Waikiki / Honolulu / Oahu

I got an extra day in Honolulu. Hurricane Lala was approaching from the east. When we got word that our flight was cancelled the sun was still out and the surfers were still in the water. Others were watching TV for news that wouldn’t happen for another 18 hours. The reporters interviewed the surfers to keep busy talking until then. My hurricane-lingo bingo card was blacked out before the storm made landfall: rain event, wind event, Saffir-Simpson Scale, the cone of confusion. We all wanted to hear what was to be said, even if that was nothing at all useful. The emergency was imminent, but also unknowable. We would settle for anyone’s guess. The politicians covered their asses, the utility companies theirs. But then… they interviewed the surfers. They just smiled, and said the waves were good ahead of the storm. It’s not time to worry yet. “now, you know, it’s like the calm before the storm.” As if they had produced the perfect adage for the moment. Yes, so right surfers! It is a great deal like that.

My Waikiki high rise hotel rattles in the wind. Not because the wind is so bad, it’s up to maybe 30 knots now, but the gusts hit my sliding glass doors like a crazy person trying to get in to use my bathroom. The whole room rattles. I look out toward the other high rises, but get lost in the space between. Trash flying up fast from the streets, tangling with patio furniture cushions launching off balconies in a fantastical air show of un-aerodynamic things. The wildest dreams of common cushions coming to life. Heavy, floppy pads aloft, from forty stories up, caught on gusty updrafts. They climb unimaginably away from the earth, happy and free, then tumble and flop, sliding sideways down between the glorious updrafts. I had never guessed at how long it might take a common cushion to fall 400 feet, but no one could have guessed so long.

By night, the outer bands hit us. The room kept up its vibrations. Even still it was hard to take it too seriously. The reporters told me what to worry about, and the Simon Schuster thing says it’s still not time. Lala had been reduced to a mere tropical storm. She got wrung out by the Big Island which extracted 2 full feet of rain. We would get just the remnants of her. Even still, sirens went by frequently. I could only guess at where they were headed. The brunt of the storm would hit before dawn. We moved our patio furniture into the hallways of the hotel. I stocked my dorm fridge with ABC store goodies - the politicians warned me. Coconut tapioca was my response. I put in my ear plugs and fell asleep counting imagined 911 calls: Water rescues, flying furniture, some trees downed, others taking flight by their pieces.

I slept soundly through the night as Lala-lite snuck by me just to the south. I woke to a flash flood alert - which hardly applied to me on the 17th floor. Then back to sleep to wake to the hotel fire alarm - which I optimistically guessed also didn’t apply. Then back to sleep again, to wake to the inevitable announcement that it was a false alarm. But I already knew that.

In the morning I picked my way around flooded streets and dismembered trees. I started to think about the surfers, and all these false alarms. When is it time to worry? What a silly phrase. Activate worrying now! Every true traumatic event in my life was a straight up surprise, something that was not on my bingo card at all, and with no alarms to warn me. During the time that I worried, my worst fears never manifested. And of all the things I worried about, those were rarely the ones which did manifest. Some other thing, at some other time surprised me when I wasn’t worried about anything. By the time it occurred it was too late to worry.

The surfers were already back in the water - and they were right. It never was time to worry. The waves were good ahead of the storm. Then the storm brought whatever it was going to bring. Then the waves were good after the storm.

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Lindenhof / Zurich / Switzerland

In my youth, if I had been presented with the prospect of this standard day that lies ahead of me today, I most certainly would have said yes. My day today, or any day, is a feat of geographical miracles that we treat as if common only because we’ve grown used to them.

From the fort on Lindenhof Hill I watch it begin. I sit on the wall of a Roman fort, legs dangling, watching today’s particular swath of light come up on Europe. In nine hours that light will reach my family at home. The fort was positioned exactly for this view over the river valley. It may have been built to defend against Germanic tribes, but that was just a blip. Now it is better suited for more reflective endeavors- like watching the sunrise and having a moment of gratitude for a thing so common as a day. To be alive in it, and to be content with what it is comprised of.

I am awake and alert and ready to start what I know is the longest of days. I’ll watch the day begin in Switzerland, and watch it end in California some 22 hours from now. I’ll remain in the same light until then.

The leading edge of that light is just now chasing the previous night out to sea, crossing the shore of Europe and over the Atlantic. The bands of light keep up the rhythm so perfectly that we measure our very lives by it. My family is about 3 hours into the night and abiding by the rhythm. I’ve gotten a bit ahead of schedule, and will pay the price tonight. We make a call to compare notes on the beginning of my day, and the ending of theirs. We talk over the status of our worlds as we currently see them. In just under 24 hrs our time zones and lives will reconverge.

I’ll begin my work day in a few hours; I’ll have a delicious pretzel sandwich while they sleep, then start my way home. I raced through the previous night, and will linger in today as recompense. If I marginally out run the one, I give it back in another. When I get home I’ll exit the chase and live within the provided rhythm for a bit. Regardless, the bands of light and dark keep up the chase or we have no days to talk about.

We land in San Francisco before the long day finally recedes. I only watch it end during my commute flight home. In the turn southward I watch the day slide back into the pacific for another go around — This was my day, interminable, common, and wonderful.

I’ve exited the orbit of our life, and now endeavor to not burn up on reentry, to not let all the bits of me that have been fatigued over the days away burn up and impact the people who I am happy to see. When I walk in the front door, the sunrise on Lindenhof will be a distant memory, as if a different day. My body will be present, but that’s not much. It will appear ready to field simple questions like: “how was the trip?” Or, “what do you want for dinner?” I will blink long, and turn my head toward the sound. “I’m sorry, what was the question?”

If asked at the end of today whether I’d like to repeat it, I would still say yes. From morning gratitude to evening collapse, it’s a day I would gratefully repeat.

Our days and our gratitude should always travel together. When you look at the world you can’t see it all. Only today’s light and whatever it brings. Even the sun sees only half. Of our lives we see only the day we are in, and with each day the next one becomes more rare.

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I published this piece very early on, before many of you were here. So much has evolved over the years of “detouring around our life,” but I no longer worry about the big downsides, we have already survived them.

Oh little pile of crap on the kitchen window sill, you are more than a mess to me

The lids of jars unmatched, a mound of lost and found

Oh little pile, let them overlook you

Oh wilted gerber daisy in the highball glass, how I love thee

In your browning water, you are a beacon to me  

You are better wilted than new

Of all the things that have accumulated on horizontal surfaces in our home and make me feel that I ought to do something about them, the daisy is the brightest. Things I ought to remove, sort, return to their places. I feel responsible for their misassigned locations when I am home.  But as a traveler returning from 4 days away, I feel quite differently about them. 

As a traveling dad I am in a perpetual balancing act between being a provider and being present. I have one remunerating skill, and that skill requires that I travel far and fast away from what matters. It requires that I have a secondary life which I live out alone and away from our life together.

I will not complain that it is so, it is the one bit of my job that I don’t like. But it is also true that I need to do heroic acts to manipulate my schedule toward family-friendliness.  I am home for birthdays, talent shows, concerts and competitions because this is the natural response of a traveling parent who fears missing the big moments of life. But the real threat to the perpetual traveler is not missing the important things, but missing too many unimportant ones.

Life is not target dates, but a million interactions. Life is what you do everyday. It is waking up in your own bed, fixing things, playing music together, doing homework, eating meals together, being angry about messes, watering the palm trees, and going to sleep at the same time, in the same bed with your wife.  

I love my job.  I even like my second life, I don’t romanticize for a moment that home life is always fulfilling, or even close to easy.  But… home is life. 

Learning to live away from home is like compensating for a missing limb. There are workarounds yes, but they can never hold light to actually having the limb. How many moments when a dad was needed, was a dad not available? Are they learning to get along without me? I wonder if it is possible to work myself out of my most important job.

On night one of a four day trip I am still mentally in sync with home.

By night two I am aware of my loss of connectedness.

But by night three I feel it.   It is then that I might find myself looking in a mirror in a quiet hotel room  saying, “why in the hell are you here? “

On night four, I walk in my own front door from a trip, the whole house asleep. I exhale and  breathe in familiar air. I fill my lungs fully and turn on a light to see what remains.  I have detoured around a bit of our life, and now rejoin it.  What have I lost? What have I missed? 

But there, in the window sill, still, the daisy, my beacon

Only that you still exist

Marking time, proving my fears unfounded

Perhaps I have not been away too long

Perhaps not so much has changed

Yes, life has pressed on without  me

But it did not make it very far.

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El Zonte / La Libertad / El Salvador

In our former Central American journeys, before cell phones, digital maps or disposable income, uncertainty was guaranteed. Uncertainty was critical to the journey, lest we feel like we had signed on for an all-inclusive experience. It wasn’t something we wanted to be included. We paid in cash for everything, but took half the day to find a bank which could give it to us. We stayed in pensiones with walls painted the color of papaya flesh, and ate the house breakfast of plantains and beans, or whatever was provided. Whatever came our way, in our breakfast, or in the days travels would be just fine. We relied on buses, or friends with cars to know how to get places. We had no good maps, and apparently neither did they. You either knew how to get there or you had to ask someone who did. You had to find the person who looked most able to communicate something useful, and then hope that you could understand whatever thence came forth. You’d throw your particular uncertainty blindly out to the world and brace for its reply. In so doing you traded one uncertainty for another. The response would come in a flurry of directional gestures, and ambiguous utterances, the success of which all depended upon getting the very first turn correct; and it was all but guaranteed that you would not.

