The Casual Blog

Category: travel

July 31, 2011

Golfing at Turnberry, Scotland

Turnberry, Scotland (Kintyre)

Last week I played golf at Turnberry, Scotland, rated the number one course in the British Isles, and the site of numerous British Opens. Is it really so great? In a word, yes. It was golf nirvana.

I played the famous Ailsa course the day I arrived, immediately after traveling all night. The day was sunny and mild — possibly too pleasant for a representative experience. At almost every hole, I had a shiver at the beauty. It had a raw, untamed quality, but I gradually realized that it brilliantly combined the natural contours of the terrain with a deep understanding of the essence of golf. Its authors and keepers loved the land, and the game.

It demanded constant vigilance and focus. The hazards were, in golfing terms, serious — deep bunkers with walled backs, knee-high grass, spiny gorse, and water. I had one disastrous descent into a bunker, costing four strokes to get out. But I generally controlled the ball well, with a handful of excellent shots. I did not putt particularly well till the end, when I finished with a flourish — sinking a thirty-footer on 18 for a birdy. I ended up with a 92.

I played the Kintyre course the next day. The skies were overcast, threatening (but never quite delivering) rain, and there were gusty winds — proper Scottish golfing weather. The ocean is a bigger element in this course, and the bunkers less. It seemed less imposing than Ailsa, with views of the surrounding hills and pastures, but the level of difficulty was challenging enough. I played reasonably well for me on the first nine (46), but had a couple of bad blow ups in the second and finished with a 99.

Jim, my caddie, and a Linux fan

There is something about Scotland that spoke to me powerfully. The people seemed friendly, but practical and tough and very proud of their country. The countryside was rolling and rugged. I got a lesson in single malt whiskey, and learned that it a dash of water loosens it up.

After finishing my meetings, I had a few hours to walk about in Glasgow, and found it a lively, modern city with Victorian charm. I made a stop at the Gallery of Modern Art to see works of several contemporary artists, and also visited the Kelvingrove Museum. Their collection of Impressionists and Post Impressionists is quite good, and I also liked their collection of 16th century armor. There were lots of people out in Kelvingrove Park, which reminded me of Central Park in New York, but with grass tennis courts and lawn bowling.

The trip back was long — about 19 hours all told. It started with a 5 hour delay because of weather in Newark, and the 7 air hours were bumpy. One good word for Continental — they provided surprisingly tasty curry as part of my requested vegetarian meal. I ran out of electricity on both my iPod and iPad, and came close to running out of other reading material (horrors!).

The Newark to Raleigh leg was uneventful until near the end, when the pilot suddenly pulled up from the final approach and banked to circle around. My first thought was that I might have a rookie pilot, but he explained that there was a local thunderstorm with microbursts of wind. A few minutes later we made the final approach, and the plane began bucking and shimmying. I focused on deep calming yoga breaths.

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July 6, 2011

A big road trip for the Fourth, including the Tail of the Dragon

For the Fourth of July weekend, I thought it would be fun to take a road trip to western North Carolina. It had been many moons since I spent time in the beautiful Blue Ridge mountains, and I’d never driven the serpentine roads in my beautiful Porsche. Sally was game, and so on Friday afternoon we loaded up and rolled out from Raleigh.

We spent that evening in Winston-Salem, where I grew up. We stayed downtown, and were surprised to find large numbers of young people eating at sidewalk tables and promenading. At our hotel, there was a convention of “greasers” into fifties/punk hair styles, big tattoos, and hot rods. I find big tattoos somewhat disturbing, but I found this group sort of cheering. These outsiders had some things to be happy about: something they really liked (cars and a certain look), the courage to come out proudly about their passion, and a community of like-minded people. It’s not easy being different.

We had dinner with my old old friend (since fourth grade) J and his wife N. J was my hero as a kid: great at things like throwing rocks, building model fighter jets, and finding discarded Playboy magazines in the woods. He’s become a successful construction supervisor for commercial projects, and pointed out some of his projects on the Winston-Salem skyline. It was good to refresh on our history and to catch up.

