I told this story last week to my old GMAT student in Warsaw, and I figure it makes a nice segue from the Valentine's Day story, to the next BMFRTE post. It's a nice segue because it includes the story of one of the near-death experiences (with Laszlo) mentioned in the V-Day post, which happened in a location (Arches National Park) that figures in the next BMFRTE post. So without further ado,
How I Got Into Business School
I applied to business school during the fall of '97. I had been working for Katz Communications in LA for 3 years, and had been having a very good career there. I had only recently come to consider the idea of getting an MBA, and decided that it was only worth it if I got into a really good business school. So I applied to just 4 schools: Stanford, UCLA, Berkeley, and Yale.
As I evaluated my own candidacy, I realized that I was a terrible long shot. On paper, I really had no business being in a top business school. My grades were mediocre (3.06), and I had minimal work experience in an industry which sent very few people to business school. Thankfully, I did have a very good GMAT score (770), but that was the lone bright spot in an otherwise thoroughly mediocre candidacy. I realized I desperately needed to get an interview with these places. I've always done better in person.
Unfortunately, neither Stanford nor UCLA interviewed people unless there was some really compelling reason for it. But I went and visited Berkeley, and managed to get an interview with a current student there. So my girlfriend Sarah and I drove up to SF from LA, and crashed with JOC, who was at Hastings Law School at the time. Since I had to park my car in the Tenderloin, I decided to bring everything inside, including my interview suit.
If you have been reading these posts for a while, you might be able to guess where this is heading- after staying up all night with JOC (I remember falling asleep during South Park at like 3 a.m.), we were dragging a bit in the morning and raced out of the building sans suit. Halfway to Berkeley, it finally dawned on me that we'd left it behind, and so I had to drive 90 mph back to get it, causing me to trip one of those photo-enforced intersections in San Francisco. Though, I never did receive a ticket; it's possible I was going so fast the camera didn't get a good look. I've read that's possible.
Anyway, despite my best efforts, I didn't really click with my interviewer, and I had a lot of doubts about whether the student was going to talk me up enough to make a real difference. But then I found out that Yale was sending its admissions people out to LA for interviewing, and that by luck of the draw I had landed on the slate of Richard, the Dean of Admissions. I was totally pumped.
The interview was set for a Friday at 4pm, at one of the hotels down by LAX. That put it 20 minutes away from work assuming no traffic on the 405 (ha!), but I had a surefire surface-street route that could get me there in 30 even during rush hour. Nevertheless, I resolved to leave work by 2pm so that there was no conceivable way I would be late. Friday afternoons were normally very slow at work, since working on Friday afternoons would get in the way of the primary activity of people in the advertising business in LA, which is drinking in westside bars.
Our team at work was composed of a manager, 5 account executives (AE's), and 5 assistants. We represented several television stations scattered around the country, but 80% of our business came from just 2 stations: KUSI in San Diego and KNXV in Phoenix. The National Sales Manager (NSM) from KNXV was in town that day, and so our manager and all the AE's took him out to lunch. A long lunch. A long lunch that, by 2pm, I was beginning to suspect was going to end up lasting the rest of the day. Clearly, none of them were coming back. No worries though, I figured, I'll just wrap up and get out of here.
And that's when the NSM from KUSI called.
Her name was Judy, and she was, while being personally a wonderful human being that I genuinely liked, often a pain in the butt to work with, especially when she was in a mood, which, to be honest, was frequently. And today she was in the mother of all moods.
As it happened, the very first person at Katz that I ever assisted was Judy's daughter, Summer. Summer was her mother's daughter in that on a personal level she was awesome, but she went through a lot of assistants because assisting her was like assisting General Patton. But once I figured that out, and decided not to take it personally, we bonded and worked extremely well together. And so, her mother treated me far better than she generally treated the other assistants on the team.
Also, by this time, 3 years into working at Katz, I carried a much bigger and more advanced set of responsibilities than the other assistants on the team. So when Judy called needing a deal to be negotiated with J. Walter Thompson, who happened to be in our building up on the 21st floor, and it couldn't wait because it was for spots to air that weekend, and there were no AE's present, and it was 1997 and no one had a cell phone, I did what I thought was best and volunteered to go upstairs and try to negotiate the deal. Technically, that was work that only an AE should have done, but I knew the buyer up there and she liked me too, so I negotiated the deal. That part all worked out- the buyer got a good deal, Judy got the money she needed, and Katz Communications looked great.
The problem was, by the time it was done and I could run out of the office, it was 340. I was panicked. I had no number to get a hold of Richard, and I needed LA traffic not to present a single problem in order to make the interview on time. You're in pretty bad shape if you need LA traffic not to present a single problem. In fact, the 405 was a parking lot, and then there was construction on my backup route, and so by the time I got to the hotel, parked, found out which conference room Richard was in, and found the room, it was 420.
420. 20 minutes late for a half hour interview. I literally ran into the room, foaming at the mouth in apologies.
Me: "OhmygodI'msosorryIhadnowaytocontactyoupleaseacceptmyapology..."
Richard: "Relax, it's OK. Did they send you to the wrong room also?"
Me: "What?"
Richard: "Yeah, they've been sending people to the wrong floor all day. No one has been on time. Where did they send you?"
Me: "They sent me here. They got it right." And I proceeded to explain about Judy, etc.
So after hearing my little story, Richard says that he appreciates that I 'fessed up about why I was late, when I had the opportunity to pin it on someone else, and then offers that he only has one more interview, at 430, so if I am willing to wait outside the room until 5, he'll see me then.
So I waited until 5, and Richard called me in. In the end, the interview consisted of just 3 questions. After looking over my resume for a minute, he asked the first one...
Richard: "So, I see here that you were a physics and math major, and now you work in advertising. It's not real intuitive to me how that happens, so why don't you tell me how you ended up at Katz."
And this is the story I told him:
I was raised from birth to be in the sciences. My dad wanted me to be a doctor, but I knew early that I hated hospitals and medicine. However, in a show of flexibility, my dad was willing to accept a Ph.D. in a hard science as a substitute for an M.D. In my dad's very black-and-white mind, there were 2 types of people: people who did science or medicine, and Other People.
And so, raised in a household with a heavy Indian influence, it didn't really occur to me to further question whether that was the right track for me. I majored in physics because it was the only science I enjoyed, and majored in math because I took so much of it I only needed 1 more class. And so, needing a Ph.D. to fulfill my father's wish, I applied to Ph.D. programs in planetary physics, and finally got accepted to the program at UC Davis.
It wasn't until I got that acceptance, just before graduation, that I finally sat down and grappled with the thought of doing physics pretty much exclusively for the next 6 years, after that entering a job market with maybe a dozen jobs out there for theoretical astrophysicists, which is what I would have been. A dozen jobs, currently held by people all perfectly capable in principle of winning a Nobel Prize. We're talking people like Stephen Hawking. If you took a teaspoon and scooped out a chunk of Stephen Hawking's brain and dumped it on your kitchen table, that disembodied chunk would be about 1000 times smarter than I am.
Between being not smart enough to effectively compete for a handful of jobs in the area I would have pursued, and a broader feeling that I liked physics, and liked understanding it, but didn't love physics in the way that you have to in order to pursue that kind of life, I chose to defer for a year. I figured I'd try and spend the next year doing something as totally unlike physics as possible, and then a year later, if I found I was really missing physics, I would know that it was the right path for me, and I would go to UC Davis.
Then I graduated, went home to StL, packed my stuff in my car, and moved to LA permanently. And discovered that I had no savings, no income, and absolutely no relevant job market experience whatsoever. I had only worked in places like ice cream stores, or been a TA, or done random odd jobs. I had no resume. I had no prospects. And I needed income fast.
I put together a resume and submitted it for several positions I saw in the LA Times. One of them was for a job as the assistant to the VP of Marketing at Petersen Publishing, which publishes Motor Trend, Guns & Ammo, and many other magazines. They received 100 resumes, and picked 20 people to come in for a first round screening interview. Judy, the woman I would be interviewing with, told me to come down Wilshire Blvd, see the Petersen Publishing sign on the right, turn into the driveway, and then park underneath the building, come up to the 2nd floor, and tell the receptionist that I was there for an interview, and she'd direct me from there.
So I got in my car and started driving. It was my first interview for a real job, and I was nervous as hell. Laszlo had given me a page of commonly asked interview questions, and I was more reading that than I was driving. Eventually I did come down Wilshire, saw the Petersen Publishing sign, and then turned into the driveway, whereupon I went back to reading my interview questions. On autopilot, I parked underneath the building, went up to the 2nd floor, marched up to the receptionist (Alice).
Me: "Hi. I'm here for an interview."
Alice: "Great, we really need people."
(That's encouraging, I thought)
Alice: "Who are you here to interview with?"
Me: "Judy."
Alice: "Um, we don't have a Judy here." She picks up what must be the company directory and starts scanning it.
That's odd, I thought, I just spoke to Judy half an hour ago. Just then, I look up at the wall behind Alice, and in enormous letters it says, KATZ COMMUNICATIONS.
Me: "Uh, this isn't Petersen Publishing, is it?"
Alice: "No-o-o, that would be the building next door."
The Petersen building and 6500 Wilshire are right next to each other, separated only by their 2 driveways, and a short concrete wall between the 2 driveways, atop which sits the little Petersen Publishing sign that I had seen shortly before turning into the wrong driveway.
Just then, Nancy, the office manager, walked into the reception area and saw me there in my suit.
Nancy: "Oh hi. Are you here to interview?"
Me: "Uh, actually, I'm supposed to be next door interviewing in like 5 minutes."
Nancy: "Well, here's my card. We work in television, it's a great entry level job, a good place to learn and get started. If it doesn't work out over there, call me."
So I pocketed the card and went next door.
I ended up passing the screening interview. They picked 3 people to come back and interview with the VP. I was the 1st one he saw. We had an awesome interview; it went over an hour, we really connected, and at the very end I thought "I so have this job locked _up_"
And that's when he said: "I just want to let you know, although I haven't seen the other 2 yet, I'm definitely going to offer the position to one of them." At what must have been my look of shock he continued, "I think you're really smart, and will be bored in this position and want to leave within a year. I want someone who will be a little bit more challenged than you will, and who will therefore stick around longer. Thanks."
So I left. I was depressed. No one else had responded to any of my resumes. And I was staring starvation in the face. The only reason I had a place to stay was that I'd moved in with my girlfriend Tasha, who rented the 2nd bedroom in a West Hollywood apartment from a gay male hairdresser named Stan whose salon had been leveled in the Northridge quake back in January. So, he cut all his hair in the apartment. And smoked copious amounts of weed. And brought home a lot of strange men that, as a fully hetero guy, I could tell were scrapings from the bottom of the barrel. I desperately wanted out, but we were stuck there until I had income.
So I went home and called Nancy. She was thrilled to hear from me, and asked if I could come in to interview tomorrow. I said sure. Now, it was 1994, and so across the country at MIT, Tim Berners-Lee was busy founding the World Wide Web Consortium, which would eventually lead to mass exposure to the Web. But as of that day, there was no meaningful WWW, no Google to look up anything with, and so the next day when I went in for my interview, I knew the following things about the position I was interviewing for:
1) It was for a company called 'Katz Communications', and
2) It had something to do with 'television'.
As it happened, when I arrived neither Summer nor Mike, who were the two people immediately in need of an assistant, was present, so rather than send me home, they sent me in to interview with Mickey, the Vice President of the whole damn company.
Mickey, you may be interested to know, was the nephew of Mickey Cohen. That's Mickey Cohen the gangster, who was partners with Bugsy Siegel in setting up the Flamingo Hotel and more or less building Vegas, and who worked with Al Capone, Frank Gagna, and over the course of his life survived several attempts on his life. I didn't know that at the time I walked into Mickey's office, but I did immediately recognize that this man was _terrifying_. Although Mickey spent his whole life trying to maintain a distance between himself and his gangster pedigree, he definitely had absorbed the special gangster ability to project a unique combination of absolute authority and dispassionate lethality that I promise you is different from anything else you've ever experienced.
Mickey had a huge corner office, with an enormous, pristine oaken desk, and a huge leather chair. He'd sit way back in that leather chair, angled somewhat away from you, mostly looking down at his hands folded in his lap. He always spoke quietly; in all the years I worked for him I only saw him lose his temper and yell once, and it was the single most terrifying moment I had there. And I was just a distant bystander. We had several clients who had national reputations for being abusive to salespeople, but every last one of them was extremely deferential to Mickey. He just had that kind of ability to project.
And so, when he asked me why I was interested in the job, I almost pissed myself because I had no idea about the job really, and instead just told him how I'd ended up there. I can only hope I didn't sound even a tenth of how terrified I was. When I finished, there was a long silence, while Mickey just looked down at his hands and I tried hard not to squirm in my seat. I fully expected him to say, "Why are you wasting my valuable time? Hey Vinny, whack this piece of shit!"
Finally he said: "Well, this is a sales job. There's a lot of talking on the phone. If you're the sort of person that argues with your girlfriend over who has to call and order the pizza, this isn't the job for you."
Wow. The thing is, and I am not making this up, the previous night Tasha and I had gotten into an argument over who would have to order the pizza. But I was so desperate for this job, whatever it was, and so I said:
"Oh no, I love talking on the phone. I talk on the phone all the time."
Yes, I said something that retarded. And yes, it was a bald-faced lie. It remains the one lie I have ever told in an interview. I told it because I was even more desperate for a job than I was afraid of Mickey, who gave every impression that if he found out I'd lied to him, would casually reach into his desk, pull out a gun, put a bullet in my head, and then go back to reading Advertising Age and eating Triscuits.
He said they'd let me know, and swiveled his chair to go back to facing the window, which was always his way of dismissing you. I got up and left, went home, and about 15 minutes after I got home, Nancy called me and asked me if I wanted the job, and upon hearing my answer, asked if I could start tomorrow, to which I joyfully answered "yes". I still really had no idea what they did there- I'd been too nervous to ask Mickey any meaningful questions.
I soon found out that the team normally had 5 assistants, was down 2 already at the time I blundered into the Katz office, and a third had just given notice. So they were desperate for a warm body, which I was able to provide. Later, as people came and went, I would look at the people we would turn away, who had actual experience in the industry, and marvel that it's all about timing. But I got my wish- selling television airtime was as unlike physics and math as possible, and it turned out I had some facility for it. Just before he died of AIDS, Mickey said I was the best hire he ever made.
And that's how I ended up in advertising.
When I finished telling Richard the story, he looked a little, well, stunned.