Our trip to El Salvador this summer couldn’t be called an accident, but on the vacation planning curve, it fell as close to unplanned as it could. Initially, our vacation ideas were grand. They started with ideas like hiking Machu Pichu, A villa in Albania, or reviving the Thailand trip that we had scrubbed during Covid. But all that seemed like too much. Our only true objective was for all our young adult spawn to be able to join us easily. Anywhere that could happen would be fine.

My wife said “how about somewhere closer,” I said “how about El Salvador.” And that was that. A complete about-face in one minute. I typed a couple lines into my current favorite AI describing only the vibe I was looking for, and asking which area of El Salvador might achieve it. I looked at pictures of the suggested hotel in El Zonte and booked it on the spot: a surf hotel with a palapa style restaurant, its own mini skate park, a room big enough for 6, and an infinity pool overlooking the surf break. I put my hands up and declared it done.

El Zonte is a quiet beach town, and a remnant of the less developed Central America we recall from the past. Most of the streets are paved but not all. The primary beachfront walkway is just dirt and beach rock lined with scrabbly buildings built on 4x4’s stuck into the sand. That’s what occupies the prime water front position, and their best business plan is to sell fruit juice to surfers. A creek runs through the middle of town in a straight line down to the ocean. If we want to have dinner on the other side of the creek, we can walk up the hill to the end of town and cross it on the main road. Or if we are able to find it, there is a dirt trail through the shrubs, which skirts around back yards, over roots and rocks to a newly constructed foot bridge. Most commonly though, we just walk to the beach then walk through the creek where it joins. We put our flip flops back on on the other side and walk to dinner.

My morning routine here, or anywhere is the same. It’s just coffee and not talking. Vacation only changes where that happens. Here, I take a heavy teak chair on the patio just outside the palapa top. I watch crushing waves hit the beach then listen to them pull shot-put sized rocks back down the steep beach. I read daily reflections from a book on the Stoic philosophers, and decide that, in spite of having been called “stoic” at points in my life, I am not. More likely, I’ve got a pretty good poker face — just good enough to pass as inward calm. It’s a fine line between RBF and stoicism, but I’ve got the outward half of it nailed.

Our days are filled with anything or nothing as much as you choose, as vacation should be. Plantains, surf, skate, papusas, waterfalls, world cup, hammocks, drinks at the pool. That is all for 8 days.

One of the days we go to Lake Coatepeque, a volcanic crater lake in view of the Santa Ana Volcano. On our way back to El Zonte we get caught in rush hour traffic as we skirt the perimeter of San Salvador. We’re behind frappy chicken buses blurting out thick diesel dust clouds like personal insults. These mechanical disasters masquerade outwardly as fantastical beasts. They are made from old American school buses then painted wildly for maximum attention seeking. Painted by their proud owners with the logos of their favorite teams, religious preferences or anything generally bright and loud. They will never even once go fast enough to need aerodynamic assistance, but if their owners likes spoilers, they will have spoilers! Massive, spectacular dragon-wing like sculptures atop slow boxy busses. The blaps and blurts continue their assault. We switch the AC to recirc and ask Google for a reroute.

We pull away from the buses, and follow the blue line with little thought to where it might be taking us. I think nothing more of it - just take the turns as they come - any way home is fine. But somewhere around 3/8th of a tank I notice that the route is headed for the mountains. I start to wonder a bit more about the blue line. How far are those towns ahead? And do they even have gas?

The map says the mountain town of Jayaques will have gas: a Tropigas station. We navigate to the marker on the map. But on reaching it, there is no gas, no sign of gas, no sign of there ever having been gas. We proceed up through the steep hill town hoping the marker was misplaced. Our van has no window tint, just clear glass, which I become suddenly aware of as I notice locals turning their heads toward the fishbowl of gringos. For your entertainment we present: El Seis Gringos.

We recognize now that the map is useless, and that we will just have to ask. I pull the fishbowl over against a 3 foot high curb, it is meant to level out the lots of the buildings dug into the steep hill, but doubles as a sidewalk, and triples as a front porch. Two grandmas sit there in dark green plastic chairs. My wife asks them in Spanish about the missing gas station. I can’t understand the response, but I get the gist from the gestures and expressions. It means something like “Gas station? Here? - Noo!” But then they keep talking anyway. I watch the hands. We’ll go up the hill, some unknown distance further, turn right somewhere, on some specific - but not really specified street. Then? Then what? More words. Lots more words.

At the end of all the words we don’t know too much, just that, up there, on the right, maybe up some stairs, there’s a guy, he has gas, and he’ll sell it to us if we find him. I’m concerned about precisely which gas is on offer, but also concerned about the amount of uphill vs downhill still between us and the coast. It’s the kind of uncertainty I would not go in search of. I would go to some effort to avoid it. We decide to try to find the guy. We go further up the hill, and choose a street to turn right on, it is the same as every other choice except that we chose it. I immediately suspect we chose wrong and am ready to turn around when my wife rolls down the window and asks some guy parking his truck about the gas guy. She says more words in spanish, gasolina is one of them. This time I understand the response — A smile and a nod. “sí, yo vendo.”

It’s 5.50 a gallon, marked up from 4.50 at the stations. 10 would’ve been fine too. He brings out two blue Alpina brand water jugs and a siphon hose before I can even pull the fishbowl to the curb. It’s done in a minute. No problema! He offers us the restroom in his home, which we accept, and play with his needy chihuahua Layla while we wait. Then we head back into the hills, toward the coast over mountain roads so steep at points that first gear is the only option. We’re grateful it’s not raining; there is no doubt it would then be impassable for our far less fantastical bus.

I wouldn’t have said that I wanted to feel lost in the mountains of El Salvador, but it turns out I did. It was a long drive, and might have made for our worst day. But in fact it may have been our best. We had no good reason to seek out those mountain towns, but by being off route, we ended up with reason to interact with locals in remote mountain towns where maps don’t mean a thing. We stopped as we crested the range and watched the sunset over the Pacific while our kids took turns driving the stick-shift fish bowl. The locals got to watch gringo kids learn how to bump start a manual with a perfectly good starter down the steeps of a hill town. We were relieved that the under-developed and uncertain Central America that we enjoyed in earlier years still exists. We experienced just enough uncertainty to realize the value of that thing that we go to such lengths to eradicate. We never go in search of it because we believe that the comfort of certainty is the goal. But that comfort is far better after we have successfully navigated in its absence. We all agreed the infinity pool hit so much better that night.

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De Koffieschenkerij / De Wallen / Amsterdam / Netherlands

I am sometimes asked if I use AI in writing. The answer is no. Not for writing, not even for editing, though you might argue I should. I am not at all curious about training AI on my writing style to see how much better it could do it than me. Not even a little. I am more interested in the reverie which precedes writing; the parts that machines don’t do at all: day dreaming, observing with unique predilections, perceiving with multiple human senses.

I have switched to writing on paper more often. The less editable, direct analog output of my own hand. Writing in my own journal only for my own purposes. Today, from a place that is made for analog pursuits — my favorite coffee portal in Amsterdam; probably the world.

Shadows move across my page, cast by the fast clouds of The Netherlands. Fast and low; too bright to look at; the Greek Gods of clouds. Close enough to cast sharp shadows on my page, diagonally through the open attic window. The wind moves the clouds, and the summer leaves just outside. It swings the window frame slightly more open and lets itself in, then circles the room and turns up the corners of my pages. Some local quiet talkers take the table in front of the window, then very quietly say that perhaps the wind is too much for them. But they do not close the window. The window is always perfect, in whatever state you find it, you think it should be no other. They see the man on the couch with a journal, the shadows, and the movements. They recognize a balance that could be disrupted and choose to let the wind be. They quietly move to the corner chairs, for reasons only a human would.

I am not at all grumpy about artificial intelligence, only hung up on the first word of its name. Which things need to be genuine? When am I willing to use artificial help and when am I not? I’d like to believe we are all forming our answers to that question lately. I only know that I am increasingly wary of reading pristine AI produced sentences which are not born of any struggle. I am not interested in songs or stories that are not the product of some human trial; perfectly accurate, but with no human weight to form them.

Eve Fairbanks (A genuine human) explains why in her article in The Atlantic:

No matter how much we may tell ourselves that AI is just a tool like spell-check, it isn’t. When we use AI to flesh out ideas, we lose the most important part of the writing process: thinking.

When human beings write, we judge ourselves; we stop; we backtrack. In published writing, the traces of this process are erased. But it is the process that makes human writing sensible and meaningful.

Not only is the process important to the product’s quality, it is simply more important period. If I could do the process without the product, that would be enough. So yes I use AI for many things, but not for anything that truly matters in a reflective or artistic manner.

The quiet humans recognized something good and chose not to disturb it. This attic has been my hideout through so many visits here. It is as naturally genuine as a place might be. I’ve recognized that it feels a little different each time - the environment changes, and my response to it. Today it is just quiet, with only the sound of the elements and the shadows of them crossing the room. Empty except me, until the quiet people came. Maybe they wonder what the man with the yellow journal is writing about, alone on the couch with his coffee in an empty church attic.

His favorite space of course, the clouds, the wind that animates them. The burden of things that he counts a privilege to carry. The gift of being somewhere beautiful, the ongoing attempt to make something beautiful. That he got himself a good job but can’t hold down a proper hobby. The reality that all his eggs are in one basket. He’s made his choices, good ones, but still with an undiagnosable hole in their wake. The Coffeechurch bells ring. His soul wrings its hands. The clouds move through and darken the attic in a way that he has never seen.

