Author Archives: dkrashb

Hang Gliding Take 2

Posted by dkrashb on

Still toying with the idea of getting our novice hang gliding certification (although also still not convinced I ever want to launch off the mountain), we signed up for a second round of hang gliding lessons.  We upgraded our introductory package to a weekend package, which gives us 15 more hill flights and 1 more tandem flight each.  Today is the kickoff of our weekend.  The alarm wakes us up early and we scramble to gather all the gear we’re taking with us.  We actually do not need anything other than a change of clothes and water, but I, of course, must take my camera.  And, the fact that we will be done on the hills by early afternoon but our tandem isn’t until 5PM means that we need things to do.  That means I’m taking two laptops, iPad, iPhone, and MiFi.  We also take air mattresses and pillows in case we want to take an afternoon nap.  We have more stuff than if we were traveling with an infant.

But, we get the car loaded and we make it out the door in plenty of time to fill up the gas tank and still get there early.  The entrance to the training hills is about 40 minutes from our place.  But once we get to that entrance point, there is a long dirt road full of pot holes, rocks, and ruts that we must make our way down.  It adds an extra 10 minutes, although it’s a little faster in the mini van that it was last time when we made the mistake of coming in Pat’s lowered BMW.

By the time we make it over all the bumps, I really need to use the restroom again.  Believing there are no facilities at the training hills, I start to head into the woods, but I see a man heading down a mown path and stop, thinking I don’t want to walk up on him if he’s headed into the woods for the same reason.  When he returns, I follow the same path he took to discover that there is an outhouse at the end of it.  Now, I have used many outhouses and, while none generally smell good, some are tolerable and some are really only appropriate for acts of desperation.  This outhouse appears to be occupied by mice.  I assume they have some rare disorder that causes a complete loss of smell.  The mice are not home right now, but their nesting and seed shells occupy the majority of one corner of the outhouse.  That is the most pleasant part.  I stand in front of the open door looking in and contemplate the pluses and minuses of just going in the woods anyway.  In the end, I opt to hold my breath and practice my balance inside the outhouse because I figure at least it’s private and I’m running out of time to find a good spot both because I have a very full bladder and because I’m supposed to be on the field by now.  Mental note:  make a pit stop at the nearest town tomorrow.

When I arrive at the field by the storage unit, I discover that I am supposed to be learning how to assemble my own glider and that Pat and the guy we will be sharing our glider with today, Craig, are already more than halfway through the process.  I get there in time to watch the final steps and perform the pre-flight check.  Pat tells me on the way to the hill that now that he’s seen how a glider goes together, he’s a little worried.  He was expecting it to have more parts that are fastened or something.  I decide not to think about it too much.

My first flight is not a flight at all.  It’s a run-and-crash.  I try to review what I did and didn’t do, but I have no conscious memory of what actions I took or didn’t take.  I assume that I stopped running too soon.  Pat, on the other hand, gets airborne like we were just hang gliding yesterday.  He seems to have retained what he learned last time.

My next turn, Gordy, the instructor, reminds me to loosen my grip and let the glider fly and to keep my eyes on my target.  I get a good start and launch well, but perhaps I loosened my grip a little too much because I am suddenly much higher than I expected.  I am also pointed towards the woods instead of my target and headed towards the 4-wheeler used to tow the hang gliders back to the top.  I confess:  I scream.  I know I did something to turn the glider back to straight, but my brain is not processing information at a conscious level, so I cannot say for sure what it was.  However, whether I did the wrong thing or just did too little, too late, I found myself diving towards earth, landing hard, and spinning out at the stop so that I ended up facing the hill.  The good news is that I landed before I hit the 4 wheeler.

Despite the crash landing, the feeling of flying stays with me.  The moment of lift off when my feet were running in air and the sudden realization that I am flying make me want to do this again.  I realize that I’ve been pushing myself into this.  This is the first time that it really felt fun.  Every run previously was more about “I can do this, too” than it was about wanting to be in the air.  I scraped my ankle on the first landing and it’s oozing blood.  My shoulders and upper arms are already bruised from carrying the glider.  My knees are bruised from landing too hard and too fast against the ground.  But now, I really want to get good at flying off this hill.

Unfortunately, there is a big crowd on the hill.  The wind is gusting and changing direction.  We need a calm, gentle headwind to safely launch and land.   There are 10 gliders up on the hill all vying for a turn at the precise moment the wind is right–we can launch only one at a time.  Plus, the morning ground school has now joined us on the hill to try to get their first flights in, adding 8 additional students and 3 more gliders.  But there are only short windows to launch in and everyone must launch into a headwind, so things slow way down as we take turns waiting for the wind to cooperate.

We stand-by as Gordy holds another trainee poised for take off, waiting for the wind to calm down.  When it does, it changes direction.  The student moves from one side of the hill to the other to try to catch a headwind.  Then the wind changes again.  This switching of direction slows the whole process down even more.  It’s not easy to move from one side of the hill to the other with a 90+ pound wing on your back in gusting winds.  Even more troublesome, the gliders start lifting off the ground on their own when the windspeed gets too high.  We start having trouble keeping gliders on the caddy coming up the hill.  First one flips in the wind, then another.

Between gusts of wind, Gordy manages to launch a few more students.  However, as I get on deck, I watch an experienced student in front of me get caught in a crosswind that causes one wingtip to catch the ground as she runs down the hill.  The glider goes airborne, spins, and then drops her on the ground hard.  She is OK.  She didn’t get high enough into the air to get seriously hurt, although I supposed she could have twisted an ankle or something easily enough given that she wasn’t launched yet.

Gordy announces that we’re going to call it a day and that we’ll try to fly down if the wind will let us, but we should take our gliders back after we land.  He looks at the windsock and looks at me and says, “I’m nervous about this wind.  Are you nervous?”  I say no.  I’m really not–I have confidence in my ability to heal.  He decides to walk me further down the hill so that I’m launching from a lower altitude.  The wind dies and I launch safely, but I get little lift because there is suddenly no wind at all.  It’s not quite the day on the hills we were hoping for, but we live close and walking away with only some bumps and bruises is far better than risking serious injury,

Pat and I discuss the odds that we’ll be able to take our tandem flight.  We decide to drive up to the pro shop at the mountain launch and reschedule since we don’t want to hang out all day only to have to reschedule anyway.  When we get up there, there is a crowd of disappointed tourists who were hoping to watch hang gliders launching from the mountain.  The wind is blowing the opposite direction needed for a safe launch, a tailwind, which we learn is called “over the back.”    The person in the pro shop thinks it’s a good idea for us to reschedule our tandem flights for tomorrow–apparently they have already moved people from Friday to Saturday and the schedule is over booked.