Richard: "Wow, that's a hell of a story. You should embellish it a little- you know, say you'd been working there a couple weeks before you even noticed you were in the wrong place."
Me: "Ye-e-a-a-h-h, I could do that, but I kind of feel like the story is crazy enough as it is, without embellishment."
Richard: "Yeah, okay, you're right about that."
And then he asked me his second question.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
A Valentine's weekend to remember, part 2
(In our last episode, I was clutching my bloody ass and wondering where the hell my keys could have gone...)
With no keys, we can't drive home. I can't get into the office on Monday, since it's a holiday and none of the office people with spare keys will be there. So I quickly reach the obvious conclusion:
Me: "We have to go back."
Keiko: "GO BACK?!?!? Go back WHERE?!?!"
So I give what is pretty obviously a persuasive, eminently rational explanation why we should walk back to the site of our recent near-death experience. However, since my credibility with Keiko is at something of a low ebb (ha!), my "persuasive", "eminently rational" explanation comes off to her a bit more as "unconvincing", and "totally insane".
We compromise by agreeing that we will walk back there, and from the safety of the high cliff peer over the edge and see if we can spot the keys down there. Since there are several shiny trinkets attached to the keys, which helps prevent me from losing them (normally) and which are probably at least in part responsible from my losing what is rapidly becoming clear is a significant chunk of the skin on my right ass cheek, and since the rocks are very dark, owing to what I now more clearly realize is their near constant inundation by waves, it's possible in theory that the keys are just stuck in one of the little crevices that the waves pushed me along, and might therefore be visible against the dark rock when viewed from above.
We decide to leave as a Point To Be Negotiated Later what will happen if in fact we do see the keys down there. There turns out to be some strongly divergent feelings on that issue. It is not unlike when the Israelis and the Palestinians, after much impassioned discussion, agree that a summit is a good idea, and that if you're going to have a summit, some place like Oslo where the weather is cool and the women are hot would be a good place to have it, but we'll leave the other details, like Palestinian statehood, right of return, final status of Jerusalem, and the continued existence of Israeli settlements on the West Bank as points to be negotiated later.
So we turn around and start walking back. Fortunately, the adrenaline hasn't really dissipated yet, so although I am aware in a general sense that I have sustained a lot of injuries, and am going to be feeling a lot of very specific pains in the near future, I at this moment feel only a general, amorphous sense of Pain. It's not exactly a short walk, but we move quickly and return to the scene of our brush with death.
From our safe perch high on the cliff, we scan the area surrounding where we started and ended up. No evidence of the keys turns up. But, after much looking, I do notice that high tide still hasn't come in yet, and I decide that now is a good time to bring up my insight that the obvious flaw in the previous Plan was that we didn't pay consistent, careful attention to the ocean, but now I, having swiftly and wisely learned from experience, have developed a New Revised Plan.
Me: "OK, I'm just going to go back down there for a quick look around, youstayrightuphere, and watch the waves. If you see one that looks particularly big, scream or something and I'll get out of there immediately."
See? A sensible new Plan.
Keiko: "OHMYGODYOUARENOTGOINGBACKDOWNTHERE!!"
Keiko is _flipped out_. She is at least an order of magnitude more upset than she was in the immediate aftermath of nearly getting killed. This catches me a little by surprise, but fortunately she is still somewhat in shock, and clearly exhausted by the whole experience, and so faced with a negotiating strategy of quiet persistence, she eventually capitulates. As I climb down the cliff I reflect that she probably figures that if I get myself killed in the next 10 minutes, she's super hot and should therefore be able to hitch a ride to the nearest airport without much trouble.
So, a few minutes later, I find myself back on the dark wet rocks. I am now feeling acute paranoia, and look up at the ocean about every 0.8 seconds. This makes looking through the million nooks and crannies in the rock a pretty slow process, and a couple of times I see a suspicious wave and bolt for the cliff, but the ocean more or less behaves itself, and I comb pretty much the whole area.
And then, in the crevice that leads to a 6 inch wide horizontal cleft in the rock that quickly plunges 4-5 feet into the ocean, and which the original wave pushed me clear over (thankfully), I see a glint of metal. I reach down there, and pull up the key to our hotel room. Or what's left of it, anyway. It's a large oval metal tag that says "Sea Rock Inn Rm 4", with half of a key attached. The key has been cleanly snapped in two. It was the only key not attached to the primary set of keys I was carrying, since it isn't mine. I can't believe it's snapped in half like that. That's apparently how hard I my ass hit the rocks. This realization suddenly, perceptibly accelerates forward the time at which I am going to start fully feeling the pain associated with my injuries.
However, I am cheered by having found the key, so I redouble my efforts to find the other keys. But the afternoon clouds are coming in, the wind is picking up, and the waves are starting to come more frequently, and I start getting the feeling that the tide is going to start really coming in soon. And so, after casing the area one last time, I give up the search and climb back up onto the cliff, where Keiko is now shivering, and, admittedly with some justification, feeling pretty unhappy.
So we start walking back to the inn. It's somewhat of a long walk, and by the time we get back, it's pretty clear that the adrenaline-induced grace period on pain is swiftly coming to an end. So, we walk through the front door to talk to Barbara, the innkeeper, and get a new key to our room. We are absolutely drenched, shivering from the long walk in the chilly ocean wind, and visibly bleeding.
Barbara: "OH MY GOD! What HAPPENED to you guys??"
I figure I should probably field this one.
I explain to her about the Plan, and how it had seemed like a Good Plan, but which had, in the final analysis, really turned out to be more of a Retarded Plan, etc., etc., and Barbara flips out. We get a lecture about how people die out there, we're lucky to be alive, and so on. But she's very kind and sympathetic, and gives us a new key, her last couple bandages, and the phone numbers to a place that will deliver food, so we don't have to go out tonight, and the one car rental place nearby, which is 15 miles away in Fort Bragg.
I need the car rental place because my spare key is in Half Moon Bay. There's no one I can really ask to do a 9 hour round trip to bring the key to me, and even if there were, I wouldn't ask, because no way do I deserve to weasel out of that. It's now past 5, if there is a locksmith, he's probably up in Ft. Bragg also, we'd have to use some kind of emergency contact, and he'd have to not only unlock my vehicle, but fashion a key to start it. There seems to be a lot of uncertainty in that scenario, plus it may well be more expensive than renting a car for a day, so I figure we'll just do the 9 hour round trip tomorrow, and then stay here tomorrow night.
Trouble is, it turns out there are no more rooms here tomorrow night. So Barbara calls next door, at the Agate Cove Inn (in Mendocino, every building is one of 3 things: a B&B, a restaurant, or a funky shop selling local artisans' stuff) and gets us the last room over there.
So we take our new key and trudge up to our room, where we peel off our wet, bloody clothes and put them by the fireplace. Then we take a super long hot shower to get the dirt and blood off. I am still bleeding rather a lot, it turns out. And I can't put pressure on all the different places at once, so I start prioritizing. This also proves to be a good time to do an inventory of our injuries: Keiko has sustained cuts to several places on her arms, plus sizable bruises on her arms, legs, and ribcage. I have lost the skin on my right ass cheek, some of the skin on my left knee, most of the skin on my right knee, and several large patches of skin on my right leg and right hand. It is also clear that there is bruising pretty much everywhere on the right side of my body (though bruises rarely are visible on my skin).
In addition to that, as someone who has broken multiple bones, some of them multiple times, sprained both ankles multiple times, sprained my wrist, been knocked unconscious several times, fallen from a tree, and been nearly drowned multiple times, I am here to tell you that every type of physical trauma has a unique flavor of pain associated with it, and it is just after the shower that all the specific pains finally hit. And there are a lot of them. But, it allows me to compare against previous experience and give a rough diagnosis: right ankle, clearly sprained, clearly mild-moderate severity. Right knee, clearly sprained, moderate to severe. Both knees and the ankle are starting to swell severely now. And did I mention the pain? Ouch. ouchouchouchouchouch.
I hobble over to the phone and dial up the car rental place. It's the only car rental place within 50 miles, and it's Enterprise, but when you're as far away as we are, they don't pick you up. Not that it matters- they don't have any cars available. Right, it's a holiday weekend, and they are a tiny facility. And, they're closed on Sundays. Which means, we may not be able to get a car until Monday. He advises us to check in tomorrow morning and see if anyone returns their car early.
So Keiko and I are stuck. We camp out on the bed and watch TV for a couple of hours, and then decide to see if we can walk into town and get some food. Upon attempting to stand, I nearly end up in a heap on the floor, since all the joints are swollen and stiff. Also, they really, really hurt. And, upon looking back at the bed, it's clear that over the last 3 hours my ass has continued to bleed for some nontrivial portion of the time. Oops.
But we're starving, and there's a nice restaurant in town, and I think I owe Keiko about a million nice dinners after this, so I grit my teeth, struggle into some clothes, and we hobble slowly down the road into town. Once we're moving, the pain is much more manageable. We eventually make it into town, and have a very nice, very slow dinner, after which I am once again almost unable to stand, as the joints have stiffened up again. But a bottle of wine has gone a long way to dulling the pain.
We hobble back to the inn, and go straight to bed. Over the course of the night, I wake up about 3 million times, because every act of moving is an act that involves a high degree of pain, so every time I move, I wake myself up and find myself in pain. By morning I am exhausted and miserable.
At 1130am, as we are packing up our stuff to move next door to the Agate Cove, the Enterprise in Fort Bragg calls, and says someone just dropped off an SUV, which I can have if I can get to them before they close in 30 minutes. I tell him to hold it for me, and then hobble down to the office at the Sea Rock as fast as my gimpy joints can take me.
I stumble into the office, where Barbara is talking with an older couple who have just arrived, and who are friends with the owner. I quickly explain that we can get a rental car if I can get to Fort Bragg in the next 25 minutes, and that we're all winning if i do since my car is stuck in the Sea Rock's limited parking until I can get into it. The older gentleman, Rick, listens to an extremely abbreviated version of the story, and then volunteers to drive me.
So Keiko stays behind to move us from Sea Rock to Agate, and Rick and I head for Fort Bragg. Along the way, he gets the fuller version of the story, and in his super-chill NoCal way, says, "Oh well, live and learn, I guess." Yeah, that's true. I'm especially excited about the living part right now.
As we enter Fort Bragg, Rick turns to me and says, "So where is the Enterprise?"
Uh oh.
Back at the Sea Rock, when I had said that's where we needed to go, he had reacted as though he knew exactly where that was. So, I didn't think to get the address. And I have no cell phone to call anyone with, since it's waterlogged. And, it's 11:52. I tell him to pull over at a Longs Drugs that we're passing, and I run (well, hobble very quickly) inside and up to an old guy at the Photo Development counter. I ask him where the Enterprise is, and he says "Wow, I didn't even know they finally got a rental car place around here!"
sigh
But he hands me the Yellow pages, and I look up the address and ask him where that is. It turns out to be only a few blocks away, so I make it to the Enterprise at 11:58, where Michael, the guy I've spoken with on the phone multiple times, has apparently been making bets with his assistant as to whether I'd make it before close. Ha ha.
So he rents me a Chrysler Aspen, which, if you haven't seen one, is about the size of a double decker bus. But it's a vehicle, and I thank Rick profusely, offer to buy him and his wife dinner (he politely refuses), and then head back to get Keiko.
Our room at the Agate is amazing, and priced accordingly, which is probably why it was the last one available. A beautiful ocean view. But Keiko and I pile into the Aspen, and begin the 4.5 hour trek back to Half Moon Bay. For the record, if you have a sprained right ankle and knee, driving is extremely uncomfortable. But Keiko, being a New York City girl, very rarely drives, and is also banged up, and we have to drive over some rather treacherous roads, so I just suck it up and do 3.5 of the driving hours. In further proof that you can take the boy out of the Catholicism, but you can't take the Catholicism out of the boy, I figure this is all just part of my Penance Plan.
[St. Peter: "What did you come up with, J.C.? I came up with 2 weeks of unremitting joint pain, near-total loss of credibility with his girlfriend, total loss of credibility with the girlfriend's mother, ridicule from his friends, and a month off from sports."
Jesus: "Taking the economic view- one expensive hotel room, replacement costs for a phone, two digital cameras, a security badge, and an office key, a car rental -biggest size possible-, gas, and a lot of flowers."
St. Peter: Ah, but a little bit of wisdom...
Jesus: ...priceless.]
4.5 hours later, Keiko and I pulled into Half Moon Bay. I keep a spare house key hidden outside, and so we go inside the house and I immediately get the spare car key. It feels so sweet to have one thing back that I lost. I also look up my student's home phone number, so I can call her and let her know that I won't be able to see her on Monday. Her dad answers, and since I don't really feel like explaining right now the ways in which his daughter's expensive tutor is a retard, I'm pretty sure he thinks I'm just playing hookey.
We grab season 3 of Coupling, since once we get back to the Agate Cove, we're not going to (a) feel like doing anything but laying around, or (b) be able to do anything even if we wanted to, since the town shuts down at like 9p.m. And then we drive the 4.5 hours back, getting back to the Agate Cove at 1030pm. At this point, I am rapidly learning all the roads in Mendocino County like the back of my hand. Exhausted, we retire early.
The next day, we lie in bed and watch Coupling, plus admire the amazing ocean view from our room. Then we avail ourselves of the fancy shower with two showerheads. I desperately covet one of these- although showering with someone has a certain kind of obvious upside potential, having your own consistent stream of hot water is also awesome, and so, dammit, why not have both?
We head down to breakfast, and upon entering the dining room, are loudly announced to everyone by the innkeeper, who we have not actually met yet, as "our celebrity guests who nearly got swept away yesterday." All conversation stops and everyone turns to look at us. Awesome. That's definitely what you want with breakfast.
[St. Peter: "Public humiliation? Wow. I didn't see how that could get worked in."
Jesus: "Yeah, that was a bit inspired, if I do say so Myself"]
The Agate Cove Inn. Breakfast and humor served daily.
After breakfast, we pack up to check out, and I propose that since we didn't get to hike around the headlands Friday, why don't we do it today before we go. After all, the pain tends to be pretty manageable as long as I keep moving. It's just the starting and stopping that really hurt.
The view at the Agate Cove.
In the picture above, you can see just above my right shoulder a chunk of the headlands that sticks way out into the ocean. And at the very bottom of the chunk, if you look closely, you can see a little nub that sticks even farther out. That's where we almost died.
So after making a quick run up to Fort Bragg to dump off the rental, we drive back to the scene and park, and start walking around the headlands.
The coastline around here is so awesome, though I do recommend viewing it from up here. Note that the dark rock is rock that is regularly hit by ocean water, which tells you how big the waves can be.