No AI model will ever feel the warmth changing on its skin, or see the paper darken on a page that matters deeply to it. It will never wonder who made it so, or if there is a meaning to be found in it. It won’t wonder about its choices, or how it might be happiest in the remaining life it holds. It will never wonder anything unless it is prompted to do so. It will only aggregate what humans wonder. It will never recall any feeling except ones that a genuine human has already struggled to put down in writing. A human who got great benefit from the struggle itself. If AI wrote the next perfect Steinbeck novel, what on earth would it ever matter?

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Cafe ‘t Papeneiland / The Jordaan / Amsterdam / Netherlands

Crossing the bridge over the Prinsengracht Canal on a bicycle is an act of athletic valor. It’s an obstacle course of meandering pedestrians on a short, steep, unbanked descending turn paved in uneven skinny bricks. Its downhill perimeter is a berm of perilously placed cafe tables. I have taken one of them, in the kill zone. The turn is perilous. Unless you are Dutch. If you are that, it is normal. You casually navigate it, around the moving obstacles, smiling and licking an ice cream cone.

Cafe ‘t Papeneiland is the cafe, often declared the home of the best appeltaart in the city. It’s my duty to test such claims. I sit outside to admire the canal crossing. There’s a Dutch woman in front of me, she’ll take the brunt of the hit when it comes. My tart is stacked tall with apple slices, they’ll be flung asunder when centrifugal forces inevitably get the best of a less adept cyclist. Housemade whipped cream will splatter behind me like an assasination. I am confident though. Dutch children are on bikes before they can walk. Their bikes are as much a part of them as their feet. Casually athletic, like pro cyclists on a grocery run. Van der Poel in a sweater. I settle in to evaluate the pie, then stick around to evaluate the riders. Dutch? Or not Dutch?

Dutch if you have more than one person on your bike. Not Dutch if you’re using brakes. Dutch if you have a dog in a grocery bag. Not Dutch if you’re looking at pedestrians instead of the gap between them. Dutch if you have a semblance of peripheral vision. Not Dutch if you’re wearing a helmet. For the ones going uphill; Dutch if you hit the hill with speed and your upper body does not sway, not Dutch if you’re surprised by a hill impacting your momentum. Dutch if you drive a wheelbarrow with pedals, with your children in it, and they shoot water guns at your friend at the cafe. Not Dutch if you stand up to make the climb, and you dismount to walk up. Then you are simply an embarrassment.

Dutch if you look for gaps, and call them opportunities, Not Dutch if you stop for obstacles which you can’t find your own way around. My table is not safe, but I am confident of this: that if I am killed at this corner it will not be by a Dutch rider.

The pie is exceptional. I also declare it the best. Super Dutch. I stand up from my table more than a little disappointed that no one crashed, then proceed with my plan: ferry across to the Northern neighborhood, simply called Noord. The evening wind sweeps up the streets. There is nothing to stop it. It spooled up over hundreds of miles of North Sea, and advances at will. In the summer it delivers a positive mood change, pleasant, but hinting at a wildness that it could also deliver at will in another season. Noord otherwise exudes calmness. It hosts sensible Sunday night socials; calm, quiet and beautiful. People in all stages of aging, gracefully enjoying the process. Very Dutch. Whilst just across the river in the center, near my hotel it is all embarrassments waiting to happen. Soon-to-be-shitfaced boys dressed in samesies stag-party tees, hee-hawing hapless lads cackling at the yuckiness they will embrace. They will fall in canals before they learn. Not Dutch.

Tolerating other’s choices without it being a threat to your own - Dutch. I wonder how locals put up with it. But the Dutch are nothing if not consistent, in the way that they ride their bikes, and the way they dispense tolerance - confident without making a show of it. It has been hard to put a finger on the quiet confidence I see here. They are orderly but not rigid, attractive but not pretentious; their very posture exudes contentment. It radiates “I’m me! and I have no need for any attention about it.” Gestures to prove almost anything are generally unnecessary. Be happy to be you, let others do the same. There is a saying here that captures the essence of Dutch modesty. “Just act normal, that is crazy enough.” Amongst cultural catch-phrases, it is one I could adopt quite quickly. The cycling skills on the other hand will require some time.

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Zurich / Switzerland

It’s Labor Day in Zurich. Everyone is out, at the river, at the lake, in the sun, and away from their chosen professions. I step out to join them, first a stumble, then a stride, a cappuccino to bring me back to life. Everyone is out and on display, and now me too. I survey who surrounds me to see what the laborers of Zurich are made of. A ridiculous notion perhaps, as if such a thing could be seen.

First to the river. The less polished people gather in the sun. This section of the river is a designated swimming spot, and the bank alongside it a designated “creative space.” It makes me wonder about the rest of the world that isn’t designated as such. Creativity - separate but equal, segregated, out on the outskirts of town. Who are these people? Is it a creative space or just unmanaged facial hair space? Who could know by looking? A girl with a chrome fixie, a guy in homemade clothes. A girl with a jet black bob, a boy with a tangled tuft of river hair. Smokers of course. Vapers of course. Beard growers, hemp wearers, hemp evangelists. Artists and philosophy majors. Who knows where they might labor the rest of the days, but today they are here. Hippies flipping on slack lines over cold water. People who understand beauty prioritize it, and will create whatever stability they cannot buy. I am happy here. Safe for the weird. Weird to the safe. I am wary to go back to the undesignated spaces.

I walk onward to the lake, where the beauty is sweeping. Everyone here, not working, just basking. I take a seat on a rock and look low across the water to the opposite hillside. The hill is variegated with dark conifers against white lake-view houses. Every home with the opposite view to mine of them. I presume they are not owned by the river people. You would want them to be - a lakeside hillside filled with painters, bee keepers and artisan cheese makers. But they are rather, far more likely filled with bankers. People who understand money prioritize it, and will buy what beauty they can not create.

Beauty that fills the soul is priceless, but is rarely compensated as such. Money is valuable, but rarely fulfills the soul. It is, apparently, too difficult to prioritize both things. I walk on. Every effort is at the expense of another. Bankers long to be carefree, artists long for stability. We may envy the outcomes of the bankers, but not the sacrifices to get them. We may envy the freedom of the river people, but neither the opposite sacrifices required. We choose our course by which sacrifice looks least painful then enjoy the benefits of our choice, but inevitably wonder about the choice that we did not make. The money we did not earn, the art we did not make, the view we might have had from the other side. It seems near impossible to have a lake house AND bees!

Labor Day in Zurich. Everyone is out, and under the same sun. What is any one of us made of? What a silly question. It is a million things with no easy summary - whether a country, any of its factions, or any member amongst them. We can’t even summarize ourselves. We are at best, each a mess of things we barely understand. A thousand things, and proud of only a few. The hundreds of professional choices we might have made, are each as much a part of our core as the one that we did choose. Despite how we labor, we scarcely change what is at our core - only make little tweaks this way or that. We can change our outward course quickly, but only slowly the traveler.

A banker with a latent artistic talent, an artist longing for a stable life, a splash of anxiety, a dash of social charm, a hodge podge of things fearful and wonderful. We talk about our vocations as if they represent us, as if they could even scratch at it. We can hardly articulate the ways in which they don’t. We long to be liked for what is at our core, because there is precious little we can do about that. We may have chosen our profession, but what we are made of, there are few choices about. We need that to be enough as it is. Bankers, slackliners, and all of us in between, are all only as we were made. We have no title that matters, only what was decided long before we made a decision.

Every person on display has found one thing at the expense of another equally critical thing. Thousands of people, each made up of hundreds of conflicts. What is anywhere made of except for that - Millions of conflicts that can’t be seen, but long to be.

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I am concerned for the spider in my bathtub. Too concerned for a man who’s greater concern should be the removal of spiders from bathtubs, and who’s supposed duty it is to protect the gentler sex from creepy things. He is struggling. The mist thrown off from my relaxing shower has put him in a panic. Nervous and stumbling he tries to right himself, to regain composure. He is not hairy or black. He is hardly a spider at all, except that he has 8 legs like all the tougher spiders. He is a Daddy Long Leg, the least harmful of all spiders, who are, nominally, universally male. He is tripping over his gangly, spindly legs weighed down by droplets of mist that I can’t even see.

What would I do if my legs were 10 times longer than my torso? I think I would feel robbed, like I was born into a defective body - a body that is not well suited to the types of things spiders need to do. I would feel clumsy and awkward, embarrassed if I got myself all tangled up down in the glossy walls of the bathtub and couldn’t organize my legs. The greater spider community resting comfortably up in the ceiling corner would be helpless to save me on account of their own weird legs, and would just think what a shame it is to see all the struggling, to watch all my legs flailing and scrambling for grip, whilst I fearfully eyed the great drain below with my turreted eyes.

I should smash him. I should crush his body and carelessly break his awkward legs in a piece of toilet paper, and casually throw him in the toilet while thinking about something else more important, like being almost out of shampoo. The lives of corner dwelling spiders should not cripple the progression of the events of a man’s day. They shouldn’t, lest our home be over-run with friendly skinny-legged corner spiders. Or more important, lest anyone think I was weird.

Weird like my Dad who maintained a balanced and peaceful relationship with the army of ants that filed through the rooms of his apartment for a season. He had put some effort into mechanically blocking entrances to his apartment with tape and paper towels, but was not interested in poisoning them. When I asked him about it he simply said of the ants “they are just trying to get along like the rest of us.” To which I replied: “Weird.”

