What Have I Learned From 35 Years of Tracking My Weight

Would I like to lose weight? Yes.

Will I lose weight? Maybe.

Look at this picture (if you are on a phone turn it sideways):

The horizontal grid lines are ten pounds apart.
The blue line was my goal weight for most of this time period.
The red line is a place I'd be happy to be now.

This is the last 35 years of my life, as told by my weight. Key on the numbers:

1. 1988: I join weight watchers for the first time, at age 33. The weight I was then is a weight I would love to be now!
   
2. 1997: I move from Chicago to DC for a major career change, the same week my father dies. After about a year settling in, I buckle down and lose weight.
   
3. 2008: My sister dies unexpectedly, resulting in a major lifestyle change as I become a parent in the midst of grief.
   
4. 2010: I start this blog, determined to gain control over at least the physical parts of my life as life with grief-stricken adolescents remains chaotic. I de-emphasize work.
   
5. 2019: I retire, which blows up every habit I ever had. And then the pandemic strikes.
   
6. 2022: I embrace "intuitive eating", buying and eating whatever I want whenever I want.
   

Why do I keep coming back to this picture? Am I just wallowing in fact that my current weight is right up at my all time peak from 25 years ago? What can I learn by looking at this history, enriched with other stories of my life? Memories are faulty, but here my actual weight is recorded accurately. Looking back over this blog has also been helpful, to color in what was going on in my life during the ups and downs recorded on the graph. Here are some tidbits I've gleaned from anchoring my other memories in the truth of my weight:

• Losing a lot of weight for me is likely to happen relatively quickly, if at all.
• Not paying attention to what I eat and what I weigh means I'll gain weight.
• Each significant weight loss involved eating low carb a lot of the time, not eliminating sweets entirely, and never choosing low-calorie formulations of real food but instead cooking and eating more vegetables and meat from scratch.
• Each significant weight loss required a great deal of attention and focus, taking up bandwidth in my life.
  
• Each weight loss period was also associated with increased exercise and conscious activity levels.
  

How might I turn the above information into actual weight loss? Do I have the motivation and interest to focus on this? Stay tuned, I guess, because I don't know the answer yet.

California Dreamin'

 

View from the dorm

Wow, is northern California absolutely beautiful! And, it seems my girl is in love with it. And with school. And with the people she has met so far. I'm feeling she is well launched! 

The last week before leaving was fraught, indeed. Many last minute errands, several farewells (her brother threw her a going-away party!), and tears as we said goodbye to the dogs and drove off to the airport. But through all of this, "It's gonna be great!" was the mantra, even if sometimes through gritted teeth.

We got to SFO mid-day, and drove the almost two hours to Santa Cruz nonstop, going directly to Target to buy the essentials we didn't get in advance. By then we were exhausted, so off to the motel for a rest, before venturing out in the car to get more fully oriented. I was astounded by the change in terrain from the relatively flat and green town by the water, up the mountain through brown meadows to the wooded top part of campus where the dorm is. My ears popped on the way up, every time. We found our appointed unloading spot for the next morning, located one of her classroom buildings, and drove randomly around the mountainous campus, and then down to the waterfront campus three miles away where one of her classes would be. The main campus, not even including the coastal campus, is enormous and beautiful, stretching a couple of miles up and down the mountain, and about a mile across. It is completely separate from the town. There are clusters of housing units with food and various amenities, called colleges, and other clusters of the academic classrooms, laboratories, and libraries. They are designed into the landscape so that you don't see buildings until you are one them.

Evening view from overlook,
halfway up the mountain to campus

We got takeout dumplings from across the street from the motel. There was (yet another) orientation zoom session she had to be on in the evening, and she also wanted to take her time doing her hair in the privacy of our motel bathroom (before having to be in the gang bathrooms). After eating, I pretty much crashed out while she seemed to be having a good time on the zoom call. I fell into my signature hour-long deep sleep the minute I closed my eyes, but woke up when she came back into the room after facetiming with a friend in the motel courtyard. We both tossed and turned, dozed and woke, off and on for the rest of the nervous night.

Dorm from parking lot
Many stairs involved!

My girl had astutely signed us up for an 8:15 unloading slot, so we were among the first wave of cheerful students and parents rolling laundry hampers full of luggage and bedding and boxes around parking lots and into the dorms. Her room is a large triple, and she got first pick of the beds. All of the setups were the same - lofted upper single bunks with wooden desks and wardrobes under each one. She picked the one that seemed like it would have a view into the redwood grove behind the dorm from the bed! 

We had a flurry of opening bags and unboxing things, laying out power strips and surge suppressors, while waiting for roommates to show up. No-one joined us, and we decided to head back out to Target to knock items off the new list of more useful stuff we had been compiling while we unpacked and set up. It felt familiar to go back to the same store, but we also saw a Bed, Bath and Beyond with a final liquidation clearance and went in. We scored some high-end sheets as her second set for a pitifully low amount of money. 

After Target we went to a Hawaiian poke bar I had spotted on the map, and we got the absolute best poke bowls ever. But we had to hustle back for the first event happening on campus. 

Digressive anecdote follows:

The bed that trapped me

As she went off to the orientation thing, I decided to stay and set up the new foam pad and mattress cover and make up her bed. I pulled the plastic wrap off the compressed foam mattress topper, and from the ladder at the foot of the bed started unrolling it, and got the rest of it laid out while standing on the floor at the side and head of the bed. As the foam continued to puff up, I climbed back up the ladder at the foot and flung the top of the white fabric mattress cover as far towards the head of the bed as I could, and then tucked in the foot. The cover stuck to the foam pad, so from the floor I pulled and tugged to get it deployed over the rest of the top of the bed. I reached between the wooden bed frame and the wall to get at the cover from the head, and my arm was suddenly stuck! I couldn't pull my elbow back out through the small gap between the frame and the wall, even though I had gotten it in there somehow!

