Break All the Tea Cups and Coffee Mugs

I was drinking tea from my beer mug as I worked late into this evening.

It’s a mug that I purchased when I spent a January session at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter Minnesota back in 1986. That was the January the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded during take off. “Life in a Northern Town” was the popular song of that time.

Over the years, that mug has been filled with Diet Coke, water, coffee, tea and even, on occasion beer. It’s an excellent device for mikifying Nilla Wafers. Lots and lots of Nilla Wafers. When I had next to nothing, I had that mug.

That mug finished college with me and moved to Boston. It came back to California and lived in apartments, condos and houses with me. It was a constant companion each night and weekend that I worked on my MBA.

Over the years, there has always been that fear that one day it would break.

My thing. My precious old thing.

As I rinsed by tea-bearing beer mug in the sink tonight I wondered what I would do if I lost it or it broke. What if they all broke. One good earthquake, it could happen.

What would I do? Answer: I would buy a replacement. Would I order a new one from Gustavus? Probably not.

But if all the coffee cups and glasses in the cupboard, there would be so much room. There would be so much room for new stuff. Or maybe there would just be a void.

The things we hold on to take up space. They diminish our capacity. People, resentments and memories diminish our capacity too. They take their place on the shelves our minds and sometimes they suck up the real estate in our hearts, limiting us.

So break all the glasses and the coffee and beer mugs. Consider retaining the ones most dear and them smash them to pieces…

And be free. Be free for anything else that comes along.

Days Go/Gone By

It’s about 3am and I just woke from that wonderful dream.

It’s that dream of moving back into the dorms at Whittier College a few days before the start of school. Judging by the details of this particular rendition of the dream, would place it at the start of Junior year in the fall 1986.

In my dream, I had arrived at the earliest possible time to check into my dorm room.  I routinely did that to get out of Vegas and be anywhere else.

I had moved into the third floor of Stauffer Hall, room 333.   I was out and about visiting people.   There was that mix of new faces and then old friends/acquaintances (my what Facebook-like terms).   I was wondering how long it would take my roommate to drive down from Alaska.  For some reason, he had my dog of 2013 with him.  I am not sure why.  I remembered that my wife, Laura was not happy about Tango going to stay with my roommate in Alaska.  Something about bears.   I was excited that this year, I could call him on his cell phone to keep track of his journey down the coast.

As I explored the dorms and the houses I saw friends that were reuniting after the summer.   I saw them getting back into their, for lack of a better term cliques and I the feeling of not belonging rose up in inside of me.   So in my dream, I excused myself from where I felt that I didn’t fit. I did that quite a bit as a teenager. I did that just yesterday as I think on it. That behavior has excluded me from a lot of fun, or so I think.

I walked backed to my dorm room and there was a familiar face.  She was clearly the floor RA,  telling me where the cleaning supplies were.   In the dream I didn’t recognize her face at first.  It was the face she was wearing at our 20 year reunion last year.  I recall being shocked in the dream at how much she had matured over the summer.  In my dream I noticed the details of her face more than I ever did in real life.

I walked into my dorm room and the anxiety set in.   For some reason there was anxiety about whatever math class I was taking this year and how I was going get through it.   I’ve never been one to worry about classes, but my daughter last night was anxious over her finals this next week.   She also has cheer competitions in the coming weeks and there is cheer drama. There’s always cheer drama.

When I left work yesterday,  I had Keith Urban’s, ‘Days Go By” cranked surprisingly loud in my car as I made my way from office workstation to home workstation. Maybe that’s what triggered the dream.

Maybe, the dream was a function of how busy I am with work and training these days.

Maybe it’s the fact that I am a week away from getting on the road again and that after the stressful part of the trip is over, there will be a chance to visit friends and family in my typical hurried manner.

Maybe, it was just time to have that dream again.

Whatever the reason, it’s time to go back to bed.

Peace!

The Problem Isn’t that Youth is Wasted on the Young

The problem is that the old forget what it is to be young and then blame their misery on age.

Cast off your shroud, no matter how old it is and run.

Run for joy, run to feel your heart pumping and your body sweat.

Run so that your body learns that it’s not winning.

