Exit 109

Maine afternoons

2011-08-06T22:55:00.133-04:00

On our last evening in Maine, I spent half an hour wandering the fields, looking down. I waved at the long grass -- still five or six inches, bent over as if combed, with tufts of fresh-cut blades scattered in clumps -- with a wooden stake borrowed from one of my cousin's gardens. My uncle had spent part of the afternoon mowing his lawn, then ducking through a short stand of trees into the neighbor's field to cut some of the grass in front of their guest cabin. And somewhere along the way, he had lost the ignition key to his John Deere riding mower, a farm version with a license plate and headlights that he's had for probably 20 years. There are photos of me sitting on it, reading Cars and Trucks and Things That Go while my mom cut my hair. I couldn't have been more than 10. But somewhere along his route that afternoon, my uncle John had knocked the key from the ignition. The tractor continued purring along, but when John went to turn it off back by his driveway, his hands came up empty, so he stalled it and decided he'd figure out the key problem later.

So while John, his daughter Kate and her boyfriend, Rich, were back in their yard, tending to her gardens, I took it upon myself to see if I could find the key. I didn't particularly feel like digging around in the gardens (and without knowing what I was doing, someone would've had to instruct my every move, which probably would've been annoying for them, too). So while Casey sat by the house and read, John put a James Taylor record on his turntable, pivoted his large speakers to face out the windows, and cranked the volume so they'd have music out in the yard. It carried over to me as I scanned the neighbor's field.

The afternoon soon melted into those August Maine days from my childhood. Crickets chirped up a soundtrack (one that -- not for the first time, but for the first time outside -- was augmented by the folk stylings of Mr. Taylor) as the sun sunk lower in the west and painted the pines in a golden tint. I thought of how I used to find the path down through the woods to the river dark and terrifying, especially in the late afternoon when the canopy turned the woods dark before dusk had even begun. But when I got older, I'd often take walks down that path by myself, then turn left, following the path along the river until the flora closed in, then turn left again, heading back up the hill, bushwhacking my way back toward the house, though not along any known path -- or even knowing where I was headed. I just knew that I'd eventually, at worst, hit the road not far from the driveway and be able to find my way back.

But it never came to that. No matter how far along the river I walked, once I turned to head in the direction of the house and open field, I always seemed to emerge at the top of a short but steep slope that led down into a small gravel pit at the end of a second -- but rarely used -- driveway. I guess more than a usable driveway, it was more a wider, longer path leading from the road that contained no rocks or trees and was big enough for a car to maneuver.

I thought of those days as I criss-crossed the field, head down, scanning the path of the tractor for the strand of red string my uncle said might be attached to the tractor's key. Nothing against my family, but some of my favorite moments in Maine always were -- and, for brief moments, sometimes still are -- those when I'm alone and unplugged. No phone (we can't get cell service at the house anyway), no TV (we rarely watch anything during visits there). We'll still use the internet, now that they have it -- on an unsecured network because there are no other houses within range, so anyone trying to access it would have to be in view of the house -- and music is always an option. But I don't always need music; I'm happy to stroll along with the soundtrack of the forest and fields.

So not only was my perambulation soothing to my soul and psyche, but it was fruitful in my search as well. The one last section I had to explore was a path John cut parallel to the stand of trees separating the neighbors' field from his. It was a simple down-and-back to the thicker forest, a lane as wide as two tractor widths. I followed it to the circular clearing at the end -- not unlike a dead-end street -- and eyed the indentations of the tires, noting the steep angle in one section formed by a subterranean rock. And then, just when I thought my quest was about to come up empty, I saw a flat, yellow plastic tag -- precisely the type of key fob you'd get for free from a car or tractor dealership. Attached to it was a small, slightly rusted key that certainly looked like it might start a tractor. I flipped the tag over in my hand and saw the name and address of the local John Deere dealer.

My quest complete, I returned to the gardens and asked John if he was sure the key had a red string attached, or if it might be a light yellow key ring from the John Deere dealer. His eyes lit up when I held it out, a look of relief that he'd not have to dig up the tractor's VIN (or some other ID) to have a new key made.

A few minutes later, the gardeners finished their work and we traipsed down to the river to wash up for dinner. The beauty of a Maine summer is the ability for four people to put on bathing suits, wade into the river and use the all-natural soap and shampoo my family keeps on the bank to rinse off after a sweaty afternoon. After washing up and briefly enjoying the flowing amber water, we were on our way back up the hill to change for dinner, everyone ready in half an hour. Such a satisfying way of life.

A perfect Maine day

2011-08-05T23:24:00.000-04:00

Amazingly, even after beginning with a chocolate croissant breakfast, this day continued to get better. From the Village Bakery and Cafe to a farmers' market in Damariscotta where my cousin was manning a tent, we then headed down to Pemaquid Point, home of the best lighthouse in America. I didn't even spend that much time traipsing across the rocks, looking for different photo angles. We got some good early shots, then settled our backs against a properly slanted slab of granite and watched the waves crash along the coast. Later, after we'd moved further town toward the point, I noticed a seal poking his head up out of the surf. He bobbed there for about a minute -- before we could switch to our telephoto lenses -- then disappeared again into the depths, swimming off in search of lunch.

After our own lunch on the dock at Shaw's, we came back to the house for a leisurely afternoon (a nap and some reading) before getting dinner under way. For some, fresh lobsters boiled on the stove; for others, spaghetti with sauce and meatballs made from local sources -- meat bought down the street, basil, garlic and parsley from the garden in the yard and sauce made by my cousin from her tomatoes.

And perhaps the best part of it all? While this was all being prepared, we put on some of my uncle's records for background atmosphere, beginning with Darkness on the Edge of Town. It's rare enough that we listen to albums/CDs/mp3s in order as it is, but to hear Darkness; Crosby, Stills and Nash; Rumours and The Kinks on vinyl, with side breaks and crackling and popping -- yet still in wonderful stereo -- made for a perfect night. I can't think of a better setting to appreciate the opening chords of "Badlands," the Side 1 finale of "Racing in the Street," the splendid Side 2 opening of "The Promised Land" and the album finale of "Darkness on the Edge of Town" than a cool Maine summer night.

In the land of rocks

2011-08-04T22:48:00.002-04:00

High season on the breakwater

These series of posts from Maine are simple, end-of-day spontaneous recollections. By "jotting" down these outlines, I hope to come back to revisit them for more detailed accounts, at least for some particular points of the trip. I figured if I manage to do this much each night, I'll be more apt to follow up in a few days.

Another day spent in places I've been before, but with new twists. With Casey's stomach as a guide (to put it in the most general terms), we started the day with an early lunch at Home Kitchen Cafe in Rockland. From there we drove out to the breakwater, which allowed access to the lighthouse in the harbor -- after a walk of nearly a mile along the huge granite blocks placed some 130 years ago in the harbor to provide safe passage -- and, well, harbor -- for ships.

Out at the lighthouse -- which was not open today -- other folks took a break on the benches and walked around the base, taking photos. On the east side, the carcass of a harbor seal lay rotting, parts of it already ripped away by carnivorous birds, but its torso mainly intact. Up on the deck, which looked out back across the length of the breakwater, one couple sat eating their lunch, taking the time to enjoy themselves out a the lighthouse before beginning the careful walk back. We spent maybe 15 or 20 minutes taking photos before beginning our return trek. And with that, I checked another lighthouse off my list.

Following the walk along the breakwater, the natural next step was to visit Owl's Head Light, a more remote beacon nestled into a woodsy cliff further east from the harbor. The walk along the gravel path was less than half a mile (and probably less than a quarter, one-way) and a much more leisurely experience all around.

We then returned to downtown Rockland, parking along Main St. -- just past Lobsterfest at Harbor Park -- and strolled the retail strip, window shopping, browsing in antiques shops and other stores. After asking more of our credit cards, we drove north along the coast to Rockport, an even smaller harborside community that was once the home to Andre, a rather famous harbor seal in these parts. I remember visiting Andre some 30 summers ago, hoping that when we went down to the water's edge in the harbor, he'd be "home" and pop his head up inside his enclosure (which was open and allowed him to come and go as he pleased). Not much has changed with Rockport Harbor, except my eating habits and the opening of Shepherd's Pie, which turned out to be an exquisite dining experience. After dinner, we took some time to walk around the park on the other side of the harbor, stopping by the statue of Andre and reading about the ruins of the limestone kilns still standing against the rocky wall.

And the best part about the day was that we barely faced any rain -- only a brief shower while we were on the road out at the beginning of our day. Back in Whitefield, my uncle said, they'd had some rain in the morning and more in the late afternoon -- evidence of which we saw on our way back, along a still-saturated Route 17.

Riverside discovery

2011-08-03T23:26:00.004-04:00

Today was spent in Freeport, shopping. Nothing too exciting to write about there.

But when we returned to Whitefield, Casey and I took a walk down through the woods to the river. I hadn't been in a long time -- five, six years maybe -- when the stroll used to be a near-daily occurrence on my annual family trips. Fishing, swimming, tubing or (in late spring when the flow is still high enough) canoeing. I thought about taking a dip, but it was already six o'clock and I wanted to take a quick visit, then come back and pop open a beer and sit around chatting until dinner.

When we got there, we stepped down the bank to the riverbed, the two or three feet of rocks on the shore between the water and the 5-, 6-foot high "bluff." We watched toads hop into the tall grass and looked up and down the river as the afternoon light shone on the trees on the opposite bank. I scouted out a few flat stones and skipped them across the surface, trying to get the perfect trajectory and speed to skip one clear across (couldn't do it in the half-dozen throws today, and I'm not sure it's ever been done).

At one point while looking for a good, flat stone, I looked a little higher than my feet, at a spot on the little bluff maybe even with my thighs. What appeared to be a rather uniformly round rock, nestled under a slightly eroded overhang, caught my eye. I then noticed that one end of it was really flat, so I reached for it and immediately upon grasping it felt its weight. That's when I realized it was manmade, an iron weight of some sort. At its top -- the flat side was the bottom -- a hoop is attached, perhaps the last link in what had been a chain. It could very well be an old anchor, a weight to keep a canoe in place on the river. It may have been used for something else.

I took a few pictures and showed them to my uncle when we got back to the house. He was intrigued and told me of an iron ring hammered into a rock a little bit up the river. He wondered if the ring in the rock had once been part of a log dam or perhaps even a suspended footbridge. Perhaps this weight was related. He asked if it might have been uncovered by the erosion of the bank by the river. I was too unsure to answer yes, but not convinced either could be discounted, either. I told him I'd only moved it a few inches and stood it upright; otherwise, it was in nearly the same place I had found it. I'm sure he'll be looking for it the next time he's down there.

Times change

2011-08-02T23:04:00.000-04:00

I know the way to Maine like the roads in my hometown. Not just the I-95 north part, but the exit to the midcoast, the stretch of gas stations in Brunswick, the turn toward Bath, the Taste of Maine restaurant afterward. And, finally, the left turn onto Route 218 and the last 11 miles to my aunt and uncle's house. I have an inner GPS, a homing signal that can lead me here each summer.

Only, doing it at night, in the fog, and I somehow missed the driveway -- yet I knew it right away. Whoops.

Tomorrow, I'll take stock of the place in the daylight.

Miss you, Big Man

2011-06-19T22:36:00.001-04:00

Giants Stadium, Oct. 2, 2009. The Darkness on the Edge of Town show. This was during "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out," the second song of the night. I think it says it all. He was larger than life. "Big Man" wasn't just a nickname derived from his stature. Even when he was less mobile and confined to his little area to Bruce's right, he was still a presence. It's a shame he didn't get his deserved place in the spotlight during his last public performance with Gaga on that singing show. It's a shame the change was made upstairs and the Big Man left the band. It's a shame. I'm sad.

Clarence lived a wonderful life. He carried within him a love of people that made them love him. He created a wondrous and extended family. He loved the saxophone, loved our fans and gave everything he had every night he stepped on stage. His loss is immeasurable and we are honored and thankful to have known him and had the opportunity to stand beside him for nearly forty years. He was my great friend, my partner, and with Clarence at my side, my band and I were able to tell a story far deeper than those simply contained in our music. His life, his memory, and his love will live on in that story and in our band. -- Bruce Springsteen, June 18, 2011

Re: My thoughts on e-mail subject lines

2011-06-15T23:50:00.000-04:00

I never get people who put "re:" in the subject line of an e-mail they initiate, such as "re: party plans." I know they're using it as "regarding," as in, "this e-mail is regarding the plans for the party." In this age of get-to-the-point and short attention spans, you'd think people would cut to the chase rather than take the time to type out two extra letters and a form of punctuation that needs the shift key.

Beyond that, I think 99 percent of the emailing populace looks at "re:" as "reply." So if the initial e-mail subject was "party plans," an e-mail in reply would be, "re: party plans." Of course, it could still stand for "regarding," and that may have been the thought when it was coded into the "reply" button in our e-mail clients, but in that case, the "re:" is a shortened form of "regarding your e-mail about party plans."

I also can't stand when the entire contents of an e-mail is in the subject line, with nothing in the body. I understand the time-saving nature of this exercise, both on the part of the sender and that of the receiver, but I look at the subject line as the tease and open the e-mail to get the full gratification of what this all-important communique contains.

Maybe that's why I'm only marginally active on Twitter -- I want more. I like the long-form articles in The New Yorker, the "continued on p. 121" features in Outside and the back-of-the-book features in Sports Illustrated. After 140 characters, I still want to know more.

But then again, maybe I don't need that much more. I can barely keep up with my magazines and internet reading enough to get through a book in a reasonable amount of time, and nevermind writing the long posts I used to enjoy crafting.

This surely isn't going to be one of them...

It's still winter out West

2011-05-23T00:18:00.001-04:00

Five years ago, my college roommate and I took a road trip in the Rockies that included a day in Rocky Mountain National Park. I took the above photo on one of the park's roads, the walls of snow along the road in May were still pretty high on the right side (the left side dropped off on a steep slope).

But that's nothing compared to this year:

That's from a New York Times story on the unusually deep snowpacks still high atop peaks in the West. That's 23 feet! Crazy.

Actress moms ride the PATH

2011-04-25T23:15:00.002-04:00

I stepped through the turnstile at Christopher St. to exit the PATH system and found myself standing behind a blond woman holding a baby, a stroller in front of her. Ahead of us were about 50 steps leading to the street above. She appeared to be trying to get the attention of the PATH attendant manning the station, standing in the narrow space between the tracks and the last turnstile.

It was a quarter to six -- rush hour, with a few of us exiting the station, but a lot more streaming down for the trip home to New Jersey. There's not much room to maneuver in the area between the end of the steps and the turnstiles, and I couldn't get past the mother and child until other riders made their way down.

So I waited and, in those few seconds, decided I'd do the right thing and offer to help her up the stairs. Moments later, it hit me, a realization that I knew her that quickly shifted to a recognition -- she was familiar to me, but I was nothing but another stranger in New York to her. That's what happens when you used to watch someone on TV each week for eight years.

As she tried to get the station attendant's attention -- I presume she was going to ask him for assistance -- I removed my earbuds and stepped around her, in front of the stroller, then turned back.

"Would you like some help?" was all I asked, though in my head I added, "Ms. Moloney." I suppose I omitted that part on the off chance my hunch was wrong. I was pretty confident, however, that it wasn't, because upon spotting celebrities in the wild, I tend to feel a jolt of recognition and a surge in my chest at the excitement of seeing someone famous in my world -- or at least this world we share.

"Oh, that'd be great if you would," she said, turning toward me. "It's not really heavy, if you could just carry the stroller up the stairs."

I picked it up -- it was truly light, and I could've managed it with one hand if I had to. Thankfully, she didn't have one of those deluxe SUVs of baby carriages. She chatted with me as I led the way up the stairs.

"He's still too young to take in a cab," she said. As I listened to her, I confirmed my initial hunch, because the voice was so distinct. It was as if Donna Moss was walking behind me.

The stairway to the Christopher St. PATH station includes three landings. As you exit, there is one with a 90-degree turn, a second that stretches for several feet, and a third that requires a U-turn as daylight comes into view. On the second landing, we caught up with the heavyset man ascending in front of us, so we had to slow down. I had the chance to turn around as we spoke, the conversation shifting now to just how freakin' far underground the PATH runs -- something I've thought of on occasion with this commute. "I guess it's because it has to go under the other subways," she reasoned, again expressing a thought I've had come across my own mind.

When we finally reached the last step, I set the stroller down on the sidewalk as she thanked me. "You've done your good deed for the day," she added, smiling. I smiled back as I gave my reply.

"I was going to help anyway," I began, as a way of saying that I didn't do it because I recognized her as an actress, "but I loved 'The West Wing.'"

She smiled again and said, "Thank you." I replied, "Have a nice day," with a final wave and turned toward Greenwich St. and the late-afternoon sun.

Chains of Liberty

2011-02-11T23:33:00.000-05:00

The chains

During my first visit to the Statue of Liberty, I bought a book in the souvenir shop -- it might have been a coloring book -- that included views or aspects of the Statue that weren't obvious to visitors. One was the chains at her feet, representing the breaking of the bonds of tyranny or oppression or some such. This fascinated me, that there was a "hidden in plain sight" detail that could only be seen by the most astute observers, if at all. I'm not even sure you can see them from the crown looking down at her feet. It might only be from outside aerial vantage points -- or from the ferry, if you're looking closely enough.

Well, with a 300mm zoom lens and cropping ability on the computer, those chains can just be seen -- as can a marker on the right side of the frame.

Recklessly dashing through the snow

2011-01-29T00:39:00.003-05:00

Today's technology changes everything. Now a snow day is not just a day off from school, a chance to bundle up, find a hill and let gravity entertain you.

Bring along a camera and it's an event, one to watch back at the house -- and in years to come.

Those runs down a hill in Brooklyn's Prospect Park take me back to one spring when my family visited my mom's brother in Maine. It was either an early Easter -- one of those Easter-in-late-March years -- or a late snowstorm that dumped several inches on my uncle's property.

Up the road, one of the two neighbors who lived within walking distance had a son who was a year older than me and for a couple of years, he and I would hang out during my family's visits. He came over after the snow piled up and we took a couple of sleds out into the yard.

Most of Uncle John's 200-some acres (at least, I think that's how big the property is; I asked once and that number seems to stand out in my head) is covered by forest -- including the hill. Paths through the pines lead down to the Sheepscot River and even now when I visit, one of the first things I do is walk across the lawn and down the short incline to the main path down to the river. The drop gets steeper as the pines stand taller until it opens up at the copper-brown water passing over the rocks on the river bottom. In our annual summer visits, we'd swim and fish and occasionally canoe from this spot. One year, after our cousins had reached high-school age (and I was in college), they joined my sister and me on inner tubes for a float down a mile or two of the river, to a dam downstream where my dad picked us up.

Some 200 yards to the north of that main walking path is another opening in the trees where an older and wider path leads into forest before narrowing and, in places, becoming a more difficult route to the river. I'm not sure why the path to the south became the preferred route to the water. But it was on this less-used path that the neighbor from down the road, Bobby, and I took our sleds after that Easter snowstorm. We somehow managed to steer the plastic sleds through the trees, avoiding both the steep drop to the left in one section of the run and the larger trees that stand near the thoroughfare.

I'm not sure how, exactly, we emerged from this adventure without any serious injuries. It's certainly possible that, in my memory, we only felt like we were going much faster than in reality. However, I do recall one incident in which I couldn't quite correct a drift to the right, glancing off of a tree with my right shoulder as I was spun off the sled, coming to rest along the path. I laughed it off, though there was definitely a throbbing sensation at the point of impact. I wasn't injured, but it left me sore for a few days, I'm sure. At the time, I thought how I'd narrowly missed a more serious injury, one that could have derailed my certain-to-be successful baseball career. (Turns out that my lack of ability is what derailed that job opportunity.)

On another run, when I couldn't keep the sled from drifting to the left where the forest dropped off into a shallow gorge (but with a drop steep enough and the trees close enough that you wouldn't want to ride a sled down it), I bailed safely and watched the sled careen down the slope, banging into a dozen young trees, most no thicker than my forearm.

Those runs through the Maine woods were not unlike the short trips down Breeze Hill in Brooklyn. We didn't have to contend with any gravestones, but we had a lot more trees and a narrower opening along a much-longer run.

And we had just as much fun.

Snow 2.0: This week's blizzard

2011-01-12T01:34:00.002-05:00

Winter's bearing down again, but I don't mind that much. I know it will mean another round of shoveling in the morning, attempts to clear the sidewalks and back porch, wipe off the car and clear out the berm the plows leave us at the driveway entrance. If it's going to be this cold, I'd rather have this precipitation with it. Give us something pretty to look at, even if it's only a day or so before it starts to get brown and yellow and slushy and gross. We've had weekly snows since Christmas, the last two -- and last week's was little more than a dusting, but enough to shovel off the sidewalk -- covering up what had not yet melted.

I thought about setting up the camera for a time-lapse project with this one, but I chose not to because there was already quite a bit of snow still left on the ground. It wouldn't have the same effect as one that starts with a snowless, colorful streetscape that, over time, gets whited out.

This is one of those muting snows, arriving after dark and carrying enough punch and prompting enough warnings to scare most people off the roads. Not that 1 a.m. is any kind of high-traffic period around here, but for the last hour or so, I've been alone with my thoughts (and the Twitterverse and other online distractions) and the background sounds of our house. Other than the gurgling of the cats' water fountain, some recessed hum of one appliance or another and the occasional hiss of the radiators (one is stirring to life right now, in fact), this night is quiet. It's as if the world has been insulated, the town and the city bundled up and tied down.

Snow in the Suburbs
--Thomas Hardy

Every branch big with it,
Bent every twig with it;
Every fork like a white web-foot;
Every street and pavement mute:
Some flakes have lost their way, and grope back upward, when
Meeting those meandering down they turn and descend again.
The palings are glued together like a wall,
And there is no waft of wind with the fleecy fall.

A sparrow enters the tree,
Whereon immediately
A snow-lump thrice his own slight size
Descends on him and showers his head and eyes,
And overturns him,
And near inurns him,
And lights on a lower twig, when its brush
Starts off a volley of other lodging lumps with a rush.

The steps are a blanched slope,
Up which, with feeble hope,
A black cat comes, wide-eyed and thin;
And we take him in.

Pick ME, Mazda!

2011-01-05T01:09:00.003-05:00

I just submitted an short essay for Mazda's online "Zoom Zoom" magazine. First prize gets to take his or her proposed road trip and wins an iPod Touch to bring along. (Would be pretty nice to win a car, too, but whatever.) I'm sure I have as good a chance of winning this as I did the $330 million Mega Millions jackpot tonight. (That is, slim to none, and Slim just left the building and forgot his keys.)

Anyway, here's the itinerary I whipped up in five minutes, based on our trip last March and with some new destinations tacked on to the end.

> > >

When I think of road trips, I think of the American West. I may be a Jersey guy who went to college in the Midwest, but I feel right home in the desert or the Rockies. Though I've made several trips to Arizona, Utah and Colorado, if given the time and resources for a road trip somewhere in North America, I think I'd go right back to roads I've cruised before.

Starting in Phoenix, we'll head north to Flagstaff, taking scenic Route 89A from Sedona. After exploring parts of old Route 66 outside "Flag," we'd head north to the Grand Canyon. From there, it'd be east out of the park and down into the Painted Desert on the way up to Monument Valley. Next, it's up into Utah, past Mexican Hat and on into Moab, where a few days would be needed to see Arches and Canyonlands.

But then a decision must be made. One option is to turn west to hit Capitol Reef and then south again for Bryce Canyon and Zion. Depending on the season, a stop at the gorgeous and even more remote North Rim of the Grand Canyon would be a bonus. Finally, if time permits, I'd like to continue west and back around the Grand Canyon -- via Hoover Dam -- to get back to Phoenix and a trip-capping dinner at the famed Pizzeria Bianco.

Or perhaps we'll go east from Moab into Colorado, where the options include turning north to Dinosaur National park, south to Mesa Verde, or cruise east on the prettiest interstate in America, I-70, to Rocky Mountain National Park. If this is our route, Denver would be our finale -- some good steak and wine in LoDo.

Tiny Christmas tree, Route 3

2011-01-04T02:41:00.004-05:00

Back before it was torn down to make way for a new entrance to a shopping center (even though it's still listed in a Google search), the Falls View Grill on Route 3 would light one of the tiny pine trees in its minimal patch of landscaping at Christmastime. My favorite part was how they'd leave it on all night, so that I'd see it on my rides home in the wee hours. I just enjoy Christmas lights, but not too many people leave them on through the night. There are some homes that do along Route 3, but when we're cruising by at 50 mph, it's difficult to take in an entire house or block. But one tiny little tree is easy to see on Route 3.

A slothful New Year's Day

2011-01-01T23:11:00.001-05:00

Before I get any more wrapped up in other internet distractions, it's time to get back to the personal blog. I've let it slide yet again, so in a last-ditch effort to bring myself back to it, I'm hoping to dedicate myself more to it in 2011.

Two years, ago, I pledged to take a photo a day and post it on my photo blog. Mission accomplished. Last year, the plan was to devote myself to more baseball blogging, and that has gone well -- though the photo blog suffered as a result, going from 418 entries in 2009 to 40 posts in 2010. This year, the goal is to update this one more frequently -- I'm not putting any requirements on it, but I'd like to shoot for at least four per month -- a once-a-week average -- while maintaining the same on the other two blogs. Maybe I'll get to it more (I could see myself jumping into this 110 percent, posting every day -- or close to it -- for the first week or so, until that pace proves to be too much and I slack off a bit), but I'd hope it's not any less than that.

I think part of the reason my visits here have waned is my use of Facebook and Twitter, where both sites allow me to post simple, quick thoughts without the need for elaboration. But what they don't provide is a journal-like record of my life, an easily read (or searched) log that I'll (presumably) someday use to look back, reflect and enjoy. Or something.

So let this stand as the record for Day 1 of 2011, when we spent the entire day lounging around Bryan's house -- Casey and me on the couch, Bryan and Lee on the air mattress on the floor -- and watched our way through six entire movies: Ghostbusters 1 and 2, Rushmore, Saved, Scrooged and The Royal Tenenbaums. Breakfast was Mickey Mouse waffle cakes (allegedly waffles, but they seemed more like pancakes to me); lunch was delivery (pizza for me) and dinner was takeout (gourmet mac and cheese with bacon).

I also spent a good part of the day with the laptop open, either watching bowl games (and Notre Dame-Syracuse basketball) online or working on my timelapse video of the New Year's Eve party. That effort follows. Happy New (blogging) Year!