It was hilarious, and scary. I was alone in her securely locked dorm room - only the coded ID card could unlock the door from the outside. My arm wasn't uncomfortable while stuck in there, but no matter how I twisted and maneuvered, it wouldn't come out. I couldn't move the heavy wooden bed frame, anchored in place with the heavy wooden desk and newly stuffed with clothes wardrobe pushed against it. I tried to climb up the bedframe to slide my arm out the top of the frame, but I couldn't cling to the frame with my arm stuck. Feeling like Lucy Ricardo, I contemplated my next options.

My right arm was stuck, my left arm was free. My phone was in my lower cargo pocket on my right leg. I might be able to reach it, and one-handed dial my girl, but I pictured dropping it, having to remove my shoes and socks with only my feet to pick it up with my toes. Besides, the cell phone coverage in her room was lousy. Then I had an image of the missing roommates coming in with parents to find me stuck there and barefoot. 

That wouldn't do, so with a mighty shove by my stuck right hand and a pull with my free left hand, I moved the heavy wardrobe an inch. Then I could slide the bed just the half inch I needed, and I was free! Just as I was rubbing my poor red but free elbow, my girl came back in.

Return to main narrative:

At 3 that first afternoon, there was a half hour reception, introduction of some staff, and a very pointed dismissal of parents to allow the students to attend some mandatory meetings and optional additional events. We were each on our own. I went to the beach.

Santa Cruz has a road along the waterfront, with several parking areas every few blocks. There is a walking / biking path right along the cliff edge - the water is several yards down from the land. The weather was severe clear, and the California sun felt like it had a different quality than we get in the east. The temperature was perfect though the fierce sun meant that often you need a sweater in the shade but long for shorts and a skimpy top in the sun. I walked and sat on benches and read, content to be in such a beautiful place and rejoicing that my girl seemed to be settling in.

Saturday morning we exchanged texts, and set up a tentative evening rendezvous. Knowing she would be so busy, I floated the idea of going home early, but that received a lukewarm reception. So I decided to embrace leisure and tourism.

Seals under the wharf

Amusement park from the wharf

Santa Cruz also has a downtown, a municipal wharf, and an amusement park on a boardwalk by the beach. I drove out to the wharf, and spent time walking the wharf, people watching and then also seal watching. I went to a dog beach, and spent a very long time watching the canine and human interactions. I read on a bench on the sea cliff in the sun. From the motel, I walked to a beer garden (passing three other beer gardens on the way) and had a lovely lunch. 

My girl managed to squeeze me in for about an hour Saturday night, during which time we drove around downtown and stopped at Trader Joe's for a couple of necessities. But she had to get back to campus to attend a forest rave with her new friends. Also, one of her roommates had appeared and she wanted to spend some time with her. We set up another tentative rendezvous for the next night.

State park beach, with Coastal Campus seen in the background

So Sunday, I went to a lovely fancy breakfast at a downtown cafe. Then, I went to see Oppenheimer. (I opted against Barbie, because I was afraid that on a weekend daytime showing there might be kids.) While in the movie, I got a text from my girl saying she was downtown having lunch with friends, and would be happy to meet me there when she was done. The timing worked well. We met up easily ("downtown" is not that big) and wandered together for a while. We made another brief shopping trip for some more necessities (this time at CVS) and I dropped her off after a couple of hours. She had some pre-work to do before classes the next day. I had time to walk to ice cream and the beach, and one more trip to pick up a useful item for my girl at a hardware store (a flashlight - they have already had a power outage in her dorm!)

First day of school,
Grade 15

Her first class was at 9 am at the Coastal Campus. As I didn't need to leave for SFO until 9:30, I volunteered to pick her up and drive her to class. As a rule, she will take the bus, unless she manages to find a fellow student who drives. So Monday morning, I went to the usual pickup spot, and enjoyed a few minutes in the redwood grove while waiting. While she might have been pleased to just hang out and party with her new friends, she exclaimed that she loved her pre-work, was absolutely convinced she was studying the right thing. Biology is her jam. 

My trip home was long but completely uneventful. And, I am so happy for my girl, embracing the next step of her life with gusto! Her dad picked me up at the airport and was also thrilled to hear she is doing so well!

My Ireland: History, Whiskey and Beer

The stars are where we spent the nights

I loved my trip to Ireland! If I were to be totally honest, in terms of frequency, my experience was not quite the order I have it in the title. It would more accurately be Beer, History, and Whiskey, but I went for the lovely rhythm. It's kind of the Irish way.

This was my first trip with this set of folks. We had my Boat Partner (BP), her husband the history guy (HG), and their good friend, Mr. Irish Boyo. (IB). I have spent a great deal of time with BP, sometimes in unpleasant or difficult circumstances, so I knew we were likely to be compatible for travel. Since they've been married for 40+ years, I also know HG, and while we are totally different people, I like him quite a bit. IB was an unknown quantity, but he came highly recommended.

I did none of the planning - it was primarily a scouting trip for future forays by IB, who was in the role of our native guide. He has a lot of Irish heritage and feeling, but had only been in-country for a two week tour twenty years ago, but that made him a comparative expert. So he laid out a suggested itinerary and asked for feedback and help scheduling hotels. The idea was to hit certain specific historical and cultural points, with as many different pubs and beers as could be worked in. It all worked fine.