We head on home, tired and slightly disappointed, but still excited about the experience of flying and looking forward to returning tomorrow.

Back in Chattown

Posted by dkrashb on

Having spent the night just outside of Lexington in a semi-frightening hotel, I am doubly surprised when the alarm jerks me out of a sound sleep.  First there is the expected surprise (sort of paradoxical, isn’t it?) of the alarm itself, but then I am also surprised to realize that I have slept through the night undisturbed.  I hop out of bed and get myself ready to roll quickly.  We have a 3 hour drive to home, today is a work day, and I have an important conference call this morning.  Fortunately, I was able to finish the presentation material last night and send it out for a quick review.  I check my mail to see if I have any responses.  Only one with no suggested changes.

We forgo the free breakfast that comes with the room (probably just cereal and bananas anyway) since it’s still a half an hour before the service starts.  We get in the car with me setting up to work from the car while Pat drives.  It’s early enough that nothing much urgent is happening and my cellular MiFi is getting sketchy reception as we get into the hills.  Deciding I’m as caught up as I’m going to get this morning, I put the work away and watch the sunrise over the mountains as we make our way from Kentucky to Tennessee.  It’s a gorgeous morning.

Pat starts nodding off at the wheel, so we stop for a break and to grab something to eat.  Then, we switch drivers.  I drive us the final stretch into Chattanooga.  It’s the first time I’ve been the one behind the wheel as we returned to our now hometown.  It’s only the 2nd time I’ve driven in Chattanooga since our move.  I get to experience some of the oddly banked curves of 27 as we round the city and cross the river to our exit.  I manage to drive us safely to our parking lot, but with the stop we made, it’s almost 9AM.  I grab all of my work related items and dash upstairs to get back online.

When I get online, nothing has happened.  My boss hasn’t sent me any comments on the slide deck.  No one in Australia responded to the replies I sent early this morning (already past their office hours).  I’ve still heard nothing from Singapore, Hong Kong, or China on any of the things I’m working on there.  And no one in any other part of the world sent me an email between 7:30AM and 9AM.  That hour and a half that I wasn’t able to check emails really wasn’t so critical after all.  I’m glad that I relieved Pat of driving rather than insisting I needed to be working.

During the day, fortunately during a break between conference calls (and after my most important call of the day was over), squealing tires and a big crash attract my attention.  Two cars have collided in the intersection below our balcony.  Since my camera is already set up, I indulge in a few quick shots from the window and then return to work.  I count the number of sirens required for this accident.  Both drivers are alone and both walk away with no apparent injuries, yet 3 fire trucks, 1 ambulance, and 6 police cars all come screaming to the scene.  This helps explain the ridiculous number of sirens that go by every day!  When I next look out the window, they are loading up one of the cars on a flatbed tow truck and sweeping the debris out of the street.  I get a few more quick shots and then forget all about the accident.

That evening, the sunset reminds me why I tolerate the sirens during the day for our view.  I talk Pat into going up on the roof with me so I can get a better shot of the sunset since there’s a building between us and the horizon to the West.  I watch the sun go down with deep breaths.  I slow down all of the anxiety-produced nervousness.  I settle into myself as I watch the sun settle into the landscape.

I think this is why I love to shoot–it creates stillness.  It stops the motion of time and pauses in a single moment.  While a photo stays in that moment forever, the photographer moves on to the next moment and repeats the process.  Between shots, I watch with an open mind and wide eyes.  I am eager to see what next will present itself.  All my senses feel alive and alert as I decide, “Is this the moment to shoot?  Is this?”  This is especially true during a sunset when I might shoot a hundred pictures of virtually the same thing–I watch for minute changes that make the scene worth shooting again.

Today, I am also working on some skills.  As much as I enjoy shooting, I am rarely really pleased with the end results.  Today I am practicing using a tripod and a remote shutter release in the hope of improving the sharpness of my images.  While I’m at it, I play with long exposures and car lights, which is always fun.  I also always try to improve composition.  Unfortunately, I’m finding the use of the tripod is making composition much more difficult.  In addition, my viewpoint makes getting the elements I want in the photo difficult to arrange around the rule-of-thirds.

Although I work on each of these things and take them into consideration as I set up for each shot, it is without anxiety.  After all, this is a low-risk activity.  If I don’t like the picture, I delete it.  Instead, I work with the tripod to figure out how to best position the camera for the composition I want.  I don’t worry so much about the rule-of-thirds for tonight.  I breathe into the sunset and push the button on my remote.  I feel calmness, serenity, and perhaps a little awe as I watch the light disappear.  This is why I shoot.

Embracing My Inner Jerk

Posted by dkrashb on

After feeling like I’d walked into an abandoned office building following some massive nuclear holocaust or something yesterday, I’d thought about just working from my friend’s house today.  However, I do have a couple of face-to-face meetings scheduled, plus I have a lunch date that is closer to the office and closer to Pat’s daytime destination.  So, I have Pat drop me at the office again.  Now this is a bit of a sore subject.  I was supposed to have the car today so that I could get to my lunch date and a doctor’s appointment at the end of the day without having to worry about Pat driving back and forth to cart me around.  However, Pat did not come up with a plan that would allow him to get from my office to the workshop where he’s working today without a car.  So, I’m a little irritated that I am the one who is always stuck asking for rides.

But now, I get to the gym and am a little more cheerful.  I get to walk outside during the sunrise, something that always makes my morning, and then laugh a lot with the guys I workout with.  By the time I’m on my way up to my office, I have forgotten about not having a car.  When I get to my floor, there are actually people there!  Not a lot, but at least a handful in each quadrant of the floor.  I say hello at least 3x on the way to my office and even stop to chat for a minute with 1 person.  It’s a banner day!

When lunch comes, Pat picks me up and drops me at the restaurant where I’m meeting my friend.  My friend has a tight schedule, so I get there early and order for both of us so that she arrives about the same time the food comes out.  This works well–we’re not as anxious about getting our food and eating it fast enough to get her back in time for her next appointment so we can talk more leisurely.  Fortunately for me, she doesn’t need her car the rest of the afternoon, so I’m able to make arrangements to drop her at her office and take her car back to my office when we’re done.  Then, I drive back to her office after work, where Pat will pick me up.  That saves Pat from one round-trip at least.  But, I feel bad having to borrow someone’s car.  Especially since I get caught up in a crisis at the end of the day at work that prevents me from leaving the office until later than I needed to leave.  As a result, I don’t have time to put gas in her car before returning it.  I console myself that the needle hasn’t moved and that I’ve only driven about a 1/2 a gallon’s worth, but I still feel bad.