On Saturday we took Highway 421 to Boone, and once there decided to take 221 south. The road wound through the green mountains. During this stretch, I experienced a Zen-like connection to Clara and the road. No thought, just driving. Shifting to third, back to second, back to third, back to second, for miles. It was strange and wonderful to have no schedule and no place we had to be. We drank in the rolling mountain vistas.

We had lunch in Blowing Rock at Louise’s Rockhouse Restaurant, where we sat near a group of State Troopers in the motorcycle corp. The vegetarian options on the menu boiled down to one: a grilled cheese sandwich. But the service was friendly, and it was a perfectly fine sandwich.

We took the Blue Ridge Parkway south to Asheville, stopping now and again to enjoy the mountain views. In Asheville there were lots of street musicians and artsy looking folk, and no shortage of veggie friendly restaurants. We chose the Laughing Seed, where I had an interesting cocktail with ginger liqueur called East of Eden, and a mushroom risotto. We stayed the night in a B&B called Reynolds Mansion, which is an 1847 house that reminded me of the Addams Family’s place, but with beautiful rooms. The breakfast featured poached pears and eggs benedict, and the host told an elaborate ghost story about a portrait of a star-crossed plantation mistress.

After breakfast we drove west through Maggie Valley, Cherokee, and Bryson City, where we bought sandwiches at a Subway, then headed northwest toward Fontana Village. About 18 years ago, we had a week-long family vacation at Fontana, and remembered it happily. A significant memory of the trip was how difficult it was to get there on the windy mountain roads in the minivan, and it seemed like a good idea to try those roads again in a better vehicle. It turned out the roads had been widened to four lanes for most of the trip, and the only exciting part of the journey there was the last few miles. We ate our sandwiches at Fontana and recalled the happy vacation with little Gabe and Jocelyn — river rafting, horseback riding, swimming, ping pong, and shuffleboard.

Then we went north to US 129 and encountered the Tail of the Dragon. We’d heard of the road, but weren’t certain of the location until we came to Deal’s Gap and saw several dozens of Harleys in the parking lot of the motorcycle motel. So we drove it. It was like skiing black diamond moguls. It whipped back and forth, up and down through the Nantahala forest, never straightening for any length. Like a mogul run, it took total commitment and focus. We were fortunate to find long stretches with no one ahead or behind. 318 curves in 11 miles. A major dose of adrenaline. It was awesome. Awesome!

Returning, mentally exhausted, we stopped at Deal’s Gap and I bought a Dragon souvenir tee-shirt and hat. We sat around for a bit with the bikers, and noted the things we had in common and the things we didn’t. In common: love for vehicles and the road. Different: facial hair, cigarettes, tattoos. Some of them were scary looking. But I felt I understood much better what they were about after driving the Dragon. Like the greasers, these folks had embraced their differentness and found a kind of community.

Sally served as co-pilot and navigator throughout. She had no interest in taking the wheel, unless I threatened to fall asleep, which I never did. Amazingly, she was cheerful throughout. She never once expressed fear or even hesitation at the speed. She was game, and brave. We talked for periods, and were quiet and peaceful for periods. I realized, once again, that she was the girl for me.

For the most part, we navigated the old-fashioned way — with maps. I have a Garmin GPS, which is useful for getting from point A to B, but not for finding interesting byways. We missed our turns a couple of times as we headed back east (poor signage, we thought), but never worried excessively. We spent the last night in Franklin, then took US 64 back across NC. Total mileage for the weekend was just about 1,000. We couldn’t get over what a beautiful state this is.

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February 26, 2011

Ups and downs in Telluride

My life is full of technology and intense mental activity, and I’m glad of it, but from time to time I crave an interlude of pure natural beauty and physical activity. And so for a long President’s Day weekend, we skied Telluride, Colorado, where the San Juan mountains look something like the Alps — jagged and imposing, yet peaceful in a way.

Set a human body sliding down the snowy slopes, and interesting things happen. Exhilaration at the speed, microbursts of fear, quick happy recoveries, or minor disasters. I had my most dramatic fall on Bushwacker, reportedly the steepest groomed run in America, where I’d got off the groomed terrain and into the bumps. Tips crossed, I launched over the top of my skis, which came off the boots as designed, but rather than stopping I then found myself sliding fast downhill headfirst and accelerating. I eventually managed to flip over, spin around, and dig my boot heels into the snow to brake. By this time, one ski was 200 yards below me and one pole was 50 yards above (a classic yard sale). I am always happy to rely on the kindness of strangers, and gratefully accepted assistance of one who picked up my pole and another who helped me resituate on one ski. Then I lowered myself inelegantly down the slope to retrieve the other.

