From the hallway closet I take out a small cardboard box. Inside are the hottest items on the planet. A small stack of N95 masks that I ordered back in late February. Along with these are a larger stack of painter’s masks that I snagged from Walmart in March.
I’ve had to ration these out as carefully as possible as they’re functionally unavailable anymore. In the bathroom is a box of nitrile gloves. These came from the hospital back in 2017 when my dad spent a couple of days under observation.
“might as well take’em” said the nurse, “they’ll charge you for them anyways”
I’d quite forgotten about them till I realized I hadn’t any and needed them.
Checklist before leaving the house. Mask, gloves, tiny hand sanitizer bottle in the car, shopping list in the front t-shirt pocket along with the credit card.
I leave a wad of paper towels and a bottle of Clorox disinfectant prepositioned by the back door for when I return from the market.
I have to say that I find my settling into this new temporary normal is somewhat disturbing and comforting at the same time. When this whole mess began to unfold in earnest back in February and I had to accept that this was not going to be confined to the other side of the world but come crashing home I have to admit that the whole situation was surreal and frightening as no one, least of all the government, seem to have any clue as to what to do.
I imagine that it is the feeling of living on a coastline and seeing a tsunami form far off in the distance and seeing it come closer and closer knowing that there is nothing you can do about it.
My anxiety and fear about the virus has calmed since the initial days back in early March but on some things I can’t become complacent. Back in those early days all I would do is watch the bad news roll in on the television and it seemed that every time I refreshed the websites counting the deaths that the numbers would just climb and climb. Information overload anxiety, if that’s not a psychological term I’m sure it will be soon. The root of my anxiety centered around my mother.
My own death doesn’t frighten me as much as the thought that somehow my mother would contract the disease. Worst of all would be if she became ill through some thoughtless action of mine. To top everything, I got the flu in early March and spent some sleepless nights checking my temperature, distancing myself from my mother, and watching her for symptoms without looking like I was checking on her and getting her panicked. All of this led me to be somewhat stricter about exposure.
My mother begins her customary complaint about the mask and of course I am adamant on this point. No mask, no trip to the supermarket. She is a bit claustrophobic and as she puts it, the mask makes her feel like she’s drowning but I won’t relent. So far we’ve fared fairly well over the last 2 months and I am not about to ruin things.
Traffic has picked up. I was last out in mid-April and the streets were empty. Some traffic now flows but the bus stops are empty, and you don’t see that many people on the streets.
We park and don the masks and gloves before getting out of the car. The local supermarket has finally gotten all their COVID-19 measures in place. A cashier wearing a mask and gloves and standing behind a plastic shield looks at me as I enter. Hard to read people with half their faces covered but he seems a bit anxious.
The supermarket has a few shoppers already. Most wearing some sort of mask or bandanna over their face but one man coming toward me is wearing nothing at all over his face. Whether this is due to bravado, stupidity, or just a lack of material to cover his face I don’t know. I pass him by as quickly as possible.
Some people still don’t believe in the virus. To some it’s part of some conspiracy, a plan to exert control over the populace, others refuse to see it as a big problem, and yet others express a nihilistic worldview that whatever happens will happen and we can’t or shouldn’t try to thwart fate.
Part of this can be attributed to the leadership, or lack thereof, in this country and the refusal to treat this seriously back in January. The current regime in power holds science with so much disdain that this attitude percolates down to the regime’s supporters, and this has led to some to question whether the virus exists at all or is somehow related to cell phone towers.
Of course, this anti-science attitude predates the current white house occupant by decades, but the sentiment has blossomed under his watch.
Produce is still plentiful at this point. Hardly touched if I’m being honest. My mother sees this as a typical supermarket trip and takes her time choosing the best produce possible. This by the way is the reason that she is here. I could knock out this shopping trip in less than fifteen minutes, but she insists that I “have no eye for proper produce” and she had to pick out the produce herself. I just think she wants to get out of the house and see other people.
I’m fairly calm about her taking her time. Back in mid-March not so much. My attitude back then was let’s just grab anything and go. Of course, I had to resist the urge to express my irritation with her for not treating this as seriously as I thought it should be. Keeping all that anxiety bottled up and not expressing it hasn’t been easy. I’ve had to learn to not react when something upsets me.
Sitting and doing nothing is not something that most people do well, particularly not Americans. We want to come to grips with a threat, buy war bonds, plant victory gardens, invade other countries.
Some talented people have turned to making cloth masks as a way to “fight back” and provide protection to those that don’t have protective gear. Others have taken to social media to “police” the space and keep real information flowing while attempting to squash false information. But the only really effective thing that most people can do is to sit still and not go out.
Maybe we can sit still for a few days and let a hurricane or tornado pass by but looking out the window and seeing the sun shining and the birds chirping it’s hard to believe that so many people are getting sick and dying.
And again, it’s hard to shelter in place when the leadership isn’t really giving any good guidance or reassurance about the situation.
Meat has become a bit more scarce, flour has disappeared, but prepackaged bread exists. The canned goods isle is fairly ravaged, but the paper goods isle is making a comeback as you can now find toilet paper once again. Weird what people prioritize.
Spray disinfectant can’t be bought at any price. I suspect all the supplies are going directly to the government or to medical facilities. It is the one item I have at the top of my shopping list and I can never find. We had two cans of it in early March and we’re down to one and I have to constantly ask my mother to limit the use of it while keeping the anxiety out of my voice.
Finally, we’re at the checkout line. This is where I’m most concerned about possible transmission. The market has laid down some strips of tape at 6-foot intervals to spread people out at the checkout line and shoppers for the most part honor the interval. The cashier and the sacker are friendly and do their jobs quickly and efficiently. I suppose that they have become accustomed to all of this and have resigned themselves to come into work everyday and do their jobs despite the risks.
Driving home we pass a convenience store.
“Masks and hand sanitizer for sale”
What were 80 cent N95 masks are now up to 5 dollars and cheap 10 cent surgical masks are at about $1.50 apiece. This is what the president meant when he told the states, and by default everyone else, that they were welcome to make their own arrangements. Sellers will charge what the market will bear and if the market’s life is in jeopardy it will bear quite a bit.
I remember a story from the Spanish TV news about “entrepreneurs” in the Dominican Republic that went dumpster diving at hospitals and resold used masks on the streets. This makes me wary about buying from just anyone.
We get home and go into our carefully arranged unloading process. The gloves go into a garbage can in the garage. I wipe down every car surface that I’ve touched with my hands with the disinfectant and paper towels and then the door handles of the house.
Inside we wash our hands. By the way, I knew the 20-second hand washing rule years ago and adopted the 2x birthday song as my guide to washing hands.
Now we unpack. Some online acquaintances insist on washing the food packaging as well, but I don’t. Cardboard will keep COVID 19 alive for a day and plastic for 2 or 3 days. Everyone has to make peace with a certain level of risk. But at least we’re good on food for another couple of weeks.
I crank up the oven and bake the masks at low heat for 30 minutes. We have to preserve what we have as best as possible. This is the second time that we’ve used these particular masks. Next time they’ll have to go in the trash. Tonight I will have to do a search for more masks and hope I find something besides scam artists.
I grab a sore throat lozenge from the medicine cabinet. A side effect of wearing the mask. I freaked out the first couple of times I had a sore throat after wearing the mask but I found out online that some people got sore throats from wearing masks. Something to do with rebreathing warm moist air and microscopic particles from the mask irritating the throat. The sore throat usually eases up overnight.
I hope that this doesn’t turn into some sort of cancer 20 years from now but that’s a worry for another day.
The transition from “normal” life to “quarantine” life hasn’t been as much of a shock to my life as it has for others. I’ve worked from home since 2010 so I don’t miss things like office softball or gossiping around the water cooler, or office politics. My routine really hasn’t changed much.
My mother wants to make sopaipillas for my brother and take them over to his house. He’s had it rough. He’s a manager at a supermarket and has had to risk exposure throughout this whole mess. Back in early April he felt ill and had to stop working. His COVID test took a week to come back negative but he still felt ill. His doctor told him it was stress and high blood pressure. He had worked 21 days straight without a break. He took 2 weeks off but is back at work now.
My nephew is another “essential”. He’s a police officer and at one point the department made him and other officers sleep in the station in case things began to break down and they needed the extra manpower. Luckily things have remained fairly calm and he’s just had to deal with the same problems that he is accustomed to dealing with.
Open up America and get back to work. The mantra of the investor class. I say the investor class because as far back as March they were the ones urging the government not to quarantine. The rallying cry is now heard from protest groups around the country urging state and local governments to get back to normality, but I have suspicions that these “grassroots” groups are organized and bankrolled from somewhere outside of the grassroots.
It’s simple really. The investor class lives off of their stocks and at the core, the value of those stocks is predicated upon millions of daily cash register transactions and millions of things being made. A haircut here, a movie ticket there, a gallon of gasoline everywhere. The lower classes WOULD go back to work no matter how risky it was.
On the flip side the lower classes were out of money. Remember that factoid bandied about since the 90s? Most Americans don’t save money and couldn’t even afford a $400 emergency. We’re way past that. I doubt most people want to risk exposure, but they need the money for basics like rent and food.
We drive to my brother’s house and along the way we pass a church. The city had set up a local food bank. A 3-block long line of cars waited for a box of food that would have to tide them over for a week or two.
The state suspended all eviction processes till the end of the emergency but that just postpones what may become a mass enlargement of the homeless population. Hopefully, people will sort it out before that happens but there are no guarantees.
We arrive at my brother’s. After putting on one of my painter’s masks, I grab the box of sopaipillas and run to his door leaving the box there and ringing the doorbell before running back to the car.
A moment later he emerges wearing his own mask and waves at us. My mother waves back and yells out “Be careful at work”. He nods and stands there to let her see that he’s alright. I know she wants to go out and hug her son, but we can’t, at least not yet. I look down, purse my lips before starting the car. We drive back in silence.
But we’re going back to normal. Back to the situation that we’ve had for the last few decades. In a year or two all of this will go into the history books just like 9/11 is now part of history. Maybe some monuments will go up and maybe even a national day of Remembrance will be declared to honor the fallen. In a decade or two it will be hard to remember what life was like before COVID-19.
But will we really learn from this experience? I don’t mean the scientists, the crisis managers, the politicians, or the rich people. They’re already analyzing, and planning based upon the experiences now.
I mean us. Will we learn what’s really valuable in life? What’s real and what’s just fantasies that we’ve made up to get through our day? Will people continue to value dollars more than human lives? Does returning to normal mean going back to the situation that got us here in the first place?
This topic is also being covered by Leslie Farnsworth on her blog. You can find this and other insightful posts here: https://observingleslie.com/
Waking up in the dark as always and dangling my feet over
the side of the bed, curling and uncurling my toes to wake up my feet before I
stand up. My feet find it difficult to
just hop up and go after sleeping.
Before it was just on cold winter mornings but nowadays it seems to
happen more and more. Walking unsteadily to my desktop to write this.
I’ve had a few blog ideas kicking round my head for the past
couple of months. One idea was my thoughts about turning 49, another about how
you only realize how healthy you were when you start losing your health and of
course this, what’s changed about me in the decade of the 2010’s.
Taken one by one I doubt I would have enough material for a
blog post and certainly not an interesting one.
Taken together? Let’s see how it goes.
The nice thing about being born in 1970 is that you can
pretty easily calculate your age. It’s
1986? Then you’re 16. 2003? 33.
2011? You’re obviously 41. Of course, I screwed that up by being a
December baby so for most of the year I get to subtract 1 from the total like
some 1971 baby.
I started the decade in the last year of my 30’s. By some metrics I was at the zenith of my
life. I already owned a home, a car, and
had money in the bank. My career had for
the moment sorted itself out and I was assiduously applying myself to
discovering and perfecting sales methods that I would successfully use for
years to come.
More importantly, at least to me, I knew what lay ahead of
me for the next few years. I had willingly
committed myself to the path of taking care of my parents and I understood quite
well what this would entail and that I would have to put some personal dreams
and projects on hold for their sake.
But at least I knew that there was a plan. I just had to
keep working and keep taking care of them and things would work out.
