- both daughters- and I'll be able to get out and walk around. Maybe I can even do some exercise other than walking, though the walking is highly entertaining around here.

Medicalwise, I guess things are okay. Post-surgery pain management is the main thing, but they seem to be finding the right balance. Ronnie is finally able to get some sleep. When you're in bed this long, they sometimes put things on your calves to squeeze them to prevent blood clots (same reason you should get up and walk around when you're on a plane flight). Hard to sleep with that kind of thing. But it doesn't have to be on 24/7 apparently.

So yeah, hospitals are kind of like casinos, except in most cases with a more positive outcome. I'm going to be really happy when I get home.

Day 2, I think.

It's all starting to fade into one formless span of time. I believe it's Thursday. I know that because there is a clock that says the date as well as the time.

It seems sort of a shame that I even need to say such a thing, but given people's experiences, it's important.

Through this process so far, which shockingly has been barely more 48 hours yet, I feel treated like a person and I have seen Ronnie treated like a person without fail at all times by every person we've come in contact with. I can't say we've loved every single person but we interacted with, the occasional person being a bit annoying and a little condescending, but even they seemed genuinely interested in helping. They were trying to interact in a human fashion, but maybe just didn't really know how.

It's now about 29 hours post, and so far everything seems to be proceeding in a routine fashion, if there is such a thing in these cases. Ronnie is uncomfortable and dozy, but seems incredibly much herself for so soon after surgery. I'm taking things as easy as I can; they've let me sit here in the ICU as long as I want and tolerate my occasionally asking for or about things.

The other thing that occurs to me at this point is how you just can't take anything for granted. I try not to in general; I'm grateful for everything. But it never hurts to get a rude reminder of some sort.

We're at a point of waiting for the next step. Ronnie got out of bed to sit in a chair for a while, and we've had some visitors, but that's all the action so far.

End of the day

So let's recap, shall we?

It's been a long day. It's after 10 and I've been up since 5:30, so I'm about ready to fall asleep. But it's been a good day. The surgery went really well, and all the signs from the recovery so far have been very positive.

It's nice to have family around to have someone to hug when the news is good. I presume when news is bad too, but that hasn't happened. And of course it's a relief of some sort when family is gone and it's just me again. It's also important to get out and go for a nice walk from time to time. I really enjoy walking around this neighborhood and found some very good pizza not far from here.

Hospitals are strange organisms and all kinds of odd things happen here. Some nurses use the patients as tables, while some nurses prefer to use tables for tables, so at one moment there could be a half dozen things sitting on Ronnie and then the next moment they could all be gone and placed neatly at bedside. And the array of things attached to her in incredible.

The biggest takeaway, I think, is that the surgery, which gets built way up in advance, is just the beginning of the process. If you think about in terms of the goals, which would be to have Ronnie feel good and able to live her life without impediments, then it's clear that it's just the start and that there's a whole series of small and large steps ahead of us.

I'm an instinctual caretaker and it's hurt me at times, but as I've gotten older and possibly, though not certainly, more mature, I'm better at knowing when I have to stop and care for myself. It's going to be necessary to keep that up, especially after we're home and I'm back at work.

But all in all, a successful day. I'm ready for bed, because I need to be up at 6 to see the doctor(s) when they come around for their first rounds.

"DO NOT take BLOOD out without permission of the NURSE PRACTICIONER"

There's a sign you don't see everywhere. Like I said, hospitals are weird places.

It's around 6:00 PM. The dynamic has completely shifted. We've transitioned from the high anxiety of waiting to hear the results of surgery to a waiting game. Slow, step-by-step recovery, starting a couple hours ago with removal of the breathing tube. As stressful as it's been, the first stage was the easy part in ways. Now the hard work starts. We have a lot of support, and Ronnie is very determined, so things should go well. Recovery from this kind of thing just isn't quick or easy though, even though the outcome should be excellent.

And it's also a waiting game because Ronnie's nurse, while very sweet, is one of those people who says "I'll be with you in a few seconds" when she really means "I'll be with you in 15 minutes or so." The lack of precision makes it difficult for me to know where to be and when.

I think what's going to be frustrating for me is that I need to be helpful at the same time as I am for the most part pretty helpless to really do much of anything. I can't relieve any kind of pain or discomfort; I can only try to distract and rehab and just generally take care. And try to remember to take care of myself.

I've now spent the last 3 hours in the Intensive Care Unit, where she'll be for the next 12-18 hours. There's a very impressive array of stuff attached to her and it seems as if the task is to keep her awake long enough to let her go to sleep. Or maybe they don't let her sleep. Who knows? I'm going to need to sleep at some point. I have to be up at 6 to make sure I catch the doctors on their rounds.

I'll probably check in one more time tonight. My family was around earlier, and my sister will be stopping by again shortly, but soon I'll be alone again, which I'm ready for. This has been a pretty overwhelming day.

Whew! Noon on the day of surgery

So Ronnie's surgery's done. I was supposed to come to the waiting room at 11 and got a call around 10:45 saying it was over and went well and to come to the doctor's office. My sister was with me at this point and we went to his very busy office and stood there waiting to talk to him while I got more and more anxious.

But the news was as good as could be hoped. Easy surgery, best possible result. Hopefully will never have to go through this again.

So I'm still internalizing this. I get waves of relief and some other unidentifiable emotions pouring through me. To paraphrase the opening thoughts in Infinite Jest, I am trying to appear normal. It's not necessarily easy, but relief is such a generalized kind of feeling that it's tough to attach to to affect or a facial expression.

And of course I can't see what I look like either, but I'm glad I showered.

At this point, the most overwhelming thing is informing everyone and getting responses and responding to them. And one of our friends just reminded me to breathe, which was very good advice. I'll go for a walk soon, which will be helpful, though the snow is annoying. I do want to walk out onto the George Washington Bridge at some point. It's only a half mile from here and I want to look down the river at New York and just inhale it (not literally).

I'll keep posting as we go through the post-surgery process. Thanks again for all the support.

5:30 AM, day of surgery.

I slept a bit. Cold in the room, and no extra tissues, which led me to steal a box from a reception desk (tissues, not blankets . I need a shower. 

But once Ronnie goes in I won't have anything to do for most of the day, so I can take care of little details like personal hygiene. 

At some point soon they'll be wheeling her off to the surgery floor. And then the reality will set in completely. For the moment she seems to be sleeping and I see no reason to mess with that. 

Everyone says first surgery slot is the best. Nobody ever says why. I guess doctors get tired too, but the reason may be nothing more than time certainty. Considering how long we sat around yesterday doing nothing, there's no reason to wait. 

Once surgery starts, I guess I'll try to get a bit more sleep, and then my family will be coming by.

Thank you at 10 am

I'm pretty much overwhelmed with all of her messages and prayers and concern that we been getting. I barely have time to type a sentence and do anything without getting a message from somebody.

Ronnie went into surgery at seven and should be out between 11 and one. I desperately need to take a shower, and then one of the time, my entire family will be coming. Not my kids,brother sister and father.

To be honest I am torn between wanting the company and wanting to be alone with it. But I think the desire for company will win out. It's very emotional. Everything about the experience.

Hospitals are weird places. I've been a few of them and they're all designed in a style that might be called Neo-Post-Classical Maze. There are bunches of interconnected buildings with elevators in seemingly random places that take you to other floors where you may not be able to re-access the building you came from.

The main thing you need to know about these buildings is that they are named after people who give lots and lots of money to the hospitals. If you only give lots, but not lots and lots, you may end up like the 3 families, all of whom have cath labs names after them in a Cath center named after someone else in an interventional cardiology wing named after someone else on a floor named after someone else in a building named after someone else. I actually know something about this (note the name of the pavilion), and I'm completely serious. The naming stuff is cutthroat. In buildings like this, only the hand sanitizers aren't named.