Celebrating our woodiversary

2010-09-22T02:14:00.003-04:00

Matt and me and Nolan

I first went to Cooperstown in 1988, when my family stopped over for a night in August on our way to Boston and Maine for our regular summer vacation. The second trip came in 1992, when we went -- and my sister and I each brought along a friend -- for Tom Seaver's induction into the Hall of Fame. That's the origin of this photo, Matt and myself next to a display after a long day of touring the Hall. I've long wanted to go back, not really caring when, and in fact thinking I'd do it in the offseason, when it would both be less crowded and, at least for lodging, cheaper (not to mention easier to reserve).

Then, rather suddenly last Saturday, it was determined that Casey and I will be going to Cooperstown on Thursday to spend the night. Friday is our fifth anniversary and in discussing what we wanted to do this year, we weren't really keen on another fancy dinner in New York City, which we've done for each of the past four. Last year, after reading a story in The Times about Block Island just after the summer season, I suggested that a four-day weekend on the island would be a good fifth-anniversary trip. But as September approached, we re-evaluated and determined four days away wasn't in our best interests, so we started thinking of other options.

Casey brought up the idea of using our National Parks Pass, bought in March and thus expiring in March 2011, but there's not much outside of NYC/NJ within four hours where we could use it. So I started putting into Google Maps random destinations to see how long the drive was from our home. Gettysburg fit within four hours, as did Cooperstown. I suggested the latter but played it down. Casey, after briefly perusing some dining options in town, was more enthused. "Let's do that," she declared.

So we booked a room at the Tunnicliff Inn, with plans to drive up on Thursday after Casey finishes work at noon, walk around town to decide where to eat, and then spend Friday at the Hall. We don't have a set time to be back, other than before too late Friday, because Casey has to work on Saturday morning.

Strangely, though, each day seems to have brought a new Cooperstown connection since we decided on this quick getaway. First, the Hall will be featured on Wednesday's "Ghost Hunters" on SyFy. And then there was this post on Baseball-Reference about the recent visit by one of the site's editors.

Before deciding on Cooperstown, we consulted the traditional anniversary gifts and saw that the fifth is wood, but that didn't give us any ideas. So now we're wondering if we should mark the occasion with a personalized bat. It's much better than the designated modern gift: silverware.

Beyond our lodging, the Hall of Fame and Friday's lunch, I don't think we'll plan much ahead of time. With Thursday morning now open, we can leave earlier and get into town to have a slightly later lunch on Thursday afternoon, then take more time to walk around a bit. We'll decide where to eat that night after we've checked out a few places in person. That Baseball-Reference post already has me eager to walk around the village for the first time in 18 years and see how it stands up to the memories of my 16-year-old self. And I wonder if I'll remember anything from inside the Hall that isn't in the photos I took or the video Matt and I made as we walked the galleries. (A video I hope to soon digitize, though it won't be before this trip.)

A quiet, start-of-autumn getaway to the shores of Otsego Lake should be the perfect break from hectic city/suburb life and a nice chance to recharge before the craziness of October.

About last post

2010-09-14T17:05:00.002-04:00

So yesterday's post about the blue/white/yellow belt? Ignore that part. After posting, it occurred to me that I hadn't checked one smaller bag that had been in my rolling bag, so I did that today and the belt was there.

Thank you all for your concern. I'm glad I could now set your mind at ease.

I'm losing it

2010-09-13T20:57:00.003-04:00

Well, not it, but things. After unpacking from Chicago/South Bend last weekend, I couldn't find one of the four belts I'd brought on the trip. The missing one was a blue/white/yellow (close enough to blue and gold) cloth belt that I think got left on the floor at O'Hare when I rearranged my bag so that I could convince the agent that it would fit in the overhead compartment. This comes a few months after I last saw one of my Underarmour T-shirts, a red one that I can't recall where it lay last. And we've now been in our house for nearly three and a half years, but a few baseballs seemed to have vanished in the move. Either they're still tucked away in some unsorted container (though I don't think I've left any box unchecked), they inexplicably got left behind or the movers noticed them and swiped 'em. But it's way to long beyond the fact to complain if that were the case.

At least I still seem to have my wits about me.

I know your name ...

2010-08-30T15:21:00.003-04:00

So Gothamist asked, "Do you remember your friends' phone numbers?" And, sadly, I don't. I wish I did. I used to take pride in knowing everyone's numbers. These days, I know my wife's cell number and, on good days, my sister's and my mom's. My dad's never took. Yet, I do still retain the digits of two of my best friends' houses, but only one would still do me any good. The other's parents have moved away, leaving their 8321 suffix embedded in my brain, unable to be defragmented.

If I were living in my bathtub for a week, that's what I'd use my time for -- memorizing phone numbers. That'd prove to be more useful going forward than knowing the presidents in order.

What I missed

2010-08-18T23:56:00.001-04:00

from k.geis' flickr

Gothamist had a post about tonight's spectacular sunset, which I saw ... from the windows of our kitchen at work. I was heating up my dinner around 8 p.m. when I saw a rosy sky to the west, a tint of pink on a water tower across the street. I tried to get a shot through the window with my phone, but it wouldn't focus on the sky to get the color. I could've come back to my desk to get my point-and-shoot, but I let it go. It only would've reminded me that I was here, in the office, instead of out there, somewhere.

A lot's been happening the past few months -- lo, all these months I've neglected to post anything. I don't know why. I've had ideas of things to say, adventures to describe, but by the time I've found myself in front of a computer, I've lost interest. So this time, I just decided to pound it out. Let's see if I can keep that going.

Final goodbyes

2010-05-27T21:28:00.006-04:00

After watching two shows that accompanied me through the last decade sign off this week, I started thinking back to some of my other favorites, those that I watched without fail from week to week. Despite some of the touching and tear-jerking moments as Lost and 24 ended their runs, I didn't find myself feeling quite the same sensation of emptiness and, well, loss that I used to over a favorite program's ending -- and it's all because of DVDs.

As we all know, Lost isn't lost to us -- the final season will be out on DVD in August. And though 24 had several common threads throughout its eight seasons, each "day" can stand alone, so we can just ignore the sub-par years and rewatch the good ones, like the first, ground-breaking campaign when Jack Bauer had to save Pedro Cerrano from becoming an insurance pitchman. (Or something like that; it's been a long time since I watched that season.)

My feelings this week included two kinds of sadness. The first is for the emptiness in my weekly TV schedule -- no more new episodes to anticipate. The second is based on the escape into the shows -- a group of plane crash survivors on an island, a counterterrorism agent who will do whatever it takes to get answers and protect this country -- and a suspension of disbelief. I wanted Jack -- both of them -- to win, not just by defeating evil, but by riding off into the sunset to enjoy his accomplishments. That Jack Shephard had to give his life to triumph and Jack Bauer had to flee his country and never see his daughter and granddaughter again was heartbreaking, but necessary to the story. But then I can bring myself back to reality, remember it's only a story, and go back to previous thrills and triumphs from years past.

But I can't do that with two of my all-time favorite programs, The Wonder Years and Ed, both of which came along before (just before, in the case of Ed) rights agreements took into account shows' lasting legacy on digital video. As a result, their release on DVD is hung up in negotiations for the rights to the music that played such a big part in both of them. Ed only lasted four seasons and used its extensive soundtrack more as an accompaniment to the storylines, but the music matters enough that cutting corners won't do the show justice.

The Wonder Years has a bigger task ahead of it. Not only did it run nearly twice as long -- six seasons -- but its music, in many cases, was the story, right from the opening credits, which featured Joe Cocker's "With a Little Help From My Friends." The cost to renegotiate all the music rights has been estimated in the millions of dollars, no surprise when a look at one random episode's song listing includes nine tracks. I'm not holding my breath. For now, I can only rely on my homemade videocassette tapes of what I think might be the complete series in random order, taped off of Nick at Nite or TV Land back around '97-98 ... if they still work. I haven't watched them since about then.

Both The Wonder Years and Ed were special to me, for vastly different reasons. In The Wonder Years, Kevin was the same age as I was. As he moved through seventh, eighth and ninth grades into high school, so did I. Some of his awkward social situations -- school dances and general boy-girl interactions, dealing with older kids -- were parallel to my days at school. And Fred Savage, in fact, is just two months older than me; a high school classmate of mine pledged the same fraternity as Savage at Stanford. With Ed, the connection came in the geography. Set in the fictional Stuckeyville, Ohio, it was filmed in northern New Jersey, giving me a chance to visit some of the locations, including Stuckey Bowl itself. (I only saw it from outside; Casey got to go inside after the show had ended and they sold off many of the props.) I hated to see both of them go.

So unlike Lost and 24, all I have of The Wonder Years and Ed are the memories of watching those final scenes -- of Kevin at the Fourth of July parade and the voiceover describing meeting Winnie at the airport years later, his wife by his side, and his dad's death; and of Ed and Carol dancing at the bowling alley as Yo La Tengo's "My Little Corner of the World" played over them. That will have to do for now.

Abbey's country

2010-03-11T22:48:00.003-05:00

The ghost of Ed Abbey

For myself I'll take Moab, Utah. I don't mean the town itself, of course, but the country which surrounds it -- the canyonlands. The slickrock desert. The red dust and the burnt cliffs and the lonely sky -- all that which lies beyond the end of the roads.

-- Edward Abbey, "The First Morning," Desert Solitaire

We chased Abbey's ghost around the southwest, but of course it was in Arches where we felt his presence the most. When we first drove through town on our way to Canyonlands the day before, I looked at Main Street for some sign of familiarity from my visit back in '98, but found none, not even the Arby's where I bought lunch, until we reached the bridge over the Colorado River. I'm not sure why, but I remembered that Arby's, how I bought a chicken sandwich and curly fries (the only reason I stop at Arby's) to go and took my lunch up the road to the little park along the Colorado, just beneath that bridge. The Arby's is gone, apparently, and they're renovating the bridge, and it turns out I remember little from my previous short stay in Moab.

And that includes Arches. I remembered the entrance road that runs alongside U.S. 191 and I recalled the visitors center, but I had no memory of the steep climb the park road makes alongside the redrock cliffs, winding its way up into the big rock garden that is Arches. My memory was of the road once you finish the climb, when it opens up to a vast vista to the south, over the petrified sand dunes to the La Sal peaks on the horizon. I remembered the road curving around Park Avenue and running alongside the Great Wall, and the turnoff at Balanced Rock for Double Arch, the Windows and Turret Arch.

Desert Solitaire was the reason I first came to Arches, and after short-changing myself on that initial visit -- I believe I only was in the park from mid-morning to mid-afternoon and didn't hike the path to Delicate Arch -- I was determined to give Casey, on her first visit, and myself a full day this time. As part of my preparation, I brought both Desert Solitaire and The Journey Home. My reading of them -- the second time for Solitaire, my first for Journey -- bridged the stay in Moab, and I found that reading them after visiting the places made the images in my mind much more vivid. As a result, the time spent felt more rewarding, because I was better able to put myself in Abbey's shoes than if I'd read the books before the trip. I found it easier to recall the park while reading the book than to recall the book while in the park.

So after re-reading Abbey's account of his first morning in the park and searching a bit online, I deduced the location of the house trailer where Abbey spent his summers as the steward of Arches National Monument, as it was then. I could've asked a park ranger, as that article mentions, but what's the fun of that? So before turning right after Balanced Rock to explore the Windows, we made a left on to the unpaved road that rises a hump to a picnic area and then becomes uneven and rutted as it slopes down toward Willow Flats. It then continues several miles through the backcountry and crosses Courthouse Wash before meeting Highway 191 eight miles north of the current entrance to the park. This dirt path through the desert was Abbey's way in and out of the park.

I may have been wrong, but not far from the turn off the main -- paved -- road, near the picnic area, just before the Willow Flats road deteriorated, was a clearing that currently held a few concrete barriers and other maintenance tools. It looked like the kind of clearing where a house trailer may have stood during the park's more primitive days. But the clincher, to me, was the view. This spot sat atop a bluge in the land, with Balanced Rock a few hundred yards away, the La Sal range off on the southeastern horizon and the crux of the park -- Devils Garden, the Fiery Furnace, Delicate Arch -- off to the north. Abbey described this vantage point in his book, and with the road quickly descending past this point, I didn't see another clearing that would offer the views that Abbey had.

Abbey would probably loathe the fact that the paved park road passes so close to where his trailer sat, cutting him off from Balanced Rock and the arches past it, not to mention that the picnic area and pit toilet on the park map (PDF) may be where Abbey built his ramada, the covered-from-the-sun, open-on-the-sides patio to escape the confined heat of the trailer when summer reached the Utah desert.

We then drove out to the Windows parking area, passing Ham Rock on the way, and finding a relatively full lot. We walked the loop trail, stopping first to explore Turret Arch, passing through it to the other side and catching the bearded man beneath it for the photo above. I took two shots for perspective, keeping one in color and converting that one to black and white after seeing it on the computer; it wasn't until looking at it that night in the hotel room that I saw the resemblance to Abbey in profile and knew I'd just taken one of the iconic photos of this trip and one of my favorite shots, ever.

Back through Turret, we followed the path to a fork where the path on the right goes to the South Window, the left path to the North. Two women and several small children -- walking slowly -- went right; we went left. The North Window looks out on a view like that from Mesa Arch, though the drop-off through the arch isn't so sudden; you could pass through and descend to follow a path through the backcountry. Even if you don't, the vista in front of you is a reward in itself: small canyons and rock spires scattered about the desert, leading off to Salt Wash in the distance.

Double Arch sits nearby, unchanged and sitting in the perfect morning light seen on the WPA poster. Somehow, I missed this one back in '98, too, even though it lies a short walk from the parking area. If I did take the time to see it, I didn't take any photos, or I don't remember them. On that trip, I do remember weighing more time at some places vs. more places, but less time. I didn't have a hard end date for my trip, but I knew I wanted to try to meet my family in Maine in August. And so I told myself that it was OK if I cut a visit short -- it just meant I'd leave something to come back to see.

On the park road again, we turned to head deeper into the park, first driving past Wolfe Ranch to the Delicate Arch viewpoint, a short if at times steep trail that gives you a view of Arches' -- and one of Utah's -- most famous and iconic spots, though you're a mile away on the other side of a 500-foot abyss. It was a brief glimpse from the other side of what was to come after lunch. I basically planned the morning according to the photography suggestions in the park newsletter. After a look at Delicate Arch and a quick stop at Wolfe Ranch for some photos with the right light, we drove back into Moab to refuel with burgers at Milt's Stop and Eat.

Fortified with beef and cheese and tots, we returned to the park and began the mile-and-a-half trek to Delicate Arch. It's an arduous and varied hike, first through the brush around Salt Creek, then up a small switch-backed rise and down and up again as you approach the long climb up the sandstone, where Abbey noted that the legions of tourists have left a noticable path from cairn to cairn on the rock. At the top of this stretch, the walk becomes more pleasant, winding and dipping and rising slightly again through a pleasant collection of rock formations, juniper, sagebrush and damp, muddy pockets. The final push covers a ledge cut out of a cliff -- on the shadowy side, so that much of where we trod remained covered in snow and ice, but thankfully it angled in toward the cliff wall rather than out toward the slope.

And then, you're there. I shouldn't have even tried to describe it myself; Abbey does a fine job of it:

Many have made the climb to Delicate Arch, so many that the erosion of human feet is visible on the soft sandstone, a dim meandering path leading upward for a mile and a half into a queer region of knobs, domes, turrets and coves, all sculptured from a single solid mass of rock. What do the pilgrims see? The trail climbs and winds past isolate pinyons and solitary junipers to a vale of stone where nothing has happened for a thousand years, to judge from the quietude of the place, the sense of waiting that seems to hover in the air. From this vale you climb a second ledge blasted across the face of a cliff, round a corner at the end of the trail and Delicate Arch stands before you, a fragile ring of stone on the far side of a natural amphitheatre, set on its edge at the brink of a five hundred foot drop-off. Looking through the ring you see the rim of Dry Mesa and far beyond that the peaks of the La Sal Mountains.

There are several ways of looking at Delicate Arch. Depending on your preconceptions you may see the eroded remnant of a sandstone fin, a giant engagement ring cemented in rock, a bow-legged pair of petrified cowboy chaps, a triumphal arch for a procession of angels, an illogical geologic freak, a happening -- a something that happened and will never happen quite that way again, a frame more significant than its picture, a simple monolith eaten away by weather and time and soon to disintegrate into a chaos of falling rock. ...

If Delicate Arch has any significance it lies, I will venture, in the power of the odd and unexpected to startle the senses and surprise the mind out of their ruts of habit, to compel us into a reawakened awareness of the wonderful -- that which is full of wonder.

We sat up there for a good half-hour, at least, and could've stayed longer, but there was more we wanted to see. Our stay happened to fall within the departure of some of the more voiciferous people who had been there before us and we left just as a new collection of hikers arrived; for the most part, we had a quiet and serene stay for ourselves.

Though there were the two items that slipped from their owners' grasps and rattled down the rock into the amphitheater: a plastic water bottle one couple accidentally kicked down the slope as they stood up to leave, and the camera lens of a photographer who had been crouching in a small level ledge a few feet below where we sat. I nervously watched him taking his shots, his boots holding him onto the sandstone slope. When he shimmied back up to his jacket and started changing lenses, I further questioned his judgement. And then, as I was drawing Delicate Arch in my notebook, I heard the sound of metal and plastic bouncing off the red rock. I looked down, he looked up, and I said, "That didn't sound good. Was it a lens?" He nodded: "Guess I'm going for a hike."

He walked around to the base of Delicate Arch, then sat on the slope and considered whether he could get down into -- and back up from -- the bottom of the amphitheater. It forms a basin, with a patch of soggy sand -- including rather recent footsteps -- a juniper and some sagebrush. At the opposite end, it appears to connect to more stable ground, perhaps accessible to the trail, with only a small wall blocking it from view.

After some thought, he abandoned the plan and started the walk back along the trail. As Casey and I began our walk down, I could see him ahead. Before long, he wasn't there anymore, so I suspect he went off-trail to find another access point to the amphitheater to retrieve his lens.

I took note of the time -- our walk down took maybe half an hour, after a 45-minute trek up -- and noted the groups we passed that were heading up to the Arch. Nearly down, we came across a couple, their two children -- one a toddler strapped to Mom's back, the other a daughter walking up with grandma -- and wondered how they'd get to the top in time, let alone down before the shadows started settling into the nooks of the canyon. But that wasn't our concern -- we headed deeper into the park along the road, passing the Fiery Furnace as it lived up to its name in the late-afternoon light. The road, which had descended from Panorama Point into Salt Valley, began rising again as we approached Sand Dune Arch, Broken Arch and Skyline Arch on our way to the park campground.

We got out for one more hike that we hoped would take us in a loop from the end of the campground road to Broken Arch and back, but after a brief detour that took us to a quiet view of an arch whose name escapes me at the moment, we were beat. The sun had ducked behind the rock wall behind us and the shadows stretched across the terrain in front of us. Weary and tired of tromping over the snow, still ankle- and knee-high in places, we decided to call it a day and, essentially, a vacation.

Driving out of the campground, we noted the campers as they stoked their fires and began to settle in for the night. We turned onto the road again, driving past Devil's Garden, the 7.2-mile trail and collection of arches at the very end of the park road, and began to make our way out of the park. So deep into Arches were we that it took about 45 minutes to drive the 20-something miles from Devil's Garden back into Moab to our hotel. After showering, we walked across the street back to Moab Brewery, settling in at the bar for more hard-earned food and a couple of pints.

Where the roads run every way but straight

2010-03-10T22:48:00.002-05:00

The grand view

After reading Desert Solitaire in college, I had my heart set on visiting Arches during my post-grad cross-country adventure, yet I somehow only allowed an afternoon for exploration, and that's clearly not enough. I also didn't take into account that Canyonlands National Park is less than an hour to the west of Arches' entrance. On this trip, I didn't overlook that proximity.

We got ourselves up only a little after the sun -- which wasn't showing through the cloud cover anyway -- and were on the road north through southern Utah and the snow. Monument Valley was dry, if overcast, with just a powdered-sugar dusting across the desert. At the top of the hill at the end of a long stretch of U.S. 163, I pulled over for a few photos, getting a bit of a different view from the one seen in Forrest Gump when he decides he's had enough of the running. In getting out of the car, I feel my foot hit the underside of the dashboard, but think nothing of it. When I get back in the car and close the door, the icon on the dash showing a door ajar remains lit, but with all four doors closed, I cannot determine the source and assume it's a glitch. About 14 miles up the road, when we pause to photograph the rock formation that gives Mexican Hat, Utah, its name, I happen to notice that the hood had been "popped" -- thank God for the latch that serves as a second form of closure. Why the Ford Fusion uses the door ajar light to indicate the hood has been disengaged is another matter.

The road continues to wind around the buttes and mesas, changing elevation and passing through the towns and settlements of Bluff, White Mesa, Blanding (where I believe I stayed back in '98), Monticello (where we doubled back for a picture of Shake Shack's southwestern cousin) and then Moab. We kept driving right out of town, across the Colorado River and past Arches' entrance to Utah 313, turning left and heading west to Canyonlands' Island in the Sky district. We saw few other cars on the road and just one was parked at the visitor center when we stopped to get my passport stamped and use the restrooms -- the first of many pit toilets in our two days in the two parks. As we left the parking lot to drive deeper into the park, the older British couple whose car we saw crossed the street for some photos of the view. We'd encounter them at Mesa Arch and Upheaval Dome, too, but in our roughly four hours in the park, we saw no more than 10 other vehicles.

Our first stop, Mesa Arch, offered an easy half-mile loop to the window on a vast mesa below the cliff. Before we left the parking lot, a group of four returned to their car. On the trail, we passed a ranger and a couple heading back to the parking area, saw the British couple arriving at the arch as we were leaving and encountered a couple from the University of Iowa (they each wore sweatshirts declaring as much, and their car advertised it too) as we came around the hill back to the parking lot. None of our subsequent stops would be busier, though Upheaval Dome equalled it.

Though the view from Mesa Arch was breathtaking -- and photos can't convey the vastness, nor the sensation of walking up to the archway and seeing nothing on the other side, at least not less than several hundred feet down -- I didn't realize that we had yet to truly experience Canyonlands. We drove on to Whale Rock, a large, rounded sandstone bulge resembling a half-submerged whale (the above-the-waterline view) visible along the road. Marked as a short hike on the map, we were drawn to it. As we entered the trail from the parking lot, a father and son finished gathering their things and would soon follow us along the path.

Casey went ahead and followed the cairns up and over small humps and hills, through a gulley or two and around the juniper trees. Thinking of the formation as a whale, though the tail isn't visible, we were near the lower third, and as I looked to my left I noticed a cairn atop the great beast's humpback. This trail was taking us to the top of the whale.

Soon we were climbing the long, gradual sloping back of the beast, encountering eroded pools and small clumps of earth deep enough to support a juniper or a few bushes. Having climbed a hundred feet or so from our starting point, we followed the cairns to the left around a steeper bulge atop the rock but had to tread carefully over some loose gravel lest we slip as if on marbles and risk a long, painful slide down the rock to the trees at the bottom. Once around the bulge, we reached the "head" of Whale Rock. A line -- a crack in the rock, or a second formation pushed up against the first -- marked a deliniation between head and body, and the trail before us, as marked by the cairns, suddenly grew steeper. I started up on all fours -- my hiking boots gaining traction on the face of the rock as I went hand-over-hand, leaning forward for better balance. When I got about two-thirds of the way up, Casey paused and sat, unsure about going further. I sat, too, just above her and we looked back at the view before us. We could see our car far below in the parking lot, the road snaking back the way we came and disappearing behind another hill. All else was pockets of snow on red rocks and desert flora.

As we sat there, we began to hear the voices of the father and son we'd seen in the parking lot. They were coming over the higher and steeper hump that we'd walked around. I decided that I'd come this far and wanted to finish the journey, so while Casey said she'd wait for me, I turned and finished my crawl-climb up the rock, needing only a few steps before I felt comfortable enough to stand up. About to tell Casey it wasn't bad at all, I turned to find her right behind me. "When I saw you do it so easily, I couldn't wuss out," she said. "Plus, I didn't want those two to come by and see me sitting there."

At the top of Whale Rock, we had a vast view. Most of what lie to the north and east was obscurred by nearby ridges, but views to the west, south and southeast were wide open. If we weren't talking and couldn't hear the father and son, who were pleasant when we chatted with them, the only sound in our ears was that of the wind. We were so far from any airport, out of the way of any flight plans, there were no man-made sounds to be heard. We were mere specs on the rugged landscape, miles from any road that didn't dead-end at a cliff or a National Park Service parking lot. A few days ago, I thought the Grand Canyon was silence, but that was only in the middle of the night. Instead, this is silence: Canyonlands, 2 p.m., on a Wednesday. It may not be like this on a June Saturday, but it is on this day and it's noticeable. I love it.

Father and son took a few pictures -- "Dad! Get one of me kicking in the air!" the boy exulted before performing a karate kick atop Whale Rock as his dad snapped away -- and then settled themselves into a depression to shield themselves from the wind and eat their lunch. Moments earlier, we'd discussed together just what Upheaval Dome could be and whether we were looking at it from our vantage point, or if it lay beyond the formations in front of us. I speculated that it sat behind the rocks that rose from just beyond the parking lot at the end of the road that we could see. Casey and I left them to their lunch and descended the whale and returned to our car.

As soon as we parked at the Upheaval Dome parking lot, it was clear that the formation itself indeed lay beyond the rocks in front of us. The trail led up (and we once again passed the British couple) and soon we were standing at the edge of the mysterious cone protruding from an impressive crater. The two main theories on how Upheaval Dome came to be, with the latter believed to be more likely than the former, are a meteor impact or a salt dome.

We had the viewing area to ourselves and then made our way along the ridge for a few hundred feet to gain a different perspective. After a short while, we headed back to the car and encountered on the way six new faces, plus the father and son, who paused to tell us that next they'd be driving to the Aztec Butte trail. "It looks like it will be a similar hike to whale rock!" they told us. As we drove past it, we chose not to explore it for ourselves, and I wonder if they were disappointed not to see our car at the trailhead or encounter us once more along the trail.

Instead we continued along the park road, turning off for the Green River Overlook, speaking softly to each other so as not to disturb the experience for the lone photographer there before us. Yet he is driven out and we soon follow when a 4-Runner full of frat brothers arrives and they talk loudly of impossible feats of agility in descending into the canyon or leaping over a chasm that would surely end in the best possible way: failure.

We continue on to what amounts to land's end in Canyonlands: Grand View Point. Two cars -- one of them sporting a bumper sticker reading "THE DUDE ABIDES," of which Casey must take a picture -- are all we see in the parking lot, and the quartet that abides soon returns to their Subaru and departs. We have just enough time to enjoy the view for ourselves and are returning to our car by the time the five brahs are pulling up.