Back then I also had the feeling that things in the world
would generally work out for the better rather than the worse. America had just narrowly avoided a worldwide
depression, we had our first black president, things looked to be winding down
in Iraq, everyone could now carry a pocket computer on their phone.
Sure there were still plenty of bad things going on in the
world but little by little I felt that things would get better and that if not
sooner then later we would all inherit that prosperous technological future
that the sci-fi authors always went on about.
Physically I wasn’t in the best of shapes, but I had stopped
smoking and begun taking short walks so maybe it would be possible that even I
would improve slowly but surely.
Speaking about the physical I need to move a bit. Back in my
20s and 30s I could fold my leg under me while sitting and stay in that
position for hours in front of the computer.
Now not so much. Things, I’m not sure that they’re joints, but things in
my legs sometimes pop and creak when I walk.
My eyesight has declined, particularly in the last decade.
My hair though I never really cared about it is becoming more and more a suggestion
rather than a fact and for someone that was once terrified of root canals I’ve
now had 4 of them.
And to think I used to chew ice when I was a kid. It amazes me the amount of abuse that my body
could take and never complain. To think that my pancreas could handle 4 or
sometimes even 5 cola drinks a day and never utter a word in protest…
We never think about all that we have in this life and just think about the things that we don’t. But when some tiny but vital part of your body stops working or malfunctions then you get to thinking about all the abuse you put your body through or all the wasted opportunities that you squandered in your youth.
watch the things you gave your life
to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools
Worn-out tools. I used to love that poem. It gave me animus, intention, the will to
keep building and rebuilding no matter what happened but what happens when you’re
the worn-out tool?
I suppose something that I have gained in the last 10 years
has been more empathy and appreciation for the circumstances and situation of
others. When you want to accomplish or do
something and due to your own physical condition or circumstance in life you
can’t do it. You feel not just the frustration
of not doing it but a disappointment in yourself.
I’ve watched someone that I cared about physically and then
mentally deteriorate right in front of my eyes and was unable to arrest that
descent in any meaningful way. Watched his mind struggle to speak the words
that he wanted to but finally give up in frustration because he just couldn’t
remember the correct word.
Of course, I’m nowhere near that but it gives you pause to
think that this could happen to someone you knew as totally healthy and capable.
It also reminds that me that just because something is easy for me that it’s
not necessarily the same for others.
And empathy I notice has been on the decline in the last 10
years. Perhaps that’s at the root of what’s
happened to the world in the latter half of the last decade. People have stopped caring. About each other or about the world in
general. It’s no longer just about
surviving but at prospering at someone else’s expense. It seems as if not just
the system is breaking down but the underlying principles that are the basis of
the system no longer apply. The thought frightens me as that vision of that
prosperous future seems less and less sure with every new calamity.
Sometimes I just have to shut off the news and social media.
Connecting the world one user to another seemed to be such a good idea. What could possibly go wrong when people talk
directly to one another? Such beautiful naivete. Wish we could go back.
And I do go back, in my mind at least. I close my eyes and
think of some of the happier moments in the last ten years. Remembering experiences,
vacations, friends and I tell myself “you were happy once and you will be happy
again.” And that has to tide me over till my next happy moment occurs.
Interregnums are such uncertain times.
Unlike the last decade the next decade greets me with
uncertainty at all levels. Nothing calls to me or presents itself as my new
path. Perhaps nothing will. For someone
living with a plan or an idea of where he was going it’s difficult to adapt
specially when the mind isn’t as nimble as it once was.
All I can do is look back when I’m 59 and see how I did.
(Author’s note: just an operational note. You can right click on any of these images in this blog and choose view image to see them in full detail. Don’t know why wordpress changed this feature on me)
My roommate Mike and I are sitting in our college dorm room after classes one day in November of 1989. We’re watching Dan Rather and the evening news on the 15-inch TV that I had brought from home that Fall. The Berlin wall was coming down.
Mike’s reaction was “cool”, I’m flabbergasted. As late as my
senior year in high school (literally six months earlier) we were being taught
how communism and democracy were intractable foes and that the status quo would
not change in our lifetimes and here it was all collapsing literally in front
of my eyes. In the next few years while I was in college, eastern Europe began
to change and open up.
Almost immediately some people that I was acquainted with
were talking about exploring the new frontiers of eastern Europe. A couple even
left college and took off to visit Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, or even Moscow.
Meanwhile I stayed put.
One of my history professors raved about the interwar years
in central Europe and how the newly formed countries of Czechoslovakia and
Yugoslavia were these egalitarian wonderlands that existed before the nazis
took over.
During the 90s, Miyazaki had several of his adventures set in amalgams of central European countries all with quaint baroque architecture of the early 20th century. As a side note, if you get a chance you should check out Castle in the sky, Witch’s delivery service, or Howls moving castle. Very entertaining examples of Japanese anime and at the very least visually stunning.
All of this stoked my desire to go and see for myself. But
over the years I always found a reason not to go. Some personal emergency, or money,
or work (usually work) was a good excuse not to go.
But finally, I was on my way.
Unfortunately, there was no direct rail service from
northwestern Italy to the Czech Republic.
I would have to go to Venice or Milan and take several detours round the
Alps to get to Prague and the train ride would eat up more than a day in travel
so a plane ride would be the most efficient use of my time. From Genoa I would go to Rome and from Rome
to Prague.
I had convinced myself that this vacation would be a good
time to reflect on my life and think about my future plans or at least that was
the excuse I gave to justify taking the trip. Here we are halfway done, and I
hadn’t given it a second thought.
So, sitting in Leonardo Da Vinci Airport in Rome for a
3-hour layover seemed the perfect opportunity to do so. I had briefly
considered a quick dash into Rome to throw a coin into the Trevi fountain to
ensure that I would return one day but the car ride would have been about 90
minutes in and 90 minutes back and was probably not worth the risk of missing
my flight.
Finally, I was cornered and had no more excuses.
I was in my late forties without a job and in a career that
I no longer wanted. Even before losing my job I’d begun to become dissatisfied
with sales.
Back when I started working, I considered sales to be a useless profession and salesmen to be lazy. Fourteen years in sales has taught me that sales aren’t easy, that salesmen have special talents and skills, and that sales is a vital part of any business.
But even with my newly found respect for the profession I knew that it’s not for me. I have neither the disposition nor education to be an effective salesman and I even though I now possess years of practical experience I will never have the hunger for it.
Beyond that however I find that I want to do something with
my life that will create something that will last. When I was making maps in my
first job, I was creating something that had not existed before. Something that
would last and be available to future generations.
So why did I take the sales job then? Money of course. I had
debts and I wanted things that my previous salary couldn’t provide. That’s part
of the devil’s bargain that most people have to make in this life.
Being a salesman, I didn’t have the feeling that I have
created anything permanent or worthwhile. People bought goods and services from
me and then went on to use these in their own projects and create something.
All that there would ever be of my part in their projects would be a paper
trail of transactions.
This was at the heart of my existential or mid-life crisis
that I was having. This was also why I didn’t want to think about this crap as
there is no easy answer or solution to this, just more questions.
Luckily my flight arrived, and I was able to get past one of
the more uncomfortable moments of self-reflection in my life.
Flying over the Swiss Alps.
Even in early May the Alps were still totally snow covered. One day, one
day.
Even though I’d wanted to come to Prague for a long time the
language was proving to be a challenge. Czech is a Slavic language and unlike
the Germanic or Latinic languages where I could guess at some words based on my
life experience, I was totally clueless here. So even though I’d covered the
basics, not much was sticking.
The phone service was still working so on the cab ride to the hotel I was brushing up on basics.
Yes = ano
No = ne
Please = prosim
Thank you = dekuji vam
Hello = dobree den (or Ahoj if you’re answering a phone)
This was going to take some practice.
I might have well not have bothered learning anything as almost
everyone spoke English. I still did because I firmly believe that you at least
need to make a good faith effort even if it still sounds terrible.
I’d booked a room in the Angelo hotel in the Smichov
district. After the velvet revolution in
‘89, the Smichov had been remodeled and transformed from a factory district
into a pretty contemporary business district with new shopping malls, office
buildings, and hotels.
Prague….. Prague turned out to be exactly as I’d imagined. A mix of cutting edge and old world traditional. Here in the Smichov you had all the modern conveniences but once you cross the Vlatava river into Old town it becomes picturesque and quaint.
The Vltava river
If anything, Miyasaki had dialed down the quaint in his movies to make it bearable cause the sheer sensory overload of all the baroque architecture is hard to take in at a single glance. You have to carefully look over and digest every adornment, every crenelation, every curve to truly appreciate each building.
You also get the sense that Prague isn’t out to prove anything or be the best in anything but just wanted to be a livable place for its citizens to enjoy. Prague is just a simple city on a river flanked by hills. The river front areas alone could keep you busy discovering museums, restaurants, parks, clubs for an entire year.
The old town is a tourist trap but such a well-done tourist trap that you don’t mind being trapped in it’s maze like streets and discovering this or that little shop.
The Charles bridge you just have to go and see for yourself
because I can’t really explain it. Every morning I would rush off on foot towards
old town to see what new little gem I could uncover during my unguided tours of
the city.
I never once experienced the culture shock that I had in
Paris and quite enjoyed the experience of just walking around and seeing what I
could find around every corner.
On my last full day in Prague I found myself sitting at a street side café in central Europe eating a croissant and having a coffee. Probably a quarter century too late but I finally got it done.
part of my bucket list believe it or not
The trip’s coming to end as all things must end.
Coming back to the UK in a plane I pass over the white cliffs
of Dover. I wonder what my dad thought when he first saw them.
I had to fill in the last 2 days of the vacation and instead
of expensive Amsterdam I decided to substitute in a couple days in an English
country estate.
Searching online, I found Burcombe Manor in Wiltshire, a little B&B specializing in wedding receptions but as it was the off season, they took in stray tourists.
Taking the train west out of London and watching commuters
get on and get off in towns along the way.
“Why am I not doing this? Why am I not living this life?”
In Salisbury I found a very accommodating taxi driver that
filled me in on the local history of Salisbury all the way back to the crusades
and suggested sites to see and restaurants to avoid.
Burcombe Manor was exactly as advertised. This was the type of place that you might imagine being in a P.G. Wodehouse story. Not exactly Highclere castle but charming nonetheless.
The Manor was run by a young couple and only offered breakfast. They suggested a couple places down the road that offered dinner. So, there I was walking down a British country lane in early May watching the sun slowly set in the West, listening to the wind rustling the crops, the babble of a small stream, and the odd chirp of a bird here or there.
“You’ve got no complaints. You know that, right?”
“These 47 years really haven’t been that bad, have they?”
Counting my blessings? Taking stock? I don’t know. Sitting at the Barford Inn and drinking a Badger beer later that evening I reflected that not everyone would get a chance to do this and the best thing I could do was to appreciate the moment.
Stonehenge is the big draw in western England and of course
I went there. Don’t get me wrong it’s impressive but honestly, I thought it was
a little too neat and clean. You can’t even touch the stones anymore except on
certain days of the year. I just found
it a little too tidy for my taste.
Salisbury cathedral is big and imposing and has a copy of the magna carta and now I’ve seen two copies of the magna carta (yay?)
I guess my mind was more than a little preoccupied with the
thought that the trip was coming to an end to really appreciate my surroundings.
Time to step back into reality.
My last full day and I’m back in London before Noon and I wander round Westminster and tour some of the more recognizable sites. Maybe I should have foregone the stones and taken in another day in London.
I’m staying near Greenwich and one of my Facebook contacts
suggests a quick jaunt round the observatory. So, one last quick little sightseeing
tour.
Sitting in an upscale steak place in Canary wharf. At a nearby table an Aussie, a South African,
and a Londoner are discussing the launch of a new business project. Of course, I was listening in.
The Aussie was leaving in the morning and going back to Sidney. The South African was going north to visit relatives in Scotland. They all look to be in their thirties. Idly wondering what I did in my thirties and realizing it was nothing like this.
So, here we are back to my first blog post on my vacation. I just have to go upstairs to the club I previously mentioned in my first vacation blog and the story is all done.
Vacation memories are nice to revisit but I’m learning to appreciate the moment and not cling to the moment. Vacations come and go and I’m sure there will be another in my future. Where I will go or more importantly when I will go is pretty hard to say.