A couple of my colleagues at Red Hat have written about failing fast and often as a means to success, which in skiing translates as falling fast and often. It entails some moments of embarrassment. But by golly, I’ve really improved this year. I took on steep, deep powder runs, glades, and double black moguls, as well as carving on high-speed cruisers, all with great joy (and occasional terror).

We had fresh snow falling our first day and night, and a classic powder day the second day. I insisted that our group (Sally, Charles, Chuck, and later David and Kimberlie) move out early to try for first tracks. We found lots of beautiful light snow and varied terrain. Those first two days I stayed well within my comfort zone and had great fun. Each night we ate in good restaurants, (Excelsior, Rustico, Honga’s, and Siam), and one night had delicious pizza served by my sweet Jocelyn at the Brown Dog. The group included old familiar friends and lively new ones, and there was good conversation and laughter.

On day three the skies had cleared, and Gabe and Lindsey, who live in Telluride, had days off and came out to play. They knew the mountains well, and managed to locate pockets of non-skied-out powder. For the first time I felt reasonably comfortable on steep gladed runs. I was inspired by their beautiful skiing, and proud that I could more or less keep up with them. Riding up the long chair lifts, we caught up on things in general, considered the state of the world, and got to be better friends.

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February 19, 2011

Watson, human games, and the twilight of the gods

Sally and I flew out to Telluride, CO yesterday for a late winter ski adventure. On the flight from Raleigh were our good friend Charles and Chuck, and we looked forward to meeting up with Gabe and Jocelyn. The flights took off on time and progressed in an orderly way. I made some progress getting through back issues of The New Yorker, Scientific American and Golf Digest, listened to Mozart and Debussy. And as often happens when I travel at 35,000 feet, I found myself in a contemplative mood. As Garrison Keillor says of his private eye character: one man’s still trying to find the answer to life’s eternal questions.

What is the meaning of play? When humans have taken care of the essentials — food, clothing, shelter, sex — it is a large part of what they do. I suspect the same is true of all animals, based on the birds, squirrels, fish, cats, dogs, and other creatures I’ve observed. They all love to play. Children love to play. Put a random group of four-year olds together and a game will almost always develop.

The games people play vary widely according to their age, traditions, fitness, intelligence, financial resources, and moxy. Some like skiing, some prefer bowing. Some go for chess, and others like checkers. The arts are unquestionably a form of play; we even refer to musical activity as playing music. A lot of our verbal activity has little to do with survival and qualifies as mostly play.

Smarter-than-normal people tend to like games requiring a good memory and a quick tongue, and to view success in those games as a badge of honor. Before this week, we mostly felt confident that, whatever our weaknesses and failings, we were superior to all other known beings at such activities. After Watson’s triumphant performance at Jeopardy this week, that’s over.

I didn’t see the entire three Jeopardy sessions, but I saw enough to get the idea. The gifted engineers at IBM have taken artificial intelligence to a whole new level. (By the way, congratulations, guys.) Watson has incredible facility with language and memory. The humans never had a chance. I was reminded of the song about John Henry, the great swinger of the hammer, who drove himself to death but couldn’t beat the machine. (Bruce Springstein does a great high-energy version of the song.). Admittedly, Watson’s abilities don’t extend to the entire range of human intelligence. For example, it isn’t good at creative reasoning — yet. But the day when it will be considered hopelessly romantic to think that humans could be more intelligent than machines is well within view.

So where does that leave us as a species? Consciously or subconsciously, we justify a lot of atrocities on the theory that we’re superior as a species to all others, Could Watson make us just a bit more humble? Could it inspire a bit of self-examination? If intelligence isn’t our greatest achievement, if compared to our computers we’re not really very bright, perhaps we’ll come to view our most important defining characteristics as other human qualities, like love and kindness. What if we consciously cultivated those qualities?