Look at the size of the wave in the lower right. I don't think the camera adequately conveys how big it is.
Along the way, I mention to Keiko that having a near-death experience places her in an elite subcategory of my friends- friends I've had some level of near-death experience with:
Tom, vehicular, ca 1989, I-40 in southeast MO, definitely his fault
Plaid, vehicular, ca. 1989, highway 59 in East Texas, definitely his fault
Plaid, vehicular, ca. 1990, I-55 in Mississippi, definitely my fault
Joel and Zhian, wilderness, ca. 1991, Big Sur, definitely Zhian's fault
Shara, vehicular, ca. 1992, just outside the Riverport Ampitheatre after the Steve Miller concert, definitely the fault of some fraction of the 6 other drivers involved.
Laszlo, wilderness, ca. 1996, Arches National Park, definitely his fault, despite what he says (note to self: when wandering in the desert, never let the Jew lead)
Sarah, wilderness, ca. 1997, Big Sur, shared fault (my risky plan, her not following the plan)
Laura, vehicular, ca. 1998, I-70 outside Indianapolis, definitely my fault
Jeffrey, wilderness, ca. 2004, Banff National Park, definitely my fault
SP (my sister), vehicular, ca. 2005, I-10, definitely my fault
Keiko, wilderness, 2008, Mendocino, definitely my fault
Unfortunately, I had some difficulty accurately conveying the appeal of being in such an elite club.
After about 20 minutes of walking, I turn to Keiko and inform her that we've got to go back to the car. This is the third calendar day since the incident, and the pain in my leg and ankle has gotten steadily worse. Given that my ankle and leg are probably at least sprained, I should probably not be hiking around on them anyway. It's just that I was really hoping to have a nice hike on some beautiful coastline, dammit.
So we go back to the car and decide to just head back to Half Moon Bay. We decide to take a slightly different route, because I'm tired of the same old Mendocino highways I've been up and down so much recently, plus this route will take us through Ukiah, where I have reason to believe there is a used bookstore with science fiction, and where we can get some lunch.
In Ukiah, we get some food and decide to see Jumper. As we are getting ready to go inside the theatre...
Keiko: "I can't find my cell phone."
Me: "When was the last time you saw it?"
Keiko: "When I gave it to you last night so you could set the alarm. You put it on your bedside table. You didn't pick it up when we left this morning?"
Me: "Uh, no."
Bear in mind, Ukiah is already 2 hours away from Mendocino. We are nearly halfway home. The movie is starting in 5 minutes. I'd call Agate, but I never had their number, because Barbara is the one who spoke with them. Plus, I have no phone to call with, since it's ruined. And now Keiko doesn't have a phone either.
So I dig out my credit card receipt, which thankfully has an 800# on it, and then we go in search of a pay phone, which we eventually find (it's not so easy to do anymore). We call Agate, and sure enough, the phone is still on the bedside table. They are fine with our driving back to get it after the movie.
So we watch the movie, which we both enjoyed, and then I drive the 2 hours back to Mendocino again- this is the 3rd time in 4 days we're driving into Mendocino from a point at least 2 hours away, and pick up the phone, and then turn around and drive all the way back to Half Moon Bay.
The view of the Mendocino coast. Um, covered in fog. But pretty nonetheless...
And that was basically our Valentine's weekend. We also spent Monday together, but were careful to do nothing more adventurous than go get lunch. Do I know how to show a girl a good time or what?
Postscript: As of this writing, nearly 2 weeks from the original incident, my ass and legs are still covered with scabs. Also, after 5 straight days of slowing increasing pain, I did finally go to the doctor- a terrible indignity as far as I'm concerned. They did x-rays, and fortunately I did not break or fracture my leg. Instead, my diagnosis of sprained ankle and knee were confirmed, and in addition to that I have a mild contusion below my left knee and a severe contusion below the right knee. Apparently it's likely I bruised the bone. I didn't know you could do that.
Another thing I didn't know is, for the first 72 hours after you sprain something or get a contusion, you want to apply ice. What you don't want to do is apply heat, since that opens up the blood vessels and increases the amount of immune system inflammatory markers that cause swelling and pain. So, each of those long hot showers I took for the first 3 days after the incident was absolutely the wrong thing to do.
Yet another thing I didn't know is that after the 72 hour window, you do want to apply heat, rather than cold. The heat, by opening up the blood vessels, increases blood flow that takes away the inflammatory markers that cause the swelling and pain. So, when Keiko flew back to NYC about 72 hours later, and I woke up the next morning in severe pain, and I realized I had only phone students that day, and I work in a solo office, I decided that I would eliminate any non-essential standing or movement. And that included my daily hot shower, either on Day 4, or Day 5. So once again, I did exactly the wrong thing.
So ends the story- we're both banged up, but still alive. And we're still dating, owing entirely to Keiko's good sense of humor and inherent Japanese stoicism.
Ecclesiastes 1:18 says: "Because in much wisdom there is much grief, and increasing knowledge results in increasing pain." I have gained much wisdom, at the cost of much pain. So feel free, dear reader, to consider me a kind of Napster of wisdom- you can just download my wisdom content for free without having to pay the price I paid for it. Because I just like you that much.
With no keys, we can't drive home. I can't get into the office on Monday, since it's a holiday and none of the office people with spare keys will be there. So I quickly reach the obvious conclusion:
Me: "We have to go back."
Keiko: "GO BACK?!?!? Go back WHERE?!?!"
So I give what is pretty obviously a persuasive, eminently rational explanation why we should walk back to the site of our recent near-death experience. However, since my credibility with Keiko is at something of a low ebb (ha!), my "persuasive", "eminently rational" explanation comes off to her a bit more as "unconvincing", and "totally insane".
We compromise by agreeing that we will walk back there, and from the safety of the high cliff peer over the edge and see if we can spot the keys down there. Since there are several shiny trinkets attached to the keys, which helps prevent me from losing them (normally) and which are probably at least in part responsible from my losing what is rapidly becoming clear is a significant chunk of the skin on my right ass cheek, and since the rocks are very dark, owing to what I now more clearly realize is their near constant inundation by waves, it's possible in theory that the keys are just stuck in one of the little crevices that the waves pushed me along, and might therefore be visible against the dark rock when viewed from above.
We decide to leave as a Point To Be Negotiated Later what will happen if in fact we do see the keys down there. There turns out to be some strongly divergent feelings on that issue. It is not unlike when the Israelis and the Palestinians, after much impassioned discussion, agree that a summit is a good idea, and that if you're going to have a summit, some place like Oslo where the weather is cool and the women are hot would be a good place to have it, but we'll leave the other details, like Palestinian statehood, right of return, final status of Jerusalem, and the continued existence of Israeli settlements on the West Bank as points to be negotiated later.
So we turn around and start walking back. Fortunately, the adrenaline hasn't really dissipated yet, so although I am aware in a general sense that I have sustained a lot of injuries, and am going to be feeling a lot of very specific pains in the near future, I at this moment feel only a general, amorphous sense of Pain. It's not exactly a short walk, but we move quickly and return to the scene of our brush with death.
From our safe perch high on the cliff, we scan the area surrounding where we started and ended up. No evidence of the keys turns up. But, after much looking, I do notice that high tide still hasn't come in yet, and I decide that now is a good time to bring up my insight that the obvious flaw in the previous Plan was that we didn't pay consistent, careful attention to the ocean, but now I, having swiftly and wisely learned from experience, have developed a New Revised Plan.
Me: "OK, I'm just going to go back down there for a quick look around, youstayrightuphere, and watch the waves. If you see one that looks particularly big, scream or something and I'll get out of there immediately."
See? A sensible new Plan.
Keiko: "OHMYGODYOUARENOTGOINGBACKDOWNTHERE!!"
Keiko is _flipped out_. She is at least an order of magnitude more upset than she was in the immediate aftermath of nearly getting killed. This catches me a little by surprise, but fortunately she is still somewhat in shock, and clearly exhausted by the whole experience, and so faced with a negotiating strategy of quiet persistence, she eventually capitulates. As I climb down the cliff I reflect that she probably figures that if I get myself killed in the next 10 minutes, she's super hot and should therefore be able to hitch a ride to the nearest airport without much trouble.
So, a few minutes later, I find myself back on the dark wet rocks. I am now feeling acute paranoia, and look up at the ocean about every 0.8 seconds. This makes looking through the million nooks and crannies in the rock a pretty slow process, and a couple of times I see a suspicious wave and bolt for the cliff, but the ocean more or less behaves itself, and I comb pretty much the whole area.
And then, in the crevice that leads to a 6 inch wide horizontal cleft in the rock that quickly plunges 4-5 feet into the ocean, and which the original wave pushed me clear over (thankfully), I see a glint of metal. I reach down there, and pull up the key to our hotel room. Or what's left of it, anyway. It's a large oval metal tag that says "Sea Rock Inn Rm 4", with half of a key attached. The key has been cleanly snapped in two. It was the only key not attached to the primary set of keys I was carrying, since it isn't mine. I can't believe it's snapped in half like that. That's apparently how hard I my ass hit the rocks. This realization suddenly, perceptibly accelerates forward the time at which I am going to start fully feeling the pain associated with my injuries.
However, I am cheered by having found the key, so I redouble my efforts to find the other keys. But the afternoon clouds are coming in, the wind is picking up, and the waves are starting to come more frequently, and I start getting the feeling that the tide is going to start really coming in soon. And so, after casing the area one last time, I give up the search and climb back up onto the cliff, where Keiko is now shivering, and, admittedly with some justification, feeling pretty unhappy.
So we start walking back to the inn. It's somewhat of a long walk, and by the time we get back, it's pretty clear that the adrenaline-induced grace period on pain is swiftly coming to an end. So, we walk through the front door to talk to Barbara, the innkeeper, and get a new key to our room. We are absolutely drenched, shivering from the long walk in the chilly ocean wind, and visibly bleeding.
Barbara: "OH MY GOD! What HAPPENED to you guys??"
I figure I should probably field this one.
I explain to her about the Plan, and how it had seemed like a Good Plan, but which had, in the final analysis, really turned out to be more of a Retarded Plan, etc., etc., and Barbara flips out. We get a lecture about how people die out there, we're lucky to be alive, and so on. But she's very kind and sympathetic, and gives us a new key, her last couple bandages, and the phone numbers to a place that will deliver food, so we don't have to go out tonight, and the one car rental place nearby, which is 15 miles away in Fort Bragg.
I need the car rental place because my spare key is in Half Moon Bay. There's no one I can really ask to do a 9 hour round trip to bring the key to me, and even if there were, I wouldn't ask, because no way do I deserve to weasel out of that. It's now past 5, if there is a locksmith, he's probably up in Ft. Bragg also, we'd have to use some kind of emergency contact, and he'd have to not only unlock my vehicle, but fashion a key to start it. There seems to be a lot of uncertainty in that scenario, plus it may well be more expensive than renting a car for a day, so I figure we'll just do the 9 hour round trip tomorrow, and then stay here tomorrow night.
Trouble is, it turns out there are no more rooms here tomorrow night. So Barbara calls next door, at the Agate Cove Inn (in Mendocino, every building is one of 3 things: a B&B, a restaurant, or a funky shop selling local artisans' stuff) and gets us the last room over there.
So we take our new key and trudge up to our room, where we peel off our wet, bloody clothes and put them by the fireplace. Then we take a super long hot shower to get the dirt and blood off. I am still bleeding rather a lot, it turns out. And I can't put pressure on all the different places at once, so I start prioritizing. This also proves to be a good time to do an inventory of our injuries: Keiko has sustained cuts to several places on her arms, plus sizable bruises on her arms, legs, and ribcage. I have lost the skin on my right ass cheek, some of the skin on my left knee, most of the skin on my right knee, and several large patches of skin on my right leg and right hand. It is also clear that there is bruising pretty much everywhere on the right side of my body (though bruises rarely are visible on my skin).
In addition to that, as someone who has broken multiple bones, some of them multiple times, sprained both ankles multiple times, sprained my wrist, been knocked unconscious several times, fallen from a tree, and been nearly drowned multiple times, I am here to tell you that every type of physical trauma has a unique flavor of pain associated with it, and it is just after the shower that all the specific pains finally hit. And there are a lot of them. But, it allows me to compare against previous experience and give a rough diagnosis: right ankle, clearly sprained, clearly mild-moderate severity. Right knee, clearly sprained, moderate to severe. Both knees and the ankle are starting to swell severely now. And did I mention the pain? Ouch. ouchouchouchouchouch.
I hobble over to the phone and dial up the car rental place. It's the only car rental place within 50 miles, and it's Enterprise, but when you're as far away as we are, they don't pick you up. Not that it matters- they don't have any cars available. Right, it's a holiday weekend, and they are a tiny facility. And, they're closed on Sundays. Which means, we may not be able to get a car until Monday. He advises us to check in tomorrow morning and see if anyone returns their car early.
So Keiko and I are stuck. We camp out on the bed and watch TV for a couple of hours, and then decide to see if we can walk into town and get some food. Upon attempting to stand, I nearly end up in a heap on the floor, since all the joints are swollen and stiff. Also, they really, really hurt. And, upon looking back at the bed, it's clear that over the last 3 hours my ass has continued to bleed for some nontrivial portion of the time. Oops.
But we're starving, and there's a nice restaurant in town, and I think I owe Keiko about a million nice dinners after this, so I grit my teeth, struggle into some clothes, and we hobble slowly down the road into town. Once we're moving, the pain is much more manageable. We eventually make it into town, and have a very nice, very slow dinner, after which I am once again almost unable to stand, as the joints have stiffened up again. But a bottle of wine has gone a long way to dulling the pain.
We hobble back to the inn, and go straight to bed. Over the course of the night, I wake up about 3 million times, because every act of moving is an act that involves a high degree of pain, so every time I move, I wake myself up and find myself in pain. By morning I am exhausted and miserable.
At 1130am, as we are packing up our stuff to move next door to the Agate Cove, the Enterprise in Fort Bragg calls, and says someone just dropped off an SUV, which I can have if I can get to them before they close in 30 minutes. I tell him to hold it for me, and then hobble down to the office at the Sea Rock as fast as my gimpy joints can take me.
I stumble into the office, where Barbara is talking with an older couple who have just arrived, and who are friends with the owner. I quickly explain that we can get a rental car if I can get to Fort Bragg in the next 25 minutes, and that we're all winning if i do since my car is stuck in the Sea Rock's limited parking until I can get into it. The older gentleman, Rick, listens to an extremely abbreviated version of the story, and then volunteers to drive me.