I’ve got to get my life moving. I wanted to say back on track but truthfully there really hasn’t been a specific track for me to follow for a long time. Life tends to meander back and forth and does what it will paying little mind to what you want. Learning to sail along with life is I suppose the only advice that I can give anyone listening.
Running through a dark alley in an Italian town in the
middle of nowhere while a rainstorm rumbled overhead. Ducking under a porch overhang
for a second to check my map. Thinking to myself that given the overall arc of
my life, it suddenly seems so obvious that one day I would end up lost and
alone in a dark Italian alley.
But let’s go back 14 hours and see how this scene developed.
I’m at Gare de Lyon in Paris waiting for the train to take me south. Four
trains that I would have to catch in sequence to get me to the town of Levanto,
just west of the Cinque Terre.
This all looked so neat and tidy on the desktop a month ago when I booked these tickets on the EuroRail website. Of course, I could have booked air fare from Paris to Genoa and then taken a train from there and probably be in the hotel just past lunch time but where’s the charm in that? Besides, I had already foregone any time on the coast of Provence and the driving portion of my trip. Least I could do is pass by on the train.
Sitting in the train station I’m getting a mild panic
attack. I’m in a strange city hoping
that a complicated train schedule plays out as planned, crossing borders, maybe
they won’t let me into Italy, maybe my hotel reservations are lost, maybe this,
maybe that.
Then I see a mother and her 3 kids patiently and quietly
waiting for the train and realize that I’m not some intrepid explorer going out
into the wilderness, I’m middle aged tourist in Europe. Things will be fine.
And things were fine.
Once you’re past the factories and suburbs of Paris it’s miles and miles
of some of the greenest and prettiest countryside that you’d ever want to see.
No wonder that people have fought over France for thousands of years.
A few hours later and the scene starts getting rockier and less vegetated and we’re approaching Marseille and the coast. Here and there you see a palm tree or two. The sun has decided to peek out for a bit and the Mediterranean is a bright crystal blue this afternoon. This is a happy uplifting blue that nourishes the soul not one of those somber dark blue-grey oceans that makes one take stock of one’s life.
The bright blue Mediterranean
We pass Toulon. Where Jean Valjean was imprisoned in the
novel Les Miserables, another lost opportunity that I would have to make
right one day. We dip inland for a bit
and return to the coast at Cannes.
In a week or so the well-to-do would be crawling all over this town and everything would cost ten times what it does right now. The big pleasure yachts were already pulling into the marinas.
One of the things that the guidebooks made plain was that if you weren’t flush with the green stuff that Cannes was pretty to look at but fairly inaccessible so not much a regret there though all the oceanfront real estate and the sun drenched beaches were gorgeous to look at.
Pulling into Nice. The old train station is a mix of French, Italian, and even some Arabic architecture. The palm trees growing nearby give it all an exotic feel.
Looking at my ticket and I see that I’m switching to
Trenitalia, the Italian rail system, and I’m looking at the departure board (at
least I think that’s what it is) and I have a slight shudder of panic. I ask a
ticket agent in terrible French where I’m supposed to go. He wisely points instead of trying to relay
the information in French that I would not understand.
I’m off again and pass through Monaco which melded into
Monte Carlo and somehow both managed to look even more quaint and luxurious
than Cannes. I’ve just gone through two
other countries without noticing.
Everybody on the train moves over to the right side of the
train to look at all the beautiful seaside villas, the yachts, and the sparkling
beaches. I’m trying my best not to notice two extremely attractive college
students leaning over me to get a better look at the good life and suddenly I’m
in Italy and we reach Ventimiglia and time to catch the next train to Genoa.
As the afternoon approaches the skies get progressively
darker. A little confusion at Genoa, the city has 4 stations and 2 of them have
similar names and I almost strand myself at the wrong station but jump back on
board just as the train is leaving.
Some people watching. A gang of municipal workers wearing city overalls gets on, laughing and joking with each other. Wish I could understand their banter. A little old lady with a bag full of groceries and leaning on a cane gets on at one station and gets off a couple stations down. She’s probably taken this train route all her life. A tall thin older man with blond hair wearing a black business suit, golden spectacles, and carrying a briefcase, banker or stockbroker I’m guessing.
The train makes several stops along the coast to little
towns here and there. Pitch black and
definitely raining now. My only rain gear is an emergency plastic poncho in my
pack. Totally unsure what I will find at Levanto so I don’t unpack it but move
it to the top.
“Scuzi signorina, est la estacion de Levanto” I ask the
conductor. I think I dipped into Latin
and Spanish there, but she confirmed it was Levanto.
So back to the beginning of this story and google maps
suggest a route to the hotel and off I go from the station walking down the
road in the dark with something more than a sprinkle but less than a full-blown
rainstorm.
With nothing else to guide me I’ve no choice but to rely on
the map and hope I don’t end up lost and push past the alley where I was onto a
regular street and go towards some bright lights till I end up at the Hotel
Nazionale.
“Oh, you’re from Chile! I was just there on holiday last
year” exclaims the concierge as she reviews my passport.
I finally get my room and unpack everything as I’ll be here for 3 full days. I open up my balcony window and notice that the rain has stopped. I haven’t eaten since Paris, so I wander round the neighborhood looking for some place to eat. The only places open are a high-end restaurant, reservations only, a couple bars, and a pizza place with a line out the door. I remember a candy bar I bought in Ventimiglia and go back to my room to wait for breakfast in the morning.
Levanto isn’t one of the Cinque Terre (five lands) towns but it is located next to it and does do a brisk tourist trade on its own as a seaside town. Unlike the Cinque Terre towns, Levanto does have car traffic and is fairly accessible to those who want to drive round northern Italy.
Though as this is off season the weather makes the town somewhat dreary and the locals are still enjoying the last days of a restful Winter and preparing for the season to come.
a mini castle
With no set itinerary I wander round the town trying to
orient myself and get some landmarks locked into my mind so I won’t get lost so
easily.
The local forecast was for more rain for the rest of the week, so I decided to take a chance and head for Manarola to get that iconic image of Manarola. Even if the rest of the week was nothing but rain at least I’ll get that.
This is what everyone comes for
The train station seems more accessible and cheerful in the
daytime. I get a single ride pass to
Manarola at a vending machine. With decades of tourist experience now, Cinque
Terre has most everything well laid out and marked for people to see all of the
advertised sites.
I could go into painful and precise detail about everything I did in the next few days, but I won’t. Some experiences you really can’t capture in words or even images.
The plaza at Vernazza
You have to be there to attach significance or to enjoy the impact of the moment. Whether it was Corniglia and the stairway to the town with its countless twists and turns (there’s a shuttle bus if you don’t feel like walking), Getting lost in the back alleys of Manarola and looking into the countless hole in the wall shops, sitting in the bay of Vernazza and listening to the bells of Santa Margherita chime the hour, going to the top of Riomaggiore and looking down at the sea far below, or finding an out of the way restaurant in Monterosso and listening to an Italian waiter trying to explain the menu to Chinese tourists in English. Even simple things like sitting in a laundromat for an hour and chatting with two Dutch backpackers or stumbling my way through a menu with a very patient waitress take on a meaning that cannot really be explained.
If I were a person of means and leisure I would probably rent out an appartamento or studio in one of the towns and live a Summer here and watch the ocean come in and go out, bargain with the fishermen for the fresh catch of the day at the local docks, listen to the local neighborhood gossip, and occasionally tap out a sentence or two of my great American novel on my veranda while trying to forget or ignore the world going to hell.
In case you were interested.
But I was just a tourist waking up on my third day here and
saying “I’m not doing a damn thing today” to no one in particular. The weather
report on my phone was for rain all day long and I didn’t want to get out of
bed. But breakfast had strict service hours downstairs and the maid would soon
be by to shoo me out while she tidied the room, so I got up.
I wandered round Levanto for a bit before taking a train to
the other towns to collect up some knickknacks for the folks back home. One of the problems with backpacking is that
you really can’t bring back souvenirs for a lack of space.
The season was already beginning. The train was loaded down with a tour group from Romania (from what little I could pick up from their conversations). Manarola was chock full of people and what I thought were private homes were suddenly open and displaying wares for sale. The world will find you wherever you go.
That evening after downing a pizza and a local brew I wandered Levanto’s now familiar streets. Even the dark alley I had stumbled into my first night here now just seemed pedestrian and plain. For a moment I thought, and I realized that I didn’t know the date or even what day of the week it was and that it didn’t really matter and that this was it. This is what perfect relaxation really is. You don’t have to go to this or that resort or experience this or that to achieve it. You just have to let go.
Un cono de Nutella
Getting on the train the next morning and leaving for Prague I felt a pang of sadness at leaving. Not of leaving the actual location but leaving that particular moment in my life. Thinking to myself that I would never be this relaxed in my life ever again.
Landing in Dublin and I’m realizing that I’m on the other side of the world, or at least that I’m not on the same continental shelf.
Being in an airport I really couldn’t make any observations or conclusions about Ireland which was a shame as I really did want to explore the country, but I couldn’t do the entire continent on this trip and some sacrifices had to be made. I will just have to hope that I return to Europe one day.
I do have to say that they had the friendliest customs agent
that I’ve ever dealt with in my life. Whether that’s due to Irish customs
training or just a coincidence I’ll never know.
Then waiting for my connecting flight to London the problem
began. I turned off my phone and turned
it back on. The phone picked up
something called Vodaphone, they seem to argue for a bit and then the phone did
nothing more. One of those “Gah” moments when you realize that you’re in a
foreign land with no communications.
I used the airport Wi-Fi to see if I could find a solution and the only solution that my phone provider gave was to call customer service. Something that I would have to deal with at the hotel later on. I wish the phone had worked as it was 5 in the morning here but 11 PM back home and I could have just called to catch my mother before she went to bed.
London
Landing in Heathrow and I have 90 minutes to get to
Liverpool street station to catch a train and I made a ridiculously bad and
rookie tourist mistake. I took a taxi.
You may think that you have traffic gridlock going home at 5
pm on a Friday afternoon in Houston but that’s nothing compared to average
weekday traffic in London.
Even though the taxi driver did a marvelous job of giving me a guided tour of London as we passed several landmarks I couldn’t really concentrate on that as I watched my table time slowly tick away.
Long story short is that I missed my train. After asking round I found the customer service booth and a friendly ticket agent stamped and approved my train ticket for a later train and I was off to Ipswich.
Sitting in the train I was somewhat astonished to think that
less than 24 hours ago I was in my bed in Houston and now I was on a train in
East England heading to a little town that I barely heard of.
Once at the train station I got out and found a local taxi
driver and asked him to take me to my destination.
“Can you take me to the 493rd bomb wing museum at Debach?” He had barely heard of it but was willing to try and find it. We roamed round the countryside and asked some locals. At one point a common pheasant flew past the taxi with its brilliant green and red plumage and I exclaimed “What was that?!?”
“Oh that was just a pheasant”
“What do you mean just a pheasant? That was amazing!” I thought to myself and almost made him stop
the taxi to look for it, but we continued.
We finally found the museum at a large commercial farm. The farmer was in and explained that his father was in charge of the museum, but he was out visiting another farmer and wouldn’t be back today.
We drove to the actual site. The runways and most of the buildings were long since gone, tractored away and returned back to the giant potato patch which it was before the war. A few old metal and brick buildings were left and I looked round as the taxi driver waited for me.
Truthfully it was all rather anticlimactic although I don’t know what I really expected. When my dad was alive, I’d asked him if he ever wanted to return here and he shrugged and said “What for? That was a different time and it’s over now.”
Walking round the remaining buildings, I tried to imagine him as a young man in uniform and the bustle of activity that once took place here.
This was my one thing I told myself that I had to do, and I’d done it. I sighed and asked the taxi driver to take me back to Ipswich and to recommend a nice pub.
Later on at the station and waiting for the train back to London I watched as people got on and off. Ipswich is an ex-burb of London. People take the train into the city and come back here in the evenings. Groups of kids come to school here and take the train to some other town.
I think I would like this.