Lovely green countryside

We flew non-stop from Newark to Dublin, the cheapest non-stops available when IB booked the flights six months ago. (IB spelled my name wrong in the reservation, an error I didn't have a chance to discover until we got to the airport, and I spent an unpleasant hour with Air Lingus customer service getting it fixed, but it finally worked out. Note to self: make sure to double check oneself, don't rely on others. And arrive early at the airport.) The flight arrived at 5 am local time, so we got some coffee and our first Irish scones at the airport while we figured out transport into town. We opted for the local bus, and were in downtown Dublin at 6:00 am. With our not-insignificant baggage, standing on a deserted street corner, every business in sight shuttered We couldn't get to the AirBnB until the afternoon. As a result, we dragged our luggage around quite a bit (had to stop for more coffee and scones) before we finally found a place to store them. Hooray for the app Luggage Hero! 

BP, IB, HG, and me in yet another pub

Our biggest difficulty was very few things were open early. This turned out to be the case everywhere we went. Restaurants listed under "breakfast" opened at 8:30, 9:00 or even 10:00! Even some hotel restaurants started serving at 8:30. Because we wanted to cover so much territory, we wanted to be up and out each day. We found that there was the occasional coffee shop open early, and while they looked like pastry-only places, to our delight most of them served the "Full Irish Breakfast" that we soon loved. Fried eggs, "bacon" (looked like ham), my very favorite Irish sausage, black or white pudding (don't google it), baked beans, and toast. Luckily, we found such a coffee shop the first day (for what by some counts was Third Breakfast). We also found during our road trip many gas stations that had surprisingly good cafes inside - fresh baked goods, good coffee, hot cafeteria-type service (more sausage!) We didn't try them for anything other than breakfast, I have doubts about how good they would be for dinner.

From left: IB, BP, HG, and me

By noon on our first day we were ready to get to the Guinness brewery. They have a six-story "visitor experience" building, not tours, but it was well done. We also learned how to pour a pint with a perfect head on it, and sample some of their other beers. This was a good launch for the Beer portion of our tour. IB is a real beer guy, with a tap room in his basement that displays his collections of stolen beer glasses and coasters, and an app to keep track of everything he's tried with notes. With a brief quiet chat with the bartender, he added to his display collection right off on the first day.

Every dinner, and a few lunches, were in pubs, and were very good. There was a sameness to the menus, generally hot sandwiches and chips (fries), fish and chips, usually something more ambitious such as broiled fresh fish, sometimes other traditional Irish food such as lamb stew. I liked it all. The chips were especially good, and just chips and beer could be dinner some nights. I managed to find a few afternoon ice creams, but generally sweets were not in our plans, as most don't go so well with the beer. The first thing we'd do upon entering a pub was to scan the taps. Guinness was always there, along with their related brands, plus Coors and Corona and an Italian beer often showed up. But often there was also one or two taps dedicated to a local brew, and that usually became our choice. I learned what I liked, but didn't stick to it. Experimentation was the name of the game.

Early morning in Wexford

Walking through the cities is one of the great pleasures of traveling. Sadly, I am out of condition and feeling my bad knee. The first day, according to my fitbit, we covered nine miles, much of it hauling around our baggage. None of the other days hit that total, but still there was enough walking to double my average steps from the previous month. I went slow, and I sat whenever I could, but I got everywhere I wanted to get. Many of the ruins and castles we visited had hills or stairs, and the stairs in particular slowed me way down. When we were at a history stop or in a city, we often split up during the day, and I could amuse myself with my camera and not feel like I was holding anyone back. We learned how to take buses in Dublin --google maps to tell us what to look for where, excellent real time signage, all fares 2.60 exact change -- and BP and I rode in the front seat of a double decker all along the river front, big fun. Taxis were available to flag down, and Uber had an arrangement so the app would summon a taxi (with roof light and meter) and you would pay through the app like usual. I guess there aren't drivers using their own cars there.

Wexford waterfront

We picked up a rental in downtown Dublin the second day and headed out of town in the pouring rain. IB was our driver, and BP his co-pilot. Those first few miles, with a lot of traffic all on the wrong side of the road, we were all helping co-pilot, as we got used to traffic circles and cryptic road signs. We had phone-based navigation, which took us on all sorts of roads, including narrow tracks with signs saying "oncoming traffic in the middle of the road". It was fun watching IB learn to drive, and BP learn how to help him out. We checked off each new accomplishment (passed someone on an expressway! passed someone on a two lane road! 15-point turn on an unpaved lane with ditches!) By the end, when we returned to Dublin, IB was relaxed and confident.

Just a random ruin we stopped at

Our group dynamics also grew more relaxed and confident. I realized that HG was going to zig and zag as he saw a new squirrel to chase, and he couldn't pass anyone without striking up a conversation (I said we were very different.) IB and I grew more relaxed as we got to know each other. I knew we were doing OK, though. On the third morning, we were cranky (annoying hotel, no breakfast yet, changing plans on the fly without discussing it) when IB smashed his finger during the daily assembly of the 3D puzzle that was our luggage in the small car. He said (I paraphrase) "fuck fuck fuckity fuck fuck FUCK". As we got in the car, someone said, in a small voice, "fucking luggage". Someone else said "fucking hotel". Someone else said, "no fucking breakfast". "Fucking small cars." "Fucking hotel clerk". It went on, and we were all dissolving into giggles as we hit the road. 