So Keiko stays behind to move us from Sea Rock to Agate, and Rick and I head for Fort Bragg. Along the way, he gets the fuller version of the story, and in his super-chill NoCal way, says, "Oh well, live and learn, I guess." Yeah, that's true. I'm especially excited about the living part right now.
As we enter Fort Bragg, Rick turns to me and says, "So where is the Enterprise?"
Uh oh.
Back at the Sea Rock, when I had said that's where we needed to go, he had reacted as though he knew exactly where that was. So, I didn't think to get the address. And I have no cell phone to call anyone with, since it's waterlogged. And, it's 11:52. I tell him to pull over at a Longs Drugs that we're passing, and I run (well, hobble very quickly) inside and up to an old guy at the Photo Development counter. I ask him where the Enterprise is, and he says "Wow, I didn't even know they finally got a rental car place around here!"
sigh
But he hands me the Yellow pages, and I look up the address and ask him where that is. It turns out to be only a few blocks away, so I make it to the Enterprise at 11:58, where Michael, the guy I've spoken with on the phone multiple times, has apparently been making bets with his assistant as to whether I'd make it before close. Ha ha.
So he rents me a Chrysler Aspen, which, if you haven't seen one, is about the size of a double decker bus. But it's a vehicle, and I thank Rick profusely, offer to buy him and his wife dinner (he politely refuses), and then head back to get Keiko.
Our room at the Agate is amazing, and priced accordingly, which is probably why it was the last one available. A beautiful ocean view. But Keiko and I pile into the Aspen, and begin the 4.5 hour trek back to Half Moon Bay. For the record, if you have a sprained right ankle and knee, driving is extremely uncomfortable. But Keiko, being a New York City girl, very rarely drives, and is also banged up, and we have to drive over some rather treacherous roads, so I just suck it up and do 3.5 of the driving hours. In further proof that you can take the boy out of the Catholicism, but you can't take the Catholicism out of the boy, I figure this is all just part of my Penance Plan.
[St. Peter: "What did you come up with, J.C.? I came up with 2 weeks of unremitting joint pain, near-total loss of credibility with his girlfriend, total loss of credibility with the girlfriend's mother, ridicule from his friends, and a month off from sports."
Jesus: "Taking the economic view- one expensive hotel room, replacement costs for a phone, two digital cameras, a security badge, and an office key, a car rental -biggest size possible-, gas, and a lot of flowers."
St. Peter: Ah, but a little bit of wisdom...
Jesus: ...priceless.]
4.5 hours later, Keiko and I pulled into Half Moon Bay. I keep a spare house key hidden outside, and so we go inside the house and I immediately get the spare car key. It feels so sweet to have one thing back that I lost. I also look up my student's home phone number, so I can call her and let her know that I won't be able to see her on Monday. Her dad answers, and since I don't really feel like explaining right now the ways in which his daughter's expensive tutor is a retard, I'm pretty sure he thinks I'm just playing hookey.
We grab season 3 of Coupling, since once we get back to the Agate Cove, we're not going to (a) feel like doing anything but laying around, or (b) be able to do anything even if we wanted to, since the town shuts down at like 9p.m. And then we drive the 4.5 hours back, getting back to the Agate Cove at 1030pm. At this point, I am rapidly learning all the roads in Mendocino County like the back of my hand. Exhausted, we retire early.
The next day, we lie in bed and watch Coupling, plus admire the amazing ocean view from our room. Then we avail ourselves of the fancy shower with two showerheads. I desperately covet one of these- although showering with someone has a certain kind of obvious upside potential, having your own consistent stream of hot water is also awesome, and so, dammit, why not have both?
We head down to breakfast, and upon entering the dining room, are loudly announced to everyone by the innkeeper, who we have not actually met yet, as "our celebrity guests who nearly got swept away yesterday." All conversation stops and everyone turns to look at us. Awesome. That's definitely what you want with breakfast.
[St. Peter: "Public humiliation? Wow. I didn't see how that could get worked in."
Jesus: "Yeah, that was a bit inspired, if I do say so Myself"]
The Agate Cove Inn. Breakfast and humor served daily.
After breakfast, we pack up to check out, and I propose that since we didn't get to hike around the headlands Friday, why don't we do it today before we go. After all, the pain tends to be pretty manageable as long as I keep moving. It's just the starting and stopping that really hurt.
The view at the Agate Cove.
In the picture above, you can see just above my right shoulder a chunk of the headlands that sticks way out into the ocean. And at the very bottom of the chunk, if you look closely, you can see a little nub that sticks even farther out. That's where we almost died.
So after making a quick run up to Fort Bragg to dump off the rental, we drive back to the scene and park, and start walking around the headlands.
The coastline around here is so awesome, though I do recommend viewing it from up here. Note that the dark rock is rock that is regularly hit by ocean water, which tells you how big the waves can be.
Look at the size of the wave in the lower right. I don't think the camera adequately conveys how big it is.
Along the way, I mention to Keiko that having a near-death experience places her in an elite subcategory of my friends- friends I've had some level of near-death experience with:
Tom, vehicular, ca 1989, I-40 in southeast MO, definitely his fault
Plaid, vehicular, ca. 1989, highway 59 in East Texas, definitely his fault
Plaid, vehicular, ca. 1990, I-55 in Mississippi, definitely my fault
Joel and Zhian, wilderness, ca. 1991, Big Sur, definitely Zhian's fault
Shara, vehicular, ca. 1992, just outside the Riverport Ampitheatre after the Steve Miller concert, definitely the fault of some fraction of the 6 other drivers involved.
Laszlo, wilderness, ca. 1996, Arches National Park, definitely his fault, despite what he says (note to self: when wandering in the desert, never let the Jew lead)
Sarah, wilderness, ca. 1997, Big Sur, shared fault (my risky plan, her not following the plan)
Laura, vehicular, ca. 1998, I-70 outside Indianapolis, definitely my fault
Jeffrey, wilderness, ca. 2004, Banff National Park, definitely my fault
SP (my sister), vehicular, ca. 2005, I-10, definitely my fault
Keiko, wilderness, 2008, Mendocino, definitely my fault
Unfortunately, I had some difficulty accurately conveying the appeal of being in such an elite club.
After about 20 minutes of walking, I turn to Keiko and inform her that we've got to go back to the car. This is the third calendar day since the incident, and the pain in my leg and ankle has gotten steadily worse. Given that my ankle and leg are probably at least sprained, I should probably not be hiking around on them anyway. It's just that I was really hoping to have a nice hike on some beautiful coastline, dammit.
So we go back to the car and decide to just head back to Half Moon Bay. We decide to take a slightly different route, because I'm tired of the same old Mendocino highways I've been up and down so much recently, plus this route will take us through Ukiah, where I have reason to believe there is a used bookstore with science fiction, and where we can get some lunch.
In Ukiah, we get some food and decide to see Jumper. As we are getting ready to go inside the theatre...
Keiko: "I can't find my cell phone."
Me: "When was the last time you saw it?"
Keiko: "When I gave it to you last night so you could set the alarm. You put it on your bedside table. You didn't pick it up when we left this morning?"
Me: "Uh, no."
Bear in mind, Ukiah is already 2 hours away from Mendocino. We are nearly halfway home. The movie is starting in 5 minutes. I'd call Agate, but I never had their number, because Barbara is the one who spoke with them. Plus, I have no phone to call with, since it's ruined. And now Keiko doesn't have a phone either.
So I dig out my credit card receipt, which thankfully has an 800# on it, and then we go in search of a pay phone, which we eventually find (it's not so easy to do anymore). We call Agate, and sure enough, the phone is still on the bedside table. They are fine with our driving back to get it after the movie.
So we watch the movie, which we both enjoyed, and then I drive the 2 hours back to Mendocino again- this is the 3rd time in 4 days we're driving into Mendocino from a point at least 2 hours away, and pick up the phone, and then turn around and drive all the way back to Half Moon Bay.
The view of the Mendocino coast. Um, covered in fog. But pretty nonetheless...
And that was basically our Valentine's weekend. We also spent Monday together, but were careful to do nothing more adventurous than go get lunch. Do I know how to show a girl a good time or what?
Postscript: As of this writing, nearly 2 weeks from the original incident, my ass and legs are still covered with scabs. Also, after 5 straight days of slowing increasing pain, I did finally go to the doctor- a terrible indignity as far as I'm concerned. They did x-rays, and fortunately I did not break or fracture my leg. Instead, my diagnosis of sprained ankle and knee were confirmed, and in addition to that I have a mild contusion below my left knee and a severe contusion below the right knee. Apparently it's likely I bruised the bone. I didn't know you could do that.
Another thing I didn't know is, for the first 72 hours after you sprain something or get a contusion, you want to apply ice. What you don't want to do is apply heat, since that opens up the blood vessels and increases the amount of immune system inflammatory markers that cause swelling and pain. So, each of those long hot showers I took for the first 3 days after the incident was absolutely the wrong thing to do.
Yet another thing I didn't know is that after the 72 hour window, you do want to apply heat, rather than cold. The heat, by opening up the blood vessels, increases blood flow that takes away the inflammatory markers that cause the swelling and pain. So, when Keiko flew back to NYC about 72 hours later, and I woke up the next morning in severe pain, and I realized I had only phone students that day, and I work in a solo office, I decided that I would eliminate any non-essential standing or movement. And that included my daily hot shower, either on Day 4, or Day 5. So once again, I did exactly the wrong thing.
So ends the story- we're both banged up, but still alive. And we're still dating, owing entirely to Keiko's good sense of humor and inherent Japanese stoicism.
Ecclesiastes 1:18 says: "Because in much wisdom there is much grief, and increasing knowledge results in increasing pain." I have gained much wisdom, at the cost of much pain. So feel free, dear reader, to consider me a kind of Napster of wisdom- you can just download my wisdom content for free without having to pay the price I paid for it. Because I just like you that much.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
A Valentine's weekend to remember, part 1
So, I had this vision of a nice weekend up in Mendocino for Valentine's Day. I pictured a couple days relaxing in a nice bed&breakfast on the coast, with maybe some hiking in the nearby Redwoods parks. I had just finished reading "The Wild Trees", which is about people who climb and study Redwoods, and which I thought was awesome, so I was pretty excited about that.
I not much of a theologian, but I'm pretty sure my relationship with God works something like this:
[Scene: heaven. There is a large house on a hill. The sign in front says "God's House". Camera pans up the front walk, through the front door, and into the divine living room, where God sitting on the blessed sofa, with his feet up on the holy ottoman, watching SportsCenter. Suddenly, a red light starts blinking on the heavenly Blackberry.]
God: "Holy crap! Gus has a new vision for how he thinks his life is going to work!"
[God quickly dials up his only begotten Son.]
[Scene shifts to a spacious 2-bedroom apartment a few blocks down from God's House, where Jesus Christ and St. Peter are playing Halo 3 on the celestial XBox...]
Jesus: "Christ! I mean, Me! Pete, how the hell do we kill this giant mechanical spider??? I swear, if we don't make some headway soon, I'm gonna use my omniscience."
St. Peter: "C'mon, don't be such a big pussy. Just lay me down some covering fire on the left while I go for the joints on that thing."
[Jesus's heavenly Blackberry starts going off]
Jesus: "Damn! It's my dad. (reaches for the Blackberry, still laying down covering fire) Dad! What's up?"
God: "Son, are you busy?"
Jesus: "Kinda dad, what's going on? Aw FUCK! I just died again! Pete, pull back so I can resurrect, I mean, respawn!"
God: "OK, if you can just put down the Halo for a minute- Gus just had a new vision for how his life is going to be!"
Jesus: "No, really?! (presses pause on the XBox) What's this one?"
God: "Something about a peaceful weekend by the coast. You interested?"
Jesus: "Heck yeah! Me and Pete'll grab a few of the heavenly host and we'll go have some fun!"
God: "That's my boy! I've been getting so bored possessing Ron Paul and making him say bizarre shit. This should be some good entertainment..."
Jesus: "We're on it! Thanks for the heads-up, dad!"
So, the plan started out OK. Keiko came out Wed night, and Thursday we drove up to Mendocino. We had a room booked at the Sea Rock Inn, which featured a view from the room of some of the most beautiful coastline you'll ever see. Because we left Half Moon Bay late, and the drive to Mendocino takes a lot longer than you'd think based on distance alone, we had about 5 minutes to change clothes and then jump back in the car to head up to Ft. Bragg, where I'd made dinner reservations. Curiously, although I'd written down directions, a reservation time, and an address, I apparently did not write down the actual name of the restaurant itself. On top of that, this little blunder turned out to be compounded by the restaurant not having any sign or external labeling at all. I figured I'd recognize the name when I saw it, but since it had no sign, we spent quite some time looking for a name we didn't know on a sign that wasn't there, and between that and minimal effort in Ft. Bragg toward providing visible addresses, we ended up half an hour late for our reservation.
For the record, it's called Rendezvous, and the food was outstanding. Also, I recommend Mendocino county Pinot Noirs highly.
After closing down Rendezvous, so that I'd sobered up enough to drive us back to the Inn without putting us over the side of the cliff into the ocean, we headed back. We woke up the next day ready to explore our environs.
Our environs. Taken from the deck of our little cottage.
It was a gorgeous day, so we decided to drive into Mendocino town and have lunch, which we did. After a leisurely lunch, some local ice cream, and the obligatory trip into the local used book store, we drove back and decided to do the walk around the headlands. The Mendocino headlands really have to be seen to be believed. Pictures do not do them justice, but here are a few anyway...
So beautiful- the mist, the trees, the cliffs, the waves, the drainage pipe...
Eventually, as we made our way around the headlands, we found places where you could climb down a little closer to the ocean...
There has to be a way farther down...
Keiko was somewhat less enthused about the idea of climbing down near the waves, which is why the pic above has its particular perspective. But I have always been drawn to the ocean- I feel a need to be very close to it. Very, very close...
OK, let's see if we can get closer...
Be back in a jiff- just heading for those rocks down there on the lower left...
Much better. If only I could get even closer...
The camera really fails to adequately convey the size of these waves. And this is just after low tide.
I climb back up, and we continue around the headlands. I finally succeed in finding a way to get all the way down to ocean level...
Aha! A clear path to the bottom. That wasn't so bad. And I even convinced Keiko to come down, which is why we have photographic evidence.
I am master of all I survey...
I want to be there, ahead and to the left, where that wave is breaking. I mean, who wouldn't, you know?
Answer: Keiko, and pretty much everyone I've told this story to so far.