Grand View Point stood out for me the moment I looked at the park map online, because I recalled Abbey's chapter in Desert Solitaire: "The Dead Man at Grandview Point". I'll let him describe it, because I can't top it:

Looking out on this panorama of light, space, rock and silence I am inclined to congratulate the dead man on his choice of jumping-off place; he had good taste. He had good luck -- I envy him the manner of his going: to die alone, on rock under sun at the brink of the unknown, like a wolf, like a graet bird, seems to me very good fortune indeed. To die in the open, under the sky, far from the insolent interference of leech and priest, before this desert vastness opening like a window onto eternity -- that surely was an overwhelming stroke of rare good luck.

"Jumping-off place," to clarify, is a metaphor for the missing man's passage from life into death; he did not literally jump from the point onto the open mesa of the White Rim. Abbey's brother found him under a tree a mile or so from where he'd parked his car.

And for this day, this chapter of our trip, Grand View Point -- today's maps break it into two words, unlike Abbey -- serves as our jumping-off point, for from here we get back into the car to return to Moab, eager to check into our hotel and walk over to the Moab Brewery for dinner. We're there early, eating in an uncrowded dining room, and I keep an eye on the Notre Dame Big East Tournament game I can see in the bar. Once I see that Notre Dame has a lead, I can tell by the motion on the court when the Irish score or when Seton Hall has the ball. ND puts the game away just as we're putting dinner away.

To enjoy a few more of the house brews, we decamp to the bar, finding two seats on a corner. Soon, a middle-aged man to Casey's left starts chatting with us about Big East basketball and we discuss the conference and the similarities in our backgrounds -- like Casey, he's from Pennsylvania (though the Philly area) and he went to Boston College. He moved to Moab by way of San Francisco and seemed to be enjoying his simpler life. "You know, I've never texted, tweeted or Facebooked," he said, just as Casey and I were wrapping up all three on our phones. We chatted a little about New Jersey too, at which point the shaggy young man to his left and said, "Excuse me, did I hear some discussion about New Jersey over here?"

Casey confirmed his query. "I just moved out here today from Teaneck," he said. Our first night of two in Moab and his first of many, and we each come across someone who lived 15 minutes away back east. Even in the desert southwest, were you can drive for miles on a designated highway and not see another car, even another sign of human settlement, this world seemed just a little smaller.

Two days on the reservation

2010-03-09T22:09:00.000-05:00

A snow-covered Grand Canyon was charming and adventurous, but it was nice to head east along the Rim Road, make one last stop to gaze upon the emptiness at Desert View, and then descend to Cameron, where Arizona 64 ends at U.S. 89 and you can go south to Flagstaff or north to the Navajo Reservation and Page and the blasted Glen Canyon Dam.

We turned left to go north on 89 and then east on U.S. 160. Just outside Tuba City, we stopped for 15 minutes to tour the dinosaur tracks petrified in the rock floor of the desert. Our Navajo guide, Delfina (not sure of the spelling), led us across the wind-swept sandstone pointing out the prints left by allosaurus and other "wondrous lizards," though after further research, I don't think we saw more than mere footprints, which are unmistakable (and she didn't try to tell us any were made by Tyrannosaurus rex), so the alleged eggs and the potential skeleton now seem dubious. But that doesn't take away the allure for me; I'd still stop again to look at the prints and pretend that the small round bubbles were once dino eggs.

We made a donation and got back on the road, through the towns and not-quite towns of Tuba City and Moenkopi, Tonalea, Cow Springs and Tsegi to Kayenta, which had the last traffic light, gas station, McDonald's and other roadside staples we'd see before crossing the border into Utah ... only to then turn onto Monument Valley Road, cross back into Arizona (no sign this time) and onto the Monument Valley Tribal Park. In a parking lot at the end of the paved road sat a gift shop (or trading post, as they like to call them in the desert), restaurant and The View hotel. A quick check-in had us in our room in time to step out onto the balcony with our cameras to watch setting sun bathe the monoliths across the valley -- the Left (West) and Right (East) Mittens and Merrick Butte -- in the deepest red-orange hues I've ever seen. The sun was setting behind us, over the hotel, and even though the rock formations sat on the desert floor at an elevation below the ridge on which our hotel sat, they reached high enough so that they held the light as the shadows made the long, slow creep up from the floor.

The sun down, we stepped back inside to organize ourselves, but I returned to the balcony a short time later to get a stronger cell signal to call my parents. As I did, a coyote trotted along the ridge below the balcony, looking up when it heard me and sitting down at one point. The wily guy probably knows to ook for scraps beneath the balconies where the tourists come to gaze at the desert and watch the stars at night.

We walked down to the restaurant for dinner -- our first of three meals there (we brought crackers, string cheese, granola bars and juice with us for breakfast to save a little money since none of the hotels after Sedona offered it for free) -- and agreed that the dry Navajo Reservation would provide a good check for us as far as our alcohol intake. The free refills on soft drinks helped the bottom line as well, especially once we got to Moab and its brewery across the street from our hotel.

Back in our room for my most anticipated night of the trip -- but not for the reasons you may be thinking -- we turned out the lights and stepped onto the balcony to look up at the dome of stars, filling the sky from the horizon to the roof over our heads. I'd requested a room on the third floor, the highest, specifically to have the best vantage point at night. With the help of the Google Sky Map app on my Droid, I could confirm Venus on the western horizon (on the other side of the hotel; we saw it on the way to dinner) and spot Mars and Saturn in the sky above the Mittens. Castor, Pollux, Betelgeuse and more were hanging out up there, too.

I tried my hand at photographing the stars with a long exposure to create trails across the sky, but unfortunately the A/C power adapter that I'd bought for my camera hadn't arrived before our departure (likely delayed en route by some of the snowy weather in late February) and I was only able to take three shots before my three batteries were drained. In a way, though, I'm glad I didn't have it, because I wouldn't have thought to bring an extension cord to reach from the room out to the balcony, so it would have done me as much good as it did being in the post office back in Clifton.

With my batteries drained, I couldn't experiment with different settings, so the one shot of the three that was salvagable had one glaring flaw -- my white balance, still set to auto, is (I suspect) the reason pixelated red, green and blue dots appeared on the image. I probably wouldn't have bothered to post it to Flickr (or here) had I not tried looking at it in black and white. The dots are still there, but they don't stand out as much in black and white. At least I had a decent composition and can use this as a starting point for my next attempt, whenever -- and wherever -- it comes.

Loving the idea of spending the entire day in the tribal park, we set the alarms for early the next morning, waking up to step onto the balcony with our crackers, juice and cheese and settling into the deck chairs to watch the sun come up. The opener was just as spectacular as the previous night's closing, with a few clouds streaked in shades of rose and indigo to complement the orange horizon and add depth and variety to the tableau.

Afterward, a nap was necessary, but once we arose for good, we set out for the Wildcat Trail, the only self-guided hike in the park (the others required Navajo guides), which circles the Left Mitten. Though the description on the hotel website and the arrows on the map given to us at the front desk both said to circle the monolith in a clockwise direction, as the Navajo do, yet when we reached the point where the trail circle back on itself, the marker pointed to the right -- counterclockwise. Most of the footprints we followed did the same, and the mileage markers (the whole trek is roughly 3.2 miles, and we'd passed the three-mile marker on the way to the fork) were laid out in the counterclockwise direction. This bugged me throughout the hike and continues to perplex me now, but no ill will came of us as a result of spurning Navajo tradition.

The walk was a true desert hike, over soft, beach-like sand, firm redrock and muddy, adhesive wet clay during one stretch in which the path and a wash through the rabbitbrush and Mormon tea undergrowth were one and the same. The mud caked onto our hiking boots, filling the treads and turning the dark gray of my soles into a deep red to match the ground on which we trod. We stomped our feet on any slickrock we found and picked up a little more mud -- though less adhesive -- over the rest of the trail, but by the time the trail looped around to meet itself, we'd shed all the mud in the coarse, dry, loose sand. "It's a natural exfoliant!" Casey noted.

Around the backside of the West Mitten, as I walked ahead of Casey, hearing only our footfalls and the wind, I thought I caught a comment from behind me. I slowed and asked her what she had said, but she insisted she hadn't uttered a word. "Probably just a rustle of my pants or one of our packs," I surmised. "It almost sounded like a horse's whinny, though." Casey punctuated that statement with a whinny of her own. Yet a minute or so later, just as we were about to resume our walk after snapping a couple photos, we did in fact hear a horse, and turning to the east we saw two of them grazing in the desert, closer to a homestead at the crest of a small hill than to us, but free-range grazing nonetheless. So at least I wasn't hearing things.

The hike finished with a 900-foot climb back to the vacant campground where we'd started, and after shedding our gear in the room, we went to lunch in the restaurant and stopped by the shop so Casey could procure some prickly pear juice. Before leaving for the trip, I considered using this day in Monument Valley to make the two-hour one-way drive to the Four Corners and playing Twister -- one hand and one foot spread out over Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico -- but after enjoying the comforts of The View and checking the weather report (calling for snow), we ditched that plan and any attempt to take our Ford Fusion rental out onto the 17-mile dirt road through the tribal park and decided we'd earned an afternoon to relax at the hotel.

To get out of our rooms, we took our laptops and books (I was re-reading Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire in advance of our trip to Arches National Park; Casey had brought along Kerouac's Desolation Angels) to a pair of leather chairs and ottomans set in the second-floor traverse past the lobby. There, we caught up on reading, chatted with a few fellow travelers and looked out the windows with regularity as the squalls came through, obliterating the Valley and its formations from view. A few hours later, it was time for dinner and a quiet, lazy evening of TV and more reading as the snow continued and cancelled any star displays for the night.

Winter at the Grand Canyon

2010-03-08T13:03:00.000-05:00

The Grand Canyon is silence.

I woke up in the early-morning hours in our bed in one of the Bright Angel cabins and had trouble falling back to sleep. As I lay there, hoping the next day's weather would improve for us, the compressor on the mini refrigerator in our room shut off, and all was silent. Complete, utter dead stillness. It's an experience we don't get on the East Coast, though I suppose if I lit off for the northern New Jersey Highlands on a spring weekday, I might come close. But chances are, I'd still hear a plane overhead as it makes its way to Newark or I'd still have to block out the whir of the trucks on Interstate 80 or 287.

But at Grand Canyon National Park, should you wake up in the middle of the night, you'll hear nothing, provided your companion is sleeping soundly and not snoring. As I lay there, my ears were off duty. I could hear my breathing, so I held my breath. I heard Casey, sound asleep next to me, but was able to block that out. Maybe a truck went by on the nearby village road, but that lasted a mere moment. Everything else was silence.

The first experience for many at the Grand Canyon is the same: You arrive at the rim and stand there looking out at the Colorado River's handiwork and hear nothing but the wind. At least, if you're lucky. If you arrive with a tour group, you'll have that moment for little more than seconds before someone starts talking. But in many cases, visitors are so taken aback by what they see before them that they treat the spectacle like the cathedral that it is. This trip was my third to the Canyon and I still held my breath upon seeing it again.

That is, when we finally did see it. We left Sedona and drove north on Arizona 89A up through Oak Creek Canyon, gaining elevation with every tick of the odometer. Soon the snow was falling, and it continued, on and off -- but mostly on, until we arrived at Grand Canyon Village. Once we walked through Bright Angel Lodge to the rim, we were met with a wall of white. The Canyon was shrouded in a cloud. We were so high up it wasn't just fog; it was a cloud. Snow continued to fall as visitors milled about, walking the Rim Trial -- at this location a path, paved and wide as it passes several of the lodgings and restaurants in the village.

Casey and I filled the hour until we could check in by walking to the El Tovar Hotel, then back to the Arizona Room at Bright Angel for lunch. Once fed, we returned to the desk to get the key(card)s for our cabin and unloaded the car. Restless and not wanting to sit in our cabin while it was still daylight, not to mention the potential that the weather could clear any minute, we bundled up and set out eastward along the Rim Trail, deciding to walk the 2 1/2 miles to the visitor center. There was no particular reason to go other than to pass the time, enjoy the walk and steal glimpses of the abyss when the clouds allowed, which was not often.

From the visitor center, we boarded the shuttle bus for the return, stepped into a gift shop or two near our cabin and enjoyed a drink at El Tovar's cocktail lounge. Following dinner at Bright Angel's diner, we capped the night at the adjoining bar and watched the last few Academy Awards handed out once they changed the channel from ESPN's worthless NBA game of the night.

After a fitful night's sleep -- mostly excitement at what lay ahead on our vacation, though I did contemplate getting out of bed to write down some of these thoughts when I first had them in the wee small hours -- I woke up and dressed around 6:30, walking over to the rim to see if the weather had cleared. It hadn't, though the overnight snowfall had left a thin coating on any remaining roads and paths that had held off any sticking the previous evening. I returned with a report and Casey and I went back to sleep for a couple hours.

Around 8:30, we awoke for good, bundled up and made our way to the rim. The clouds were parting and offering a limited glimpse into the nearby chasms, but the main vista remained behind the white curtain. The sun, rising behind us in the east, was making an effort to peek through the clouds. Casey and I chatted with a French-Canadian on the trail and we all agreed that by noon, we should have a clearer view.

It didn't take nearly that long. As Casey and I walked westward for 45 minutes, the views began appearing. The white snow, evergreen trees and tan sandstone of the nearby cliffs reached out and then dropped off, but where we had once seen a transition in grays to the white clouds, we now saw further -- to the red formations rising from the bottom of the canyon, to the orange spires reaching to the remaining clouds, to the Bright Angel Trail reaching out and disappearing behind another drop on its way to the Canyon floor.

We made our way to the Trailview Overlook before turning back, packing up our things and checking out of our cabin. Once the car was packed, we boarded a shuttle bus westward, disembarking at Mohave Point for a prime view of the Colorado River winding below us. From there, we began our trek back east, following the Rim Trial when we could -- often walking on top of the packed snow, sometimes punching through drifts up to our knees, occassionally losing the trail completely and trudging up to the road to walk along the asphalt. Though not a full Canyon hiking experience, we prefered the potential hazard of a shuttle bus along the road than a slip off the trail -- if we were even on the trail -- into the Canyon itself. Our efforts took us back to Powell Point and the marker commemorating John Wesley Powell's navigation of the Colorado River all the way from Wyoming through Colorado, Utah, Glen Canyon and the Grand Canyon. There, we hitched a ride back to the village on the shuttle, ate lunch at El Tovar's main restaurant and got back in the car to head off on our next part of the adventure: Monument Valley.

A new view of Sedona

2010-03-07T09:16:00.001-05:00

My first visit to Sedona was in June 1999, when Bryan and I stopped in between Flagstaff and Phoenix. We were in Arizona for the first wedding among our college friends, just 13 months after graduation, and decided to make a brief vacation out of it. We landed in Phoenix on a Wednesday, drove to Flagstaff, toured the Grand Canyon on Thursday, then stopped by Sedona on Friday on our way back to Phoenix. We slid at Slide Rock in the morning -- the sun hot, the water frigid -- bounced up into the red rock hills on a jeep tour (not a pink one) in the afternoon and sped south on I-17, arriving back in Phoenix for dinner and to meet up with the rest of our friends arriving at Sky Harbor Airport.

The Sedona I remembered based on that brief visit was a quaint mountain town rimmed by the picturesque vermillion cliffs, an artsy community with galleries and boutiques along Main Street -- not its real name -- overlaid on an outdoorsy, mountain hamlet inhabited by hikers and fat-tire enthusiasts, the crunchy granola set. So either Sedona has changed a bit in the last 11 years, or my brief glimpse kept me away from the reality. The 2010 Sedona I saw was closer to Orlando than Boulder, the town I've since learned fits my memory of Sedona much more than actual Sedona does now.

Casey and I stayed in the western end of town, along Arizona 89A after it bears right once you leave downtown as you're traveling from the north. The highway out by our hotel is nothing like the two-lane center of town; outside the shopping district it becomes the strip-mall district, a four-lane thoroughfare lined with chain stores and restaurants with a few touches of local flavor to provide some variety. I had no idea this end of town existed, so when Casey was scouting hotels, I encouraged the affordable and let her research the options. I figured the west end was an extension of downtown, that the Days Inn would be nestled in with other budget lodgings yet still maintaining Northern Arizona charm. Sedona had come highly recommended to Casey by some friends, and I paired those recommendations with my memories. It occurs to me now that maybe those friends hold different opinions on what makes for a quiet, enjoyable vacation spot.

After checking in, we drove downtown and walked both sides of the main street, ducking into a few shops when the window displays -- or the varietys of jerky -- drew our attention. During our stroll, though, we stumbled into the hidden Sedona, the part that I hadn't seen before and that erased much of the charm for me. After turning down the first time-share hawker who addressed us ("Hi, you folks just get into town?" was enough of a warning), I was fooled by the next guy. He was nice enough, and I don't remember exactly what he said that caused us to detour into the alcove and stand at his desk while he pulled various brochures tried to sell us on a 90-minute time-share presentation the next morning in exchange for discounted jeep tour tickets, a free romantic candlelight dinner or a great deal on a scenic train ride in the mountains near Jerome. He had an answer for every activity we threw at him in an attempt to end the spiel, asking only that we show up at the resort south of town at 8:30 the next morning. By 10, we'd be free to begin our excursions, but with a free two-night stay at one of their 170 worldwide resorts for our time. We turned out to be one tough sell, and he finally gave up when we convinced him that, in fact, yes, we are the kind of people who enjoy waking up in the morning, taking our time over breakfast gauging the weather and our gut feelings before deciding where the day will take us.

Saturday did take us to Jerome, but I don't recall any train tracks or engine whistles. We wouldn't have considered watching the mountains from inside a passenger compartment, nor on a bench of the open-air cars. I may hop aboard the railroad at Disney World to see the park or get from Frontierland to Toontown, but on my one visit to Jerome, I'd prefer to get closer to the sights. So we began by driving straight through town to the "ghost town" at the old Gold King Mine. It's a ghost town in the same way that the Olive Garden is authentic Italian food -- because they say it is and they charge you for it. And while it may be a ghost town out of a Scooby Doo episode, where it takes an active imagination to see the thrill in it, we were OK with that. Mostly an assortment of rusting cars and trucks, some mining equipment and a collection of shacks and buildings that once may have been used for blacksmithing, wood cutting and other old-timey pursuits, it is at least set up around the long-closed entrances to the mine. We enjoyed our hour perambulating over the hills among the Studebakers and farm animals -- two penned-in goats, a flock of chickens and roosters scurrying about, a donkey that knew to ring its bell in hopes of food and a gray bunny that had dug itself a nice little trench in the dirt beneath a plow. It all began with a pleasant welcome from the in-character "miner" who bore a striking resemblance to Frank the Tank's boy, Blue, and who, when told we hailed from New Jersey, replied, "I've heard of that place. You don't live in Camden, do you? Or Newark or Paterson?" While we're close to Paterson, we assured him our neighorhood is far from the mean streets.

We returned to downtown Jerome for lunch, eating what may be the best nachos I've ever tasted at Quince (the pulled pork put them over the top) and pausing at various historical markers on the buildings -- or what was left of them. Jerome is what I thought Sedona was, a tourist destination of shops, galleries, museums and eateries, but without the trap-like commercialism of chain resorts or golfing vacations. Many of the original buildings from the boomtown days have been renovated and re-opened as similar businesses -- the brothel as bar -- while others stand as a literal shell of their former selves, a plaque and a photograph provided to give us a glimpse at the glory days.

Once descending Cleopatra Hill, we doubled back beyond Sedona for a quick visit to Montezuma Castle National Monument, a Native American cliff dwelling carved into the limestone along Beaver Creek. It was a short visit that allowed me to add a stamp to my National Parks Passport and made the purchase of an annual pass worthwhile -- the $5 per person put us at $55 for the trip (Grand Canyon will be $25, Canyonlands and Arches $10 each), so $80 for admission to the National Parks System over the next 364 days seemed like a wise financial choice. It's a well-designed program -- the back of the card holds lines for two signatures, so Casey and I each signed it, allowing either of us to use it for admission to any of the parks, monuments or landmarks under NPS jurisdiction. And for areas like Montezuma's Castle, where admission is per person rather than per car (and for seven days at that), the pass covers the bearer and up to three guests. The ranger explained a local benefit of the pass, which doubles as a Red Rock Pass for hiking in and around Sedona. We used it after leaving Montezuma, driving up to the airport for an aerial view from Overlook Point. Saved another $5 there, putting us at 20 bucks before it's all gravy until March 5, 2011.

Dinner that night was at the Oak Creek Brewery, where we walked in to find two seats at the bar and the Gold Lager to our liking before calling it a night. With snow in the forecast for the next day, I wanted to make sure we had enough time to get to the Grand Canyon well before nightfall.

All the things I thought I'd figured out I have to learn again

2010-03-03T00:35:00.002-05:00

A little over a month ago, Uniwatch pointed to a post about the right way to tie your sneakers. And when Verlyn Klinkenborg wrote about it yesterday, I decided to chime in with my review: It works!

Like Klinkenborg, I had no idea I was doing anything wrong. Of course, I also had some sort of mental block or performance anxiety about tying my sneakers as a kid. I can vividly recall not only asking parents -- mine or my friends' -- to tie my shoes when they became undone well into my school years, but I also seem to remember Sue, the mother of my best friend, Matt, being particularly proud when I no longer had to ask her for assistance.

But this revelation came to me at a particularly fortuitous time, for the sneakers I've been wearing as my everyday footwear for the past several months have a rounder, more slippery lace that tended to come undone more easily than any in recent memory. To wit: There were days when I couldn't even make the third-of-a-mile, eight-minute walk from the house to the train station without having to stop to tie one sneaker or the other. Once I started trying the new method -- the Reef Knot -- I saw an immediate improvement. Now, I have to stop maybe once a week to re-tie a sneaker between the time I put them on and the time I get home and remove them. And like Klinkenborg, I found that the first several implementations required me to think about what I was doing, how I was tying my shoes. It's becoming more natural of late, but there are still times when I have to pause when I bring the one free lace over the formed loop and create the second loop.

Despite the knot's usefulness, I won't be getting any more New Balance with these laces in the future -- and I'll be sure to think the colors through. When I bought these, I saw them as blue and gold -- Notre Dame colors. When I finally put them to regular use, they seemed blue and yellow -- Michigan colors. Ew.

Maybe the lace slippage is just what I get for my tradition in recent years of buying anything with a decent (read: not garish) design in my size at a discount at the LL Bean Outlet in Freeport. This pair was the last I'd stockpiled in the past several years. I'll be due for new kicks when spring arrives (I prefer to stick with the current/old shoes through the slushy snowmelt and, depending on the year, April's showers, then break out the new ones when the weather turns warm) and for the first time in a long time, I don't have a pair stored away. With no trip to Maine planned as of yet for this year, I'll try the Nike outlet in Paramus or see what deals I find in some of the local stores.

No matter the brand, though, I'll be employing the Reef Knot after this success.

Another dream for the photo checklist

2010-02-15T23:25:00.004-05:00

In addition to star trails, one of the things I'm eager to try with photography is a time-lapse video. With the forecast for last week's snowstorm -- and it all lived up to the hype -- I pondered whether I could make it happen, but came to the realization that I would either need to stay up for an extended period of time or quickly find a way to get an interval timer and A/C power connection for one of my cameras. Upon realizing that none of this was feasible, I abandoned the wish for this storm. At some point, I'll research those tools again and maybe I'll eventually have what I need to produce something like this:

Brooklyn Snow Storm (and Melting) Time Lapse from John Huntington on Vimeo.

The slow ride down

2010-02-04T00:05:00.003-05:00

Ann Curry got stuck in an elevator at the New York Times building the other day, but she and her fellow shut-ins spent the time tweeting about it. It always helps to have your cell phone on you.

I got stuck in an elevator in New York once in the mid-90s. Well, I don't know if "stuck" is the right word, because we kept moving -- only at a insanely slow pace. During summer break from college, my friend Mia spent the summer in New York taking some acting workshops (I think) at NYU. We'd occasionally hang out, and on one afternoon, we went to the observation deck of the World Trade Center. On the way down, instead of the rapid blur of floor numbers flashing on the digital display, we got clear, long-lasting numerals for seconds at a time. Instead of whooshing down the dozens of floors to the lobby, we descended slowly but surely, as if being lowered by rope down a cliff.

The elevator operator assured us we were safe, but then explained that this had happened before --and it wasn't going to get better until the ride ended. And these elevators to the observation deck had only two stops -- lobby and roof, essentially. There were no other options, no other floors to select to try to jump-start the high-speed gear.

So a ride that would normally take 45 seconds (wild guess) took 45 minutes (roughly accurate recall). Thankfully, the elevator wasn't crowded and we all had ample personal space. It was a friendly bunch and we chatted as we watched the floors slowly tick away. But this being the mid-'90s, we didn't have cell phones. Even if we did, they wouldn't have had texting or cameras (and I must not have had mine that day, because I don't believe I have any shots of the view from the top). Of course, we also didn't have Twitter and Facebook to which to upload any images.

Once we finally reached the lobby, we probably clapped or let out a mild cheer as the doors opened and we stepped out. With smiles, we turned and headed in our separate directions, out into the warm sunshine of Lower Manhattan.

The band of the fighting treadmills

2010-01-25T16:24:00.004-05:00

After revealing my intentions and a strong start to the blogging new year, I kind of fell off a bit there after the seventh. Well, sort of: I'm going strong on my baseball blog. That's just where I'm feelin' it right now.

But I suspect I'll eventually balance out soon enough -- a few posts a week here, a few (more) there, a photo post once or twice a week, though that one might have an increase in activity as I go through my film negatives and scan them in. I'm nearly done with 1994, which is when I got my first SLR (in August). I'll probably continue to scan in batches -- a month at a time or in segments that seem to offer natural starting/ending points -- and then tweak as necessary and upload to Flickr in one great push. After that, I'll gradually point some out on my various blogs. Or something like that.

What brings me back today was this story I read in Notre Dame Magazine this afternoon. It describes the process of filming the video to OK Go's new single, "This Too Shall Pass," and how they came to shoot it in a field in Indiana with the Notre Dame marching band. I'd embed the video here, except the band's record label, EMI, has disabled that function (as noted in this short segment on the video).

After reading the article and watching the video, I went ahead and bought the album. If nothing else, it'll be good to run to, as was Oh No and its Nike+ iTunes workout, which I bought when I first purchased my Nano in January 2007 to get back into an exercise routine. I spent a few mornings on the treadmill in the fitness center at our apartment complex before we moved out a few months later, and because of that workout, I continue to find that OK Go's songs get my blood pumping.

The album should come in handy as I try to accomplish another goal this year, which is to run at least once more each month and one mile further each month than I did in the corresponding month in 2009. So far, so good, but it's been easy -- I only ran once in January and February 2009, so this month's three workouts (I'll get at least one more in, perhaps tomorrow after the deluge ceases) have covered it.