It was full dark as we pulled into London. I used the train Wi-Fi to download a map onto my phone which became useless as Londoners don’t believe in street signs or door numbers apparently. As far as I can tell I roamed round central London, the City of London (hilariously the city of London and London are not the same thing), and east London.
An ex-Londoner later explained that London was really a collection of small cities and that locals don’t need street signs as they know where they’re going.
Along the way I walked past bistros, gastropubs, restaurants, terraced rooftop bars, and all sorts of nice places to go at night and all useless to me as I was lost. Of course, there’s never a cop round when you need one and the locals seemed to be more lost than I was.
Some how I managed to find a building with a street name,
and it was the street I wanted and finally found the Whitechapel hotel at
around 10 at night.
Using the hotel Wi-Fi and my tablet I quickly got onto Skype and called my phone provider and exercised magnificent restraint while dealing with them. After about 10 minutes of fiddling around with the settings the phone started working again.
The next day armed with a reliable phone map and actual sunlight
I felt emboldened enough to tour the city on foot. All the fabulous gastropubs and bistros seem
to have disappeared and to this day I have no idea of where it was that I roamed
that night.
Instead I did some of the bigger tourist sites and roamed round tower bridge, the tower of London, St Paul’s, “the city”, the Globe. I probably could have and probably should have budgeted another day for London and still it would not have been enough.
my life seems to revolve round bridges lately
It was a rainy evening in London, so I had dinner at a nearby
Turkish restaurant and the next morning I walked from my hotel to St Pancras to
take the Chunnel to Paris.
Paris
Apparently as it was a Saturday the French rail workers had a weekly strike and some of the rail service had been suspended but they allowed one train to go through and luckily it was my train.
The Chunnel was…..meh.
20 minutes of darkness and suddenly I was in France holding my breath that
my phone would work. It did.
I got out at Gare du Nord and walked south along the Boulevard
de Sebastapol passing street hawkers vending all sorts of wares in French, Arabic,
German, and other languages that I could only guess at. Crossing the Seine and
stopping on the Ile de la Cite and looking east I see Notre Dame.
Momentarily I am torn. Just take a little detour and snap
off a couple of pictures. What could it
hurt? But maybe I’ll get lost like the
other day. So, I keep going. It’ll be
there waiting for me once I’m settled in.
So that’s one of my genuine regrets in life.
Finally I arrived at the Hotel des 3 colleges right next to the Sorbonne and checked into a tiny little room before going out to walk the local neighborhood and get my bearings and here I must confess that I felt what I suppose could be termed culture shock as I realized that I was in a foreign country that spoke a different language that I could not intrinsically communicate in.
Walking around and listening to people talk to each other in
a foreign language I suddenly felt very isolated and had a genuine urge to run
back to my room but then I realized that I hadn’t eaten since Breakfast and
that someone in Paris had to speak English.
So I walked to a patio bar and tried out the basic French I had and unsurprisingly enough the waiter spoke English. As I waited for a trout and potato dinner that I will never forget I indulged in my favorite pastime, people watching.
At a nearby table were what I guessed were parents and their kid here for a university visit, a gang of 20somethings sitting at a nearby fountain, one with a guitar and a cigarette in his lips, another with a skateboard, a young woman at a nearby table talking into her phone in British accented English,
“well why can’t you tell her that you want a divorce?”
Okay…. enough people watching.
The next morning, I went to a café next to the Sorbonne and had breakfast and tried to mind my own business this time and then I saw that they sold cigarettes as well as food here.
Gauloises Blues, world renowned among smokers as cigarettes
so strong and hip that they instantly turn you into a lanky, tall, world-weary,
French noir cinema star that drives a motorcycle and has a deep and interesting
back story.
Oooooof. Tempting.
One secret about smoking is that it never leaves your system,
the craving I mean. You can be clean for years and it will sporadically peek
out to nudge you. Of course, you can nudge right back but when there’s other smokers
around it gets harder to push back and they smoke a lot in Europe.
Foregoing the nic fix I finished breakfast and wound my way towards the Eiffel tower. Looking up at all the stone façade work of the buildings that I passed I reflected that trying to recreate this today would cost a fortune. All the intricate stone carvings, the metal downspouts, the balconies, no way you could recreate Paris nowadays.
I passed by Invalides and pondered visiting the Emperor to pay my respects but just flicked off a quick salute in his direction and found myself on the Champs de Mars looking up at the tower.
The tower wasn’t tilted. I was.
As it was a Sunday morning the park was full of families, soccer
players, and of course tour groups and hawkers.
I threaded my way through all of these to the tower. Also, careful to stay
on the path and avoid all the doggie accidents on the grass.
The lines to go up were already long and getting longer as
tour buses arrived so I passed on going up and kept going north to rest on the
bridge over the Seine and watch those weird tour bus boats float past.
After walking a bit more I found myself approaching the Arc de Triomfe on the Champs Elysees and this time I could not resist.
McDonald’s.
Look, if you put a mickey D’s on the Champs Elysees, you’re
gonna get Americans. Yes, they do have a Big Mac and it’s not a Le Big
Mac. Just a Big Mac.
Rain again. A hazard you have to accept if you come to Europe in April. Took a cab back to the hotel and hoped that it would abate but it got worse and didn’t lighten up till early evening. So many other things to see and do here! But not if you have to trudge through the rain.
So unfortunately I finished my day at a French-Vietnamese restaurant near my hotel and got ready for my trip South the next day.
Overall I liked Paris but I found London to be more laid back and sedate at least going by first impressions.
“The court will accept this will for the estate of John Pora. Please see the secretary for some paperwork to sign. Next matter.”
My lawyer then guided me upstairs to the records department
to order letters of testamentary from the county. Rocky knew everyone there and
greeted and joked with everyone in the records department.
“Okay, you should get these letters in about 2 weeks. Go to the IRS website and get a tax ID for the estate and you’ll be all set. If you have any problems, call me.”
With that he shook my hand and went off to greet another attorney.
So, I stood there in the hallway of the Harris county
courthouse as people went about their business pondering what I would do
next. I took the elevator down to the
ground level.
He had died three months prior and I had just lost my job three
weeks earlier and for the first time since I’d left college I hadn’t a thing to
do or any place I had to be.
I knew a couple bars in the downtown area but I neither
wanted nor needed a drink. Besides it
was only 10 in the morning.
On my way home I passed by my dad’s accountant to inform him
that everything was done. He greeted me at the door and as always, I was amazed
that he had retained his fine silvery locks of hair that complimented his tan
and reminded me of a Cuban George Hamilton.
“You look depressed”
I suppose he would know.
He had literally known me since I was 8.
“I’ve been better”
“What are your plans now?”
I shrugged noncommittally “I don’t know what I want to do”
“well maybe you need to take some time out and go somewhere
to figure it all out. If you stay here all you’ll do is get more and more
depressed”
Of course, I didn’t tell him that I had a vague notion of
going on vacation and that I kind of had a location in mind already.
So why didn’t I tell him that? My parents have a strong work
ethic and mainly eschewed vacations or even going out to fancy
restaurants. Under normal circumstances
going on vacation while you were unemployed would not have been something my
family would approve of.
Maybe my dad’s accountant would understand or maybe he’d get
on the phone and start a conversation with my family that I didn’t feel like
engaging in. I didn’t want to chance it.
No outside consultations or advice allowed this time. This vacation
would be all for me and I had in a sense begun planning it since 2015.
That year I found and bought a DVD copy of an anime film
that I hadn’t seen since high school. If
you’re the sort that is into Japanese animation (anime) then the name Hayao
Miyazaki is no mystery to you. He is
perhaps the best animator ever and had made a career from drawing amazingly
detailed backgrounds for his animated adventures. Among the earliest was a movie entitled “Lupin
the third: The castle of Cagliostro”.
Lupin is a daredevil cat burglar but the main point for me
was the setting. This was set in a
notional kingdom called Cagliostro on the southeastern corner of France on the
Mediterranean. For most of the film,
Lupin tools around the coast in a Fiat 500 on cliff edge roads. That views really put the hook into me.
Miyasaki had based other adventures on the Adriatic Sea and
an unnamed central European country and the views were just phenomenal, and I
knew that I had to see such things for myself. So why not start with Provence.
2015 passed by without a vacation. I just had a vacation in late 2014 so I
figured it was too early yet to go on another.
2016 came in and the situation at home became complicated and then 2017
happened. I’m still amazed I went to San Diego that year.
In the meantime, I amused myself by buying a copy of Lonely
Planet’s “Provence & the Cote d’Azur” and read and reread it in my
spare time.
Fast forward to 2018 and here I am in front of my desktop
and opening up multiple tabs on my browser and comparing airline tickets and
looking at hotels when I suddenly start thinking to myself “this may be my only
trip to Europe ever. Why am I going to
restrict myself to one spot? Instead why not a crash course on European
tourism. If you like something and you
get the chance you can come back one day.”
So back online I made up an initial itinerary of 2 days in
the UK, 2 days in Paris, 3 days in Provence, 3 days in Venice, 3 days in
Prague, and 2 days in Amsterdam.
The destinations careened back and forth across Europe and
briefly involved Croatia, Ireland, and even a day or so in Istanbul at one
point.
Some hard truths began to emerge as I planned.
Driving in foreign countries could get expensive
and given that I didn’t know the local customs might be problematic so probably
driving would be out for this trip.
Travel times between destinations would
inevitably eat into my leisure time. I was willing to accept some of that, but
I didn’t want to spend all my time in airports and train terminals.
Some of these places were really expensive, even
in the off season.
So after a lot of internal debate the final itinerary got
knocked into shape; 2 days in London, 2 in Paris, 4 days in Liguria, 4 in
Prague, and 2 back in the UK.
Where did Liguria come from?
I noticed that the Provence guidebook mentioned this area to the East in
passing and after Finding another guidebook about Liguria I decided that this
would stand in for Provence on this trip. The Cinque Terre region in Liguria is
one of those amazing parts of the world you need to visit and hopefully you
will agree when I publish that part of the story.
Amsterdam and Venice both got cut for being too expensive
and I mean ridiculously expensive even as far as the hostels. Instead I would go into western England and
visit Stonehenge instead.
With that in mind I finalized my online bookings and began
to prepare. For some reason I got it into my head that I would backpack through
Europe and bought the largest TSA approved backpack that airlines would allow
in overhead compartments. Fun fact, the primary way you measure carry on
luggage is by length and width, the secondary way is by weight.
I then approached the family and told them I was going.
Surprisingly it went smoothly. No one seemed to be in the mood to argue the
point with me and I got verbal commitments to check on my mother every other
day. My mother wasn’t too thrilled, but I suppose she understood that I needed
to get away.
Packing was mostly clothes.
The Social media websites snuck a peek at my online history and
suggested a travel hoodie and for once I didn’t ignore the recommendation. Basically, someone took a hoodie and put in
pockets everywhere you could think of and to me it didn’t look bad, so I
ordered it.
My toilet kit was as basic as I could manage. I didn’t want the hassle of explaining what
liquid was what to airport security so I left behind any toothpaste or shampoo
and would rely on local shops to supply what I needed.
My phone service assured me that with today’s modern phones
that I didn’t have to fiddle with any settings and just let the phone sort it
out for me. Don’t worry it will work. Famous last words. Apart from that I
packed my tablet and downloaded some movies and books on the tablet to fill in
any long travel times.
The pack looked like an overstuffed sausage, but it would
fit in any overhead bin, so I was satisfied. I didn’t care if the locals
snickered at my pack or if my hoodie was funny looking with all the pockets
full of stuff.
The big day arrived, and I left through Hobby and waited
awhile at LaGuardia. Sitting at the Aer Lingus terminal waiting for the plane I
found a song for the trip (of course there’s a song).
I got on the big Airbus and sat back to enjoy my 6-hour trip
to Ireland.
So the outline for the next few blog entries will be:
Part 2 London and Paris
Part 3 Cinque Terre
Part 4 Prague and Stonehenge
I’ve already written a piece about my return trip and you
can find it here:
Today’s somber grey sky matches my mood. Winter hasn’t been overly cold since early
December, but it has been grey and rainy.