After carefully climbing around nearly to where that wave is breaking, we reach a point where we can't go any farther without getting into the water, which seems pretty unwise, even to me. So we hike back up the side of the cliff and continue walking some distance around the headlands, until we reach this point:
We must take a moment to study this picture very carefully, in order to fully grasp the rest of the story...
First, the perspective on this pic is crazy because if I move even a nanometer more to my left, I'll plummet 30 feet onto sharp wet boulders. But it's the only perspective that gets all the important places in one picture.
All the dark colored rocks are 30 feet below where I'm now standing. There is a horizontal line of white foam which is coming up out of an 8-inch wide, 4-5 foot deep chasm in the rock. All the dark rock below that line in this picture is, relatively speaking, flat, though you can probably tell that I am indeed using "flat" in a very relative sense. The rock above the white horizontal foam line rises to a height of about 7-8 feet above the water line as you see it in this picture, which is with a typical wave in the process of hitting it just after low tide.
My Idea was to climb down the left side of the rick we're standing on in this picture, which was a bit tricky, but which was doable, and which eventually puts you on the flat wet rocks toward the bottom right of the picture. From there, I thought it would be really cool to move up onto the 7-8 foot rock at the front, and watch the waves come in from there. All told, about 15-20 feet along the wet rock and then another 10 feet or so up and over the big rock at front.
Upon explaining my Idea to Keiko, she informed me that I was crazy, and that normal people would never consider doing such a thing. I explained that that's because "normal" people have no "sense of adventure". She replied that "normal" people have instead a "will to live". I replied that I was going down there, and she could stay up top if she wanted.
So I climbed down about halfway, and then motioned for her to come down and join me. She shook her head no. I persisted, and eventually, after pointing out that we had been completely safe following me so far, convinced her to climb down with me. From there, we continued down until we were on the wet rocks below.
From that point, I took the lead in slowly making my way along the extremely slippery, hard, sharp rocks. They were soaking wet, and covered with soft plant life, which is what made them so slick. That, and we were each wearing old tennis shoes. Now, I will grant that another person might have thought to themselves, "Gee, why is it that these rocks are all completely soaked, even though it appears to be low tide", or "Gee, how do all these underwater sea plants survive on this exposed rock?", but instead I was just thinking about treading carefully on the slippery rock, confident in the knowledge that after much scientific observation of the wave height at this time, we were perfectly safe.
And that's when I looked up, and saw The Wave.
Flashback- Maui, May 1994...
My girlfriend Tasha and I went to Maui for senior week. I had gotten a couple of free airline tickets from voluntarily bumping myself both coming and going at Christmas, and she had won 3 free nights at a hotel in Lahaina in a radio contest. We were poor as hell, but with these prizes we only had to pay for food and a rental car, so we did it. Maui was gorgeous, and just what I needed after all the agitda of senior year at Pomona.
One day, we drove to a particular beach and were having a fun time hanging out in the waves. The beach was in a cove, and way out in the middle of the cove was a giant chunk of volcanic rock, on which the waves were breaking. The rock was big and flat, and stuck out a good 8 feet above the water line. Suddenly, I just knew that I had to get out there, and climb up on that rock, and watch the waves come in.
Tasha informed me that I was crazy, that no sane person would attempt that. I informed her that if everyone thought that way, we'd still be up in the trees in sub-Saharan Africa, eating fruit and scratching our asses. She informed me that half the time all I did was eat fruit and scratch my ass. In retrospect, she kinda had me there, but I responded that I had A Plan, and she could either come along and have an awesome time, or be a stick-in-the-mud and stay behind.
My Plan was this: I had observed the waves for some time, and noted that they came in a pretty predictable cycle; in particular, they had well-defined lulls. Out in front of the main chunk of rock was a smaller piece that stuck out only about a foot from the water. I figured I would swim out past the small chunk of rock, wait for the waves to deposit me alongside it, and then hang out until the next lull. At that point, I would climb out onto the small piece, and from there make my way along the underwater bridge between them, and climb up the big piece. From there, I would watch the waves come in and revel in my Manly Glory.
To her credit, Tasha did follow me out to the rocks before declaring that this was insanity and turning back. To my credit, the first part of the plan worked beautifully. I swam out past the rocks, the waves deposited me right alongside the small piece, I waited for a lull, and then I climbed up onto the small chunk of rock.
From there, the plan started to wobble a bit. One thing I didn't realize, having never been on volcanic ocean rock before, is that it's sharp as hell. And I was barefoot. So as I started making my way along the underwater bridge, which meant I was about knee-deep in the water, I had to go very slowly and carefully to avoid seriously lacerating the hell out of my feet. Also, although from shore it looked like the two chunks of rock were right next to each other, once I was out there I realized that the underwater bridge was about 6 feet long. And at the pace I was moving across it, it was taking quite a while.
And so, perhaps with a primitive sense of danger triggered, at some point my intense, laserlike focus on the slow traversing of the underwater bridge was interrupted by the sudden thought that it had been a while since I'd checked the waves, and that because of the direction I was traveling, I had my back to the ocean. When I turned around, I saw The Wave coming right for me.
[St. Peter: "Oh, that's a good one, J.C., hitting him with the sleeper wave."
Jesus: "Ha, we'll be hearing my name in 3... 2... 1..."]
Me: "Oh Jesus."
I was caught on the underwater bridge, with nowhere I could go in the 1.5 seconds I had left. And let me tell you, after a long lull, the first big wave that comes is a _really_ big wave. I hunkered down in the water and grabbed on as tightly as I could to the underwater rock.
When the wave hit, I was able to hold on for about a fraction of a second, and then my grip was torn from the rock and I was propelled forward. Basically, I was smeared onto the side of the big chunk of rock, and started to slide down it, which, since it was sharp volcanic rock, cut large, deep vertical gashes down a large portion of the right side of my body. From there, the afterswell pushed me underneath the water and swept me along the side of the big chunk of rock. I just tried to stay limp and keep my arms and hands in front of my head and face. As long as you don't hit your head or get caught on anything, you've got a chance.
I finally surfaced several feet down alongside the big rock. Deciding that I'd had enough of the Plan for one day, I started the long swim back to shore. When I finally reached shore, and stood up out of the water, a mother playing with her young son looked up at me and screamed. I was bloody all down the right side of my body. I ignored her and found Tasha, who gathered up our towels and wrapped me in them as much as possible. We piled into the rental car and sped back to the hotel, so I could wash off. By this point, the seawater was evaporating and leaving only salt behind, so I felt like half of me was on fire. When we got back to the hotel, we peeled the bloody towels off, generating a fresh round of pain/bleeding, and then I took the longest cold shower of my life, taking increasingly bloody washrags and pressing down on places until they stopped bleeding. I was seriously fucked up.
From the whole experience, I learned two valuable lessons: (1) be better prepared, and (2) never turn your back on the ocean. So I've had a Plan ever since to someday go back to that beach, this time with Aquasocks for protecting my feet and gloves for my hands, and this time I'll keep a close eye on the ocean and at the first sign of trouble dive in rather than try to ride it out.
The thing is, my dance teacher used to say that you have to learn something 5 times before you really learn it. And that certainly holds true here, where, back in Mendocino, I looked up and saw The Wave.
[St. Peter: "C'mon J.C., not that old gag again!"
Jesus: "Whatever. This wave's bigger, and this time I've got the girlfriend too."]
This time, I didn't have enough time to form to form a true verbal thought. All I had time to do was look up at The Wave, notice that it towered above the 8 foot rock now immediately in front of me, and experience a kind of gut reaction that I had never seen a wave even close to that big before. And then it hit.
In retrospect, it is fortunate that the 8 foot rock was right in front of us. It absorbed the primary shock wave. But then several feet of surf from the shattered remains of the wave cascaded over the rock and slammed into me, and then a second later, Keiko. We both were completely submerged. I was blasted back along the rocks I had just shinnied across, still completely underwater, once again with my body limp and my hands out in front of me to protect my face. I started just behind the big rock in the picture above, and when the waters receded, I was on the dark rocks at the bottom of the picture.
Immediately, I got up, looked around for Keiko, because I didn't know whether she'd been hit or not, and saw her above me and closer to the big rock. She was on hands and toes, gripping the rocks with a death grip and saying "Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god." Forgetting that I was on slippery rocks, I basically sprinted over to her, casting an anxious eye back at the ocean, where more waves were coming.
Me: "Are you OK baby???"
Keiko: "Oh my god. I can't believe this happened. Oh my god."
Me: "We need to get out of here babe."
Keiko: "I am not letting go of this rock. I am not letting go of this rock."
Keiko is in shock, I realize. I turn and look, and the next wave comes in. Thankfully, it's smaller, so the water doesn't get all the way to us, but it does come close.
Me: "Keiko, we really need to get out of here."
Keiko: "I am not letting go of this rock. I am not letting go of this rock."
Me: "BABY. We need to get out of here NOW. It's safe up on the rocks. We've got to get back up on the rocks."
Keiko: "okay. okay."
She reluctantly releases the rock she is holding onto, and I practically drag her over to the place where we can start our ascent back. As we get there, I see the next wave is about to hit, and it's a big one too. I more or less shove her upwards on the cliff as the wave impacts. I'm only concerned with her safety at this point, not because I'm such a great guy, but because I refuse to allow her to be a victim of my stupidity any more than she already has been today. Me dying today seems pretty fair; her dying does not.
The impact from the wave ends about a foot from my foot, and as soon as Keiko is up I scramble up after her. We reach the top and start walking back to the hotel, taking stock of our situation as we go.
We're both completely soaked, head to toe. We can both walk, but I am experiencing a lot of pain in my right foot, ankle, leg, and knee. I can't feel right now all the other cuts and scrapes, probably because of the adrenaline, but my jeans are rapidly getting redder on the right side, so I can tell I'm bleeding pretty profusely somewhere. Keiko has numerous cuts and bruises, but other than that seems OK. We start to laugh a little, probably as a joyful reaction to, you know, still being alive. We're both just glad it's over, and we made it through okay. As we're walking, I reach into my pocket for my phone, and note that it is completely soaked, and completely dead. Ditto for my digital camera. Then I reach for my back pocket, where I keep my keys.
Except, there is no back pocket. It's been completely ripped away. The inner layer of my jeans are also torn, and my fingers come back bloody. I realize just now that my right ass cheek really, really hurts. And apparently is bleeding. And the keys are gone. That would include the keys to the hotel room, the car, and the office, since I keep them all together (otherwise I forget one or more). The hotel room shouldn't be a problem, but the spare key to the car is 4.5 hours away, in Half Moon Bay. And we're supposed to check out tomorrow morning. And, I'm supposed to be in the office to administer a diagnostic SAT on Monday, which is a holiday, meaning the office will be empty except for me, and so I'll have no way of getting into either the building or my office. No problem, I'll just call the student- no, wait, the only place here I have her number is in my phone, which is soaking wet and dead.
Oh crap. It's not all over, is it?
[Jesus: "Oh yeah, now we can sit back and watch some real entertainment. Let's see how he wriggles out of this one. Does he get to keep the girl? Tune in and see..."
St. Peter: "Sport me the divine pizza rolls, eh?"]
I not much of a theologian, but I'm pretty sure my relationship with God works something like this:
[Scene: heaven. There is a large house on a hill. The sign in front says "God's House". Camera pans up the front walk, through the front door, and into the divine living room, where God sitting on the blessed sofa, with his feet up on the holy ottoman, watching SportsCenter. Suddenly, a red light starts blinking on the heavenly Blackberry.]
God: "Holy crap! Gus has a new vision for how he thinks his life is going to work!"
[God quickly dials up his only begotten Son.]
[Scene shifts to a spacious 2-bedroom apartment a few blocks down from God's House, where Jesus Christ and St. Peter are playing Halo 3 on the celestial XBox...]
Jesus: "Christ! I mean, Me! Pete, how the hell do we kill this giant mechanical spider??? I swear, if we don't make some headway soon, I'm gonna use my omniscience."
St. Peter: "C'mon, don't be such a big pussy. Just lay me down some covering fire on the left while I go for the joints on that thing."
[Jesus's heavenly Blackberry starts going off]
Jesus: "Damn! It's my dad. (reaches for the Blackberry, still laying down covering fire) Dad! What's up?"
God: "Son, are you busy?"
Jesus: "Kinda dad, what's going on? Aw FUCK! I just died again! Pete, pull back so I can resurrect, I mean, respawn!"
God: "OK, if you can just put down the Halo for a minute- Gus just had a new vision for how his life is going to be!"
Jesus: "No, really?! (presses pause on the XBox) What's this one?"
God: "Something about a peaceful weekend by the coast. You interested?"
Jesus: "Heck yeah! Me and Pete'll grab a few of the heavenly host and we'll go have some fun!"
God: "That's my boy! I've been getting so bored possessing Ron Paul and making him say bizarre shit. This should be some good entertainment..."
Jesus: "We're on it! Thanks for the heads-up, dad!"
So, the plan started out OK. Keiko came out Wed night, and Thursday we drove up to Mendocino. We had a room booked at the Sea Rock Inn, which featured a view from the room of some of the most beautiful coastline you'll ever see. Because we left Half Moon Bay late, and the drive to Mendocino takes a lot longer than you'd think based on distance alone, we had about 5 minutes to change clothes and then jump back in the car to head up to Ft. Bragg, where I'd made dinner reservations. Curiously, although I'd written down directions, a reservation time, and an address, I apparently did not write down the actual name of the restaurant itself. On top of that, this little blunder turned out to be compounded by the restaurant not having any sign or external labeling at all. I figured I'd recognize the name when I saw it, but since it had no sign, we spent quite some time looking for a name we didn't know on a sign that wasn't there, and between that and minimal effort in Ft. Bragg toward providing visible addresses, we ended up half an hour late for our reservation.
For the record, it's called Rendezvous, and the food was outstanding. Also, I recommend Mendocino county Pinot Noirs highly.
After closing down Rendezvous, so that I'd sobered up enough to drive us back to the Inn without putting us over the side of the cliff into the ocean, we headed back. We woke up the next day ready to explore our environs.
Our environs. Taken from the deck of our little cottage.
It was a gorgeous day, so we decided to drive into Mendocino town and have lunch, which we did. After a leisurely lunch, some local ice cream, and the obligatory trip into the local used book store, we drove back and decided to do the walk around the headlands. The Mendocino headlands really have to be seen to be believed. Pictures do not do them justice, but here are a few anyway...
So beautiful- the mist, the trees, the cliffs, the waves, the drainage pipe...
Eventually, as we made our way around the headlands, we found places where you could climb down a little closer to the ocean...