I for one, am more concerned about being weird than I am about killing an innocent spider. This seems like a really sinister kind of selfishness that my reputation trumps my value of life. I know, most would argue that spiders aren’t people. One day though, if we discover that spiders are smart like dolphins, and that their invisible-to-the-naked-eye brains are capable of something like love, I would be declared a murderer, and all the insensitive men of the planet would be despised for their brutality toward the sentient descendants of Charlotte. If such a discovery is ever made, the truth is my selfishness will still not change. My reputation will still be more important than the spider’s life. But I will stop killing them, only because I wouldn’t want to be regarded as a horrific killer. For now, I exist in the balance between horrific and weird. I am comfortable here.

I fear for where else in my life this may be true. What percentage of my life do I maintain because I don’t want to be weird? Quite a bit I think. I am, along with some billions of others, under a great deal of conforming pressure. I value being different and yet simultaneously do everything in my power to avoid being different. We value our non-conformity in tidy, little, predictable ways. Like customizing our homes with unique and eclectic items, but not universally - Just try going to work in a Star Trek costume.

A girl I dated, and later married, had an idea to dispose of all her professional business clothes and wear a cassock, not only to work, but all the time. This would eliminate non-utilitarian fashion and all the decision making about what to wear along with it. It might have worked in her case too, because she worked in a government office. I imagine there would be great mystique about the cassock at first. Her coworkers would assume it was a religious obligation and say nothing for fear of being insensitive. Those who would carefully develop a casual way to ask about the cassock in a non-offensive way, would not believe her practical answer that she was simply tired of deciding what to wear.

Unlike the Spock-suit, the cassock was a good idea. It was perfectly practical, cheap, and prevented wearing silly business clothes that no one likes. I wouldn’t admit it at the time but the idea caused me significant tension. I only liked the idea to the degree that I thought she was joking. I was troubled with my inability to ascertain how serious she was. She acted very serious… Like she was looking for cassock suppliers. Was she testing me? Or was she really so unconcerned with what everyone thought of her? I would have professed at that time that I loved those who could so easily blow off silly customs. Why didn’t I love the idea? It was the perfect solution to stupid obedience to social norms - and impractical clothing. I nervously played along, trying not to reveal my unease, all the while inwardly grappling with the fact that my reputation was more important to me than common sense. I did not want to date the cassock girl.

What kind of hypocrite was I? My young ego could not support the product of my principles. Which brings us to today, and the spiders, and killing them merely for being creepy. I owe this suspension of my value for life to my wife on account of the fact that she suspended her cassock dream. It’s a tangled web of give and take, marriage. I can resolve the discord by admitting that all my nonconformity is bounded within some generally agreed upon level of acceptable weirdness: The point at which we collectively agree that something crosses from unique to troubling. This is a subjective and shallow way to live, I realize. And I plan on keeping up the charade for another decade or so, at which point I will begin a disturbing downward trend toward eccentricity. We will secure a proper cassock purveyor, and live together in harmony with the spiders.

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Xiamen Xiamen, what shall I say of thee?
I am stuck with thee
Would not have chosen thee
But here we are bound
Alone and away
From anywhere I wanted to be

Xiamen / Fujian Province / China

Not all distance is measured in distance. I am further away here than I am in farther places. While so much of the world no longer feels distant to me, here I am acutely separated.

No one you know goes to Xiamen. No US carrier serves the place, primarily only Xiamen Airlines, which it is safe to say, you have never heard of. This work trip is a maintenance ferry flight. That’s how these situations start: You pick up a basic work trip for a bit of extra dough, and a few days later you find yourself writing horrible Shakespearean poetry in Chinese solitary confinement.

Day 1&2 - Travel

We fly in an empty jet to drop at the “heavy maintenance” facility in Xiamen. We see aircraft from all over the world, scaffolded and taken apart to do heavy checks. We plan to take a different, completed aircraft out 2 days later. On landing we learn that the outbound plane won’t be ready on time, we’ll stay longer. Who knows how long? - No one! - It’s fine. It seems fine

Day 3 - Room Rot

We wake up and discover that this is an excellent hotel with an excellent breakfast buffet. Maybe we’ve got a good deal after all. We scrub our exploration plan on account of the rain. I spend the first half of the day at breakfast, and the rest of it regretting it. I lie on the padded couch windowsill watching traffic in the rain. Seeds of bad poetry. What’s it like out there? No matter.

Day 4 -Try to be Happy

Yesterday - What a waste of a day. But still no matter - plenty more days to work with. Today we’ll do better. Convene at breakfast - try the purple dragon fruit, skip the duck blood curd. We’ll take a ferry out to Gulangyu, an island off of the main island of Xiamen. Locally it is called Piano Island, not for any poetic reason, they just have a lot of pianos. The highest concentration of pianos in China they say. The whole thing is weird to start. Piano island - Fun. Tracking piano concentrations in China - Weird. They were brought by European missionaries, to accompany choirs. I expected a fascinating tale of passion for the instrument. But no, just a factual report, literal and direct. Europeans brought them > Now they are here > Now we have a lot of pianos > The most pianos in China > Piano Island.

I also expected to be charmed by a pedestrian only island. (The lowest concentration of cars in China? Yea probably.) That alone was not enough. The island was a treaty port after the opium wars and became a mashup of European and Asian cultures. But it feels contrived to me now. I begin to wonder if I’m just grumpy. Could be. There are surveillance cameras on every pole and corner, by the hundreds maybe thousands. Some algorithm has probably already computed my mood. It wouldn’t be hard to be better at that than I am. I might even pay for a subscription for that service. I’m struggling even to understand why this, the greatest tourist attraction in Xiamen, leaves me so flat. The mish mash of cultures was organic and genuine back then, but someone did something to ruin it. Maybe it was resigning it to being a historical site that did that. Or maybe the cameras. I dunno. UNESCO likes it. But for me, whatever organic culture it once was is long lost. Now it’s a tourist diversion manipulated to be what is presumed to be pleasant. It is too hard for me to envision what it was, in the face of what it currently is. I want to leave, but stick with it as an alternative to hotel rotting.

Sunlight Rock is the highest point on the island. It’s a crowded set of stairs up. I wait politely at an intersections and the gap keeps getting filled decisively and aggressively. But that’s just China. At the top I look out over European architecture across the water to modern downtown Xiamen. I take a selfie that makes me feel even more alone. The presumably pleasant tourist diversion isn’t working. I am untethered from my home and my people. Even our awake times are apart. I’m not home, don’t know when I will be, standing alone on a crowded rock, on an island, off an island, off of mainland China. Trying to be happy about it.

We mash our way back on the shoulder to shoulder ferry to return to our hotel for dinner in the lounge again and to visit with our new friends on staff. We bring them up to speed on today’s exciting events. Lounge, buffet, lounge, buffet…

Day 5 - Optimism

Again to the buffet to start the day. Another day to fill with something other than going home. I’m hopeful about the Shapowei art zone. Our lounge manager friend doesn’t like it. Based on what I know of her, I figure that I will. I am right. The more exploratory of my coworkers joins me there while the other two get crazy painful foot massages and 1 dollar haircuts. Shapowei is weird in the good way. I try my hand at instagrammable photo ops, walk through the remains of an old pipe station, which was home to the only brewery in Xiamen. It was said to be an oasis in the beer desert of Xiamen. Now it’s an abandoned saloon of lost hopes. We get coffee and “Ashin Thick Toast” instead, listening to Taiwanese boy bands and sitting on Astro-turf.

We rejoin the crew for dinner. Hope is rebuilding. We think there is a good chance we will go home tomorrow.

Day 6 - Time-Distance-Speed-Separation

We actually leave Xiamen. By the time I’m headed home, I am fully acclimated to Xiamen time. I settle into my bunk as if to sleep like I’m supposed to. I check my location instead. I’m approaching half way home by time, but feel no closer. We are over the North Pacific, just outside Russian airspace east of Petropavlovsk. The Kamkatchka peninsula is said to be beautiful, but it offers me no comfort. For our purposes it is nothing but icy Russian military installments down there. Home to intercontinental missile silos and the Pacific nuclear submarine base. They say that if you are forced to land there in an emergency, that your emergency has just begun. It is more friendly only than the icy waters.

The bearing sea, Shemya, Adak, Cold Bay Alaska still ahead. When you’re happy to see Adak in range, you become aware of what it means to feel distance.

The distance is closing. We are closer, but still too far. Time is now the most optimistic measure, at least the most satisfying. The lower 48 by morning. Home by noon.

Not all distance is measured in distance. The time-speed-distance equation does not solve for the hardest part of it. The internal aspect persists even as the miles close. All the dinners we didn’t share, and conversations we didn’t have accrue toward the most separating form of distance, which makes me feel the furthest even when I am no longer far away.

Only hours to go. The hardest part of distance closes fast, but always last.

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Alaska / Minato City / Tokyo / Japan

Seven PM, Tokyo. Staring from my high rise hotel window at higher high rises, envisioning them sprouting up from the webs of roadways which feed them, like tall trees growing up from their own roots, eventually into the clouds. I preside, all-seeing from my high window. All seeing —anything but all-knowing. I watch the skyline darken with the setting sun, wondering how it grew to be what it is. Layers of civilization, levels of transport, stratum of superstructure. So many layers, I know them only at their most superficial level.

Centuries of intricate layering to be curious about. I muster only enough to wonder if I can stay awake. Tokyo is a feast for the curious, and nothing to the sleeping. It’s 3 am back home, which explains precisely how I feel. But I would be a failure to give up before the sun. So much curiosity beckoning, so much sleep burden weighing.