When Pat picks me up later, I am running late from my appointment, having gotten there late.  We are leaving to return to Chattanooga straight from the office, but now we will get a late start.  Plus, I have a couple things I need to drop off to someone in Grandview, so we have to take a slightly indirect route out of town.  We make the drop and then decide to get dinner before getting on the road.  We stop at Donatos and order subs to go.  However, they’re very busy and there’s a long wait for the food.  Since I’m still trying to wrap up the work situation, I go out to the car and get online for a while.  I get a start on the slides I need for a meeting tomorrow and then I decide to change into more comfortable attire.

Since we have a van with tinted windows, I’m able to do this without anyone noticing by sitting on the floor in the back.  Taking off my work shoes feels so good!  I think my feet are growing now that they’ve been set free in hiking sandals most days–shoving them back into heels feels like foot binding.  Now, taking off my heels has the opposite effect–my feet feel like they are exploding into their preferred size like compressed sponges dipped in water.

We finally get our food and head down the road.  Pat is tired, so I will drive the first stretch.  It’s after 7:00PM.  We accept that we will not make it home tonight. As I merge onto the highway, I’m stuck behind a slower vehicle in front of me.  There is a young guy in an SUV behind me who starts to get over and block me in.  This is one of my pet peeves.  I can understand that we all have moments when we lose patience, but if you’re going to block someone in, make it the person who’s causing the problem, not the innocent victim behind them.  I can’t say I snap.  I really feel totally calm about it.  I just don’t feel like being blocked in.  So, I move over in front of him.  Yes, he has to either swerve or slow down to avoid hitting me.  Yes, it’s a risky move on my part.  But, I just don’t feel up to taking any crap from this guy.

Then, a second merge approaches.  There we are, dejavu all over again.  And what do I do?  You guessed it, I cut him off again.  Only this time, he’s not content to just back off (accompanied by his horn and hand gestures).  Instead, he swerves into the shoulder and continues driving too close to me, holding down his horn.  Now this is what we call an “escalating situation.”

That is the problem with being a jerk–you trigger competitive jerkiness in others which turns into a game of chicken as to which one of you is going to back down first.  The problem is that once you’ve committed yourself to being a jerk, it’s hard to back down.  Fortunately for everyone on the road tonight, I take a deep breath and recognize that I’ve pushed too far and it’s time to back down.  Unfortunately for everyone on the road tonight, he is less forgiving.  He starts cutting in and out of traffic so that he can get in front of me and slam on his brakes.  I take another deep breath and let it go.  I remind myself that he probably doesn’t even know why I cut him off and thinks I’m the only jerk in this scenario.

As luck would have it, he continues out of town along with us.  I laugh to myself thinking, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if it turns out he’s our next door neighbor?”  He periodically appears in my rearview mirror gesturing at me and then next to me and then in front of me, still angry.  But, as the traffic makes such maneuvers more difficult, he either calms down or gives up.  Thankfully, he disappears near Grove City (aka, “Grove’tucky), which explains it all.  I make a mental note to not cut people off just because I think they’re rude in the future–I admit, it’s not the first time I’ve made this mental note.  At least it kept me wide awake for the first part of my drive.

We cross our fingers as we approach Cincinnati–tonight is not the night to have an hour delay trying to get out of Ohio.  Traffic flows smoothly into town and slows only briefly on the other side of the river as we get into highway construction.  I am starting to nod.  It’s only about 9:30PM, but I’m so mesmerized by the rhythm of the road that I can barely keep my eyes open.  We find a place to pull off to get gas, use the restroom, and switch drivers.  Now I am wide awake again, which is a good thing because I need to finish some slides for a call tomorrow morning.  I work on the deck for the next 2 hours while Pat drives.

Pat gets us to Lexington, KY, but then we are done.  It’s close enough to Chattanooga that we’ll make it back tomorrow morning, so we look for a motel.  However, Pat has stuff in the van that makes him want to stay in a motel where we can park outside the window.  Usually, the choices are limited and these types of motels are not so nice.  The one we find tonight is no exception.  But, we see no signs of bed bugs, so we throw down and tuck in for the night after setting the alarm for an early rise.

The Deserted Office, Desserts, and Death

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Today is Wednesday.  No workout this morning.  No face-to-face meetings scheduled.  But my calendar is full of conference calls.  When Pat drops me off at the office, I go upstairs to discover an empty floor.  Those who were there the day before are all either off, working from home, or traveling today.  There is no one to say hello to, no one to catch up with, not even anyone to ignore.  I find this oddly distracting.  Given that I even have calls through lunch, I find myself wondering why I bothered to come in at all.  I do not rate a window office, so I sit in my empty office with no view and miss my home office with a fantastic view.

An interesting thing I have learned about myself in the age of ADD:  I need low-level distractions in order to focus.  It’s as if I need to give the “Squirrel!” part of my brain something to do so that it stops nagging at the rest of my brain when I’m trying to concentrate.  Background noise at the office helps.  Just knowing there are people outside my door helps.  When I work at home, I have an easier time remaining focused on an intense task when my husband is home doing something on his own than if I’m home alone.  I’ve found that listening to music helps in the absence of other distractions, but that’s not possible when on conference calls.  Within an hour, I am coming out of my skin.

I don’t know what exactly it is that I experience when there is not enough going on at once–is it anxiety, boredom, hyper-activeness?  I’m not sure.  All I know is that I begin to work on one thing, I think of something else and open that, then I think of something else and open that.  All while I’m on a conference call.  Before I know it, I have about 40 documents open, 8 instant message conversations going, I’m halfway through answering 9 emails, and I’m in a complete state of confusion as to whether I’ve actually accomplished anything or not.

Complicating this state of task-hopping (let’s face it, there’s no such thing as multi-tasking) is the memory factor.  Another thing I’ve learned about the scattered mind combined with a faulty memory is: when I start to do something, it often creates a memory of having done it.  Whatever the function is in my brain that checks of to-do items, starting a task can trigger that little check.  Once the item is mentally checked, I forget all about it.  So, the more task-hopping I do, the more items I’m at risk of believing I’ve completed when in fact, they are only partially done.  To combat this, before I close things, I carefully look at each window I’ve opened, figure out why I’ve opened it, and then determine if that item is complete or not.  When I have a day like today with back-to-back conference calls where I’m able to just listen for my name during the first one (giving me the opportunity to open a lot), but the rest of them I have to listen and participate (preventing me from finishing anything I opened during the first call), I will often get to the end of the day and not have time to do a graceful shutdown, so-to-speak.  Then, I put my laptop to sleep and hope it will wake up later and that I will remember where I was with all the stuff that’s still open.  Of course, the more stuff I leave open, the more likely my laptop will hang and require a reboot, which essentially reboots my memory right along with the laptop.