There has to be a way farther down...
Keiko was somewhat less enthused about the idea of climbing down near the waves, which is why the pic above has its particular perspective. But I have always been drawn to the ocean- I feel a need to be very close to it. Very, very close...
OK, let's see if we can get closer...
Be back in a jiff- just heading for those rocks down there on the lower left...
Much better. If only I could get even closer...
The camera really fails to adequately convey the size of these waves. And this is just after low tide.
I climb back up, and we continue around the headlands. I finally succeed in finding a way to get all the way down to ocean level...
Aha! A clear path to the bottom. That wasn't so bad. And I even convinced Keiko to come down, which is why we have photographic evidence.
I am master of all I survey...
I want to be there, ahead and to the left, where that wave is breaking. I mean, who wouldn't, you know?
Answer: Keiko, and pretty much everyone I've told this story to so far.
After carefully climbing around nearly to where that wave is breaking, we reach a point where we can't go any farther without getting into the water, which seems pretty unwise, even to me. So we hike back up the side of the cliff and continue walking some distance around the headlands, until we reach this point:
We must take a moment to study this picture very carefully, in order to fully grasp the rest of the story...
First, the perspective on this pic is crazy because if I move even a nanometer more to my left, I'll plummet 30 feet onto sharp wet boulders. But it's the only perspective that gets all the important places in one picture.
All the dark colored rocks are 30 feet below where I'm now standing. There is a horizontal line of white foam which is coming up out of an 8-inch wide, 4-5 foot deep chasm in the rock. All the dark rock below that line in this picture is, relatively speaking, flat, though you can probably tell that I am indeed using "flat" in a very relative sense. The rock above the white horizontal foam line rises to a height of about 7-8 feet above the water line as you see it in this picture, which is with a typical wave in the process of hitting it just after low tide.
My Idea was to climb down the left side of the rick we're standing on in this picture, which was a bit tricky, but which was doable, and which eventually puts you on the flat wet rocks toward the bottom right of the picture. From there, I thought it would be really cool to move up onto the 7-8 foot rock at the front, and watch the waves come in from there. All told, about 15-20 feet along the wet rock and then another 10 feet or so up and over the big rock at front.
Upon explaining my Idea to Keiko, she informed me that I was crazy, and that normal people would never consider doing such a thing. I explained that that's because "normal" people have no "sense of adventure". She replied that "normal" people have instead a "will to live". I replied that I was going down there, and she could stay up top if she wanted.
So I climbed down about halfway, and then motioned for her to come down and join me. She shook her head no. I persisted, and eventually, after pointing out that we had been completely safe following me so far, convinced her to climb down with me. From there, we continued down until we were on the wet rocks below.
From that point, I took the lead in slowly making my way along the extremely slippery, hard, sharp rocks. They were soaking wet, and covered with soft plant life, which is what made them so slick. That, and we were each wearing old tennis shoes. Now, I will grant that another person might have thought to themselves, "Gee, why is it that these rocks are all completely soaked, even though it appears to be low tide", or "Gee, how do all these underwater sea plants survive on this exposed rock?", but instead I was just thinking about treading carefully on the slippery rock, confident in the knowledge that after much scientific observation of the wave height at this time, we were perfectly safe.
And that's when I looked up, and saw The Wave.
Flashback- Maui, May 1994...
My girlfriend Tasha and I went to Maui for senior week. I had gotten a couple of free airline tickets from voluntarily bumping myself both coming and going at Christmas, and she had won 3 free nights at a hotel in Lahaina in a radio contest. We were poor as hell, but with these prizes we only had to pay for food and a rental car, so we did it. Maui was gorgeous, and just what I needed after all the agitda of senior year at Pomona.
One day, we drove to a particular beach and were having a fun time hanging out in the waves. The beach was in a cove, and way out in the middle of the cove was a giant chunk of volcanic rock, on which the waves were breaking. The rock was big and flat, and stuck out a good 8 feet above the water line. Suddenly, I just knew that I had to get out there, and climb up on that rock, and watch the waves come in.
Tasha informed me that I was crazy, that no sane person would attempt that. I informed her that if everyone thought that way, we'd still be up in the trees in sub-Saharan Africa, eating fruit and scratching our asses. She informed me that half the time all I did was eat fruit and scratch my ass. In retrospect, she kinda had me there, but I responded that I had A Plan, and she could either come along and have an awesome time, or be a stick-in-the-mud and stay behind.
My Plan was this: I had observed the waves for some time, and noted that they came in a pretty predictable cycle; in particular, they had well-defined lulls. Out in front of the main chunk of rock was a smaller piece that stuck out only about a foot from the water. I figured I would swim out past the small chunk of rock, wait for the waves to deposit me alongside it, and then hang out until the next lull. At that point, I would climb out onto the small piece, and from there make my way along the underwater bridge between them, and climb up the big piece. From there, I would watch the waves come in and revel in my Manly Glory.
To her credit, Tasha did follow me out to the rocks before declaring that this was insanity and turning back. To my credit, the first part of the plan worked beautifully. I swam out past the rocks, the waves deposited me right alongside the small piece, I waited for a lull, and then I climbed up onto the small chunk of rock.
From there, the plan started to wobble a bit. One thing I didn't realize, having never been on volcanic ocean rock before, is that it's sharp as hell. And I was barefoot. So as I started making my way along the underwater bridge, which meant I was about knee-deep in the water, I had to go very slowly and carefully to avoid seriously lacerating the hell out of my feet. Also, although from shore it looked like the two chunks of rock were right next to each other, once I was out there I realized that the underwater bridge was about 6 feet long. And at the pace I was moving across it, it was taking quite a while.
And so, perhaps with a primitive sense of danger triggered, at some point my intense, laserlike focus on the slow traversing of the underwater bridge was interrupted by the sudden thought that it had been a while since I'd checked the waves, and that because of the direction I was traveling, I had my back to the ocean. When I turned around, I saw The Wave coming right for me.
[St. Peter: "Oh, that's a good one, J.C., hitting him with the sleeper wave."
Jesus: "Ha, we'll be hearing my name in 3... 2... 1..."]
Me: "Oh Jesus."
I was caught on the underwater bridge, with nowhere I could go in the 1.5 seconds I had left. And let me tell you, after a long lull, the first big wave that comes is a _really_ big wave. I hunkered down in the water and grabbed on as tightly as I could to the underwater rock.
When the wave hit, I was able to hold on for about a fraction of a second, and then my grip was torn from the rock and I was propelled forward. Basically, I was smeared onto the side of the big chunk of rock, and started to slide down it, which, since it was sharp volcanic rock, cut large, deep vertical gashes down a large portion of the right side of my body. From there, the afterswell pushed me underneath the water and swept me along the side of the big chunk of rock. I just tried to stay limp and keep my arms and hands in front of my head and face. As long as you don't hit your head or get caught on anything, you've got a chance.
I finally surfaced several feet down alongside the big rock. Deciding that I'd had enough of the Plan for one day, I started the long swim back to shore. When I finally reached shore, and stood up out of the water, a mother playing with her young son looked up at me and screamed. I was bloody all down the right side of my body. I ignored her and found Tasha, who gathered up our towels and wrapped me in them as much as possible. We piled into the rental car and sped back to the hotel, so I could wash off. By this point, the seawater was evaporating and leaving only salt behind, so I felt like half of me was on fire. When we got back to the hotel, we peeled the bloody towels off, generating a fresh round of pain/bleeding, and then I took the longest cold shower of my life, taking increasingly bloody washrags and pressing down on places until they stopped bleeding. I was seriously fucked up.
From the whole experience, I learned two valuable lessons: (1) be better prepared, and (2) never turn your back on the ocean. So I've had a Plan ever since to someday go back to that beach, this time with Aquasocks for protecting my feet and gloves for my hands, and this time I'll keep a close eye on the ocean and at the first sign of trouble dive in rather than try to ride it out.
The thing is, my dance teacher used to say that you have to learn something 5 times before you really learn it. And that certainly holds true here, where, back in Mendocino, I looked up and saw The Wave.
[St. Peter: "C'mon J.C., not that old gag again!"
Jesus: "Whatever. This wave's bigger, and this time I've got the girlfriend too."]
This time, I didn't have enough time to form to form a true verbal thought. All I had time to do was look up at The Wave, notice that it towered above the 8 foot rock now immediately in front of me, and experience a kind of gut reaction that I had never seen a wave even close to that big before. And then it hit.
In retrospect, it is fortunate that the 8 foot rock was right in front of us. It absorbed the primary shock wave. But then several feet of surf from the shattered remains of the wave cascaded over the rock and slammed into me, and then a second later, Keiko. We both were completely submerged. I was blasted back along the rocks I had just shinnied across, still completely underwater, once again with my body limp and my hands out in front of me to protect my face. I started just behind the big rock in the picture above, and when the waters receded, I was on the dark rocks at the bottom of the picture.
Immediately, I got up, looked around for Keiko, because I didn't know whether she'd been hit or not, and saw her above me and closer to the big rock. She was on hands and toes, gripping the rocks with a death grip and saying "Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god." Forgetting that I was on slippery rocks, I basically sprinted over to her, casting an anxious eye back at the ocean, where more waves were coming.
Me: "Are you OK baby???"
Keiko: "Oh my god. I can't believe this happened. Oh my god."
Me: "We need to get out of here babe."
Keiko: "I am not letting go of this rock. I am not letting go of this rock."
Keiko is in shock, I realize. I turn and look, and the next wave comes in. Thankfully, it's smaller, so the water doesn't get all the way to us, but it does come close.
Me: "Keiko, we really need to get out of here."
Keiko: "I am not letting go of this rock. I am not letting go of this rock."
Me: "BABY. We need to get out of here NOW. It's safe up on the rocks. We've got to get back up on the rocks."
Keiko: "okay. okay."
She reluctantly releases the rock she is holding onto, and I practically drag her over to the place where we can start our ascent back. As we get there, I see the next wave is about to hit, and it's a big one too. I more or less shove her upwards on the cliff as the wave impacts. I'm only concerned with her safety at this point, not because I'm such a great guy, but because I refuse to allow her to be a victim of my stupidity any more than she already has been today. Me dying today seems pretty fair; her dying does not.
The impact from the wave ends about a foot from my foot, and as soon as Keiko is up I scramble up after her. We reach the top and start walking back to the hotel, taking stock of our situation as we go.
We're both completely soaked, head to toe. We can both walk, but I am experiencing a lot of pain in my right foot, ankle, leg, and knee. I can't feel right now all the other cuts and scrapes, probably because of the adrenaline, but my jeans are rapidly getting redder on the right side, so I can tell I'm bleeding pretty profusely somewhere. Keiko has numerous cuts and bruises, but other than that seems OK. We start to laugh a little, probably as a joyful reaction to, you know, still being alive. We're both just glad it's over, and we made it through okay. As we're walking, I reach into my pocket for my phone, and note that it is completely soaked, and completely dead. Ditto for my digital camera. Then I reach for my back pocket, where I keep my keys.
Except, there is no back pocket. It's been completely ripped away. The inner layer of my jeans are also torn, and my fingers come back bloody. I realize just now that my right ass cheek really, really hurts. And apparently is bleeding. And the keys are gone. That would include the keys to the hotel room, the car, and the office, since I keep them all together (otherwise I forget one or more). The hotel room shouldn't be a problem, but the spare key to the car is 4.5 hours away, in Half Moon Bay. And we're supposed to check out tomorrow morning. And, I'm supposed to be in the office to administer a diagnostic SAT on Monday, which is a holiday, meaning the office will be empty except for me, and so I'll have no way of getting into either the building or my office. No problem, I'll just call the student- no, wait, the only place here I have her number is in my phone, which is soaking wet and dead.
Oh crap. It's not all over, is it?
[Jesus: "Oh yeah, now we can sit back and watch some real entertainment. Let's see how he wriggles out of this one. Does he get to keep the girl? Tune in and see..."
St. Peter: "Sport me the divine pizza rolls, eh?"]
Monday, February 11, 2008
Stirring the Pot, Chapter 2: Abortion
I figured it was getting on about time to stir the pot up again, and I was reading recently that Mike Huckabee is proposing a constitutional amendment to ban abortion. "Abortion!", I thought, there's a topic that's sure to stir the pot up.
So, without further ado, here's my thinking on abortion:
First, let me start by saying: I don't think there's much of a constitutional basis for Roe v. Wade. Sooner or later, it's probably going to get overturned, and if it does, it's going to be because it didn't have enough of a constitutional foundation to protect itself.
Now, before you go praising me or cursing me, let's note that I have not yet expressed an opinion on abortion; I've only given an opinion on the validity of a particular legal decision. Before I give that opinion, one thing I've noticed, and always get irritated by in this debate, is the way in which both sides constantly demonize the other as holding a view that is irrational/evil/oppressive/unreasonable. That's not very conducive to a productive discussion of a unique, and very important issue.
On the one hand, the pro-choice movement seeks to protect the rights of women. Let's stop there for a second. Is protecting the rights of women a good thing? If there were an empty room, and all that was in it was the concept of protecting women's rights, would we agree that the room had a Good Thing in it? I think most people, women traffickers excluded, would probably say yes.
On the other hand, the pro-life movement seeks to protect what are arguably the most vulnerable lives in society: the unborn. After all, they can't speak for themselves or defend themselves in any meaningful way. Let's also stop there for a second. Is protecting the most vulnerable members of a society a good thing? If there were an empty room, and all that was in it was the concept of protecting the most vulnerable members of a society, would we agree that the room had a Good Thing in it? I think most people, sadists excluded, would probably say yes.
So the problem with abortion isn't that either of the two sides is somehow founded on a thoroughly unreasonable principle, the problem with abortion is that you have two concepts that are good in the abstract which happen, in this particular instance, to be in conflict with each other.
So how do we resolve this issue as a society? First of all, we can start by acknowledging that there is no solution to this issue which will not upset a large number of people. For instance, we could do as Governor Huckabee proposes and pass a constitutional amendment banning abortion completely. That will please a relatively small fraction of the population a great deal, and upset a relatively large fraction a great deal, and would represent 100% emphasis on protecting the most vulnerable members of society, and 0% emphasis on protecting women's rights. Or we could do the opposite, and pass a constitutional amendment granting the right to have an abortion at any time for any reason. That will also please a relatively small fraction of the population a great deal, and upset a relatively large fraction a great deal, while representing a 100% emphasis on protecting women's rights, and 0% emphasis on protecting the most vulnerable members of society.