And I do get to embed one video to end this post, since this older one isn't ruled by EMI:

Josh Charles squared

2010-01-07T21:20:00.003-05:00

I always thought that Sports Night was an underrated and too short-lived sitcom. Plus, it foreshadowed my co-anchor-for-life with the Dan and Casey pairing. I hadn't thought about it in a while until reading that there are two Josh Charles ... -es. I hadn't heard about the musician one before.

Anyway, that story brought me back to several years ago when I saw the Sports Night Josh Charles at a New York restaurant. It was one of my first celebrity sightings, and probably my first celebrity encounter, because I don't usually go out of my way to interact with them. But I felt strongly about my love for the show, so I wanted to thank him. He and a friend had been seated at a table next to us, so as we got up to leave the Corner Shop Cafe (same name and location, but previous owners; in fact, I think we were there during the soft opening), I excused myself (he wasn't eating yet) and told him that I really enjoyed Sports Night, thanked him for it and wished him luck. He might've been in a play at the time, but I don't remember. He smiled and thanked me and that was that.

Harry's television debut

2010-01-06T23:08:00.005-05:00

My first reaction when Casey said she'd gotten tickets to Martha Stewart's cat show was, "I'm sure my mom would love to go with you and Harry."

But then the more I thought about it, I decided I didn't want to miss this. I don't watch the show, so seeing the production in person wasn't a lure. I've been to TV tapings before, so the nuts-and-bolts of it wasn't a mystery to me. I don't follow Martha much, either (Casey does), but I think it'd be neat to bump into her during a vacation in Bar Harbor and discuss our shared New Jersey roots.

As I thought about it, though, it dawned on me that seeing an audience increased about 50 percent by cats (each person was allowed to bring one cat, but most of the attendees were couples with one feline, plus several without their furry friends) would be as entertaining as the show itself. Plus, as I thought more about it and Casey and I traded comments, I realized that this experience would be similar to a father witnessing a milestone in his child's development, only mine was on a smaller, four-legged scale.

To make it even more fun, interesting and memorable, I chronicled the day in real time in the way we do these days: on Twitter. Yep, Harry -- and his brother, Lenny -- have their own Twitter pages. I set them up before giving myself one, because I'm still not buckled into the Twitter bandwagon and I saw it as some sort of statement that I found it more useful for a cat to have a feed than it was for me.

Harry travels well. We had one false start in getting him into the new soft carrier we bought this week (Lenny's about outgrown the smaller of the two hard carriers we have anyway), but other than that, he just went along with it all with nary a peep -- other than the growling and a couple of hisses when he first came out in the studio.

As best I could tell, all the cats were well-behaved -- except for one who was a guest with Martha and the vet -- with most of them sitting in their companions' laps throughout the show. There was some hissing and growling as they discovered their neighbors, but none lurched or swatted at those around them, that I saw. Harry checked things out from our laps, then stepped off mine to the step on my right, since I was seated on the aisle. He ventured out toward the women across from me and then went up the step and settled at the feet of the woman behind me. (I'm certain there were more male cats in the audience than male humans.)

I think because we had deprived him of several important hours of sleeping time, Harry tried to catch up during taping. He sprawled out on the step beside me, drawing the attention of the audience members around us and some of the production assistants who walked by. Harry tends to make a favorable first impression on those who meet him.

Toward the end of taping, Harry got more restless. All he really wanted to was to sleep, but if we tried to nudge him closer or coax him one way or another, he swatted our hands and attempted to chomp down on us, once or twice with a growl. He'll often clamp his snakejaw on our hands (or feet) when we pet or play or adjust ourselves in bed. When the show ended, we quickly forced him into his carrier and zipped him up for the trip home, which Casey endured on her own. I stayed in the city to go to work, but I'm sure he enjoyed the chicken treat she gave him and caught up on his sleep.

The show airs Monday, Jan. 11, and will be available after that on the website.

Friendly skies in Newark

2010-01-04T17:55:00.000-05:00

I have frequent flyer accounts with at least four airlines, but it's been so long since I've used three of them that I'd have to check their rules to see if any miles I once acquired are still valid. The one with the most miles banked, by far, is in no danger of expiration, because it's the one I still use for most of my travel: Continental. The reason for that is simple: I fly out of Newark, which is one of Continental's main hubs, and their flight options are plentiful for where I need to go and when I need to travel. (The last time I flew, however, has escaped me.)

So I do have some allegiance and preference for Continental born out of my frequency of travel and the dearth of delays or incidents I've had with the airline. (Contrast that with Northwest, which I flew maybe twice, but not since I was headed to South Bend in 2001 for my sister's college graduation and ended up renting a car and driving from Detroit, because I'd missed my connection. I arrived ahead of my luggage, which did take the next available flight.)

But I do know that people can quickly become frustrated or enraged when several minor tasks, incidents or delays mount up when flying. For me, I think the biggest irritant is the people around me getting louder and more demonstrative in their anger, which then causes me to become more agitated, though I tend to stew more silently. It may not be good for my blood pressure, but I like to think I hide it well from others.

When I read about the security breach at Terminal C at Newark yesterday that required the evacuation of the terminal and re-screening of all the passengers who had already been through the checkpoint, I wondered just how rowdy the scene was. Perhaps it was suppressed a bit by the fact that Continental allowed passengers to reschedule their flights without paying the rebooking penalty. (Another point for the airline, though had they tried to stick to their rules, they might've had a riot on their hands.) But I have to say I wasn't too surprised to see this video of one group of travelers breaking into song while waiting. in the endless lines to be screened again:

You can have your Jersey Shore; I'll take the real thing

2010-01-04T15:41:00.004-05:00

My parents refused to get cable television until March 1994, which happened to be six months before I went off to college. Thanks, Mom and Dad. As a result, I missed out on a lot for a kid growing up in the '80s and into the early '90s. There are still a lot of shows, music videos and cultural references that I know of but don't completely understand as a result. For one, I pretty much missed the entire "music" period of MTV's existence.

I tried Real World back in its infancy; I remember an episode when they went from their loft in New York City to a Nets game in New Jersey so one of the cast members could meet Larry Johnson, who was playing for the Charlotte Hornets. But I couldn't stick with it and I've rarely gone back since. I couldn't even tell you where MTV is on our FIOS channel lineup. And so I haven't seen a minute of Jersey Shore.

I have seen The Punch, of course. Even before the episode aired, there was a GIF online that showed a few seconds of the footage on a loop, so that you saw Snooki's head go back and to the left over and over. But I have no interest in watching what I know is a contrived scenario of people of a certain background (and I don't mean what ethnic heritage they have) that happens to take place in Seaside Heights, N.J., because that's where MTV rented the house. They easily could've imported this same cast to the Outer Banks, South Padre or Las Vegas and had the same show. The Jersey Shore in Jersey Shore is mostly just the backdrop, the setting. While these particular cast members are representative of some of the people you'll meet in Seaside and other Shore hotspots, they aren't an indication of everyone you'd encounter -- especially in the offseason.

Obviously, the Shore is what it is because of the summertime, and Staten Islanders' money is just as good as the locals', the New Yorkers', the North Jerseyans', the Philadelphians'. But to really know the Shore, you need to go to the quieter, smaller towns. Or you need to go on a quieter weeknight in the summer, not a crowded weekend. Or you need to visit in the offseason, a windy winter afternoon, and stop into a local cafe and give them a little love to get through the down time. The revenue from summer visitors can only last so long.

There are a few redeeming qualities about Jersey Shore, according to Neil Genzlinger, and without having seen the show, I still feel like I can agree with his list. (Particularly the one about the Kardashians. If there's one thing I loathed about my previous employment at a celebrity magazine, it was covering "celebrities" who were famous for no discernible reason. Exhibits 1 and 1A might be the Kardashians and the Hilton sisters.) However, I'm going to continue to separate MTV's vision of the Jersey Shore from my own and do my best to educate others. I'll hold onto the memories I have of my grandfather's summer house in Seaside Heights, which he sold in the early '80s, just before the town began its transition into the scene it is now. And I'll take the quieter beach towns over the loud, neon-tinged circus of places like Seaside that draw the crowds and the gawkers down the Parkway from points north.

And I'll take the Shore in winter, too, when I may have to bundle up a little more, but there are no lines and the gorgeous views aren't as cluttered with swarms of people and bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Cleaning up and battoning down

2010-01-03T13:35:00.006-05:00

We're back from New Year's Extravaganza '09-10 and the wind, she's a-blowin'. We got out of Boston before the storm really set in, had brunch at Bryan's parents' on the water in Hull and made it home in the usual 4 1/2 hours. We'd driven out of the snow by Rhode Island and found dry roads by Connecticut. But upon our arrival home, we found wind gusts up to 30 mph, which are now gusting to 50 today.

To keep warm and to keep organized, we took down the Christmas decorations inside -- including the tree -- and tidied up the house. I'll leave the outside lights for later in the week, when nature's not so forceful. No harm waiting until the 12th day of Christmas, either.

So it's a day of cleanup and football, and I've got the Steelers flag flying outside hoping to bring them luck. They need to win in Miami and hope for a combination of losses by Houston and the Jets or by Houston and Baltimore or by the Jets, Baltimore and Denver.

Go Stillers!

Trying the resolution thing again

2010-01-02T08:44:00.004-05:00

After such a successful resolution in 2009, I'm taking the same approach with my promise to myself for 2010. I want this year to be the year I get back into blogging -- with words, that is. I've tried several times to be more active in this space and on my baseball blog (I like to keep certain interests separate so as not to bog just one site down with such specific posts), but I've failed to keep up with my aspirations.

This time, however, I'm not going to set such rigid parameters (such as a post a day), which may prove to be both a wise move and a mistake. Without a schedule, I could abandon it yet again. But without the pressure, I could find myself more eager and willing to stay with it. I'll say this, loosely: If I can update both this blog and the baseball one at least once a week, I'll be in good shape, but I don't want to say Monday will be baseball day and Friday will be devoted to here.

I think another key will be to remember that I first started a blog 10 years ago this fall (!) not to please and impress those who may read it, but to satisfy my urge to write. I choose to keep it public so that my friends can have a little insight to my goings-on and stay in touch with me as they wish, but I don't want to let myself hold back because I don't feel a thought, a recap of a day, or a post is worthy of publishing because I don't think it would read well to others. Even if what I write turns out to be glorified mental notes or a retelling of an inside joke/had-to-be-there moment, I shouldn't care if others skim past it. This is my space (though not MySpace), for me, and that's what I want to get back to this year.

So far, so good, though I'd really like to come up with a design here that I like and can stick with, maybe one with an easily adjusted header so I can switch it up at will (new photo, maybe new color scheme throughout) without having to choose a new Blogger template. Baby steps, though.

A new era in the new year

2010-01-01T21:42:00.002-05:00

Are we getting old?

That was the question this morning when we awoke from our New Year's Eve festivities at Bryan's in Boston and were merely tired and hungry, maybe a little sluggish, but not hungover. We -- Bryan, LM, Casey and me -- even put on clothes, coats, hats and boots to go out for brunch, a big change from our previous history of barely moving from a darkened living room, where whatever tolerable New Year's Day marathon on TV tended to get us through the day.

The party involved our usual traditions of recent years: shots every hour, beginning at 3 p.m., to celebrate the new year in some country to the east of us; a feast fitting the yearly theme, a country of Bryan's choosing in previous years, but chef's choice -- Casey's -- this year; a steady parade of people coming early (usually with children) and late (arriving in the final hour of the old year); and a bedtime closer to midnight on the West Coast than the East.

One theory was that the food was so good this year -- Italian being a staple of Casey's -- that everyone kept eating and sustaining themselves for the long haul of imbibing. A more likely cause was the fact that we paced ourselves much better. The traditional 8 p.m. shot of water, which serves as a check on our intake and a nod to Greenland's melting glaciers (it's a hard time zone in which to find land to ring in the new year), was not needed as a means to curb our drinking in the way it has in years past. I believe I had only one beer between shots before reaching 8 p.m. And finally, after ringing in 2010 (that's TwentyTen; trying to get into the habit of saying it that way), we sipped our glasses of champagne and then put them down for good. No refills, no last glasses of wine, no last beer for the night. The guests began clearing out and were all gone by 1 o'clock (in previous years, we've still been kicking them out near 3), and by the time the kitchen was cleaned up, water ingested and teeth brushed, our heads hit the pillows just as Los Angeles was breaking into "Auld Lang Syne."

Bryan's younger brother and his wife, who have always lived nearby, even went home to their own bed for the first time rather than crashing in the living room, where they'd stay through New Year's Day as we all recovered. More than just a new year dawned today; we entered a new era as well.

A parting thought for the year

2009-12-31T15:31:00.003-05:00

LM: The other store is a computer store, so they wouldn't have beer.

Me: Nerds don't really drink beer, do they?

LM: I guess not. What do nerds drink?

Me: Kool-Aid?

LM: Whatever their moms buy them!

What has Beethoven got to do with Christmas?

2009-12-23T21:38:00.003-05:00

Nearly everything from today's checklist is crossed off. Still have to pack before we depart tomorrow, but Casey hasn't packed yet, either, so I don't consider myself behind in that regard. Just even. And I also have to wrap the gifts for my family. It occurred to me in my brilliance that I should just leave them here under our tree, then when Mom and Dad come by to feed the cats, they can take them down to their house, where we'll go on Sunday before we return home. This way, we don't have to lug them out to Pennsylvania only to bring them back to New Jersey.

And there we go. The "Christmas season" is just about over. In some ways, I consider tonight the last night, since Christmas Eve is usually spent at one family's house or another, then sleep, wake, repeat on Christmas Day. I think maybe once in my life did I have to buy a last-minute gift on Christmas Eve. And then there was the one year when, after our traditional Christmas Eve morning exchange with my longtime friend Matt and his family, I convinced Dad to take me to the music store so I could spend the gift certificate Matt gave me right away. I'm pretty sure that's when I bought Van Morrison's Hymns to the Silence (double cassette).

Today's plan was to knock out everything I had to do around the house, then get on the train to spend a few hours taking some last photos of New York at Christmas before meeting Casey after she finished work. Only ... I stood at the train station for 20 minutes before they even made an initial announcement that the scheduled 6:33 Clifton departure was cancelled and that the next train, the 6:48 (which was only about four minutes away at this point) was experiencing delays of "up to 10 to 15 minutes" as a result. I know how that goes -- when one train gets cancelled the next one departs each station just a little bit later because there tends to be more people (sometimes double, as you might expect) waiting to board.

I stood there in the cold watching "A Charlie Brown Christmas" on my iPod and glancing up at the directional lights down the tracks every minute to see if they'd come on, signaling that the train was about a minute out. They never did, and once I'd reached the title screen of "It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown!" (it came, along with "It's Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown!," as one hour-long purchase in the iTunes Store) I'd had enough. I was cold and starting to get hungry, so I made my way to the car and sat there for about 10 minutes with the fan blowing on high to thaw out my extremities. Instead of heading straight home, I cruised through some of the neighborhoods on my regular running route to look at the lights on the houses, particularly this one, which I'd spotted from an adjacent street on my way to work a few weeks ago and bookmarked in my memory to come back to, since I didn't have time on that rainy night.

It's just as well that the trains were so messed up today (and I didn't even have to go into Penn Station). This way I'm able to enjoy our tree and our own decorations for one more night and I didn't have to risk frostbite in my toes to take a few more holiday photos around here. It may not be the red-and-green Empire State Building as a backdrop for the tree at the Washington Square Park arch, but it's all for the better.

Tomorrow, to Johnstown, from where I'll work on Friday to mind the site for the day. But it's my only on-call day through the break, and I won't have to think about work again until the night of Jan. 4, when I head back to the train station and hope that the 5:04 is on schedule.

Enough with the parodies

2009-12-23T00:20:00.005-05:00

I like Christmas carols as much as the next holiday reveler. There are some 540 songs on my Christmas playlist on my iPod (though I am trimming the fat this year), and even though I tell myself every year I have all the songs I need, I still find myself adding a handful -- like when I stumbled across the Glee cast covering "Last Christmas" while searching iTunes for Death Cab For Cutie's cover of "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)." And then there was the trip to the supermarket when I had the good fortune to hear a radio station play a wonderfully bouncy version of "Here Comes Santa Claus" by Elvis Presley. How that one got by me until this year I'll never know. So that's three more added this year.

What I can't stand is parodies of carols being used to sell in holiday commercials. And I'm a guy who still can't get enough of "The 12 Pains of Christmas" or "Rusty Chevrolet" (though I do try to limit those listenings to when I'm alone, out of respect for others). Best Buy was bad enough this year (and I LOVE Best Buy), but now we have Marshall's and TJ Maxx doubling up on the parodies. I think this plague of carol parody commercials began a few years ago with the Garmin ads. Thanks, Garmin. (Though thank you, Mom and Dad, for the gift of GPS this year. At least it doesn't play the carol when you turn it on.)

If the retailers must use Christmas tunes as jingles, I prefer the originals (though I know that entails rights fees; whatever). I can live with that. Radio Shack's use of The Raveonettes was a big one for me, J.C. Penney's choice of The Weepies worked well, and even though the commercials are weird, the brief use of "The Christmas Song" at the end of this year's Target spots put me in the giving spirit. My all-time favorite, though -- or at least the best of this decade -- would be the J.C. Penney ads that used a mashup of Bing Crosby singing "Here Comes Santa Claus" and Fatboy Slim's "Wonderful Night." (Hurrah for Mashuptown for that link.) I don't believe the songs were ever mashed up in a full-length cut, so that snippet is all we've got.

But if some mash-savvy user could get those two tunes together, that might be the best gift of all.

So when in doubt, play it safe with the Beach Boys.

A Rockwell-inspired trip down Memory Lane

2009-12-10T22:48:00.006-05:00

Casey sent me a great post showing a selection of Norman Rockwell's photo studies that would become some of his most famous paintings. I had a deep appreciation/minor obsession with Rockwell in high school and into college. As the Apartment Therapy post so aptly puts it, his work sparked "endless nostalgia for an America most of us never even knew."

Yet I've always been drawn to those iconic small-town scenes he so often depicted. I still own a framed print of Marriage License, wrote a college paper on the Four Freedoms series, have a 1,000-piece (maybe bigger) puzzle of Stockbridge at Christmas and sort of believed a friend from high school who said I resembled like the smiling boy on the left of Freedom From Want (side-by-side image TK, maybe). And, of course, I have various items depicting his baseball paintings. Oh! I even still use an address book showing a wide range of his works, even though no one uses address books anymore.

I love looking at the photos to see part of the process and to see how amazingly accurate his depictions and details were. In some cases, his paintings are nearly photocopies. I still haven't been to the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, but with this exhibition I may just have to make plans.

One last Rockwellian-related anecdote from my past. It will probably mean little to anyone else and I doubt I can describe it in as funny a manner as it happened, but I feel like recording it for posterity so that one day when I'm old and forgetful, I can read this blog like The Notebook and live in a fantasy world in my past.

For a few years in middle school and into high school, I found myself involved with the youth group at my church -- mainly because of some of the cute girls in my class who also participated. The pastor at the time was a woman with a family who was really intent on making the youth group work, and one way she did so was to get us involved with the Christmas Eve service. This one particular Christmas Eve service, we each took turns reading different parts of the Christmas story from the Bible. We readers sat in the choir loft at the back of the church -- a small, early-1900s building. The loft wasn't used regularly back then, so being allowed access to it was a thrill and probably convinced a few of us who weren't natural performers to agree to participate.

The readings were interspersed with hymns, and either to punctuate the announcement of what passage was about to be read or to signal the end of the reading and the start of the hymn, one girl was down in the front of the church, at a microphone and podium in one of the two choir boxes on either side of the altar, and tasked with ringing a triangle to go with each reading. That girl, Heather (not the famous friend), was a bit overzealous on one of her taps of the triangle, striking it so hard that it flew off its hook, clanging on the microphone on the podium, then hitting the podium with a thud and falling to the floor. In the choir loft, we snorted in an attempt to hold back our laughter. Heather's brother, sitting with their family in the pews, cracked up. Heather herself laughed as she recovered the triangle and sat down, but on the remaining chimes, continued to suppress laughter. If only we had YouTube back then.

One year at Christmas, I sent Heather a Christmas card depicting Rockwell's Christmas Trio. Inside, I wrote that the trio was supposed to be a quartet, but the fourth had bent down out of the frame to pick up the triangle she had dropped. That year at the Christmas Eve service, our families happened to fill one of the long pews in the center of the sanctuary, and during a particularly solemn part of the service -- I believe it was during the service-capping singing of "Silent Night" as everyone held candles and the lights were dimmed -- I made a motion of striking a triangle toward Heather. Both my sister and Heather's brother also saw and the four of us spent the remainder of the service snorting and stifling laughter. When the song finally ended, we all had tears in our eyes and aching cheeks from laughing so hard. The recessional couldn't happen fast enough, and once we were free to exit the pews, we bolted for the back of the church to let loose with the laughter that had built up during "Silent Night." I doubt that song has ever elicited such a joyful reaction at a Christmas Eve service.

Back to my Princeton days

2009-12-08T23:43:00.003-05:00

For her birthday, my sister wanted us all to get together for dinner in Princeton, which is close to her new apartment in Lambertville. It was a pretty equal distance for my parents to drive from Little Silver and for Casey and me to arrive from Clifton. We left a little early to allow ourselves some time to walk around town before meeting at the restaurant at 6:30.

The walking was brief, however, when we decided a drink at the Triumph Brewery sounded like a good idea. But after that, we continued along Nassau St. to Palmer Square, which was bedecked in holiday splendor. I took a loop around the big tree while my parents -- whom we had come across on Nassau -- and Casey chatted. And as we made our way to Teresa Caffe, we passed Winberie's, one of the places I recall from the high school and home-from-college days when my friends and I would make an afternoon or evening of it and drive across the state (the thin "waist" of New Jersey) to enjoy the campus, the town and dinner.

Princeton provided plenty of firsts for me in terms of an exposure to a college town and college life. This was ironic because of its location an hour to the west of where I grew up, yet Monmouth University (then Monmouth College) was just 15 minutes away and could have provided the same exposure, only without the Ivy League reputation. However it was Princeton that for so long I associated with "college" and what went with it.

I saw my first college football game at Princeton Stadium, a clash between the Tigers and Dartmouth in 1992. One of my best friends, Will, invited me to the schools' annual season-finale clash because his father was a grad. I remember the ride out -- through Freehold and onto Route 33, across Route 1 and over Carnegie Lake (where scull boats often provide the quintessential Ivy League image), then a left to the stadium -- because Will, with his leaner's permit, was behind the wheel of the family minivan. Princeton lost the game, 34-20 (I didn't remember that; I looked it up), but we did get to see Keith Elias, a running back from our high school conference who went on to play a few years with the Giants and Colts.

The lasting image from that day was the postgame performance by Dartmouth's band, playing the alma mater, and Will's father standing there singing. I had never seen such a thing, but I understood the first time I watched the Irish play as a freshman in 1994. Another thing that stuck with me -- though it may not have been that same day, but another football Saturday when I happened to be in Princeton and at a restaurant that evening -- was the postgame crowds at the local establishments. I knew little of college football, and certainly nothing of the gameday experience, but just being in a restaurant (with a bar) as the crowds came in after a crisp autumn afternoon at the stadium struck something in me. That sense of camaraderie and community was appealing to me and when it came time to make my college decision, I feel I chose Notre Dame in part because I could see such a scene playing out each week in the fall. I didn't get the same feeling at Syracuse (my No. 2 school) and though I would've had it at Virginia (No. 3), I knew I wanted to study journalism in college, and UVA cut the program the year before I enrolled, essentially taking the school out of contention.

I don't remember the last time I was in Princeton before tonight, but my guess is that it was more than 10 years ago. I traveled back several times from 1998-2001, when I covered high school track and New Jersey would hold its big winter track meets at the university's Jadwin Gymnasium, but on those trips, I never got to Nassau St. and downtown. Once I crossed Carnegie Lake, it was a right turn to the gym instead of straight into town. Yet in all these years, I didn't notice much that had changed -- though tonight was admittedly a brief visit limited to the few blocks of Nassau St. and Palmer Square that we saw. It was nice to get back and even more pleasing to find that it still gave me the same sense of happiness and enjoyment, a welcoming aura that reminded me of how much I enjoyed it as a teenager. We'll probably have to make a point to get back there sooner.

The first and last days of Billy the Kid

2009-11-23T23:55:00.004-05:00

I didn't realize until now that today, Nov. 23, may have been the birthday of Billy The Kid -- who may have been born in New York City. If true, puts the last verse of Billy Joel's "Ballad of Billy the Kid" into a different light with the potential for an Empire State connection.

But what's certain is that he was killed on July 14, 1881, which sent me back to The Archives for the account of my 1998 cross-country trip to see when I visited family in Silver City, New Mexico -- where Billy spent some time up to and during the the Lincoln County War until he was killed. I wrote little of Billy the Kid during that trip -- though I did mention him a couple of times -- and apparently didn't realize I was in Silver City on July 14, 1998, the 117th anniversary of his death. Even though one of my American history courses in college touched on Billy and the war, and I was intrigued enough to explore a little of downtown Silver City and the nearby nearby one-horse outpost of Pinos Altos, I didn't delve into the local history of the Bonney boys as I might were I to go back there today.

A wild West showdown —
It happened here for Billy,
Lincoln County War.

And the harried holidays start ... now

2009-11-22T22:53:00.004-05:00

In some ways, it feels like we're about a week from Christmas, because the stores began putting out the displays before Halloween, the commercials started airing shortly thereafter and Santa was already taking requests at the Short Hills mall during the first week of November.

In reality, we're still four days from Thanksgiving, the weather has remained mild and I have yet to shift my polos and other short-sleeved shirts from the front of my closet to the back, replaced with the flannels and their long-sleeved cousins. And Thursday will be here before I know it. Casey already began preparations for the biggest gathering we've hosted -- 14 people this year -- and I've got three errand-filled days and two work-required nights before my mother-in-law and her friend arrive on Wednesday afternoon.

Should it all go to plan, I expect to have accomplished the following by the time we sit down to dinner on Wednesday night:

Taken the car to have the tires rotated and oil changed. Clearly not holiday-related, but it's overdue. Plus, I always time the trip to the Hackensack Sears for late morning, so I can hit White Manna, take a seat and get my order in before the lunch rush arrives.

Cleaned the house, top to bottom. This is Tuesday's task, which Casey and I will team up to handle. We've put off some sweeping and vacuuming for about two weeks knowing we'd just be doing it again before the holiday.

Put up the Christmas lights. Yep, breaking a small tradition of mine, which was to pencil in this task for one of the days of the long Thanksgiving weekend. However, with Thankgiving falling later in November this year (which I suspect is the reason for some of the early signs of the season noted in the intro to this post), I feel justified in putting up the lights on Wednesday, which is Nov. 25 -- one month before Christmas. Plus, I'm eager to have them up for all to see in person on Thursday night.