Typing away at a work-related email. One of many that I will send out that day. I’m totally unsure as to the nature or particulars of the email as lately they’ve all begun to look the same to me. To me the work seems to be a repetition of the same task that I had been doing year in and year out in this home office since 2010.
Pausing to look around at my surroundings. Same desk, same chair, same computer. Same situation.
“I’m so tired” I suddenly whispered to no one in particular.
Driving down the street later that day, to the post office. Sitting at a red light thinking about nothing in particular.
“What’s the point
of you anymore? What’s your purpose?”
My hands wrapped round the steering wheel. The light turns green and I drive on without an answer.
Later that evening I turn off my work computer, trudge to my
room, turn off the lights and get ready to repeat the whole cycle all over
again the next day.
Mid-February.
I think
Laying in bed one evening with the tablet on my lap and an earbud in my ear watching a movie. Feeling a bit nostalgic I found “The smartest guys in the room”, a documentary about the fall of Enron.
A bit schadenfreude I guess. The Enron guys that I had dealt with way back when were some of the most arrogant a-holes I’d ever run across in my business life. Hearing about their downfall was somewhat satisfying. The documentary went on to explain how they had screwed the state of California back then.
When the California part of the movie started, they played
this song in the background.
yes, I know that music is a recurring theme in my life
California. Sunshine. Where nobody knows your name.
Hmmmmm.
Lying in bed looking up. Time off would be impossible.
Things weren’t going well at work and I’d used a ton of time to keep my dad
company in December. A weekend trip
then. Couple days outside the city.
San Diego again? No.
I wanted to see something new. L.A.? Too much like Houston, or so I’d
heard. Okay, San Francisco then.
Had my dad ever been to San Francisco? I couldn’t remember. He had lived in L.A. in the early 50s before moving to Chile, but I couldn’t remember if he had been here. I couldn’t remember and I couldn’t very well ask him now. How much more would I forget over time.
“So, what’s holding you back? No more insulin readings to
take in the evenings or people to dress in the morning, right?
So next weekend then. Do I tell my boss? Why? He doesn’t own your weekends.”
The next day I inform my mother. We hadn’t had much to discuss since December. We were both coping as well as we knew how to.
“don’t get mugged”
Friday
I booked a flight to San Francisco for Friday. My plan was to land early enough to have a
late dinner and some drinks at one of those ritzy San Francisco restaurants
that people go on about, tour the city all Saturday, and take an early morning
flight back on Sunday. Fool proof. I
even went as far as dressing for the trip in my best blue blazer, blue pants
and white collared shirt. Looked pretty good, for once.
Now obviously, I didn’t read the itinerary too closely, or I
would have known that the flight took off out of Hobby and not George Bush. So midway
to one airport I change course and cut through downtown to get to my flight on
time. Might as well not have bothered as the flight was cancelled.
The airline rep wanted to toss me a couple bucks and told me
to come back Saturday. I said no. She got exasperated and typed and typed. A flight was bound for San Francisco at
8…..at George Bush
I’m sure my eye twitched. I think I heard my teeth grind a
bit.
“Thank you, I’ll take it”
With Friday afternoon traffic I might just make it to the
gate. The rep gave me a taxi voucher and
along with another passenger we hustled off to George Bush.
My co-passenger was a health care professional from San
Francisco. She had been in Houston for a
week for some sort of health care conference and was going home.
She filled me in on how expensive San Francisco was and how amazingly cheap Houston restaurants were and how she would love to come back and try the micro brew beers once her pregnancy was over (she was pregnant. I didn’t feel it my place to ask about it.)
We got to the airport and parted ways at security. Once on
the plane we sat on the tarmac for an hour before taking off. So dinner was
obviously out as I would be getting there round 11 at night. In fact, the plane
got there nearly at midnight and I had to call the hotel to make sure my
reservation wouldn’t be cancelled.
The Pier 2620 hotel which I guess was a pier at one time? I don’t know. They had a lot of corrugated tin decorations and nets and fishing gear on the walls to go with the name. Whatever. I unpacked my one bag and realized I was hungry, so I went out looking for food and found an all-night In N Out burger operating about 3 blocks away.
Surprisingly it was packed, and I finally got my food round 1:30 in the morning (or 3:30 in the morning back home), ate my first “gourmet” meal in San Francisco and then went back to the hotel and fell asleep.
To the edge
Looking at my phone the next morning I found it was
surprisingly early. Time difference I
suppose.
Time to plan out the trip…
No, I didn’t plan a thing. My knowledge of San Francisco was
basically pop culture references and common knowledge. The big bridge,
Alcatraz, fisherman’s wharf, the Castro, the streets where the hippies lived,
Chinatown, those were the main ones. So let’s see what we can cover.
I changed into to a hoodie, jeans and walking shoes and took
off.
Fisherman’s wharf was practically outside the front door of
the hotel. Pretty much a tourist trap.
The sidewalk vendors were already boiling up a load of crab legs for the
hungry tourists that would arrive in a few hours. The seagulls already had some prime rooftops
already staked out and watched as lunch was being prepared. I wasn’t in the
market for t-shirts or overpriced novelties, so I decided to skip this.
My Uber/Lyft driver (all the drivers seem to use signs for both companies) drove me down to the bridge.
The tour buses hadn’t arrived yet and crowds were still fairly light and mostly milling around the visitor center so other than a few joggers and cyclists getting in some miles that morning I had the bridge to myself.
The bridge itself is surreal. A giant mass of metal and concrete painted bright orange. Somehow it doesn’t seem artificial to me. Somehow it seems to be a part of the landscape that needs to be there and that somehow things wouldn’t look right if it was gone.
The bridge on the edge of the city and the bay. On one side the city, the bay, and life. On the other side the vast cold Pacific.
If you’re there you just must walk it. The car traffic was fairly heavy for a Saturday morning. Other than that, the wind coming off the Pacific provided the only noise. I started my walk north along the bridge. Effectively I was alone with my thoughts.
47, I was 47. Exactly half his age. He had been 47 when I
was born. I thought of everything he had done during my life and add to that
everything he had already done before I came along.
Two lifetimes, a war, college, two families that he had
raised, fortunes won and lost and re-won. A sense of purpose and order, a
mission.
Me? I had a mortgage and a job I was tired of. Always plans for the future but none of them coming to fruition. What was it all for anymore? What’s the point of you anymore?
Stopping along the bridge and turning to watch the sun rise over the city. Alcatraz off in the distance; I’m gripping the cold orange rail tightly.
Like it would be that simple
Taking a deep breath. The wind is cold, but the sun is so bright, and the sky is such a clear blue. The water far below is a cold dark blue. Off across the bay the city was waking up ready for a new day. So many people getting on with their lives with their plans, with their purpose.
“I’m so tired”
I stare off at the water between the bridge and Alcatraz for
a bit longer before easing my death grip on the rail and continuing down the
bridge to the other end.
It took me about 45 minutes to walk across to the northern end of the bridge. The other end has a memorial to sailors and a yacht club on one side and an old abandoned army fort on the other side.
Sitting on the top of the cold concrete fort and looking out
towards the endless Pacific.
“You don’t get a choice in this.”
The next few years will probably be a painful mess and there
are no promises and there is no plan, but it doesn’t end today.
Is this faith? Is this just me being too stubborn and not
knowing when to quit?
The universe, God, or whatever wasn’t providing answers that
morning, just a cold offshore breeze. Getting up off the top of the fort I walk
back towards the bridge.
I wanted to walk back on the Pacific side of the bridge, but
it was only open to cycling traffic on the weekends.
The tour bus crowds had arrived and I pushed my way through
the throngs of tourists and back towards the visitor’s center.
I lucked out and caught an Uber/Lyft as it dropped off a couple and told him to take me to the hippies. I didn’t even look back at the bridge.
Love and
Haight
So, this was the one-time capital of the counterculture. The Haight evolved from its dingy counterculture roots as a hangout for the lost 60’s generation trying to find itself into a high-end hip neighborhood with the high rents and property values, but it was desperately and earnestly trying to remember what it had once been.
You could walk down the street as I did and see all the
trappings of that age. The coffee shops,
the book shops, the record shops, the clothes shops all with a psychedelic
motif going on.
Lots of shops but really if you were going to exist in the Haight you needed to finance your stay somehow.
Discussions about real estate values and rents seem to permeate every aspect of the city. Everyone from the drivers to the hotel concierge to the girl selling me a seven-dollar plain coffee in the Haight referenced it. Most of the people I saw working that day commuted into the city where the rent was just ludicrous and not outright impossible.
Of course, 50 years ago when this was the counter-culture
capital this area was rife with flophouses, communes, and just plain derelict
buildings.
But then in the 70s came the cops and right behind them the redevelopers and like many of these quaint old neighborhoods that the locals made into a cool place to live, it was suddenly no longer affordable to them to continue living there. The redevelopers and real estate people just wanted the back story to the place, not the people. A victim of its own success I suppose.
Just for funsies I checked the rents on my phone and found an average of $1,400 per month which didn’t sound that bad till you realized that was for just a bedroom. If you were lucky you got to share a washing machine and a kitchen with the other tenants.
Still I could see the charm of strolling through this area
and picking up a book at a bookstore and sitting at a café to while away an
afternoon. The Haight is definitely worth a return visit by itself to unpack
and delve into more closely.
Chinatown
Usually my drivers are a talky lot. Apart from brusquely telling me to fasten my
seat belt this guy was dead silent.
Fortunately, Chinatown wasn’t far off.
They celebrate the Lunar new year for two weeks here and the streets were packed to overflowing but you could definitely tell that packed was the norm for these streets.
This was more like what I wanted to see. Not the manicured perfect lawns of the suburbs or a reprocessed gentrified urban neighborhood but the hustle and bustle of a packed city going about its business. Of course, this was also a packaged and well managed view for the sake of tourists but it’s more inline of what I think about when I think a big city.
Houston of course is way bigger, but it’s so spread out and
so wide open sometimes it’s hard to see yourself in a big city.
But back to Chinatown the shops were all open the crowds roamed back and forth looking at all the knickknacks and goodies for sale, the cooks in the restaurants were prepping for lunch and the buskers were belting out some traditional Chinese folk music.
Add to that the craziness of lunar new year on top and the
scene was frenetic, but it wasn’t claustrophobic or overpowering in any
way. I could easily see myself living or
working here.
Speaking of lunch, I steered my way through the crowds towards north park and found a Chinese restaurant on the edge of Chinatown to grab a bite. They were only doing to go orders so I walked out with my food and climbed my way up what has to be the steepest street ever and found myself at the base of Coit tower (a local landmark) and had lunch in the little park in front.
The
Castro
After lunch I hailed a ride and took off to the Castro and continued my tourist blitz through the city. On my way there I realized that yes everything I was seeing was great but it was just a superficial skim through the city and to really do it justice I would have to spend many more days or more visits to do a deeper dive into what I had seen. Another thing I thought about was that I could not escape the feeling that I would get more out of the trip if I were traveling with someone else and sharing the experience.
The Castro was in some ways like the Haight in that it was a
revitalized neighborhood and things were. What struck me was that the
neighborhood had a wonderful sense of energy and vibrancy that most of Houston
lacks.
Living in the burbs you get the sense that you are just in a giant dormitory with lawns and supermarkets. No purpose no character just well laid out streets and security. But I suppose it takes time and history for a neighborhood to develop that.
Most of Houston is less than 70 years old and we continually see fit to demolish bits and pieces of it when the real estate market deems it expedient. Maybe someday in the far-flung future….
In the meantime, for no reason at all I decided to walk down
towards the Haight from the Castro to see how far it was. Not that far but farther than you would
think.
Once there I just ambled about for awhile looking at the old Victorian houses till, I noticed that the afternoon was getting late and decided to get a ride back to the Hotel.
The Year
of the Dog
I was born in the year of the Dog and my element was
wood. According the Chinese zodiac, Wood Dogs are kind, friendly and stable in character.
So there’s that.
I guess that since this was the year of the Dog I could expect….something? I wasn’t too clear on western astrology let alone eastern astrology.
I was however clear that a huge lunar new
year parade was going on downtown and that traffic would be a mess, so I put on
my blue suit and booked a table at a high-end steak restaurant away from the
parade route.
