Like a ton of bricks

It isn't supposed to be this way.  Parents should not attend the funerals of their children.  That's not fair.

I was sitting at home tonight, nursing a nasty head and chest cold which began on Thursday.  Standard Saturday afternoon TV fare, the reruns of movies we've seen, sports, and crappy reality shows.  Mindless blather to relieve the stresses of the earlier part of the day and the latter part of yesterday.

We had attended the viewing (ashes in an urn), funeral, and wake of a close friend who died last week.   The outpouring of support and compassion has been amazing, and will surely help the family get through these tough times.   During Mary's battle with cancer I lived in blissful, hopeful ignorance and hope that all would be well in the end, just as I had when my mother, sister in-law, and aunt fought and defeated cancer a few years ago.

Instead,  her time was severely limited when the diagnosis was made.  So limited that we all thought today's events would have already taken place last summer.  I knew this in the back of my mind but refused to accept it, so when she made heroic advances at recovery over the summer and fall months I figured that she was beating this thing once and for all and everything would be back to normal once again.  So when Mary's health declined once again after the New Year, it became clear to us that she had battled for and won an extension of her life so that she could prepare her family for the next journey.  Even when I heard that Mary passed away last Friday I felt sadness but relief that she could rest in peace, finally.

The community gatherings to celebrate her life were appropriately sad and bracing.  The grieving was open and raw, but music was a big part of the service to celebrate her memory.  So tonight I picked up my guitar and tried to emulate my friend Mike's rendition of Harvest Moon that he played at the funeral service, and suddenly the flood gates opened.  I had been holding it in for many months, knowing that the inevitable day would soon be upon us, and it all came out, uncontrollably cathartic.

The only good thing about having a bad cold is when you spend an hour bawling, your face doesn't look any different.

Bass trio

We were watching This is Spinal Tap this weekend after hanging out with the cousins.  My cousin's husband, who, like me, has seen this flick umpteen times, noticed something that I had never noticed.

Everyone knows the "This one goes to eleven" line--it's entered our consciousness and is a part of pop culture.  And the umlaut over the "n" in Spinal Tap is also obviously funny.  But the thing that slayed me when we saw this again was during "Big Bottom" we noticed that Derek Smalls had a double bass.  A four stringer and a...four stringer.  When the camera panned over to Nigel Tufnel, he had a bass guitar too.  And David St. Hubbins rounded out the trio with another bass.

Guess you had to be there.

Cortlandt Street Station

We spent the weekend in NYC, visiting with my cousins who live in Brooklyn. We spent the time being with my cousins, seeing friends (one of whom I haven't seen in 16 years), and spending an entire day walking around Midtown, the Lower East Side and Brooklyn. We started the journey with a trip to Ellis Island to see what our great grandparents and grandparents went through to get here about a hundred years ago.

It was all a great time, full of memories that stem from the fullness of the weekend and the inevitable frictions of hanging out with family. In our zeal to accommodate everyone's plans we found ourselves stepping on each others' toes in ways that became comical. Mix in some overtly deferential communication styles amongst all of us who are hard-headed and convinced that our way is the right way. Layer that on top of my cousins' opinions of where the best pizza to be had can be found or how to get somewhere (which way is fastest? or cheapest?). The funniest moments (though frustrating at the time) could have come straight out of an I Love Lucy episode, involving a car service car and a bus (and its surly driver), with movements that could not have been choregraphed better. Describing it here won't do it justice--it will live on in memories.

One other unintended detour, however, gave me a bit of closure on something that has been on my mind since September of 2001. I have a macabre obsession with the events of the 11th, starting with Why and How and going back to Why again. I've always wanted to see the site with my own eyes, knowing that pictures and TV images don't demonstrate the peripheral scope that being there provides. Since I design buildings for a living, understanding how buildings react to outside forces (or in this case, how they fail), is an endless source of fascination. How people react to buildings under stress is similarly fascinating, since building codes are written and revised as a direct result of tragic events. I was hoping to see "Ground Zero" to understand the physical magnitude once and for all.

I called an old friend from architecture school, who told me to get on the R Train from Park Slope and get off at Court Street, where I would visit and catch up on 16 years of time gone by. The train rolled past Court Street without stopping, and before I knew it I was on the Manhattan Bridge. I got off on Canal Street in downtown Manhattan, jumped across and waited for the R to come the other way to get back to my intended destination. Sunday evening train schedules and routes get weird due to repairs, etc. I was along for the ride.