It’s the end of the day, we have dinner plans with friends we haven’t seen in two months, and, as predicted, I have too many things open and must put my laptop to sleep and clean up later.  Given that our friends are expecting a baby in about 2 weeks, I imagine we will not be out late and I will have time for this tonight.  But, I hate going to dinner with things hanging unfinished both on my laptop and in my mind.

After a day of isolation, getting together with friends is even more welcome.  Our friends include a little one who arrives in his mother’s arms half asleep.  I try to remember what it feels like to have to jerk yourself out of sleep, rouse yourself and be social.  He’s only 4–too young to have learned that skill set yet.  He wants to be held by his mother, tiny and nearly 9 months pregnant.  She holds him and I wonder how that’s possible.

Our small friend does come to life during dinner.  He makes it through his meal with the promise of ice cream dancing in his head.  There is a Graeter’s next door.  Even though we still have Graeter’s in the freezer at our hosts’ house, I am just as excited about going next door after dinner as the 4-year old.

Outside, there is an event for a dog rescue.  One woman has a tiny Chihuahua on a leash.  He poops toothpaste-consistency yellow poop on the patio without his owner noticing.  I think back to our Mastiffs and how I used to tell my friends that with Mastiff poop, you worry more about tripping over it than stepping in it.  The Chihuahua’s poop is about 1/40th the size, just like the dog.

I watch as first one dog steps in the soft pile, then another.  I tell a volunteer and she gets out a bag, but before she can clean it up, the Chihuahua owner steps on it, completely covering the mess with her Ugg boot.  Amazingly, when she takes another step, it’s as if the entire pile has desinegrated and been absorbed into her sole and the patio pavers, leaving only discoloration behind.  The volunteer looks at me and says, “Was it her dog who pooped?” I answer in the affirmative and she winks and says, “Retribution!”

After enjoying a scoop of pumpkin pie ice cream, watching the dogs, and watching our small friend attempt to play “Cone Hole” (Graeter’s humor–an ice cream place’s name for “Corn Hole”), we say our good-byes and head on home.  It’s barely 8:00PM.

When we arrive at our hosts’ house, we eat some more ice cream and talk about the news of Steve Jobs’ death.  Oddly, I feel more likely to buy an iPhone 4S because Steve Jobs died.  There is no logic to this and I cannot explain it.  We ponder what the impact will be on Apple and whether they can continue his legacy when he was so heavily involved in the details.

I find myself wondering what his personal life was like, if he was happy, if the legacy of Apple was worth whatever he sacrificed.  I wonder what was most important to him and if he believed, in the end, that he lived his life according to his values and his priorities or if he struggled with regrets over the things he didn’t do.  Then, I begin to wonder if building something like Apple is more or less important or valuable than building a family or anything else that someone dedicates their life to.  But, this is too deep for contemplation right before bed, so I let the thought drift away as we say our goodnights and head upstairs.

Fitting in Friends

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On the second day in Columbus, I start off my day by working out with my old workout partners. By old, I mean “former,” because I am not far enough behind them in age to call them old. This means getting up early enough to get completely ready and wake Pat up so he can get up and take me to the gym by 7:00AM. When I get there, I drop off my stuff in the locker room and head outside for my familiar loop through the local park. When I make it to the restored prairie area, I’m surprised by a new crop of yellow flowers blowing brilliantly against the browning foliage. It’s beautiful in the sunrise glow–I enjoy this start to my day.

The workout is more of a social event, although one of my partners isn’t there. We catch up on what’s going on and swap gossip while we workout. The workout goes by quickly and I’m soon on my way to the locker room and then rushing off to my office. The morning flies by and before I know it, it’s time to take one of my friends out for her birthday. We debate where to go and then decide on the Longhorn Steakhouse, not to be confused with the Longhorn diner in Chattanooga. When we arrive, another friend is sitting at the bar eating by herself. We join her and enjoy catching up. I suppose the odds of running into a colleague at a restaurant that’s right around the corner at lunch aren’t that astronomical, but since going to lunch has become a rarity for most of us, it seems almost miraculous that the three of us have run into each other this way.

At the end of the day, I call Pat in time to get him to come pick me up so we can meet more friends for dinner. Tonight, we are taking our hosts out to dinner. We are all meeting at our favorite Mexican restaurant. I told myself that I was going to try not to eat so badly while in Columbus. After only gaining a couple of pounds during our two weeks in Germany, I will gain 5 in 4 days in Columbus if I don’t have some self-control. Unfortunately, all my resolve dissolves in just a sip of margarita and I find myself ordering a shrimp chimichanga. Oh well, maybe I can walk the fifteen miles to work tomorrow morning.

We eat and laugh, a lot. I wonder how many calories laughter burns? After dinner, Pat and I decide to stop at Graeters to pick up dessert for all four of us. While I don’t exactly understand the mental process that goes from “Oh, my, I’m going to gain weight!” to “we really should eat Graeters while we’re here since we don’t have Graeters in Chattanooga,” once the thought of Graeters Black Raspberry chip ice cream enters my mind, there is no turning back. We pick up two pints of black raspberry chip and a third of mint chip for George.

When we get back to the house, each of us sits around the living room with our bowl of ice cream discussing the announcement of the iPhone 4S and the reaction. I go to bed with my belly full of ice cream and my head full of questions about the new iPhone. I’m not all that excited by the prospect of upgrading, but I’ve been waiting a long time, so I will have to investigate further tomorrow. Right now, sleep is all that’s on my agenda.

Columbus, Again

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It’s Monday morning.  Pat drops me off at the office and I walk in feeling like I never left.  There are some differences.  First, the receptionist is not at the desk in the lobby of my building.  Instead, a sign sits on the desk with instructions for visitors.  I wonder where the receptionists went–they were all such helpful, friendly people who would even jump in to help with projects from time to time.  I hope they all found other jobs.

The next difference is the experience of walking into my office.  In reality, there is no difference from the last time I was here, but in my memory, I have returned to what my office looked like before I moved.  When I open the door and turn on the light, the desk is completely bare except my phone.  No headset, no monitor, no keyboard, no papers scattered around the desk.  Nothing hangs on the walls.  Even the whiteboards are wiped clean.  Now, I suddenly feel like a visitor.  The only remnants that show I once worked here are a few books that I no longer need and don’t want to take with me.