And the frigging places stay busy all the time. Even at 11, it takes several stops on the elevators to go a few floors down from where my lovely pseudo hotel room is to the patient floors.

Hospital room disguised as a hotel room

The most difficult thing about dealing with hospitals is that they are incredibly complex machines with lots of moving parts, and nobody ever seems to have 100% of the necessary information. "Why don't you have the paperwork?" "The people in the last office told me I didn't need to bring the paperwork." "We can't do anything without the paperwork."

And more often than not, it's the patients who have to navigate this by themselves. It's lucky that I can be there to intercede on Ronnie's behalf, because being the patient is completely overwhelming by itself, so how are you suppose to sweat the details?

It's been a long day. Gotta be up 5-something. Will keep you all posted.

Entry 2, Evening before.

I've never been through this process before, so I'm learning as I go.

The catheterization went easily and the results were both very positive and reassuring that we're making the correct call in doing the surgery now. Afterward, Ronnie was moved to the appropriately named Holding Room. Not that anyone is holding her exactly, but it has a very temporary feel to it. We're hoping to have her moved to an actual room later, which could help her sleep.

I've been fielding lots of calls and texts, and after a while went out for a walk to clear my head. This is a very busy neighborhood, between the hospital and the many residents of all the apartment buildings that surround it. I walked up and down Broadway from the 150's to the 170's and even for New York, it seemed very lively and extremely multicultural, as is the hospital itself.

Tomorrow starts early, with prep beginning at 5:45 and surgery at 7. Everyone says you want to be first in a day, and I'm presuming this is the first, considering it takes 4 hours or so. I should have an idea of what's going on within a couple of hours afterwards. I'm not worried, just hoping for the best possible outcome. I finally met Ronnie's doctor and he seemed optimistic, as was the surgeon.

For myself, I'm not stir-crazy yet, though I'll probably need to go for another walk soon. This is way more sitting than I'm used to. Maybe I should pace or something.

I've managed not to think about school too much. Not worried about that either. We're on this ride and there's nothing to do but go with it.

Entry 1 in the saga. 11AM 1/26

I'm sitting in a waiting room, trying to not freak out. Nothing serious is happening today, just a catheterization, where they poke a camera up inside you and check for blood vessel blockages that might affect cardiac surgery in some way. It's referred to as a "cath," which is slightly jarring because that's the name of a close friend. I'm just a little scared and a little sad.

Anyway, today is just a test, if a fairly invasive one (the camera goes into an artery (I think) near your groin. Easiest way to the heart, I gather. So it's nothing to be worried about. I just got hit with a wave as we came over the George Washington Bridge that this wasn't like any of the other thousands of times I've come over that bridge. It's a step into the unknown.

I have every reason to feel hopeful about the result. Ronnie's and therefore our quality of life should improved noticeably. We're in one of the best possible places in the world to get this done. It's just, well, major surgery. I have no experience with this. My mother died of ALS and she just gradually faded away. My dad has a pacemaker and has had some relatively minor cardiac procedures done. But nobody's been opened up like this before. So it's hard not to have a kind of nervous expectation.

So I indulge myself in the trivia of logistics, making sure we got out in time, getting parked, all that kind of stuff. Next is to find the hotel section of the hospital where I'm staying for the week or so we're her. Lunch fits in there somewhere, probably from a food truck (#5 area lunch place on Yelp and just downstairs). Then it's waiting until 5:45 tomorrow morning when they take Ronnie from her room to prep for surgery. Wonder how I'll fill that time.

That's all for now. Back soon.

Limboland

Well, it's the Monday of what is likely to be one of the more excruciating weeks of my life and there's nothing going on. I'm generally anxious, not about anything specific about the surgery, but about the general uncertainty surrounding the aftermath.

Also, it's just weird doing this. Took the dog to the dog sitter, packing a suitcase. Not going on a vacation or real trip of any sort. Plus, Ronnie and I are going together and yet we're going to having completely different experiences. It's just strange.

Part of what makes it hard is than neither of us has ever done anything like this before. At least we both know the hospital building fairly well. We have to leave at 7-something in the morning for a 10:30 procedure and then at some point I'm checking into my hotel room. I don't understand the parking system, so even that's stressful.

But we'll move ahead and hope for the best.

Taxi!

There was a headline in the business section of Friday's New York Times (I'm a hybrid newspaper user- I check in on the online version several times a day, but I also get a paper copy delivered and I read it pretty thoroughly) with the headline "Self-Driving Cars May Get Here Before We're Ready."

I will admit that I did not read the rest of this article, because the point had been made. I can predict what's in it with just a little thought. Self-driving car technology is far more advanced than the laws, rules, infrastructure, etc. that are required to support it. The time is out of joint, as that Shakespeare guy says.

One aspect of technological advance is that it is agnostic to what we need and are ready for. Advance can happen when we are ready for it, but it doesn't necessarily come because we are ready for it. Smaller or more specific advances can occur because there is a need for something, but then the advance lags the readiness. Electric refrigeration, antibiotics and cars themselves are examples of that.

The Web, invented in 1993, lest we forget, was an example of fortuitous timing. The Internet already existed. Personal computers were becoming popular and more affordable, and enough people had them who were beginning to think, "Gee, this is a great thing for spreadsheets and word processing (there were word processors before PC's) but as long as I have to put all the information into this thing in order to get anything out, it's nothing more than an appliance of sorts." The ingenious invention of HTML and its ability to link people to information easily came at a time when people were ready for it.

Smart phones too. They're probably the most revolutionary device there is as far as their effects on society, but cell phones had been around for a while and smart phones were evolutionary in terms of cell phone technology. All it really took was miniaturization and more powerful processing, which was happening whether or not cell phones existed.

Anyway, self-driving cars will probably have to wait for a while, because everything about the way our roads and driving laws and associated things such as insurance are designed is based on people operating the cars. Changing that is a massive bureaucratic task (although the insurance companies are getting ready for it). Whose fault is it if a self-driving car hits someone? Google? Yeah, good luck with that.

I'm sure there are plenty of technologies waiting for implementation. Some of them are just marketing-based, but cars and driving are fundamental to modern life and are almost inconceivably complex as systems, so next time you call a cab, it's almost 100% certain that someone will be driving it.

The storm before the calm before the storm.

I know everybody always talks about the calm before the storm, but I've always have great affection for the calm during a storm. Now obviously, if you're outside in that storm, things are not so calm. But if you're inside and comfortable, as I am with a fire going and a dog sleeping nearby, It's pretty darned comfortable. And pretty darned calm.

I think my most extreme examples of storm seeking our first when we flew to Martha's Vineyard, knowing there was going to be a hurricane the following day, just to experience a hurricane on Martha's Vineyard. It was extremely noisy, but it was kind of cozy and kind of fun. The other was when we drove into the last big blizzard in Philadelphia, leaving from Connecticut just as it was starting to snow, know that thing that they were going to be 2+ feet of snow on the ground by the time we got to Philadelphia.

I remember almost getting stuck at the blue route interchange with the Expressway, which would have been pretty frustrating because we already been driving for 150 miles in three hours. We had fought our way over there and then a couple of cars right in front of us got stuck on the ramp. We sat in traffic there for about 10 minutes trying to figure out what to do, and then, miraculously, a snowplow came by and things cleared right out. I also remember coming as fast as I could down our road and just plowing our car as far as I could get it into our driveway. 