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January 8, 2011

New Year’s skiing in Telluride

To ring out the old year, I flew to Telluride CO to see Gabe and Jocelyn and do some skiing. Sally could not be persuaded to go; she said it was too much travel for her after our Bonaire trip. It was in fact a tough journey, with multiple cancelled or delayed flights, and ended up taking 22 hours. I got my wish for heavy snow (so much so that I worried whether we’d make a landing in Colorado), and the mountains were well covered with a 49-inch base when I arrived. I slept for 3 hours, and then got up in hopes of getting first tracks with Gabe and his girlfriend Lindsey.

It was still snowing lightly that morning as I went out to find some rental skis. I found my way to Bob at the Boot Doctor, who seemed to know everything about skis and proposed several options. I wanted to try a hybrid rocker all mountain ski, and Bob set me up with K2 Aftershocks. I ended up liking them a lot. They turned easily and handled well in the heavy stuff.

Gabe and Lindsey made the considerable sacrifice of missing a couple of early runs while I completed my preparations, and were of good cheer when we met at the gondola in Mountain Village. I had not met Lindsey before, and had a little trouble spotting Gabe, because he and most everyone else had covered up their faces against the brutal cold. The reported high for the day was 9, but I’d wager it never reached 0 on the mountain. Lindsey, who’d experienced plenty of cold days skiing in her native New Hampshire, got the shivers after the first couple of runs. We took a hot chocolate break at Giuseppe’s, and she decided to head home.

Plenty of others made the same reasonable decision — which left the mountain largely unpopulated for us diehards. I reminded Gabe that it was my first day going from 300 feet above sea level to 12,000 or so, and my first day of the season on skis. He acknowledged these challenges and proceeded to take me down some of the toughest double-black terrain on the mountain. I suspect he wanted to show off his new skiing prowess, and I was impressed with his accomplishments, as a proud parent should be. I held my own for a few runs, but leg fatigue eventually caught up with me. We skied the last part of the day mostly on groomers.

That evening to celebrate New Year’s, I took Gabe, Lindsey, and Jocelyn to Excelsior’s, an Italian restaurant. It turned out that Lindsey had worked there as a server and knew everyone. We got the royal treatment.

The next morning I felt like I’d gone 16 rounds with the champ — sore from top to bottom. I took a megadose of Advil and headed to my ski lesson with some doubts as to my ability to make it through. Once again, the cold was harsh. But my soreness somehow abated once I got to the top of the mountain. My teacher, Jim Schwartz, was an affable guy of roughly my vintage with a lot of teaching experience. He had some interesting ideas that were new to me, such as focusing on the little toe. We spent the last part of the lesson working on mogul technique. I skied by myself in the afternoon with new confidence and joy.

During one lift ride, Jim opined that people skied for 3 main reasons. Some are excitement junkies that are only happy if they can scare themselves on steep rugged terrain. Others love the alpine beauty. Still others love the kinetic fun of dodging and swooping at speed in a kind of dance. I thought he was generally right. However, I’d add that it’s possible to cross categories. For me, the pleasure is some of all three — excitement, beauty, and grace.

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December 29, 2010

A scuba Xmas in Bonaire

Bonaire is a small island is in the southern Caribbean about 60 miles north of Venezuela. It does not have pretty beaches or glitzy nightlife. It does, however, have a thing that make it world famous among scuba divers — fantastic coral reefs. Sally and I spent Xmas doing lots of diving there, and I can affirm, the coral is healthy and gorgeous.

This is no small thing. Coral all over the world is under stress from global warming with rising ocean temperatures and acidification, as well as pollution, industrial fishing, and various poorly understood diseases. At the same time, a significant percentage of creatures in the ocean life depend directly or indirectly on the reefs for food and shelter. They are the rainforests of the ocean. From a human perspective, they have an additional important attribute — incredible beauty.

It is hard to believe that simple, tiny animals do what coral do. Over long periods they form large structures of great complexity, with each new generation building on top of its predecessors, layer upon layer. The structures have many colors, textures, and shapes. They may resemble cacti, ferns, mushrooms, pillars, antlers, flowers, bowls, or giant brains. In Bonaire, there is a band of coral reefs around the entire island that starts in water about 20 feet deep and goes down below 100 feet.