From the outside, the castle-ie-ist castle on a city street

We made bunches of history stops. There were ruined castles everywhere, many of them open to be explored. We stopped at battle sites and markers and a museum for the Irish rising in 1798. HG had created and is marketing a board game about the conflict, after meticulous research (everything hinged on whether or not the French landed their army). In Cork, we visited an island that had served as a fortress and prison in the 19th and 20th century. IB's grandfather escaped to America from Cork during the Irish Civil War in the 1920s, but would have ended up in that prison had he not run in time. I don't know so much about the convoluted history of Ireland, but had done enough reading to understand how Ireland was England's first colony, and served as a testing ground for many colonial policies used elsewhere in the empire. 

Big 19th century house repurposed as contemporary abbey

Much of the preparation I had made for the trip was reading novels with Irish settings and scenes. I was happy to find connections. I read This is Happiness, by Niall Williams, set in a small village in 1950. It's your basic coming-of-age story, but the backdrop is the coming of electricity to the village. I was thrilled to read a display in a museum about Rural Electrification in 1950's Ireland, and to see many of the dynamics that played out in the book be reflected there (maybe the author had seen the same display?) In a still-functioning but open to the public abbey, I read about how suppression of the Catholic orders and indeed education for Catholics from Henry VIII through Cromwell and right up to the twentieth century led many religious orders  to establish Irish foundations in France and Spain. This abbey had finally moved back to Ireland from France during the First World War, but they walled up their precious relicts in the catacombs back in France. This was, indeed, a plot point in a book I read that takes place during the First World War! 

We toured two whiskey distilleries, Tullamore DEW, in Tullamore, and Jameson, in Dublin (they don't actually make whiskey in Dublin anymore so it was another "visitor experience"). The Tullamore one was fabulous! Irish coffee to start, a complete tour including a sample right from the barrel in the aging warehouse, and more samples and guided tasting. Jameson was cheesy, but fun, and also included guided tasting. 

Our very own castle!

We stayed in two AirBnBs and the rest hotels. Often we had a hotel on the outskirts of town (much cheaper), so the Uber/taxi was useful to get us to walk around towns and visit pubs. One AirBnB was a castle! We had the whole castle to ourselves, seventy-five steps high to get out onto the battlements. It was basically a square tower, with one function for each floor, so not only did we each get our own bedroom, but we had our own floor! There were great handholds available for the spiral staircase, and especially for the transition required from staircase to floor at each level - it involved a bit of jockeying for me, to make sure I stepped up with my good leg each time. The castle was in the middle of nowhere, so we stopped at a grocery store and bought food and drink to carry us through. It could have been cold, but both the flooring and the bed were heated. We met the hosts outside in the morning (they live in a cottage nearby) and heard a bit about the restoration. They are booked almost always, so hopefully their labor of love / investment is paying off.

My castle bedroom

My castle bedroom also came with its own canon

All of the castle details were exquisite

Castle stairs, with rope for handhold

One comment on Irish wiring. They use the UK electricity plugs, and each plug also had an on-off switch, sometimes some distance from the plug itself. Both AirBnB showers had a distant on/off switch on a wall outside the bathroom, and then an electrical unit inside the shower with an on-off switch that created the hot water and water pressure. Never saw such a thing before, but I have read in novels about British old houses with retrofitted bathrooms with "geysers" to heat the water for each bathtub. I guess this is the latest version of that.

Cobh, from the island in the harbor

My favorite stop was Cork, and the associated small town of Cobh. It was a very sweet small town (very accomodating to tourists). This is where we went out to the island in the harbor for a half day. I spent my time outside, climbing the walls and taking in the views. The island had many small focused little museum exhibits, about its time as a fortress and its time as a prison, but I skipped most of that. (The guys were mostly in there.)

 

 

 

Scenic Cobh

A beautiful day to be outside-Spike Island in Cork Harbor

When we got to Cork for the night, we rode a taxi from our outskirts hotel to downtown, and followed the advice of the taxi driver. First, a brief stop at the English Market, then some gift shopping, then to a local brewery, a different local restaurant/pub, and finally to yet another pub where we finally encountered trad (traditional) music, one of our quests. These were musicians not exactly hired by the pub, not a band, who came in to play. There were four fiddles, a flute/penny whistle, and an Irish piper. The talking and noise of the pub went on around them, but I was fortunate enough to eventually get a seat by them and really listen and observe. There was a young woman who asked questions and got kind direction from the older guys. It was really sweet. 

Busy pub!

 

We had extraordinary luck with the weather - the only rain was our first couple of days in Dublin and down to Wexford. It may have actually rained other days, but not what you would really call rain. Just some extra thick wet air. But we were blessed with a lot of clear skies and beautiful views. And the rain is what makes everything so very very green.

Ruined abbey

Abbey from the inside

Vista along the Ring of Kerry- rough west coast

I took many pictures of the intimate details
This is on a rock wall outside a graveyard

We got many recommendations for restaurants from TripAdvisor, and all of the tours we took asked us to review on TripAdvisor. So it seemed fair play to me, and I did.

Final pub night

Ireland Picture of the Day

 Not goin’ to write yet, but here’s a picture I took. I think it would be a great photo to use for a jigsaw puzzle. 

City of Cobb, Cork Harbor

Cleveland Going Dark

 In the paper this week there was a headline: Book now for next year's total eclipse! 