What makes this storm particularly strange, at least as far as the timing is concerned, is that I'm leaving for New York on Tuesday morning, in preparation for Ronnie having open heart surgery. My original intent was to get everything prepared for my absence on Monday, but then it occurred to me that there might not be school on Monday, so I scrambled to try to get everything done on Friday, and for the most part succeeded.

So now I'm in a storm, but also in the calm before the storm that will take place during the surgery and its aftermath. I have no experience with this particular type of thing. Ronnie and I have, for the most part, been pretty healthy over the years. I had shingles a few years back, and once, a long time ago, we both had pneumonia at the same time. But aside from that, nothing worse then the flu has really hit us in that 25 years or so we've lived here. It doesn't feel really scary but it doesn't feel completely safe either. Uncertainty is no fun.

But off we'll go to New York on Tuesday morning. A new adventure. I'll keep you posted.

Well this is ridiculous

Over winter break, my daughter asked me if I'd like to go skiing sometime and we realized it was a possibility over the long weekend. There was no snow to speak of in the east, so I looked into Colorado, and there were cheap flights to Denver and decent accommodations available in Vail, so off we went. It's a crazy thing to do, given everything going on in my life, but we did it.

The trip over here was one of my all-time worst travel experiences, though not up to the prolonged agony of our 3 days in China waiting for our luggage to possibly show up. Our 6:30 flight left an hour and a half late and got in an hour late, and then baggage claim took forever an featured a conveyor belt jam when my bag and a backpack got wedged in the chute. This inexplicably took 15 minutes to clear, so rather than leaving for Vail, a 2-hour drive away, at around 9:30, we left somewhat after 11.

The interstate going west of Denver traverses several mountain passes and by the time we left it had begun to snow, so going was difficult- our car did not handle very well in the snow. I've driven in snow and ice many times in cars that don't handle well, so I wasn't frightened, but it was very slow and arduous and took nearly twice the time to get here as it would have with clear roads. So between the delays and the roads instead of getting to Vail around 11:30, which was the plan, we arrived in town around 2:30 AM exhausted. Then, because of all the snow were unable to get the car up the driveway into the condo parking lot. We tried 2 different driveways for all different angles for nearly half an hour, but never got more than halfway up.

So we left the car there briefly while we unloaded luggage and then I went and parked in a lot that I'd noticed not too terribly far away. But by the time I got back to the condo it was 3:15 mountain time, which felt like 5:15AM to the two of us. We went right to bed, of course.

We had a lesson planned for the first afternoon, so we got up as late as we could manage. I walked to the nearest convenience store to get breakfast stuff, ate and then went over to rent our equipment and have our lesson.

Amazingly, we had a great afternoon skiing, but that's another story.

Blast from the past.

Yesterday toward the end of conferences, one of the parents, perhaps noticing that I was making up multiple tests before they came in and seemed generally frazzled, jokingly asked if I wanted a drink. I think I replied yes, but that conference night was probably not the most appropriate venue. But it brought me back to one of the most ridiculous jobs I ever had.

In the spring of 1979, after I'd been admitted to Wharton and was living in New York with no plans between May and September, I got myself a job. It seemed perfect. They were looking for people with 2 or more years of college to work a 4:00 PM to midnight shift (the infamous swing shift) in an office doing clerical work. That was ideal because I could then spend my day at the beach and then go into work.

Here's what the job was. At that time, a series of court cases were underway which culminated in the breakup of monopoly of the Bell Telephone System, which was at that time, the only real telephone company (cell phones were still nearly 10 years in the future). As with many lawsuits, this one involved a process called "discovery." For those unfortunate souls who have never watched the movie, "My Cousin Vinnie," discovery is when the opposing sides in a lawsuit share their relevant documents with each other. It's required by law.

So what companies do when given a request for discovery is one of two things. Either they cheat, and try to conceal things, which is illegal, or they comply. And the one way to comply is to send every single document you can get your hands on and make the other side sort through them trying to find something useful (aka document dump). This was the path taken by the parties in these lawsuits. So what does a company do when faced with millions of sheets of paper that may or may not be relevant? One thing you can do is hire another company to hire a bunch of people cheap who can read to go through the documents and try to find something.

That's what happened here. We worked in the Bell System building, but it was taken over by another company with a bunch of people working for a couple of bucks above minimum wage. We sat at desks on an open room the size of half a city block and sifted through paper, looking for words that suggested that the company was acting in an uncompetitive way (that's what the lawsuit was about).

Each evening, we were given a box of numbered documents and coding sheets and we would read through them and note what pages the key words occurred on, if they occurred at all. Our quota for an evening's work was a minimum of 180 pages and a preferred amount of 225-250 pages.

I'm a fast reader, and was typically done within a couple of hours. And I was accurate, so my quality ratings were high. So what did I do with the rest of the time? Mostly, I wasted time and performed mischief. I walked around and distracted other people, even my supervisor. I became very adept at shooting the huge rubber bands that the documents came wrapped it. My best skill was to hit a spot on the ceiling (which as about 20 feet high) and have it then drop in the middle of someone else's desk. I’m still pretty decent at doing that.

Then one day, I decided it might be nice to bring something to drink to work with me, so I brought a thermos full of white wine. It honestly seemed a perfectly innocent thing at the time. I hadn’t had too many jobs and I didn’t know that you weren’t supposed to bring alcoholic beverages to work with you. My previous boss had sat at his desk with a bottle of Guinness all day, starting at 10 in the morning.

I don’t know if anyone in authority ever realized that I was drinking 16 ounces of wine out of my thermos over the course of the evening. I certainly never made any effort to hide that I was doing it. I’m not sure they would have cared. On payday we would go and have what we called liquid dinner at a bar down the block. Nobody ever got in any trouble for any of this. A week before I was planning to quit they offered to promote me.

My best friend there was a nerdy guy named Marty who kept a Lucite picture frame cube thing with photos displayed on all sides on his desk. He told me that he had decided to keep the pictures that came with the frame, because the people in them were so much more attractive than his actual family.


I don’t know what the moral of this story is, or even what the point is. Except that maybe it’s worth not giving a crap about anything every once in a while and to just do what you feel like doing without worrying about consequences. I’m never really in a position to do that at this stage of my life. I hope that changes.

Dogs can only do so much

I was walking my dog the other day and and a neighbor's puppy came running down their driveway to greet us. No problem with that for me, but they they have one of of those Imaginary Fences, or whatever they call them, that are supposed to keep the dogs penned up by shocking them if they go past some imaginary boundary. But this dog didn't have the appropriate attire and so received no shock. So I rand their doorbell to tell them their dog was loose.

My neighbor came out and was grateful for the return but was fussing at the dog, calling it dumb and, horrors, bad. But as I was walking away, I was thinking, the dog wasn't the one who forgot to put the collar on, it was my neighbor. So whose fault is that exactly? I decided not to pursue it, but I have hypotheses.

A little segue

I don't watch a lot of football. Even though there are a lot of great athletic players in a football game, I find the game simplistic and brutish. There's certainly room for subtlety and intelligence in the game, but it is such a small part of it that it really is kind of meaningless.

One thing I've noticed, is how adept they've become at slipping little advertisements into the announcement. Yes, I did listen to some of one of the games on the radio. Every time that was an excellent block by a player, it segued right into an advertisement for H&R Block. All in the space of about five seconds (and notice how I segued here too).

That said, the last two football games this weekend, between Detroit and Pittsburgh and between Minnesota and Seattle, of which I watch not one second, both ended in equally horrific and completely different fashions.