By the window I’ve propped myself up, stocked myself up with the best of 7-11 happy hour supplies from the best of 7-11’s. Japan has mastered the minimart, and installed it under the logo of a low-rent American snack shop, as if the two had any other thing in common. But I have what I need: sticky rice triangles with egg yolks and soy sauce in the middle, a canned Suntory highball in a hotel glass, and this grand view…out to wild, but civil Tokyo. I remember now, that I almost failed second grade for daydreaming out the window. Bah! I should have earned high marks for it.

Staring out a window is no failure. High speed glass elevators ascend up the sides of towers, loaded with people, where did they come from, where do they go? Up and in? Down and out? Each tower a city unto itself, food courts, shops and sundries. Any tower’s economy larger than a small midwestern town.

This window marks the boundary of my curiosity. For tonight it is all I need: entertainment at my own pace, my own slow, and further slowing pace. My eyes glaze over like a kid at a pet store, watching graceful fish flapping fins moving in circles. Japan, for the most part, is still a mystery to me. From up here it looks like chaos on a grand scale, but I know how orderly and civil it is at the human scale, and at its very heart. But still, from here, I mostly don’t know what I’m looking at. It’s a massive and complex world down there, and it’s built on subtleties and nuances that I may never recognize, let alone understand. Little intricate dances of courtesy occurring everywhere, they go right by me. Pretty fishies.

There is no remaining reason to be awake aside from a self imposed notion that I should be, for sleep management I think it was. But that conviction is waning. It weakens with every blink, each heavier, longer blink. Thoughts are loosening, widening beyond the restrictions of reality and wakefulness, sliding toward sleeping dreams. It’s fodder for sci-fi dreams out there; where is the line between day dreams and real ones? It is blurring. In the squint of minimum wakefulness I spawn twitchy dreams of flying cars in stacked lanes racing around Tokyo sky-scrapers. Liminally awake, nominally upright, minimally interested in anything otherwise. Sleep is a spectrum, uprightness too; sliding through semi-recumbent toward fully so, toward the inevitability. Still more awake than asleep, still more upright than horizontal, still hanging on to the view, the window, and the ridiculous hope of remaining awake. One more shift downward to give up on all of it.

The Suntory music hall is just below, they’ve just opened the doors for the evening show. The Czech Philharmonic tonight. People in suits and ties. Good for them. Good for them. I clink the rim of my glass to the window toward them. A clean note, tuned by the volume still in it. Kanpai y’all! I have no suit and tie, just a half finished cocktail, a towering view of courteous Tokyo, and curiosity enough for the morning. Goodnight Sun. Goodnight Tokyo.

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Marlybone / Westminster / London / UK

Every London pub is either the best thing you’ve ever seen or just another one of hundreds like it. Every lane of row houses is a moment of old world wonder or just more steps on your tracker. London to me, over and over, is the former, regardless of what I come in looking for.

It goes on keeping me charmed, even through countless visits. Not by wowing me with its showiness, though it can do that. Nor by nurturing some easily saleable tourist-friendly culture, though it has those elements too. London is everything to everybody, and manages to do that also with poise. But it doesn’t need all that to keep me charmed, it does so merely by being normal.

Here, I feel both at home and in new territory. What is normal here are unending pockets of character, alleys that call you in to send you off course, miniature courtyards hiding one thing or another that want to keep you there forever, thousands of old doors to duck into, into places that are immediately welcoming. These moments are everywhere. In spite of its incredible breadth in every category of culture and status, London remains both approachable and abundantly sensible.

I came in a bit on my heels today, with warnings to keep aware of our surroundings for expected volatility associated with the annual Al-Quds march today. It is war season again, or still, so all bets are off. Now I’m geared up to look for threats, which is nothing I want to be doing - looking about for the abnormal in the place I love merely for being so normal.

I’m headed to Marlybone, a neighborhood which I deem normal. A bit fancy, but in a friendly and local way. I take the long way there, via the St James neighborhood, also fancy, but in a friends-of-the-Royals way. Definitely no threats here, it’s nothing but pushchairs and prams everywhere. Dads are out strolling with toddlers in sweaters. In St James Park, there are more babies on walkways than geese on waterways. Rich Londoners, by the looks of it, are making a lot of babies.

From here, there is no choice but to pass through Mayfair, up New Bond Street. Ugh. It is beyond fancy, but in a prove-it-to-the-world way. It exists because people want it to. Everything to everyone - like it or not. It is, I suppose, good that it exists, for those who need such things. Luis Vuitton and so on, Hublot and what not. Unending emporiums of everything I actively avoid owning. This is ground zero for the hobby of owning the most refined possible version of any one thing. In front of Versace the most British panhandler ever says “pardon me, do you have a pound? I am quite homeless at the moment.” A block up, by Breitling, Bentley babies are being unloaded, and the buggy from the boot. I can’t imagine why. Baby’s first timepiece?

I make my way past it all with a sigh of relief and cross Oxford Street into more rational Marlybone, a neighborhood of locally owned boutiques and cafes. Amongst them all is Daunt Books - reason enough to visit the neighborhood, long oak galleries holding books organized so pleasingly to me, geographically. The grave of Charles Wesley is around the corner too, but doesn’t offer enviable branded totes, just some benches on which to consider his thousands of hymns, to hum the great redeemer’s praise.

There are no threats, it’s nothing but normal. Now I’m only watching the weather, tracking my radar app and timing the arrival of a darkening wave of rain headed my way. I’ve been planning my pending spontaneous duck-in. I’ll beat the inevitable rush inside when the sky opens up. There is rarely glory in being a weather nerd, but occasionally it pays out, and when it does it is the best of smugness. I duck in at The Barley Mow, the rain hits mere moments later, the people flood in, and I am happily seated with a drink in hand and a view out to the rain. I am brilliant.

Less brilliant it seems, at reading the clues from the all the babies out and about. The chalk menu sign out front alerts me. It reads “Sunday Roast special - Mothering Sunday.” Could British Mother’s Day sound any more British? The clues were so obvious, but I needed it spelled out apparently, literally, on a sign.

It is even more obvious inside, midlife mums sipping wine with their late life mums. I take a table in a nook of a room in the back with a cut out to the bar that looks like a confessional. A pair of lad’s lads wearing Guinness jerseys approach it. I listen in on their ordering. 6 pints. One for each of Guinness, Murphy’s, and Fuller’s Porter. An enviable dark trinity.

Lad’s lads, mum’s mums, and anyone who stepped in from dark skies for dark drinks. It’s Mothering Sunday at The Barley Mow of Marlybone, and it is also two days until St Patrick’s day. Immediately welcoming indeed! A fiddle and guitar duo play Irish tunes for the mums and chums and me.

I came in looking for threats today. London brought me Mothering Sunday. Instead of chants and marches, I have jigs and reels. The march happened, and in an orderly and sensible way, but I am not here for that, nor for the royals, nor a new time piece. I came for normal London, and found it everywhere I turned.

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Embassy Suites / Orlando / Florida / USA

My hotel window is being pelted by sharp rain, a high pitch clacking, at the frequency of dog claws on wood floors. The thunder, rumbling octaves below, is as throaty as a Harley Davidson. Midway between the two, my sigh, at the precise frequency of a man’s sigh who thought he would be back home tonight, but is at that very moment realizing that he will not be.

Outside my hotel door the atrium happy-hour is mixing up a depressing aural cocktail of echoey sounds A player Piano, on an island, in a coy pond, is plunking out former hits that won’t prove to be classics. It is autonomously saving the hotel’s entertainment budget and providing a tacky soundtrack to free beer and post-conference small talk. Through my door I hear the sounds of people unwinding from their work day while I wind up to mine. The sounds by which I reflect all the ways the next 30 hours until Easter might unfold.

I focus out through the droplets running fast down the window, at the churning dark sky that is keeping me in Orlando. All flights into and out of Orlando are stopped for a line of twisty, nasty storms. We flew around the tops of these very storms last night on our way to Florida. I read this morning that they dispensed lethal force to a couple people in some state below last night while we flew around them. We watched the coffee in our cups ripple, and glanced up at the seatbelt sign, perhaps we would need to reach up to flip the switch, but didn’t.

Our trip, or our work schedule for the next couple days is planned by the airline a month in advance and given a proper name to refer to it by. This one is named L5175. It is our itinerary for several workdays and lists our flights, hotels, ground transportation and all associated times. 17:28 van, 18:48 departure etc.

A normal trip without changes would keep its name through to the end of it. But when a disruption to normal operations forces a substantial change to the plan, a new trip version is sent to us, and L5175 becomes L5175A, then L5175B with the next change, and so on. We are now on version L5175U. U is the 21st letter in the alphabet. I don’t know what happens after 26 changes.

On version D I was still at the hotel listening to the player piano machinate through Katy Perry songs. Should I sleep in anticipation of flying through most of the night? That is what plan D calls for. I don’t sleep, but stay awake watching our intinerary change. Plan F has us at the airport for a 10pm departure to Washington Dulles, where we will stay the night. Plan F is going to happen. Activate plan F…. Van time 20:42.

We arrive to a refugee camp of a terminal. Spring-break mouse-ear wearing kids currently exhausting all their ideas, their parents having long since exhausted all of theirs. Kids manning the vacated information desk, their parents sleeping on piles of backpacks, given up for lost. I buy a couple hours of caffeine, but not so much that I can’t sleep on arrival. Weaving through faces of bored desperation I arrive at our gate to see that our flight will not leave tonight at all, but at 8:30 tomorrow morning. Plan F did not cover this option. I stop drinking my coffee and sit to watch the schedule evolve. Plans G through K haggled over flying the plane or riding in the back. K through N can’t decide which hotel we would stay in in a sold out amusement world. N says we stay in Orlando and work the 8:30 am flight. I throw away the coffee.

