Odd Days: Who Needs NY Foliage?

You might recall that Durf and I joined the fall foliage frenzy while we were in NY last year. We did what everyone else did: we made a list of all the perfect places to see the changing leaves and then next to each one we wrote down the date the colors would be at their peak. They actually publish that stuff in the newspapers back there!

Unfortunately, the whole foliage phenomenon is more art than science. Consequently, one weekend we found ourselves wandering around the Catskills wondering why all the leaves were green. Perhaps we had taken a wrong turn (thanks, Navi!) and stumbled into a heretofore undiscovered forest of evergreen deciduous trees.

Ah, memories.

This year we are back in Colorado and most nonresidents believe we have only four kinds of trees: spruce, fir, pine and aspen. Well...take a look at this photo, which I shot this morning from a spot that is a hop, skip and jump from our front door.

Eat your heart out, NY.

Odd Days: Revenge of the Navigatrix

To get from Jonesborough TN to Columbus OH, where my sister was keeping a pizza warm for me, I expected to hop on Highway 23, toggle cruise control and soak in the scenery. Just to be safe -- in case an alien took over my brain and drove Bubba (my car, duh!) off onto some nameless blue highway -- I gave my navigatrix the address of my destination.

She and I were getting along just fine all the way through Tennessee, Virginia, and most of Kentucky when all of a sudden she instructed me to get off the highway and make a left turn. I'm no fool. I did what I was told.

I soon found myself wandering aimlessly around the streets of Ashland, Kentucky. "Turn left, turn left, turn right." At some point I saw a Starbucks and the next thing I knew, my car was careening into the parking lot. Ten minutes later, coffee in hand, I re-entered Bubba and told the navigatrix to continue directing me to Columbus.

"Turn left. Turn left." It felt like I was going in circles. I looked at the screen and when I turned my eyes back to the road, I saw a car coming directly at me. In my lane. Holy CRAP, Navi had me turn down a one-way street! I pulled over, gasped for air, and then I put my thinking cap on. What in the world did I say that offended her?

When my heart rate returned to normal, I drove to a major (ha) thoroughfare and let Navi take over again. This time I spoke more gently, with wheedling undertones. I figured it worked because soon I had crossed the Ohio River and was heading north.

Two minutes later Navi told me to make a right turn.

"East? Why does she want me to go east? Would she really betray me again?"

It was then, in my time of greatest need, that I invoked the words of my wise old mentor. I spoke them aloud: "Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."

I gripped the steering wheel, stepped on the gas, and drove right by that right turn.

Yuk.

From my sister Jan:

Odd Days: Storytelling

I love stories. I loved being read to as a child. After Mom read us our bedtime story, and after the lights were switched off, I would turn on my radio and listen to the Lone Ranger. Nowadays I rely on NPR to tell me stories. On (very) rare occasions, I can talk Durf into reading to me, but I daresay he puts that activity in the same class with climbing Pikes Peak.

All this by way of saying, our primary reason for going to Tennessee recently was to attend the storytelling festival in Jonesborough. Ok, and a little teeny part of me thought that there was a teeny weeny chance that Pat Conroy, master storyteller that he is, might also make an appearance. (He didn't.)

So, what is a storytelling festival, you might ask. Well, think Telluride, but replace the films with people who run up on stage and tell hour-long whoppers. Replace the well-heeled and slight snooty audience at Telluride with hillbillies, cowboys and down home folks like yours truly. Replace the Rocky Mountains with colorful hollers and there you have it.

There is no requirement that the stories be true, and apparently no requirement that they not be stolen. Only that they entertain. And that they did.

I want to go back! Next time, I'll bring some wine to go with my fried fish and tater tots. (No bars in Jonesborough!) And I'm going to take my sister with me. She won't be sitting in the audience, though. I'm going to put her on stage, because nobody tells whoppers like she does!

The Great Indoors.