The one thing that's great with live sports, even live sports that I don't like, is that they're live. You don't know what's going to happen, it's not scripted. Even scripted the way reality shows are scripted

Call me old-fashioned, but I long for the days when every single thing that you did or looked at or listen to wasn't trying to sell you something. I think that's part of why people feel stressed all the time, because somebody's always trying to sell them something. I'm not really aware of anyone who enjoys going in to a store or market and having to try to fend off the salesman trying to sell them something. It just isn't pleasant and it's stressful. And the ubiquity of advertising these days isn't really that different.

I studied and worked in advertising for nearly 25 years, so I have a pretty acute sense of when somebody's doing this to me, be it through banner ads or play-by-play mentions or pop ups or product placement. I make fun of it. My wife worked in advertising also and she does it with me.

So I don't find it the stuff stresses me out at all. It's really easy for me to ignore it, because I know what they're doing. We tried to teach our children about it. I feel bad for people who don't though, because if it makes them think about things they don't really want to think about, that means, and I know this sounds stupid, they are thinking about the things they want to think about. And that's bad.

I can't give you any advice as to how to avoid this; you can't avoid all the messages. What I can advise however, is that you become aware of their existence and what they're doing there. They're there to sell you something and absolutely nothing else. They don't care about anything else except your buying the product and making them money.

It's really nothing more than 1 million little Nigerian email scams every single day. They're not always actual scams, but they're always trying to make money out of you, one way or another. That's just the way things work.

Going to 7-Eleven

I've decided to walk from my house to the nearest 7-Eleven. I'm not really doing this out of choice, PayPal screwed up and overdrew my bank account instead of charging my credit card, so I have to go deposit money in that account. There are no branches around here, and the closest place to make a deposit is at a 7-Eleven. Such is the joy of being an adult.

I honestly never go into 7-Eleven. Around here, if you want to go to a convenience store you go to Wawa. And even though Wawa really is a convenience store, I don't think people really think about it that way. It's more like a home away from home where they have sandwiches and junk food. So I have to say, I feel ever so slightly guilty going to into a 7-Eleven and only depositing the check and then walking out. Shouldn't I buy some beef jerky? Maybe it taquito or a Big Gulp of some kind of sugary soda. As I proceed along the road, I pass a Dunkin' Donuts, McDonald's, pancake house. Also places to buy mattresses and tires and liquor. 

In and out of 7-Eleven in a matter of minutes. On my way back now, so that's exciting. I found out first of all that it is the 50th anniversary of the Slurpee. I don't know how I got 10 days into 2016 without knowing that, but I did. I also found out that the Big Gulp is not the largest size drink at a 7-Eleven. The largest size is the Super Big Gulp. I didn't even have the heart to look at the size of that cup. 

I'm tired

I guess I'm not supposed to admit that, should carry on and be professional and all that, but I'm beat. Being professional isn't necessarily my thing anyway, so that's fine, but really. I left school at 9 and am back at 7:30 and it's just kind of numbing, especially being back in the same exact room so soon.

This week flew by. My life is feeling a little bit roller coaster-like right now in general, which will probably continue to be the case for the next month or so, for reasons that will be explained when they happen. Right now, I'm filling in for an ill colleague. That means taking on an extra class, which is perfectly enjoyable in and of itself, but it throws the  rhythm of my days off. Weird that teaching 5 classes instead of 4 would be that jarring, but my class/preparation time ratio went from 50/50 to 63/37. It's a pretty substantial difference and it feels that way.

I can't end this without talking about the bells. It is simply astonishing to me that we can't have bells on time. If they're always ringing a couple of minutes late, can't we either set a clock somewhere to check them or start school at 8:18? This is worse than no bells at all, to be honest. That's what we had in my high school. But of course there we had clocks that all read the same, accurate time in every classroom. Running the school had to feel like Whack-a-Mole. You knock off one problem and another pops up. I've been at the school for 13 years now and it's only in the last couple that we actually have a solid idea of who is in attendance and who isn't. So there's progress.

Yeah, I'm ready for the weekend.

Mid-conference blogging

Okay, yeah, I feel sort of obligated to write more now, which is fine. I get busy and forget, but I love to write. I also feel obligated to be interesting and possibly even funny. For me, that stuff happens pretty spontaneously, so it's pretty hard for me to try to do either. But I'll give it a shot.

Starting tomorrow. Tonight is parent conferences. I enjoy parent conferences. I do not, however, particularly enjoy being at school from 8 in the morning until 9 at night. I therefore suggest that conferences be held someplace more comfortable and that there be food and open bar. Cocktail Conferences. Yeah, that's it.

Or not, aside from the long day part of it. I do enjoy talking about what I do and about my students. I like hearing from the parents what their kids think about the class and about math, and it puts the students in a different context, which is always enlightening in some way.

I am noticing that I am now older than a lot of the parents. Not sure if they think so, I don't look quite my age, but I'm increasingly aware of it.

I had all of my conferences in a room where I had my last period class, tutored after school, and have my first and third period classes tomorrow. So I hope you'll excuse any disorientation on my part in the morning. I'll try to make it interesting and funny.

Yeah, I actually sometimes wake up thinking this kind of thing.

Life is trivia but life is not trivial. There, how about that?

Can we reconcile this? First, let me note that I have no particular proof that life is not trivial, I'm not a philosopher, and on a universal scale, anything that happens on this little planet, even, oh I don't know, say the actual genuine son of an actual genuine god being tortured, killed, and ascending to something called heaven (I'm just making this up, of course), is pretty darned trivial.

That's beyond the scope of what I'm prepared to handle here (and in all likelihood ever), so we're left with a couple of issues to deal with. First, let's stipulate that life is not inherently trivial, because otherwise what is the point of writing this. Next, let's make sure everyone understands that with very few exceptions, real life is indeed trivial; it's mundane at its core. I know everyone has big events that happen, and sometimes even things like a math test or needing to go to the bathroom seem really really important, but they're not. Life is not a highlight reel.

It's also important to note that in the age of information, the sheer volume of stimuli that we encounter each day tends to make each individual one less significant and inherently more trivial. That's just math, and it makes it harder to find the meaningful stuff.

So the question facing us as human beings is, how, if you care to, do you construct a meaningful life out of trivia? In simpler times (which really existed by the way, I remember them) it was not as difficult to sort things out. There just wasn't as much noise to contend with.

Someone once said to me, I think it was my father, who heard it from someone else, "Spend a life." Spend your life. In other words, treat it the same way you would treat, for example, spending money. How are you going to spend each hour, minute, second of each day to have the kind of life you want to have?

I can't answer that for you. It really isn't even necessary to want to have some particular kind of life. Stuff will happen whether or not you do. I spent 40+ years that way, and though I had some fun and some good experiences, I can't say it was a particularly rich and rewarding way to live.

What I've learned since is that the important part of avoiding triviality is trying to avoid it by seeking meaning, whatever the hell that means. My current motto is "Be where you are, do what you're doing." Although the thought isn't original, I didn't take that line from anywhere. But it seems to me that that's what it's about. Don't be distracted by all the bullshit. Don't spend the day looking at what other people are doing any saying. It's fine to check in, but that's all. Don't be captive to everything going on around you, don't go FOMO, be present.

At the same time, and this may seem to completely contradict what I just said, look outside yourself. Being in your head all the time isn't a path to anywhere. How do you interact with the world around you? Do you take it in? Do you participate in it somehow? There are many things, sounds, messages, videos trying to catch your attention, but you can control where your attention goes. It isn't any more complicated than that.

I feel like I've been very lucky, because I've had good helpers in getting myself out of my head, and teaching has been the perfect antidote, because you have to be completely focused on the students. But that's just what works for me. Everyone has to find their own way. Just be where you are and do what you're doing.