Squeeze in one more minor, but not necessary task. I'd hoped to have accomplished more by now, but barring the acquisition of a DeLorean equiped with a Flux Capacitor, I'll have to settle for hoping I get the previous tasks done with time to spare on either Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday to give me a chance to create a mix for Thursday, organize the basement room into something less obviously a haphazard rec room or fully get the office in order.

And with Friday most likely our usual day in NYC with the visiting family, it looks like any resumption to running and, oh, more than six hours of sleep won't come until Saturday, at the earliest.

So long, Cheyenne

2009-11-13T01:20:00.004-05:00

So I had no idea that the Cheyenne Diner was shipped off to Alabama. To be more accurate -- I had no idea that it had been bought with plans to move it down south. Somehow that all managed to happen without me catching word of it or someone mentioning it in conversation. I'd never been there, and I'm not a diner aficionado by any means, but I always appreciated the classic look of it. I just wish I'd gotten a shot of that neon at night.

And now the Empire Diner on 10th Ave. in Chelsea is changing hands and, inevitably, names. I see that one every time I head home that way, which is three or four nights out of five a week. (Incidentally, I am now addicted to Google Reader. Casey was right about how invaluable it is. I never would've seen these things if I didn't have these New York blogs among my growing list of things to read -- or at least scan -- each day.)

So in a weird coincidence, part of the reason I'd taken this picture of the Cheyenne Diner a couple of years ago was because I had seen a photo challenge that sought contemporary images of the places in the opening scene of Woody Allen's Manhattan. There's a diner in that montage, and my first thought was that it was the Cheyenne, because I didn't recall seeing the name on it. As you watch the intro to the movie, you'll see why that little recall would've helped me -- it's the Empire Diner that's among the images of Woody's Manhattan. Those scenes are a scrapbook of late-70s New York, from the old yellow cabs to the seedy Times Square to another now-lost sliver, Washington Square Park with the old fountain at its off-center alignment with the arch.

Upon rewatching that clip, it also occurred to me that he goes off the island to show Yankee Stadium for nearly 10 seconds, beginning at the 2:51 mark. The ballpark, of course, is not in Manhattan. They're the Bronx Bombers, not the Manhattan Maulers. And that now, too, is disappearing.

New tags in New York

2009-11-11T16:34:00.004-05:00

New York is getting new license plates.

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with cars and, by extension, license plates. I'm nothing close to the collector and historian my mom's cousin (I think that makes him my first cousin once removed) in California is, but I'm still drawn to them, both for the design of the clever or unique and for the amusement of reading an owner's choice for personalization.

But after a visit to Geddy's in Bar Harbor, Maine, last year, the bug bit me again. The store beneath the restaurant sold used plates and with a whole basement (well, a half-finished basement) to myself in our house, I flipped through the offerings and bought a few that I had always enjoyed, like Utah's Delicate Arch and Arizona's desert colors. We dug up Casey's various Pennsylvania plates, a few random ones I'd had in my bedroom as a kid (the old orange-and-blue New York, Vermont, various Maine tags) and I started planning how they'd hang in the basement.

I also started a new quest to collect as many license plates from states that feature lighthouses as an option. Most of those direct a portion of the cost to beach or seashore preservation, like New Jersey's -- which I've had on my car, in three letter/number combinations, since I got my first set of wheels in college.

So the news of New York's new tags piqued my curiosity. But the funny thing about the change New York is making next year is that my first thought -- after noticing their resemblance to the old plates -- was how would people react to the shift away from the red, white and blue of the Statue of Liberty plates. And then I remembered that those were nearly a decade ago, and they've had the blue and white -- from Niagra Falls to the City -- since 2001.

Guess those didn't make much of an impression on me.

Something in the night

2009-10-03T00:52:00.000-04:00

One night only. Giants Stadium. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Darkness on the Edge of Town, start to finish.

I didn't get chills at the announcement that the band would be playing the album in its entirety, but I did get the feeling that it would be something special. It was never one of my favorite albums – not that there’s anything I hate about it (though I’m not a fan of “Adam Raised a Cain”) – but it does have some of our favorite songs, particularly “Badlands” and “Promised Land,” which we tend to get at most shows anyway. But to hear it from start to finish, with the slower songs – and Darkness has several – mixed in put them in a new light. “Racing in the Street” and “Factory” are particularly moving in the way they seem to be lifted out of the pages of a diary – “Racing” as a recollection of one summer as a teen and “Factory” of the sepia-toned memories of a boy looking up to his hard-working father.

But back to the beginning. We got the penned-for-the-Meadowlands song “Wrecking Ball” to open, and though we’ll probably only ever get it on our iPods as a bootleg or potential live album out of this run, I’m a sucker for Jersey-specific songs. “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” grew slightly stale on me for no good reason after seeing it at so many shows, but it made a comeback after the Super Bowl halftime show. From that, he went into one of my all-time favs in “No Surrender,” which contains one of the lyrics that will make it to my list of Top 10 Springsteen Lyrics That Send Chills Through me whenever I get around to creating it:

I want to sleep beneath peaceful skies in my lover's bed
with a wide open country in my eyes
and these romantic dreams in my head

This is ostensibly the last leg of the Working on a Dream tour, but he’s down to just two songs from the album in regular rotation: “Outlaw Pete” and the title track, which is fine with me. (They bookended “Hungry Heart,” with the crowd-supplied first verse.) There are a couple other individual songs I like on the album, but I’m not dying to see any done live. I was happy, though, that my hunch that “Outlaw Pete,” which I pegged as OK on the album, would be a great live tune was confirmed. The huge screens displaying grainy black-and-white desert imagery and the breeze coming through the stadium heightened the experience.

I was curious to see what we’d get during the request segment, because when he first started doing this during the summer ’08 tour, I didn’t favor it. I think I preferred to be surprised by seeing what Bruce chose to play for us and getting the on-stage audibles that were made when he felt a different tune would fit in place of a pre-planned one. I wanted him to decide whether we were worthy of being treated to “Rosalita” or “Trapped” or “Jersey Girl.” (Yeah, it’s not one of his, but it would sort of complete the experience to see it once.) I’ve seen him add “Ramrod” because Max wanted it and watched from above and behind the stage in Austin nine years ago when Bruce and Stevie kept looking back and forth at one another nodding in a Mafioso kind of way as if deciding between themselves whether or not we deserved just one more. Then they gave us “Cadillac Ranch.” And I’ve looked over setlists and gone to shows hoping to finally hear “Rosalita” only to be disappointed in my luck – I didn’t get to see it, but it was played the night before, or the night after. On this night, however, the requests worked for me. We got “I’m Goin’ Down,” “Be True” (big fan fav and one of the great Tracks gems) and “Jailhouse Rock” – which he claimed the band had never played before. They should consider adding it because, to borrow another phrase from that era, they had the joint jumpin’.

“Jailhouse Rock” launched the band into a charged four-song finale of the main set. On the screens, we saw Bruce calling the audible to Nils and Stevie, but someone near us thought he read “Born in the USA” on Bruce’s lips. Even better, we got “Thunder Road.” Giants Stadium had an arena feel to it when the crowd could be heard singing, “You ain’t a beauty, but hey you’re alright” above the band. In a fortunate quirk, during one of the later choruses, a smoky scent not unlike a campfire reached us. We were two rows from the concourse, and I’m sure the hot dogs and cheesesteaks weren’t cooked over an open flame, but for a few bars, it sure seemed like it. On an October night in northern New Jersey, we could almost smell those skeleton frames of burned-out Cheverolets.

“Thunder Road” led to “Long Walk Home,” my favorite track on Magic and another of my Top 10 “chilling” lines:

You know that flag flying over the courthouse
Means certain things are set in stone
Who we are, what we'll do and what we won't

From there, “The Rising” then took us to “Born To Run.” But rather than leave the stage, the band came to the front for bows, then went back to their stations to play. The sad thing is, I suspect this absence of a traditional departure and return for an encore is the result of Clarence’s repaired/replaced knees and hips and I couldn’t shake the thought that these shows may be his last, that when the band wraps the tour and takes the announced 18 months to two years off, Clarence might not be up for three hours on stage anymore. I’ve seen no reporting to lead me to this fear, and I hope I’m wrong about this hunch.

So then “Cadillac Ranch” opened the encore, followed by “Bobby Jean” and the great jig “American Land.” I love that song, the joyous fiddle of Soozie Tyrell, the jaunty celebration of America as melting pot and the imagery of, “Dear I hear that beer flows through the faucets all night long.” (Not to mention that when he sings, “The McNicholas, the Posalski's, the Smiths, Zerillis, too,” so quickly, it kind of sounds like my last name instead of “Posalski’s.”) And then “Dancing in the Dark” and “Rosalita” – which I’ve now seen at least four times, at each of the three Giants Stadium shows and one Shea Stadium night I’ve attended – closed the night.

Friday night ranks up there with the best of the 13 or 14 shows I’ve seen, and after a bad experience at our first Giants Stadium show back in 2004 (way far away in the upper level, with annoying college kids around us), I vowed I’d only go again if I got lower-level seats. We’ve done that for the last two shows there (July ’08 and this recent one) and both have been high-energy, arena-worthy performances. And while I love the fact that I was part of the only crowd that got Darkness on the Edge of Town from start to finish, after looking at last night’s Born in the USA setlist, I would love to see “I’m On Fire” and “My Hometown” done on an autumn night in the swamp.

But I’ll leave those selections to chance and hope that when I finally do hear them, they’re as much of a treat as I’d expect.

These autumn days

2009-09-30T17:52:00.000-04:00

High school band practice
reaches my house from the field
It's football season

- - -

Al fresco dining
no longer an option on
this cold autumn day

Fall's first day

2009-09-23T15:05:00.001-04:00

First day of autumn
Acorns crushed on the road like
Peanuts on the bar floor

It felt more like summer today than fall -- 80 degrees, bright sun, humid. My arms and face got a little rosy as I ran three miles up on Garret Mountain. Could have more of the same tomorrow, but then it looks like autumn will arrive over the weekend with rain and temperatures in the 60s.

After the weekend, we're into the last stretch of baseball's regular season, which can be a relief (the day-to-day grind at work), a pain (the postseason is four stressful weeks) or heartbreaking (when the Mets still have a chance, only to fall short). With injuries wiping out the Mets' season before the 4th of July, at least there won't be heartbreak. Now I'm just waiting for the end so we don't have to watch the losses mount and can forget about them for a few months, until it's time to get our hopes up again for 2010.

It was a great summer. We had barbecues, late nights on the porch and visits from friends. We played Rock Band with the windows open and breezes coming in and only needed the air conditioning for one brutal week in August. I painted the exterior of the house with help from a family friend and have only a few more details to finish before the job is complete -- details so minor that I haven't rushed and it's been about a month since I picked up a paint brush. I may go out there one of these next two days to take care of a couple of them.

And it was a great summer for traveling. To Boston, the Cape and Maine in May; Cleveland in mid-July; back to Maine for rafting at the end of July; then Boston again for my college roommate's wedding at the end of August (a weekend I really should write about before I forget the details; perhaps I'll tackle that one of these next couple of days).

There are times -- sometimes daily, at the least a couple times a week -- when I'll find myself unhappy that I work nights and weekends and don't have the luxury of regular dinners with my wife or dates with friends. I miss out on a lot of things, have to skip get-togethers and weekends away. But then I feel fortunate to have a job, let alone one that can be fun and pays well enough to let us have this house and take these trips. And I still got to do much of what I wanted this summer, even if I didn't do it as often as I wanted. So maybe I didn't dig a single toe into the sand this year or even slip on a bathing suit one time (despite buying two new ones during our rainy visit to Freeport in May), but I'm not as drawn to the crowded, hot beaches as I used to be. I'm sure I would still enjoy a body surfing session, but Casey's not a beach person and living an hour away makes it more of an excursion than the 15-minute drive from my parents'. An afternoon at my uncle's pool would've been nice, but it just didn't work out this year.

So here's to a dip in the pool in Scottsdale in March and perhaps riding a few waves in Long Branch in August, next year. But first, the fall. A great season, after all.

Rainy day remembering

2009-09-11T13:33:00.004-04:00

For the first time that I can remember -- and I admit that I don't remember each and every one in the past eight years -- Sept. 11 is cold, gray and rainy. That morning eight years ago, as I've written before, was clear and crisp, a brilliant blue-sky day marking the handoff of summer to fall, the sun still warm enough to be felt on bare arms but the air a touch cooler, so that wearing jeans feels just right. Many of the anniversaries since have amazingly featured the same weather, including the day in 2006 where the sky seemed to be the same deep blue and the air the same degree of Fahrenheit.

Not today, though. In fact, until I came downstairs this morning and logged onto Facebook and saw a few status updates, I'd forgotten what today's date was. Even though I saw the Tribute in Light from Hoboken last night, a long, deep sleep (and some pretty out-there dreams) had temporarily wiped my mind clear of the passage of time. And what a long time eight years is. It's the difference between middle school and senior year of college (or being a high-school freshman and a first-year employee). It's also the time passed from birth to third grade, the age of the students that Amanda, the sister of my friend Nate, is teaching in Hoboken. At dinner last night, before we turned our attention to Titans-Steelers, she was telling us of today's birthday party in the classroom. I asked how old the kids were, and when she said 8, I replied, "So the one with the birthday tomorrow was born on Sept. 11, 2001." She replied, "Yep. They were all born in 2001, so they don't know what it was like back then."

Eight years down the road, and Ground Zero continues to be a construction site like so many others in New York -- an open pit. I haven't been there since last summer, but there's a little bit of progress to be seen, in the form of the first steel beams for the new tower. But as we get further away from that date, the lack of a rebirth and a memorial becomes more noticeable. The Pentagon and Western Pennsylvania have their memorials, and though they were constructed on the lawn of a federal compound and in a rolling field and therefore didn't have the multiple layers of permits, approvals and government oversight to maneuver through, you'd think that by now we'd at least have a target date for the World Trade Center's rebirth.

Someday I hope to look out over Lower Manhattan from the office or the High Line or Hoboken and not have to imagine the magnificent view of the Twin Towers rising above the cluster of buildings at the tip of Manhattan. The Freedom Tower or whatever ends up being there will stand tall, providing a suitable substitute to allow my mind's eye to picture the two square towers standing side-by-side as I remember them.

Wake-up burger

2009-08-18T04:56:00.003-04:00

I had the best alarm today. I'd set a reminder on my phone about lunch (because I can sometimes forget when there are leftovers in the fridge or something ready for me to heat up), and so at 12:30 (I didn't expect to sleep that long, but there you go), I woke up to the alarm on my phone and the word "BURGER."

Mmmm... Wake-up burger...

Suddenly, a road-trip summer

2009-07-24T00:42:00.005-04:00

[So I've since realized that I had the formula on my spreadsheet wrong and I've only been about 5,200 miles so far this summer. Don't know why I though it could've been 4,000 more than that. Still, it's been a great traveling summer nonetheless.]

It hit me about the time we reached the curvy section of I-80 in western New Jersey and the distinctive hills flanking the Delaware Water Gap came into view: This is a road-trip summer.

I hadn't really lamented the lack of cruising vacations in recent years, but I had noticed it. I wasn't taking long trips in the car from May to September, at least not to new, undiscovered places. There was a wedding in the Outer Banks in 2007, but we had planned to fly down to Virginia Beach and drive from there -- until our flight out of Newark on Friday night was canceled and, afraid that I wouldn't get there by early afternoon to join up with the rest of the wedding party, we took a cab home and got in the car at 1 a.m. and drove through the night. But that was done on the fly and our time in North Carolina so short, it didn't have the feeling of a road trip. More like a travel recovery.

Otherwise, most of our trips in recent summers have been to Casey's family in western Pennsylvania or up to familiar haunts in Maine. But something about this summer feels different, and I love it. It started with a quick overnight to Washington for a baseball game in mid-May with some college buddies. A week later, we commenced a partial repeat of last year's Memorial Day week visit to the Pine Tree State, but we started with the holiday weekend in Boston and Cape Cod and added a night in Bar Harbor, leaving us time for a day trip up Route 1 to Lubec and the West Quoddy Head Lighthouse on the U.S.'s easternmost point.

Then we had last weekend's jaunt out to Cleveland specifically to see the Bruce Springsteen exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and cap the day with an Indians game. On the way, we stopped off at Bucknell for lunch, then did the same on the way back. And in the morning, a few hours from now (how many is yet to be determined; it depends on when I get to sleep after work), I'm off on a solo drive up to Maine to meet up with my college roommate for his bachelor party: two nights of camping and a day of rafting on the Penobscot.

Even before the Maine trip, which will add just over 1,000 miles, round-trip, the car's been roughly 9,434 miles this summer -- and I've been in it, if not driving, for just about all of them. I looked over my mileage records and this is only the second 8,000-mile summer I've had since buying the car in June 2000. Just based on the odometer readings from the first fill-up after May 14 and the first one in September, only the summer of '02 had more miles than what we've compiled this summer -- and a lot of those 9,891 ticks were accumulated on the Garden State Parkway and New Jersey Turnpike as I commuted 60 miles one-way to work.

So now it's time to get on that road once more, to enjoy the mystery of a solo adventure, even if it's just crowded interstates until Augusta and then a group camping weekend once I roll into Millinocket.

Summer miles

2000		6927
2001		7877
2002		9891
2003		4439
2004		6505
2005		3888
2006		3328
2007		5136
2008		4714
2009		9434

If it's summer, there's construction on I-80

2009-07-17T16:25:00.003-04:00

Western Pennsylvania, Friday afternoon, Interstate 80, somewhere east of DuBois

Right lane closed and most traffic has moved over two miles before the closure. This single lane should be able to move through the long stretch of construction cones pretty easily now. Bust as some aggressive holdouts continue to zip ahead on the right, a noble pickup truck gets into the right lane to block them off, even swerving at one point when a white Altima comes up behind. The Altima slows behind the truck, tries to move right onto the shoulder, then left onto the dotted line when the pickup swerves right for the block. After the truck counters to the left, the Altima gets by on the right when the pickup decides it's not worth it with the New Yorker in the white Nissan. Before passing, the Altima slows and the drivers exchange words. The tractor-trailer in the left lane plays along, keeping the pickup's spot in line open so he can move back in at the merge point. Only one or two more cars make it by before a line forms behind the pickup, and the last few cards merge when we reach the cones in the road.

Coming back to a favorite place

2009-07-17T02:43:00.002-04:00

I went back through my old blog to look at some of my previous July 16 entries (last night I did this) and found myself jumping around to some other posts, in part because I've apparently been pretty boring/bored on July 16. I find myself wanting to write, but then I find myself not wanting to take some time to sit down, organize my thoughts, and type them up.

Looking at my old diary -- because that's what we called it back there on Diaryland.com, though I more often referred to it as a journal -- some of my best and favorite works were either college or shortly post-college entries transcribed from notebooks (in my obsessed-with-Kerouac stage, I carried a spiral pocket notebook and pencil to write my thoughts just as he had), or those I wrote in the early hours after I'd come home from the paper and got on my computer in my bedroom at my parents' house. That's when my days were spent driving around the Shore, going on photo day trips, or covering high school sports and minor league baseball. I was out and about, didn't have Flickr or a digital camera or an iPod or Facebook. Or a house. I had time.

But as the entries faded in frequency (I'm not going to count the number, but I split the 2001 archive into three pages, the 2002 into two, and kept '03 and '04 as one) and then in quality, my tasks and responsibilities each day rose. I moved into an apartment. I started dating. I switched jobs. I repeated two out of three of those, the first one three times.

I used to write extensively about my trips and vacations, often at the end of the day on the road. At the very least, I'd put down my thoughts in a file every few days, then polish them at the end of the trip. It was only today that I finally finished off a post about a baseball game back in May, and I still have dreams of something of a travelogue about the rest of the trip. We'll see.

I'm headed home now, and in the morning, we head west to Cleveland for a short weekend trip. But I'm not going to write about it now -- let's see if I make the time to write about it after it happens. And within a few days.

Beer me: Zywiec

2009-06-17T18:04:00.004-04:00

A light, crisp beer made of "pure mountain water" (so says the label), Zywiec is "famous worldwide" (also on the label). There's nothing special in the flavor -- it doesn't floor me the way Victory Prima Pils does, or Gritty McDuff's Vacationland Summer Ale can -- but it's definitely got a refreshing quality to it. And it packs a bit of a kick as far as the buzz goes. The bottles contain a pine (actually a 1 pt., 0.9 fl. oz) and by the end, you know you've finished a beer.

Could I be anymore suburban? The beer capped off a long afternoon in the yard -- mowing the lawn, edging along the sidewalks, weed-whacking where the mower wouldn't reach, and finally trimming the bushes. My arms were about to give out with the shears when a neighbor pulled up on his way out and handed me his electric hedge trimmer through the car window. "Just put it back in my garage when you're done," he said. Emboldened, I decided to trim the hedges near the front porch, too, even though I hadn't planned to do that much. But it all needed to be done, if for no other reason than rain is forecast for tomorrow and who knows when we'll see the sun again.

At least the reservoirs won't be lacking this summer -- if it ever gets here.

Two haiku in June

2009-06-15T22:08:00.003-04:00

Summer rain cools off
a sweltering afternoon
Mist drifts at my feet

Thunderstorm has passed
this sunny June afternoon
Wish I had sunglasses

Opening day on the High Line

2009-06-10T15:33:00.002-04:00

Ever since I first read about the decommissioned railroad tracks built over 10th Avenue and the West Side, I've been intrigued. And once they announced that the old trestle would become the High Line Park, I've eagerly anticipated my first trip up there.

I've missed the Open House New York tours that brought you up to the old, abandoned tracks, but I'm happy to settle for the refurbished park that mixes the gnarled history of rusted rails with the community gathering place of open space and abundant benches. No longer a member of the media that would be invited to press conferences and VIP previews, I'd noticed in the past few days people walking above 10th Avenue and 14th Street and knew that it must mean the park would soon be open. That day was yesterday, and so I made sure I caught an earlier train into the City so that I could alter my usual route from Christopher St. to Chelsea Market just a little and climb the steps to the park.

Not only was it a thrill to look down over the Meatpacking District and to walk over 14th St. instead of having to wait for the light to change, but it was convenient too. The park is on the way to the office, so it's not really a detour to enjoy it regularly. The only concession I'll have to make if I want to take that route is to get my ass in gear early enough to take an earlier train than the 5:04, which maximizes my time at home but leaves me no extra time to wander once I get to Manhattan. Today, that's the train I'm taking after getting home at 6 a.m. and sleeping until 1. The next sunny, cloud-dotted blue-sky day, however, and I'll have to leave myself extra time -- and pack the SLR and the wider lenses instead of just the point-and-shoot -- and enjoy more than just the Gansevoort-to-18th-St. stretch I strolled through yesterday. I've read, though, that there is an exit at 16th St., which is perfect. This could become my regular walk to work -- so long as I can refrain from stopping, or regularly make the 4:38 train out of Clifton.

Out of the icebox and into the fire

2009-04-25T17:59:00.000-04:00

Sunny, upper 80s today, like we skipped spring and jumped right into summer -- diving into the deep end without so much as dipping a toe into the water to test its temperature.

But it won't last. Yeah, we've got three more 80-degree days through Tuesday, but on Wednesday we're down into the 60s again and then the rest of the week will bounce between mid-60s to mid-70s. I'll take that.

I broke out a new pair of sneakers today, and whenever I put on a set for the first time, I feel like I'm sporting clown shoes. They just look big -- oversized -- on my feet until I've worn them enough to break them in, maybe soften the edges a bit and get them to relax their rigid out-of-the-box shape a little.

I also need to ignore the fact that in daylight, the shade of navy blue and yellow that New Balance "N" and accents are closely resemble the maize and blue of Michigan. I swear the colors looked more blue and gold when I bought these in the L.L. Bean factory store last year. But I guess I can't complain too much for a $50 pair of sneaks.

The kind of weekend I live for

2009-04-22T02:37:00.007-04:00

The neon lights of the vertical cinema sign along Route 495 in North Bergen read "ema 12," with the letters stacked upon one another and the numbers paired up below them. The windows of the car were beginning to fog up, as if the defrost wasn't working, but it was only the driver who chose not to turn it on yet. The cloudy windows coupled with a light mist falling in the early-morning hours teamed up to create a time warp, a sense that what I was looking at wasn't present-day, but a long-ago image seen in a book or a movie or described in a piece of spontaneous bop prose tucked away in a Kerouac novel.

For no particular reason, I conjured the thought of a family driving past the theater with a young daughter named Ema -- the singular M one of those naming anomalies parents seem fond of these days, like Mychael or Jayde or Kacee -- and pointing out the failure of fate that personalized the sign for her. And then I slipped into a nostalgic recap of a lovely weekend, the kind I don't get to have regularly because I tend to work on Saturday nights and the kind that you make plans for in advance and hope when the time comes that the events live up to your expectations, and they did just that.

I slept until nearly noon on Saturday after working Friday night, but when I did wake up, the day was bright and beautiful -- high 60s, sunny, truly springtime. I went for my first run in weeks, and the first in just shorts and a T-shirt -- no need for long sleeves or long spandex under my shorts. Casey and I ran a few errands (apparently joining everyone else in Clifton in taking our cardboard to the recycling center, judging by the three overflowing dumpsters and stacks of boxes around each one) and then prepared for a night in the city.

Casey chose Shoolbred's and we settled into the soft chairs around the fireplace. Friends trickled in and we ordered some food and more and more beer. The first couple of hours went by at a pleasantly slow pace, but then the last two merged into a blur of fluttering from conversation to refill to conversation. Before I knew it, we were outside on a busy Second Avenue hailing a cab to take us home. I remember few goodbyes, and Casey says she asked me for money when she settled the tab and that I pulled out my wallet, handed her $40, and replaced my wallet. Of this, I have no recollection. I'm still amazed that I made it out of there with my jacket and the items divided among its pockets (none of which have any kind of closure): my camera, wallet, Moleskin and a pen.

Casey and I were headed back to Hoboken to get the train home to Clifton, and Nate and Marie were on their way to Nate's apartment there, so he took charge and negotiated a deal with the driver of a Town Car. We got in -- Nate in the front, me between the women in the back seat -- and headed for the Holland Tunnel. No longer with any sense of time, I'm not sure how long we sat in traffic before realizing the Holland Tunnel was closed. Nor do I know how long it took to get up to the Lincoln Tunnel, but somewhere in there -- when we had finally started moving with any progress -- I realized that the flashing city outside the windows was nauseating me, so I stared down and focused on my rolled-up jacket in my arms and maintained a grin on my face for the sole reason that Jorja Fox's character on CSI once said that smiling -- presumably the muscles involved -- suppresses the gag reflex.

