gwax's rumblings

Sitting, wait­ing to board my flight from San Francisco to Seattle for PAX Prime, I have already, once, for­feited my dig­nity to my over­lord, Police State USA. Standing up to the man as much as might still allow me to fly, I opted-out of soak­ing up the X-rays that aren’t backscat­tered and hav­ing my naked body put on dis­play for the highly trained elite that is the TSA. Opting-out, of course, sub­jects me to a manda­tory pat-down. During the pat-down, I am granted the dig­ni­fied cour­tesy of hav­ing my spe­cial places be pat­ted down by the back of the agent’s hands; lucky me. Dignity sac­ri­ficed at the alter of home­land secu­rity, I was per­mit­ted to wait for my plane.

At least I sprung for the slightly more expen­sive, exit row and free booze seats: now I can drink until my dig­nity doesn’t matter.

Yesterday, in return­ing from a week long, Christmas related stint in my home state of Massachusetts, I had a par­tic­u­larly intrigu­ing synchronicity.

I was fly­ing Virgin America, which is an excel­lent air­line but that’s an entire dis­cus­sion of its own right. As a mat­ter of good for­tune, I was fly­ing Main Cabin Select, which pro­vides, amongst other things, the option of check­ing in through the First Class line. The reg­u­lar line was pro­ceed­ing rather quickly and a young lady behind me in line made a com­ment to the effect of it seem­ing a mis­take to be in the First Class line. My moti­va­tions being as they are, I took a few moments to chat with this nice young lady but didn’t make it far before it was my turn to go for­ward and check my baggage.

Conversations cut short are unfor­tu­nate but such things hap­pen. I pro­ceeded through secu­rity, got to the gate, waited a while and boarded the plane where who should end up in the seat next to me but the very same young woman who had been behind me in line. This was a pleas­ant coin­ci­dence but not ter­ri­bly sur­pris­ing inso­far as there are not very many Main Cabin Select seats on any given plane. Shortly after tak­ing her seat, this young woman says to me, “nice ring” and, as I glance over, it turns out that she’s an MIT grad­u­ate as well; there’s a pleas­ant extra level to this coin­ci­dence and a good source for con­ver­sa­tion topics.

As we’re chat­ting about var­i­ous things, this young woman (who I am going to refer to as Margaret because it’s eas­ier than con­tin­u­ing to use qual­i­fied generic nouns), men­tions that she was on the crew team and I men­tioned that I had been on the sail­ing team. Somehow, in dis­cussing sail­ing, I men­tioned spend­ing sum­mers on Cape Cod, which raised the ques­tion of where. My answer, of course, is Woods Hole and, lo and behold, Margaret’s fam­ily also has a place in Woods Hole. I should note that Woods Hole is a very small town and it’s quite rare that I encounter some­one in Woods Hole that I have not met before, espe­cially some­one within 5 years of my own age. As a result, rather unsur­pris­ingly, it turns out that Margaret and I have at least a dozen mutual acquain­tances and friends.

Overall, it was a fan­tas­ti­cally sur­pris­ing coin­ci­dence; so much so that it makes me wish that Mr. Data were on hand to tell me what the odds of the coin­ci­dence were. Certainly there exist cer­tain biases to cor­rect for, which make it such that the coin­ci­dence isn’t purely ran­dom but I am not ter­ri­bly inclined to enu­mer­ate all of the non-random fac­tors that may have con­tributed. Why such a coin­ci­dence hap­pened, I can’t say, but it did, and that’s great. The end result is that I’ve nar­rowed the gap of peo­ple that I don’t know in Woods Hole and made a con­nec­tion with a pleas­ant new per­son in this world.

Today is Wednesday of my Sunday through Saturday week in Cancun. It is cur­rently the evening, about 11p and, before I go to sleep in prepa­ra­tion for tomorrow’s activ­i­ties, I thought that I should check-in with y’all. I think that Im going to struc­ture this as a sum­mary of some of what’s been going on and fol­low with some more gen­eral thoughts that have been crystalizing.

It being Cancun, the oblig­a­tory sun bathing, swim­ming and strong, frozen bev­er­ages have been hap­pen­ing but, as that is largely not inter­est­ing in any detail, I’ll leave it at that. I have been stay­ing with friends at the Royal Sands, a time­share resort. This is one of five time­share resorts owned by this com­pany and I have to say, it’s pretty sweet; hon­estly, if my fam­ily didn’t have prop­erty on Cape Cod, I would strongly con­sider sign­ing in to this whole time­share thing. The ameni­ties are nice, the weather is fan­tas­tic and, let me tell you, the water is amaz­ing. Evenings here have pri­mar­ily fin­ished off with games of Dominos, Fluxx and Set,which has been a wholely pleas­ant expe­ri­ence, and makes me want to play more casual games with friends.