So my thinking is, we should go for a middle solution- one that is likely to make everyone somewhat unhappy. I don't believe a middle solution is always called for when there is a disagreement; however, in this case because we are dealing with competing goods, I think a middle solution is warranted. What I propose is this: a constitutional amendment which grants a woman the right to terminate a pregnancy for any reason up until a specific point, and then grants the fetus the right to survival past that point, with an exception granted for a pregnancy which threatens the life of the mother at any time. The amendment would also include language forbidding the government from infringing on the right of women to have full access to any knowledge which is relevant to making an informed choice about whether to terminate a pregnancy.
The underlying principle here is that since we have competing goods, we set up a legal framework that creates a balance, and allows the balance to tip toward protecting women's rights at first, and then toward protecting the most vulnerable members of society afterward. What we have now is similar in the sense that abortion is sometimes legal and sometimes not, but there's not a firm legal underpinning supporting legal abortion, and there's a whole lot of social energy expended in either expanding or restricting the current ad hoc framework.
As for determining when the balance should tip, I would leave that to a lively debate amongst representatives of both sides, plus doctors, plus medical ethicists. As a single male with no medical training, my knowledge of female biology is limited to an admittedly rudimentary navigational sense. I have steered clear of trying to understand how female biology really works, since it seems both nightmarishly complicated and surprisingly variable. So I've got little to add on this point, except to say that the tipping point should be late enough for a reasonable percentage (95%?, 97%?) or pregnant women to (a) realize that they are pregnant, which I have a vague understanding may take some time, and (b) find out the options and discuss them with whomever the woman thinks should be involved in the decision making.
On another note, I sometimes hear an argument that a fetus is not actually a person, and therefore should not be accorded any rights thereof. I find that argument logically unconvincing, morally oh-so-convenient, and strategically unnecessary to a resolution of the issue that goes a significant way toward protecting women's rights. Certainly, a fetus is well on its way to becoming a person, and if left alone for some months, will do exactly that. That differentiates it from, say, a hot air balloon, which if left alone for any amount of time will never become a human being. That, by the way, is how you know Rush Limbaugh isn't actually a human being.
There was a recent New York Times article saying that all this abortion legal stuff people fight so passionately about may be rendered obsolete by a relatively common drug that is used for some other purpose, but which, if taken in the right dosage, can induce an abortion with minimal side effects. The article predicted that poor women would end up going that route, and rich women would just fly to wherever they needed to in order to get a proper procedure done. So there's one vision of where we end up as a society if we don't ever resolve this issue sensibly.
The benefits of a constitutional amendment such as the one I've proposed are many:
-we don't have rich woman/poor woman scenarios like the one noted above
-we can stop having every damned Supreme Court justice nomination be about Roe v. Wade and whether we're going to overturn it or not. Christ in heaven, I get so tired of that.
-we can have abortion law that has a firm legal foundation, and is consistent everywhere
-we can spread the dissatisfaction around; i.e., extremists at both ends will be pretty unhappy, but will at least get some of what they want, while everyone in the middle of the spectrum, which I have to believe is most people, will probably have a vague feeling that it's not a perfect solution, but is a solution they can live with. And that's democracy in action.
So there you have it- yet another reason why I'm not electable, beyond modest stature, terrible hair, and a penchant for saying what I think about hard issues.
So, without further ado, here's my thinking on abortion:
First, let me start by saying: I don't think there's much of a constitutional basis for Roe v. Wade. Sooner or later, it's probably going to get overturned, and if it does, it's going to be because it didn't have enough of a constitutional foundation to protect itself.
Now, before you go praising me or cursing me, let's note that I have not yet expressed an opinion on abortion; I've only given an opinion on the validity of a particular legal decision. Before I give that opinion, one thing I've noticed, and always get irritated by in this debate, is the way in which both sides constantly demonize the other as holding a view that is irrational/evil/oppressive/unreasonable. That's not very conducive to a productive discussion of a unique, and very important issue.
On the one hand, the pro-choice movement seeks to protect the rights of women. Let's stop there for a second. Is protecting the rights of women a good thing? If there were an empty room, and all that was in it was the concept of protecting women's rights, would we agree that the room had a Good Thing in it? I think most people, women traffickers excluded, would probably say yes.
On the other hand, the pro-life movement seeks to protect what are arguably the most vulnerable lives in society: the unborn. After all, they can't speak for themselves or defend themselves in any meaningful way. Let's also stop there for a second. Is protecting the most vulnerable members of a society a good thing? If there were an empty room, and all that was in it was the concept of protecting the most vulnerable members of a society, would we agree that the room had a Good Thing in it? I think most people, sadists excluded, would probably say yes.
So the problem with abortion isn't that either of the two sides is somehow founded on a thoroughly unreasonable principle, the problem with abortion is that you have two concepts that are good in the abstract which happen, in this particular instance, to be in conflict with each other.
So how do we resolve this issue as a society? First of all, we can start by acknowledging that there is no solution to this issue which will not upset a large number of people. For instance, we could do as Governor Huckabee proposes and pass a constitutional amendment banning abortion completely. That will please a relatively small fraction of the population a great deal, and upset a relatively large fraction a great deal, and would represent 100% emphasis on protecting the most vulnerable members of society, and 0% emphasis on protecting women's rights. Or we could do the opposite, and pass a constitutional amendment granting the right to have an abortion at any time for any reason. That will also please a relatively small fraction of the population a great deal, and upset a relatively large fraction a great deal, while representing a 100% emphasis on protecting women's rights, and 0% emphasis on protecting the most vulnerable members of society.
So my thinking is, we should go for a middle solution- one that is likely to make everyone somewhat unhappy. I don't believe a middle solution is always called for when there is a disagreement; however, in this case because we are dealing with competing goods, I think a middle solution is warranted. What I propose is this: a constitutional amendment which grants a woman the right to terminate a pregnancy for any reason up until a specific point, and then grants the fetus the right to survival past that point, with an exception granted for a pregnancy which threatens the life of the mother at any time. The amendment would also include language forbidding the government from infringing on the right of women to have full access to any knowledge which is relevant to making an informed choice about whether to terminate a pregnancy.
The underlying principle here is that since we have competing goods, we set up a legal framework that creates a balance, and allows the balance to tip toward protecting women's rights at first, and then toward protecting the most vulnerable members of society afterward. What we have now is similar in the sense that abortion is sometimes legal and sometimes not, but there's not a firm legal underpinning supporting legal abortion, and there's a whole lot of social energy expended in either expanding or restricting the current ad hoc framework.
As for determining when the balance should tip, I would leave that to a lively debate amongst representatives of both sides, plus doctors, plus medical ethicists. As a single male with no medical training, my knowledge of female biology is limited to an admittedly rudimentary navigational sense. I have steered clear of trying to understand how female biology really works, since it seems both nightmarishly complicated and surprisingly variable. So I've got little to add on this point, except to say that the tipping point should be late enough for a reasonable percentage (95%?, 97%?) or pregnant women to (a) realize that they are pregnant, which I have a vague understanding may take some time, and (b) find out the options and discuss them with whomever the woman thinks should be involved in the decision making.
On another note, I sometimes hear an argument that a fetus is not actually a person, and therefore should not be accorded any rights thereof. I find that argument logically unconvincing, morally oh-so-convenient, and strategically unnecessary to a resolution of the issue that goes a significant way toward protecting women's rights. Certainly, a fetus is well on its way to becoming a person, and if left alone for some months, will do exactly that. That differentiates it from, say, a hot air balloon, which if left alone for any amount of time will never become a human being. That, by the way, is how you know Rush Limbaugh isn't actually a human being.
There was a recent New York Times article saying that all this abortion legal stuff people fight so passionately about may be rendered obsolete by a relatively common drug that is used for some other purpose, but which, if taken in the right dosage, can induce an abortion with minimal side effects. The article predicted that poor women would end up going that route, and rich women would just fly to wherever they needed to in order to get a proper procedure done. So there's one vision of where we end up as a society if we don't ever resolve this issue sensibly.
The benefits of a constitutional amendment such as the one I've proposed are many:
-we don't have rich woman/poor woman scenarios like the one noted above
-we can stop having every damned Supreme Court justice nomination be about Roe v. Wade and whether we're going to overturn it or not. Christ in heaven, I get so tired of that.
-we can have abortion law that has a firm legal foundation, and is consistent everywhere
-we can spread the dissatisfaction around; i.e., extremists at both ends will be pretty unhappy, but will at least get some of what they want, while everyone in the middle of the spectrum, which I have to believe is most people, will probably have a vague feeling that it's not a perfect solution, but is a solution they can live with. And that's democracy in action.
So there you have it- yet another reason why I'm not electable, beyond modest stature, terrible hair, and a penchant for saying what I think about hard issues.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
BMFRTE Day 14: Denver
Thursday 8/30, the Super 8 motel, just outside Nebraska City, NE:
We manage to get up at a semi-reasonable hour and hit the continental breakfast before heading out.
Yep, southwest Iowa just doesn't get any better than this...
Now, I'd love to say that this post is going to tell of various and sundry crazy adventures, but most of the day was spent driving across Nebraska...
Yes, this is actually the place where they thought up Arbor Day. Because there weren't any trees. To date, no one has had the heart to tell Nebraskans that corn isn't a tree.
The first half of our day consists of driving through flat cornfields. I pop in today's road trip mix...
8/30/07: Country Mix
1) Quarter Horse - Unknown
2) White Horse - Laid Back
3) Wild Horses - The Sundays
4) Ghost Riders in the Sky - The Outlaws
5) Country Grammar - Nelly
6) Out of Habit - BR5-49
7) Who's Cheatin' Who- Alan Jackson
8) Before He Cheats - Carrie Underwood
9) It's a Little Too Late - Mark Chesnutt
10) Boot Scootin' Boogie - Brooks&Dunn
11) Born Country - Alabama
12) Thank God I'm a Country Boy - John Denver
13) All We Ever Find - Tim McGraw
14) Long Gone Lonesome Blues - Hank Williams
15) Don't It make My Brown Eyes Blue - Crystal Gayle
16) Gentle on My Mind - John Hartford
17) Cowboy Take Me Away - Dixie Chicks
18) Take Me Home, Country Roads - John Denver
We stopped for lunch at a nice Nebraskan restaurant...
Note that via Ed's artistic direction, this picture's center is a sign that says "cold beer". This is not an accident.
You've no doubt heard of the World Famous Crystal Palace Revue, but never knew exactly where it was. Well, here it is. Today featuring: a shoot-out! On the street! Too bad we can't stick around here in the middle of nowhere for another 6 hours. I mean, it's fun for the whole family.
After yummy buffalo burgers, we continue west. Then, it what is possibly the most exciting development since crossing into Nebraska, the scenery changes from flat endless corn fields, to perceptibly hilly endless corn fields! Amazing!
Welcome to Colorful Colorado, a Laconic Land of Alluring Alliteration.
By now, we're running a bit behind (a surprise, no doubt, to readers of this thread of posts) since we got up a little late, it's a lo-o-o-ong way across Nebraska, and we spent too long eating buffalo burgers. It's just too hard to rush when you're in country like this. When we get into the Denver area, we hit some bad traffic, and wind up getting to Sarah's house pretty late.
Sarah is an old friend from LA, who grew up in Denver and eventually moved back. We're going to the Broncos game tonight, and our lateness means we wind up arriving at the stadium just after the opening kickoff.
It's preseason, so I guess it's customary to arrive late.
Are you ready for some football??
Broncos win! I'm still undefeated picking teams to root for on this road trip.
We are all thrilled to see the Broncos win- Sarah because it's the home team, Ed because it's his first time in Mile High and he's pumped up about it, and me because the Arizona Cardinals, who have just lost, are on List 4.
Like King Kauffman of Salon.com, I have a very complicated calculus of teams I root for. All teams fall on one of 4 lists:
List 1 - Teams I Always Root For:
St. Louis Cardinals
St. Louis Blues
Missouri Tigers
Pomona College Sagehens
List 2 - Teams I Almost Always Root For:
Anaheim Angels
LA Clippers
Yale Bulldogs
Virginia Tech Hokies
New York Rangers
New York Giants (new as of most recent SuperBowl)
Golden State Warriors (new as of move to Bay Area)
List 3 - Teams I Am Open to the Possibility of Rooting For
Any Team not on Lists 1,2, or 4
List 4 - Teams I'd Rather Hit Myself in the Balls With a Hammer Than Root For
New York Yankees
Minnesota Twins
Detroit Red Wings
Duke
UCLA
New England Patriots
Arizona Cardinals
List 1 is basically the original home teams. Now, I haven't lived in StL for 18 years, and in the meantime I've lived all over the damned place, so I try to adopt at least one local team everywhere I live. List 2 is basically composed of the teams I've adopted from the various places I've lived. List 4 is composed of teams that have royally pissed me off, typically by beating a List 1 team in a postseason event.
Movement between lists is rare, though in 2006, the Detroit Tigers moved from List 4 to List 3. They had been on List 4 as a result of beating the Cardinals in the 1968 World Series. My grandpa was at game 7, and the tough loss in the late innings scarred him for life. He still tells the story sometimes when we go to games. But the Tigers redeemed themselves by losing in the 2006 World Series.
Of course, within List 3 things get very complicated. For instance, if the Mets were playing the Tigers in the World Series, I'd root for the Mets, because although I don't like either team very much, the Mets never traumatized any family members. But if the Orioles were playing the Tigers in the ALCS, I'd root Orioles, who were once upon a time the St. Louis Browns.
Anyway, the Arizona Cardinals are a List 4 team, courtesy of playing 30 years in St. Louis and almost never getting to the playoffs, and on the couple occasions when they did, losing immediately, and then, after all that losing, demanding that the city build them a new stadium or they'd leave. Thankfully, Missourians being a fairly down-to-earth, practical lot, we said "OK, buh-bye." So, I was very pleased to see the Cardinals lose.
Ed, Sarah, Me
After the game, we head back to Sarah's, and stay up for a little bit talking. But she's a teacher, so she gets us at a crazy hour, and we have to get up then too, because tomorrow we have to get all the way back to Vegas in time to meet MK and J-Rob, who are flying out for a guys' weekend. So, we compromise and go to bed around 2, which means 4 hours of sleep. Another night of little sleep. Oh well, sleep when you're dead and all that...
We manage to get up at a semi-reasonable hour and hit the continental breakfast before heading out.
Yep, southwest Iowa just doesn't get any better than this...
Now, I'd love to say that this post is going to tell of various and sundry crazy adventures, but most of the day was spent driving across Nebraska...