The reefs of Bonaire are teeming with thousands upon thousands of tropical fish and other creatures. From time to time, we were engulfed in enormous schools. We brought along our copy of Reef Fish Identification, and identified a number of species new to us. Many of them are not at all shy, and some are actually interested in examining humans. On one of our night dives, there were five tarpon that followed us about like large, curious dogs, circling and gliding up from behind close enough to touch.

Close encounters with so much exuberant life was inspiring, though not without some drama. We did some dives from boats run by the operation at our hotel, Divi Flamingo, which generally were delightful. The water was a pleasant 81-82 degrees, and visibility around 60 feet. This visibility is not especially good by Bonaire standards, but we were not complaining.

We had more drama on the shore dives, for which Bonaire is famous in dive circles. Sally and I served as our own guides and safety checks for these, and generally there were no other divers nearby. I enjoyed the solitude, but it also increased the risk level. The reefs are generally only a short swim from shore. However, getting to the water over the uneven volcanic rock with heavy dive equipment can be difficult. At times the ocean surge makes entry and exit dangerous. We got stung by jellyfish and fire coral and sustained minor bruises, cuts, and scrapes from being tossed about on the shallow rocks. Once we made a navigation error because of a strong current, got lost, and I ran uncomfortably low on air. But it was all worth it for the amazing beauty.

Out of the water, we saw flamingos, magnificent frigatebirds, parrots, and various warblers. There were also wild donkeys. The predominant European language of the island is Dutch, followed by Spanish and English. The vibe of the island residents had a strong dose of Dutch reserve along with the Caribbean relaxedness. We were sometimes surprised at the slowness of restaurant and hotel service, and equally surprised that the dive boats always left on schedule, or earlier. Among the tourists the Dutch were predominant. They seemed unusually handsome as a group, though unfortunately a surprising number of them smoked cigarettes.

Bonaire has character and charm, and, as I say, those incredible coral reefs. We’ll likely go back, but I hope next time we can find direct flights. Getting there went smoothly, but getting home ended up taking 31 hours, rather than 9 we’d expected. The customs process in Curacao was amazingly slow, and so we missed our flight to Miami. So, stuck on Curacao, we found a cheap hotel near the airport, took a cab into Willemstad for a walkabout, and ate a good meal. The next day we finally made it back to Raleigh to find snow on the ground.

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December 1, 2010

Thanksgiving in New York

There’s just something electric about New York City! Flying in last Wednesday, I passed close to the Statue of Liberty. Liberty! Then the splendid dense verticality lower Manhattan, and the gleaming skyscraping icons of midtown. It’s Oz!

The original plan for the Tiller clan to meet up for an urban Thanksgiving got off to a rocky start because Stuart, our dog, appeared to be dying. He threw up all over the apartment for a couple of days, and then spent several days in the animal hospital unable to eat. Exploratory abdominal surgery failed to yield a clear diagnosis, but made him weaker still. The day before we were scheduled to leave for NYC, Sally declared she couldn’t stand the thought of his being miserable and alone at the end. He’d been a beloved friend to us for eight years. So she decided to bring him home for hospice care. She urged me to proceed with the plan to meet the kids, who were already there, and so I headed north, with mixed feelings. (P.S. Stuart started improving the day after Sally brought him home and is still with us, frail but looking perkier every day.)

Wednesday afternoon I rendezvoused with Gabe and Jocelyn at the Hotel @ Times Square, a modestly priced (by NYC standards) but clean establishment at a great midtown location. Jocelyn was just back from two months backpacking in Columbia, Ecuador, and Peru, and I was delighted and relieved to see her. Not a day went by during her trip when I didn’t worry about her being kidnapped or worse. She seemed very chipper and glad to be back to the land of flush toilets and hot showers. Gabe came in from Colorado looking handsome, hale and hearty.

I was so glad to see them, and so glad to be back in NYC! When I lived there in my twenties, I could ordinarily not afford taxis, and it was satisfying to take many cab rides with the kids to share some of my favorite places. We went to the Metropolitan Museum and I introduced them to some of my favorite paintings, including the Vermeers. We checked out the amazing holiday windows in the shops on Fifth Avenue, and maneuvered through the mobs of people at Times Square.