I sleep, and wake accordingly. But I wake to plan U. 6 plans I never saw and the one I am currently to believe. Flying at 11:45 to Washington Dulles then ride as passengers the rest of the way home.

Plan U stuck. Plan U is alright. It puts me where I am now: riding in first class from Dulles to LAX. Eating, drinking, and being grateful that I am not writing about one of the other plans, but about plan 21 and how it got me home in time for Easter.

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Devonport / Auckland / Queensland / New Zealand

It’s a perfect southern summer day, as perfect any one day can be. Perfect for anyone who is themselves capable of having a good day. The whole world looks happy, healthy, centered and sensible; and I feel the same.

The town of Devonport is ten minutes away by ferry and offers micro-volcanoes seemingly made for easy summer walking. Long ago they were used as defensive outposts. Now they have been repurposed for Saturday morning kids who need to run uphill, and whose parents need them to too. They get to the top and watch their fathers in prime father form, pointing at all the places kids need to know about, and that even more, dads need to point at.

Devonport’s peaceful idyllic-ness is in no way contrived. It is a healthy and happy place, not just today but always. Seaside victorian houses in two, maybe three shades of white stuck to hillsides down to the water. Teens play cricket in otherwise empty parks, with warm summer winds rustling through tall perimeter trees. Kiwi kids wearing kiwi-bird hats laugh with their mums. Summer dogs smile without qualification. The whole world looks the way you think it always should.

You’d say everyone was perfectly happy if you didn’t know better; but everyone does. No one is wholly whole and everyone knows that much. No one is fully happy and secure. Today may be a day to wash your cares away, but I wonder if that is a thing that is even possible? Cares are persistent things, and not everyone I know is happy and secure.

Training wheel kids marvel at glistening fountains in the park. Training wheel parents right behind them, riding in the wake of their children’s unbridled joy. They are succeeding at early parenting only by being happier for them than themselves. Full of hope, some of it realistic. New to the job and wanting to do it right; for now by buying cute helmets. For now still unaware of future falls they are in training for, or if they will have any power to protect against them. But from now forward, they will always care. Those cares don’t wash away.

They can’t yet imagine specifically which, but they will always care more about those than anything else. Anyone who is free of cares, is so only temporarily. Anyone who is free of cares has a gift to offer and a window to do it in.

I climb my little volcanos and walk toward my chosen pub. At the only busy street crossing in town I help an old lady cross the street. She has a cane and wants to cross mid block. Maybe she doesn’t need help, but it wouldn’t hurt either. She tells me this isn’t a sensible place to cross the street, I tell her she can cross wherever she’d like, and joke that I’m using her for cover to cross there too, just as a distraction to the helping part. She asks about my funny accent and we walk alongside each other for a bit until we part ways at my chosen pub, Tiny Triumphs.

They had me with the name. It’s a neighborhood pub, with a makeshift record shop on the side deck, on summer Saturdays only. Neighbors on the deck in the sun. The playlist reveals the proprietor’s musical sensibilities, and helps work me toward focusing my swimming thoughts about washing cares away. It’s a carefully curated playlist of deep cuts and local artists. I settle in and talk music with a friend of the owner, while my cares about the not-wholly-whole keep paddling about in the back half of my brain. It’s trying to engineer a way to transfer happiness and security.

Local Auckland band The Beth’s come up singing “The Straight Line Was a Lie.” It’s a simple pop song about the supposed straight path out of pain. It is never that. The song is not too deep, just simple and true. The patrons on the deck are secure, the alt-pop band is struggling. I am secure, but not everyone I know is. Happiness transfer prototypes are failing. It’s looking even less likely than washing your cares away. The path to happy and secure is only ever your own, and it is anything but straight. Walking alongside is my only idea today.

By all accounts it is a perfect day. I’m not trying to wash my cares away, I’m trying to move them forward. No one is free of cares, but I currently have some bandwidth outside of my own cares, and that is a gift when true. It is easier to carry someone else’s than your own, but it can’t be done without adding the weight of hope. Hope for their better, hope for their own sense of happy and secure, hope for some triumphs. Tiny will do.

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This flashback post reminds me why I publish this stuff. I didn’t think it was a very good post - until other people liked it. Being so sure that you know what you need in life, and finding out you needed something entirely different is humbling, and incredibly relieving at the same time. To get something you didn’t know you needed is getting two good things. (Not a Japanese proverb). Searching for good soup is important work. (Should be Japanese Proverb).

Osaka / Kansai / Japan

Fumbling about in Osaka like it’s my very first time.  It is, but sometimes I think I’m above all that. I should know better.  I can’t show up like a professional every time. My needs are few though, and I always think it should be easy.  Today all I want is a proper bowl of ramen before bed. 

If I’m honest though,  that’s not all I want.  I also want it to be perfect.  I don’t want average ramen, or strip mall vibes. I want to feel like I found something worth finding. I want broth that will fulfill my emotional needs, and possibly have curative powers.  Basically, I want to step out blindly into a city of 3 million for the very first time, sleep deprived,  hungry,  and language-less, to find the best ramen shop in the city.

Don’t think I’m being cute about curative power either! Have you ever had tonkotsu ramen?   It’s the one I crave to the exclusion of all other types of ramen.  I just don’t want to waste a real ramen moment on anything else. Slow cooked pork bone broth, infused with ancient wisdom. Ok maybe a little cute. 

First-time first-steps from the hotel are always guesswork: 360 degrees and several roads to choose from.  But the stakes are low, and the chances of stumbling on a ramen shop are high. 

I step out and take in the basics. I quickly conclude that Osaka looks like Japan, and also that I know what all of Japan looks like, based on all those one day trips to that one neighborhood in Tokyo.

It’s fine.  I know three words in Japanese, which should be helpful. Often I get lucky and say the right word at the right time. Other times, I say the right word in German, or any other language besides Japanese.

I also know a few customs to show respect: Use both hands to offer an item with dignity and respect. Don’t tip, it is insulting. Keep your feet on the floor, don’t cross your legs and point your foot at someone.  Regarding the hundreds I don’t know, I just live in fear. 

I find a narrow street lined with the stacked restaurant signs I’ve become familiar with in other dense Asian cities.  The signs vertically stacked, representing restaurants and bars similarly stacked, six floors high.  Surely one of the signs says ramen!  But there is no way to know.  

I cave to google maps to focus my search, and chose Shun Shaido. It’s one of many choices in this area, and it is on the first floor; which it seems, should be easy.  But, having found the building, I feel no closer.  I stand there facing it, looking blankly at it, like I’m waiting for it to reveal a message. Like I don't know what I’m looking at. Because I don’t.  Because I’m too thick to find the door. I’m just looking for a crack to enter through. There are no doors to the street, just six floors of windows.  The ramen shop is winning. 

I try to match kanji characters on the stacked signs. I’ve memorized the first and last  to help my search. But my characters are lost in the sea of signs. And if I found them, I would still be doorless.

No visible doors, no common lobby. The only gap is a single-file dead end service alley which I had disregarded as a possible entrance.  But what other choice do I have? I commit to enter it, led by desperate hunger.  Drains, vents, pipes and utility meters surely mark the way to the best ramen. It’s true that it is not very welcoming, but I have found doors, so that is progress. I must now choose wisely.  Any one of them might  lead to ramen, or to someone’s apartment… or to a Yakuza den. I lean my head around corners cautiously to survey which. 

I choose the smaller of two doors which I think are more likely to be restaurant doors than mafia den doors. There is a paper lantern with characters on it, perhaps mine, but I’ve now long forgotten what they looked like. I go up the three steps with a turn, and a duck through the low door to enter. I’ve found it!  A restaurant the size of a  bedroom, a box buried in some leftover internal space. Surely someone miscalculated the building plan, and this is the remainder of bad division. One door and no windows, in an afterthought of a space.  It’s the type of place you wonder how it survives.  One cook, one server, two tables, and a low bar with 5 squatty cylindrical stools. I choose the stool at the end of the bar, and lower myself to sit on it like a toad, with knees up. A big, confused, American toad, feeling outsmarted by Osaka. The server blesses me with an English menu to which I can grunt and gesture. 

My curry ramen is delivered with both hands and dignity toward the lowly. A deep bowl and a shallow bow. It is not the tonkotsu which I thought I needed, but I amuse myself with the idea, that this is rather the ramen that I needed today.  Each has its own power, and this one uplifts the humbled. Or maybe I was just hungry.

Is it the best ramen in Osaka?  It is a silly question.  It is the best ramen for me, for today.  I have no doubt that I found something worth finding.   I hop up and stand tall, and even manage to say arigato instead of konichiwa as I leave.  

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We were young and we knew what we needed to know. We knew that we had committed our very lives to each other.

Whatever we imagined about our future, it would be different. We didn’t know the outcome of the blanks in the promises we made to each other. Which better, which worse, which sickness. Whatever it might be, we said, we would do it together.

She was bright and beautiful
And she was mine.

Even then I knew I had married well. But I didn’t know nearly how well. I hadn’t scratched the surface of what would emerge in her when she was tested, or how I would benefit.

When the twins, our first babies, were in peril before they were born, I saw what she was made of. She was full of the most durable kind of love. I sat beside her in a hospital bed in Milwaukee while she fought for them. She was bright and beautiful, and she was unflinching in every effort to save them both.

When we had four kids four and under, she was not daunted, she made it a party. When I traveled away for work she only talked to them about how lucky we were that I had so many days off, and how fully available I was during them. She was unflinching, and she was always optimistic about our future.