Typing

I'm sure in the wake of the apparent hoaxical closing of the LA school system, there will be criticism for the disruption the closing caused to the many thousands whose children attend the school It's not fair to do that though unless you at a minimum weigh the whole Type I versus Type II error matrix.

A Type I error would be to close the schools because of a hoax and cause massive inconvenience (and I'm sure financial harm to some). In that that case the Type II error would be to let people go to school when there really were bombs there.

Which error would you rather make? To do this intelligently, you need to weight the probabilities involved, but when you make a binary choice like that (close or don't close are the only alternatives) you have to look at both sides and try to be smart.

I actually use this kind of decision-making all the time If I have a 50-50 choice and I can't decide between the right choices, I assume that I'm going to be wrong and decide which way I'd rather screw up. It's proved a good guide for me; it's one of the few actual life skills I learned in business school.

Catching up

I know, I already missed a day. Just by a few minutes though. And I did write both 20 report cards and a thesis statement for someone else's term paper. But still, I know I messed up.

It's not like I didn't have anything in my head to say. It's just that there was too much of other people's stuff in my head as well. That's kind of my issue.

I did get out for a 12 mile bike ride today. Only had 3 cars almost hit me. I should tell any of you who are inexperienced drivers of have children who are- stay off the road until after Christmas! People are crazy this time of year. It's really dangerous to be on the road, even in a car.

Seven more school days until break. Hope I make it. Actually, I'm fine. I hope all the nonsense around me subsides a bit, but I'm okay.

Today is the first day of the rest of my day.

I'm tired of writing about how I don't write in my blog anymore. So I am promising my self to write something every day, even if it's not significant, just to get my writing needs satisfied.

This week was the first chapter of the second volume of the Barrack School Year 2015-16 trilogy. I got a new class, with 16 students, almost none of whom I know. It's hard for a student to understand how exciting and terrifying that is for a teacher. I don't mean that I'm scared by it, but I get the kind of terror that actors describe getting before going on stage. Are they going to like me? Am I going to like me? Am I going to like them?

The last question isn't really a question. Even the most challenging class is stimulating and enjoyable for me. If you asked me for a preference between teaching middle versus upper school, I'd always say upper school. But I am hugely enjoying my 7th grade class, as I've enjoyed every 7 grade class I've taught.

Meanwhile, I need to write report cards. So the genesis of starting to blog again is procrastinating other writing. That's okay; whatever work.

GTWTAFUBAR

Most of what I write about is small and relatively unimportant. I think this is important, because we can't begin to solve a problem without understanding it. Everyone seems to bemoan how polarized things are, but nobody seems to understand why or how to fix it. This doesn't provide any fixes, but tries to show a clear view of the problems (or as my former professor Russell Ackoff would call it, the Formulation of the Mess- a mess defined as a system of interrelated problems).

This is a post about why people are acting so crazy now. About why our politics are so bitterly divided and why nobody seems to be able to agree on anything. The first 5 letters of the title stand for "Global theory why things are" and the rest you can look up if you don't know it.

I'm going to make a generalization here, for which I have no particular evidence. But this is an opinion piece, so I can say whatever I want without any evidence. OK, call me a Republican.

Here's what I think is happening: As a rule, people don't like change. This should not be surprising, because I'm not aware of any animals like change, and we are more or less animals. And at the risk of sounding ridiculous, change changes everything. It makes it difficult to know what to do when or how or where or whatever. It doesn't make it impossible, it just makes it more difficult, and people don't like things being more difficult.

And yet we live in a time where everything around us is changing rapidly. I would suggest that to many it feels as if things are constantly changing, that the world beneath their feet is not stable, making it scary and unpredictable. For year, people said "Everyone talks abut the weather, but nobody does anything about it." And now we have changed the weather, and do we like that?

I lived through the time when microwave ovens were introduced and I remember how wonderful and terrifying they were. "They cook with radiation? Like nuclear weapons radiation?" Imagine how those people, who are for the most part still alive, feel about what's going on today. It's gotta feel like the foundations on which their life is built are crumbling.

I've gotta admit, I like this stuff. For me, I was born at the perfect time. But I love new technology, and I've spent enough time with people other than myself to know that I shouldn't expect anyone else to react in even remotely fashion as I do.

Too much change makes people fearful and cranky, and fearful cranky people don't make thoughtful choices, because they're constantly in some state of fight or flight. They react from their amygdala, aka lizard brain. The part of your brain that does fight or flight really well and pretty much everything else really badly. It's purely reactive, and it leaves people ripe for the picking by demagogues and on a less extreme basis, by public figures who frame things in simplistic ways. Good versus bad, us versus them. Flee or defend yourself.

There's really no rational reason to fear change, but nothing about this is rational. If you react to change in an emotional way then you are at the mercy of people telling you to be fearful or angry about it, especially if there's nothing else to cling to. And so these upset, vulnerable, largely poor and not highly educated people are being rallied to recapture the past. To preserve what they already have and not give anything they have to anyone else, worthy or not.

Amazingly but not surprisingly, this self-preservation response even includes things that are not in their self-interest, because understanding self-interest requires a nuanced level of thought that the lizard brain does not do. A perfect example was Kentucky, where a population that is highly dependent on Medicaid expansion and the ACA voted for a governor who promised to take that all away. Because Obama. And because his opponent was a lousy candidate.

More than anything, what upsets me is the pessimism than underlies this behavior. I know that we're not living in the golden age or anything, but my goodness, life in the US is pretty good and I wish there was some collective will to make it better and not say, "we can't." Pay a few more dollars in taxes. Fix the roads and the schools, have a good public transportation system. Provide a safety net for those who need it. These are not lofty goals. They're basic.

I hope we can get past this stage, and I wish I was more hopeful about it.

In serviceable

So Friday was in service. In service is so mysterious that the school needed to send out an email explaining what it's about to parents. To students I can say it in a shorter form- it's team building, which when you're an adult you get to call team building professional development.

Let me go on briefly about team building. It's something that works really well with a group of people who have a common goal. One of the reasons ropes stuff is effective is that there's a discreet, clearly articulated goal that everyone understands and buys into.

The problem with doing in a professional development context is that everyone involved in most situations don't naturally have common goals. In a simple artificial construction you can simply dictate a goal. but when you're working within an organization that's a recipe for disaster. Consensus building requires its own set of team building activities. A goal imposed from above will feel arbitrary and won't achieve the buy-in necessary for success.

But here's the thing. It's pretty well known to most of my colleagues that I dislike the whole big meeting thing and that I find them useless. But I can't go on one day about how one should never be bored and then drone on about how bored I was during in service.

And I wasn't. That's the importance of being present. Whatever's going on, think about where you are and what you are doing. And be where you are and do what you're doing. Nobody at my table would have for a moment thought that I was disengaged in any way, because I wasn't. I discussed, I expressed opinions, offered suggestions, the whole deal. And yeah, I even complained about it. But all in the context of what we were doing. What's the point of being bored? Better to engage than sit there watching the clock.

What's alarming about this is how simple it is and yet how difficult it is for people. I need to think about this more.

It's all Jefferson's fault

I was just reading a depressing article about the state of the American family. People, especially educated, upper middle class people, are feeling very stretched and stressed out. They feel torn between job and home, especially when they have young kids. Of course they're torn. It's a binary choice.  You can't be at work and at home. You can't be hanging out with your baby and expecting to earn a significant income. You can't help feeling like you're missing out if you're not home with the baby and good luck trying to juggle them both.