I succeeded; had this been an eating -- or drinking -- contest, I wouldn't have been disqualified for regurgitating any of what I'd put down. Where we failed, though, was getting to Hoboken in time. When we arrived at the 36th St. entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel, I was able -- thankfully -- to look up and see the cars backed up on the access road. I know from experience that a backup at this point means a long drive beneath the Hudson -- 30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour maybe. Casey and I objected -- loudly -- and redirected the car to the PATH. After a much more reasonable period of travel, we were exiting a cab at Nate's apartment. Following a quick look inside, he drove us back to Clifton, our last chance at boarding a New Jersey Transit train having come and gone more than an hour ago, probably as I was grinning.

Once home, Casey and I loudly and drunkenly discussed our love for our house, our cats and each other, then took our inebriated asses to bed around 4 a.m. I slept until noon, but somehow, the debilitating hangover I expected would be my payment for the night's activities didn't quite materialize. Sure, my mind was foggy, my head a little achy, my movements gentle and measured, but I didn't feel the need to spend the afternoon on the couch. I got onto the computer, I watched baseball on TV. I also went with the greasy lunch: a large plate of nachos, a little extra cheese for comfort.

I also didn't have the whole afternoon to recover. I was due into work at 6 p.m., plus we had plans to cross the two rivers to Brooklyn for an orthodox Easter dinner at Jen's. Unfortunately, my deadline meant a short visit of a little more than an hour -- just enough time to enjoy the varied selection of meats, to have some pleasant conversations with even more pleasant people and to feel that, in the entire time we were there, Jen barely sat down. But we left after all the food had been presented, and she had already dug into a plate of her own, so I'm sure she spent the rest of the evening enjoying the company and the feast she had prepared.

I tend to be anxious when going to small gatherings at which I only know the couple who invited us -- wondering if I'll be able to carry the conversation or seem interesting enough around people who don't share my overblown interest in Notre Dame or the Mets -- but I didn't have any apprehension before Sunday's party, nor during it. I found myself not wanting to leave, though after Saturday night's events, my energy level was already lowered, so more food and a longer stay on a comfy couch would only have exposed everyone to the yawns and blank stares I had to shake off later at the office.

It's afternoons like that, nights like Saturday, friends like those we got to see this weekend that I should recall more often when I have a night off or an afternoon invite, yet I don't know if I can muster the stamina to leave the house after a few trying days at work. It sure makes it easier to go back to the office with warm smiles and friendly faces etched in my memory to help me look forward to the next open date on my calendar.

Poetry in newsprint, virtually

2009-04-18T22:38:00.003-04:00

The sun went down half an hour ago, and there is a nearly perfect stillness in the evening. I stand outside and wonder how such a night is possible, how — in the great cycle of air masses thrusting and obtruding their way across the planet, boiling up from the oceans and scattering over the plains — this small-valley quiet comes to be.

You don't often read such poetry in a newspaper, but Verlyn Klinkenborg's short Op-Ed pieces in The Times are just that, and I try not to miss one.

Thrill in the city

2009-03-20T21:15:00.002-04:00

Two people walking on 16th St. near Ninth Ave. ...

WOMAN: I hailed a cab today.

MAN: Good for you.

WOMAN: It was cool.

(Out-of-towners)

Ethan, Michael, Martha and the songs of R.E.M.

2009-03-15T01:16:00.008-04:00

I had been in a decided drought when it comes to celebrity spotting. People around me were seeing them like spots of gum on the city sidewalks: Will Ferrell in front of the bank across the street from work. Jonathan Cake (the British spy recently on Chuck) at the gym. Derek Jeter ... 's mom at our office. I recall having heard about more, but the details slip my mind now. I'm sure there were some, though.

It had been so long that I hadn't bothered to look. I wasn't conditioned to it, even though the list of famous faces that have been seen in Chelsea Market alone and spotted by my co-workers include Steve Buscemi, Samantha Bee and Jason Jones, and Molly Shannon (whom I later saw myself on the corner across the street).

But on Wednesday, as Casey and I walked to Company for dinner before the R.E.M. tribute at Carnegie Hall, we zigged and zagged our way from Sixth Ave. and 17th St. to Ninth Ave. and 24th St. As we walked up the west side of Eighth Ave., crossing over 21st St., we passed a man tossing a nerf football as he chatted with a woman on the corner. As we turned to walk down 21st to Ninth, in the back of my mind I had a thought that the voice I'd heard from him was somewhat familiar. That instinct didn't emerge from my subconscience until we were halfway down the block. The man with the nerf football had passed us on the sidewalk. Ahead of us, he paused to talk with a woman and two kids sitting on a stoop. He tossed the football up to one of the boys, who threw it back.

That's when I got a closer look.

"That's Ethan Hawke, isn't it?" I asked Casey.

"Yes, it is," she confirmed.

He continued his stroll toward Ninth Ave. before we overtook him, and we turned to head up to Company as he waited to cross the avenue.

We enjoyed our meal of two gourmet pizzas (we ordered the Popeye and Flambe off the menu, with a crisp, refreshing growler of Kelso from Brooklyn) and were finishing our pints before settling the bill and heading up to Carnegie Hall when Casey went to the restroom. As I idlly looked at the patrons -- we had arrived right around 6 p.m. to avoid the crowd, which had now arrived -- I noticed that a group at the round table in the front had begun to arrive. And I recognized the man in front of me: Michael Kors.

I laughed silently to myself and looked for Casey to return. Before she got back to the table, her eyes met mine and I pointed to Kors. She looked and began to laugh.

"He's stalking us!" she said.

We talked about that sighting in Palm Beach as we settled the tab and the rest of Kors' party walked in the door. Turns out he wasn't the most-recognizable face at the table, because after giving him a hug hello Martha Stewart took the seat to his right, her digital camera on the table. Alas, no blog post came of it, but it's not like we needed Martha's confirmation that we'd just eaten some damn good pizza.

The night only got better, once we got to Carnegie Hall. I'll leave the song-by-song recap to New York Magazine and Casey, who's the R.E.M. completist in the family. (I fill that role for Bruce Springsteen, and yet I had to miss a similar show at Lincoln Center in April 2007 because it fell just after our house closing and we had shit to do so that I didn't want to sacrifice a night. So my personal discovery of Josh Ritter came months later.)

Anyway, I got lucky with the three songs I recorded -- "Hairshirt" by Glen Hansard, "(Don't Go Back to) Rockville" by Jolie Holland and the show closer, "E-bow the Letter." They were among the highlights for me. All the performances were good -- especially Calexico on "Wendell Gee," Apples in Stereo on "South Central Rain" and Guster on "Shaking Through" -- but the one I really wish I'd caught was Ingrid Michaelson covering "Nightswimming" with only an upright bassist and digital-delay pedal for accompaniment. (She did it again the next night at City Winery -- and there's a great venue/concert experience that deserves its own entry.)

I just love it when a night lives up to its expectations from start to finish, especially when I'm exhausted enough to know a night in would've done me good. Yet I never wished that was the case, even as I napped on the train on the ride into the city.

Tasty pizza, cold beer, good music and a pretty girl will do that to you.

[Alas, the videos were removed from YouTube. Carnegie Hall getting all bitchy about its copyright. I don't know if this is the place to mention that the show was a benefit for music education, and 100 percent of the "net proceeds" -- after Carnegie's take, I'm sure -- went to three organizations that benefit underprivileged youth. I guess we can't benefit youth music education through the internet, though.]

Spring is springing

2009-03-11T16:55:00.004-04:00

Signs of spring: Scull boats on the Passaic for crew practice; chair-sitting at the AmVets lodge in Lyndhurst; and baseball practice on the new turf fields along the tracks by the old landfills.

I thought I'd dread returning to the city tonight on my one night off in a long stretch of long nights, but I'm excited. Dinner out with the wife, a show at Carnegie Hall. I'll be in bed before 5 a.m. -- probably by 1:30 -- for a change and can have a full day around the house and for errands tomorrow before going back to a vampire's life.

For one night, that's enough. I'll take it.

A white half-birthday

2009-03-02T11:25:00.003-05:00

Hibernation day

I got to leave work early last night to get home ahead of the worst of the storm, but I still drove out of a city where the streets were starting to hold the snow. Route 3 had patches where the asphalt wasn't visible and the only lanes I adhered to were the tracks left by the car several dozen yards ahead of me. I drove slowly -- other than in the Lincoln Tunnel below the Hudson, 30 mph was my max -- and laughed at the maniacs who passed me on Route 3 going the speed limit.

The commute took about 50 minutes, which included brushing off the car on Ninth Ave., and the only instance I had where I lost traction was a few inches as I pulled into the driveway. I logged on to check in at work and stayed online for about an hour and a half. Before I went up to bed, I looked out at the car to find it covered again in about two inches of snow, and my tracks across the porch were mere indentations in the white blanket.

The Weather Channel is trying to fancy it up by calling it the Monday Mega-Storm, but I'd prefer a simple, classic designation more along the lines of "The Blizzard of '09" or "The Nor'easter of 2009," those that take me back to the December 1993 nor'easter that closed school from Friday through Monday or the 1995 northeastern blizzard that shut down everything from New York to Boston and kept me at my roommate's house an extra two days and prompted my mom to send a fruit basket the size of Plymouth Rock just because they had to shelter me for two extra days.

So I'm catching up on DVRed TV and photos and fueling my addiction to Mafia Wars on Facebook while I wait out the last of the falling flakes. That, and if I hunker down long enough, one of the two nice neighbors with a snowblower will make his way along our sidewalks, leaving only the deck, the driveway and the front steps for me to shovel.

You gotta know how to play it in suburbia.

Well worth it

2009-02-22T02:55:00.003-05:00

It certainly falls into the category of why didn't I think of that before? I got off the PATH at Christopher Street tonight and walked the seven-tenths of a mile up Hudson, rather than staying on for two more stops to 14th and walking the six-tenths along 14th or 15th. Not only was the neighborhood more pleasant, but the pedestrians were fewer and seemed more, well, welcoming. Even the bars I passed but cannot enter were more enticing, though that's no surprise considering two of them are among my favorites: The White Horse and Bayard's. Even the Duane Reade and Rite Aid (though that one's on the other side of Hudson) looked more appealing than the Duane Reade at 14th and 7th that I've entered in the past.

Plus, it occurred to me that it's more economical, time-wise, to get off at Christopher because the walk, while only a tenth of a mile longer, crosses fewer main streets (only the two-way 14th, rather than 14th plus four avenues) and cuts out two stops on the PATH, meaning I'm starting the walk a minute or two sooner.

I swear, this discovery is an epiphany. It's like finding the shorter trade route to India, only there wasn't a "new world" halfway there to trick me into thinking I'd made it.

Reversing the commute, last night I had Car 10 heading home, and I remembered having the number before but couldn't place it. So I checked the notebook to find that he'd driven me home on consecutive nights, the second of which he remembered me and already had the address programmed into the GPS, so I was able to kick back and chill after what I recall being a busy night. He also has an affinity for hip-hop music (and Hip-Hop Weekly, in the seat pocket in front of me) and strong cologne, which is better than some of the smells the drivers, um, give off. And though he hadn't driven me home since April (that I can recall), he remembered the street name -- or looked it up in the computer system, if the drivers have access to that info -- as he was programming the GPS.

Time to head out tonight. It's car 271 though.

I see you walking up 14th Street

2009-02-11T00:09:00.004-05:00

I used to commute into New York on NJ Transit by transferring at Hoboken and taking a second train into Penn Station, then the A/C/E subway two stops to 14th Street (though I'd actually get out at 15th Street and walk from 8th to 9th Avenue to get to work). Then I started taking the train one stop past Secaucus, to the terminal in Hoboken and getting on the PATH subway under the Hudson. I'd ride that three stops to 14th Street at 6th Avenue, then walk the three long blocks -- on either 14th or 15th Street, depending on my mood or whether I was stopping for food on the way into the office. The route via Hoboken saves me $1.25 on the NJ Transit ticket and, at first, 25 cents on the subway on account of the difference in MTA and PATH fares. Now that I use a Smartlink card for the discount, the PATH is something like $1.30 per ride, rather than $1.75.

Anyway, a co-worker mentioned last night that when he takes that same PATH line, he likes to get out two stops earlier, at Christopher Street, because the walk up Hudson Street to Chelsea Market at 15th and 9th is a nicer stroll (and it clearly is). But he also felt that the Hudson route was actually shorter than the one from 14th Street.

And that's what made me look up. "I never thought of that," I said, "but you may be right." A quick check with Google Maps' nifty "walking" option showed that the 14th Street stop is the closest of the three (adding 9th Street as well) -- but by only a tenth of a mile. My daily stroll from 14th and 6th to 15th and 9th is six-tenths of a mile, while both the Christopher and 9th Street stops are just seven-tenths away.

That's outstanding. Not only does it give me a more pleasant option for my regular walk, but it opens up new avenues to explore, plus the potential for new dinner options. And, of course, it will provide new photo opportunities for my resolution when I've exhausted everything on my current route, which I may stick with until I've taken all the shots I want to take (like today's). The walk through the Village up Hudson Street or Greenwich Avenue is like a drive in the country compared to the 14th Street strip mall. Even 15th Street, with its rows of stoops and apartment buildings, has a more urban feel than you find in the Village.

The reason it never occured to me that the 14th Street stop might not actually be the hands-down closest is because everything below that long east-west boundary is a jumble to me. It's old Manhattan, where the grid is blown up. (Actually, more accurately, it's where the grid never had a chance to be laid out as Manhattan was settled northward over the decades, converting the farms into city, with the open space allowed for a more ordered system of roads.) Whenever I come out of the subway below 14th, I have to take a moment to orient myself -- if I can. In some spots, it's hopeless, and I take a guess. More often than not, I guess wrong and backtrack. Always an adventure.

Now the adventure will be exploring more closely a new regular route I already know.

Beer me: Zamkowe!

2009-01-29T23:13:00.004-05:00

Zamkowe!

From the back label: The Namyslow Brewery is over 600 years old, dating back to 1321. The word Zamkowe means "castle" named after the brewery's 14th century gothic castle. To this day, Zamkowe is known as the "Beer of Knights."

There wasn't anything special in the flavor of this beer, but it was rather light and very refreshing. It'll be a great beer for a summer evening on the back patio.

It was well-earned today, though. This was the fourth day of significant progress on the basement as I push to have it finished by 6 p.m. Sunday, when our guests arrive for the Super Bowl. We expect to be able to fit everyone in the living room, where the HD TV is, but I'd planned to have the basement ready in case we needed it, and now that we're so close, there's no reason to slow down.

I bit the bullet and hired an electrician to finish the lighting. My uncle had been helping, but after a slip on the ice on Christmas Eve, he's been laid up with back trouble, so we decided to pay the money and get the wiring finished. The guy I hired even cleaned it up a little, installing a switch near the entrance of the laundry area to control the main light there. Until now, that switch had been ... one floor above, in the kitchen. We'll never know exactly why. He also changed the bulb in the utility closet into a pull-chain socket powered independently from the switch that now controls the lights mounted on the walls. Previously, that light was controlled by the switch -- the switch which turned on an outlet in the middle wall between the finished area and the laundry room, the outlet that had an extension cord plugged into it that then ran through the ceiling and somehow controlled the utility closet light and two lamps mounted on the opposite wall that were plugged into another outlet in the utility closet. It's a wonder the previous owners didn't burn this place down with that setup. (Not to mention their decorating motif of fake brick and shingles -- brick on the top half of half the wall space, shingles on the lower half, with a two-inch shelf in between. Two small sections of shingles remain, on a section of ceiling that drops down to allow pipes to run through. They're going to be covered with license plates anyway, so there was no need to go through with the headache of prying them off and putting paneling up.)

With that done, my dad's been up every day this week to finish with the walls. Monday, we put up the last of the sheetrock and cut some paneling. Tuesday and Wednesday, we measured and cut the last pieces of paneling, needing both days because of a particularly tricky section involving an inlaid bookshelf. I had to work both Monday and Tuesday nights, so our work time was limited those days. Today, we glued and nailed in the last sections we'd cut on the previous days and cut one final outlet hole, even devising a way to get the outlet to sit more flush and even with the paneling, instead of being recessed as it originally would have been.

I'd hoped to prime everything by tonight, but the preparations took longer than expected, so I managed to lay the edging tape and spackle the areas that needed it. Tomorrow morning, we'll prime it -- we have to do the whole thing because the sections that were already paneled are in need of new paint, and not just because they're a sea green color. They're grungy. Hopefully by the afternoon, we can get a coat of paint on before the Devils game, and I'll have Saturday for the second coat of paint. That evening, the couches can go into position and the TV can be set up and I'll have my man cave.

Outside the sunshine is skating around on the asphalt

2009-01-28T00:49:00.003-05:00

I can't say I ever read much of John Updike's work, but I would often pause if I came across his name somewhere. For some reason, I sort of grouped him with William Faulkner and Jack London in a line of noted American authors whose work I was not that familiar with. (As opposed to someone like John Steinbeck or Ernest Hemingway, with whom Updike might be more similar, but I'm more familiar with their work.)

So maybe all I really know about Updike is that he continued to write for The New Yorker all these years, and I'd see his byline and read the articles -- and the occasional work of fiction -- and appreciate that I had access to fresh material from one of America's literary icons. But then last week, as I read various reviews of Bruce Springsteen's new album, a few noted the ties between Updike's 1961 short story "A&P" and Springsteen's third track, "Queen of the Supermarket."

To me, the comparison ends with the narrators watching -- crushing on, as the kids might say -- a girl in the supermarket, though Updike's is from the point of view of the cashier, while Springsteen's is a customer's. Updike's story is quite good. Springsteen's song is crap. I just can't get behind it. Maybe he felt the need to write a song -- an officially recognized and released song, at least -- that begins with the letter Q.

While it's sad that Updike's time on earth has come to an end, it's interesting that it came on the day Springsteen's album was released, even if it had been available on NPR for a week. As he left this world, Updike was in the news again for something he wrote nearly 50 years ago.

And 50 years ago, he wrote one particularly gorgeous line, a series of actions as the story reaches its climax and a line that ends with nine wonderfully descriptive words:

One advantage to this scene taking place in summer, I can follow this up with a clean exit, there's no fumbling around getting your coat and galoshes, I just saunter into the electric eye in my white shirt that my mother ironed the night before, and the door heaves itself open, and outside the sunshine is skating around on the asphalt.

Rest in peace, John Updike.

The one nice driver in northern New Jersey (besides me)

2009-01-22T02:28:00.003-05:00

From the You Don't See That Everyday Department:

A woman tried to pull around me at a stop sign, though we were both going straight. I did not have my turn signal on and was not pointed in any way that would indicate I was turning right rather than going straight. I moved first, so she remained behind me. Once in the parking lot at the train station, I moved slowly, trying to determine whether I would go right or left in search of a parking space in the small lot closest to the station. She tried to pass on the left just as I chose to go that direction. I was lucky in that I thought to look for her first. I waved her past, rolling my eyes.

I managed to park first and was walking past her car as she was maneuvering into her spot. After she purchased her fare and I was getting my iPod out, she came up to me ... to apologize.

"I'm not usually that crazy," she said. "I didn't know how much time I had before the train came and I had to buy my ticket."

She was nice about it, and I forgave her.

Good thing I didn't go off on her, which was my first thought.

First listen of 'Working on a Dream'

2009-01-20T01:18:00.006-05:00

Listened to Springsteen's new album streamed at NPR, and here are my initial thoughts...

1.) "Outlaw Pete." Love the strings in the beginning as the song builds, but it gets weak when Bruce's voice is isolated -- and cracks. When it picks up, it's a salvageable opening track.

2. "My Lucky Day." I love the tempo. Was just OK with this on first listen, when the video was posted online. I think it will grow on me.

3. "Working on a Dream." NBC did a terrible job of "premiering" this song during halftime of a Sunday Night Football game. The network spliced together bits and pieces to play over football highlights, and it was horrible. That said, even upon hearing the full version, it may be one of the worst title tracks in the Springsteen catalog (up against "Human Touch" and "Lucky Town"). I'm fine with the verses, but the choruses grate on me a bit.

4. "Queen of the Supermarket." The fourth track? Really? Something like this is probably best left for a hidden "bonus" track. "I'm in love with the queen of the supermarket"? Kind of ridiculous. If he plays this on tour, it'll be the biggest rush to the bathroom of any song.

5. "What Love Can Do." A pretty good recovery after "Supermarket." Upbeat, layered vocals, some guitar licks that stand out, a short solo ... and some train imagery. Bruce goes back to his reliable building blocks.

6. "This Life." Definitely feels like a cousin of Magic, which is what this album essentially is. Several tracks stand apart from that sound, but this one is very similar to "Girls in Their Summer Clothes."

7. "Good Eye." The bullet microphone is back. It must be on a lighter setting than when he used it on his solo tour following Devils & Dust or "A Night with the Jersey Devil" last Halloween, because it's not as annoying. This is a bit of a honky-tonk rocker.

8. "Tomorrow Never Knows." Easily my favorite track. I slid the bar back to hear it again. A folksy, toe-tapping tune that brings to mind several other artists: Arlo or Woody Guthrie, Jakob Dylan, even the railroad-like guitar work of Johnny Cash. Could have come off of The Seeger Sessions.

9. "Life Itself." Again, echoes of Magic. Another one about which I had doubts when hearing online a few weeks ago. But I think it, too, will grow on me.

10. "Kingdom of Days." Meh. After the first listen, can't tell if I hate it or could come to like it. One thought: On the "Walk away, walk away, walk away" refrain, I actually could see young white teens singing along, heads bobbing back and forth, eyes closed, hands held high, in one of those "Songs 4 Worship" commercials. That's probably not good.

11. "Surprise, Surprise." I can live with this one. It's peppy and upbeat, with a guitar solo in the middle. No real -- ahem -- surprises.

12. "The Last Carnival." Ending -- at least before the bonus track that we've all heard already -- with a quiet, slow number. A bit ethereal, with shades of Toad the Wet Sprocket (to me). This one, of course, is Bruce's elegy to departed bandmate Dan Federici.

13. "The Wrestler." Right behind "Tomorrow Never Knows" for favorite status, and I haven't even seen the movie yet. The emotion of the words and music fit the images in the trailer so well, just as they did in the video for "Streets of Philadelphia," so it's no wonder this song won the Golden Globe. I expect an Oscar nomination on Thursday and a likely win in February.

My issues with this album may stem from its release so soon after Magic, which I felt was his best work since Born in the U.S.A. That album sat so well with me that this one had a lot to live up to before I ever pressed -- er, clicked -- play. We'll see how it sounds when I can take it with me -- listening in the car, on a run or on the way to work. It will almost assuredly sit differently with me when I'm not tied to my computer to hear it.

The events of Monday evening, January 12

2009-01-13T18:19:00.003-05:00

5:21 p.m.
We've stopped. This isn't particularly unusual for my commute to work. As our train heads east across the Meadowlands, we sometimes have to wait just before crossing a bridge over the Hackensack River because the span only contains one set of tracks. Yet this time, there's an announcement: We're being held at a stop signal. I'm literally stuck somewhere in the swamps of Jersey, on a New Jersey Transit train held near the western spur of the Turnpike because of frozen switches up ahead near Secaucus. Turns out it was the failure of backup batteries.

5:23 p.m.
The first text message: "Due to Switch Problems, trains on the Main/Bergen, Pascack Valley, and Port Jervis Lines are operating 10 to 15 minutes late." We haven't even been delayed five minutes, so there's really nothing to be alarmed about.

5:25 p.m.
The same text message hits my cell phone. OK, so whoever is in charge of the mobile alerts tonight didn't send it out to all subscribers at first.

5:36 p.m.
Another text alert, only this time the delays are 20 to 30 minutes. I log onto e-mail from my phone to let my co-workers know I'm running late.

5:37 p.m.
The 20-to-30-minute delay text alert, repeated.

6 p.m.
I should be at work right now. It's been 40 minutes, with no indication of when we'll move. Outside the windows is nothing but darkness pierced only by the headlights of the cars on the elevated spur just ahead of us. In a way, it's as if they're hover cars from the future, scooting overhead like in The Jetsons.

6:02 p.m.
An update, via short messaging service: trains "are operating 30 to 45 minutes late." The engineer has come out of the cab and is chatting with passengers and conductors in the car. She mentions the train ahead of us, the problem with the switches and that the trains on lines heading to and from Penn Station New York are running smoothly, with no delays.

6:05 p.m.
I decide that once we reach Secaucus, I'll transfer there. I figure this delay has backed up trains into and out of Hoboken, and once we get over the bridge and into Secaucus, there's no guarantee we'll arrive in Hoboken 10 minutes later, as we normally would. From Secaucus, I'll get to Penn Station and take the subway to work and walk a block between avenues, rather than taking PATH from Hoboken and walking four blocks between avenues. I've also been hungry since about 5:22, with nothing to munch on in my bag, so I'd like to grab something to take up to the office right away.

6:07 p.m.
Well, so much for Plan B. A new alert from NJ Transit: "Northeast Corridor and North Jersey Coast Line service temporarily suspended at Linden due to trespasser fatality." Fabulous.

6:14 p.m.
The one hits close to home. "Main-Bergen County Line train #1116 the 3:58pm from Suffern up to 80 min. delay near Secaucus Junction due to Signal problem." At first, I think that's my train, but I later realize it's the one that stopped in Clifton at 4:34 p.m and should have arrived in Hoboken at 5:07. I'm on the 5:04 out of Clifton, which should've reached the terminal at 5:37.

6:15 p.m.
Westbound service at Linden has been restored, but that doesn't help me, since I will be going eastbound from Secaucus -- if I ever get there.

6:17 p.m.
Just to rub it in, NJ Transit issues another alert saying that service remains suspended at Linden.

6:35 p.m.
Eastbound service has been restored at Linden, with 20-to-30-minute delays. I decide to switch at Secaucus.

6:40 p.m.
The latest alert says that service on the Main, Bergen, Pascack Valley and Port Jervis lines is subject to 30-minute delays in both directions because of earlier switch problems. That's cool, but our delay is now up to 80 minutes.

Amazingly, the time flies as I read The New Yorker and listen to my iPod. I called the office to check in at 6:15, and immediately after hanging up, a train passed us going the other way. Clearly, the problem had been fixed. Yet four more have come by in the opposite direction, and we've yet to move. We were one of the first eastbound trains stuck by this delay. I'm in the first car, and ahead of us, across the bridge (which has just one set of tracks, hence the bottleneck -- trains have to wait for any moving in the opposite direction to pass before they can cross the river), we could see a westbound train also waiting out the repairs.

6:44 p.m.
Finally, we move. Once we cross the bridge, we pause again for several minutes as they sort out the shuffling of the trains into Secaucus.