I look at the books for a moment and wonder what to do with them.  They are the kind of reference books that no longer make sense in a digital age–for example, a dictionary.  I can’t remember the last time I physically picked up a printed dictionary to look up a word.  With the Oxford English Dictionary available electronically, who would ever buy one in print?  But, I have a love of books that probably stems from having been read to a lot as a child.  I’ve never thrown a book away.  I’ve always found it a new home, although I suppose it’s new owner might have been less emotionally attached to its bindings and pages than I was and managed to dump it in the recycling bin–or even the trash.  No one wants out-of-date reference books.  Not even used book stores will take them at no charge.  The library is fussy about the donations it will accept.  And I am surrounded by marketing people who probably aren’t interested in the topics of my books anyway.  The recycling bin is not even an option here.  I decide to leave them where they are for now and return to getting my laptop setup and online.

After a busy morning, I manage to sneak out for lunch with a couple of my favorite colleagues.  I’m not sure if they are actually colleagues anymore or friends–we don’t actually work together on the same projects anymore, but we still all work for the same company.  I’m not sure what that makes us, but I enjoy catching up with them.  Although, they swap stories of their children going to homecoming dances, which freaks me out a bit since I always think of their children as being too young for High School.  I think we are actually having lunch more frequently now that I have moved to Chattanooga than we did before I left.  It’s an interesting phenomena that suddenly it’s a priority to make time for lunch because I am only here for a limited number of days.  This seems to affect them, too, as we have often had trouble finding a time on our calendars that works for us and have then ended up rescheduling more than once.  I suppose it’s the same phenomena that makes me want to go, do, see everything in the Chattanooga area while we’re there, but kept me from feeling motivated to try out Columbus in the same way.  The psychology of a limited resource, I guess.

Regardless of what makes it possible for us to get together for lunch, we have a good time.  Even in complaining about some of the struggles each of us has experienced in our jobs, we have a good time.  It’s interesting how different it is to complain to people who know what you’re talking about than it is to complain to someone who looks at you blankly and nods as you spew out an incomprehensible collection of acronyms and names that are meaningless to anyone outside work.  Plus, these are just really good people and I enjoy being around them even if we’re not saying much of anything.

The afternoon gets a bit crazy and before I know it, I’m getting pinged by another group of colleagues whom I’m meeting for happy hour.  Ordinarily none of us would schedule a happy hour on a Monday evening, but feeling bad that I blew them off the last trip up, I wanted to get a happy hour in and it’s the only day that will work for me.  I’m flattered that they all manage to drag themselves out on a Monday night.  None of us is actually ready to leave the office at the allotted time, but we do manage to get out the door within a half an hour of the planned departure.

We meet at Gallo’s on Bethel Road, which has a great collection of beers to choose from, but tends to be noisy.  Fortunately for us, it’s a slow night and relatively quiet–at least until we get there.  Between my colleagues and two former colleagues who join us, we laugh so hard that people stare.  We are ridiculous, I’m sure, like a group of juveniles finding everything hysterical and each piling onto any joke.  It’s like we’ve been on our best behavior for so long that we’re just running off at the mouth now that we’ve let our guard down.  Later, Pat arrives to pick me up.  We order food since it’s already late for dinner.  We all laugh and talk some more.  But, we call at an early evening and head out shortly after everyone is done eating.  As I walk out to the car, I am smiling to myself.  It’s been too long since I cut loose with a group of people that know enough about each other to create the kind of “group joke” that everyone participates in.

On the way home, I think about the fun side of work.  The interaction with the people I work with that allows us to build trust and really work well together.  It’s interesting that the people who I can joke and laugh with (even in more polite ways) are the people I work with the best.  I trust people who laugh at my jokes.  I wonder what it is about shared humor that creates this sense of kinship?  I also wonder if it’s an accurate measure–have I been betrayed by people who get my sense of humor less often than by those who don’t?  Hmm.  Now I’m curious, my avid reader(s):  What makes you trust people?  When you think of people who get your sense of humor, do you trust them all?  And have you found this to be a good barometer for whom to trust?

Seeing Eagles and Shooting Soccer

Posted by dkrashb on

It’s our second day visiting my brother, sister-in-law, and nephew in Indianapolis.  We are at a lull in the day where each of us has found our own way to entertain ourselves.  I am working on photos.  Paul is doing something related to work.  Megan has gone for a run.  Scott is off somewhere.  We have a few hours before we will reconvene to go to the next soccer game.  Pat is the only one devoid of entertainment.  He wants to do something fun and he wants someone to do it with.

I ponder this for a while.  While Pat used to do things on his own quite often, they typically involved having a workshop and building something.  It’s not the kind of interest that you take with you when visiting others or even relocating temporarily.  His tools are being used by a friend instead of in storage, but they remain in Columbus.  It dawns on my why he wants to go back to Columbus so frequently.

In the meantime, my brother gets up and finds some sort of game for the two of them to go outside and play.  It looks like Jai Lai, which I would have never heard of except that we had a restaurant in Columbus when I was a child named “The Jai Lai,” so we all learned what it was.  Since Paul has taken care of entertaining Pat, I return to my photos.  Sorting through the shots from yesterdays soccer game is a challenge.  I actually had many decent shots (given that my goal was to shoot my nephew), but they mostly look the same.  I missed the crucial moment many, many times.  For example, when my nephew scored, I couldn’t get my lens turned fast enough and ended up with shots of the grass.  I have a new respect for sports photographers.  But now, I have hundreds of similar shots that really should be discarded because they are dull.

Pat suddenly returns to the room I’m working in all excited.  He tells me that he and Paul have seen an eagle diving into their neighbor’s yard and that I should come outside.  While I’m somewhat skeptical that they saw a Bald Eagle diving out of the sky in the middle of their suburban neighborhood, there have been eagles nesting by their neighborhood lake, so this is not as far fetched as it would have been even 5 years ago.  The only part that is at all surprising to me is that a Bald Eagle would choose to hunt rodents when there is a lake full of fish just a block away.  I make a mental note to google Bald Eagle eating habits later.

When I step outside, I am surprised by the bright sunshine.  While the weather was improving yesterday, it’s downright perfect now.  I suddenly regret that we didn’t decide to go for a short hike before the soccer game.  Instead, we walk the streets of my brother’s neighborhood looking for an eagle eating something.  We never spot that eagle.  Pat doesn’t take nearly as much interest in birds as I do, but he is interested in birds of prey.  So, when he tells me the bird they saw was much bigger than a Red-tailed Hawk, I tend to believe him.  But, now it’s getting close to time to leave, so we return to the house to get ready to go.

When we get to the soccer fields, I haul out my big lens again on it’s monopod.  As Pat and I settle in at the sidelines, a father sits next to us and says, “Are you with the Indianapolis Star?”  He points at my camera.  I assume that the Star is the local paper.  I laugh but before I can say anything, Pat jokes that we’re from the Chattanoogan some-name-he-made-up and that this game is getting big coverage.  The guy laughs mightily at that–this is a co-ed recreational soccer league–and says, oh, yeah, big, big game!