As we rolled (slowly) back to Brooklyn, we went through a station that looked like it was under construction, when in fact it was deserted, dusty, and spooky. This was the Cortlandt Street Station, the closest one to the Twin Towers, with what looks like the dust and debris from that day still resting on the tiles and rails. Riding through it, listening to the aching screach of the train's wheels on the tracks raised the hair on the back of my neck, since above me approximately 3000 people died in the span of an hour when two buildings failed based on forces that they were not intended to withstand.  It's actually not closed due to the collapse--now it's closed because of the construction of the new WTC, but the effect remains the same for an outsider like me.

I got to see Ground Zero, finally, but not from where we are used to seeing it. It's no longer so important that I see it again. But this:

the Brooklyn Bridge at dusk...was awesome.

Friday the 13th

It was not the best day of days.

The dwindling economy is finally taking a toll on our office.  We're cutting back in ways that we don't want to, but have to.  The hard decisions are upon us, and it's not fun.  But we'll get through it.

This is all is dwarfed by a far larger sadness, the news that we have been preparing for about a dear friend, a mother, a wife, who succumbed to a battle against cancer tonight.  Her husband and three kids will be supported by all of us in their new journey without her.  They are strong people, a strong family.  They will get through this.

Rest in peace, Mary.

Closing dinner

Our client  (on one of our jobs) treated all of us (who worked on the project) to a "closing dinner" at OYA downtown.  Very nice.  Good feelings all around, drinks were flowing, the food was great (though sparse as is typical in haute cuisine), and we cemented some relationships.

This is an intense, hard charging group of people.  Type A personalities all around.  Many feathers ruffled during many meetings as the project took shape and we marked our respective territories.  Animated and sometimes angry conversations about process and product, telephone conferences with bad connections, crossed e-mails, unyielding government agencies, and high levels of stress.  Not to mention an extremely slow cashflow (not unlike molasses in January).

Recognizing these difficulties that enabled the project to proceed to construction made tonight's dinner that much more enjoyable.  Things can get done when you work together and work toward a common goal which will ultimately benefit a large number of people.  It's not always smooth, but if it was, everyone would be doing it.    

Three times in one month

Most of the impetus to write this blog centered on the local racing scene and my somewhat half-hearted involvement in the fringes of the fringe.  I've been reading race accounts for a couple of years now, vicariously enjoying the scene through the eyes of people I don't really know but have gotten to know, some through riding and racing and some through reading their writing.  Dabbling here and there in a few road races and crits the last 4 years to justify the existence of my USAC license (almost wrote USCF) and jumping wholeheartedly into cyclocross so I don't feel guilty about NOT putting in a base these past 2 months--"my season starts in September, see". 

This past Sunday was the Proteus race in College Park.  Two months ago it sounded like a grand idea--a 'cross race in February kinda shakes things up a bit and gave me something to shoot for.  The weeks melded into one another this past January, with lots of fam in town during Christmas, house remodeling ongoing, work prospects dwindling, and this inauguration thing happening--the bike really has been an afterthought recently.  It's hard to sustain the intensity required to train on a road bike year round, especially when life gets in the way.  I don't know how some of my peers do it, but they manage somehow. 

So on Saturday night when I was getting the bike ready, I realized that I had been on the bike as many times in January as I had gone to Caps games--three.  I thought better of entering the race and went to support my clubmates (we're not a team, really), two of whom were trying cyclocross for the first time.  A bunch of us were there with cowbells and we made a lot of noise "and etcetera".   I think we've got two new converts.  So I'll swing my leg over my ride soon enough and get back into the routine...no need to force it now.

Swinging legs over the boards is another thing altogether.  I got Row B seats next to the Caps penalty box for all three of these games, opportunities that I could not pass up.  I happened to be at the right place at the right time, with a friend who knows a friend who gets these tickets at a ridiculous discount, so ridiculous that I don't want to touch the golden goose.  From this vantage point one can truly appreciate just how big, how fast, and how skilled these athletes really are.  From this proximity I watched their eyes and could see how their skates interfaced with the ice surface--these are skills that I can't really fathom.  You just can't see these nuances on TV or from seats that I would typically pay for.

Semin leading the breakout against the Red Wings...

Three Caps in the sin bin...

Schultzie battling the Bruins...

Ovechkin gathering speed against the Lightning....