It wasn't an advertisement, it was an article about the total eclipse of the sun that will pass in a great diagonal line across much of the United States on April 8, 2024. People are already making plans to be in the path of the totality. Prominently mentioned was how Cleveland would be a prime viewing spot. I've been in the path of many partial eclipses in my time, but never a totality, and given I may not have a lot of other opportunities, I decided to seize the day and go for it. 

During a partial eclipse, small openings
for sunlight show the progress of the eclipse.
The effect through dappled leaves is dazzling!
Each crescent is replicating the eclipse.

It turns out a lot of downtown Cleveland hotels were already sold out, so I checked into AirBnbs. There weren't so many downtown locations available, but there was a cluster on the western border of Cleveland near the lake. As it turns out, that is exactly where I lived, once upon a time. Somehow, I was more comfortable going for the neighborhood I knew a little - even if it was 40 years ago - than picking any other place at random. I ended up booking a whole house - two bedrooms, sleeps five - and it is just a block from my old apartment building. It was also brand new on AirBnB, no reviews yet (though the host is a superhost with other places). Most importantly, I can cancel up to 48 hours before.

Looking at available places kicked me off on a whole nostalgia trip. I spent quite some time on google maps and street view wandering around. I found my old building, still there, and still with a McDonalds in the back yard. Where I lived was in the town of Lakewood, just one block
from the Cleveland border. The street that formed the city border is a commercial strip, with today many more fast food places than the single McDonalds from when I lived there. Online, with my iPad, I browsed restaurants, places to shop, the lakefront, taken up by a wholly unexpected cascade of memories.

The time I spent in Cleveland, starting in 1982, was the most urban period of my life (so far). I had had a hard time finding a job after grad school, and I finally took a job at a steel company, working actually in a steel plant in a small town in the middle of industrial rust belt Ohio, south of Akron. I had steel toed shoes, my own hard hat with the prestigious brown burned spot on the forehead from leaning into the furnace to admire the molten metal, and some incredibly unattractive prescription safety glasses. After two years, I loved the work but I was done living in this small, backwards town, and actively seeking other jobs when I was offered a promotion to headquarters, in downtown Cleveland. I jumped at it!

My apartment was an old apartment building (turn of the twentieth century) with a common layout. A brick building with four apartments, two up and two down, each apartment with the same long, narrow, floorplan. In front, a parlor with a balcony overlooking the street. Then the main bedroom, a dining room, and sharing the back wall, a small bedroom and a smaller kitchen, with a back balcony and outside stairs down to the parking places behind the building. The ceilings were high, there were blocked off fireplaces in the parlor and the dining room, and there were beautiful glass fronted builtin cabinets in the dining room. There was a smoke alarm, newly required and very sensitive. Because the ceilings were so high I couldn't reach it to pull the battery out when it went off, not even when standing on a chair, and so I went to the Radio Shack around the corner, bought a button switch, and wired in a way to cut off the noise from ground level whenever I was broiling something in the kitchen. 

Where I lived was on the border, not only of Cleveland and its closest, oldest suburb, but also the border between the relatively wealthy lakefront and lake-adjacent blocks and the solidly blue collar interior of Lakewood, trying hard not to slide down into poverty. Most of the buildings in my town were two-flats, up and down, in woodframe houses. I lived just part of a block away from the richer side, but my neighbor buildings were the two-flats. The folks I saw every day were a real mix. I don't think even on the lakeshore there was the wealth I later found in a very similar Chicago suburb, Evanston - also the closest suburb to the city and along the lakeshore from a different Great Lake.

The view behind my office building,
downtown Cleveland, 1982

In Cleveland, my office building was connected to the central rapid rail station, and via some other tunnels, to the old time downtown department store. If you have seen the movie "A Christmas Story" you have seen my office building. (It was filmed while I worked there. The filming was a very big deal in Cleveland.)  In the mornings, I would walk from my apartment around the corner to the main street, where I caught a bus that poked along, taking at least half an hour to drive the five or so miles right to my office. In the evenings, I would instead catch the Rapid (metro rail) which was much faster than the bus but dropped me off a half mile up the main street and I'd walk past all the run down businesses home. If I worked late, which was rare, I would take a taxi home as neither transit option felt safe. Often at lunch, I would go by tunnel to browse in the department stores, and more than once was mistaken for a sales person because I had no coat, even in winter. 

Industrial sailing, Cleveland, 1982

I liked the urban vibe, and the rusty vibe, even though it was not a happy time in the industrial midwest. To me, Cleveland felt a bit more "eastern" than midwestern, and it had a Great Lake and thus sailing opportunities. Cleveland's waterfront was almost entirely industrial, not yet experiencing the waterfront revivals other old cities were just starting then. But there was a small marina where I signed up for sailing lessons as soon as the weather permitted. From that contact, I was feeling my way into a sailing scene and thus a non-work social life, when my life was disrupted by the company being bought. I worked in corporate finance for my steel company, and actually worked on the merger / buy analysis, the only time in my life I had genuine "insider knowledge" where I could have made my fortune if only I had had money to invest (and didn't get caught). Our little financial analysis group were the first to realize that we were in exactly the kind of jobs where the masters of the merger would expect to find efficiencies, ie redundancies. So, in those pre-internet days, every Tuesday when the Wall Street Journal published its "help wanted" section, the six of us would go through the ads together. It was my boss who pointed out the airline ad ("Do you have an MBA? We want YOU!") that I applied for and got. That job took me to the suburbs of Chicago and back to a life behind the wheel of a car. (It also took me all over the world but that is a story for another time.)