And if you can’t run, walk.
And if you can’t walk, crawl.

And if you can’t crawl, then get your ass in a wheelchair and have someone push you down a hill.   You will figure something out along the ride, hopefully for the better.

Happy New Year.

Music purchases should come with memories.

“Don’t Fight It” by Kenny Loggins and Steve Perry was pushing me through my run this morning.  My mind wandered to a 1982 Saturday morning about 10am when the Warehouse music store across from the University of Nevada Las Vegas opened. Payday was the day before and I was at the store when it opened to buy Loggins’ “High Adventure”.  I unwrapped the cassette and listened to “Don’t Fight it” in my 1965 Mustang as I drove home.

As I ran a little bit further this morning, I though about how buying music has changed.

The first CD I ever bought was the Grateful Dead’s “In The Dark”.  I purchased that CD as well as a CD version of “Simon and Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits” from Lovell’s Record Store in Whittier, California in the summer of 1987.   I had to take “In the Dark” to a friend’s house to listen as I didn’t yet have a CD player.

I remember a CD I purchased from Lovells in 1997, a month after my mother died.  They say you can get any music you want at Lovells and within two days they found a particular CD of old Irish music that I had grown up listening to when it was just an LP.

In 1990, I purchased Paul Simon’s, “Rhythm of the Saints” at a Music Plus store about 2 miles from the home of the woman that is now my wife. We listened to the drums on that CD consistently all summer long.  More often that not, if we take a long road trip, that CD still comes with us.  The music has been part of our lives, but the actual CD has too.

When I was working on my MBA in 2006, there was a class discussion one day on whether or not there would be media even available for sale in 10 years.  I am torn, I like to convenience of being able to download songs and sometimes albums; however there are some albums for which I just want the media.

Once the question of download or media is resolved for a particular CD (can you really call a CD a CD if it’s a download?) and the answer is buy the media, the question then turns to whether or not to purchase it on-line or in a store.

I still like buying CDs in the store.  I like walking into a store and figuring out where that target is amongst all the other media.  Then there’s that micro-second of joy that comes from finding THE CD.  Then there’s the line up, the purchase transaction, the unwrap and the first playing.   And there’s that joy for the rest of the month that comes from having that new CD in the car when I get in.  Basically, what I am saying is that the experience that I had in 1982 is still a rush in 2012.

I don’t think there are ever any great memories associated with getting music in the mail.  Guessing there weren’t memorable downloads either.

What do you think?   Download or media?  Buy on-line or in a store?   Any great memories associated with downloading music?

Prompt for 12 Dec: Benign But Pre-cancerous

Today’s prompt is courtesy of Cultivate 2012 Daily Prompt list

 Health: How did you treat your body this year? You only get this one vessel one time around. In what ways can you cultivate better health for your body next year?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

                                                         December 2012
Dear Mr. Smplefy,

Thank you for allowing me to participate in your health care.  
The following information is regarding you recent Colonoscopy.

The polyp was benign but was pre-cancerous.  The polyp was 
completely removed. 
I do request that your repeat your Colonoscopy in five years.

Sincerely,

Your Doctor
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

This is the point where one discovers if one is as much a “glass half-full” person as one pretends to be.

On one hand, the polyp was removed a good 3 years before I would have normally had “the 50 test“.

To paraphrase Monty Python “this Polyp is no more.  It has ceased to be. It is expired and gone to meet its Maker.  This is an ex-polyp“.   Its little baby ass never had the chance to make the transition to cancerous. So score one for the 47 year-old guy with the health insurance.

On the other hand, the fact that the little shit (pardon the expression) was there, growing… waiting… messes with my head.

It was there,  like that first cockroach hidden inside a wall all by himself.  Silent.  Waiting. Growing.  Thinking (as much as a polyp can think) that it was going to take me out.  What if my close relatives hadn’t recently been diagnosed with colon cancer?  What if I had waited once I turned 50?  What might have happened?

“IT DON’T MATTAH WHA’ IF, ‘CAUSE I TOOK CARE OV  IT”.  Can’t waste life wondering what would have happened if you hadn’t taken care of business that’s been taken care of.

But I know many people who put off their colonoscopy and regretted it.

So now, on my calendar in September 10, 2017 is a little alert.  A reminder to make an appointment for another check inside the walls to make sure none of little ugly’s  friends rear their  little polypy heads.

In the meantime, please join me in a toast, “To the ex-polyp”.

Lift one glass to cultivating better health way beyond 2013.

Half full my ass.  I am cultivating health in 2013 but I ain’t cultivating no polyps!

How about you?   Have your relatives had colon cancer? Are you over 50 and cultivating polyps?

Prompt for 10 Dec: Money

Looking back at my 2011 Reverb posts, I noticed one that caught my eye.   So I copied it:

Sarah Rosemary at Sunny Side Up and DailyAngst were hosting Reverb11, a series of prompts on 2011,

Money.  Where did you spend your money this year?  Did you save it instead?  What, if anything, would you like to do with your finances this year?

I deplore talking about money, so again (in 2012) this might be a short post. Senior year of high school back in 1982, I took a computer programming class.  Back then, we had a computer lab stocked with Apple IIe systems.  I took to programming like a fish to water.  I talked to my mother one day about the possibility of her getting a loan so we could buy one. Let’s just say that the proposal was not well-received and summarily rejected with extreme prejudice. We lived in Las Vegas, somewhere between the poverty line and the middle class.   My mom was a medical assistant and my step-father a stage hand.  The two of them didn’t manage their money well.  They had issues that prevented them from being where they wanted to be… on many levels. Notices to pay or move out were routinely posted on our apartment door. It was not uncommon for the power to be turned off at least once a year for anywhere from 1 to 5 days. If we had a phone the number was never in service long.  This meant that more often than not, if I wanted to talk to my dad, I had to walk down the block and cross the street to the payphone and try to call him collect.  He had no way to reach me. On August 28, 1983, I arrived at college in a nice new car my mom bought me that morning.  While I was driving to Southern California, the credit company decided that mom was too big of a risk and wanted that they car back immediately.  Mom and my stepfather flew down that afternoon to retrieve and return it to the dealership.  Mom and Stepfather never delivered the funds to pay the difference between my tuition and my scholarships.  I actually was one of those Las Vegas lowlifes who had to borrow $500 from his girlfriend in order to stay enrolled in college. So needless to say, I’ve had money issues in my life. In college, I double majored in Chemistry and English, but I worked in the computer center on the work-study program. The school ran a PDP-!! computer system which ran RSTS, a time shared operating system. My Sophomore year, the computer center purchased a half dozen Macs.  I fell in love with those systems. In 1988, I went to work as a chemist in the real world, where they used DOS and then later Windows.  Early in my career, I did some programming in Pascal. I figured out pretty quickly in the late 80′s that there were many people who could program and that I was better off sticking to Chemistry. In 1997 when my daughter was born, we decided it was time to by a computer so I could work from home.  I wanted to buy a Mac, but Apple wasn’t doing well, and a Mac wouldn’t do what I needed for work.  So we bought a PC.   Then a few years later we bought another PC.  And another.  When I started working on my MBA, I wanted to get a laptop.  Money was a bit tight then so I settled for a cheaper brand.  I still recall the day I checked my voicemail and I heard the message from my daughter, “Dude, you got a Dell!”.   It was a piece of crap. We got into the PC cycle and it wasn’t until I bought my wife an iPad for Mother’s day in 2010, that we had an Apple product under our roof.   In 2001, my daughter wanted a MacBook Pro for High School.   Given my personal history, I bought it for her gladly. In 2012, a full thirty years after I first floated the idea of getting an Apple IIe to my mom, I let it be OK to buy a MacBook Air for myself.   There was no good practical reason to buy this computer.  It was expensive, it was unnecessary, it was redundant and the purchase was completely self-indulgent. I bought it anyway.  I bought it with money borrowed from our car fund.  I borrowed from myself, but I paid the good people at Apple cash.  I had plenty of financial reserves to make the purchase.  On my 47th birthday, I broke the PC cycle and the financial one all in one fell swoop of the debit card.

A Veteran’s Day Run Around the National Mall

I flew from Newark to Ronald Regan Airport in D.C. early on Sunday morning. My three-day seminar was scheduled in Alexandria and I was planning on getting in a long run about the town before meeting up with an old friend from high school around 4ish.  That was the plan, anyway.

On approach, the plane banked around the Washington Monument and passed by the Capitol. I  realized that if I didn’t take some action, I was going to spend five days in the D.C. area without visiting these great monuments.

After checking into my hotel, I changed, and headed to the Metro Station. Within 40 minutes I emerged from L’Enfante Plaza.  There is something amazing in the feeling of emerging from underground and having the Capitol building be right there, larger than life.   The first time I saw the Capitol was in December 20, 1987. My girlfriend and I were driving through D.C. and we saw the Capitol from miles away as we approached.   On this day, the Capitol appeared out of nowhere, there in all its glory.

My Route Along the National Mall

I ran towards the Capitol like an excited child, with my headphones on and the Grateful Dead show from 1989 playing in my ears.  I was giddy.   I was also on a schedule with which meant that there was no time to lollygagging.   I wasn’t sure how far I was going to run, but I had a good idea that I had to be on the Metro back to Alexandria by 2:30 at the latest.

Despite being the near side of mid-November, D.C. was unseasonably warm.   The National Mall was beautiful, bathed in the bright sunlight.   There were tourists like myself all through the Mall.   Also like myself, there were many runners, all of them more serious than touristy me.  Other than the traffic lights every block or so, it was a beautiful environment to run in.

 As I made my way around the Washington Monument, the Dead were still playing in my ears. Brent Midland sang the words, “But we never tend the garden and we a rarely pay the rent. Most of it is broken and the rest of it is bent. Put it on our plastic and I wonder where we’ll be when the bills hit.”

Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial at the Conclusion of Services

The song reminded me of the stories of how the construction on the monument stopped when they ran out of funding and how when they restarted construction again, they had to use a different type of stone.   I think I captured that interface between the two in the photo on the right.

After the Washington Monument, the Mall started to get crowded.   There were Veteran’s day activities going on near Vietnam Memorial.  I started passing older gentlemen dress in the colors of their service.  Some wore the uniforms of WWII, others their representation of their time in Vietnam.  I found myself thinking about the Vietnam Vets and the raw deal they got when they returned.  I am glad that as a society we have evolved to the point where we separate the people who serve from the politics of the battles they fought in. I ran past veterans that were younger than me.   It struck me in that the Gulf War (you know, the one with Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf) was over 20 years ago.

I climbed the stairs of the Lincoln Memorial and thought of the two movies that recently were released about the President.  The more recent film seemed a much more historically-based than the rendition earlier in the year that portrayed Lincoln as a vampire slayer.  What a weird and distant world Hollywood lives in.

I stopped for a few minutes at the Lincoln Memorial to look out over the world.   I saw the Jefferson Memorial on the other side of the Tidal Basin.  I knew that it was short of 2 miles, and I could be there in 20 to 30 minutes, but I also knew there was no Metro station nearby to take me home.   I won’t say that I was broken-hearted, but I longed for more time.

I headed back as the services at the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial were concluding.   I walked quietly through the crowds of men and women who have serviced this country, like a funeral guest who didn’t know the departed or the family.  I saw one man holding the U.S. Flag as well as the flag for the MIAs.  The MIA flag was a big part of my early experience growing up in New York in the 60′s and early 70′s.   It’s not that prevalent in California, I don’t know why.  I just know that when I see that flag, I am on the East Coast.  It’s a culture thing I guess.  Even the hockey stadium I went to as a kid, the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum had MIA flags all around it as I recall.

I wanted to stay and be among these people on this their day.  Unfortunately, I had to go.  I had to get back to my hotel and shower in time for dinner.  I was torn.  I was someplace wonderful that I wanted to be and yet, I had someplace to get to.  Someplace that was equally important to me an my history.  That’s the story of my life, short on sleep, short on time, trying to pack another great experience in on borrowed time.

P.S. I Love You

I’ve been home from my trip for nine very intense days.  I landed at LAX a week ago last Thursday and was in the office first thing on Friday.  Reentry into work is always rough after a long trip.  There is the normal catch up of the organic work that comes every day.   There is also the follow through on the dozen meetings that I hosted in Europe.  And then there was some new stuff.  Stuff that pretty much dwarfed everything else and consumed my days and my thoughts in the evenings.

After about a week home, I realized that this was not a normal reentry.  My stress level was way too high for this time of year and I am unfocused, opera

ting like a humming-bird going from issue to issue and kicking thing into the tall grass to buy time.  I hate people who do that.  I was also too tired to run, that’s another bad sign.

With all this in mind, Thursday night I called our timeshare and asked if they had a room available for Saturday.    They did and we booked it.   Micro-vacation planned.

This morning, we jumped in the car and drove to The Plaza Resort and Spa,  our second home (for at least 7 days a year) in Palm Springs.

Home Away From Home

Last month marked the 22 year that I have owned here at the Plaza. Palm Springs hasn’t changed much in that time.  Downtown is still downtown, it’s just that some of the Mexican restaurants are now English and some of the tchotchke stores are now frozen yogurt places.  It’s still the same town that has 1 foot firmly planted in the early 1970′s and the other foot on the golf course. The residents are still as friendly as the climate is warm. If one subscribes to the idea that LA is phony then one should believe that Palm Springs is genuine.

I bought this time share back in 1990, just as Laura and I started dating.  The joke in our family is that if Laura had come with me to the presentation, she would have talked me out of buying it.  Turns out it was well worth what I paid for it.  The Plaza is not a luxurious resort, but it’s our 3 start home away from home.  We come here to relax, recuperate and most importantly, sleep.

Although we are only here for the night we have partaken of the normal rituals.  We stopped at Vons, the same way we have for two decades to do our food shopping.   In Palm Springs, we eat vacation cereal.  You know vacation cereal, the stuff that’s loaded with sugar that we would never keep at home because there are healthier alternatives.  We also bought post cards.  Filling them out and getting them in the mail is another ritual of Palm Springs.   Dinner our first night was at Upper Crust Pizza on Highway 111, just near our resort. That’s one of the four restaurants we eat when we are in town.

After food shopping, we checked in, unloaded and went straight to the jacuzzi.  I had to sneak onto the golf course to take some pictures of sunset behind Mt. San Jacinto.   Sunset was beautiful tonight.

The Oasis of Palm Springs

The Child was a baby here.  She has been here almost every year of her life.  Tomorrow, we might take her out to do a bit of driving before she goes for her permit later this month.  Afterwards, I will practice my tennis serve for an hour (or until my shoulder decides that it has had enough).   There will be more time around the pool, eating of sugary cereals and a time change that will allow us to have an extra hour of sleep.

Before The Child started kindergarten, we used to come here in October for Laura’s birthday.   These visits inevitably involved Yankee playoff baseball.   If anyone remembers a certain memorable play involving a ball thrown from left field by Shane Spencer,  caught by Derek Jeter just right of home plate that was quickly shoveled to Posada in time to tag out a certain Giambi brother, I was here, in this building, eating pizza from the same restaurant I had dinner at tonight.  It was like it was yesterday; but it wasn’t.  It was 2001.  It just feels like yesterday.

In Palm Springs, in this building back in June 2004, we watched the Ronald Regan funeral processions.   We came here for the viewing of Gerald Ford when he passed.  If you ever go to Ford’s Library, we are told that visitors books from that day are on display there.   The Child was the first entry in one of those books as we were on the first bus of visitors who came to pay our respects.

My favorite Palm Springs story happened on the day of my 40th birthday.   We wanted to go to our favorite rib restaurant, Babes for lunch, but we weren’t sure if they were open.  I plugged my computer into the phone line,  fired up the modem and Yahoo searched for “Babes in Palm Springs”.  A number came up and I dialed it on my cell.  The next few seconds seemed to take an hour in my brain.  While the phone was ringing, I was staring at the Yahoo map for “Babes in Palm Springs”.   The map indicated that there was no location listed.  I thought this strange and kept scanning the page.  Then I realized that Babes is really in Rancho Mirage, not Palm Springs proper.  Perhaps the second ring was underway at this point.  My eyes moved to the top of the page and to my shock, I realized that the “Babes in Palm Springs” that I was dialing was an escort service.  I hung up quickly and walked into the bedroom to tell my wife of how I happened to call an escort service on my 40th birthday.   As we were both laughing about the matter, the escort service called back.   Seems people often start to call and hang up.  I explained it was a wrong number.  I don’t think the lady on the other end of the phone believed me.

It funny as we sit here with three wireless devices going.   Two years ago, we had to pay for wireless.  Now it’s free.   Ten years ago, I brought my computer and we used the phone line with a local modem number. The DVD players now sit above the TVs on these huge wooden shelves hat used to house the VCRs.

Times change.  Technology changes.  People are born, get older and die.  Businesses come and go.  Palm Springs, stays the same.

About to make my shoulder hurt.. again

Days 4 Through 7 – Jetlag, Fog and work

I really did want to write every day during this trip. Unfortunately, once the work weeks started, time and sleep became dear.

Monday was easy. Up at 6, dressed and walk across the street through the fog for weekday mass by 7:45am. The first wave of us left for the office at a the civilized hour of 8:20am and meeting number 1 went from 10am to 2pm with a brief break for lunch at the canteen. Another car picked us up at 3:30pm and we were back at the hotel for 4pm. It was in my opinion a proper way to cope with the jet lag . We had a wonderful dinner with the people from meeting number 2. Then bed.

Sunrise through the fog on Monday

Each day became a little more busy and the morning pickups gradually moved to 7am and the evening drop offs moved out to 5:30.   Wednesday, I added second meetings from 2pm to 5pm. I never got to church after Monday and despite best intentions, I never got to bed before 11.

There were a lot of scenes from the back of a car this week. Luckily the trip from Ennis to work isn’t too long and it is very scenic.

On the road from Tullah to Ennis

Monday night I took a bit of time to stroll over to Paddy Quinn’s Public House.  I came in here my first trip to visit in 2010 and it immediately became my favorite place in Ennis.  It’s a little pub off a side street that one might not give another look at.  I walked in on Monday and was greeted by the owner who recognized me from quick stop over in April. I was disappointed to see that Joe wasn’t there.   Joe is the Norm of this particular establishment.  He’s in his mid-sixtys, very Irish and hilarious.

Downtown Ennis at 8pm

Tuesday night, Joe was there.  We had the pub pretty much to ourselves and were laughing all the while.  A young American couple wandered in after a bit.  It was their last night Ireland and technically, their honeymoon was over.  They were so incredibly young.   They had met at the University of Buffalo when she was a freshman and he was a senior.  Luckily, he went back to get an advanced degree the next year.  After knowing each other for 5 years, they tied the knot.  They delayed their honeymoon for about 3 months, because many of their friends were getting married at the same time.   I remember those times, when we had to adjust our wedding date because another couple also booked the date. These two were so sweet and so very young.   We stood at the bar and chatted for about a half hour until I HAD to go at 9pm.

A multi-national contingent

Wednesday, I brought a party of eight with me.  We had just had dinner and decided to have dessert at the pub.  We sampled the Red Breast Whiskey and the beverages on tap. This party went a little bit late.   We had representatives from the US, Germany, Norway, Ireland and Italy at this party.  The conversation was fun and the laughs flowed like the rain we’ve seen every day.  Speaking of rain, does anyone know why when it rains in Ireland, the internet goes down.

Today was a 7am ride to the factory, two meetings and then I escaped early at 4:30 to get back to the Old Ground in order to pack.   Then I went downstairs for a contract discussion over tea and scones.   That’s what one does at the Old Ground, one sits in the comfy chairs in front of the fireplace and works.   From there, we went out for a work dinner which for me included the most wonderful Irish stew and Guinness

The Sitting Areas in the Old Ground Hotel

From there, I sent an email reminding my group of 7 that we have a bus arriving at 6am to take us to the airport for our 7:30am flight.   That was my last official work-related activity of the day.

Now I am back in Patty Quinn’s, where the owner calls me by name and wouldn’t take my money for my Smithwick’s.    This place rocks.  I need a little time alone and this place offers me a that quiet time.   People drain me.

Tomorrow a small sub-group fly to London for a few customer visits.  I had picked a really nice Marriott near Kensington palace.  Unfortunately, life changed my plans  and now we are staying at a Holiday Inn near the airport.  That sucks.