Steaks (or so pop culture told me) were a
big deal in San Francisco and I figured this was the best way to cap off the
whole trip.
Catching San Francisco on the Lunar new year weekend had
been an accident. Houston had their
Lunar new year festival the week before and I had no idea that San Francisco
celebrated for two weeks.
Even with forethought my driver was not
able to get round the parade and dropped me off on the wrong side of the
parade. I asked a cop how much longer this would go and he said a couple more
hours.
Looking around I saw a pedestrian
overpass and climbed up the stairs to it.
The overpass led to a hotel and they had a guard to keep out the parade
watching public. Maybe the blue suit
lent my plea a bit of gravitas, but the guard let me through.
Once in the hotel I found myself in the
middle of the Miss Chinatown pageant reception dinner. Recognizing that this
was an excellent way to get busted by security I looked for the way out but not
before congratulating the Miss Photogenic winner as I passed by.
Once outside and on the right side of the parade I looked for the restaurant and saw it behind a chain link fence set up for the parade. Going far back down the dark alley I found a spot with a stack of boxes next to it and climbed over the fence to get to the restaurant.
Again, narrow dark alleys, brick
buildings, how could I not love this?
The restaurant was one of those old-time
restaurants that was dimly lit and had dark maroon wallpaper. The waiter handed me a telephone book sized
menu with prices that regularly ranged up into the three-digit range. An
extravagance to be sure but how often are you in San Francisco?
I went the traditional route with the martini, and the quarter of an iceberg lettuce, the giant steak, the baked potato, the cheesecake and the too dark and too strong coffee.
When was the last time I’d done
this? I mean really done something like
this without giving mind to how much does this cost, or how many calories does
this have, or should I get to bed early?
When I left the restaurant the tail end
of the parade was finishing up. I hadn’t
quite had enough and looked up a nearby sushi bar to get a couple more drinks
in.
I passed by a group of kids from a local
dojo and congratulated them.
“you looked great out there, guys. Good Job!”
After an hour or so at the bar I got a ride back to my hotel and stumbled into my room somewhat worse for wear and started packing for my “before dawn” flight about 6 hours from right then.
Packing was quick. After all I only had one bag.
I don’t recall when the crying started or what set it off. The first time since before the funeral. My legs just buckled and I sat down on the carpet of my hotel room in between the two beds and cried till I passed out.
My phone insisted that I wake up and get
off the floor. I passed my face under the cold water tap and did a quick check
through the room before leaving.
Back home I showed my mom the pictures on
the phone and described the parade and all the shops and all the things I
thought she might have liked to have seen.
Up in my home office I had 40 emails waiting, a couple of phone messages and a stack of bills to tend to. Picking up exactly where I had left off on Friday and returning to the same routine.
Two weeks later…
“You’re terminated as of this moment.”
<click>
Cradling the receiver in my hand before hanging up. My lips pursed for a moment before sighing.
Comic-con San Diego (or Comic-con International as they prefer but I am just going to refer to it as SDCC from hereon) is the holy grail for anyone that enjoys comic conventions. Why or how this happened is anyone’s guess. Maybe the proximity to LA and all the studios? The year-round garden of Eden weather? Possibly the local government that has bent over backwards for the convention for decades? Who knows, but it is so. For anyone into pop culture a ticket to SDCC was a Willie Wonka golden ticket, rock concert backstage pass, and Superbowl ticket all rolled into one.
How it started for me
Every February on a Saturday morning for the past five years I would go through the ritual of trying to get tickets. Due to the popularity of the show and the size of the convention hall only 130 thousand tickets would go on sale and SDCC developed an online lottery to distribute tickets on that one day. You would log in and sit with literally hundreds of thousands of other people watching a little blue circle spin on a webpage indicating that the lottery was under way. The waiting was punctuated every 3 minutes or so with a lottery update or reminder not to try and double or triple log into the lottery as that would invalidate your entry. About thirty minutes into the lottery the tickets would begin to run out. First the VIP passes, the all event passes for all 5 days and then the single days. I would wait until the Friday or Saturday tickets ran out and logged off as those days were the main days and at least in my mind it wasn’t worth the effort to go for just one day.
So here I was in February 2017 going through the ritual for form’s sake. I was totally certain this was a waste of time but after all what’s 30 minutes? I was probably browsing some news article online when suddenly the SDCC webpage changes and I’m in a checkout page.
It took me a
moment to realize what had happened and I just stared at the screen. Then
panic.
“I can’t go to this. Log off the page!“
“You have to! This might be the only chance you get!“
“Who is going to take care of your parents?“
“but how?“
The clock
was ticking, and I only had 10 minutes to make a purchase and in the meantime
other people were literally buying thousands of tickets a minute. I looked
round frantically for my credit card and then had to go through a stack of my
emails looking for my SDCC ID name.
So what
days? I had totally lucked out and had a
full range of choices.
Sunday?
Definitely not. All convention (con)
veterans know that Sundays are the lazy end days of a convention and attendees
are focused on packing up and getting out. But you couldn’t buy the preview Wednesday
night without buying Sunday as well. As
preview night was $30 and Sunday was an additional $60, I opted to save some
money and just buy Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.
The rest of
the process was a standard online checkout and with a confirmation email I had
done it. Now I had to make it work.
Time off
My dad had a hypoglycemic attack in late January 2017. He had refused to eat dinner one night after receiving his customary insulin shot and his blood sugar had dropped.
If I had known that he had refused to eat I would not have given him his daily dose of insulin. My mother woke me in the middle of the night saying that he had fallen out of bed. I ran down and found him raving and thrashing around. I thought he might have had a stroke. The paramedics arrived and took him to the emergency room where the attending doctor confirmed it was low blood sugar. He stayed in the hospital for a couple of days and came out of the hospital walking and joking with the nurses. I ended up with a week-long case of insomnia.
My boss
noticed what a wreck I had become and offered some days off, but I told him I
would hold onto them for later.
Wildcard: The other trip
My mother
got spooked by the January event and declared that we needed to close out any
pending business in Chile. My parents
had some bank accounts and some other legal arrangements that we had let slide
but she decided we needed to make sure that everything was tended to so she
declared that she would go down there for a week in the summer with one of my
brothers and deal with any pending issues while I stayed and tended my
dad.
At first, I
was sure this would kill off SDCC as with my luck both trips would be on the
same week and I was fine with it. Two
hundred dollars gone but hey it had been nice for a moment, right? As it turned out her trip got postponed for
one reason or another from May to June, and finally to August. Bullet dodged but I had to arrange care for
my parents and manage the biggest headache for SDCC; lodging.
The hotels
California
is of course ridiculously expensive, but the big coastal cities are doubly
so. Normal lodging prices are high but
go insane for conventions. SDCC had somewhat
sidestepped this issue by reserving a block of rooms for the con at lower
prices but again you had to go through a lottery system to get them. Here I am sitting and looking at a spinning
blue circle in late March but this time no luck. I would have to scrounge up a room. Just for fun I look up the pricing for nearby
convention hotels. Two grand a night for
one room wasn’t going to work.
Camping out on the travel websites (Expedia, kayak, orbit, etc.) I mapped out the decrease in prices the further away you moved from the convention center till I got to what I found was (for me) a reasonable rate of $250 per night and further reduced this down using some travel miles which, huge shock actually worked and got the total price down to about $350 for all 4 nights.
Air tickets
were of course no real problem as San Diego is a major airport.
So, in total
I’m in for about $700. I figured that I
could still cancel and recoup a few bucks here and there and still not feel too
bad if the trip fell through.
It gets real
June rolls round. My dad has been doing alright since January. We had gone to Galveston to an airplane museum and he strolled round a B-17 bomber. He shuffles round the old plane and he seems to enjoy seeing it or at least I tell myself that he’s enjoying it. His mind seems somewhat detached from what was happening in the present. He can still answer questions and is lucid but he’s more quiet these days.
The next day a manila envelope arrives. The package is totally nondescript except for the address from San Diego California. I go to my office and using an X-acto knife I do some careful surgery on the package and reveal the box inside.
Points for presentation
For a moment
I forget that I’m a 46-year-old salesman with an elderly father and I become a
fanboy wondering at the ticket badge inside the box. This was now real. Not an email confirmation but physically
real.
So, I ask
for a mini 3-day vacation in July. All
my boss asks is that I do my regular customer contacts each morning.
Next the hard part. I talked to all my siblings and told them I was going out of town for a few days and to check in on the parents. The insulin issue turned out to be the hardest part. I had to train my siblings how to take readings and give shots. Unfortunately, this didn’t work. Everyone else in my family seems to be averse to seeing even one drop of blood. My sister came through with a nurse friend that would drop in every day to give him his insulin.
Finally, I
talked to them. My mother was a bit resistant at first. She wasn’t sure she could cope with him for
those few days but then I told her everyone else would be checking in on them
and reminded her that in August I would have to spend 10 days alone taking care
of him.
With that
settled, the trip was on. That Wednesday
afternoon I typed out my last work email, shut down the computer grabbed my suitcase
and went to San Diego.
First night
San Diego is
just nice. I was first here back in 2000
and it was ridiculously cute back then and it still is. The weather can’t possibly get better. The sun shines but isn’t oppressive as it is
in Houston, the air is moist but somehow not humid.
The scenery
with the mountains in the East and the desert and the dark blue Pacific
Ocean? I have to agree with the main
character from Joe vs the Volcano, “It looks fake. I like it.”
The airport
was plastered with SDCC posters. My first
hint that this town knew how to host a party.
My Uber arrived and we headed to my hotel. We drove into the Gaslamp district and caught
the SDCC traffic already in full swing.
As we sat in traffic, I opened my window and found the outside air was
more pleasant than the air conditioner.
Somewhere in
that traffic jam someone had their radio playing this. This exact version in fact and it took me
awhile to find it again. We sat in that
traffic jam and I listened to the whole song.
I leaned
forward grasping my forehead breathing hard.
“You okay,
buddy? You gonna be sick?” asked the
Uber driver
“No. Just tired.
Long trip”
Thankfully
this set him off into a “talkie cabbie” mode and he started talking about the
con and movie stars and how he was an ex-Marine and had done stunt work on some
TV shows I’d never heard of.
I was half
listening and mainly wondering what about that song had triggered me.
Maybe that
line “I’m in California dreaming about
who we used to be when we were younger and free”
Maybe I was
remembering what my life had been like before I took on so much responsibility.
Was I that much of a stranger to myself these days?
The traffic
finally let up and we got moving. We
arrived in the North Park district of San Diego to my hotel, The Lafayette
Hotel and Swim club.
The Lafayette
This had
been one of those swell places back in the 30s and 40s and the management made
sure to remind everyone of its heyday by posting pictures of movie stars and
celebrities that used to come down from Los Angeles to take in the gorgeous
weather. To be honest it was…worn.
Don’t get me
wrong, it wasn’t a dump or anything, but it had seen better days. The carpets were a bit frayed and the paint
somewhat scuffed. Besides a formal
restaurant the hotel had a small tavern attached to it. A deep dark musty bar straight out of the
1970s. I peeked in and decided I would
never again enter that place for the rest of my life.
The local
neighborhood wasn’t that great either, but across the street some new
construction signaled that some local investor had already begun the
gentrification process.
The lodgings
really didn’t concern me. As long as the door lock worked, and the bed was
reasonably soft I was happy. The general
rule for conventions is that the hotel room was just for sleeping. You would try to stay at the convention site
as much as possible. I put my stuff away
and hailed an Uber to head to the Gas lamp district.
The Gas Lamp
Every city
has a gas lamp district. Some have
several depending on how many urban renewal schemes that the local government
had tried. The old buildings get gutted
out and rebuilt, the old tenants get chased out and new tenants move in and
instant prosperity.
I first saw
the gas lamp back in 2000 when I first came here for a work conference and I
found a nice Persian food restaurant which I was determined to find again. Surprisingly I did. The food was still good as was the service,
but I found it a little stuffy and formal.
I told the waiter I had been here before years ago and he just shrugged
and went off to serve a party of six.
I idly
listened in on the other table’s conversation and again they were discussing
movie deals, scripts, and acting classes. This was getting ridiculously
stereotypical.