Reclaimed lakefront, Cleveland, 2010

I never went back to Cleveland after I moved, until 2010 when I took my oldest boy to college in Ohio. He was in Oberlin, about 20 miles away from Cleveland. I stayed a couple of days with him, moving into and setting up the dorm room, attending parents orientation sessions. But there was a point where my boy didn't want me around for a bit, and there was a pause before an important session I needed to attend about maintaining his scholarship. I took a three hour self-guided tour of Cleveland. I went to the downtown, and the waterfront, which had been greatly transformed. There was the grand Rock and Roll Hall of Fame right on the water. There was a place to stroll along the lakefront. There were The Flats, an industrial area along the river (the river that famously caught fire). Notionally, back when I lived there in the early 1980s, they talked of turning The Flats into a new-urban-style place for loft-style apartments, bars and restaurants. Thirty years later, it was a reality, though without the polish seen in the high-end waterfront developments here in DC. There were still freighters using the river and railroads hauling ore and coal, right in the middle of this urban playground. Still the rust belt, but one with some attempts at polish.

Watching a partial eclipse on the National Mall, 2017

So I'm going back to Cleveland again next year. Plenty of time in the next 11 months to invite someone to come along and see the total eclipse- Whole House! Two Bedrooms! Sleeps Five!

...And the Livin' is Easy

This is a sago palm, which sat in its
pot for more than year doing absolutely
nothing. Then suddenly, I swear in a
single day, this!

It's not truly summer yet, but it sure feels like it. We're in a bad drought - the spring rains haven't come, and it will hurt us - but we're having one golden day after another. Even when it's not actually hot out, the sun is creating a high summer vibe. My days involve a lot of time outside, whether working on something or just reading. Or watching my plants respond to the spring. I'm busy enough, with projects, gardening, and seeing the neighbors. I've mowed the grass once (even more summer feeling evoked) and planted a few things, but I have to keep cautioning myself not to get ahead of the real cycle - there are still a few cold nights in the forecast.

At the end of the day I feel strongly the longing for a beer, barbecue, and ice cream. One day, I harvested (indoor hydroponic) cherry tomatoes, more than I could ever eat out of hand, and cooked up a fresh tomato sauce by slicing each one in half, tossing with an equal volume of sauteed onions and seasoning with my own hydroponic oregano and basil. I grilled marinated eggplant slices and italian sausages, and it was absolutely perfect!

On another day, the craving for ice cream was so strong I took myself to the store and stocked up. Yum! Sometimes, all it takes is a spoonful of creamy goodness and I can move on. I've also learned that as much as I love a beer after working outside, it is filling me up too quickly right now, and so I'm experimenting with a small growler so I can enjoy one can over two days. For me, one of the things I learned from my fling with IE is to not let myself feel deprived. I don't want to find myself eat things out of habit or impulsively and thoughtlessly, but if I want something, whatever it is, I'm going to have it. And when I do, I'm going to enjoy it. As much as I want of it. But I'm going to constantly check whether I really want it or not. And I still worry about food waste, and portion control because I do love a clean plate.

My girl and I took a trip down to the tip of Southern Maryland, where the Potomac River meets the Chesapeake Bay. We checked out a school there, and while she was on a tour I took a stroll along the water front, including a stop at a replica old ship - the Dove, that helped bring the first English colonizers to Maryland. The sound of the little wavelets in the bay, and the smell of the wind over the salt water, gave me a bit of a Bellport vibe. But the school is tiny and really isolated - miles from even a 7-11 or fast food joint - and probably not a good fit for my mature city girl. We'll be heading  to the far west of our state in another week to check out another school, that at least has a little town with coffee shops and convenience stores.

On the agenda right now, besides many many gardening chores, are prepping for the Kinetic Sculpture Race (Saturday May 6) and getting my boat ready for sailing season. I couldn't keep my mouth shut about structural issues with one part of our Kinetic Sculpture so now of course it's my responsibility. I built a tent frame out of bamboo harvested from a team member's yard, which a colleague will cover with a canvas tent. Our theme is "Happy Campers" so of course we need a tent. However, our tent will have Baltimore icon Divine peeking out from it. It turns out we are more camp than campers. For my costume, they asked if I wanted a feather boa - not my style - but now I have to come up with something else. 

The living really is easy for me right now. I've got little to be anxious about and much to celebrate. My stupid body keeps tensing up my back or shoulder muscles, going into spasm, and I have to just laugh and tell myself I'm fine, nothing is broken, I'm perfectly safe, and if I can't bend over to pick something up, I'll sit down to get it instead. Not going to stop moving. 

Of course, I'm making hex signs to ward off the evil that follows the hubris of announcing everything is fine, more than fine, it's good. But really, the fish are jumpin' and I've got stuff to do. A banana tree to plant. And a new beer to sample. Catch you later.

Florida Sailing

We woke Thursday morning to a
bright sparkly morning - coffee on deck!

 On the Thursday midnight deck watch, things were definitely looking up. From there on, sailing was more like the other trips I have been on - requiring layers, bouncy, but overall warmer and less challenging. On that midnight watch we were closing with the Florida coast. We crossed back over the Gulf Stream, and saw the Bahamas light on the up ahead on the left, marking the Florida strait. To the right up ahead, we couldn't spot any land but there were clearly lights looming on the horizon lighting the night sky in that direction. 