When teenagers got teenager-y she dug in. She was a bulldog on a bull’s ankle. The most persistent of un-fun love. I tried to copy what she was able to do by instinct. She was optimistic, and she was resolute that we would win by love.

When we were poor she was resourceful
When we were not she was generous
In every difficulty, she was creative
In every trouble, tenacious
She was all those things to my benefit

When cancer came for her, some of the brightness left. She exhausted herself making decisions, and grew tired of all the solutions. Everyone of us was for the worse when she was compromised. Love was different then than it was in the beautiful pictures from the beginning.

When the cancer, by grace was resolved, the brightness started to come back. Optimism began to outweigh the losses. She did the work required, medically and mentally. She filled in gratitude journals to get back on her feet. Now the girl I dated, and committed my life to, is back.

She is bright and beautiful, and she is unflinching, always optimistic, resolute, resourceful without end, generous, creative, perpetually tenacious, and, when she fell she got back up.

Now she is back, and so is the easier type of love from our youth, now deepened by the better and the worse which we promised to live out together - and did. Now we are not optimistic blindly; now we have proof that there was always reason to be. Now our pictures may look like we have been through some things, but she is still the bright and beautiful girl that I married, and she is so much more.

She is all those things. And she is mine.

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Shanghai / People’s Republic of China

I am in Shanghai for the first time and I feel nothing - except disappointment about feeling nothing. It’s my first time in real China, I should feel something, anything would do. But here I am, in new territory, fully numb. I want better for myself, but my best plan at the moment is to feed my indifference at the breakfast buffet.

I’ve been to Taipei and Hong Kong quite a bit. But this is Shanghai, it is not disputed like Taiwan, and it has no special rules imputed like Hong Kong, this is the real PRC. I’ve never been here simply because I haven’t wanted to. I shouldn’t be so disinterested, but I am. It may not be the right response for a supposedly curious traveler, but it is my response nonetheless. I could fake interest but it would still not be interest. So in the spirit of honesty, I’ll admit that the only reason I am here at all, is to buy a knock off winter jacket. Shanghai is the place for that. And now is the time before World War III starts.

So it is that I am in China without being impressed about being in China, and so it is that I am killing time comparing notes on squishy buns at the breakfast buffet. Taro, shrimp,and pork-floss are all ok, but black sesame is king. When the underground market opens, I push back from the trough. Sesame balls until then.

About the jacket, it’s for me, a So-Cal dad who has never owned a heavy jacket. I have made it to my current age by layering flannel until I can’t bend. But this will be a twice a year jacket for watching winter lacrosse games in the Pacific Northwest. I don’t need a $500 Northface for that. A $100 ‘mostly northface’ should do, and I’ll be looking good in the stands, like I’m ready to summit something.

I may want better, but at the moment the jacket is the only thing I have ambition about. I have no other thing I am looking forward to seeing here. I’ve just flown 6000 miles to get a fake jacket. I was recently asked if I am a good tourist on my work trips. Well… no I guess.

Hours later I had bought the jacket and ended up right back in my room with no better feelings than before. Why didn’t I just go to Europe? It took me two hours to not answer that. I can’t fake my feelings about the place, but I’m hoping my real ones will lead me to something better.

But first, back to the buffet. This time the executive lounge on the top floor. I told myself I came up here for the view, but that was a lie. I’m just a bad tourist. I might as well be in Fresno.

From the 37th floor I look over the city that I visited but never saw, the sun setting on a lost day. The buffet chef proclaims his works. Sir! Pork! Sir! Bok Choy! The lights begin to come up on the Shanghai skyline. I had dismissed it simply as “not Hong Kong.” It may be notable, but it doesn’t make me care any more. I claim a table with a view… a view of everything that I missed. It’s a good view regardless, and I do have bok choy, which is nice.

It is then, when I am most of the way to eating my weight in red bean-paste buns, that the lights come up on the Nanpu bridge. I barely noticed it all day, now it cannot be missed. My dormant good-tourist rustles. I feel just a bit of awe, and the simultaneous pang of disappointment for not feeling it sooner. I stand up and face out through the floor to ceiling glass. I face the truth that this apathy was my own doing. My own lack of curiosity, and lack of planning led me here. When the lights came up on the bridge it became instantly dramatic. I stare out at it and wonder how I had missed it. I just needed some fan-fare to alert me. Its spiral viaduct lights up like a spiral galaxy, it was built to get traffic down from the bridge’s great heights, and spins off off-ramps like starry legs. I see the Shanghai Tower light up, and the ball of The Pearl Tower, a dramatic display of what I might have enjoyed.

Surely Shanghai deserved better of me today. Today, I was a bad tourist. I will accept the title. I got the jacket I came for, but missed what Shanghai had to offer. Now I’ve got the buffets and knockoff markets nailed! Now I am ready for the real Shanghai. I’ll be back, and I no doubt will be doubly curious about what I missed.

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Cafe Kosmos / Munich / Bavaria / Germany

All is well at Cafe Kosmos. With gimbal hands I ascend tight spiral stairs to the second floor without a spill. Surface tension is in my favor, the foamy dome of my giant cappuccino remains intact. I take a seat at the couch with the view out to winter Munich. Out there its black jeans and black jackets, train station bustle, walkers crisscrossing, stoppers stopping, talking, smoker’s lips contorting, to blow smoke up, out into cold air, outgassing like street vents.

Inside, it’s snug and secure, analog reggae broadcasting contentment. The peeling walls were painted maybe one time ever, but it was a different time back then. Red leather chairs, black leather boots. I didn’t go in search of the best bohemian coffee bars of Bavaria. I just stumbled in, and took my place by the people who still love heavy metal, sitting together, drinking together, beer and espresso together, and the soft-sweatered study-buddies computing in the corner, tapping black fingernails at their work. All of us being exactly who we are, no more.

My place in the universe is secure. I am cozy, caffeinated, and calibrated to my time zone. I know where I am, and where I fit in. On the wall across from my couch is a pull down map of our solar system from a German primary school. I reconsider my definition of far-from-home. One picture makes me feel closer. The center panel reads Heimat unserer Erde - The Home of our Earth. How warm. She should not be alone out there, spinning on her own. Another panel is labeled Geschwister unserer Erde, The sisters of our Earth, which also makes me smile. Kosmos is my kind of place. Homes and community for all. I feel at home, here at Kosmos, in Bavaria, and more broadly, out here spinning with the sisters of The Earth.

I don’t know exactly what, but Kosmos nailed it. I feel like I have rejected something superficial and stupid by accepting what Kosmos has to offer.

I know where I am, and I know something about where I am. Bavaria was my first introduction to Germany, so long ago. That too, was a different time. We were traveling and playing music, and enjoying the perks of staying in the homes of hippies instead of premium hotels. We learned more about Germany in one day in a hippie-home than we would have in a week at a hotel. We’de walk a block to the bakery each morning to get today’s rolls for breakfast. Our hosts Andy and Selke were self proclaimed Jesus freaks. They used to take psychedelic drugs but weren’t proud of it anymore. They hosted us, an American band, in their small Bavarian town and drove us to gigs in their VW bus, smoking with the windows rolled all the way up. Only now do I wonder how the whole arrangement happened. We learned how to say ‘no speed limit’ in German: Kein geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung. Which was funny at the time as we hauled around on the autobahn in a VW bus which itself definitely had a speed limit. Now it’s funny because it looks like the suggested strong password no one uses.

I barely knew where I was, or how it all had been arranged. I didn’t understand how insanely unique this thing was; California kids playing festivals in Germany, club gigs in Hamburg and Düsseldorf. Shows in Dresden only a handful of years after the wall fell. I might have been more shocked by the opportunity if my brain had been more complete. In retrospect I wonder if our memory is so good when we are young so that we can save things to be grateful for when we’re smart enough to recognize which things those are.

It is definitely a different era now. Now I stay in fancy hotels and have opinions on bedding and design accoutrements. I could have slept on a towel back then. But I also now understand what a privilege it is that I get to travel to these places under these terms. Like then, the terms are overwhelmingly unique, and could not be reproduced at will. I understand now with great detail how the logistics work. I know precisely what has to remain true for me to continue the privilege, and what things could bring it to an end. There isn’t a week that goes by without deep gratitude about it all. My job is not to be in a bohemian coffee shop in Munich, but kind of. I had no such perspective then.

So I didn’t expect it, or even recognize the feeling at the moment that it happened, but as we descended through the clouds over Munich this morning, it felt like a mini homecoming. Today the forecast was 0°C, with low freezing fog. We weren’t sure what we would see, if anything. A very uniform layer of cloud cover reached from Canada to Europe. While above it in the bright sun, we knew it was dark and wintery Bavaria under there, but couldn’t see any of it. It was just an ocean of white. Whatever winter mood Munich might present was still a mystery. When we came through the layer a few thousand feet above Munich’s surrounding hills, we saw that the fog was spotty and thin, and still far below us. I saw it reaching cold fingers up into valleys and up the slopes into timber stands. Dark conifers stood out dramatically, almost black against trees that were frosted white. Trees that had shed their leaves and their warmth, and those located on the windward sides, stood cold, flocked in the softest wintery white. The valleys between timbered hills were dotted with old villages on winding roads like the one I walked to the bakery on. In the van to the hotel I flashed back to rambling down the autobahn in the smoke filled VW bus. I had not recognized the uniqueness of any of it. These core memories recalled in micro seconds and spawned immediate warmth and gratitude 30 years later.