As I practice zeroing in on my nephew as he plays goalie (making my job much easier) the first half of the game, I periodically pause and look around.  It’s an interesting shift when I am thinking only about shooting a subject and I’m looking through a telephoto at that subject, and then I suddenly look outside the lens and allow the full scene to enter my consciousness.  It’s a good analogy for tunnel vision, I guess, which is, of course, an analogy for narrow thinking.

I think about one of my least favorite corporate expressions that’s being overused these days:  “Laser Focused.”  Remaining “laser focused” allows me to shoot my nephew without getting distracted by the pretty leaves across the field, the crooked lines drawn on the field, or even the ball.  But failing to look around causes me to miss all of those things, including who’s actually winning the game.  I experiment with looking for other things to shoot when the ball is at the other end of the field.  This creates an interesting tension between keeping an eye on the ball so that I know when my nephew is likely to be back in action and peering down that telephoto lens at some other subject, when I’m most likely to miss what’s going on in the game.

Then, Pat points out a big bird circling over the woods across the field.  I had seen it and dismissed it as a vulture because of its size.  Now, as I look again, I realize that it is not a vulture, but I can’t tell what it is.  It’s too far away and I don’t have my binoculars with me.  We watch it circling and then it suddenly tucks it’s wings into a shape you would expect to see on a military fighter plane and dives towards the earth at break-neck speed.  Pat sees a white head and is convinced we’ve seen another Bald Eagle.  I’m less convinced.  I didn’t see a white head (although it could have been a juvenile) and I’m still not confident that eagles commonly hunt on land.  I make a second note to google eagle eating habits.  However, I can’t say that I’ve ever seen a hawk that big or one that dove like that.

I hope that it was a Bald Eagle.  I remember the first time I saw one in the wild.  It was 1992 and I was on a trip to the East coast of Maine.  At that time, I’m not sure if there were any places closer to Columbus, OH where you could see a Bald Eagle in the wild than the East Coast of Maine?  DDT destroyed the population.  It’s unbelievable to me that I was able to drive 15 minutes from our home in Columbus to a metro park to watch a nesting pair of Bald Eagles for the past two years and that my brother has a pair nesting in his neighborhood.  It’s one of those stories of hope that makes me think it’s possible to correct the damage that we’ve done and restore some sort of balance to the ecosystems we depend on.

But returning to the game, I get to practice panning (a lot) when my nephew plays defense in the second half.  Turns out, panning it pretty difficult when you’re following a subject that is unpredictable.  I also get to use an autofocus setting that I don’t use often–it keeps refocusing as your subject moves.  It’s a little tricky to get used to, but a couple of my shots come out reasonably clear (out of about 100).  I definitely need more practice!  It’s funny that I’ve been trying to learn this hobby for about 7 years now, but I’ve been so sporadic that it’s like I have to start over each bout of shooting–I even have to get the manual for my camera out and relearn what’s what periodically.  Oh well, at least it’s a hobby that’s likely to last a lifetime.

After watching my nephew’s team win their second game of the end-of-the-season tournament, we all head home.  We pack up the van and we take two cars to dinner.  We eat at an Indian restaurant that’s on the way out of town for us and not far for everyone else.  Pat and I will drive to Columbus straight from dinner.  I am dubious about eating Indian–I like Indian, but it doesn’t always like me–but I order something mild.  As we say our goodbyes, I am suddenly sorry to be leaving.  For a moment, I ponder what it would be like to have a close-knit family that lives within a couple blocks of one another and walks in and out on a daily basis.  Then, we get into the van and go on our way.

Getting Older

Posted by dkrashb on

I have spent 6 days back in Chattanooga.  Pat spent 2.  He returned from his trip up to Columbus Thursday night and had one day in town.  Today, we will drive to Indianapolis.  My nephew is turning 18 on Tuesday.  We will spend the weekend there and then go on to Columbus Sunday night where I will work and visit as many friends as possible.

It’s funny how other people’s children become a measure of time for me.  Even my own nephews, whose birthdays I keep track of, progress through time at a rate that constantly shocks me.  Their birthdays somehow shifted from being a fun opportunity to delight and surprise a child to a reminder that I’m aging.  I’m not sure if this is more because of the delusion I suffer from that I am not actually getting older or if it’s because they stopped getting so excited about their birthdays when they entered the realm of double-digit birthdays.  Whatever the cause, it surprises me to realize that their birthdays have ended up being about me.

We load up in the car and head out.  We have a ton of gear for this trip.  We pack more for this road trip than we packed for two weeks in Germany.  But, I am taking a slew of electronics and work clothes as well as play clothes.  And, to the fill the suitcase even more, the temperature in Columbus is in the 50’s and it’s raining.  Funny how much more space sweaters occupy than T-shirts.

The drive to Indy is about 35 miles shorter than the drive to Columbus, so we are actually only adding about 150 miles to a trip to Columbus by going to Indy first.  We head up through Nashville and Louisville to get there.  As we approach Louisville, we decide to stop to get something to eat.  I find a restaurant that doesn’t sound like a chain and we pull off the freeway.  Unfortunately, there is a massive street fair going on at the stop we choose.  Traffic is backed up and there is no where to park.  We can’t get to the restaurant we’d selected and we decide to head on back to the highway just to get out of the congestion.

On the way back to the highway, we pass our second-choice restaurant, a fish fry place.  It has ample parking, so we pull in, get out, and walk in.  The place is tiny.  There are 2 ice cream parlor tables sitting just inside the door that block part of the area available to stand in line at the counter.  About 8 people can fit inside the door standing in line if they like each other.  There are 4 ahead of us now.  To the left, there is an old TV mounted up near the ceiling, pictures all over the walls that make me think of an older person’s living room, and 3 tables with 2 small chairs each.  One table is open, so we stand in line.

When it’s our turn to order, we ask if they have restrooms since this was an ulterior motive for stopping.  They have none.  This shocks us–in Ohio, it’s not legal to have a restaurant with sit down tables and no bathroom.  Pat pleads, telling the woman that we’ve been driving for hours and had no idea the street fair was going on.  But she is afraid of setting a precedent with so many people from the street fair stopping in looking for a restroom.  I contemplate suggesting that if she make the restroom available to customers only, she might sell more food, but decide that she is firm about the bathroom and that it’s not worth the argument.  Since we are both able to wait, we decide to go ahead and eat while we’re here and find a restroom after.