On that watch, for the first time ever in my life, I observed the movement of the stars. (Or, as my NASA scientist neighbor pointed out, the rotation of the earth causing the apparent movement of the stars.) We were headed due south, and that put my one sure star constellation, the Big Dipper, right behind us. We had a bright sky, no clouds, and the looming light pollution from Florida was still far ahead and in the other direction. The Big Dipper was upside down, emptying its contents down to the sea below. I followed its two pan stars straight down to Polaris, the North Star. I located it right away as I got on deck at midnight. Three hours into the watch, when I went to look at the Big Dipper again, it had moved! Now it was sideways, holding some of its contents back. MAGIC! A few nights later, one of my watch mates showed me how to use the big dipper to find Arcturus (follow the arc of the handle) and Spica (spike that same line out farther) and finally a small square constellation called the "spanker" that was always oriented to true south. (Repeating the mnemonic for my own benefit.)

Thursday morning - this is one of
most comfortable spots because it
has a back rest!

That morning I hung out on deck for after-breakfast watch before mine, with the weather finally conducive to being up there with nothing to do. As it turns out, the Captain decided to set more sails without calling out more people. And it turns out they have a saying, "on deck, on duty"! So I got to actually help haul on big heavy lines to raise the main and trim the other sails. And, my help was actually useful and even necessary. They have a big racket device where two baseball-bat sized sticks are stuck in and used as levers, and that is used for final grinding up of certain things. I got to serve on one side of the rachet for the first time! It was hard! My shoulders and biceps felt it, as I put my whole weight into it.

Friday off the Keys

As the day wore on, we came in reach of cell phone signals from shore, followed shortly thereafter by visual. We followed the southern curve of Florida along from Miami and then along the Keys. Remarkably, the wind followed along behind us, making the same curve. And for the first time, it was T-shirt weather. Friday afternoon found us off Key West, and then we shot through the passage between the Keys and the Dry Tortugas, and finally headed north. Still, the wind followed us! Though, it dropped in strength considerably.

The day spent off the Keys was different. We were in contact with the shore, both via cell signal and also the VHF radio at the wheel was full of chatter. After several days of seeing and hearing from no-one else, it felt like we had emerged from some other world. I did not check news, only texts and emails. I figured I didn't need to know anything about the larger world beyond my friends, family and neighbors. Several of the crew members had spent time on boats in Key West, and they reminisced about the boats and the lifestyle (some of which we heard from on the VHF radio!). As the weather had moderated, making it easier to move about the ship with fewer layers on, boat chores piled up for the crew. 

The crew in the rigging doing chores

As we headed north, and the wind dropped, it got hot! We were going to be early into St Petersburg, but there wouldn't be any dock space available until Thursday. So there was no point in making the kind of excellent time we had been making up till then. With the wind dead behind us, on Saturday the captain dropped the large fore-and-aft sails on both masts and at the front, leaving only the square sail high up on the foremast. (The "foretop"). With just this sail up, the awnings could be rigged - one between the two masts, and one over the boom all the way to the back of the boat. The shade was VERY welcome - it felt like 20 degrees cooler immediately. 

In charge!

So we poked along at 3 knots (roughly a walking pace) for the rest of Saturday and Sunday. There were many boat chores to be done aboard - sanding and painting, polishing, sewing leather chafe gear to strategic places on the rigging, adding more "thimbles" into the rigging to feed lines through, reducing tangling. With the boat doing only a little bit better than drifting, the crew left the handling of the ship to us guest crew. We took over the helm and the boat checks, letting the crew get on with specialized tasks uninterrupted. No-one needed to touch the sail for those two days! I felt pretty good about being in charge until I heard the chief mate say to the second mate "it's not like they can hit anything of even go far off course at this speed!".

A word about the crew. The bulk of the crew is in their twenties, with one just 21 years old. I was happy to note that 7 of the 12 professional crew were women! (Apparently the Pride has made a point of having a co-ed crew from the very beginning. I'm just a little too old to have jumped on this, but I'll never know if I would have had the nerve anyway.) The Captain is roughly my age, and has been with the Pride project from the beginning, back in the late 70s, though not exclusively and not always full time. Last year, they appointed another Captain, and the two of them now trade off voyages, allowing time for other pursuits. But I've only sailed with this Captain, and I wonder what life would be like under the other. This Captain had his management style from the 1980s described as "likely to bark orders and corrections" - still true! But this first of the season shakedown voyage involved a great deal more explanations before executing maneuvers, and I really appreciated it. 

A view of the salon and the galley
Good head clearance, and the only actual place to sit
Also one of the many many ladders,
and the support pole for the mast

The First Mate is a woman just shy of 40, I'd say. She has been aboard the Pride and several other ships, but has also been a world-class roller derby champion and and general contractor, among other gigs. She was my watch leader, and so we had some downtime to hear life stories. She is convinced she is right to be going to sea right now.

The longtime cook quit just a week before the voyage! The organization went to town beating the bushes for a cook, and the poor woman they got had never been on a boat, had never cooked professionally, and was a vegetarian who had never cooked meat. But she was very game! (She was also a former world-class roller derby queen, currently at loose ends.) She fell, she got seasick, she got burned, but she got right back up and kept things going. So the food was very basic, but it was more than just edible. We had scrambled eggs or oatmeal for breakfast, with bacon or sausage some days. Lunches were leftovers from the night before, and sandwiches or wraps (including the crew favorite fried spam one day). She had an always-on diesel stove and oven, where burner strength was handled by moving pots closer or further from the hot side. Until we turned the stove off when we got to Florida, and she had to learn to use the propane stove. She also had a giant electric rice cooker and equally giant electric fry pan, and even though the engine was off, we ran the generator twice a day to charge batteries and make enough juice for her to use the electrical appliances. She made brownies one day, but could only do it when the angle of heel wasn't extreme - otherwise all the batter would slide to one side. Dinners were spaghetti, sloppy joes, meat loaf, baked salmon. Plain, but more than just edible, and very appreciated.