Yes, this is actually the place where they thought up Arbor Day. Because there weren't any trees. To date, no one has had the heart to tell Nebraskans that corn isn't a tree.The first half of our day consists of driving through flat cornfields. I pop in today's road trip mix...
8/30/07: Country Mix
1) Quarter Horse - Unknown
2) White Horse - Laid Back
3) Wild Horses - The Sundays
4) Ghost Riders in the Sky - The Outlaws
5) Country Grammar - Nelly
6) Out of Habit - BR5-49
7) Who's Cheatin' Who- Alan Jackson
8) Before He Cheats - Carrie Underwood
9) It's a Little Too Late - Mark Chesnutt
10) Boot Scootin' Boogie - Brooks&Dunn
11) Born Country - Alabama
12) Thank God I'm a Country Boy - John Denver
13) All We Ever Find - Tim McGraw
14) Long Gone Lonesome Blues - Hank Williams
15) Don't It make My Brown Eyes Blue - Crystal Gayle
16) Gentle on My Mind - John Hartford
17) Cowboy Take Me Away - Dixie Chicks
18) Take Me Home, Country Roads - John Denver
We stopped for lunch at a nice Nebraskan restaurant...
Note that via Ed's artistic direction, this picture's center is a sign that says "cold beer". This is not an accident.
You've no doubt heard of the World Famous Crystal Palace Revue, but never knew exactly where it was. Well, here it is. Today featuring: a shoot-out! On the street! Too bad we can't stick around here in the middle of nowhere for another 6 hours. I mean, it's fun for the whole family.After yummy buffalo burgers, we continue west. Then, it what is possibly the most exciting development since crossing into Nebraska, the scenery changes from flat endless corn fields, to perceptibly hilly endless corn fields! Amazing!
Welcome to Colorful Colorado, a Laconic Land of Alluring Alliteration.By now, we're running a bit behind (a surprise, no doubt, to readers of this thread of posts) since we got up a little late, it's a lo-o-o-ong way across Nebraska, and we spent too long eating buffalo burgers. It's just too hard to rush when you're in country like this. When we get into the Denver area, we hit some bad traffic, and wind up getting to Sarah's house pretty late.
Sarah is an old friend from LA, who grew up in Denver and eventually moved back. We're going to the Broncos game tonight, and our lateness means we wind up arriving at the stadium just after the opening kickoff.
It's preseason, so I guess it's customary to arrive late.
Are you ready for some football??
Broncos win! I'm still undefeated picking teams to root for on this road trip.
We are all thrilled to see the Broncos win- Sarah because it's the home team, Ed because it's his first time in Mile High and he's pumped up about it, and me because the Arizona Cardinals, who have just lost, are on List 4.
Like King Kauffman of Salon.com, I have a very complicated calculus of teams I root for. All teams fall on one of 4 lists:
List 1 - Teams I Always Root For:
St. Louis Cardinals
St. Louis Blues
Missouri Tigers
Pomona College Sagehens
List 2 - Teams I Almost Always Root For:
Anaheim Angels
LA Clippers
Yale Bulldogs
Virginia Tech Hokies
New York Rangers
New York Giants (new as of most recent SuperBowl)
Golden State Warriors (new as of move to Bay Area)
List 3 - Teams I Am Open to the Possibility of Rooting For
Any Team not on Lists 1,2, or 4
List 4 - Teams I'd Rather Hit Myself in the Balls With a Hammer Than Root For
New York Yankees
Minnesota Twins
Detroit Red Wings
Duke
UCLA
New England Patriots
Arizona Cardinals
List 1 is basically the original home teams. Now, I haven't lived in StL for 18 years, and in the meantime I've lived all over the damned place, so I try to adopt at least one local team everywhere I live. List 2 is basically composed of the teams I've adopted from the various places I've lived. List 4 is composed of teams that have royally pissed me off, typically by beating a List 1 team in a postseason event.
Movement between lists is rare, though in 2006, the Detroit Tigers moved from List 4 to List 3. They had been on List 4 as a result of beating the Cardinals in the 1968 World Series. My grandpa was at game 7, and the tough loss in the late innings scarred him for life. He still tells the story sometimes when we go to games. But the Tigers redeemed themselves by losing in the 2006 World Series.
Of course, within List 3 things get very complicated. For instance, if the Mets were playing the Tigers in the World Series, I'd root for the Mets, because although I don't like either team very much, the Mets never traumatized any family members. But if the Orioles were playing the Tigers in the ALCS, I'd root Orioles, who were once upon a time the St. Louis Browns.
Anyway, the Arizona Cardinals are a List 4 team, courtesy of playing 30 years in St. Louis and almost never getting to the playoffs, and on the couple occasions when they did, losing immediately, and then, after all that losing, demanding that the city build them a new stadium or they'd leave. Thankfully, Missourians being a fairly down-to-earth, practical lot, we said "OK, buh-bye." So, I was very pleased to see the Cardinals lose.
Ed, Sarah, Me
After the game, we head back to Sarah's, and stay up for a little bit talking. But she's a teacher, so she gets us at a crazy hour, and we have to get up then too, because tomorrow we have to get all the way back to Vegas in time to meet MK and J-Rob, who are flying out for a guys' weekend. So, we compromise and go to bed around 2, which means 4 hours of sleep. Another night of little sleep. Oh well, sleep when you're dead and all that...
Friday, February 8, 2008
Election '08 by Gus, Part 4
My thoughts on the current situation:
- The election will clearly be either McCain - Clinton, or McCain - Obama.
- Huckabee is in it at this point only to position himself as the logical VP candidate, especially since McCain has a hard time with two core Republican constituencies: Club For Growth types, and James Dobson Focus on the Family types. Since Huckabee seems to be the hands-down choice of the latter type, picking him would shore up one of McCain's two major intra-party weaknesses.
- That said, my respect for McCain as a candidate will drop sharply if he picks Huckabee. I'm glad Huckabee tried to do some good by the poor people in his state, but the guy doesn't believe in evolution, and his latest proposal is to impeach judges that cite international law in their judicial opinions. I mean, sure, what possible use could international law be for a nation? And who gives a shit about freedom of expression anyway? If McCain picks him and gets elected, that potentially positions Huckabee as the presumptive Republican candidate for the Presidency in 2016, which is a prospect I find terrifying.
- The Clinton - Obama race is fascinating to watch unfold. It seems very close, and if it goes into the convention undecided, I think that favors Clinton, because of the super-delegate issue. The Democratic Party machinery is loaded with Clintonites and/or people who owe the Clintons politically, and so I think if it gets decided at the convention, it'll go to Clinton.
- I don't dislike Clinton. I think she's intelligent and thoughtful, and can probably do an OK job, certainly a thousand times better than the current job. But she's basically arguing "I'm better than the other guy at playing the current political game." She is almost certainly right about that. But Obama is arguing "I want to be playing a different game." Amen to that. I'm tired of the current game. Maybe he would succeed, and maybe he wouldn't, but I'm certainly ready for someone to give it a shot. Clinton, by saying she can handle the attack machine, is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that will ensure that the attack machine is going in full gear if she gets elected.
- Speaking of Clintons, an implicit part of her message is "remember how good things were in the 90's, when we Clintons were in the White House?" Things were better to be sure, and Bill Clinton did a good job overall, but he will always be a disappointment to me. He was good, maybe even very good, but he could have been great. I find him disappointing not because of the many compromises he made to get things passed; although I would have liked to see much more progressive action happen, Clinton for the most part faced a Congress that was at best not inclined to be cooperative, and at worst hostile. So, I'm OK with most of the compromises- at least some good stuff got done. By and large, more progressive versions of what did get done probably wouldn't have passed Congress.
In addition, he got Yugoslavia right, and even though he got Rwanda wrong, the reality is that getting it wrong didn't cost us a trillion dollars or the political support of a sizable chunk of the rest of the world. And although he faced a massive Republican attack machine, for a long time they really had nothing on him, and he was still able to get stuff done. As long as they had nothing on him, the Republicans really did sound like a vast right-wing conspiracy.
But because he couldn't keep his internal demons at bay for 8 years, he did eventually give them something, and although it didn't end up costing him nearly as much as it could have, it cost the country a lot, and for that I will always view him as a disappointment. In the end, lackluster campaigning, Supreme Court interference, and election shenanigans aside, the 2000 election should never have been anywhere as close as it was. Although it's not possible to know for sure, I think a lot of people did not so much vote for George W. Bush as against Bill Clinton, in the form of his designated heir, Al Gore. And that has cost us dearly.
It's worth pondering for a second: why did Republicans hate Bill Clinton so much? I believe the answer is this- that the modern Republican party, for whatever reason, has made as one of its foundational assumptions that government is never good, that essentially the only good thing it can ever do is cut taxes. And so, competent, reasonably well-run government is an anathema to Republicans, because it is a blatant contradiction of everything their party now stands for. And Clinton ran a pretty competent government. So the longer that went on, the more Republicans just had to find a way to kill it, before everyone started believing we could have that all the time.
That's also, I think, why so many Republicans, especially Club For Growth types, hate John McCain. He looks suspiciously like someone who might run a competent government, not like a George W. Bush, who will cut taxes and otherwise run a thoroughly incompetent government that will help reinforce the Republican idea that government can't work. That's part of why I like John McCain.
But in the end, I voted for Obama here in CA, and will happily vote for either him or Hillary in November. Not because I dislike John McCain, but because you don't just elect a man or woman, you elect a party, and there aren't enough John McCains in the Republican party. And then if he picks someone like Huckabee as his running mate, forget it. He has his first chance to really lead his party now- pick another moderate to run with. Which brings me to:
- Conventional wisdom seems to suggest that this is clearly the Democrats' year. I don't think that's a slam-dunk at all. I think in McCain-Obama, Obama wins that in a very close election, and in McCain-Clinton, McCain wins that in an even closer election, principally because I think there is a non-trivial pool of people in the 10 or so states that are in realistically in play that are willing to vote Obama, but will not vote Clinton under any circumstances.
So for me, the biggest current source of election stress is: who does John McCain pick as his running mate?
- The election will clearly be either McCain - Clinton, or McCain - Obama.
- Huckabee is in it at this point only to position himself as the logical VP candidate, especially since McCain has a hard time with two core Republican constituencies: Club For Growth types, and James Dobson Focus on the Family types. Since Huckabee seems to be the hands-down choice of the latter type, picking him would shore up one of McCain's two major intra-party weaknesses.
- That said, my respect for McCain as a candidate will drop sharply if he picks Huckabee. I'm glad Huckabee tried to do some good by the poor people in his state, but the guy doesn't believe in evolution, and his latest proposal is to impeach judges that cite international law in their judicial opinions. I mean, sure, what possible use could international law be for a nation? And who gives a shit about freedom of expression anyway? If McCain picks him and gets elected, that potentially positions Huckabee as the presumptive Republican candidate for the Presidency in 2016, which is a prospect I find terrifying.
- The Clinton - Obama race is fascinating to watch unfold. It seems very close, and if it goes into the convention undecided, I think that favors Clinton, because of the super-delegate issue. The Democratic Party machinery is loaded with Clintonites and/or people who owe the Clintons politically, and so I think if it gets decided at the convention, it'll go to Clinton.
- I don't dislike Clinton. I think she's intelligent and thoughtful, and can probably do an OK job, certainly a thousand times better than the current job. But she's basically arguing "I'm better than the other guy at playing the current political game." She is almost certainly right about that. But Obama is arguing "I want to be playing a different game." Amen to that. I'm tired of the current game. Maybe he would succeed, and maybe he wouldn't, but I'm certainly ready for someone to give it a shot. Clinton, by saying she can handle the attack machine, is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that will ensure that the attack machine is going in full gear if she gets elected.
- Speaking of Clintons, an implicit part of her message is "remember how good things were in the 90's, when we Clintons were in the White House?" Things were better to be sure, and Bill Clinton did a good job overall, but he will always be a disappointment to me. He was good, maybe even very good, but he could have been great. I find him disappointing not because of the many compromises he made to get things passed; although I would have liked to see much more progressive action happen, Clinton for the most part faced a Congress that was at best not inclined to be cooperative, and at worst hostile. So, I'm OK with most of the compromises- at least some good stuff got done. By and large, more progressive versions of what did get done probably wouldn't have passed Congress.
In addition, he got Yugoslavia right, and even though he got Rwanda wrong, the reality is that getting it wrong didn't cost us a trillion dollars or the political support of a sizable chunk of the rest of the world. And although he faced a massive Republican attack machine, for a long time they really had nothing on him, and he was still able to get stuff done. As long as they had nothing on him, the Republicans really did sound like a vast right-wing conspiracy.
But because he couldn't keep his internal demons at bay for 8 years, he did eventually give them something, and although it didn't end up costing him nearly as much as it could have, it cost the country a lot, and for that I will always view him as a disappointment. In the end, lackluster campaigning, Supreme Court interference, and election shenanigans aside, the 2000 election should never have been anywhere as close as it was. Although it's not possible to know for sure, I think a lot of people did not so much vote for George W. Bush as against Bill Clinton, in the form of his designated heir, Al Gore. And that has cost us dearly.
It's worth pondering for a second: why did Republicans hate Bill Clinton so much? I believe the answer is this- that the modern Republican party, for whatever reason, has made as one of its foundational assumptions that government is never good, that essentially the only good thing it can ever do is cut taxes. And so, competent, reasonably well-run government is an anathema to Republicans, because it is a blatant contradiction of everything their party now stands for. And Clinton ran a pretty competent government. So the longer that went on, the more Republicans just had to find a way to kill it, before everyone started believing we could have that all the time.
That's also, I think, why so many Republicans, especially Club For Growth types, hate John McCain. He looks suspiciously like someone who might run a competent government, not like a George W. Bush, who will cut taxes and otherwise run a thoroughly incompetent government that will help reinforce the Republican idea that government can't work. That's part of why I like John McCain.
But in the end, I voted for Obama here in CA, and will happily vote for either him or Hillary in November. Not because I dislike John McCain, but because you don't just elect a man or woman, you elect a party, and there aren't enough John McCains in the Republican party. And then if he picks someone like Huckabee as his running mate, forget it. He has his first chance to really lead his party now- pick another moderate to run with. Which brings me to:
- Conventional wisdom seems to suggest that this is clearly the Democrats' year. I don't think that's a slam-dunk at all. I think in McCain-Obama, Obama wins that in a very close election, and in McCain-Clinton, McCain wins that in an even closer election, principally because I think there is a non-trivial pool of people in the 10 or so states that are in realistically in play that are willing to vote Obama, but will not vote Clinton under any circumstances.
So for me, the biggest current source of election stress is: who does John McCain pick as his running mate?
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