After dinner
I wandered over towards the convention hall to join the throng wandering up and
down the streets looking at the almost completed displays. Across the trolley tracks the preview night
patrons were wandering round the convention halls looking at the displays in
the building and collecting their swag bags from the registration booths.
Here and
there a few costume players (cosplayers) posed for photos here and there. Street hawkers handed out flyers to offsite
parties or nearby bars. San Diego was fully invested into convention mode.
I just
enjoyed the walk among the crowds. I had
a sense of vibrancy and life here. The enthusiasm, the creativity, the drive to
put all of this together. Sure, most of it was done for commercial
entertainment purposes but it was the common fans that gave this life. Everything from 8-year olds with their
parents in tow to 40 or 50 somethings like me. I didn’t feel out of place here
as I normally did in most of my life. The feeling I had was that here at least
I was free to do or go where I pleased without having to answer to anyone.
Then a
preset alarm went off on my phone and reminded me to call home and check in and
see if everything was okay. It was.
The sunset cliffs
Before
relating this story, I have to explain sci fi conventions. I’ve been to enough to know how they operate.
Preview nights are for people with extra money to spend. Some will pay more to meet the guest
stars. The main convention is divided
into the big halls featuring movies or tv series. The smaller convention rooms are taken up by
panel discussions, and of course then there’s the dealer’s room. Sundays are
for the die hards and locals that don’t have to travel home.
I’ve been to so many I knew enough to know that some things I could skip, and I didn’t have to spend all my time there. I wanted to see something besides a convention hall while I was in San Diego so before I left, I looked up some local attractions and found the sunset cliffs. Some sandstone grottoes next to a public beach.
Sunset would
probably be packed with people and besides I would probably be doing other things,
so I settled on a sunrise visit instead.
So, after
the Uber driver dropped me in the wrong place and drove off, I hiked cross some
high-end neighborhoods an got to the shore.
I had to imagine that the sun setting over the Pacific would be lovely at nightfall. The grottoes were roped off as they were collapsing so I sat over the grottoes and looked in as close as I could get.
I sat on the edge and watched the waves slowly grind away at the grotto and at a group of surfers off in the distance sitting on their boards waiting for a good wave to come in.
7 AM on a Thursday morning and these people were out surfing. Meanwhile back home I would already be into hour two of my workday and probably 20 or 30 emails deep.
Why had I
never tried for a life like this? Back
home I knew people that took off midday to go golfing or take their kids to a
baseball game on a workday. Meanwhile
I’m sitting in an office plowing through documents year in and year out.
I know
there’s people out there that have it worse.
People that work 10 or 12 hours working heavy manual labor and never get
vacations, but I wasn’t thinking about their lives at this point I was thinking
of what I had done with my life.
My butt was
getting wet from the damp sand I was sitting on and so I decided to dust myself
off and walk up the hill to the roadside and hail an Uber.
As we sped towards the Gaslamp the driver told me that back in the 60s and 70s this area had been a squalid corner of San Diego where hippies and druggies hung out. Many of the houses had been refurbished 1930s bungalows. Now you couldn’t get a house this close to the shore for under 1.5 million and it showed. Kudos to them, I guess.
Predictably
we hit traffic about 10 blocks from the convention center, so I cut my driver
loose and walked the rest of the way.
Lines and more lines
I mean I
can’t say I was surprised, after all the cons that I’ve been to, though I
expected that the big convention that everyone aspires to attend would be more
organized. In fairness however all of
these conventions are run by volunteer staff so a little mayhem is to be
expected on day one.
I roamed
from one end of the hall to the other looking for the one line to get my “swag
bag” with all the free loot that the sponsors included. I finally got in line and about 90 minutes
later received the bag and immediately headed to the hall H line
Hall H is
where they hold the big discussion panels with all the big-name stars. The rules for Hall H are simple. Get in line on Thursday and never leave the
line till Sunday.
Each panel
last an hour and a half. The hall
accepts about 6000 people per panel but those that got in early can stay all
day long so towards the end of the day people tend to stay even for panels that
they don’t care about.
I moved
through the line fairly quickly and found myself at a panel for a movie I
didn’t care about, “the Kingsman”, and I decided to duck out early. I reasoned that it had been so easy that
surely it would be easy to get back in later.
The next day I found out how wrong I was.
I roamed the
other halls and made my way to the vendor’s hall and found yet more lines in
here. Some vendors were selling
convention only memorabilia and people were desperate to buy before the vendors
ran out.
As it was
past lunchtime I decided to find something to eat and rather than try a 10
dollar convention hot dog, for which I would have to line up, I decided to
leave the convention and find a local delicacy.
Local
flavor
I had no idea that the fish taco was a San Diego creation but the waitress at a bar near the convention informed me so. As I sat on the outdoor porch enjoying my fish tacos I looked over at the convention and I took in the throng of people roaming round. A good mix of families and adult nerds going about their business along with media crews doing reports on the convention.
The sun was
hot but not unpleasant. I hadn’t felt
this free and easy in a long time. At
that moment I had no place that I had to go or thing that I had to accomplish.
If I had
wanted to I could have taken a cab to the airport, bought a ticket across to
Japan and just kept going West till my bank account was empty and then picked
up a word or two of the local language and gotten a job washing dishes for the
rest of my life.
But then I
realized that I didn’t have my passport with me so that wouldn’t work, and I
snapped out of my reverie. After
finishing up the local brew that the waitress assured me was made special for
just this bar but tasted like Heineken, I looked over to the convention hall
and decided that was enough convention for today and headed back to the hotel.
Back at the
hotel I began looking at the after-hour parties that were being held that
night, booked a couple and then had an afternoon nap.
Waking up around
4 in the afternoon I decided to take a jaunty little hike across interstate 8
to the nearest In N Out burger and found out it really does get hot in San
Diego.
The burger
was okay but the neighborhood I crossed was quaint. Little 1930s bungalows with small enclosed
front lawns. I was really getting to like San Diego. Back to the hotel for yet
another nap. Home never strayed far from my mind, so I called in to check and
see how things were. Yes, he had his
insulin, and everything was okay. No, don’t worry about anything. Okay.
That
night…
Waking up
after it was dark, I found the least wrinkled and most presentable clothes that
I had brought and went out.
The first
event was at a high-end nightclub where a TV celebrity was DJing. This turned out to be more for the
professional party crowd and I immediately felt out of place. Even back in my party days back in the
mid-90s I had never been too comfortable with those type of dance clubs where
people went to be seen. After about an hour or so I felt the need to leave and
headed to the second event.
The second event was being hosted by the SYFY channel. This was being held at a museum that had been turned over to the SYFY channel for the duration of the convention.
The crowd
here was more casual and relaxed. Some
professional club people had shown up in their spiffy attire but there were
also conventioneers wearing shorts and t-shirts and wearing their swag bags as
backpacks. An eclectic crowd.
The inside
of the museum was decked out with science fiction show memorabilia in every
corner. One end of the museum had a
music stage and of course there were 4 bars serving alcohol. I wandered round
and round as people arrived. I felt somewhat underwhelmed and I decided that I
would down a few more drinks and go home and sleep off the alcohol.
An hour or so later the band arrived. It was one of those 80s revival bands. Maybe that’s what hooked me and kept me there or maybe it was the 3rd or 4th drink. In any case I gravitated towards the stage closed my eyes and started slowly swaying with the music taking sips of my drink. The music washed over me and suddenly I felt myself unconcerned. Have you ever seen me smile? It’s as rare as an eclipse but it must have happened because when I opened my eyes a woman was smiling back.
She must have been in her 30s and looked like a Japanese Betty Rubble from the Flintstones. I learned a few words of Japanese back in college but right then and there I didn’t have a clue as to what she was saying. Remember, this was international comic con and people came in from all over the world. She was there with 3 other Japanese girls and they were all dancing along with the music.
Then I just
put everything out of head and started dancing with this woman I didn’t know
and just enjoyed the moment for what it was.
Of course,
it had to come to an end. Her friends
dragged her off, probably to another party. She waved and left, and I was oddly
unconcerned. I had enjoyed the
experience for what it was and just turned around and continued swaying to the
music.
After a few
more songs I suddenly realized it was nearly 2 in the morning so I stumbled out
of the museum/nightclub and after walking 3 or 4 blocks to find a cell signal I
finally hailed an Uber and got back to my hotel to sleep for six or so hours.
Friday
Let me tell
you that there have been times in my life that I have watched the sun rise from
the parking lot of a night club. Nothing
to be proud of but nothing to be ashamed of either. But never had I ever had a hangover.
Maybe it was
my age or the fact that I hadn’t had that much liquor in years or both. Water.
I needed water. That’s one
curative that I’ve heard for hangovers, another is potassium tablets. All I had easy access to was water so that
would have to do.
I didn’t
have the energy to find breakfast, so I settled for the hotel’s continental
fare. After getting some food into my
system I strapped on my sunglasses as tightly as possible over my eyes and stepped
out into the bright San Diego morning and caught a ride to the convention hall.
The Uber
dumped me off about 8 blocks from the convention and I was glad to walk a bit
and clear my head. Should I look for
that girl? Even if I did manage to find
her among the 130 thousand people in attendance, then what? No.
Just enjoy the experience for what it was and don’t press the matter.
Just be.
Friday and Saturday were the big days for the con. The A-listers, the big tv shows, and the big movies would make their appearances in Hall H. This time Hall H lived up to its reputation. A winding line looped back and forth over grassy area with tarps overhead to combat the sunshine that would soon be in full force.
So we sat
there. Ahead of me, three thirtysomething
guys from Youngstown Ohio that worked in Insurance and behind me, two teenage
girls from Los Angeles. Every once in
awhile we shuffled forward a bit. A team
of employees from the local In N Out burger roamed up and down the line taking
orders for lunch. Other hawkers were
selling water and even phone chargers.
The line
stopped moving so we all sat down to wait till the next panel. So, fast forward to three hours later and the
Ohio guys had left. Each new panel was
accepting fewer and fewer people as most of those already inside were refusing
to leave.
The Hall had
three more panels left for that day but only one that I wanted to see. The doors opened and the line barely
moved. That was it for me. Some of these folks would camp out here
overnight but I didn’t come to San Diego to literally sit in line all day.
Apart from
the big panels in Hall H, the convention had many smaller panels throughout the
convention, and I went to listen in on several.
The topics ranged from “creating superhero costumes on a budget” to
“diversity in science fiction and fantasy” to “preparing your manuscript for
your publisher or for Hollywood”. All
fascinating topics in their own ways but I had heard these before at other
conventions.
Having
attended many different conventions over the years you begin to notice all the
similarities of these conventions to one another. SDCC may be the big convention but it is just
another comic convention just like the Super Bowl is just another football
game. It’s the spectacle that people come to see and be a part of.
It was late
afternoon by then and I wandered round the Gaslamp for a while. Even out here the crowds were thick with
tourists and locals trying to catch a glimpse of people in costumes. I passed by the SYFY exhibit. They were preparing for another party that
night. Unlike the night before this
would be strictly by invitation only and reserved for VIPs and industry
insiders.
My luck had
gone bad as far as after parties that night.
All that was available were tickets for an evening cruise round the
harbor or a burlesque show by the local troupe of the suicide girls. I picked
the boat.
I called
home to check in. Blood sugar and blood pressure normal.
After dinner
I wandered my way north towards the docks passing by glamorous white
condominium towers right next to the Gaslamp.
I could only image how much these went for and what the maintenance fees
were for the tenants. A couple of streets down the scene was decidedly less
glamorous.
On a
darkened street was a group of homeless people camping out. From one end of the block to the other about
30 people were sleeping on the sidewalks in sleeping bags or blankets or some
with nothing at all.
They weren’t
doing drugs or hassling people or anything.
They were just trying to get some sleep. I’d heard a bit about the
number of homeless in California, but I never imagined it could be this many. I’ve
seen homeless in Houston before and knew that they had camps or places where
they gathered but had never seen them on just a nondescript street trying to
sleep.
Food for
thought during the harbor cruise. The tour itself was nothing special, the boat
was a bit overcrowded, it had a lot of loud music, drinks, and the captain
pointing out sights in the harbor.
I just
leaned on the rail holding a drink in my hand. Despite the alcohol I would say
my mood was sobering.