The food is probably fantastic if it’s something you were raised on.  For us, it’s just greasy and flavorless.  There is no good reason for having stopped here at all; the only result is that our bellies are full, we feel slightly sick, we still have to pee, and our arteries are probably more clogged.  Oh well.  We head on down the road and stop at the first rest stop.

When we arrive in Indy, our first order of business is to attend a soccer game.  My nephew plays in a recreational league and my brother coaches his team.  We all head out to the soccer fields together, me with my camera, big lens, and monopod in the hope of getting some good action shots.  I’m not really that much of a fan of shooting sporting events in general, but when it’s one of my nephews, I take a sudden interest.  I guess it’s pretty obvious that I’m not a sports photographer when you look at my shots–they’re all of my nephew rather than following the ball.  I get some practice panning and play with various shutter speeds to see what kinds of effects I get, and, my brother’s/nephew’s team wins, so it’s good all the way around.

That night, we decide to walk to the Mellow Mushroom for dinner.  It’s too cold to sit outside, so we pile into a large booth.  Pat and I decide to share a pizza, but the pizza doesn’t come and doesn’t come.  Finally, the waitress brings our pizza about the time everyone else is almost finished with their dinners.  She apologizes and explains that another server took our pizza for their table, which caused the delay.  We are famished by this time.  We eat our pizza loaded with greasy cheese and greasy pepperoni with a relish that belies the amount of “greasy” we’ve already had today.  I end up ordering a beer to wash it down.  I was trying not to because my brother is buying and I don’t want to run up his tab, but I learn that Pat and Paul bought Corona and that Mello Mushroom has Oberon on tap.  So, not looking forward to Corona, I order an Oberon to enjoy with my pizza.

When we return home, we celebrate with “homemade” chocolate cake and ice cream.  In a rare demonstration of  . . . not sure what . . . Scott practices waltzing with his mother around the kitchen.  Maybe all the sugar in the cake and ice cream got to him?  After dancing enough to demonstrate the waltz to the rest of us, we all retire downstairs to watch “The Event.”  I fall asleep about 10 minutes in and we all go off to bed after the episode is over.

My First Chattanoogan Drive

Posted by dkrashb on

The hardest part of taking a two-week vacation is going back to work.  I ease into it gradually, getting up early and taking a morning walk with Pat and even taking my camera so I can shoot the sunrise.  We wander along the riverfront slowly, shooting every few minutes.  We run into another photographer.  I ask him how he likes his tripod (having still not bought one) and he chides me for trying to take landscape shots without one.  OK, maybe not “chides,” but I was pretty humiliated when he asked me how long I’d been shooting and I said, “about 7 years” and he said, “time to get a tripod!”  He also points out a sunrise rainbow that’s formed on the other side of the bridges, which I had completely failed to notice.  Strike two.  We manage to enjoy the sunrise none-the-less, but as a rainbow predicts, rain drops started falling so we high-tailed it home before we (by which I mean my camera) got too wet.

After two weeks off, I’m ready to go back to work from an emotional perspective, but from a pure memory standpoint, it’s like bits and pieces of information have fallen out of my brain and have to be swept up and poured back in again.  However, the last bits of dust that make it all fall back into a coherent picture have to be chased around and forcibly gathered.  Things that seemed vitally important two weeks ago are now just distant memories that I don’t know the status of.  I find myself wishing I had timed my vacation differently, but then I pause to wonder when would have been a better time?  It’s never a good time to take a vacation.

I dive into my email.  It’s actually not as bad as I was afraid it would be.  Fortunately, there is someone to cover for me for once and the more urgent items got taken care of while I was gone.  As I hunch over my keyboard sitting on an ottoman, I am quickly reminded of something I didn’t take care of before going on vacation–I must get an office chair.  The pain in my neck has not gone away even after 2 weeks away from my “desk.”  After only a couple of hours back, I’m in so much pain that I have to move back to the couch where my head is supported.  I decide that I will go chair shopping tonight.

Pat left this morning to go back to Columbus for three days.  I could have gone back with him and worked from Columbus, but I feel a need to stay home for at least a week.  He wants to go home next week, too, so I will go back then.  In the meantime, I am left to keep myself busy for the next three days.  There is one advantage to having just come back from a two-week vacation–I will have plenty to do.

It’s now after 5PM EST and I decide to take a break to go chair shopping.  I google office furniture and discover a website that has some really nice office chairs.  Just out of curiosity, I look up their location and discover that they are located 1 block from me.  This is a nice surprise!  I walk over there to see what they have.  The woman there, Leslie, gets down chair after chair and asks me to sit in each one for a while to get a feel for it.  There is one chair that has a funky neck rest on it.  It’s the only chair that has it.  I sit down and the neck rest hits a sore spot in the crick in my neck.  I think it feels rather awkward and it’s uncomfortable, but Leslie gives is a tug and adjusts it so that the top edge is sitting just under the ridge at the base of my skull.  There is something relieving about being able to set the weight of my head on this headrest.  Although it’s still putting pressure on my neck in ways that I don’t like, I find myself wondering if it might feel better after getting used to it.  Leslie makes the most amazing suggestion:  She tells me to take the chair home and try it for a couple of days to see how it works out.  This is the perfect solution–I get to try the thing before I buy it!  However, I wasn’t optimistic when I came over here that I would find anything, so I didn’t bring the car.  I contemplate rolling the chair down the sidewalk, but see scuffed wheels full of road dust in my head and decide that’s not a good idea.  Instead, I walk back home, pick up the van, and drive in Chattanooga for the very first time.

Yes, it was only a block from home, but, remember, I had to drive 2 blocks by the time I went round-trip.  I did not even use the GPS.  I got in the van, started it up, and drove it like I’d been driving every day for months.  I think about it and realize I haven’t driven since our last trip to Columbus when I drove part of the way home.  That was a month ago.  But, I make it to the furniture store unscathed and amused that this tiny jaunt would end up being my first official drive in Chattanooga!

I retrieve the chair that I’ve signed out on loan and manage to load it into the car with only a couple of new bruises, and then go into the grocery store (which is right across the lot) to get some beer and dinner.  I pick up some stuffed shells, which have become a standard “lazy” dinner lately, and Sierra Nevada.  I forgot to grab a shopping bag when I left the apartment and was unable to find one in the van, so I tell the cashier I don’t need a bag.  Normally, I get $.10 for each bag that I bring and use.  I’ve always thought it was $.10 for every bag of theirs that I don’t use.  Apparently not.  I do not get $.10 for not using a bag at all.  When I think about it, I bring in reusable grocery bags that are 2x the size of the paper bags they use if they bag my groceries, yet, I don’t get $.20 when I fill one of my bags because I saved two of theirs.  No.  I get $.10.  It occurs to me that perhaps I should try bringing a bunch of hand-puppet-sized bags and put one item in a bag.  Would I still get $.10 for each bag I bring?  I may have just found a way to make shopping at Green Life affordable!