This morn­ing, we trav­eled to the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza, which were truly fan­tas­tic to see. The degree of engi­neer­ing, archi­tec­tural and astro­nom­i­cal knowl­edge expressed by the struc­tures of the ruins is truly impres­sive. I am cer­tain that the expe­ri­ence was greatly enhanced by the qual­ity and char­ac­ter of our tour guide. One of the major things that caught root in my mind as a result of the expe­ri­ence is the imper­ma­nence of every­thing that I am doing with my life. Even a rel­a­tively mod­est Mayan dwelling still exists and expresses some­thing about its inhab­i­tants; what mark have I left on this world that will not be gone two gen­er­a­tions from now? For that mat­ter, what mark am I really leav­ing now?

Certain, deeper things seem to be gain­ing focus for me as well. One that seems truly clear is the degree to which I have missed the Atlantic Ocean and Woods Hole. Hopefully, my plans to work remotely from Woods Hole this sum­mer will suc­ceed and I shall get some sub­stan­tial time there.

Another thing that occurs to me is that I need to spend more time with my good friends and, per­haps, make a few more.

Today, for the first time, my travel was slowed down as a result of not check­ing bag­gage. With a two hour shift, it is now 4:00p, and I am eat­ing a so-so ham and cheese with a freely pro­vided Tecate. Having just left Mexico City, I feel as though I almost didn’t make it.

So, I debarked my first flight, passed through immi­gra­tion and pro­ceeded in the direc­tion of “Connecting Flights”. Before reach­ing my gate, I encoun­tered a check­point where I was asked how many bags I had checked. Having checked no bags, with the intent of expe­dit­ing my jour­ney, I said as much and was told to go back through immi­gra­tion and go to cus­toms. Passing immi­gra­tion again, I was told to con­tinue as I had the first time. Please real­ize that my inabil­ity to speak or under­stand Spanish was not to my advan­tage. Returning to the check­point, again, run­ning out of time to catch my flight, I was turned back once more. This time, ask­ing for very pre­cise instruc­tions from the quite com­pe­tent English speak­ing head of the check­point. It turns out, what I had to do was go through immi­gra­tion, again, ignore “Connecting Flights”, and pass through cus­toms as though Mexico City were my des­ti­na­tion. It was then nec­es­sary to turn around, pass through a dif­fer­ent entrance and find my gate as a domes­tic flight. With about twenty min­utes before depar­ture, I was very pleased to catch my flight.

All is now well and that was a mighty tasty Tecate.

As I write, I am sit­ting in seat 20E on a Mexicana Airbus A318 en route from San Francisco to Mexico City. It is 9:30a; I am writ­ing on my Nokia N810 (a device, which I will have to tell you of some other time); I have just con­sumed a wholely decent omelette; and, I it is my inten­tion to pub­lish this as soon as I next encounter Internet access. The omelette has arrested my atten­tion and is what prompted this post.

Though the omelette fell some­where between edi­ble and pass­able, this really is more of a “thought that counts” sort of thing. I have become so accus­tomed to the nickel-and-dimeing of bank­rupt United States air­lines that I was aston­ished to be offered food: “omelette or enchi­lada?” It took me two tries to under­stand through the Mexican accent, but that’s prob­a­bly a fail­ing on my part. Not only is there food but there appears to be free beer, though, it being 9:30a, I opted for milk.

Based on my expe­ri­ence thus far, I’m lik­ing Mexicana and feel­ing rem­i­nis­cent of British Airways. If you’re read­ing this, as is, noth­ing has inter­fered with my opin­ion suf­fi­ciently to jus­tify revision.

Since I returned to Massachusetts and got my com­puter set up, I’ve been mean­ing to write about my trip back from Minnesota. As time goes by, I see that as less and less likely to hap­pen so, instead, I will give you a very brief sum­mary so that the impor­tant points can be touched upon.

Having made only a few hours of head­way, my clutch decided to wear out 20 miles north of Madison, WI. This was incred­i­bly unpleas­ant, requir­ing that I be towed to Madison to have my clutch com­pletely replaced. As bad as it was, my clutch going was not all bad; I was able to reac­quaint myself with my old friend Amrys, whom I had not seen in far too long and who hap­pens to cur­rently be liv­ing in Madison. Amrys was friendly enough to pro­vide me with com­pany, a couch to crash on and a brief overview of Madison, includ­ing an intro­duc­tion to a quite pleas­ant break­fas­terie. My car was fixed by noon the day after it broke and I was able to get under­way once more. The car pro­vided no more prob­lems from that point.