It's all Jefferson's fault. Why did he have to put "pursuit of happiness" in the Declaration of Independence? What did happiness have to do with anything? I had a cynical hippyish teacher in middle school, known in school circles as the guy who burned the dollar bill at the podium on Parents' Night ( it was the 60's) who said it should say "pursuit of property." But pursuing happiness is a relatively new and specifically American thing.

Let me start by saying that if you have to pursue happiness in the first place then something's out of order in your life. Happiness should be a state of being, not a pursuit. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I'm happy 24/7, but I sure don't go out looking for extra, and all-the-time happiness is an impossible standard anyway. If we've learned anything from pop culture this year, it's that happiness has to coexist with sadness in order to have a fulfilling life.

To my mind, the key is understanding what makes you happy, as differentiated from what gives you pleasure. That takes a level of self-examination that most people really aren't up for, especially the tired, stressed ones. Too bad, because they need it the most.

Part of the problem is the expectation of being amused and interested at all times. I'm tired of hearing how people are bored. Existence isn't boring. One of my favorite quotes from Car Talk was when Tom Magliozzi reacted to someone calling something as boring as watching paint dry. He said he'd painted something that weekend and watched it dry and that, you know, it wasn't that boring. Fun and entertainment aren't the same thing. Neither are amusement and happiness.

Everyone has choices. I'll be the first to admit that mine have been easier than most people's, but that doesn't change my inclination to take things as they come and not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. But if you make a choice and then continue to stress out about it, you haven't committed to the choice. It's FOMO for grown ups. There are lots of paths I could have taken but I took the one I'm on. And that's okay, whatever it is.

Some things I can tell you because I'm old

I love to give advice. I rarely do it, because most people don't actually want advice, they just want you to agree with them. But getting older makes it more acceptable to give advice, either because you're more experienced and hence wiser, or because you care less what other people think of you. Because you're old and what does it matter anyway.

So rather than impose myself on other people, I will offer it up my words of wisdom here. Some of it's actual advice; some of it is just observational.

1. Never run for a bus, but make sure that you'd able to if you really wanted. (The first part is a 2000 Year-Old Man quote, the second is because whenever I do a short sprint I think about this).

2. Baby carrots are not actually babies. They are regular carrots cut into small pieces. You should just know that. They don't even say baby carrots on the bags, they call them Baby Cut Carrots, which is a nonsense phrase.

3. Recognize that sometimes it just hurts to be alive. I think I'm a pretty happy, open, comfortable-with-myself kind of guy and I have a nice life, but I still have moments when being conscious hurts. I can't really tell you what's going on, but it's something existential. I feel it most days and fortunately it's fleeting. But it's not hard for me to imagine how hard it might be for someone with a less solid base than I have. On a related note,

4. Give yourself a break. From what I'm observed, most people are much harder on themselves than anyone else is. If for no other reason than that nobody thinks about you nearly as often as you do (or think they do).

4. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If you spend too much time ruminating about the way things ought to be or focusing on how reality is not just like that, you'll make yourself unhappy and have less fun that you might. Speaking of which.

5. Have fun. Every day, have fun. One of my favorite movie lines is in "State and Main," a sadly underappreciated David Mamet film about a bunch of Hollywood types making a movie in a small town in Vermont. At one point, one of them says to a local woman, "I guess you have to make you're own fun around here." And she replies, "Everyone has to make their own fun. If you don't make it yourself, it's not fun; it's entertainment." So don't just binge watch, do something.

6. I've kind of resigned myself to the fact that in general usage "random" does not mean anything even remotely like random. But I guess if "literally" can mean "figuratively," all bets are off.

7. And last night I saw an experienced public speaker refer to something as fruitional, which is definitely not a word, though one can argue that it should be. To make matters worse, she used it twice in a 5 minute introduction. Lazy lazy lazy. Easier to make something up that figure out how to use the actual words that are available to you.

I'm sure there's more to come.

You can't be older than dead

I have to credit the title to Bill James, who did not invent serious statistical analysis in baseball but who was the one who made it mainstream. He was discussing how extremely old a particular ballplayer was by listing all the old people he was even older than, but noted that he couldn't be older than one of them because that guy was dead.

I have to admit, after the great trip and birthday weekend that Ronnie gave me, that part of me was let down and thinking, well, "Fuck me, I'm 60. I'm done." But more of me is feeling okay. The cliché is "You're only as old as you feel." Honestly, that's both kind of bullshit and kind of true.

On one hand, you're old as you are is more accurate. At 60 I have some limitations and I don't recover from injuries as fast as I used to, but it's nothing I can't live with. Something always hurts when I get up in the morning. Normally it goes away as soon as I start moving around, but as you get older you start to lose confidence that something that hurts is ever going to get better. But I'm pretty thoughtful about the way I move and treat myself, so I don't often "insult" my musculoskeletal system, as the orthopedists say.

On the other hand, part of it is about how I feel and part of it about how I act. I've never acted my age. I was precocious as a kid, immature as a teen/young adult, and kind of youthful as an older adult. In fact, the best part of turning 60 (aside from the great trip) has been all the people who can't believe that I'm 60. The flip side of this, unfortunately, is that acting young is harder when you're not actually young. I don't think about it much when I'm busy, but there are moment that I suddenly, if briefly, hit a wall.

Aside from good genes, I think I have two things going for me. First, I have, and am truly grateful for, some little voice in my head that is always telling me to push ahead. "Take the stairs, pedal in a higher gear, walk to the supermarket," and all kinds of other exhortations. I try not to sit still. This voice helps keeps me in shape and my weight is the same as it was 25 years ago.

The other thing is more subtle and interesting, I think. I am, both by nature and design, open to as much as I can be, whether it be ideas or foods or people or whatever. I sometimes think the thing that ages you the fastest is closing yourself off to things, deciding "I don't like that" and not trying new stuff. I'm hardly what you'd call adventurous, but if I had to name my favorite characteristic, it would be open-mindedness.

Being open has all sorts of advantages, because it forces you to actually listen when you're conversing with someone, and to consider alternate viewpoints, even when you're pretty sure you have the right answer. I work really hard at taking everything at face value, not prejudging. Aside from everything else, life's just more interesting that way.

I probably have more words of wisdom lying around somewhere, but that's another post.

How can something so Wright seem so wrong?

I just finished the Wright Brothers biography by David McCullough on the plane back from Calgary (On a plane! How ironic. Or not). It was an excellent book but it left me confused and disappointed.

As a child, I had a Wright Brothers biography that I read multiple times. It was an inspirational tale of two industrious brothers, who came from humble beginnings and through hard work and determination created the first motorized flying machine. They were devoted to their family, especially their sister Kate, and triumphed over all adversity.

Of course, as an adult I assumed this was whitewashed, just like my biography of Mickey Mantle, All-American Boy and all-round upright citizen. It turns out that upright was not correct either figuratively or in many cases literally. Nobody could be that virtuous.

But when I read this book about Wilbur and Orville Wright, I was surprised to find that my old biography had actually understated the case. They weren't just hard-working and industrious; they were ingenious and resourceful and patient and scientific. They invented and constructed whatever they needed out of whatever materials were available to them. As for adversity, the obstacles they faced were far beyond what I'd read or imagined. Kitty Hawk was a nightmare of a place to work. Though it offered the perfect conditions for the flying part at times, everything else was just as easy as you can imagine building a high-tech workshop and living quarters on a barely inhabited, mosquito-infested sand bar would be.

And about their family? They were each others' support system. They took care of Kate and their father, and vice versa. They worked together almost perfectly. They were also crazy smart, honest, humble, forthright, unfailingly polite, virtuous in every sense of the word, and completely comfortable in their skins. They even had a sense of humor, for god's sake. They did it for neither the money nor the glory; all they wanted was to succeed where so many others had failed. And their triumph was thrilling and complete.