6:56 p.m.
Secaucus, finally. I step off the train onto the platform and feel liberated. There was nothing that could be done during our hiatus in the swamp. Had we been just inside our outside of Secaucus, there's always the thought that they may find a way to let us off and walk to the station, where we can take alternate routes. But out among the reeds, with the single-track bridge still in front of us, not a chance. I had a bottle of water with me (which I never felt compelled to use) and was in the passenger car with the restroom, but that proved an unnecessary luxury for me as well, so I was never in any dire straits.

7:01 p.m.
I walk along the platform of Track 2, heading down to the spot I like to stand while waiting for the train. Once there, I watch two other NJ Transit trains speed through the station without stopping. I realize that these are trains that aren't scheduled to stop and they can't make any concessions, lest the schedules get disrupted even more, but I still flip off the first silver blur that whooshes by.

7:22 p.m.
At last, a train stops in Secaucus.

7:32 p.m.
Arrival at Penn Station. I choose to take the A one stop to 14th Street rather than the C or E two stops. While waiting, I miss an E. Wrong choice. Oh well. At this point, what does it matter?

7:45 p.m.
Finally, my long commuting nightmare is over. I emerge from the subway on 15th Street, grab some food, and head up to the office. Thankfully, I was No. 2 in the hierarchy tonight, not No. 1, and it turned out to be a relatively quiet night. I missed most of the first half of the Notre Dame-Louisville game, though.

Stupid train tracks.

I'm definitely nauseated

2009-01-09T17:21:00.002-05:00

A woman talks loudly on her cell phone as she rides the train toward Hoboken. It's loud enough for me to hear as I drift in and out of sleep -- and listen to my iPod.

"MAYBE BECAUSE YOU THINK YOU'RE PREGNANT YOUR BODY IS ACTING LIKE YOU ARE. YOU THINK YOU'RE PREGNANT, SO THAT'S WHY YOUR NAUSEOUS."

Or maybe she's nauseated because her friend is screaming personal details across a rush-hour-crowded New Jersey Transit passenger car.

Beer me: Warka

2009-01-08T23:45:00.004-05:00

One of the liquor stores in town includes a varied selection of Polish beers and spirits among its selection, and when I stopped in to restock the fridge the other day, I decided to start a tasting project. From now on, whenever I go there to fill up, I'm going to choose a bottle of one of the Polish brews to try. I'll keep notes on each so that I know which ones are worth another purchase, including a sixer, where applicable.

First up: Warka. I'm not going to give a beer snob review -- not that I don't appreciate those, but if I'm not taking notes after the first couple of sips, I'm not going to be in any condition to organize my thoughts like that. And I'm not. While I agree in general with the reviews posted there -- quite carbonated, more malty than hoppy, minimal aftertaste -- my general impression was that I don't hate it, but it doesn't stand out to me. Which is fine. It's a decent, refreshing lager that I would buy again. There was nothing to it that would scare me away from a future purchase.

Na zdrowie.

When winter kicks your ass

2009-01-08T01:46:00.004-05:00

Not anyone's idea of a good time: The gyro man across the street from my office was working under the hood of his cart last night in a cold, occasionally driving rain. At 2 in the morning. I noticed it only as I got into the car to head home and empathized with him. My thoughts shifted when I noticed the "miles remaining" reading on his dashboard read just 45 -- bet he was glad to be heading to New Jersey.

Winter rain sucks. I got home and stepped out of the car in front of the house, putting my foot down on the curb. And I almost bit it. My right foot slid a few inches on the slick coating of ice on the cement before I caught myself. I turned carefully and closed the door, then heard the crunch of the frozen grass as I gingerly walked over the sidewalk, up the steps and through the gate to our patio.

I've noticed that the gate tends to swing open in heavy winds. The shaking from the gusts must shake the two sides of the gate enough that the loose wooden latch no longer rests on the ledge that keeps it in place, then rotates down into an unsecure position, which allows the gate to swing open. But when it's really cold, the latch seems to tighten and not move so easily. And last night, it was frozen in place. When I touched the top of it to pull it open and enter, I felt the soft, smooth, cold cover of a thin sheet of ice.

I hoped the freezing rain would produce a crystalized wonderland in the morning, but temperatures rose just enough to make Wednesday nothing but cold and wet. The photographic opportunities of a frozen landscape would've been stellar, but there was nothing. So when I left for work, it was a miserable walk to the train. Snow can be a pain in the ass (or back, with the shoveling), but I'd still prefer it to a steady, all-day, sometimes driving rain that soaks you through and stays with you long after you've found cover (and even heat), because the cold wind ensures that the sodden feeling reaches down to the bone.

Brrr

2009-01-07T02:21:00.001-05:00

Not anyone's idea of a good time: The gyro man across the street from my office was working under the hood of his cart in a cold, occasionally driving rain. At 2 in the morning.

Epiphany

2009-01-06T23:23:00.002-05:00

The plan next year: Leave the Christmas lights on until the 6th -- Ephiphany, Orthodox Christmas. Let's go all the way through Twelfth Night. I like the symmetry of that -- even if we're starting weeks before Dec. 24.

Another White New Year's

2009-01-01T21:22:00.002-05:00

Window on winter, originally uploaded by DC Products.

For the third time in four or five years, our New Year's Eve in Boston came with several inches of snow. Only this time, the attendance at Bryan's party didn't suffer because of it. The place was packed and the final pre-midnight shot -- of Brinley Gold Rum (look for it; it's the best) -- involved about three dozen people. I barely noticed the TV going on in the final minute before midnight, but was aware of the countdown. I'm not sure I caught whether or not they counted the leap second, though.

To enter into the public record, here's how we bid adieu to 2008 and rang in 2009:

3 p.m. ET: A shot of Stoli Vanilla as parts of Russia hit midnight.
4 p.m. ET: The Freedom Shot, or the Thrown Shoe -- a shot of guavaberry liqueur, which is made in Iraq. (As long as you say something is in Iraq, it's OK.)
5 p.m. ET: As midnight comes to Malawi and Jerusalem, we drank the Go Diva -- a shot of Godiva liqueur in honor of adopted Malawian children and red wrist bracelets.
6 p.m. ET: Midnight in the Vatican means a sip of red wine.
7 p.m. ET: If it's not Scottish, it's crap, so J&B scotch whiskey it is. Midnight in Edinburgh.
8 p.m. ET: A shot of recovery: Water to recognize the melting glaciers in Greenland, where it is midnight at this time.
9 p.m. ET: With so few areas in this time zone, we go with the Atlantic archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, a volcanic formation belonging to Brazil. We drink Italian Tuaca, connecting the volcanic atoll with perhaps the world's most famous volcano, Vesuvius.
10 p.m. ET: Midnight comes to French Guiana, and cointreau comes to our lips.
11 p.m. ET: It's midnight in the islands, and so LeeMichael buys two bottles of Brinley Gold Rum without knowing that Casey and I are friends with the people who make it.
Midnight ET: Champagne, of course. It caps off the countdown and the year, though the night continues for three more hours -- amazingly.

Somehow, we don't fall into bed until nearly 3 a.m., and I woke up just before 11 with a terrible hangover. After some pancakes, water and Advil, I plant myself on the couch for the viewing of "Talladega Nights" and am sufficiently recovered by the time my pizza arrives for lunch. By now, on our third movie ("Roger Rabbit") of this day of marathon television (a little hockey from Wrigley Field, a touch of Capital One Bowling and the Rose Bowl, too much of America's "Funniest" Home Videos and the launch of MLB Network), I'm all but recovered. Just not enough to have another drink. Not until tomorrow, at the earliest.

As for resolutions, I decided to try two in particular this year, both intended to expand my creative and artistic mind: a different photo each day and a few more books read this year.

And a happy 2009 for all.

Finishing out the year

2008-12-29T17:25:00.002-05:00

The first day of the rest of the year. (No more working for me.)

Seen on Route 17: Four teens in a parking lot, trying to fix the front fender they'd dislodged on Mom's minivan. Three stood around while one -- probably the kid who caused the disconnection, if not the one whose Mom lent out the keys for the day -- kept trying to get the two pieces to hold in place.

Later, I dawdled too much online and on iTunes and had to run to the train, literally, in jeans and a fleece jacket -- this after two miles of real running, exercise running, for the first time in about five weeks. Less than fun.

Here's hoping Pat McGee plays "Rebecca" tonight.

"Snow angels," New York, December 2008

2008-12-25T00:41:00.004-05:00

Snow angels, originally uploaded by DC Products.

May this Christmas season be filled with the joy and wonder you remember ...

All hail Joe the Plumber. Not what you think.

2008-12-23T22:05:00.000-05:00

It's the kind of story you only hear around the holidays, a story of hardship and heartache, of unexpected expenses that threaten to sap much of the magic of Christmas...

I went upstairs yesterday around 3 p.m. to take a shower. It was only three hours after I'd woken up following my last work shift (in the office) for the year. I turned on the hot water faucet and ... nothing. No noise, no trickle, no nothing. The cold water worked fine, but the hot gave us nothing.

It was late enough in the day already (I'd already wasted enough time in front of the computer), so I put on some deodorant and clothes and a hat and went out to take care of the errands I'd already planned on doing yesterday. (Note to self: The Clifton Target shopping center is a madhouse as Christmas draws closer, even on weekdays. Home Depot? Less so.) When I got home, I triumphantly replaced the fill valve in the upstairs toilet and stopped the hissing it had been making for a couple of days.

But the hot water refused to flow. A few phone calls established what I'd feared: frozen pipes. How it was the hot side only was confusing the amateur plumbers (read: my father and, to a lesser extent, his friend Steve, who once worked as a plumber's apprentice), but there was little we could do. I tried Steve's suggestion of turning off the cold water into the hot water heater, draining a few gallons from the heater, then going upstairs and opening the taps before turning on the cold water again. The hope was it would create a vacuum that might loosen the ice blockage. No such luck; there was no change in the taps. We gave up and called it a night. I'd give it another shot in the morning -- by calling a plumber.

I watched Monday Night Football to ensure that Green Bay's Greg Jennings and Mason Crosby did not outscore Chicago's Matt Forte by 38 points (not that I expected it), thereby securing me my second fantasy football championship in three years. But even that victory could not prevent a fitfull night's sleep brought on by thoughts of a catastrophic problem, a discovery of frozen and burst pipes and of opening walls in order to repair and replace them. I figured my winnings would have to go directly to some plumber, and I hoped that they'd cover at least half the cost.

This morning, I dug up the number of a plumber we'd used to disconnect our gas range in the basement, and he said he'd call around 3:30, when he had a better idea of how his day was going. Clearly unable to wait that long, I turned to Google. "Clifton plumbers" produced enough results that I narrowed it down to those near the house. The closest one with two reviews sounded good enough -- and then he surpassed any expectations.

If you live in Bergen County, Passaic County or Essex County, New Jersey, I can't recommend Yosef Gove -- Joseph Gove -- and Gove Plumbing enough. Yes, Joe the Plumber was way better than his Ohio namesake (who doesn't have the license, of course).

Here's the deal: I called Joe and explained the lack of hot water. He suggested I open the hot water taps fully, then turn the cold water just a little, thereby allowing the cold water to trickle into where the freeze might be. I could hear the air hiccuping in the pipes and saw the stream from the tub waver in the drafts. I had hope.

I came back downstairs and busied myself for a couple of hours, including a call to the insulation company that, both Steve and Joe suspected, likely had caused the freeze by not plugging the holes carefully enough. Later that afternoon, I got back online while watching ER. ("The last ER Christmas!" Yes, I'm still watching. Figured I might as well finish out the run.) About halfway through, I began fast-forwarding during a commercial, and that's when I heard it. It was like stopping along a path in the woods and noticing sound of the waterfall cascading over the cliff up around the bend. It came from behind the closed bathroom door upstairs -- water thundering into the bath. Success!

The water was hot, and 48 hours after my last shower, I was ready to lose my clothes and jump in right then. But I turned it off first and then made several triumphant phone calls -- to my parents, to Steve, to Joe the Plumber, to the one who had three other stops to make before he could give me an idea of when he might make it over. And then came the shower I'd waited two days for -- truly one day of waiting that felt like two on account of the uncertainty of the situation. It was everything I'd hoped it might be, and I probably stood there a bit longer than I otherwise would have.

Afterward, I stepped outside to check that no water had emerged from beneath the siding (indicating burst pipes), but there was no such cascade. It may have still been cold, but the sun felt soft and warm. The air was crisp and clear. Christmas is just two days away. The weather's supposed to warm up for the next five days, with only two nights barely dipping below freezing. Any recurrence of the frozen pipes shouldn't happen before we leave for New Year's -- when we'll turn off the water supply anyway -- and by then, I expect to have spoken with the insulation company.

Joe the Plumber -- a nice, personable man in a profession not necessarily known for such people -- was this year's Christmas Miracle. Here's hoping that getting the insulation company to come back and double-check its work becomes next week's New Year's miracle.

Happy freakin' holidays!

How to see the tree without the crowd

2008-12-16T18:21:00.000-05:00

Tuesday -- a random Tuesday in the middle of December -- is the time to explore New York City at Christmas. Top of the Rock? Relatively deserted. The Christmas tree at the base of the tower? So much room you could make snow angels. People were smiling and happy and kind, willingly volunteering to snap pictures of couples together so they wouldn't have to stretch their arms out, cameras in hand, hoping they got the shot with two faces and the tree in the background.

Celestial trifecta

2008-12-01T17:04:00.002-05:00

The moon, Venus and Jupiter came together for a celestial trifecta tonight, lining up in a near-perfect "V," slightly tilted to the right. At dusk over Clifton, they stood out like reflective stickers on a navy blue backdrop, no clouds or planes or other impediments to distract from the star(s) of the show.

All by myself

2008-11-26T22:48:00.004-05:00

Heading into New York at 5:30 p.m., I avoided what was no doubt a madhouse at Penn Station (and into and out of which there were 30-40 minute delays because of Amtrak signal problems) and went through Hoboken. The terminal there was a relative ghost town, considering the time and the day. The stream of commuters heading out of the PATH station was light and an inbound train to 33rd St. was waiting on the track. I got on my usual car and took a seat. Moments later, the doors closed and we were on our way.

And I was alone in the car. I think it's happened to me once before, but definitely not at this time of day. Even though it's against the rush, there are usually a few people in each car.

The walk across four avenues was pleasant as the signs of the holiday season become more prevalent. I saw a shooting star affixed to a lamp post somewhere down Sixth Ave.; the Empire State Building was bathed in yellow, orange and red for Thanksgiving; the trees outside the Maritime Hotel have their yellow lights lit; and when I come back to Chelsea Market next week, I suspect the wreath will be hung over the entrance and the decorations will be spread throughout the ground level.

Winter in New York never seems as cold during December.

Worst. Game. Ever.

2008-11-25T22:08:00.003-05:00

It wasn't pretty. I haven't seen any highlights on TV, but considering how much the media has loved Notre Dame's football struggles this year, I suspect any "SportsCenter" or nightly newscast recaps played up the booing and snowballs more than necessary. But they did happen. The snowballs were early, because there were drunk seniors in the cold who were playing around. And then when the PA made an announcement to stop ... well, that only increased it, college kids being what they are. I suspect stupid college kids at ANY school would've done that. The fact that they kept trying to reach the field (and as a result hit the team on the sidelines) was another level of stupid.

As for the booing, it really only happened once, that I noticed. ND had just blocked a punt and had a first down inside the 10-yard line. Clearly, a sure TD about to happen. But three huge penalties gave them second down and 47 YARDS TO GO. After third and 40, we couldn't even get back into field goal range. That was the only significant booing I heard -- after one series, and, frankly, they kind of deserved it. If there was booing at the end of the game, I didn't notice. As soon as the Irish missed that field goal, I turned to leave. We had to wait a bit to get through the tunnel and back to the concourse, and I did my best not to turn and look at the field. I heard the band play the alma mater and lamented that I was so disgusted by the outcome that I couldn't even stay for that. It was the first time I've ever done that -- left the stands immediately as the clock struck zero, neglecting to stay for the band's postgame performance. I've since heard about some shenanigans involving the Syracuse team and its dead coach walking, but I have no interest in delving into that. It was also, I believe, the first game I've attended since college that we've lost that wasn't a bowl game or against USC. And I've probably been to about 20. Definitely a new low.

The fun part of the weekend? Seeing Jim and Debbie, though it was strange to have just dad and me staying at the house. And that they're selling the house and it may be the last time we stay there with them. They're still planning to get tickets and come back from Cincinnati for the games, but Debbie's hoping to convince various family members to take weekend vacations and leave them a place to stay.

Brad and Tenille were also there. They stopped by on their way to northwest Indiana to spend Thanksgiving with Tenille's family. They have a 3-year-old boy and a 16-month-old girl, so they didn't go to the game. They stopped by our modest tailgate (basically Dad, Debbie and me eating chicken and drinking a few beers and hot chocolate for about 90 minutes before walking campus a little) for a short time, then went to LaFortune, the bookstore and the Joyce Center during the game. Afterwards, I had dinner with them.

I went back to the house for about two hours after that, and then Kregg called when he was finished at the stadium. He and some TV guys were grabbing food and some beers at a new bar at the mall, so I joined them for a couple hours.

And that's what made the weekend -- including the 12-hour drive out through snowstorms on Friday and the 10 1/2-hour drive back on a weary, sunny Sunday -- worth it. An upsetting loss on the football field could cast a pall on the entire weekend, but I won't let it. I refuse to look at it as just a football game. When the Irish play in New Jersey and it's just me and whoever has tickets with me, then it's just a football game. But when it's a long-distance trip, a planned meeting before the game and an impromptu dinner afterward, it's more than the football. The outcome of the game only altered my postgame routine (I left as soon as that field goal fell short, rather than staying through the band's performance), my plans to walk around campus in the cold winter-like night with my camera (I was in no mood to soak it in at that moment, not wanting to be too close to fans I don't know) and my weekly tradition of reading national columns and mailbags. From what I've heard, missing Pat Forde was no loss, since he apparently got none of his facts right and appeared to make no effort to do any research of his own, including talking with even one student. I may still read Stewart Mandel's 'bag tomorrow, but I'm not going to make a point of it like I usually do.

In time, the game will fade as just another bad loss, one of only five since I graduated in 1998. The others were against USC in 2003 and 2005 (the Bush Push game) and the 2001 Fiesta Bowl vs. Oregon State and the 2007 Sugar Bowl against LSU (the last game for Brady Quinn and Jeff Samardzija). I no longer remember those games as much as I do the weekend or other festivities associated with them. Phoenix/Tempe at New Year's was a blast; New Orleans 15 months after Katrina, with a personal tour from a friend and local reporter, was sobering (and then intoxicating). Another few years down the road, last weekend will be the time Brad and I caught up in South Bend for the first time in years. I doubt it will be the last, either.

On the road to South Bend

2008-11-21T21:44:00.003-05:00

SOUTH BEND, Ind.

Amazingly enough, the day started out as planned: Dad and I were in the car and on the road at 5:05 a.m., just five minutes past our target. We drove to the end of the street, turned right. Made another right at the yield sign onto Route 19, then curved left onto the on ramp and were westbound on Interstate 80 -- three turns and 700 miles would have us in Indiana. Another turn or two put us on Notre Dame's campus (a campus that, after several years of gradual small-step expansion and renovation is unrecognizable in certain corners).

By 6:05 p.m. -- exactly 12 hours after departing -- we were on Twyckenham Ave., the northeast border of campus. The roads have been redirected in some places (a traffic circle at Douglas and Twyckenham??) and the borders spruced up, creating quite a different melding of Notre Dame into South Bend than we ever knew.

I'd expected a hint of the daylight to come upon our departure, but the sun didn't start illuminating the eastern horizon until after 6 a.m., by which time we were already in Pennsylvania. The entire New Jersey stretch of I-80 and the Delaware Water Gap was covered in darkness, the looming peaks of the Kittattiny highlands only dark shadows against a black-blue sky. From the highway, a the illuminated skylights of a warehouse in East Stroudsburg looked like a sea of alien pods from a science-fiction movie. By the time the sun started to make an impact on the landscape, we'd reached just far enough into the Keystone State to see a dusting of snow on the hillsides and lights on in the farmhouses as people began their Fridays.

Dad drove for two-and-a-half hours and by the time I took over, at 7:30, the low morning light cast a calming orange-pink hue on the Pennsylvania countryside. The roadbed was clear, but the fields and trees held onto increasing amounts of snow. As each mile passed, the view out the windshield became whiter and whiter, until each individual bare branch of the trees appeared encased in white -- much like the North Pole scenery in any number of Christmas specials. And it wasn't even 10 minutes into my first driving shift that the first flakes started falling from the sky.

But the weather held for the first 80 miles or so, until we were west of Lewisburg and really beginning to enter the Alleghenies. By Bellefonte -- the exit for State College -- it was snowing, and as we ascended the modest peaks and maneuvered the serpentine curves on our way to the highest point on I-80 east of the Mississippi, the weather varied from flurries with a beam of sunlight to snow squalls and diminished visibility. I persevered, and as we descended from the route's modest highpoint, the warmer asphalt appeared more wet than slushed over and I felt we were through the worst of it.

Ohio, though, had more in store. We stopped for lunch at 11:30, the streets of Youngstown -- at the exit, at least -- in that in-between state just hours after a snowfall of slushed up yet plowed once or twice. Dad resumed driving after lunch and I retired to the back seat to stretch out, cover my face against the sunlight with a hat, and catch up on some sleep.

Before I could doze off, however, Dad asked if I was awake and if he had taken the wrong route. Seems that once before, on a stretch in eastern Ohio where I-80 and I-76 share the same macadam, he'd mistaken I-80's veering off the main thoroughfare for a local exit and, instead, stayed on 76. He'd done that again this morning. I consulted the map and told him it was a minor detour; we'd be able to take Exit 43 ahead and follow Route 14 north for 12 miles to rejoin 80. It would cost us little more than the 15 or 20 minutes it would take to traverse the 12 miles between the interstates.

Only before we could get to that exit, traffic on 76 came to a standstill. Thankfully, it was only rubberneckers looking at the five cars that had spun off the road a mile ahead and not the closing of 76 we'd heard about on the local radio station (that accident turned out to be west of Akron; we were still to the east). The sun was gone, hidden deep behind the clouds above and the lake effect snow pouring from them. The road was slushy and slippery, the travel cautious. By the time we did return to 80, it was 50 minutes after Dad had first alerted me.

The weather alternated between partly sunny and lake effect snow squalls with near-whiteout conditions. As we drove on Route 14, I navigated with my sunglasses on, yet over to the west, a dark cloud reached down to the horizon -- a clear sign of a storm in progress. At that moment, a haiku came to me:

Ohio sunshine
just a tease, for the west holds
dark, foreboding skies

The sunshine held until the interstate, at which point I did fall asleep for nearly an hour, waking up just east of Toledo. Shortly after 3 p.m., we crossed over into Indiana and I remarked to my father that this just might be the first time he's made the trip from New Jersey to South Bend through nothing but blue states since the 60s. After we gassed up for the second time today, I took the wheel and drove us the final 70 miles to campus, with nothing but trucks or slow drivers in the left lane hindering our progress. As if sensing its location, my iPod -- shuffling through my entire collection -- settled on Dave Matthews' "Crash" for the final stretch of highway, reaching directly into my college years in selecting the soundtrack for the final leg of the journey.

As the sun set on the campus' winter tableau -- someone had built a snowman outside the merchandise tent near the business school and on-campus restaurant, and many of the buildings have Christmas trees lit up already -- the horizon burned orange through the bare branches of the trees. We navigated slick sidewalks -- the base layer of ice buffed to a dull sheen by the sweepers used to clear the powder from the walkways -- to the bookstore, where I browsed just long enough to make sure I wasn't missing out on anything I really wanted. (The only purchase was a porcelain Play Like A Champion Today sign to mount on the wall above the stairs leading to the basement.)

Walking back to the car, I made sure to gaze up Notre Dame Avenue at the Main Building's dome, the shining gold beacon standing out, a clear, unobstructed view despite trees reaching in from either side. The sky was not yet black but a deep, deep blue like we'd seen this morning at the Water Gap. Other than a crisp, bright, sunny autumn afternoon at the fall colors' peak, this is my favorite time of day on campus. In any season -- but particularly in winter, when the air is clear and the Dome and the stars seem to pop in high definition -- this meeting of day and night, of the gold dome and the navy blue sky, is a perfect Notre Dame moment.

Cold and eager to get to our friends' house for dinner, we kept walking. I contemplated returning after dinner by myself to walk around campus under the more private cover of nightfall, but the beer tasted too good and the couch felt too soft. I would've liked to take a few pictures, maybe stop by the Grotto when it's not quite so crowded as it will probably be after tomorrow's game, but I didn't get the chance today. I'll have to push myself to do so tomorrow, even with the crowds, because these days the next trip back here is not always definitely the next season. Growing old, working hard and living far away don't allow me to designate a weekend or two every fall for a return to South Bend, so I have to be sure to appreciate these moments and take them in when I have them.

Taking pictures

2008-11-11T16:50:00.003-05:00

I finally remembered to bring my camera with me and head across the street to the municipal complex to shoot some images of the Avenue of Flags. (The explanation is over on the photo blog.) Then I cruised down the Parkway for a haircut and lunch with Dave. The most notable thing about that journey was the four speed traps I saw -- two southbound, two northbound -- in the first 15 miles after getting onto the Parkway. And then I saw none the rest of the way (and only one coming back, plus one on Route 18 as Dave and I were heading back to his office). Not sure if the state police have a Veterans Day special going on or what.

Oh, also of note: regular unleaded gas for $1.96 a gallon! That was cash only, but a Sunoco that takes credit cards was selling it for $1.99. Unfortunately, I couldn't take advantage; I had to fill up before leaving home, so I was barely below full at $2.17 a gallon. No matter, at least the $2 threshold has been broken again, in a good way. I suspected it would, and it doesn't surprise me that central Jersey is about 20 cents lower than the northern rates. It'd be nice to get below $2 up here and stay there for a few weeks, but I'll take whatever I can get right now.

Final scenes from a night of change

2008-11-05T02:11:00.003-05:00

I stepped outside onto 9th Ave. to wait for my ride home, and the streets were busier than normal for early Wednesday morning.

"It's so surreal," one young woman said as she and her companion walked past me. "I truly feel like ... the world has changed."

As those two neared 15th St., a cab crossed the avenue with a passenger in the front seat holding a flag on a pole out the window, letting the stars and stripes flap in the breeze. Coming up the avenue walked a group of six, two-by-two, laughing and singing.

It's a happy city tonight.

Yes we DID

2008-11-04T23:00:00.001-05:00

I consider Election Day to be an anniversary of sorts. I first started blogging -- it was a diary then, a journal -- on Election Day 2000, which was Nov. 7 that year. It was my first presidential election in which I walked into the booth, since my previous vote in 1996 had been via absentee ballot while at college. It, of course, was an historic election because of the tight race, the prolonged battle and the eventual Supreme Court intervention and the handing of Florida to George Bush, making him the president.