When I go back to the house and get my chair upstairs, I go back to work while my pasta shells heat.  I adjust the chair just right and feel my neck stretching and my shoulders relaxing.  I think maybe I will like this chair.

The Last Vacation Day

Posted by dkrashb on

One thing I have learned through experience that I try to do with every vacation, but especially one involving international travel: Always fly home 2 days before returning to work. Best case, it gives me a day to unpack, do laundry, get caught up on mail, nap at will, and settle back in. Worst case, if Pat gets detained in immigration (or a storm rolls in) and we miss a connection, it gives us an extra day to get home. We have needed that day for travel three times now, but when we don’t, I always appreciate having that day at my disposal. This is doubly true when my body has gone through a time change of more than 3 hours. I don’t do time changes well. Coming back from the West Coast actually messes me up worse than coming back from Europe, but I still need a few days to get back on schedule.

We managed to get into Atlanta last night without incident. The drive from Atlanta to Chattanooga was killer. When I booked our flight, I thought, “Oh, we’ll get into Atlanta at 7:30PM, that won’t be too bad for the drive home.” I failed to add 6 hours to that–our bodies were still on Germany time. To us, it felt like we arrived at 1:30AM. Then, it took another hour by the time we got our luggage and found our car in the “economy” lot (which turned out to cost almost double what the economy lot in Columbus costs). We hadn’t made it half way home before I was nodding off in the passenger seat and Pat was soon struggling to keep his eyes open behind the wheel. We had to stop and find a place to buy some water, stand up, get some fresh air. I don’t know which exit we took (I was probably asleep), but as we drove down the main drag, it seemed every building was boarded up. Some had signs that said “open during construction.” Others look abandoned. I remembered that tornados went through the area earlier in the year before we moved from Columbus and was astounded by the remaining devastation after so many months. We pulled into a gas station that had a trailer for a building. A large building was about halfway built behind the trailer. It’s a creative solution to staying in business. My mind shifted from the misery of being overly tired to the fortune of not having gone through a tornado. Unfortunately, this didn’t keep me awake for long once we were back on the road.

When we pulled into our parking lot, Pat told me that he’d been nodding off again for the last 10 miles. I said that he should have pulled off and found a place to take a nap. He had thought about it, but decided it would be weird to pull off the road so close to home. I replied, “Better weird than dead.” He agreed, but we were already home so it was a pointless conversation. We drug our tired selves upstairs, not even bothering to take all of our luggage with us, and fell into bed.

So, here we are, we’ve made it home without incident and now it’s Sunday morning. I managed to sleep through the night and wake up at 6AM after our long drive home the night before. I have no desire to do laundry or anything else that isn’t vacation-like. However, I don’t want to end up laying on the couch all day because it will slow down my adjustment to the time change. I talk Pat into walking across the bridge for breakfast in the Bluffview Art District. On the way back, we decide to walk down to the aquarium and find out about their River Gorge Explorer tour. They have a really nice boat that they use for tours of the river gorge. We confirm the schedule at the aquarium, but don’t buy any tickets. On the way back to the apartment, I talk Pat into going on the sunset tour tonight. I purchase tickets online when we get home just in case there is a big rush and the boat fills.

We do a little unpacking and a little laundry, but we spend a couple hours relaxing, dozing off and taking a short nap before it’s time to walk back over to the aquarium. We stop in member reception because the online ticketing didn’t have a way to get our membership discount. The guy is extremely nice and apologetic in crediting back the discount. The aquarium also credited us for 3 adult tickets we had purchased when we signed up for our membership. With the $10 we save on the cruise, we’re now exactly even on the cost of the membership–it’s a really amazing deal.

We walk around trying to figure out where we need to be for the boat ride. The boat is still out on the previous tour. When it returns, we watch it spin in the water and then slide sideways over to the dock. When we get on the boat, there is a video playing that explains how it was built and then transported to TN from WA. Two of the boat captains actually picked it up in Florida, tested it, and then brought it up the river to Chattanooga. It’s a very cool boat that goes very fast, but I lost interest in all the details about what it could do. We have to remain seated during the fast portion of the ride. We get up to speeds over 60 MPH, but the captain stops suddenly whenever he’s approaching other river traffic or docks, etc. The wake rises above the windows when we stop, but the guide explains that the fast stops and starts actually minimize the amount of wake, preventing rocking other boats.

The guide is actually a naturalist and, apparently, a history buff. He talks us through the history of the area going back to the Native Americans and the Civil War. He also talks about the wildlife in the area and points out anything that he sees as we go down the river. When we get to a wide open area, the boat cruises slowly and we all go stand up on the deck, watching for wildlife. We pass the convergence of Suck Creek with the Tennessee River and the naturalist explains that before the river was dammed, there was a huge whirlpool at the confluence that would suck down boats, etc. Apparently, it’s still there, just in deeper water. I wasn’t clear if it was still dangerous or not, however. In any case, he solved the mystery of why someone would name a creek “Suck.”

I have brought my big lens in the hope of seeing exciting wildlife, although I’m not exactly sure how well I will be able to shoot from a moving boat. We see many, many Blue Heron. I knew they had recovered well in Ohio after the banning of DDT, but the number along the Tennessee River is amazing. The most exciting bird (to me) we see is the Belted Kingfisher. Unfortunately, we’re too far away for a good shot. We also spot a huge gathering of Turkey Vultures circling above the river. I keep my eyes peeled for masses of dead fish floating on the water, but we never do spot what’s attracted them. While Vultures are always a little creepy, having had a large die-off of fish in our pond when we lived in the country many years ago, I have tremendous gratitude to vultures–I didn’t have to clean up a single dead fish.

When we return to the dock, we are all invited to go up on the deck to watch the captain spin the boat 360 degrees using a remote control. We stand on the boat while it spins. Then, the captain steers it sideways to the dock using the same remote. It’s a little crazy that a boat can maneuver like that. As we de-board and walk up the dock, we discover the lights on the pier have interesting patterns that shift as we move. We can see these lights from our apartment, but they just look like normal lights with interesting shapes from across the river. Up close, the light shoots up a post that has metal shaped in parabolas and a metal reflector at the top. The parabolas reflect the light so that it looks like the entire post is in motion as we walk. The reflector at the top doesn’t appear lit at all looking at it from below, but from across the river, it looks like it is the source of the light.

As we return home crossing the bridge, we discuss our day and decide that it was the perfect last day of vacation.