I got to know and like my watch mates. The two professional crew members included a very personable young man from Berkeley, CA, and the 21-year-old woman from Tampa, our destination. Both had been working on boats for a while, but were mostly new to the Pride. They had rigging skills and were happy to keep busy with boatkeeping chores during the day watches, but at night we all sat around the helm, taking turns steering and doing boat checks, but with plenty of time to talk. I think of the young man as "1911 guy" - he dresses in classic seaman's clothes, and when everyone else was hunched over their phones at first contact on Thursday he grabbed his paper journal. The young woman was "Florida girl", left home at 17 and has been working on boats ever since. She was crew on a school ship that had college students, and I think she learned a way there of distancing from the students that spilled over into some distance from us guest crew. But she did love to talk about herself! The adage of "ask them about themself and they will think you are a fascinating conversationalist" was rarely more true. I liked hearing about her experiences and life goals, so different from mine. 

Sunday night a large pod of dolphins came to join us! There was a mother with two babies, and several other adults. They stayed playing in our very placid bow wave (still traveling at 3 knots) for a long time - maybe 45 minutes. They were truly magical and a delight to see.  We could climb out on the rigging supporting the bowsprit and get right above them. We had also seen a few dolphins that didn't stay long while we were out in the ocean. There in the ocean we also saw windrows of floating sargasso weed (Florida girl retrieved some and identified the tiny critters that live there) and many many schools (flocks?) of flying fish. They scoot along in the wave troughs, and I was always surprised how long they stay up and flapping. They truly look like birds at first glance. The first time I ever saw them was on the voyage to Bermuda two years ago. We also had some luminescence in the wake and on the white caps.

Sunrise at anchor in Tampa Bay

Early Monday morning, after my midnight watch was over, the engine started up for the first time since a week ago Saturday - 9 days and 1200 miles ago! Our single sail came down. We were entering Tampa Bay, which is crazy big - much bigger than I thought. Before breakfast, I heard the anchor go down.

It was Monday, and we couldn't go the last few miles to St Pete until Thursday. The plan was to stay there and do more boat keeping, including putting the dinghy over the side and painting the hull. It was pleasant weather and forecast to stay that way, but I was tired. Also a bit stir crazy - I was getting the fewest number of steps ever recorded on my fitbit. 

My cabin mate, Florida Man, was even more ready to get off. He is a very serious sailor, but had no interest in scraping and painting, and he didn't have the arcane skills of splicing, worming, and servicing that was going to be done on the rigging. And he had clashed with the engineer, and knew that though he had skills, she was not a supervisor he would like. But Florida Man lived about 30 miles away and thought how nice it would be to beside his pool with a cold beer in his hand, rather than rocking and hot on the boat. As the Captain reviewed the plans for the next few days, FM asked about the possibility of going ashore. The captain declined, citing distance and time to get to a landing place. Florida Man countered with other ways to get ashore, and the Captain was accommodating, if FM could arrange it. I asked him to book two seats on whatever he could do, and went below to pack.

Florida Man called the closest marinas looking for water taxis or a pickup, but no-one was interested. He asked the Captain if it was ok if he simply flagged down a passing boat. We had attracted a fair amount of attention, being so beautiful and distinctive. The Captain was concerned for his paintwork, but he thought they'd be able to rig something safe for us and the paintwork both. FM had also checked for rental car availability, but came up with nothing at the two local airports. He didn't have ready transport available to come from his end, but then he checked into Ubers, and figured out it would be in the neighborhood of $100 - if he could get someone - and decided it was still worth going for. I checked my airline's website early, and they were still selling tickets for that day's flights to Baltimore - they had three non-stops in the afternoon. And, should worst come to worst, there would surely be a hotel room available to go the next day. Very unlike me, I decided to go with the flow.

Jumping ship!

Just after lunch, I heard the hails and realized Florida Man had been successful! I scrambled to finish stuffing my bags, and started to haul them on deck. There was a nice runabout with a couple in it standing a distance off. We had put our own dinghy over the side already, and so FM and I lowered our bags over the side, followed them down the ladder (the curved side of the Pride always makes this very challenging for me) and were driven over the runabout. Again, bags first, then us, and off we roared at 30 mph towards shore! They were a couple from Newfoundland that spent every winter in their condo on the south side of Tampa Bay. They asked where we wanted to go, and we said "anywhere we can get Ubers" - with my destination the Tampa airport and his much farther away south.  So they took us into a large marina, helped us carry our bags to the office by the parking lot. They were so happy to be of help, refused any money ("let us buy you a drink, at least." "No, no, happy to help. Now we have a story!")

I booked my flight home in the uber on the way to airport - that's a first for me! In the airport, I changed from shorts into long pants, in a restroom stall that was bobbing around furiously, making it difficult to get my foot through the leg. The airport continued to bob, as I first sat in a comfortable chair in air conditioning, and then got a hamburger and fries. Last aboard the Southwest flight (last to check in), middle seat home aware of how stinky I might be! Uber home, where my lovely little dog was so very happy to see me. 

It took three days for the bobbing around to settle down. I'm now well rested, and this seems like a distant adventure (except for the bruises continuing to blossom and change color).