On leav­ing Minnesota, I had com­menced lis­ten­ing to Frank Herbert’s Dune in audio book for­mat, which is a mon­strously long audio endeavor. The sec­ond leg of the Journey took me to Ithaca, NY and I was only just fin­ish­ing Dune shortly before I arrived. Now, I must say, as a way to enter­tain myself dur­ing 17–19 hours of dri­ving, lis­ten­ing to Dune served fan­tas­ti­cally well. Listening to Dune kept my atten­tion so well that I didn’t, even once, find myself bored by the dri­ving and com­pletely failed to notice Ohio, even though receipts clearly show that I stopped in Ohio.

I stopped in Ithaca, NY so that I might be able to visit with a few friends that I have who attend Cornell. Over the course of one day and two nights, I spent some time hang­ing out with my friend Liz, some time hang­ing out with my friend Hannah and, in 45 min­utes time, picked up a sun­burn. How white must I be to get a sun­burn from 45 min­utes of New York state, early May sun. It was a good time, which was fol­lowed by the final leg of my jour­ney, the Ithaca, NY to Concord, MA stretch.

The Ithaca, NY to Concord, MA leg of the jour­ney was pretty much unevent­ful and filled with the fan­tas­ti­cally amus­ing audio book ren­di­tion of The Areas Of My Expertise by John Hodgman. I would like to go on record highly rec­om­mend­ing The Areas Of My Expertise.

There you have it, a brief sum­mary of my pil­grim­age back from Minnesota.

Well, not so much Dodge as Minneapolis but the point is the same. As I write this, I am in Chi-town vis­it­ing my friend Jamie. I’d been mean­ing to get out of Minneapolis in a “get away from it all” for a while sense and I’ve been want­ing to pull a big road trip for a few weeks. So, when I dis­cov­ered that I had an old friend 6 hours drive away, I found a bril­liant means of sati­at­ing my desires. As it stands, I haven’t been doing alto­gether too much her but relax­ing with a change of scenery and peo­ple is really nice. Of course, I’m not ter­ri­bly look­ing for­ward to the amount of work that I’ll have to do tomor­row night but it’s worth it so, so be it.

I spent the long week­end down in Hartford, CT for the 2006 Fencing Junior Olympics (JOs). The JOs are the largest 20 and under fenc­ing event in the US and they’re held in a dif­fer­ent loca­tion every year; this year they were held in Hartford, which is so close to home that I couldn’t really jus­tify not going. It was a lot of fun watch­ing the fenc­ing, cheer­ing for mem­bers of my club and hang­ing out with fenc­ing peo­ple. The fenc­ing started really early every day, ran late every day and tended to be fol­lowed by a long, late din­ner, which made for very short nights of sleep­ing. I would nor­mally be fine with sleep­ing lit­tle over a long week­end for an event but I was fight­ing a cold at the same time, so this week­end has really taken a lot out of me. I feel mighty drained right now, but it sure was a lot of fun and man, oh man, watch­ing all that fenc­ing really makes me want to do some myself; I can’t wait for club tomorrow.

I spent this past week­end in Ithaca, NY vis­it­ing Liz at Cornell. Ellen and I drove out late Friday and came back mid-Sunday. It was very chill and we didn’t do much but it was a good change of scenery and com­pany, which pleased me. I’m pretty sure that a good time was had by all. And I’m being lazy, so that’s all the blog updat­ing that you get for now.

I fin­ished the return trip to Massachusetts today and am writ­ing this from my room in Concord. Total trip mileage was 3553 (keen, it’s sym­met­ri­cal). I’ll prob­a­bly get myself back into the city tomor­row, though it might take more than one day.

Today was an inter­est­ing one. I started at a rest area in Virginia where I ignored the two hour park­ing limit and got eight hours of sleep. Between there and New Jersey, things were pretty unevent­ful. However, an inter­est­ing thing hap­pened when I stopped for lunch and gas in New Jersey, I picked up a hitch-hiker head­ing for New York. Mind you, this was no nor­mal hitch-hiker, this was Ludovic Hubler (you’ll want to click the British flag if you can’t read French)(also, it’s kind of flakey in some browsers). I’m sure you’re ask­ing who is Ludovic Hubler and why should I care? He’s this French guy who is hitch-hiking around the world, try­ing not to spend any money at all on travel expenses. He started in France, hitch-hiked across the Sahara, across the Atlantic, to Antarctica, up to the US and I gave him a ride from the mid­dle of Jersey to New York.

That’s my excit­ing news of the day; I picked up a hitch-hiker. The first time I ever pick up a hitch-hiker and I get the hitch-hiker to end all hitch-hikers.