On Thanksgiving morning, we’d planned to go to the Macy’s parade, which was passing just a block and a half to the west, but Jocelyn’s left eye was hurting badly, possibly from an infection. We watched a couple of big balloons (including Horton) go by, and then we went looking for medical care. With my iPhone I located an urgent care clinic close by, but it was closed, and the next one we tried was closed as well. We ended up in the emergency room of NYU Bellevue. I expected an endless wait, but it was not so bad. They got us in and out in a couple of hours, and Jocelyn started to feel better soon after.

For Thanksgiving dinner, we went to the upper west side and shared a fine meal with Sally’s brother Bill, his wife Mary Jane, and their daughter Carmen. Everyone was in high spirits, and I was most grateful that they provided delicious non-meat food. Bill was eager to hear more of Jocelyn’s South American journey, and she had some good stories of jungle adventures with snakes and spiders and marathon bus rides. Carmen, now thirteen, seemed amazingly grown up and well spoken. She’d just applied to an arts high school for both acting and piano performance, and played her audition piece, a Haydn sonata.

On Friday, we got a personal tour of the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange and ate lunch in Chinatown. Late that afternoon, Gabe and I went to the Museum of Modern Art. Gabe was interested in Picasso and Van Gogh, and I never get tired of them. I also spent some time with the J. Pollocks. The big big drip painting finally clicked for me (goose bumps). We met Jocelyn and her friend Pam at a little Italian restaurant on the east side. Pam is an art world person and aspiring critic, and amazingly articulate, warm, and friendly. Gabe mentioned Andy Warhol, and it turned out Pam had some dense but fascinating ideas about him.

On Saturday afternoon, I took the kids to their first live opera at the Met, where we saw Carmen with Elina Garanca in the title role. She was smoking hot! Everything was truly wonderful — singing, sets, costumes, orchestra. And the story is still a bloody shocker. I was a little worried beforehand that the kids might not like it, which, especially in view of the ticket prices, would have been a bummer, but was not — they enjoyed it.

Gabe and Jocelyn had an early flight to Colorado on Sunday, so I was on my own for the last day. I went back to the Met in the morning and spent some time with the Greek and Roman antiquities, looked in on an exhibit of the work of Jan Gossart (Dutch Renaissance), and looked in again at the beloved Vermeers. Then I went to Lincoln Center to see the City Ballet’s Nutcracker.

After many Nutcrackers, I thought I was pretty much nutcrackered out for life, but it turned out not. Somehow it hit the sweet spot of pure joy and wonder. The dancing was delightful, the stagecraft was impressive, and the orchestra sounded great. The child dancers had more-than-usual charisma. Jennifer Ringer as the Sugarplum Fairy seemed a little flat at first, but was gorgeous in the pas de deux. Ashley Bouder was an exquisite Dew Drop. A few weeks earlier I’d ordered a piano version of the Tchaikovsky score and played through parts of it for fun, so I was particularly attentive to the music. It is a masterpiece.

After the ballet, I took a cab to 46th and 12th and visited the aircraft carrier Intrepid, the submarine Growler, and the Concorde. Impressive machines! The Intrepid is a proud veteran of WWII that played a significant role in the Pacific theater and survived some kamikaze hits. The sun was setting at the end of my tour, and the view of Manhattan was beautiful.

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October 2, 2010

Freedom and private matters

I finished Franzen’s Freedom on the flight back from Dallas earlier this week. Although the last half of the book was not as surgically precise and constantly surprising as the first, it was still very fine, and I was glad I read it. It passed my test for a novel that is in every sense worthwhile: it explored questions and won insights that just can’t be got at through any medium other than a novel. The subject matter involves some of the big issues of our time, such as global warming, overpopulation, environmental irresponsibility, and species extinction. But just as in other great novels, most of the interesting revelations relate to private matters — interior lives and intimate relationships.

Writing about things that are generally considered private is a risky business. Even with the license of a novelist, it takes a degree of courage close to recklessness to be direct and truthful about intimate aspects of our lives. For all the things Freud got wrong, he was surely right that civilization depends on a degree of repression of our basic urges. By the same token, our social lives would be unsustainable if we lifted all self-censorship. It’s true, as Jack Nicholson once violently asserted: we can’t handle the truth! At any rate, we can’t uncritically expose all of our feelings and our emotional lives without causing outrage and social havoc. But this is part of the gift of the great novelist: to guide us into and through these hidden things in a way that enriches rather than injures.