One thing Twila really likes is being outside. If she had her choice, I'm pretty sure she'd want to be outside anytime the weather was clement. Maybe she should have been a bear.

I've been outside, too. For instance, walking from my car into a store. It's entirely tolerable. If I want to spend time with my wife, though, which I do, often I have to be outside longer.

Sometimes we ride our bikes. We start from our house, pedal around awhile, then end up back at our house, tired and sweaty. I'm not sure I see the point.

Other times we hike. We put a lot of stress on our bodies, and often we suffer. I've blogged before how I feel about that.

I am a modern man. I take medicines, for example, because they're the main reason human life expectancy has gone from 18 to 79 years. And I like houses, which were invented to keep us comfortable. I don't see any reason to leave the pleasant environment of a house when I don't have to.

When you're inside, you don't need to wear raincoats or mittens. You don't need sunscreen. And the chances of being run over by a bus are exceedingly low. It seems like a win-win-win situation, to me. When someone, such as "guess who", suggests that we go outside, my first thought is, "Why would we want to do that?"

It's like retirement, in a way. Twila is already planning all the things we can do when her business winds down. I keep thinking about all the things we can *not* do.

In spite of differences like these, Twila and I get along wonderfully. I bought her a tandem, for example, so we can go bicycling and I don't have to pedal.

It's all about compromise.

Odd Days: In search of Pat Conroy

Sure, we wanted to gorge on seafood. And sure, we wanted to prowl the cemeteries. But in my heart of hearts, I went to Savannah with the hope of running into Pat Conroy. Of course, he would invite me to have coffee and then we would chat. I might ask him how he was coping with his depression, whether his daughter was speaking to him, whether he was still happy he forgave his father for beating the shit out of him. You know, that sort of thing.

Well we didn't run into him in Savannah, so we drove on over to Beaufort, S.C. which is only about 30 minutes away. Conroy lives on Fripp Island, but he comes to Beaufort for coffee.

In case you are ever in the mood to stalk Pat Conroy, you will need to act like a local. If you are "made" -- as the lowlife tourist you are -- you will see local lips pressed together tighter than a clam shell dipped in super glue.

To pass as a local, you must first learn how to pronounce the name of the town. Had you ever been to Beaufort, N.C. where people know how to talk, you would think to pronounce the S.C. doppelganger "Bo-fort." But you would be wrong. Beaufort, S.C. is pronounced "Bew-ferd." (Hailing from a state that calls the Poudre River the "Pooter River," I cast aspersions with some trepidation.)

For all of that, we failed to track down the elusive Mr. Conroy and reluctantly turned our tourist-mobile toward Jonesborough, TN (pronounced Johnsburg).

Just kidding. About the pronunciation, I mean.

Odd Days: Savannah, give me sordid, please!

I was in Savannah last week. That city has history! And when I learned that it is the most haunted city in America, I conjured ghosts of tortured slaves, mutilated rebels, maybe Johnny Mercer's grandfather. But no. Savannah earned the title in somewhat less interesting fashion...it applied for it.

You see, before publication of the book, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (the true story of a sordid murder that takes place in Savannah), Savannah had a mere 4 million visitors a year. The year the book came out, 10 million tourists descended on the city. The numbers declined as the years passed and Savannah needed a gimmick to lure people back in. So the city won the haunted title by reporting more unexplained parapsychological (is that a word??) events than any other city in the competition.

So now there are more ghost tours than residents. But my friend and I love kitsch, so we signed up for a tour of Bonaventure Cemetery. As we were driving to the graveyard, I commented on the declining number of tour companies going to Bonaventure (two apparently went out of business while I was on the phone with them).

Our refined southern belle of a tour leader explained that other tour leaders chased away customers by revealing too many sordid details about too many unpleasant events, thereby turning people off. "One fella" she huffed "actually stood next to Johnny Mercer's grave and rattled off all of his extra marital affairs! Can you imagine? Nobody wants to hear that kind of trash."

And I'm thinking, "They don't?"