I get a bit sentimental over anniversaries, as many people do. At the least, I enjoy taking a moment to think back and reflect on that day, where I was then and where I am now. I look at the journey and what got me to where I am today. Yet looking back at my birth to blogging was always a little bittersweet, because that reflection had to include a questionable election and a country that had changed so much, with so little of it for the better.

But today I find myself in a much MUCH different place, and a much better place. I'm married. I own a house. I have a great job I enjoy, as much as I enjoyed the sportswriting (yet low-paying) job I had in November 2000. It also has me working nights, just as that one did (though I was off on Election Day).

Today, though, is also the day we elected Barack Obama as our president. I was following along with CNN on TV and online, using their fabulous Election Calculator to fill in what was decided and what was projected. Virginia was announced for Obama at 10:58 p.m. ET, and as they discussed that, I went to the calculator and looked at the totals. California, which was closing at 11 ET, would put Obama over the top. I barely had a chance to say that out loud to my co-workers when they broke in with another projection. "I guess this is California," I said.

Not quite.

At 11 p.m. EST on the nose, Wolf Blitzer stood in front of a huge graphic that announced Obama as the projected winner. At work, we cheered.

To their credit, the producers at CNN went to live shots of Grant Park in Chicago, Times Square in New York and other areas around the country that showed raucous celebrations and wonderful, beautiful, raw moments of emotion, of pure joy. As I watched it all and took it all in, I got a lump in my throat and something stuck in my eye. In fact, something kept getting stuck in my eye for the next several minutes as different scenes of celebration came across the screen.

I was inspired by this election, doing things to contribute and get the word out for the first time. I donated for the first time, I wore a button on my bag as I commuted to work and put a sign up in the front yard and a bumper sticker on my car. I considered the ways I could volunteer, but in the end my job made it a little too difficult. The long nights -- the overnights -- and weekend hours made many things unlikely for me, and I just didn't feel comfortable making phone calls. I'm not a good debater, and getting people to talk about something they may be hesitant to share is a reason I don't miss being a reporter.

And yet, this election and this result continue to inspire me. I feel a desire to become more involved in, if not politics, than at least community organizing. I was a part of it by casting my vote, but now I want to do more. I look forward to tomorrow, I look forward to January 20. I may take that day off and take the train to Washington to see history.

In the end, America voted and America got it right. Tomorrow is a new day, next year a new beginning. I've always been proud to be an American, but never more than tonight.

Using my voice

2008-11-03T23:59:00.004-05:00

A few weeks ago, I was asked to explain -- if I wished -- who I was voting for and why. Someone I know was undecided and looking for some opinions. I happily offered mine. No one on this forum asked for my thoughts, so feel free to stop reading. No hard feelings.

My vote will go to Obama/Biden. I'd say I fall into the group of people who think the last eight years were among America's worst. Bush and Cheney broke the oaths they took upon their inauguration and failed to defend the Constitution. At times, they flatly ignored it and disregarded it. They stomped on it. Their policies have weakened our economy, destroyed our standing around the world and ruined other countries' opinion of us. The horrible events of Sept. 11 first led to an admirable military action in Afghanistan that should have produced the capture of Osama bin Laden, but Bush/Cheney instead chose to use that as an excuse to attack Iraq just to get the oil there, to make Cheney's former company rich with the rebuilding, and to satisfy Bush's grudge against Saddam Hussein. Iraq has cost billions of dollars, thousands of lives, and time, effort and resources that should be in Afghanistan. On top of that, taxes were cut (mostly for the richest Americans) that led to a deeper debt and budget deficit. When Clinton left office, there was a huge budget surplus -- the country was bringing in more than enough money to cover its expenses -- but Bush destroyed that within two years. I have more gripes -- from Supreme Court appointments to environmental policies and more -- but I won't go into all of them.

As for Obama vs. McCain, I see in Obama a genuine desire to help the country. So much of what has transpired in the past eight-to-12 years has led to the problems today, and Obama brings a fresher face. In 2004, when Obama first came on the scene with his speech at the Democratic convention, I thought he'd make a great president, but I didn't think it would be in 2008, because I thought he'd need more time and more experience. But after seeing what that Washington experience has led to, and what McCain would bring with his long experience, I feel that a fresher face is needed. It's similar to the way companies bring in someone from the outside when they need to get back on track, the way sports teams choose a new manager or coach from outside the program to turn around a sagging club, the way a movie studio changes directors when a film doesn't have the right vision or the way a family hires an interior designer to make over a room when you'd think they would know what they want. Sometimes you need a new perspective, a fresh approach to the task at hand. I think Obama's choice of Biden as his running mate also shows his insight to his own shortcomings. Knowing his own foreign policy experience was lacking, he turned to one of the most experienced and options for a running mate, based on Biden's work in Congress.

Though I don't doubt McCain's love for this country, he worries me. In 2000, I hoped he'd beat Bush in the primaries so that if Gore didn't win, at least the alternative would be a moderate conservative whose positions and values were closer to mine. Back then, McCain had no desire to overturn Roe v. Wade, he truly cared for the environment, he wasn't trying to become president just because it would put a cap on his political career. Even in just the past two or four years, McCain has reversed course -- flip-flopped, as John Kerry's detractors liked to say -- on his own positions. He now wants to appoint Supreme Court justices that would revoke a woman's right to choose; he stands closer to the big oil companies than he does to environmental reform; he's in favor of continuing the reckless Bush tax cuts that he once said he'd allow to expire; and he's admitted that if the immigration bill he once co-wrote came across his desk, he'd veto it. And in 2000, a big reason he lost was the South Carolina primary, during which Bush's team -- led by Karl Rove -- aired dirty and, in some cases, untrue ads that attacked McCain personally, not on the issues. McCain was angered and disgusted by that, yet he's hired some of the same people used by Bush and Rove to his own campaign all in an effort to win. He's compromised his principles just to win.

And finally, there's Sarah Palin. There were several viable running mates McCain could've chosen who would've complemented him well and strengthened his ticket, but he chose Palin based on her ultra-conservative views in an effort to appease the far-right Republicans and win back their support. He pandered to them, choosing her just to win their votes instead of for any insight or strengths she'd bring to his administration. McCain is 72 years old, which would make him the oldest person to win a presidential election for his first term. He's already a cancer survivor, which is wonderful. Yet despite those two big, legitimate concerns, his campaign has refused to allow a full look into his medical history. The voters have a right to know the status of his health, considering the job for which he is applying, yet he continues to hide that (as he does his wife's tax returns, and she's the big moneymaker in the relationship). These factors also play into the Palin choice. McCain's age and cancer history made the choice of a capable, able vice president paramount, yet he showed poor judgement in choosing someone with so little experience. Obama has essentially been running for president for as long as Palin has been Alaska's governor. Only a few months before McCain chose her, she admitted that she didn't even know what the vice president did. (The correct answer, based on the Constitution, is virtually nothing, other than break tie votes in the Senate. However, Dick Cheney has flaunted those rules -- or lack thereof -- and Palin has said she would continue to treat the vice presidency that way.) Should something happen to McCain and he dies or becomes incapacitated in office, our president would be someone who two years ago was a small-town mayor.

I could probably go on. I could address the candidates' campaign styles and tactics, I could point to their health care proposals, or I could go into more on their proposed tax plans or energy ideas. But the basics are this: Obama's stance on the economy, the environment, health care, taxes, education and America's security are so much closer to my own thoughts. I truly believe that a McCain administration would be so close to what we've had the past eight years, and we've seen where that leads. I would truly be scared if Obama doesn't win.

Costumed attire

2008-10-31T23:33:00.004-04:00

I think I've outgrown Halloween.

On the way into work tonight, I saw several people dressed on then train to Hoboken, the PATH to the city, and lining up along 6th Ave. waiting for the parade to begin. And yet it wasn't the fact that I had to work and couldn't party that bummed me out. If I had my choice, I would've been in South Bend tonight, drinking with friends and awaiting tomorrow morning's tailgating before the Notre Dame-Pittsburgh game.

I suppose if I had more friends nearby who had parties to go to (or to throw) and a more creative mind to come up with a unique and clever costume, I might be more into it. But I was more excited to carve pumpkins than I was to dress up in disguise, even for work.

Maybe I'll treat Halloween like the presidential election and recognize it once every four years, though not the same four years, since I've clearly missed that boat this year. I think I can find the inspiration on a four-year cycle.

It's interesting how our views and the meanings of holidays change as we grow. As a kid, Halloween is probably No. 2 on the holiday list -- No. 3 if you count your birthday as a holiday -- and marked by costumes and candy. You get to wear your costume to school, you get to spend time with your friends after dark on a school night (though pushing back daylight savings time to early November may have eliminated that one), you get to eat a LOT of candy in one day. And there are no religious lessons or good lists or bad lists to worry about; it's all about the candy.

Then when you're older, the costumes move to the forefront, along with the parties. This seems to be doubly true if you're a supple 20-something woman in New York City. Perhaps the fact that I am off the market has also sapped the interest in Halloween.

I managed to note some of the costumes I saw on my commute into work tonight (and a couple earlier today). I thought about bringing my camera to work with me, but then I realized that would only slow me down and make me late. So here they are in order of how well each wearer pulled it off, with originality of the outfit and effort incorporated into the ranking.

1.) Organ grinder's monkey. Saw this guy on 15th St. at 7th Ave. He had a monkey mask, a body suit and an accordion. Plus I could see his curved tail sticking out from behind him from 100 feet away.

2.) A nun. The best part about this was that I was in Stop & Shop picking up a couple of bags of candy and this nun was in front of me in the cramped candy display area. As I grabbed my bags, I relalized that she was restocking the shelves from a cart -- she worked there. And at first, from behind, I thought that it was a Muslim mother doing some shopping in the morning. It was only when I saw the rest of the Stop & Shop employees dressed up that I remembered what day it was.

3.) Jack-in-the-box. Nothing to do with fast food. This guy was a bagger at Stop & Shop, standing at the end of the conveyor belt in colored tights, with a box around his torso.

4.) Wonder Woman. Saw her from afar at the Hoboken station. She certainly had the legs for it.

5.) Bubble Bee Woman. Nothing like Bumble Bee Man from The Simpsons. She was tall, pretty and wearing fishnets.

6.) Sally from A Nightmare Before Christmas. She could probably be higher, but I only saw small glimpses of her through the crowd as she lined up on 6th Ave. and I'm not sure the costume was necessarily true to the movie or just an attempt. The hair was also long red strands of yarn, more like Raggedy Ann (which is who I thought she was at first) than Sally.

7.) Guy with jester hat and ukelele. The hat wasn't anything special, and other than those two props, I couldn't tell if he had a full costume on because he wore a long winter overcoat. But when I saw him standing on 8th Ave. presumably waiting for a cab, he was playing the ukelele. Rather than chalk that up to laziness ("What do I have lying around the house to wear tonight?"), I chose to appreciate the effort (or ability?) to carry a prop that he can actually play.

From this point on, the costumes are decidedly less varied and more cliche. So no more rankings, though the first one is there because it deserves to be.

A pirate. This guy put some effort into a fallback outfit. (The last time I dressed up, Casey was a pirate wench and I was a Pittsburgh Pirate.) He looked like a classic Pirate picture, with a striped bandana, an eye patch, pirate-looking facial hair, a vest and leggings. This was no jeans-and-T-shirt pirate.

From the woman-as-animal camp: a hound dog (loved the floppy ears) and a mouse. From the woman-as-slut camp: a cheerleader and Catholic schoolgirl (have you ever noticed how you never see 20-something women dressed as the homely cheerleader or the mousy schoolgirl?). From the what-I-had-in-the-back-of-my-closet-from-a-former-job camp: a guy in the army and an orange biohazard jumpsuit (no hood or anything, though). And from the has-to-be-one-at-every-Halloween-party camp: a witch (saw two). There were also several people in half-costume en route to parties or seen from such a distance that I couldn't tell what their full costume was.

So that's the extent of my Halloween 2008. Roughly one hour broken into two segments at the beginning and middle of my day. Perhaps next year will be different.

Punkin' '08

2008-10-30T21:04:00.002-04:00

2008 pumpkin carvings

This year's carvings included two replicas of the neon players that (used to) adorn Shea Stadium's exterior. I carved those. Ideally, I would've loved to have done all six, but with a particularly taxing World Series keeping me at work until 5 a.m. pretty much every night, I just didn't have enough conscious non-work hours. Two was my limit.

Casey did the Mets logo, as well as an attempt at the Home run Apple, but it didn't translate to the gourd as well as these three did.

Another note: This photo has been retouched. I fixed the head of the batter on the pumpkin on the left, because I came home this afternoon to find a squirrel had started gnawing at it. Here is how he really looks now.

Not your usual sight

2008-10-29T15:42:00.002-04:00

I sit in the home office, in a cozy hooded sweatshirt and comfy slippers. Late fall is trying to hang onto a few more crisp days before yielding to the biting cold of winter. But the old man is eager to arrive, hoping to make an appearance before November, pushing a cold front across New Jersey. Some of the Garden State's upper reaches, its northernmost counties and hilly hamlets, have already seen snow in the past day or two. But now it's here, in flurry form, in the denser suburbs. The light, drifting flakes blow diagonally outside the window and aren't here for long -- just long enough for me to notice them, and to wonder if I've ever seen this kind of weather in October in New Jersey.

Several years ago, I spent about 24 hours with a friend's (now long-ex-) boyfriend up in the Berkshires, visiting a high school buddy of mine. It was Columbus Day weekend, mid-October, the peak of the fall season in Greenfield and Shelburne Falls and the surrounding towns. We took pictures, ate apples, shot arrows (some of them at apples, none of which were perched on our heads) and made the most of a day in the country. That night, Dave and I climbed, fully clothed, into our sleeping bags in a not-so-well-heated room of the house Walker was renting or caretaking and shivered ourselves to sleep. Winter seemed to move in overnight, a frost encrusting the lawn of the meadow I hiked across at dawn in a fruitless attempt to photograph the sunrise.

When we left later that morning, we headed west along the Mohawk Trail -- otherwise known as Massachusetts Route 2 -- because of its dotted scenic route designation on the map. We had no reason to rush home, so we took the long way. Crossing the crown of the Berkshires, we looked down snow-dusted slopes to the valleys below. I had never seen trees holding a coating of snow while still maintaining a grasp onto their red and golden leaves. Autumn and winter came together in a mash-up of the seasons. The air grew warmer as the morning went on and we descended the western side of the mountains and crossed the river into Albany. Like a shooting star, the melding of the seasons didn't last long, but it left an impression.

Nancy Kerrigan stopped by

2008-10-25T01:41:00.002-04:00

It's 1:40 a.m. on a Saturday and I just walked past Nancy Kerrigan in the office. She was with a group of people discussing something work-related (all I bothered to hear was "should we set up a conference call?") before they all stepped onto the elevator and scattered.

We presume she was here using our studios for some Ice Network purpose, though it's the first time I've heard of such an arrangement. Not that I would be privy to such agreements, but I already did know about our relationship with CBS Sports (particularly during the NCAA basketball tournament).

Anyway, it was a fun celebrity sighting, and a close one. On my way to the kitchen (via a different route than usual, no purpose, of course), I had to walk right next to her. At 39, she's very pretty (for any age, really) and is about my height -- without skates.

Me time

2008-10-22T02:21:00.002-04:00

I finally got back to the photo blog tonight. And, as I mentioned, I'm using my Wednesday to take a day for myself and hit the road (gotta love gas prices now down to $2.70 a gallon or less) for a New Jersey foliage day trip sojourn. It'll be good to get away to the hills for some Dan time, away from the hectic city and a nice break after the League Championship Series and before the final stretch of the World Series. It was nice to get Game 1 off following a Sunday at home, just to have a couple of nights where I don't have to deal with the craziness.

Signs I need a new point-and-shoot digital

2008-10-21T00:16:00.003-04:00

When I bought my laptop years ago, I added a Kodak digital point-and-shoot for about a hundred bucks. It was worth it at the time, when I didn't have my digital SLR, and it worked out just fine. Picture quality was good and it takes video, too.

But now it's an albatross. It is, like most technology more than a year old (if that), a bit outdated. It's heavy for a point-and-shoot. The tab that kept the battery door closed broke off years ago, so I've been holding that together with a rubber band. If it's not tight enough, the door doesn't fully close on the battery, which then doesn't reach both contact points and, therefore, doesn't provide its power to the camera. And now it seems that the two batteries no longer hold a sufficient charge.

I haven't used the camera in a few weeks, but I've been carrying it around in my bag each night on my way to work. Today, as I headed up 6th Ave. to then head west on 15th St., I looked up at the Empire State Building in the dusk. Its floodlights were orange, a perfect contrast against the darkening blue sky. They were Mets colors creating a visual complement to the autumn chill in the air. I watched the tourists' cameras flash from the observation deck as I pulled out my camera; their strobe effect was a nice touch and I planned to take a short video of it to see if it would translate. But two dead batteries scuttled that plan.

With everything else we've spent money on this year, I'm not in any position to be spending money on such luxury items. I'll have to use this financial quiet time to shop around and find the point-and-shoot that has the features I want in a conveniently portable camera: Lightweight, good-quality photos, compact, video capabilities and the ability to take good photos without a flash in low light for concert settings.

Then I'll have to get back to 6th and 15th at about 6:30 p.m. in late October when the Empire State Building is orange.

Should be no problem.

Next time, I should keep my finger to myself

2008-10-18T02:53:00.003-04:00

Friday night brings them all out in New York City: The nutjobs, the wackos, the assholes. The ditzes, the flakes, the clueless. The pretty people, the arrogant, the self-righteous. I should know this by now. Or rather, I do know this, but I should bear it in mind more often when I find myself on the Manhattan streets after work at 2 a.m.

Here's the deal: The car is there when I walk downstairs after work, a nice easy night with a clear 2 a.m. finish because there was no baseball game tonight. I get in the car at the curb as a stream of taxis passes us even as the driver lets up on the brake and begins to move. The cabs are continuing south on 9th Ave., into the Meatpacking District. The avenue is packed in these wee hours of the morning as people hop from one trendy club to another or search for that dive bar on 14th St. for a nightcap or head home, drunk and boisterous in the back seat of a cab. After the light turns green, we're slow to turn right onto 15th St. because the cabs continuing on 9th cannot move through the intersection. The right lane we are in, which is marked as a combination straight and right-turn lane, contains cars side-by-side. My driver has his right-turn signal on -- as does the SUV to our left.

Horns begin blaring and a police cruiser toots his bullhorn. He leaves his dome lights off, however. With the inside track, my driver is able to make the right turn onto 15th St. just ahead of the pushy SUV, which did its best to position itself in front of us before the turn. I look out the window throughout the turn, trying to both get a glimpse and imagine who would have the gall to pull such a stunt, no matter how big or tough or overcompensating he is behind the wheel of his gas-guzzler. Not to mention the fact that he had to have heard the cop's horn moments before making the turn.

As we begin to make our way down 15th, I can sense the SUV's headlights close behind me. Turning around, I find I'm correct -- he's inches from our bumper, blatantly tailgating and swerving first to the left, then to the right, to get around us. It's not a two-lane road, and if parking were allowed on the right side, there's no way he would've had room. But the right-hand gutter is clear, so he floors it and passes us.

Now here's where I get stupid. Yet it must be stressed that I was in the right, clearly, while the SUV driver had three strikes against him: 1.) the illegal turn off of 9th Ave; 2.) tailgating; and 3.) passing on the right on a sidestreet.

Still, I probably shouldn't have given him the finger.

Or I shouldn't have done it so blatantly, my thumb securely holding down the other three fingers, my long middle digit pressed up against the top of the window -- where it was closer to his eye level and right up there in the lights shining down from the streetlamps. As soon as he surged in front of us -- swerving into our path before he smashed into a delivery truck parked at the curb -- and perhaps even before that moment, I knew I should've thought before extending my finger. At the very least, I should've disguised it by drumming my other fingers on the window as if listening to music or flat-out holding it up against the door beneath the window. It wouldn't have been seen there, but I still would've known and felt a moment of righteousness.

But he saw it. And he slammed on his brakes, coming to a stop in the middle of 15th St., halfway between 9th and 10th avenues. I looked behind us: No one. The driver got out and started yelling, approaching the driver's door of the car I was in. I held my hands up as if to say, "What, dude?" And yet I do not know why he approached the driver, when he clearly saw me in the back seat flipping him off. My driver, unaware of my instigation, started yelling and flipped open his cell phone to call the police. The aggressor yanked at the driver's door twice and (thankfully) found it locked.

In the back of my mind, I cursed the cops in the car on 9th Ave. who chose not to follow the SUV that had made an illegal turn two cars in front of him. Luckily, the SUV aggressor's passenger had a cooler head. "Come on, man. Let's get out of here." That's literally what he said, like we were in the opening scene of a Law & Order, when you see the aftermath of the crime that the detectives will spend the next hour (minus commercials) investigating.

My heart raced, my mind flashed through all the possible scenarios of what could have happened -- at least when it wasn't berating my hand for getting us into this predicament. The SUV sped ahead to the light at 10th Avenue. I was hoping it would be green so that he could continue on ahead of us, but it was red. We pulled up behind him. My driver continued to wonder what the hell was wrong with the SUV driver, and I explained that he probably thought I was giving him the finger, but of course I wasn't, because that would've been stupid. (He didn't need to know.)

On the ride home after a long night, when I just want to get home, the red lights always seem endless. Tonight, on my earliest exit from the office in 10 days, the wait at 15th St. and 10th Ave. was unbearable. And yet, it lasted mere seconds, because the SUV then made a left onto 10th, going against the traffic (not that there were any cars at the moment he made his turn, but he still was going the wrong way on a one-way street) for 20 feet so that he could turn into the gas station on the corner. Yet once there, he executed a K-turn, once again bringing my heart rate up as I wondered if he was trying to maneuver around the cars at the pumps so that he could exit back onto 15th St. -- where he would then be behind us again.

Thankfully, the driver got out. I don't know if he continued to shout at us or even look at us because there was a car parked in between us and all I could see was that his door had opened. Our light turned green and we headed up 10th toward the Lincoln Tunnel. Yet as we were slowed by traffic outside the 10th Avenue clubs and the lights as they turned from red to green, I continued to look back over my shoulder every block, just to make sure the silver SUV wasn't back on the road, weaving its way through traffic looking for us.

I pulled out my notebook and wrote down the license plate number and added, "Approached car on 15th St." so that the police would have a clear lead should they find us run off the road, unconscious. As we sat at a light before entering the Lincoln Tunnel access road, my driver told me he has a hammer on the front seat. "I'm glad we didn't need to use it," I reply.

Once safely inside the tunnel, where I could confirm that the car immediately in front of us and immediately behind us wasn't the SUV -- even though it hadn't left the gas station before we were several blocks away -- and the right lane was closed at that hour, my heart rate finally started to level off. Once we passed the tiled New Jersey-New York border at the (presumed) midpoint, I at last felt a sense of relief.

The rest of the way home, I was glad that it didn't get past a tug on the door handle and a few curses shouted at us from the street. But I also wished I wasn't stupid, while at the same time wished I was bigger and/or tougher or, for that one moment, the slightest bit an asshole, so that I could've defended myself should it have come to that. Because in the end, my one small act of antagonism was nothing compared to the trifecta of aggression that had prompted my response. I mean seriously -- where does the guy who passes on the right on a side street in New York City get off getting pissed off because I flip him off in response to his stunt?

Ironically, all this happened while I was in Car 495, which seems to be a number associated with drama whenever he takes me home. True to form, not only was the right lane of the Lincoln Tunnel closed, but so was the helix on the other side, sending all the traffic on to the Weehawken streets to make its way around and back up onto Route 495 and toward the Turnpike and Route 3. At least the traffic was light in the 2-2:30 half-hour. An hour later -- as I finish this post, in fact -- the volume is probably doubled, the backup through the tunnel and out onto the various approaches in the city. By 3 a.m. on a Friday or Saturday night, the Bridge-and-Tunnel crowd seems to have had enough and has begun to make its way back across or beneath the Hudson. If the helix is closed, forget about it. You could be stuck in a 45-minute backup just to travel the three miles beneath the river. Your 20-minute ride home stretches to more than an hour.

Thankfully, that wasn't the case, and I walked into the kitchen well before 3 o'clock. With Casey spending the night at a friend's in the city, I didn't feel the need to head right to bed. And having worked until 4:30 or 5 a.m. every night since Tuesday, I'm not quite as tired at 3 a.m. as I otherwise would be. Therefore, it was the perfect time to enjoy a beer and rehash the ride home, if only as a reminder to think before I flip next time.

Seasonal signs

2008-10-15T17:26:00.000-04:00

October decoration

On my run today and later on my walk to the train, I noticed more houses with Halloween decorations than political signs. A lot more. Like a dozen Halloween-themed lawns and three political placards.

I don't think everyone should announce their allegiances, nor should they have to, but I seem to remember every fourth fall would have the red, white and blue lawn accents of campaign signs to go along with the oranges, yellows and browns of the changing leaves.

I'm all for Halloween and spooking out the yard, and if I was sure I'd be home for the trick-or-treaters, we'd probably have some orange lights on the porch and tombstones in the yard. (I hesitate because I don't think it's right for me to decorate for the season and then leave the place dark on the big night. Not that the half-dozen kids we'd probably get would really notice.) But I do hope that the choice of exterior decorations in my neighborhood does not indicate that household's choice in putting one day ahead of the other.

Hopefully, those with the haunted homes will get out of the house on Nov. 4 -- and those with the political point of view pick up some candy before the 31st.

2 a.m. traffic

2008-10-08T02:28:00.003-04:00

Getting Car 495 seems to mean one thing: A delay. It's a new one tonight -- Route 3 closed at the bridge near the Meadowlands. There's allegedly one lane open, but traffic was stopped for 10 minutes while construction workers moved some equipment or set a steel beam in place for the frame of the bridge over the roadway. It's part of the expansion of the complex, the building of Xanadu and new Giants/Jets football stadium, that includes a NJ Transit rail station. This bridge will, I presume, carry the trains over the highway.

Tonight, though, it's adding about 15 minutes to my middle-of-the-night drive home.

Unprofessional and irresponsible

2008-09-28T02:41:00.004-04:00

When you work for an internet news site, deadline is more "now" than by a certain time. And when the last relevant event happens at 10 p.m., there's no reason your assignment should arrive 4 1/2 hours later.

I'm just saying. And venting.

Tomorrow, I attend my last game at Shea Stadium, though I hope it's not the last game at Shea Stadium. Today, that is. In 10 hours, I'll be there, standing and cheering. Hopefully, much rejoicing will follow.

And then I'll return to this office, this desk, and work another shift.

October lies just around the corner...