Saturday
I took an Uber back to the hotel and got in at a modest hour of midnight and immediately fell asleep. The next morning, I got up early and thought about going to the Gaslamp for breakfast but instead walked around the North Park area.
North Park is one of those older inner-city neighborhoods that has been revitalized and now being overrun by the younger set. Think of something like Washington Avenue in Houston. Just like all these old neighborhoods it had its own quirky charms and traditions that somewhat set it apart from other such neighborhoods around America.
I had breakfast
in a local café/jazz club and walked around taking in the sites and looking
over some of the bungalows in the area. The
neighborhood was quite tempting, but I could well imagine what the housing
prices were.
By the time I got to the convention the Hall H line was even longer than on Friday, so I immediately rejected that option. I reviewed the program and picked out some panels and walked the vendor’s hall a few times till I found a hardbound copy of The Incal, a graphic novel by Jean Giraud, as well as a few other knickknacks.
I checked in
back home. Elevated blood sugar and normal blood pressure. When are you arriving home tomorrow?
As the afternoon wound down, I wandered the Gaslamp and had a last dinner in San Diego and went to a live performance of Mystery Science Theater 3000 at the Balboa theater and went to bed.
Houston
Let’s be
honest. I felt better than I did when I
left. Three days and four nights of unwinding
and relaxing tend to do that for you. Nothing
back home had changed of course. I still
had to check his vitals and I had a ton of emails to tend to that night and of
course work would begin in the morning.
In a way I
suppose I needed that time to unwind for what was to come. In a little over a month Houston and in
particular my house would almost drown during Hurricane Harvey. My dad’s mind
slowly drifted away and of course he would pass away in about five months’ time.
I feel
conflicted about that trip to this day.
On the one hand I feel that I should have spent every possible second
with him but on the other hand I think that what would have changed?
As to the
convention itself, it is as I have mentioned before just a convention. It’s a spectacle and I would advise anyone
that can to give it a try at least once in a lifetime to see what it’s like,
but would I go back? Probably not.
(Adapted and expanded from a Facebook post from May 2018)
I don’t quite remember when I first began doing these “end of the trip” personal summaries. Certainly as far back as the turn of the century when I was coming back home from Baltimore though I might have done it prior to that. I just remember that particular time sitting in a mostly empty Baltimore airport terminal scribbling some random thoughts about the trip into a notebook. Since that time I have done summaries for most personal vacations and some work trips.
I’m standing in front of my hotel in east London at 4 AM waiting for my Lyft to arrive. On the last day in the UK I finally get to see just a wisp of one of those famous London fogs that everyone goes on about. Not impressed. I do however suddenly have a craving for a cigarette. Maybe it’s the urban setting that’s doing it but the craving passes by fairly quickly.
I decided to give myself a treat after two weeks of ‘roughing it’ and got a room at an upscale hi-rise hotel. A glass and steel spire with nice new streets, expensive roof top restaurants, and all night bars and clubs where the current crop of stylish 20somethings hang out. So this is how the other half lives.
The temptation to stay another two or three nights was strong but all vacations have to come to an end and soon the night wound down fairly quickly as I had a dawn flight out of Heathrow.
The next morning up pulls an E-class Mercedes and the driver comes out wearing a peaked cap. I didn’t ask for a fancy car and I suddenly felt rather scruffy in my travel-worn clothes and my travel backpack.
We whisk down the empty streets of London towards Paddington station. Even on empty streets it would take about an hour to get to Heathrow. The Paddington express would get me there in fifteen minutes.
The driver turns on the radio. A morning DJ is doing what morning DJs all over the US would do. Playing songs, talking to callers, getting people pumped up for the work day to come.
I could live here. I could get used to using the underground and walking everywhere and the smaller houses and running from one small store to another to get things instead of finding everything in one store.
I could probably make a go of it in any of the countries that I visited. You can learn local languages and customs fairly quickly if you want to or are forced to.
At the Airport I swap out the last of my English pounds, Euros, and Korunas for good old American dollars.
I’m thinking about how I’ll get home once I step out from Hobby airport in Houston and what the weather will be like.
My mind is shifting back out of vacation mode. I planned everything beforehand so I had little to think about during the trip. I just went to my next destination and it was there waiting for me.
While people around me went about their jobs and lives I wandered round with nothing to do. Except… joggers. Walking around London and Paris in the middle of the day I would encounter joggers and I would wonder what kind of job that they had that allowed them to take a jog in the middle of the day.
For the last two weeks my room was cleaned, my bed was made, my food was cooked, and my transport was arranged but now I’m going back to the real world.
Bills to pay, appointments to arrange and keep, checklists and schedules to make. Beds to make, meals to cook, places to drive to. A life.
My first real vacation in four years. My first real mental break since my dad died. I have come to terms with the fact that he will no longer play a part in my decision-making process.
For the past five years I’ve planned my life round his needs and now that chapter is closed. I can now put my needs in the forefront. The thought frightens me a bit.
I feel a bit like a soldier that’s just come home from a war with no clue about the future.
I had my daily routines, my schedule, the course of my life all built around him and putting him ahead of everything else so that he’d never want for anything or that his health might suffer. But that’s gone now and I have to do things for my benefit and I find that hard to do.
During the vacation I tried to remember what my ‘life plans’ were before I committed myself to take care of my parents. Those notions of what was “going to happen” seem like they belong to some other person. My life path has gone onto a totally different course.
Twelve years ago I realized that my dad would need care and what and who I could depend upon to help. Ten years ago I bought a house to take care of both of my parents, a big Four bedroom house with front and a back lawn. Totally impractical for a childless bachelor but something that would give them the space that they had been accustomed to. Five years ago they came to live with me.
I gave up a normal social life. The invites to events and parties trickled down to a few and then to none. No point inviting me if I always said I couldn’t go. I’ve become contented with a movie or a play on the weekends. The parents and the job filled most of my waking hours.
The job I didn’t particularly like but it would let me work from home and stay close to them so I had to keep going. This came in particularly useful in the last year of my dad’s life when I had to rush him to the hospital more than once.
But now I’m coming home tabula rasa, with a clean slate. My dad is gone, my job is gone. I lost my job in March.
Maybe my mind couldn’t concentrate on the work anymore, or maybe I didn’t see the point in staying at a job I didn’t like with no compelling reason to stay, or maybe after 15 years of doing inside sales I just burnt out.
Sales was never a good fit for me. I’ve never been a born salesman. Somehow I kept it going because I had to. But I don’t see myself going back. Not to that company at least and probably not to the sales field.
Don’t ask me what’s to come for me. I don’t know. I’ve got savings so I’m okay for a while. I told myself that I was taking this trip to get some inspiration or some new idea of where to go and what to do. I think I knew that wasn’t true.
Truthfully I just needed time away from me.
Maybe now I can force myself to look at my situation and see something that I wasn’t seeing before. Get a clue about what to do.
Landing in Ireland and running to my next destination.
(Errata – June 2019. One of my British correspondents rightly pointed out that Lyft does not operate in the UK. I went back through my Uber ride records and confirmed that it was Uber. All I can say is that it was 4 in the morning and I earnestly remember that it was a Lyft but I was mistaken.)
Normally I would go heavily into the details of a film in a review. While I will include some spoilers of the film, this is going to be more a discussion of certain aspects of the film which I feel are important to bring up.
So, this post will go into details about the movie “Rogue One: A Star Wars story“. I am also drawing material from the Rogue One novelization and details from the Star Wars Expanded Universe. If you don’t want to know what happens in this movie you better stop reading now.
I, along with most fans of the Star Wars universe, was very excited and a little nervous when I heard that Disney was going to produce the last 3 films of the Star Wars film series. The Force Awakens was a nice nostalgic trip down memory lane and while I did enjoy the film it really did not break any new ground in the Star Wars universe. We were basically still discussing the Skywalker family and their relationship to “The Force”.
I first heard only sketchy details about Rogue One a couple of months after The Force awakens. The concept that the producers pitched to Disney was that the Star Wars universe would be fleshed out in a series of semi-related stand alone stories. Follow on stories will discuss Han Solo and Boba Fett in their own movies.
Rogue One however is unique in that it does not focus on any of the popular characters from previous films. The characters involved are at best mentioned in passing but never explored and most of them in fact have never been discussed previously. The story deals with events just prior to episode 4 filmed in 1977.
Films, they say, are a product of their times. Rogue one reflects this sentiment perfectly. In the old Star Wars universe everything was well-groomed and things were generally tidy. Even the smugglers and gangsters seemed to be neat as a pin. Everyone seems focused on “the mission” and the story line. This movie moves the focus more onto the smaller supporting cast of characters that make the main players seem that much more heroic and grandiose. This also focuses more on the more unsavory aspects of wars and rebellion.
The lead character is a young woman, Jyn Erso, whose father is designing the Death Star for the Empire. Her father sent her off at a young age to be safe and she has grown up under the tutelage of her father’s friend, Saw Gerrera, a revolutionary. Saw trains her as a revolutionary but she leaves him to become a petty thief and criminal. She has grown up with deep-seated anger towards her father for abandoning her and for being a pawn to the evil empire. As the film progresses she works through her feelings about her father and slowly comes to appreciate her father’s position at the time when he sent her away.
Cassian Andor is the other main lead. He has grown up in the rebellion and has never known life without being opposed to the Empire. In the name of rebellion he has had to do several unsavory things. In the film itself he murders a friendly informant to keep him from divulging secrets to the Empire. But as the film progresses you can sense the turmoil within him. He finds himself less and less capable of justifying the terrible things he must do for the rebellion and he seeks redemption by following Jyn on a suicide mission into the heart of the Empire.
Saw Gerrera is the most interesting and best developed character in the film. Saw is perhaps the first rebel. He fought the separatists before the Empire and then when he saw what the Empire was becoming he began fighting again. Most of his time has been spent waging a very cruel and dirty terrorist insurrection. He has set off bombs in busy places and murdered people in dark corners. In the film he tortures a defector to make sure that he is being truthful. Two decades of continual conflict have damaged not just his body but his mind. He has become paranoid and a little unhinged. The casting director that brought in Forest Whitaker made an inspired choice. Whitaker had previously played Idi Amin in “The last king of Scotland” and you can see traces of that performance in Saw.
Most of the film takes place not in air-conditioned settings and well-lit and clean cities but in dingy dark alleys or dusty worn down towns in the middle of nowhere. Most of the people in the Empire live in less than ideal worlds and must work hard to make a living. The Empire itself makes life difficult and unpleasant for the majority of the population.
You get a sense of gloom and doom from the film. One of the preview trailers for the film had a great line that captured this feeling, “The world is coming undone, Imperial flags reign across the galaxy”. The common everyday people are giving up and accepting their position in the Empire and soon nobody will be able to stand up to them.
The Empire itself is finishing up the Death Star and we are approaching a moment when the rebellion will either have to stand up and fight or lose all hope of overthrowing the Empire. People like Jyn and Cassian must ask themselves if they are willing to stand up for what they believe. Jyn’s father provides hope in the form of a flaw in the Death Star and Jyn and her friends must hurry to find the plans of the Death Star and get them to the rebellion.
The film also presents us with the less than savory aspect of war in that people die in wars and not just “the bad guys”. One of the big spoilers is of course that all the main characters die by the end of the film. Disney had the option of going with a happy ending but allowed the director to film it as he wished. He wanted to stress the sacrifices made by the characters in order for Luke Skywalker to destroy the Death Star later on. In this way Rogue One is a much more honest film than any of the other Star War films.
One of the other details I found refreshing was returning the magic and mysticism to “The Force”. In the prequel films it was explained that The Force was nothing more than an energy field generated by microbes. Most fans were less than pleased by this. Rogue One presents The Force in more mystical terms. Chirrut Imwe, one of the other characters, believes in The Force. Although not a Jedi he is sensitive to The Force and has studied and uses The Force to compensate for his blindness. More than that he treats The Force as a religion which I think is the way that Lucas originally intended The Force to be portrayed.
Overall it is the best film since “The Empire Strikes back“. I was a little sad that we won’t see any more of these characters or see their stories develop any further but really the film says everything that needs to be said and is practically perfect.
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