Later, in the cemetery, we pass a statue of a runner poised over a grave. "Who's that?" I asked.

"Oh, she's a marathon runner who committed suicide."

"Oh my! What's her story?" I asked.

"I don't know," she said. "I refuse to learn the sordid stuff."

And I'm thinking, "ACK! I want the sordid stuff! Give me my money back!"

As we were returning to our hotel, I tried one last time, "So what do *you* think? Did Jim Williams kill his lover Billy Hanson?"

"Let me tell you this," she said, "Jim Williams did a lot for this town!"

And that was the end of *that* conversation.

Finally, my life has purpose.

Being retired means... well, having no meaning. You get up each day and you don't have to go to work, there is little you really *have* to do. No-one pays any attention to you. You are both idle and invisible. In other words, it's almost the perfect life.

Nevertheless, I wanted to mean something. I wanted some purpose. I wanted more money. And now, at last, I know the answer.

I'm going to become a Professional Pinball Wizard.

Probably I should have thought of that sooner, because in our basement are two pinball machines that I restored, and I have a strong background in pinball. There are really only two difficulties to overcome.

Difficulty #1. I have to become a pinball wizard. That means, first, developing hand-eye coordination. The only way to do that is to practice for endless hours. Even then, there are challenges. At a professional pinball tournament, there are many different types of pinballs in various conditions. It is essential to know the rules for each one. The "how to play" manual for my "Twilight Zone" pin, for example, is 45 pages long. I'll have to download manuals for different machines and, if an unfamiliar one shows up at a tournament, learn as much as I can in a couple of practice games. Finally, the hardware on every machine is different. The spring on each plunger that launches a ball is different, for example. My strategy for that is to first launch about 1/3 of the way to the playing field, then launch a bit farther, and calculate from those the appropriate in-play launch.

Difficulty #2. There are no Professional Pinball Wizards and no professional tournaments, as far as I know. Only one company still manufactures pinball machines, and no-one cares. When my young nephews and nieces visit I turn on the machines, they hear the seductive sounds and see the flashing lights, and then they yawn and turn away. Pinballs don't compare, apparently, to blowing someone's virtual brains out with a virtual rocket launcher.

Still, one can dream.

And practice for endless hours.

Freud & Freund.

Freud famously said, "The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is 'What does a woman want?'"

Freund not-yet-famously says, "PFFFT! What a woman wants is... security."

What do men want? Women.

Let the bargaining begin.

Odd Days: Lunatics Part II

As Durf & I have mentioned before, Colorado laws and Colorado drivers (for the most part) are quite bike and runner friendly. This is in contrast to states like Florida where the generally accepted practice is for drivers to run bikes off the road. If they happen to hit the bike in the process, all the better. If they miss, well, they hope to scare the rider to death.

In truth, though, there are lunatics in every state. And the behavior is much the same. A lunatic in a car likes to come up behind a bike and blast the horn. That causes the bike to swerve wildly. The car zooms by, well within arm's reach of the bike. Sometimes the driver leans out the window and hollers, or offers up a finger.

If the target of the lunatic is a runner, who would be running facing traffic of course, the car comes toward the runner, moving across the white line and onto the shoulder to make sure he is in the runner's path.

I'm not making this up. These things happen to me several times a year. After my heart rate returns to normal, I usual ponder the lunatic's motivation. Is he jealous because he isn't a studly runner/biker? Does he feel that runners/bikers have no business on the road -- even in the dirt off the shoulder? Does it just make him mad that people want to exercise? Does he feel that the world would be a better place if people drove everywhere and then sat on a couch for recreation?

You gotta think there's some humanity deep inside these people and if you could just get the burr out of their butts, they would lighten up.

Well good news. We've found the prescription: A tandem. Everybody loves a tandem. They wave, they smile, and they shout as they pass. But they don't shout vile epithets, they shout "Tandem!" -- not realizing that his name is actually Dracula.