Maybe my brain wasn’t formed enough to recognize it at the time. Or maybe it is simply how we are. We rarely arrive somewhere for the first time feeling a sense of grateful belonging. First you have to be lost. First you struggle to find your way, and to put things in their rightful places. Then you return like you know the place, and know a bit about everything else too. Then you realize all that you have had to be grateful for, both then and now, and maybe all along.

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Today I am linking to a piece I wrote for Friday Swell on Medium.

Every year my friend Dan collects best-of lists from friends and writers. The criteria is “ Best of ANYTHING.” It is a surprisingly difficult task to find five of anything that are your favorites. This year I pulled some thoughts from some Roaming pieces from 2025 to make “The Top 5 Foods That Make Me Feel at Home When I Am Not”

While you are there have a look around at the others for some possible new favorites for yourself! Books, music, travel, and even cookies!

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Auckland to Gaviota

When I was young and playing bass in a rock band, I knew it wouldn’t last. I knew that rock music was a young-man’s game, I just couldn’t imagine that I’d ever actually be old. If I were, hypothetically, ever old, I figured jazz would be the solution. I’d switch to upright bass and play it with other old people, in the corner, for free drinks. But first I’d have to get old. And I’d have to start liking jazz.

There was a small effort made toward the idea in junior college when I took an orchestral strings course and learned, amongst other valuable junior college lessons, that the upright bass was not for the weak. It would not be merely an easy add on for an electric bass player. I would need more dedication and time, things that old people had. For the final in the class, I played with a bow and made my way through The Pirates of the Caribbean theme song for an A in the class, but with considerable notes on technique.

From then the idea was relegated to the land of occasional passing thoughts, even as decades passed and signs of oldness appeared. I experienced an increasing tolerance for World War history, The Dire Straits, and even jazz. But I still held the little trio in the corner dream at bay. It remained a goal, but a voluntarily distant one.

Until this November 11th. I was in an Auckland speakeasy, a quiet woody basement haunt. There is no menu, they just ask you a couple questions and bring you something you’re likely to like. I had had a couple something’s when a few musicians brought their instruments in and headed for the corner. I saw the big bass being carried in, and didn’t think much about it. But a few minutes later, when he started warming up, it all came together. The hidden room, the quiet talk, the woody instrument playing through a walking line. I mentally drifted away from our table conversation for a moment and listened to the bass, its warm tone against the wood walls, and the mwah of the strings against the fingerboard. As I listened, the very clear and simple thought came to me… It is time!

I came home and made some calls. I polled some friends who would know about such things. By the end of the day I had leads on a teacher, and a quality instrument. A couple leads actually, but only one of them involved buying the bass directly from the luthier who set up the bass, and who lives in a yurt. I admit I didn’t give much thought to the other option.

I was in it for the yurt. I’d have paid extra for that, but maybe I’m the only one. It’s an unusual business model, but it worked on me. They had me at “drive up the Gaviota coast and meet your luthier in his yurt.” It was Black Friday, and while it’s not saying much, this was by far my favorite Black Friday activity ever. I arrived to a dirt driveway with epic Pacific views and a hodgepodge of alternative living arrangements for people who help out on the ranch. I walked through some grass, and past a fire circle toward the only yurt I saw. My luthier emerged from a rustic lean-to shop behind it. He’d been working on a beat up old bass with a broken headstock. He’s a farm-ready yurt dweller with a pointy beard that reminds me of Mr Tumness, but more woodworker, less goat. Maybe I see what I want to see.

It’s not Narnia but the experience is a little bit magical; the prospect of a new endeavor, and the process of purchasing the tools of the trade in such a rustic and idyllic place. I’m not drawn to the big bass for its ease. I am drawn to it because it is old, and wooden. It is natural, acoustic, and authentic. The sound is warm, and makes people feel warm. It’s the kind of thing you would want to play on a faded deck, in the sun, with an ocean view. I had 3 basses to choose from. We laid them out on the deck in front of the yurt and tried them each one at a time. I played what I could with my beginner ability, then listened as he played them. In the past I have had the experience of feeling a connection of some kind to an instrument, some sound or feel, or intangible thing that makes it an obvious choice above others. I hoped for that, but didn’t get it. I don’t have enough experience to sense the subtleties yet. I suspect the connection will come the way it more often does, by blood sweat and tears, and by shared experience. I chose the bass that had a little more growl in the tone, a vague quality I admire, but can’t explain.

Now she sits in my living room corner wearing a Santa hat. The journey has barely begun, but now I admit that I have met the criteria to start it. Updates to follow.

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Riverstage / Brisbane / Queensland / Australia

I came from a tech and tourism town on the coast of California, about 7000 miles away. I am here in Brisbane for work, but I could’ve gone anywhere for that. I came to Brisbane in particular, on this particular day, because I bought a ticket to see Sam Fender in concert here. He’s a singer/songwriter from near Newcastle UK. I bought the ticket months ago with hopes that I could get the trip which coincides with the concert. I did the calendar math, measured it twice, and landed here today, the correct day for the show tonight.

He came from about 10000 miles away, there is no shorter way from Northshields, an industrial shipyard and mining town just Northeast of Newcastle. He’s a Geordi boy, and talks like that, and sings like that, and uses words I’ve never heard to describe experiences that I’ve never had. We started pretty far apart, geographically and otherwise, and that’s a big part of the appeal of Sam Fender to me. I like his music, but it’s his stories that brought me here.

I added him to my must-see list about a week after I heard his album Seventeen Going Under, maybe 3 years ago. I figured I’d be likely to catch him in London, because it’s close to him, and frequent for me. I checked his tour schedule regularly, but it was always empty. I discovered him too late to catch the first Seventeen Going Under Tour, and the second round of it was cut short when his vocal chords were hemorrhaging. Maybe emote a little softer Sam!

Three hours to the show now. It’s a hot summer day here, and I’m riding out the final hours till sundown in a basement cafe off Albert Street. The show is at Riverstage, an outdoor venue on the point of the big bend in the Brisbane River. I’ll walk 10 minutes from my hotel and through the botanic gardens to get there. The show has been sold out for months, and they say it holds 9000 people. I didn’t expect those kinds of numbers, especially here on the direct opposite side of the globe from his home.

Where he is from, his life beat him up a bit. He’s proud of that, or maybe you have to be. I don’t know what his options would have been if his songs weren’t so good. His voice to speak about his tough start, to me, is the better part of his gifts. That’s saying something, because he’s a gifted singer and guitar player, and also a great songwriter. But it is his story, and his loaded telling of it that interests me. This is not Nashville songwriters writing stories for prettier people to sing. This is him expelling what he has no choice but to. No one else could sing these songs for him. The words come out like they had to, like he couldn’t have stopped it if he tried.

He’s dark, and knows it. He can talk about it in a way that you will feel it, which is something valuable. But being a dark artist is always a double edged sword. You have a commodity that everyone wants, maybe for the first time in your life, but it’s not because you’ve had an abundant life, and now you have to bleed publicly to deliver it. It’s what got you noticed, but now it’s your job. Come do your thing Sam.

I wasn’t sure what to expect at the show in that regard. I guessed from his own lyrics on the subject that he would not want to deliver a marketable darkness every night on cue.

When the music started it was clear that he wouldn’t. He may be dark, but he’s also the life of the party. The band itself is built like an 80’s party band, with a brass section, a back up singer dancing like it’s a Cindy Lauper video, and a keyboard player who hypes the crowd like he was born to do it. It’s a pep rally dressed in black. Sam controls which face he puts forward.

The title track to Seventeen Going Under, was my entry point to Sam’s story. It’s a recap of his youth that comes off like he was just recently seventeen, and it’s still raw. The song is a good introduction to Sam Fender, and it’s a banger, with lots of whoa’s to sing along with.

I wouldn’t have said that it’s a party song, it’s a lot of things, but not that to me.

It’s an introduction to his starting point:

How she wept and wept and wept
Well, luck came and died ‘round here
I see my mother
The DWP see a number
She cries on the floor encumbered
I’m seventeen going under

It’s wisdom blurted out.

That’s the thing with anger
It begs to stick around
So it can fleece you of your beauty
And leave you spent with nowt to offer

And an introduction to who he is:

A mirrored picture of my old man
Oh God, the kid’s a dab hand
Canny chanter, but he looks sad
God, the kid looks so sad

Maybe so, but he still makes you smile, and he’s still the life of the party. On the night, donning his Fender Jaguar, he starts the song with its chiming riff. The energy surges. The drums and bass come in on the second verse, as straight as a railroad track. P-bass pedaling, shoveling coal. Everyone tapping, everyone dancing, everyone singing, and they all know every word. Modesty is abandoned, hands are raised by instinct. And when the whoa’s come around, we’re all as helpless as drunks in a Newcastle bar, fullvoiced and proud. I came for the stories, but find myself headlong in the moment. His dark teen years have turned into an anthem. Was this a party song all along and I just missed it?

Knowing its content, it feels incongruous, but I love it. The whole show is a party and the band delivers it, but with party songs you could cry to. He may have bled in their writing, but not on command.

We started pretty far apart. But we met here in Brisbane. At the show I got something I didn’t expect and loved it. In the morning I suited up for the ride home and assembled with the crew in the hotel lobby. They asked about the show, and I was mid-sentence in answering when Sam himself comes striding across in front of me. I say “hi Sam.” I’m wearing stars and bars, he’s in black. I thank him for the show, which I am certain he was not expecting from an old pilot in the lobby. He responds with a grin and some friendly Geordi thing I really wish I had understood. We may still be pretty far apart, but we ended up in the same hotel last night. And his songs, I believe, close a bit of the rest of the gap. Dab hand indeed Sam!

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Seventeen Going Under from the previous tour: