Left of the Dial

homeschooling 601

So we're doing Film Club. We've watched several silent films—The General, City Lights, a few others—and Duck Soup. Now we're starting the Westerns section of Film Club, and this in some ways the key to Film Club, given the importance of the western to the history of American cinema and, for that matter, the American contribution to art in general. We're starting at more or less the beginning—I thought about showing them The Great Train Robbery and might at some point but for all its historical importance, it is one incredibly long 12 minutes—with Stagecoach. Great introduction to John Wayne and John Ford and the western; with the benefit of hindsight, it really is remarkable just how many themes and motifs and tropes and even visual standards are introduced in this early classic (including what I swear is a rough draft of the famous framing shot from The Searchers). 

One of which, of course—though not unique to the western, by any means—is the Hooker with the Heart of Gold. And indeed Claire Trevor is wonderful as Dallas, the woman run out of town at the beginning. There are so many good characters, quickly sketched, superbly acted. And the vistas—good lord, but some of those Arizona panoramas can just rip your heart out with their majesty. 

But there are a lot of characters and the audio was sometimes a wee bit dicey, so I checked in with the youngest two a few times, just to make sure they were following. And with the exception of understandably not knowing what a whiskey drummer was, they did great. 

Except for one key bit. 

"Why are they all being so mean to her?" The Brawn asks. Referring, of course, to Dallas. 

"She's a woman of low reputation," I say. I get a blank look in return. 

"She's a lady of ill repute," I say. More blankness. 

"She a prostitute," I say. 

"Oh," he says. "What's a prostitute?" 

"Someone who has sex for money." 

"Oh," he says. And turns back to the screen. 

Welcome to the Peterson Homeschool. Come for Film Club, stay for Intro to Sex Work 101. 

automotive goblinry

"Hey! Why's the carseat over on this side now?" asks The Brawn as he gets into the car. Almost all his trips are taken in the minivan, and apparently, at some point, in this vehicle his carseat got moved from the passenger side to behind the driver's seat. 

"I dunno," I say. "The carseat goblins must've come in the middle of the night and moved it." 

He pauses, mid-buckle. "Are there really carseat goblins?"

"No," I say, and take over buckling for him. 

He stares into my eyes a long moment and then, very slowly, he smiles ever so slightly and nods almost imperceptibly, with what might have been an attempt at a sly wink. 

We're on the same page, apparently, he and I. 

one or the other other

The Golden Weasel approacheth slowly. 

HER: Dad? Paul Ra...Rave...Rev...

ME: Paul Revere? 

HER: Yeah, him. Was he a president? 

ME: No, sweetheart. 

HER (eyes growing big): He was a king?

ME (thinking): ...are those really the only two options here? 

ME (saying): No. He wasn't a king.

HER: Then...what was he? 

ME: Well, he was an American citizen. 

ME (stopping to ponder the logistics of that statement): I think. 

HER (disappointed): Oh. 

I hate to think of what a disappointment I must be: not president, not king, just a citizen and not even a famous one. Well, best she learn now, I guess. 

tire half inflated

So this afternoon I had the opportunity to teach two of my girls how to change a tire. This pleased me greatly, since the 15-year-old is mechanically-inclined and the 12-year-old generally likes to accumulate as much knowledge as possible. 

The downside, of course, is that I had this opportunity due to a mysteriously flat tire, spotted by my eagle-eyed 7-year-old. 

Still, I'm nothing if not an eternally sunny optimist. Which is why I also was ever so grateful to be able to illustrate to the girls why, just because you're lucky enough not to have ever needed the spare tire, you shouldn't ignore it for nearly fourteen years, and how putting a flat spare on to replace the flat tire is not, generally speaking, a terribly cost-effective move and that, in the future, they should really do a better job of checking to see if the spare is, in fact, flat or not before putting it on, tightening the lugnuts, and taking the car back down off the jack. 

Such a good time! Fun for the whole family! Happy happy joy joy!

empathy

So while waiting for the traffic light to turn, I watched a guy in a business suit, with impeccable hair, walk towards a gas station, holding a gas can, a grim expression on his face. And not once did I think: "huh...I wonder where that guy's going and why."

Yu Ming Is Ainm Dom

One Home Many Hopes

So Left o' the Dialian DT has a lil' brother who helped found the following project. 

After hearing about it, I asked if I could post the info here, since studies have shown the average LotDian has a heart more than three times the average size. And because all they're looking for is ten bucks--that's about two trips to Starbucks, or one fairly cheap happy hour. And you get a better return than the market, at least, so far this century. Top Management and I have already chipped in. So check it out, yo: 

This is a campaign called “One Home Many Hopes,” organized to ask people to consider donating $10 in an effort to raise $20,000 in 30 days.

”One Home Many Hopes” is a charity Jon Tapper, who owns a Public Relations firm in Boston called Melwood Global, helped put together last year after a good friend of his was moved to action by the poverty he saw in Mtwapa, Kenya.

In short, there is an orphanage, Mudzini Kwetu, which takes care of 35 girls, all of whom were rescued from the Mtwapa streets, where they searched through trash piles for food. Mudzini Kwetu not only gives these girls a home they didn't previously have, it has also given them a childhood.

So the gist is that we're trying to raise a lot of money - $20,000 - in tiny donations by November 23. People can become a part of it by visiting http://www.raceto20k.org/ to make a donation; as well as telling friends, families and colleagues about the effort.

They can also visit http://www.onehomemanyhopes.org/index.html to hear and learn more about this amazing organization.

There is absolutely no overhead for this charity -- every last penny you give you will go directly to the girls.

Thanks to everyone who considers participating.

Compare and Contrast

We have twice as many vehicles as the Obamas but fewer houses. We also have exactly the same number of planes. 

I personally have precisely the same number of vehicles as John McCain, but Top Management has only 8.33% as many as Cindy McCain. 

Slacker. 

On the other hand, I have this: 



I win!

(If, however, McCain's health care plan goes through, we shall not be able to afford to keep her.)

New Energy Policy

I've never actually seen her speak before. 

She's, uh...well, she sounds far more intelligent than the majority of the pols I see on Sunday morning talk shows. 

My world is crashing down upon me. 

You know how when you drive on unfamiliar roads during rush hour it’s really stressful because everyone else drives to work on them 250 times a year and they know ‘em like the backs of their hands and you’re trying to figure out where to go and which lane you want and you’re trying to get over but wait maybe that’s not where you want to be after all and does the road split a quarter mile up or do I have to merge here? And it sucks because there’s that one guy who’s all exasperated with you and rather than being nice he’s all in a hurry and just makes the whole thang that much worse?

Yeah. Today I was That Guy.

I hate being That Guy. 

I couldn't figure out how to check "intoxication." Or was it "inebriation?"

create your own visited states map

h/t: Bonny Glen Up Close and Personal.

Seriously. I got palpitations just thinking about trying this.

But, man, it looks cool.

Now I wanna see someone try to land.

So as Top Management has posted, our pal Keri has spent the past year traveling the world, visiting large parts of the Middle East and Asia, whilst avoiding the perhaps more common tourist destinations such as England, France, Australia and Japan. Instead she’s spent entire months in Egypt and India, Korea and China and Vietnam, as well as days or weeks in a dozen other countries.

She called earlier today and told me she was back in Thailand. We chatted for a while about stuff, and I tried to avoid asking her when she was coming back, since I know I hate being pressured about my future plans. A bit later, I got the following email, one of my favorite letters ever:

Remember when you asked me yesterday..."what are you doing in Bangkok? Haven't you already seen everything?" And I kinda stammered a bit then said I was working on my resume, making plans for my next steps once I come home, sussing out future goals and insurance policies. Nope. I'm not.

It was my first or second visit to Virginia and Max and The Rose had finished lunch and went off to the Blue Room to play. I have no idea where you were, but it was just me, Top Management and The Bean in the kitchen. Top Management and I were going to sit and have a chat, but before we took our seats, Top Management took a handful of raisins and placed them on the small table in the bay window of the kitchen and told The Bean to sit and eat them.

The Bean sat down and popped a raisin in her mouth, Top Management and I sat down to what I'm sure was a great conversation. Maybe 15 minutes went by and I was distracted by how quiet The Bean was. I glanced over and she was still sitting there in her chair, gazing out the window like a farmer would gaze at the sky for an on-coming storm. And only half the raisins were gone. There were no toys, no books on the table with her. Just the window, the raisins and The Bean.

Top Management and I kept talking, but a part of my attention was on The Bean. Why wasn't she wolfing down the raisins so she could go play with her sisters? Was this some kind of power struggle between mother and child? Was she being punished? Was a clown doing back-flips in the yard keeping her attention away from the raisins? I nonchalantly got up to get something in the kitchen to check this situation out. No clowns, absolutely nothing out of the ordinary in the back yard. The Bean didn't look distressed, she almost had a Zen-type of peacefulness with the whole situation.

Not me. I was having inner turmoil and it was all I could do to take my seat again and not grab the raisins and eat them myself and free her from the chair. I was hoping Max would come along. You see, Max always knows when something doesn't make sense to me and she'll set me straight. Like the time she told me I needed to relax more around children. (She was so dead-on right with that one.) Or when I took her and The Rose out for breakfast in Long Island and The Rose had a meltdown when I took the paper off the straw for her. Poor Rose was so upset, and poor me I couldn't figure out why. Max calmly explained that taking the paper off the straws was one of The Rose's favorite things to do and I didn't let her. Oh, thanks, Max, would have been more helpful to know before I took the straw! Ah, but Max's good with this. You and Top Management don't pick up on it, but somehow Max knows. The Rose has also shown signs that she'll help me out as well.

But no Max. No Rose. And 15 more minutes went by and The Bean finally ate the last raisin. She sat for a few more minutes. Got up slowly. Then tore up the stairs to play with her sisters.

So Scott, to answer your question truthfully, I'm eating raisins in Bangkok.

xo to you and Top Management, Max, The Rose, The Boy, The Baby and my Bangkok role-model, The Bean,

Keri

Ed at Trapper Creek recently moved back to Alaska. The trek may have been arduous, but it’s already paying off in the form of some outstanding bloggery.

Case in point:

How folks handle the weather in Alaska versus other areas of the good ol' US of A:

60 above zero:
Floridians turn on the heat. People in Alaska plant gardens.

50 above zero:
Californians shiver uncontrollably. People in Anchorage sunbathe.

Ah, adversity. Keep thee ever away from me.

My favorite is what residents of the Sunshine State do when the temperature hits zero. But you’ll have to click through to find out.

I've always had a tendency to grade on a curve. So, fair or not—and I tend to think it’s actually more fair—if I see, say, a car with one of them big yellow Baby on Board thangs sticking to your back window, and Donald Duck window shades on the rear windows, making it clear you’ve got Precious Cargo with you, signal before you change lanes on an interstate, especially when you’re driving roughly 72 miles per hour in a 65 mph zone.

It is The Funk.

I learned this morning that even frustratingly hideous and pointless and unexpectedly heavy traffic is shockingly bearable if one is listening to Fulfillingness’ First Finale.

Indeed, boogie on, reggae woman. Your irresistibly slinky bassline makes sitting in a stopped car a damn pleasure.

Here’s what I do when I’m at a four-way stop and someone goes when it’s clearly my turn:

I nearly hit them.

Sometimes I go really fast and stop just before I hit them.
Sometimes I go slowly and stop just before I hit them.

But I pretty much always nearly hit them.

Tonight, for instance. Four-way stop a few blocks from the office. I’m heading east, and I have the clear right-of-way; I got to the stop five seconds before the other guy, who’s to my left, heading south. I’m waiting for the person who’d already gotten there before me to clear the intersection. (Naturally.) That car is facing me, heading west.

So as soon as the westbound car is past the midpoint of the intersection, the hump to my left, the southbound guy, starts going, cutting in front of me.

So I speed up and very nearly t-bone him.

He slams on his brakes and looks at me, shocked. And seeing as how he’s driving a new Benz coupe, his brakes are in outstanding condition.

I just stare back at him with what I hope is an utterly blank expression, devoid of any emotion whatsoever. Since we’re only about, what, five feet apart? He’s probably got a pretty good view of my face. (Poor bastard.)

He accelerates out of the intersection, chattering away on his cellphone quite animatedly, no doubt telling his listener about the insane jerk who almost hit him just now.

So. That’s what I do in those situations. I don’t like it about myself. And yet I do it pretty much every time.

This is not why I went nearly ten years without flying.

But it doesn’t exactly make me happy that I’m now at least an occasional flyer again either.

In the past few years, the FAA repeatedly has cut staffing at air traffic control towers. The FAA employed 15,606 controllers in 2002, according the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA), but now that number has shrunk to 14,305 while air traffic continues to grow.

May I just say that that’s absurd?

Further, the FAA has decreased the amount of time between work shifts, forcing controllers to work even when they have not had sufficient rest. Never mind that controller fatigue may have contributed to the Comair crash that killed 49 people in Lexington, Ky., last year. The lone air traffic controller on duty had only nine hours between two work shifts—and only two hours of sleep before going back on duty, according to the Associated Press. For years before the crash, Lexington controllers and their supervisors repeatedly had voiced concern about staffing issues at the airport.

You think? Fewer people doing more work? That might be a problem? I mean, jeez, they’re only responsible for keeping thousands (tens of thousands?) of people safe every day. Sheesh. It’s not like anything untoward would happen if two planes were to, say, gently brush against each other in mid-air. Worrywarts.

The new rules cut pay for current and future traffic controllers by as much as 30 percent, reduce pensions and, according to some aviation experts, could prompt more than 4,000 of the current 14,000 controller workforce to retire, exacerbating an already critical controller shortage.

Controllers who do not feel they have gotten enough rest before a shift would be forced to work anyway. Controllers also can no longer take a break after two hours on the job, a longstanding practice that controllers say was a major way to fight fatigue.

Oh, for pete’s sake. Editors get to take a damn coffee break every two hours. Admittedly, editors have a tougher job than air traffic controllers. Also, there are far more lives at stake.

What do you want to bet Air Force One gets its own air traffic controller, who’s always fresh as a damn daisy?

I have a 23-mile commute.

It takes me roughly 20 minutes to go the first 20 miles. And ten minutes to go the last 3.

I find this frustrating.

I watched the cartoons, I read the novels and short stories and comic books. It’s nearly 2007. We were supposed to have teleportation years ago.

So I got my California driver’s license last week. And it only took three trips to the DMV to acquire.

No, no, no, I didn’t fail the test—although I was worried for a while, I admit—it just took me that long to get all my paperwork in order. I didn’t have to take a driving test, just an eye test and the written. The eye test was surprisingly—disturbingly, in fact—easy. The written? Not quite so much.

There were 36 questions, and I could miss up to six and still pass. There were written instructions that said, in part:

Read the test questions carefully. Don't read anything extra into the question. There will be one correct answer and the other two answer choices will be either obviously wrong or not appropriate for the question asked.

Don't be nervous. DMV wants you to pass your test. Good Luck!

They do? They want me to pass? I’m not sure I approve. I think it should be tougher than that, they should be tougher than that. Driving’s not a damn right, it’s a privilege. You gotta earn it.

But maybe that’s just me.

And I see no reason for “luck” to be capitalized. It looks tacky.

Anyhoo, they do things a little wacky here in SoCal. For instance, you get your picture—and your thumbprint—taken before you’re actually tested. I guess they’re not kidding; they really do want you to pass.

The guy doing the taking on this particular day was a friendly gentlemen with a really good shtick. When you’d put your thumb on the print reader, he’d say, “Good. Just a little higher, please? Okay, great. Now just wait for the small shock.” Sometimes he’d add, “It only hurts a little.” Good stuff.

As I’m standing there, awaiting my turn, I look around and there on the wall is something which really makes you question reality. You look at it and you look at it and then you look at it some more but it never stops appearing to be a leftover prop from the Sylvester Stallone flick “Demolition Man.” It is a photo on the wall, as I reckon all DMV’s have in all states, of the governor of that state. But in my new state the governor is, naturally or not so much, the Governator himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

It’s one thing to know that. It’s another thing to see him on television or his photo in the newspaper. It’s a third and most unreal thing of all to see his official state photo in an official state office. Until you’ve experienced it, you cannot believe just how odd it really is.

So I took the test and, keeping in mind that The Right Answer Should Be Obvious and that They Want Me to Pass, I zipped right through that puppy. In fact, I finished long before any of the other dozen folks taking the test, some of whom had been at work for ten minutes before I sat down; I was out the door before any of them even put their pencils down. Clearly they were overthinking. Or maybe they just couldn't believe in their heart of hearts that the DMV wanted them to pass.

But they did. Ever so much.

I went with my first instinct on about 30 of the questions, leaving the others blank, to be filled in at the end. Of those, several were almost guesses on my part, and one in particular really bugged me. It was this one:

When parking on a hill on a two-way street, your front wheels should be:
A) Turned to the left (toward the street).
B) Turned to the right (away from the street).
C) Parallel with the pavement.

Now, you, dear reader, being a Left of the Dialian and therefore far, far, far smarter’n your average bear see the problem with this here question. As my girl Mona Lisa Vito would attest, it’s a bullshit question, in so far as it’s completely unanswerable in that form.

Because, of course, it depends upon whether you’re parking uphill or downhill, vital information which the test omits.

There was a bit o’ vital information which I’d missed myself when I started taking the test, and only noticed when it came time to flip it over and start on the second half, and that bit was this: I was supposed to check the box next the correct answer with an X. I’d been using check marks. What to do? Continue in my erroneous fashion, or remain consistent?

Well, as the fish would say, what would you do?

After my test was graded—I got two wrong, and received a smiley face for my outstanding score—I pointed out the incompletely worded question to the dude at the counter. He first opined that the important information was the two-way street bit, but I questioned that reading. He then looked at it again and laughed and said they’d been using this test for years and no one else had noticed.

So I wonder. Are both A and B considered correct answers? Because depending upon the direction of the hill, they could be.

I haven't slept well since. It plagues me, this question.

Anyhoo, as I drove away from the DMV, I considered it already a successful day, perhaps having made the world a slightly better place for having improved a test at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Knowing that I would soon receive in the mail my official license with, let’s be honest, a stunningly attractive photo of my fair self, I thought, “Today I may not be a man…but I am a Californian.”

So the fambly is in Arizona. All their stuff, on the other hand, is now in the lovely semi-arid clime of San Diego county.

It took the awesome fellers who did the move about four hours to get it all off the truck and in the house. Not the most pleasant four hours of my life, I must say. Certainly, far far far from the worst, but trying to figure out where the ever so flexible Top Management would like This Thing or That Thing was difficult. Trying to fit the stuff from a house twice the size into one half the size? That was…stressful. Yes it was.

And for some reason, rather than filling me with anticipation and joy, the sight of The Baby’s bouncy chair or The Boy’s highchair just made me so melancholy. They’ve been so far away for so long and while they were, at that moment, no longer more than a thousand miles away, still, I was just hit by this wave of loss, the knowledge that I’d been away from The Baby for fully half her life now, that I'll be no more than just another smiling face the next time she sees me.

I know, I know, I know. It could be worse. I could be off fighting a pointless war, and I know she’ll learn to recognize me soon enough. But the difference between a three-month-old and a six-month-old is huge—and if you're a parent, you can't deny that. So just because it could be so much worse doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck.

Waah. Poor, poor pitiful me.

The fact that I can’t find a hotel room in Yuma, Arizona or even El Centro, California is really freaking me out too. I’m flying to Phoenix tomorrow and the troop’ll pick me up in the early afternoon and we figured we’d get a couple hours further west before breaking for the night. And then Wednesday’d be an easy trip into the Golden State and that’d be that. A grand and glorious and romantic plan. But there doesn’t seem to be a single hotel room between Phoenix and San Diego. And if you think that’s an exaggeration, I highly encourage you to prove me wrong.

Hey! [It's now an hour after I wrote the above.] I just found a room in El Centro—in marked contrast to the very perky girls who turned me down so regretfully in Yuma, however, this guy…uh…hmm. I’m not filled with confidence in this hotel. I think he may actually have just wandered by and noticed the phone ringing.

A-ha. [He said, another forty minutes later.] After calling literally fourteen hotels in Yuma I found a suite there. I also found a suite in Gila Bend, the Ramada Inn Space Age. Gila Bend totally doesn't fit our travel plans but, come on. It's called Gila Bend! It's the Ramada Inn Space Age! It's going to be mighty hard to pass that puppy up.

Okay. I feel slightly better now. So home I go to unpack the kitchen and then try to find some sheets for the bed. Those tasks’ll knock the joy right outta me. On the upside, it’s the first time I've left before 9 pm in weeks. Half-full, baby! I’m back!

Top Management just called. The brood has passed the Sangre de Cristo Mountain Range and the Greenhorn Mountains and went over the Raton Pass and are now in New Mexico. Yay! They’ll be in Santa Fe tonight.

The moving truck with just about all our worldly possessions is arriving tomorrow morn. I'll spend an extremely pleasant and relaxing day thusly, then go to work on Tuesday, and Wednesday morning I'll be flying to Phoenix, where I'll be greeted by the indefatigable and redoubtable Top Management and her lovely, lovely Mess o' Kids.

It’s somewhere around 350 miles from Phoenix to the San Diego area, so we might try to do it in one day, but it’d be nice to arrive in the daylight, so maybe we’ll make it two really easy days instead.

As though there’s any such thing as “an easy day” when you’ve got five kids.

Fortunately, there are wonderful days. Or so I've been told. I’m hoping to find out myself in just about 65 more hours. Not really sure what we’re going to do; I figure we’ll stop in Yuma or somewhere around there and I’m sure there’s some Native American museums or something. And if there isn’t anything to do? Who cares? There’ll be plenty of beds for kids to jump on. And that’s more’n good enough.

The pilgrims have entered the Centennial State. (That’s Colorado for you non-Coloradoans.) They have at long, long, long, long last left the prairie behind.

That’s not true, of course. They’re about two hours from Denver, and about an hour and forty-five minutes of that will be prairie. But by “prairie,” what I really meant was, “the never-ending state that is Kansas.” Bless its big flat heart.

And just to make sure Top Management and I are secure in our collective opinion that it was a good idea for her not to wait until the house sold: it just started snowing all along her stretch of I-70. Worried? Me? Perish the thought.

So the mob has just left scenic Salina, Kansas and are once again headed my way. Apparently they had a fine ol’ time in Salina, hookin’ up with pal Karen who Top Management met through the wondrous tubes which are the internets. Karen and her accessory Tom are another of that thar rare breed known as the pro-life liberal. San Diego’s got one of the best zoos in the whole wide world. I wonder if they got that particular endangered species on display. Possibly too hard to find.

But here’s one of my favorite parts of the trip so far: Top Management got busted by the hotel staff in Salina. Apparently, she and Karen and their bizarrely large group of children were having too much fun. So they were asked to please keep it down.

And there you go. There’s a big difference between where they’ve been and where they’re going right there. See, in Virginia, southern hospitality would have dictated that folks perhaps grumble about it politely and quietly and not say a word. Here in southern California, the staff and other guests would have joined the party. (Until they learned there was no alcohol involved.) In Kansas they just shut ‘em down. Damn. It’s like Footloose come to life! Kevin Bacon, where are you in our time of need?

So. The gang entered Kansas about 26 hours ago and they’ll be leaving it in about another eight. There was a book out a year or two ago called What’s the Matter with Kansas? Excellent book with a persuasive argument.

But I've got the real answer. Is it that their Comfort Inns are too strict? No. Although that’s obviously true.

No, the problem is this: it’s too damn wide. Just. Too. Damn. Wide. If you’re gonna be 973 miles wide, you have to have at least a tiny bit of variation to your topography. And, no, Leavenworth doesn’t count. Much.

Ah, but now Nebraska? Iowa? Now them’s some midwestern states you can sink your teeth into. The glories of our nation, breadbasket to the world, and yet there’s an ebb and flow to the landscape, big sky galore but some gently rolling hills to ‘em. And they don’t take a week and a half to get through.

On the other, Kansas gave us Superman and Dorothy. So there’s that.

The troop is in Dale, Indiana tonight. The Boy and The Baby were both, apparently, very pleased to be out of the car. Max, meanwhile, felt that since they’d entered a new time zone, they were duty-bound to push on for another hour. The Boy won.

So they’ve gone about 550 miles, leaving roughly 1050 miles to go on the first leg of the trip. True to form, Top Management is refusing to drive 750 miles a day like some people. She’s nice.

What’s not so nice? From what I understand, it would be this: waking up at 3:00 in the a.m. in a Ramada Inn in Beckley, West Virginia and having to go down to the minivan and dig out your eyeglasses so you can take out your contact lenses because you’ve awakened out of an exhausted sleep, suddenly and horribly secure in the knowledge that you’ve come down with pink eye.

I gather that’s not overly pleasant.

Thank Allah for our beloved doctors, who called a prescription into a pharmacy in Winchester, Kentucky. Rumor has it the nearby McDonald’s in Winchester is really quite nice and kid-friendly.

I am torn between an intense desire to be there and help my poor girlfriend, and a shallow thankfulness that I’m far, far away. Not that I’d ever admit to such a base emotion.

Still, I’m doing what I can. We developed a routine over the past few months: when I’m ready to drive into the office in the mornings, I call her and she pulls up the up-to-the-minute San Diego traffic map and, from the Blue Ridge Mountains, directs me to the best routes in the greater San Diego area. Of course, as of two days ago I've had to wing it on my own with, I might add, coincidentally disastrous results.

Fortunately, I was able to hep her out this afternoon, when she encountered hideous traffic in Louisville, much too early for rush hour. Turns out there’s a similar up-to-the-minute traffic map for Louisville (I loves me my internets—Yahweh bless you, Al Gore) and while I wasn’t able to get her to a better and less congested route, I was at least able to tell her that her traffic troubles would end in 1.2 miles. Which they did.

So that was good. The Boy throwing up in the hotel room? Not so much.

You know, I wrote the rest of this post almost three hours ago. I was hoping a good way to end it would come to me.

I got nothin’. That’s the way it works sometimes.

[But she’s 550 miles closer to me. So there is that.]

I just got the call. The fambly’s on the road, heading west. About to cross the Blue Ridge Mountains on the start of their long, long journey to the sea. The Great Plains await. The Rockies.

And me.

Did you know about this?

Motorists in a number of U.S. states can be fined for failing to slow down or change lanes when passing parked emergency vehicles.

I’d noticed during my crosscountry drive that a lot of people did it. I just thought they were being either polite or cautious. I had no idea they were being law-abiding. I started doing it as well, just because it seemed like a good idea, but I didn’t do it every single time. Maybe I just got lucky. That tends to be a pattern in my life.

This is very, very wrong. This is not America. Or it’s not how America’s supposed to be.

A large excerpt of the wrongness:

The next day, I went to JFK in the morning to catch my Jet Blue plane to California. I reached Terminal 6 at around 7:15 am, issued a boarding pass, and checked all my bags in, and then walked to the security checkpoint. For the first time in my life, I was taken to a secondary search . My shoes were searched, and I was asked for my boarding pass and ID. After passing the security, I walked to check where gate 16 was, then I went to get something to eat. I got some cheese and grapes with some orange juice and I went back to Gate 16 and sat down in the boarding area enjoying my breakfast and some sunshine.

At around 8:30, two men approached me while I was checking my phone. One of them asked me if I had a minute and he showed me his badge, I said: "sure". We walked some few steps and stood in front of the boarding counter where I found out that they were accompanied by another person, a woman from Jet Blue.

One of the two men who approached me first, Inspector Harris, asked for my id card and boarding pass. I gave him my boarding pass and driver's license. He said "people are feeling offended because of your t-shirt". I looked at my t-shirt: I was wearing my shirt which states in both Arabic and English "we will not be silent". You can take a look at it in this picture taken during our Jordan meetings with Iraqi MPs. I said "I am very sorry if I offended anyone, I didnt know that this t-shirt will be offensive". He asked me if I had any other T-shirts to put on, and I told him that I had checked in all of my bags and I asked him "why do you want me to take off my t-shirt? Isn't it my constitutional right to express myself in this way?" The second man in a greenish suit interfered and said "people here in the US don't understand these things about constitutional rights". So I answered him "I live in the US, and I understand it is my right to wear this t-shirt".

Then I once again asked the three of them : "How come you are asking me to change my t-shirt? Isn't this my constitutional right to wear it? I am ready to change it if you tell me why I should. Do you have an order against Arabic t-shirts? Is there such a law against Arabic script?" so inspector Harris answered "you can't wear a t-shirt with Arabic script and come to an airport. It is like wearing a t-shirt that reads "I am a robber" and going to a bank". I said "but the message on my t-shirt is not offensive, it just says "we will not be silent". I got this t-shirt from Washington DC. There are more than a 1000 t-shirts printed with the same slogan, you can google them or email them at [email protected] . It is printed in many other languages: Arabic, Farsi, Spanish, English, etc." Inspector Harris said: "We cant make sure that your t-shirt means we will not be silent, we don't have a translator. Maybe it means something else". I said: "But as you can see, the statement is in both Arabic and English". He said "maybe it is not the same message". So based on the fact that Jet Blue doesn't have a translator, anything in Arabic is suspicious because maybe it'll mean something bad!

Meanwhile, a third man walked in our direction. He stood with us without introducing himself, and he looked at inspector Harris's notes and asks him: "is that his information?", inspector Harris answered "yes". The third man, Mr. Harmon, asks inspector Harris : "can I copy this information?", and inspector Harris says "yes, sure".

inspector Harris said: "You don't have to take of your t-shirt, just put it on inside-out". I refused to put on my shirt inside-out. So the woman interfered and said "let's reach a compromise. I will buy you a new t-shirt and you can put it on on top of this one". I said "I want to keep this t-shirt on". Both inspector Harris and Mr. Harmon said "No, we can't let you get on that airplane with your t-shirt". I said "I am ready to put on another t-shirt if you tell me what is the law that requires such a thing. I want to talk to your supervisor". Inspector Harris said "You don't have to talk to anyone. Many people called and complained about your t-shirt. Jetblue customers were calling before you reached the checkpoint, and costumers called when you were waiting here in the boarding area".

it was then that I realized that my t-shirt was the reason why I had been taken to the secondary checking.

I asked the four people again to let me talk to any supervisor, and they refused.

The Jet Blue woman was asking me again to end this problem by just putting on a new t-shirt, and I felt threatened by Mr. Harmon's remarks as in "Let's end this the nice way". Taking in consideration what happens to other Arabs and Muslims in US airports, and realizing that I will miss my flight unless I covered the Arabic script on my t-shirt as I was told by the four agents, I asked the Jet Blue woman to buy me a t-shirt and I said "I don't want to miss my flight."

She asked, what kind of t-shirts do you like. Should I get you an "I heart new york t-shirt?". So Mr. Harmon said "No, we shouldn't ask him to go from one extreme to another". I asked mr. harmon why does he assume I hate new york if I had some Arabic script on my t-shirt, but he didn't answer.

The woman went away for 3 minutes, and she came back with a gray t-shirt reading "new york". I put the t-shirt on and removed the price tag. I told the four people who were involved in the conversation: "I feel very sad that my personal freedom was taken away like this. I grew up under authoritarian governments in the Middle East, and one of the reasons I chose to move to the US was that I don't want an officer to make me change my t-shirt. I will pursue this incident today through a Constitutional rights organization, and I am sure we will meet soon". Everyone said okay and left, and I went back to my seat.

At 8:50 I was called again by a fourth young man, standing with the same jetblue woman. He asked for my boarding pass, so I gave it to him, and stood in front of the boarding counter. I asked the woman: "is everything okay?", she responded: "Yes, sure. We just have to change your seat". I said: "but I want this seat, that's why I chose it online 4 weeks ago", the fourth man said " there is a lady with a toddler sitting there. We need the seat."

Then they re-issued me a small boarding pass for seat 24a, instead of seat 3a. They said that I can go to the airplane now. I was the first person who entered the airplane, and I was really annoyed about being assigned this seat in the back of the airplane too. It smelled like the bathrooms, which is why I had originally chosen a seat which would be far from that area.

It sucks to be an Arab/Muslim living in the US these days. When you go to the middle east, you are a US tax-payer destroying people's houses with your money, and when you come back to the US, you are a suspected terrorist and plane hijacker.

The only thing some folks have to run on is fear itself. And for nearly five years now, that’s exactly what they’ve been doing, very, very well. Unfortunately, it’s the only thing they do well.

So I told a few people that moving from the Blue Ridge Mountains to Southern California was roughly the same as moving from Ireland to Poland. That tended to elicit a “whoa” or perhaps a low whistle. (Although they might have just been admiring my gams.)

And then I started worrying that I was overselling it a bit, and that I hadn’t traveled nearly that far.

Fortunately, the internets are a wonderful creation (thank you, Al Gore!). It took me all of about a minute and a half to find a distance calculator thingamajiggee that’ll tell you how far it is from X to Y.

Which is how I found out that I may have driven 2599 miles from my house to my office—one hell of a commute—but that it’s a mere 2189 as the crow flies. Damn crows, always taking the direct route. What’s their hurry? It’s a beautiful world. Stop and smell the roses, you nasty bastards.

That distance calculator thingamajiggee is also how I found out that I was way off with my Ireland-to-Poland comparison.

Because Dublin to Warsaw is a piddling 1135 miles. Jeez, Dublin to Moscow is only 1740 miles.

In other words, I’m a long, long, long way from home.

Coming out with my fresh cuppa morning coffee today, a well dressed guy caught my eye and said, “Hey, I’m trying to get a little money for gas so I can get to work—do you wanna buy this?” And he held out a copy of The Bourne Supremacy DVD.

Well, no, I really didn’t want to buy it. Watching it once was quite enough and, besides, I don’t have a TV, much less a DVD player. “I’m just trying to buy some gas so I can get to work,” he repeated.

I should emphasize again that he was quite sharply dressed. New polo shirt, well-pressed slacks, his hair in considerably better shape than mine, his face freshly shaven.

“What are you driving?” I asked.

“The Buick just around the corner,” he replied.

I glanced around the corner and there was a Buick maybe six or seven years old but which had seen far better days.

“Tell you what,” I said, holding out a dollar. “This’ll get you about fifteen miles.” Of course, I later realized, at today’s prices and with his car in the shape it was, it’d probably get him more like seven.

“I’m just trying to get some money for gas so I can get to work,” he said again, as he took the bill.

“I understand,” I answered, getting in my car and driving off to work.

So here are two things which (that?) folks here in California might not realize are really, really goofy to us folk from back east.

First of all, they sell hard liquor in the drug store. Which makes sense, I suppose, but things rarely work out that literally. So it’s really odd to be shopping for shaving cream in Rite-Aid and turn the corner and see Smirnoff’s and Cuervo and Jim Beam. Not unpleasant—it’s always nice to encounter old friends in a new place. But still odd.

But the other thing (another thing) is even weirder, especially to someone who worked and lived in New York City for a decade. Ready for this?

People stop at red lights here.

No, seriously. Pedestrians wait on the street corners until they get the walk signal. I know, I know, but I swear it’s true. None of ‘em cross. They just wait there. The big lemmings.

What’s more, when a pedestrian does have the right of way, such as a stop sign, say, the cars wait patiently until the pedestrian is safely out of the way, without trying to scoot past them or honking their horns or gunning their engines or whatever. It’s really disconcerting.

Turns out the cops here are serious about their tickets, and if they see a car drive past a pedestrian, even if he or she is well out of the way of the vehicle’s path, the driver gets hammered with a serious fine. And the same goes for jaywalking here. Which is actually something of a contact sport in the Big Apple. Literally.

So there you go. Yet more differences in this great big adventure o’ mine.

Okay, so we’ve already discovered that SUVs seem to semi-officially be considered SMALL CARS here in California.

But COMPACT?

Oh, yes, indeed they are. Or so I’ve gathered after seeing dozens of them squeezed into spaces so marked.

Man, has this place been an education already.

I hate SUVs. Hate, hate, hate 'em. This despite the fact that so many of my favorite folks drive SUVs.

So, okay, reasonable people can disagree on whether or not SUVs are intrinsically helping out the devil. They are, of course, but reasonable people can convince themselves otherwise. Obviously.

But here’s one thing that is absolutely indisputable: if you drive an SUV and you park it in a space clearly marked SMALL CARS ONLY and because, you know, you’re not a small car but in fact a big fancy truck and you must therefore take up a space and a half—so, in effect, two spaces—well, you’re a complete and total jerk. No two ways about it.

Good to have me back, innit?

So here’s a newsflash: we live in a big damn country.

(And by "we," of course, I mean "those Left of the Dial readers lucky enough to live in the United States of America.")

GoogleMaps informs that it takes about forty-five hours to drive from the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains to scenic La Jolla, California. Mapquest, on the other hand, claims a mere 39 or so hours. Different routes? Assuming faster driving? Or simply not a single bathroom break allowed?

We’ll see what AAA has to say. We’ll consider them somewhat authoritative, especially given how Mapquest screwed us by toying with us in the heart of Pittsburgh, Steel City itself, during rush hour a few years back. Three rivers and about thirty bridges there and I think we crossed every single one at least twice and a couple three times.

I worked with a tremendously intelligent and educated guy from Scotland a decade back. He’d been to the US a dozen times and loved, loved, loved American culture, even if he was generally way far to the left of even the most liberal of our pols. He enjoyed telling the story of the first time he and his wife ever came to New York and how they were asked what their plans for the visit were.

"Oh, we’re going to visit the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty tomorrow," they replied, "And the next day we’re going to rent a car and go see the Grand Canyon. Then we’ll drive to San Francisco the day after that and then the next day we have to drive back here to fly out of JFK."

Big country we got. Big.

Okay, this is pretty groovy —it’s a panoramic view from Mount Everest.

I’ve never been one of them folks what want to climb Everest, whether it’s there or not. But I am sorta interested in a thing I heard about, which is climbing to the lowest base camp—if I’m not mistaken, there are three or four base camps, each successively higher. Apparently, it takes about two weeks of hiking through gorgeous country to get to the lowest base camp, and the views there are spectacular. That sounds about right for me. Will I ever do it? Well, it entails a month of your life and something like twenty thousand bucks, I think, so no, I don’t see it happening anytime soon, if ever. But it still sounds pretty cool.

A cousin of mine climbed Kilimanjaro. She said there was little climbing actually involved—it’s a fairly gentle slope, at least as these things go. But it’s so damn high that altitude sickness can really hammer you if you’re not in great shape. Again, though, that sounds more my speed. I’d have to get in shape first but then I’ve been looking for a good reason to do that for ten years now. A quick jaunt to Kilimanjaro might be just the thing.

Next year. Maybe. Or the year after that.

That Guy

You know how when you drive on unfamiliar roads during rush hour it’s really stressful because everyone else drives to work on them 250 times a year and they know ‘em like the backs of their hands and you’re trying to figure out where to go and which lane you want and you’re trying to get over but wait maybe that’s not where you want to be after all and does the road split a quarter mile up or do I have to merge here? And it sucks because there’s that one guy who’s all exasperated with you and rather than being nice he’s all in a hurry and just makes the whole thang that much worse?

Yeah. Today I was That Guy.

I hate being That Guy. 

States I've Been In

I couldn't figure out how to check "intoxication." Or was it "inebriation?"

create your own visited states map

h/t: Bonny Glen Up Close and Personal.

Wing Suits

Seriously. I got palpitations just thinking about trying this.

But, man, it looks cool.

Now I wanna see someone try to land.

Eating Raisins in Bangkok

So as Top Management has posted, our pal Keri has spent the past year traveling the world, visiting large parts of the Middle East and Asia, whilst avoiding the perhaps more common tourist destinations such as England, France, Australia and Japan. Instead she’s spent entire months in Egypt and India, Korea and China and Vietnam, as well as days or weeks in a dozen other countries.

She called earlier today and told me she was back in Thailand. We chatted for a while about stuff, and I tried to avoid asking her when she was coming back, since I know I hate being pressured about my future plans. A bit later, I got the following email, one of my favorite letters ever:

Remember when you asked me yesterday..."what are you doing in Bangkok? Haven't you already seen everything?" And I kinda stammered a bit then said I was working on my resume, making plans for my next steps once I come home, sussing out future goals and insurance policies. Nope. I'm not.

It was my first or second visit to Virginia and Max and The Rose had finished lunch and went off to the Blue Room to play. I have no idea where you were, but it was just me, Top Management and The Bean in the kitchen. Top Management and I were going to sit and have a chat, but before we took our seats, Top Management took a handful of raisins and placed them on the small table in the bay window of the kitchen and told The Bean to sit and eat them.

The Bean sat down and popped a raisin in her mouth, Top Management and I sat down to what I'm sure was a great conversation. Maybe 15 minutes went by and I was distracted by how quiet The Bean was. I glanced over and she was still sitting there in her chair, gazing out the window like a farmer would gaze at the sky for an on-coming storm. And only half the raisins were gone. There were no toys, no books on the table with her. Just the window, the raisins and The Bean.

Top Management and I kept talking, but a part of my attention was on The Bean. Why wasn't she wolfing down the raisins so she could go play with her sisters? Was this some kind of power struggle between mother and child? Was she being punished? Was a clown doing back-flips in the yard keeping her attention away from the raisins? I nonchalantly got up to get something in the kitchen to check this situation out. No clowns, absolutely nothing out of the ordinary in the back yard. The Bean didn't look distressed, she almost had a Zen-type of peacefulness with the whole situation.

Not me. I was having inner turmoil and it was all I could do to take my seat again and not grab the raisins and eat them myself and free her from the chair. I was hoping Max would come along. You see, Max always knows when something doesn't make sense to me and she'll set me straight. Like the time she told me I needed to relax more around children. (She was so dead-on right with that one.) Or when I took her and The Rose out for breakfast in Long Island and The Rose had a meltdown when I took the paper off the straw for her. Poor Rose was so upset, and poor me I couldn't figure out why. Max calmly explained that taking the paper off the straws was one of The Rose's favorite things to do and I didn't let her. Oh, thanks, Max, would have been more helpful to know before I took the straw! Ah, but Max's good with this. You and Top Management don't pick up on it, but somehow Max knows. The Rose has also shown signs that she'll help me out as well.

But no Max. No Rose. And 15 more minutes went by and The Bean finally ate the last raisin. She sat for a few more minutes. Got up slowly. Then tore up the stairs to play with her sisters.

So Scott, to answer your question truthfully, I'm eating raisins in Bangkok.

xo to you and Top Management, Max, The Rose, The Boy, The Baby and my Bangkok role-model, The Bean,

Keri

Northern Exposure

Ed at Trapper Creek recently moved back to Alaska. The trek may have been arduous, but it’s already paying off in the form of some outstanding bloggery.

Case in point:

How folks handle the weather in Alaska versus other areas of the good ol' US of A:

60 above zero:
Floridians turn on the heat. People in Alaska plant gardens.

50 above zero:
Californians shiver uncontrollably. People in Anchorage sunbathe.

Ah, adversity. Keep thee ever away from me.

My favorite is what residents of the Sunshine State do when the temperature hits zero. But you’ll have to click through to find out.

Bonehead on Board

I've always had a tendency to grade on a curve. So, fair or not—and I tend to think it’s actually more fair—if I see, say, a car with one of them big yellow Baby on Board thangs sticking to your back window, and Donald Duck window shades on the rear windows, making it clear you’ve got Precious Cargo with you, signal before you change lanes on an interstate, especially when you’re driving roughly 72 miles per hour in a 65 mph zone.

A Cure for Traffic

It is The Funk.

I learned this morning that even frustratingly hideous and pointless and unexpectedly heavy traffic is shockingly bearable if one is listening to Fulfillingness’ First Finale.

Indeed, boogie on, reggae woman. Your irresistibly slinky bassline makes sitting in a stopped car a damn pleasure.

Stop

Here’s what I do when I’m at a four-way stop and someone goes when it’s clearly my turn:

I nearly hit them.

Sometimes I go really fast and stop just before I hit them.
Sometimes I go slowly and stop just before I hit them.

But I pretty much always nearly hit them.

Tonight, for instance. Four-way stop a few blocks from the office. I’m heading east, and I have the clear right-of-way; I got to the stop five seconds before the other guy, who’s to my left, heading south. I’m waiting for the person who’d already gotten there before me to clear the intersection. (Naturally.) That car is facing me, heading west.

So as soon as the westbound car is past the midpoint of the intersection, the hump to my left, the southbound guy, starts going, cutting in front of me.

So I speed up and very nearly t-bone him.

He slams on his brakes and looks at me, shocked. And seeing as how he’s driving a new Benz coupe, his brakes are in outstanding condition.

I just stare back at him with what I hope is an utterly blank expression, devoid of any emotion whatsoever. Since we’re only about, what, five feet apart? He’s probably got a pretty good view of my face. (Poor bastard.)

He accelerates out of the intersection, chattering away on his cellphone quite animatedly, no doubt telling his listener about the insane jerk who almost hit him just now.

So. That’s what I do in those situations. I don’t like it about myself. And yet I do it pretty much every time.

Fly the Fracked Up Skies

This is not why I went nearly ten years without flying.

But it doesn’t exactly make me happy that I’m now at least an occasional flyer again either.

In the past few years, the FAA repeatedly has cut staffing at air traffic control towers. The FAA employed 15,606 controllers in 2002, according the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA), but now that number has shrunk to 14,305 while air traffic continues to grow.

May I just say that that’s absurd?

Further, the FAA has decreased the amount of time between work shifts, forcing controllers to work even when they have not had sufficient rest. Never mind that controller fatigue may have contributed to the Comair crash that killed 49 people in Lexington, Ky., last year. The lone air traffic controller on duty had only nine hours between two work shifts—and only two hours of sleep before going back on duty, according to the Associated Press. For years before the crash, Lexington controllers and their supervisors repeatedly had voiced concern about staffing issues at the airport.

You think? Fewer people doing more work? That might be a problem? I mean, jeez, they’re only responsible for keeping thousands (tens of thousands?) of people safe every day. Sheesh. It’s not like anything untoward would happen if two planes were to, say, gently brush against each other in mid-air. Worrywarts.

The new rules cut pay for current and future traffic controllers by as much as 30 percent, reduce pensions and, according to some aviation experts, could prompt more than 4,000 of the current 14,000 controller workforce to retire, exacerbating an already critical controller shortage.

Controllers who do not feel they have gotten enough rest before a shift would be forced to work anyway. Controllers also can no longer take a break after two hours on the job, a longstanding practice that controllers say was a major way to fight fatigue.

Oh, for pete’s sake. Editors get to take a damn coffee break every two hours. Admittedly, editors have a tougher job than air traffic controllers. Also, there are far more lives at stake.

What do you want to bet Air Force One gets its own air traffic controller, who’s always fresh as a damn daisy?

Drive Time

I have a 23-mile commute.

It takes me roughly 20 minutes to go the first 20 miles. And ten minutes to go the last 3.

I find this frustrating.

I watched the cartoons, I read the novels and short stories and comic books. It’s nearly 2007. We were supposed to have teleportation years ago.

California Drivin'

So I got my California driver’s license last week. And it only took three trips to the DMV to acquire.

No, no, no, I didn’t fail the test—although I was worried for a while, I admit—it just took me that long to get all my paperwork in order. I didn’t have to take a driving test, just an eye test and the written. The eye test was surprisingly—disturbingly, in fact—easy. The written? Not quite so much.

There were 36 questions, and I could miss up to six and still pass. There were written instructions that said, in part:

Read the test questions carefully. Don't read anything extra into the question. There will be one correct answer and the other two answer choices will be either obviously wrong or not appropriate for the question asked.

Don't be nervous. DMV wants you to pass your test. Good Luck!

They do? They want me to pass? I’m not sure I approve. I think it should be tougher than that, they should be tougher than that. Driving’s not a damn right, it’s a privilege. You gotta earn it.

But maybe that’s just me.

And I see no reason for “luck” to be capitalized. It looks tacky.

Anyhoo, they do things a little wacky here in SoCal. For instance, you get your picture—and your thumbprint—taken before you’re actually tested. I guess they’re not kidding; they really do want you to pass.

The guy doing the taking on this particular day was a friendly gentlemen with a really good shtick. When you’d put your thumb on the print reader, he’d say, “Good. Just a little higher, please? Okay, great. Now just wait for the small shock.” Sometimes he’d add, “It only hurts a little.” Good stuff.

As I’m standing there, awaiting my turn, I look around and there on the wall is something which really makes you question reality. You look at it and you look at it and then you look at it some more but it never stops appearing to be a leftover prop from the Sylvester Stallone flick “Demolition Man.” It is a photo on the wall, as I reckon all DMV’s have in all states, of the governor of that state. But in my new state the governor is, naturally or not so much, the Governator himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

It’s one thing to know that. It’s another thing to see him on television or his photo in the newspaper. It’s a third and most unreal thing of all to see his official state photo in an official state office. Until you’ve experienced it, you cannot believe just how odd it really is.

So I took the test and, keeping in mind that The Right Answer Should Be Obvious and that They Want Me to Pass, I zipped right through that puppy. In fact, I finished long before any of the other dozen folks taking the test, some of whom had been at work for ten minutes before I sat down; I was out the door before any of them even put their pencils down. Clearly they were overthinking. Or maybe they just couldn't believe in their heart of hearts that the DMV wanted them to pass.

But they did. Ever so much.

I went with my first instinct on about 30 of the questions, leaving the others blank, to be filled in at the end. Of those, several were almost guesses on my part, and one in particular really bugged me. It was this one:

When parking on a hill on a two-way street, your front wheels should be:
A) Turned to the left (toward the street).
B) Turned to the right (away from the street).
C) Parallel with the pavement.

Now, you, dear reader, being a Left of the Dialian and therefore far, far, far smarter’n your average bear see the problem with this here question. As my girl Mona Lisa Vito would attest, it’s a bullshit question, in so far as it’s completely unanswerable in that form.

Because, of course, it depends upon whether you’re parking uphill or downhill, vital information which the test omits.

There was a bit o’ vital information which I’d missed myself when I started taking the test, and only noticed when it came time to flip it over and start on the second half, and that bit was this: I was supposed to check the box next the correct answer with an X. I’d been using check marks. What to do? Continue in my erroneous fashion, or remain consistent?

Well, as the fish would say, what would you do?

After my test was graded—I got two wrong, and received a smiley face for my outstanding score—I pointed out the incompletely worded question to the dude at the counter. He first opined that the important information was the two-way street bit, but I questioned that reading. He then looked at it again and laughed and said they’d been using this test for years and no one else had noticed.

So I wonder. Are both A and B considered correct answers? Because depending upon the direction of the hill, they could be.

I haven't slept well since. It plagues me, this question.

Anyhoo, as I drove away from the DMV, I considered it already a successful day, perhaps having made the world a slightly better place for having improved a test at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Knowing that I would soon receive in the mail my official license with, let’s be honest, a stunningly attractive photo of my fair self, I thought, “Today I may not be a man…but I am a Californian.”

Ups and Downs

So the fambly is in Arizona. All their stuff, on the other hand, is now in the lovely semi-arid clime of San Diego county.

It took the awesome fellers who did the move about four hours to get it all off the truck and in the house. Not the most pleasant four hours of my life, I must say. Certainly, far far far from the worst, but trying to figure out where the ever so flexible Top Management would like This Thing or That Thing was difficult. Trying to fit the stuff from a house twice the size into one half the size? That was…stressful. Yes it was.

And for some reason, rather than filling me with anticipation and joy, the sight of The Baby’s bouncy chair or The Boy’s highchair just made me so melancholy. They’ve been so far away for so long and while they were, at that moment, no longer more than a thousand miles away, still, I was just hit by this wave of loss, the knowledge that I’d been away from The Baby for fully half her life now, that I'll be no more than just another smiling face the next time she sees me.

I know, I know, I know. It could be worse. I could be off fighting a pointless war, and I know she’ll learn to recognize me soon enough. But the difference between a three-month-old and a six-month-old is huge—and if you're a parent, you can't deny that. So just because it could be so much worse doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck.

Waah. Poor, poor pitiful me.

The fact that I can’t find a hotel room in Yuma, Arizona or even El Centro, California is really freaking me out too. I’m flying to Phoenix tomorrow and the troop’ll pick me up in the early afternoon and we figured we’d get a couple hours further west before breaking for the night. And then Wednesday’d be an easy trip into the Golden State and that’d be that. A grand and glorious and romantic plan. But there doesn’t seem to be a single hotel room between Phoenix and San Diego. And if you think that’s an exaggeration, I highly encourage you to prove me wrong.

Hey! [It's now an hour after I wrote the above.] I just found a room in El Centro—in marked contrast to the very perky girls who turned me down so regretfully in Yuma, however, this guy…uh…hmm. I’m not filled with confidence in this hotel. I think he may actually have just wandered by and noticed the phone ringing.

A-ha. [He said, another forty minutes later.] After calling literally fourteen hotels in Yuma I found a suite there. I also found a suite in Gila Bend, the Ramada Inn Space Age. Gila Bend totally doesn't fit our travel plans but, come on. It's called Gila Bend! It's the Ramada Inn Space Age! It's going to be mighty hard to pass that puppy up.

Okay. I feel slightly better now. So home I go to unpack the kitchen and then try to find some sheets for the bed. Those tasks’ll knock the joy right outta me. On the upside, it’s the first time I've left before 9 pm in weeks. Half-full, baby! I’m back!

O'er the Mountains

Top Management just called. The brood has passed the Sangre de Cristo Mountain Range and the Greenhorn Mountains and went over the Raton Pass and are now in New Mexico. Yay! They’ll be in Santa Fe tonight.

The moving truck with just about all our worldly possessions is arriving tomorrow morn. I'll spend an extremely pleasant and relaxing day thusly, then go to work on Tuesday, and Wednesday morning I'll be flying to Phoenix, where I'll be greeted by the indefatigable and redoubtable Top Management and her lovely, lovely Mess o' Kids.

It’s somewhere around 350 miles from Phoenix to the San Diego area, so we might try to do it in one day, but it’d be nice to arrive in the daylight, so maybe we’ll make it two really easy days instead.

As though there’s any such thing as “an easy day” when you’ve got five kids.

Fortunately, there are wonderful days. Or so I've been told. I’m hoping to find out myself in just about 65 more hours. Not really sure what we’re going to do; I figure we’ll stop in Yuma or somewhere around there and I’m sure there’s some Native American museums or something. And if there isn’t anything to do? Who cares? There’ll be plenty of beds for kids to jump on. And that’s more’n good enough.

Rocky Mountains, Hi!

The pilgrims have entered the Centennial State. (That’s Colorado for you non-Coloradoans.) They have at long, long, long, long last left the prairie behind.

That’s not true, of course. They’re about two hours from Denver, and about an hour and forty-five minutes of that will be prairie. But by “prairie,” what I really meant was, “the never-ending state that is Kansas.” Bless its big flat heart.

And just to make sure Top Management and I are secure in our collective opinion that it was a good idea for her not to wait until the house sold: it just started snowing all along her stretch of I-70. Worried? Me? Perish the thought.

What's the Matter with Kansas?

So the mob has just left scenic Salina, Kansas and are once again headed my way. Apparently they had a fine ol’ time in Salina, hookin’ up with pal Karen who Top Management met through the wondrous tubes which are the internets. Karen and her accessory Tom are another of that thar rare breed known as the pro-life liberal. San Diego’s got one of the best zoos in the whole wide world. I wonder if they got that particular endangered species on display. Possibly too hard to find.

But here’s one of my favorite parts of the trip so far: Top Management got busted by the hotel staff in Salina. Apparently, she and Karen and their bizarrely large group of children were having too much fun. So they were asked to please keep it down.

And there you go. There’s a big difference between where they’ve been and where they’re going right there. See, in Virginia, southern hospitality would have dictated that folks perhaps grumble about it politely and quietly and not say a word. Here in southern California, the staff and other guests would have joined the party. (Until they learned there was no alcohol involved.) In Kansas they just shut ‘em down. Damn. It’s like Footloose come to life! Kevin Bacon, where are you in our time of need?

So. The gang entered Kansas about 26 hours ago and they’ll be leaving it in about another eight. There was a book out a year or two ago called What’s the Matter with Kansas? Excellent book with a persuasive argument.

But I've got the real answer. Is it that their Comfort Inns are too strict? No. Although that’s obviously true.

No, the problem is this: it’s too damn wide. Just. Too. Damn. Wide. If you’re gonna be 973 miles wide, you have to have at least a tiny bit of variation to your topography. And, no, Leavenworth doesn’t count. Much.

Ah, but now Nebraska? Iowa? Now them’s some midwestern states you can sink your teeth into. The glories of our nation, breadbasket to the world, and yet there’s an ebb and flow to the landscape, big sky galore but some gently rolling hills to ‘em. And they don’t take a week and a half to get through.

On the other, Kansas gave us Superman and Dorothy. So there’s that.

The Pros and Cons of [Not] Hitchhiking

The troop is in Dale, Indiana tonight. The Boy and The Baby were both, apparently, very pleased to be out of the car. Max, meanwhile, felt that since they’d entered a new time zone, they were duty-bound to push on for another hour. The Boy won.

So they’ve gone about 550 miles, leaving roughly 1050 miles to go on the first leg of the trip. True to form, Top Management is refusing to drive 750 miles a day like some people. She’s nice.

What’s not so nice? From what I understand, it would be this: waking up at 3:00 in the a.m. in a Ramada Inn in Beckley, West Virginia and having to go down to the minivan and dig out your eyeglasses so you can take out your contact lenses because you’ve awakened out of an exhausted sleep, suddenly and horribly secure in the knowledge that you’ve come down with pink eye.

I gather that’s not overly pleasant.

Thank Allah for our beloved doctors, who called a prescription into a pharmacy in Winchester, Kentucky. Rumor has it the nearby McDonald’s in Winchester is really quite nice and kid-friendly.

I am torn between an intense desire to be there and help my poor girlfriend, and a shallow thankfulness that I’m far, far away. Not that I’d ever admit to such a base emotion.

Still, I’m doing what I can. We developed a routine over the past few months: when I’m ready to drive into the office in the mornings, I call her and she pulls up the up-to-the-minute San Diego traffic map and, from the Blue Ridge Mountains, directs me to the best routes in the greater San Diego area. Of course, as of two days ago I've had to wing it on my own with, I might add, coincidentally disastrous results.

Fortunately, I was able to hep her out this afternoon, when she encountered hideous traffic in Louisville, much too early for rush hour. Turns out there’s a similar up-to-the-minute traffic map for Louisville (I loves me my internets—Yahweh bless you, Al Gore) and while I wasn’t able to get her to a better and less congested route, I was at least able to tell her that her traffic troubles would end in 1.2 miles. Which they did.

So that was good. The Boy throwing up in the hotel room? Not so much.

You know, I wrote the rest of this post almost three hours ago. I was hoping a good way to end it would come to me.

I got nothin’. That’s the way it works sometimes.

[But she’s 550 miles closer to me. So there is that.]

Westward Ho!

I just got the call. The fambly’s on the road, heading west. About to cross the Blue Ridge Mountains on the start of their long, long journey to the sea. The Great Plains await. The Rockies.

And me.

Move Over or Pull Over

Did you know about this?

Motorists in a number of U.S. states can be fined for failing to slow down or change lanes when passing parked emergency vehicles.

I’d noticed during my crosscountry drive that a lot of people did it. I just thought they were being either polite or cautious. I had no idea they were being law-abiding. I started doing it as well, just because it seemed like a good idea, but I didn’t do it every single time. Maybe I just got lucky. That tends to be a pattern in my life.

Dangerous Shirt

This is very, very wrong. This is not America. Or it’s not how America’s supposed to be.

A large excerpt of the wrongness:

The next day, I went to JFK in the morning to catch my Jet Blue plane to California. I reached Terminal 6 at around 7:15 am, issued a boarding pass, and checked all my bags in, and then walked to the security checkpoint. For the first time in my life, I was taken to a secondary search . My shoes were searched, and I was asked for my boarding pass and ID. After passing the security, I walked to check where gate 16 was, then I went to get something to eat. I got some cheese and grapes with some orange juice and I went back to Gate 16 and sat down in the boarding area enjoying my breakfast and some sunshine.

At around 8:30, two men approached me while I was checking my phone. One of them asked me if I had a minute and he showed me his badge, I said: "sure". We walked some few steps and stood in front of the boarding counter where I found out that they were accompanied by another person, a woman from Jet Blue.

One of the two men who approached me first, Inspector Harris, asked for my id card and boarding pass. I gave him my boarding pass and driver's license. He said "people are feeling offended because of your t-shirt". I looked at my t-shirt: I was wearing my shirt which states in both Arabic and English "we will not be silent". You can take a look at it in this picture taken during our Jordan meetings with Iraqi MPs. I said "I am very sorry if I offended anyone, I didnt know that this t-shirt will be offensive". He asked me if I had any other T-shirts to put on, and I told him that I had checked in all of my bags and I asked him "why do you want me to take off my t-shirt? Isn't it my constitutional right to express myself in this way?" The second man in a greenish suit interfered and said "people here in the US don't understand these things about constitutional rights". So I answered him "I live in the US, and I understand it is my right to wear this t-shirt".

Then I once again asked the three of them : "How come you are asking me to change my t-shirt? Isn't this my constitutional right to wear it? I am ready to change it if you tell me why I should. Do you have an order against Arabic t-shirts? Is there such a law against Arabic script?" so inspector Harris answered "you can't wear a t-shirt with Arabic script and come to an airport. It is like wearing a t-shirt that reads "I am a robber" and going to a bank". I said "but the message on my t-shirt is not offensive, it just says "we will not be silent". I got this t-shirt from Washington DC. There are more than a 1000 t-shirts printed with the same slogan, you can google them or email them at [email protected] . It is printed in many other languages: Arabic, Farsi, Spanish, English, etc." Inspector Harris said: "We cant make sure that your t-shirt means we will not be silent, we don't have a translator. Maybe it means something else". I said: "But as you can see, the statement is in both Arabic and English". He said "maybe it is not the same message". So based on the fact that Jet Blue doesn't have a translator, anything in Arabic is suspicious because maybe it'll mean something bad!

Meanwhile, a third man walked in our direction. He stood with us without introducing himself, and he looked at inspector Harris's notes and asks him: "is that his information?", inspector Harris answered "yes". The third man, Mr. Harmon, asks inspector Harris : "can I copy this information?", and inspector Harris says "yes, sure".

inspector Harris said: "You don't have to take of your t-shirt, just put it on inside-out". I refused to put on my shirt inside-out. So the woman interfered and said "let's reach a compromise. I will buy you a new t-shirt and you can put it on on top of this one". I said "I want to keep this t-shirt on". Both inspector Harris and Mr. Harmon said "No, we can't let you get on that airplane with your t-shirt". I said "I am ready to put on another t-shirt if you tell me what is the law that requires such a thing. I want to talk to your supervisor". Inspector Harris said "You don't have to talk to anyone. Many people called and complained about your t-shirt. Jetblue customers were calling before you reached the checkpoint, and costumers called when you were waiting here in the boarding area".

it was then that I realized that my t-shirt was the reason why I had been taken to the secondary checking.

I asked the four people again to let me talk to any supervisor, and they refused.

The Jet Blue woman was asking me again to end this problem by just putting on a new t-shirt, and I felt threatened by Mr. Harmon's remarks as in "Let's end this the nice way". Taking in consideration what happens to other Arabs and Muslims in US airports, and realizing that I will miss my flight unless I covered the Arabic script on my t-shirt as I was told by the four agents, I asked the Jet Blue woman to buy me a t-shirt and I said "I don't want to miss my flight."

She asked, what kind of t-shirts do you like. Should I get you an "I heart new york t-shirt?". So Mr. Harmon said "No, we shouldn't ask him to go from one extreme to another". I asked mr. harmon why does he assume I hate new york if I had some Arabic script on my t-shirt, but he didn't answer.

The woman went away for 3 minutes, and she came back with a gray t-shirt reading "new york". I put the t-shirt on and removed the price tag. I told the four people who were involved in the conversation: "I feel very sad that my personal freedom was taken away like this. I grew up under authoritarian governments in the Middle East, and one of the reasons I chose to move to the US was that I don't want an officer to make me change my t-shirt. I will pursue this incident today through a Constitutional rights organization, and I am sure we will meet soon". Everyone said okay and left, and I went back to my seat.

At 8:50 I was called again by a fourth young man, standing with the same jetblue woman. He asked for my boarding pass, so I gave it to him, and stood in front of the boarding counter. I asked the woman: "is everything okay?", she responded: "Yes, sure. We just have to change your seat". I said: "but I want this seat, that's why I chose it online 4 weeks ago", the fourth man said " there is a lady with a toddler sitting there. We need the seat."

Then they re-issued me a small boarding pass for seat 24a, instead of seat 3a. They said that I can go to the airplane now. I was the first person who entered the airplane, and I was really annoyed about being assigned this seat in the back of the airplane too. It smelled like the bathrooms, which is why I had originally chosen a seat which would be far from that area.

It sucks to be an Arab/Muslim living in the US these days. When you go to the middle east, you are a US tax-payer destroying people's houses with your money, and when you come back to the US, you are a suspected terrorist and plane hijacker.

The only thing some folks have to run on is fear itself. And for nearly five years now, that’s exactly what they’ve been doing, very, very well. Unfortunately, it’s the only thing they do well.

Bigger'n Europe

So I told a few people that moving from the Blue Ridge Mountains to Southern California was roughly the same as moving from Ireland to Poland. That tended to elicit a “whoa” or perhaps a low whistle. (Although they might have just been admiring my gams.)

And then I started worrying that I was overselling it a bit, and that I hadn’t traveled nearly that far.

Fortunately, the internets are a wonderful creation (thank you, Al Gore!). It took me all of about a minute and a half to find a distance calculator thingamajiggee that’ll tell you how far it is from X to Y.

Which is how I found out that I may have driven 2599 miles from my house to my office—one hell of a commute—but that it’s a mere 2189 as the crow flies. Damn crows, always taking the direct route. What’s their hurry? It’s a beautiful world. Stop and smell the roses, you nasty bastards.

That distance calculator thingamajiggee is also how I found out that I was way off with my Ireland-to-Poland comparison.

Because Dublin to Warsaw is a piddling 1135 miles. Jeez, Dublin to Moscow is only 1740 miles.

In other words, I’m a long, long, long way from home.

Morning Wake-Up

Coming out with my fresh cuppa morning coffee today, a well dressed guy caught my eye and said, “Hey, I’m trying to get a little money for gas so I can get to work—do you wanna buy this?” And he held out a copy of The Bourne Supremacy DVD.

Well, no, I really didn’t want to buy it. Watching it once was quite enough and, besides, I don’t have a TV, much less a DVD player. “I’m just trying to buy some gas so I can get to work,” he repeated.

I should emphasize again that he was quite sharply dressed. New polo shirt, well-pressed slacks, his hair in considerably better shape than mine, his face freshly shaven.

“What are you driving?” I asked.

“The Buick just around the corner,” he replied.

I glanced around the corner and there was a Buick maybe six or seven years old but which had seen far better days.

“Tell you what,” I said, holding out a dollar. “This’ll get you about fifteen miles.” Of course, I later realized, at today’s prices and with his car in the shape it was, it’d probably get him more like seven.

“I’m just trying to get some money for gas so I can get to work,” he said again, as he took the bill.

“I understand,” I answered, getting in my car and driving off to work.

Different Walks

So here are two things which (that?) folks here in California might not realize are really, really goofy to us folk from back east.

First of all, they sell hard liquor in the drug store. Which makes sense, I suppose, but things rarely work out that literally. So it’s really odd to be shopping for shaving cream in Rite-Aid and turn the corner and see Smirnoff’s and Cuervo and Jim Beam. Not unpleasant—it’s always nice to encounter old friends in a new place. But still odd.

But the other thing (another thing) is even weirder, especially to someone who worked and lived in New York City for a decade. Ready for this?

People stop at red lights here.

No, seriously. Pedestrians wait on the street corners until they get the walk signal. I know, I know, but I swear it’s true. None of ‘em cross. They just wait there. The big lemmings.

What’s more, when a pedestrian does have the right of way, such as a stop sign, say, the cars wait patiently until the pedestrian is safely out of the way, without trying to scoot past them or honking their horns or gunning their engines or whatever. It’s really disconcerting.

Turns out the cops here are serious about their tickets, and if they see a car drive past a pedestrian, even if he or she is well out of the way of the vehicle’s path, the driver gets hammered with a serious fine. And the same goes for jaywalking here. Which is actually something of a contact sport in the Big Apple. Literally.

So there you go. Yet more differences in this great big adventure o’ mine.

So Big and Yet Compact

Okay, so we’ve already discovered that SUVs seem to semi-officially be considered SMALL CARS here in California.

But COMPACT?

Oh, yes, indeed they are. Or so I’ve gathered after seeing dozens of them squeezed into spaces so marked.

Man, has this place been an education already.

Back and the Same

I hate SUVs. Hate, hate, hate 'em. This despite the fact that so many of my favorite folks drive SUVs.

So, okay, reasonable people can disagree on whether or not SUVs are intrinsically helping out the devil. They are, of course, but reasonable people can convince themselves otherwise. Obviously.

But here’s one thing that is absolutely indisputable: if you drive an SUV and you park it in a space clearly marked SMALL CARS ONLY and because, you know, you’re not a small car but in fact a big fancy truck and you must therefore take up a space and a half—so, in effect, two spaces—well, you’re a complete and total jerk. No two ways about it.

Good to have me back, innit?

In a Big Country

So here’s a newsflash: we live in a big damn country.

(And by "we," of course, I mean "those Left of the Dial readers lucky enough to live in the United States of America.")

GoogleMaps informs that it takes about forty-five hours to drive from the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains to scenic La Jolla, California. Mapquest, on the other hand, claims a mere 39 or so hours. Different routes? Assuming faster driving? Or simply not a single bathroom break allowed?

We’ll see what AAA has to say. We’ll consider them somewhat authoritative, especially given how Mapquest screwed us by toying with us in the heart of Pittsburgh, Steel City itself, during rush hour a few years back. Three rivers and about thirty bridges there and I think we crossed every single one at least twice and a couple three times.

I worked with a tremendously intelligent and educated guy from Scotland a decade back. He’d been to the US a dozen times and loved, loved, loved American culture, even if he was generally way far to the left of even the most liberal of our pols. He enjoyed telling the story of the first time he and his wife ever came to New York and how they were asked what their plans for the visit were.

"Oh, we’re going to visit the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty tomorrow," they replied, "And the next day we’re going to rent a car and go see the Grand Canyon. Then we’ll drive to San Francisco the day after that and then the next day we have to drive back here to fly out of JFK."

Big country we got. Big.

Top o' the World

Okay, this is pretty groovy —it’s a panoramic view from Mount Everest.

I’ve never been one of them folks what want to climb Everest, whether it’s there or not. But I am sorta interested in a thing I heard about, which is climbing to the lowest base camp—if I’m not mistaken, there are three or four base camps, each successively higher. Apparently, it takes about two weeks of hiking through gorgeous country to get to the lowest base camp, and the views there are spectacular. That sounds about right for me. Will I ever do it? Well, it entails a month of your life and something like twenty thousand bucks, I think, so no, I don’t see it happening anytime soon, if ever. But it still sounds pretty cool.

A cousin of mine climbed Kilimanjaro. She said there was little climbing actually involved—it’s a fairly gentle slope, at least as these things go. But it’s so damn high that altitude sickness can really hammer you if you’re not in great shape. Again, though, that sounds more my speed. I’d have to get in shape first but then I’ve been looking for a good reason to do that for ten years now. A quick jaunt to Kilimanjaro might be just the thing.

Next year. Maybe. Or the year after that.