It's an amazing story. You'd never believe it if it were fiction.

The day in Banff

I was trying to remember if there was anything I missed. I mean, it was two days on the train, and I took around 500 pictures. But it seems like we did nothing but go through beautiful country and how much an you say about that, one if comes down to it. The beauty speaks for itself.

So we arrived in Banff 6-something and got shuttled to the Fairmont Hotel there, which is kind of like a castle. It’s absolutely huge and there’s actually more to it than just that main hotel; there’s a conference center and some other stuff that I didn’t explore.

View from our hotel window

Ronnie and I went out to dinner at a place called Park Distillery, which has a huge still from which they seem to sell nothing. Part of it’s licensing and part is just it’s new and they don’t have the stuff yet. Distilling takes time, I guess. In any event, the cocktails and beer were delicious and the food was very good.

Then to bed, before the one morning we didn’t need to get up any particular time. We woke up in Banff, which is a really beautiful place. The town is okay, not crazy upscale like Aspen, but pretty lively, featuring lots of gift shops and cafés to go with the bars and jewelry stores.

Our first trip was to Lake Louise, a glacial lake about 45 minutes away. The best way I can describe the lake is that it’s a jewel. It’s this almost unnatural greenish blue. It’s a glacial lake, and part of the glacier still remains, hanging over it in the distance. It’s quite a remarkable sight, as I guess I just remarked.

Ronnie and I walked along a train on the shoreline for a while, enjoying the quiet and the beauty. It was another beautiful day out- sunny and mid-60’s. You can rent canoes, but we were hungry and wanted to see other stuff, so we headed back to Banff.

After lunch and some coffee, we went for a hike through a very strange landscape. There’s a thermal spring on nearby Sulfur Mountain, and it feed a marsh area that thrives on the warm water that’s there year-round. It’s unlike anything I’d seen before, because you have these huge, sheer mountains all around, a river doing its river stuff, and then this marsh.

According to the signs, people were curious if the marsh would support tropical fish, and in fact it does to an extent. There are a lot of Black Mollies around, and some small fish that look like guppies but are called mosquito fish, named after their favorite food. I’m glad I’m not named after my favorite food.

The whole area was strange and beautiful in totally unexpected ways. I said at some point it looked like hand-colored black and white. Photos don’t quite do it justice, but they try.

After that, we headed up to the thermal springs themselves, about feet higher on the mountain. Unfortunately, you don’t get to see the spring itself (I’m guessing it might not look like anything except a bunch of leaking puddles), but there’s a pool where you can soak in the mineral water. It’s about hot tub temperature, which was very soothing and felt good along with the upper 50’s air. Aside from the soaking, the main event was the frequent plea of “Someone stole my towel!” It’s like at baggage claim, all those white towels look alike. Fortunately, I’d borrowed ours from the hotel and (a) didn’t really care and (b) had them in a plastic bag, where they couldn’t be confused with others.

Back in town, we walked the streets, lined with shops I had no desire to go inside of, so we stopped for a drink, returned the rental car, and caught the shuttle to the bus station for an evening ride to Calgary. We departed right around sunset.

I’d always wanted to see Banff and was not disappointed. It’s stunningly beautiful in many ways. I could have spent longer there, but this was a nice taste. This was a wonderful trip and I couldn’t have asked for a better birthday present. Ronnie took care of everything and all I had to do was sit back and enjoy it, which I did, every moment of it.

From all accounts, there’s not much to do in Calgary, which was fine, because we got in at 9-something and had a 6 AM (!) flight the next morning. Maybe I didn’t enjoy the waking up at 3:10 AM moment, but the rest was great.

So Kamloops, and beyond.

Kamloops, tournament capital of the world,  is clearly very ice sports oriented, as they are hosting the 2016 Women's World Hockey Championship (hard to walk 10 feet without seeing some mention of it) and aside from the real arena they have another hockey rink and a curling club.

We arrived around 6:30, loaded onto Bus #5, which took us to the fabulous Hotel 540.Their name is their address! How clever! Our luggage was sitting in our room. The room had some other stuff in it, but I'd be hard pressed to tell you what. We pretty much immediately left and went for a walk.

The town has one very main street full of shops and restaurants, including a surprising number of bridal shops. So I guess it's the getting married capital too. The other streets were pretty dead so we headed to what was reputed to be a pretty good restaurant, called the Noble Pig. I give you the link in case you were thinking of visiting Kamloops at any point soon.

Although the Noble Pig menu didn’t look very good (talking about appearance only), they had a microbrewery, and as it turned out, the food was quite good. I had an interesting salad topped with grilled salmon, and Ronnie and I shared a charcuterie plate. I had their special, a Coffee Double Dubbel brew, with a high alcohol content and a bit of coffee "for an extra kick," as our cheerful server told us.

With that pleasant surprise literally under our belts, we headed back to the room and promptly crashed. For a bit anyway. We had to be up for a 6:15 AM pickup, so nobody from the train slept well. I got tired of waking up every hour and went for a walk around 5. It was a little spooky, but quiet and kind of pretty, in a dark sort of way. There was a nice full moon and you could hear the frogs jumping and croaking in the river.

Back at the hotel, we arrived downstairs along with everyone else at 6:10 and got back on bus #5, which delivered us back to the train.

The same staff greeted us, Frederico (memorable quote- "You should call out if you see an animal, but after you call out "Cow!" for the thirtieth time I'm going to have to come and talk to you") and Tiffany upstairs, Patrick and a woman whose name escapes me (who shared with us the Robert Service classic poem, The night I cremated Sam McGee) downstairs. Onto the train we climbed and by 7:00 we were on our way. Gotta say, Rocky Mountaineer runs a good shop. Everything was tight and on schedule to the extent they can control that running on tracks shared with freight trains. There are two seatings for each meal; yesterday we were first and today we were second. So the whole front of the car ate together, as did the back if the car. At breakfast time, to keep you busy while you wait for your seating, they give you fresh-baked scones and coffee. Very nice.

So there are a lot of differences between this kind of train trip and an Amtrak kind of train trip, of which I've done several. First of all, this train doesn't stop. You're on the train and moving all day long. Amtrak trains have stations, and sometimes they stop for 5-15 minutes, so you can get off and walk around. Although the food isn't nearly as good, they also don't have the same rigid kind of seatings. You do still sit communally in the dining room. There's also a lounge car, so you can change location on the train itself. On the other hand, this train has a bar open all day from about 10:30 AM until you pull into the station. And it's all included, and you have the opportunity to stand outside, which was really amazing. One of the most fun things there is to see the train turning ahead of you.

The biggest difference, of course, is that the whole train stops for the night and you get to sleep in a hotel. The last train trip I took I had a roomette, which had two seats that slid down to make a kind of bed. I can't say I slept great on that ride, but probably as well as I did at Hotel 540.

So off we went. The sun was rising and there was a mist on the the river.

By the way, the weather on this trip has been the polar opposite of what we got in Ireland. It's been sunny with high of upper 60's throughout, which is extremely unseasonable. It's usually low 60's with showers, just like we got in Ireland. Not a bad trade. But anyway, the mist eventually enveloped the train, but burned off pretty soon, and we were out of the desert and into greener, and mountainer landscapes.

The scenery was one of the few things I've seen that actually merits the descriptor awesome. Mountains, canyons, rivers, bridges. Just incredible. All going by at a leisurely pace with no need to drive or pay attention.

 And the tunnels? Those were fun, especially from outside (if they weren't too long and smoke-filled).