Leaving here now, I might get at least 5 hours of sleep.

Yankees have not won a game since I left the country.  Just sayin’

Skydive 2012 – Landed in One Peace

The first time I jumped out of a perfectly good airplane was during my bachelor party in April 1993.  I went skydiving today for only the second time.

A few months back, a highly cross-fit colleague mentioned that she has always wanted to go skydiving. We immediately calendared a date to go for tandem jumps. I was aware recently how much time had passed since my first sky diving experience, so when the opportunity presented itself, well, I jumped at it.

Skydiving 1993.  Note the Jump-master’s footwear

The family, my colleague and I left for Lake Elsinore about 7:30am.  The two of us jumpers paid our money, signed our lives away, watched a video and went to get suited up. The Child also wanted to skydive today, but none of the schools in the area permitted children under 18 to jump.

Without going into a whole lot of detail, let me just say that whole experience was so much simpler and safer than it was two decades ago.

It took about an hour for us to harnessed, trained, meet our jump-masters and load into the plane. One of the girls in our training class was celebrating her 18th birthday.   A strange look came over her face when I mentioned that my last jump was more than a year before she was born.

I checked out both our tandem jump-masters to make sure that they were happy and well-adjusted individuals who had reasons to live. You know, people with families that they wanted to go home to. I joked that I would get into a lot of trouble if anything happened to my colleague. Her jump-master countered with a fact that he was also highly invested in her landing safely as well. That ended that conversation.

The plane ride was cozy.  My colleague’s female videographer was to my left.  In order to clip into my jump master, I had to slide my left leg behind her and put my right knee in front of her chest.  Then I had to sit on my jump-master’s lap. Awkward for me, but it wasn’t an issue for this crowd.  The crawl to the edge of the plane was much easier than the first jump.  I remember on my first jump, I couldn’t believe I was standing on the edge of plane’s open door.   This time, it was more of, OK, let’s go; so we did.

The two and a half mile fall goes quickly.  After we left the plane I looked back to see the underbelly of the plane as it pulled away from us.  We were free-falling.  My instructor had us spinning around,  seeing all 360 degrees of the desert valley in under a second.   The free-fall is noisy and incredibly fun.  I was waiting for the quiet that comes under the canopy of the parachute.  It’s as if someone quickly turns down the volume on a stereo  from 20 to 2.  It became peaceful and quiet.

Along the way, that motion sick feeling set into my stomach. I knew it would be there from my first jump, which is why I didn’t eat much for breakfast.  I kept breathing and tried to keep my gaze fixed.

My colleage was way ahead of us.  I could see her jump-master was having a ball making harsh turns. I kanew she was having fun.   Then it was our turn to start to make some fun turns.  I could have asked the jump master to take it easy to avoid the motion sickness getting worse, but how wimpy would that have been just floating to the ground with minimal fun? Turning is fun and the whole ride goes way to quickly, just like the last 20 years.   My stomach was going to have to take this one in the neck.

As we approached the landing zone we made a few more harsh turns.  I could see Laura and The Child standing on the ground.  I called to them from a few hundred feet above the ground.  They heard me yelling.

I still have the VHS video and the pictures from my first tandem jump.  I didn’t feel the need to buy them this time out.  Laura did capture me in my last moments of the descent after she heard me calling her name

When I landed 20 years ago, it was on a day much like today.  There was no wind.  Back then we tried to land on our feet.  It didn’t work so well for me and came in like Derek Jeter sliding into second base.  I was hoping to redeem myself today.   Today the no wind SOP was to land on our butts.  I really wanted to nail the landing this time.   Next time, I am going on a windy day.

I enjoyed the entire experience more this time than before.  There is something about knowing what’s about to happen that abates the fear.

I am not in love with skydiving but it’s definitely fun. I think I have one or two more jumps left in me.  If The Child wants to jump when she turns 18 in a few years, I will go with her.  I would like, my last jump, God willing, to be on Long Island, New York.  Some place green and not as brown as the Southern California desert.

Hopefully, it won’t take me another 19 years to get up in a plane.  Of course, it might be a cool thing for a 66 year-old guy to do.

The End Is Not Here!