I’m constantly struggling, when I write for the Casual Blog, with the question of what is too private for public exposure. Where one draws the line plainly depends on what kind of person one is, which in turn depends on every other social variable — personal history, family, community, customs, laws, etc. And the line may also vary according to the subject involved. And the best answer for today may not be the best in the future. Pushing the line may actually change the kind of person one is or is perceived to be, either for better or worse. My current model involves trying to be conscious of the line and to get close to it without going over it. But it’s always a judgment call made in the fog of complexity. Mistakes are sure to happen. In such cases, I have to hope the parties affected will forgive and eventually forget.

I’ve wondered whether it crosses the line to explore the implications of Jocelyn’s latest adventure — free form travelling in South America. This is not all happy stuff. As a dad, I’m in a fugue state: full of admiration for her spirit and courage, full of pride, but also full of worry. As I told her very bluntly, she is throwing herself in front of some existential risks without understanding them very well. She did not appreciate this criticism, and just as bluntly told me so. She is highly confident of her ability to deal with the unexpected, which is impressive, yet worrisome. Does she have any idea how vulnerable she could be? Is it better if she doesn’t? At any rate, I’m sufficiently on edge and preoccupied with such risks as kidnapping that I will refrain from discussing her itinerary. But I should also say, according to her emails, she’s having a fantastic time.

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July 10, 2010

Dropping some weight and hitting some golf balls

I came back from the long weekend in St. Croix five pounds heavier than when I left.  It’s difficult to account for the sudden gain, since I was reasonably careful about not over eating and held the veggie line against temptation.  Perhaps our very pleasant seaside daiquiris, pina coladas, and pain killers had something to do with it.  In any case, I managed to shed all the extra weight this week with some vigorous early morning workouts, and as of this morning was at my fighting weight of 160.

Earlier this week the NY Times published a piece by Gretchen Reynolds on the positive effects of exercise on the brain.  http://tiny.cc/deokh  Studies with rats show the exercising rats with much superior brain functioning (“little rat geniuses”), and the apparent interaction of BMP and Noggin leading to increased production of neurons.  I can believe it.   When I first began regular exercise in my college years, I viewed it as primarily benefitting the cardiovascular system, but especially in recent times, I find that I feel duller if I can’t find time for a workout.

We’ve had a record-setting heat wave this week.  This Saturday morning, I was hoping to get an outdoor swim at Lifetime Fitness, but unfortunately the outdoor lanes were all taken when I got there at 6:40.  I made do with the indoor pool for 60 laps, then 15 minutes of yoga in the sauna, then 5 minutes in the steam room (whew!).  Then I headed over to Lake Jordan to drive my sports car on some backwoods roads.

I ended up at the end of a gravel road off US 64 at a down-on-its-luck golf range with a old barn on one side.  There was no one there when I showed up, but a guy emerged from a small adjacent house and got me a bucket of golf balls.  He couldn’t take a credit card, and couldn’t break a $20, but he agreed to let me have a $9 bucket for all the smaller bills I had ($7).  Then he drove off, and left me alone to practice.   The grass was very long, and so I was effectively working on shots from the rough.  A good thing to practice, though not so fun.  I got sweaty and tired, and was happy to get to the bottom of the bucket and see the last ball fly away.

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July 10, 2010

Driving on the left

When we rented a car in St. Croix last weekend, the Hertz agent informed me that they drive on the left.  The guard at the airport exit reminded me again to drive on the left.  As did a policewoman at a drunk driver check point.  And with good reason:  it’s hard!  I’m guessing a lot of American tourists have accidents or narrowly avoid them.  The rule that one drives on the right gets deeply grooved into the brain.  The first two days, I consciously reminded myself repeatedly that left was right.  But by the third day left was starting to feel natural.  Then we came back to Raleigh, USA.  The first day I found myself hesitating — left or right?

That minor culture shock quickly receded in the face of the everyday challenges of work etc.  I did have a couple of days, though, where it seemed that every leaf on the trees I saw on my commute to work was distinct and clear.  The short Caribbean adventure transformed things just a bit.

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