We passed the place there the last spike was struck to complete the Canadian Pacific Railway, and then the Continental Divide. We saw bald eagles, a moose, a grizzly bear and some kayakers ("Humans on the left!") And eventually we pulled into Banff. What a day!

If there are any loose ends, I'll clear them up later, but I want to get this posted.

First day of the train trip (like trains, this is running behind).

We had to get up very early for our train trip. Fortunately, the Starbucks across the street opens even earlier, so we were coffeed by the time we boarded the bus. We never do this kind of tour, with large groups, and we both find the regimentation amusing. Fill up the bus, and off to the train station. Luggage? Don't worry, we'll take that and it'll be in your room when we get there.

Where is there? Some place called Kamloops. More about that later, but it turns out that this operation, Rocky Mountaineer, has outgrown using the regular train station and has its own terminal (there’s a difference, BTW) on a spur track.

We have what they call Gold Leaf Service, which means our train car has an upper level for sitting, with wraparound dome windows, and a lower level for dining. The windows are spotless, as is the whole train, actually.

We boarded the train, listened to the safety announcement, then the train backed up to the main track, and we headed east. There’s a platform outside the train car, referred to as the vestibule, where there’s nothing but a gate between you and the outside. This is wonderful on a number of levels. First of all, you have no sense while you’re sitting on a train how loud it is outside. We went over a metal bridge and the clanging was deafening. I also loved that you can just look down and see the track whizzing by, and the tunnels? Wow.

I hadn’t really thought about it before, but one of the reasons I love these long train trips is that train tracks almost invariably follow rivers. I guess because towns grow up around rivers and rivers tend to be flat, except there they're waterfalls. And rivers are cool. There's always something going on by a river, even if it's just the river.

The first river we followed was called the Fraser, which approaches Vancouver through a lush valley. That made it smell like cow dung on the vestibule, but so what, I was like a dog in a car with the window open. I was just sticking my head out and watching.

Then suddenly it was arid and almost desert-like, except with a river flowing through it, so patches of green here and there. Meanwhile, inside the car, there were about a half dozen attendants seeing to our every need. Breakfast was tasty and massive, and shortly thereafter they announced that the bar was open, to great applause.

The people on the train were all really nice. We didn't have extended conversations with too many of them, but those of us who hung out in the vestibule chatted quite a bit. That's another attraction of trains. The people are almost invariably nice (Northeast Corridor excluded). We eat at tables of 4, which means 2 couples who don't know each other. Met two women from Australia (lots of Aussies) and a couple from Toronto.

Eventually, we approached Kanloops, a surprising large town for in the middle of nowhere. It's the tournament capital of the world, whatever that means.

Gotta go now. More later. 

Of course, I had to start my first morning with a walk. Since we are staying on Eastern time, that meant getting up around 5. So when I went out, it was dark and everything was closed. The city is glutted with Starbucks; the closest one, across the street, didn't open until 5:30, so I walked around the block and passed another Starbucks and another coffee shop that was open.

After coffee, I walked down to the water. Guess I should be more specific, because it would be hard to walk for more than a few minutes in any direction without hitting water. But I walked north, I guess, down toward the convention center, which is next to both high-end marinas and industrial ports. I could see the sky brightening on the horizon.

I turned west and followed the coast for quite a way, until I reached a beach with the amazing full moon reflecting off the bay, then came inland and headed back through a nice neighborhood.

What really strikes me is that Vancouver has the feel of a real city, not just a tourist attraction that has people living in it. After Dublin and Bruges and Amsterdam that's a nice change. Not that there's anything wrong with any of those places, they're all lovely, but I was always very aware that their prime as real cities is in the past and that the present is significantly dependent on trading on that past. Italy is probably the most extreme version of it, but a lot of European cities have that feel.

But this place has a vibrancy to it that you don't see elsewhere. Even at 6:00 AM there's an energy that's unmistakeable. I can't imagine that it's not growing quickly.

As the day progressed, it became even clearer why it must be growing. It's absolutely beautiful here. Water and mountains everywhere, cool neighborhood, good mass transit, great parks.

We had breakfast and went to the most famous of the parks, Stanley Park. Perched on a peninsula (oh god, did I really just write that?) it features paths (one for walking, one for biking and blading) that wrap around between the water. Gotta say, they rent bikes to anyone, but beware if you're not a good cyclist, because the path is often narrow, and even though they're one-way, if you're not solid, you're likely to get clipped.

But the scenery is drop dead gorgeous. You're right on the harbor and bay, between ancient trees and mussel beds. Just beautiful.

So we made it around, returned the bikes, and headed for an enclave called Granville Island.

Aside from the true bodies of water surrounding Vancouver, there is also something called False Creek, which I assume is called that because it isn’t actually a creek. I’m not sure, I didn’t really check. So in False Creek is this little island, which appears to have originally been mostly and industrial site, but is now a kind of arts center/tourist attraction.

We walked around the island for a while. There was some great public art at the concrete plant, a whole bunch of theaters, art supply stores, and an art and design college.

There are also various crafty type shops and eating places. Also a small distillery,where we stopped to a tasting of their vodka, whiskey (clean, unaged) and gin. The whiskey was kind of sharp, but we liked the others enough to buy a couple of small bottles.

There’s also a large public market, not unlike Reading Terminal, for you Philly folks, where we had lunch. After a stop at the hotel, we visited an area called Gastown, named after the owner of the local pub who was a noted talker, raconteur, and all-round gasbag.

It’s one of those transitional neighborhoods where there are hipsters and homeless in close proximity. Cool shops and pubs. We then walked over to the Vancouver Overlook, which is a 550 high observation tower with a revolving restaurant (which we didn’t visit).

Back to the hotel, where I had a nice swim, and then Ronnie told me what we were doing for the remainder of the trip. Taking a train through the Canadian Rockies! A longtime dream of mine. Then out to dinner in an area called Yaletown, where we ate in a place called Rodney’s Oyster House. That was great. Fantastic oysters. Sat at the bar and drank and ate shellfish. Loud but not unpleasantly rowdy. Properly stuffed, we walked around the neighborhood.

Then early to bed because we had to board our bus to the train station at 6:30 AM. Yes, you heard that right. More to come.

"I just got back from Majorca"

"From Majorca? Where's that?"

"I don't know, we flew."

That's an old borscht belt joke. It is on a Myron Cohen album, right after the joke about the Klopman Diamond. ("That's a huge diamond on your ring. Yes, it's the Klopman Diamond. It's cursed, you know. Really? What's the curse? Mister Klopman).

So yesterday, we flew. Ronnie has a surprise trip planned for me for my 60th birthday. She didn't spill anything, and I went out of my way to not learn what or where it was. So while the Pope was on his way to give Mass on the Parkway, we headed to the airport. At first, Ronnie didn't even want me to know where we were flying from Philly, which was kind of funny, because that flight went to Dallas/Ft. Worth, which I was pretty confident Dallas was not our final destination (though it is sort of hell-like).

Since DFW is one of the busiest hubs in the country, being there was no clue at all, but eventually we got on a plane for Vancouver, BC, and the secret was out. Lots of flying on full planes, but surprisingly not unpleasant.

We got off at the very attractive airport here, cleared customs, which was 4 dudes just hanging out near the exit checking passports, walked out to the taxi stand and there was this moon fragment in the sky. I'd kind of forgotten about the eclipse because we'd been flying, but it was right after the moon had begun to reappear. By the time we got to the hotel it was about halfway back.

So here we are. I've always wanted to visit Vancouver and am looking forward to seeing it in daylight. Or at least full moonlight.