BTR/ATR: Before/After The Rona

Corona virus...there is a decidedly distinct time schism that will now mark an era in our lives. What was life like before the rona...what will life be like after the rona?

It's a pause button for some of us, with the underlying buzz of normalcy still pulsing through erratically, like a slightly unwelcome guest. Perspectives are being hewn differently in our alone-ness.

BTR Kate and I made time for ourselves when we could. Now we have more time to give but I fear the virus vectors that we could ply upon one another. Can't wait for ATR.

BTR I looked forward to seeing my parents when they got home from the Philippines. Now I talk more regularly on the phone with them. I want to hug them so bad...ATR.

Once a week BTR I played music with my mates and that will happen again ATR. Now I'm just playing alone and finding solace there. Solace BTR and ATR.

Almost a decade later

It's been almost 10 years since I wrote here. As is the case when time passes, much has happened.

I feel a bit awkward writing again, as most of my writing is business oriented, and not so refined. Not that this is refined, but I never know exactly who my audience is, but then I always know the audience is me.

It's the eve of the first day of our new work reality and the end of the first week when we realized just how serious this pandemic is. So there's lots to write about, both looking forward and looking back.

Back to school night

Or should I say back to blogging night. Two months since our pick-up game under the lights of Blair HS, and another one just two weeks away.

I guess I haven't felt the need to write much lately. But in keeping with my propensity to forget the life that passes by like shooting rapids, I should jot down a few of the highlights (not too many lowlights) of the past coupla months.

On the weekend that I left the soccer field that night (or pitch, as we call it due to the need to provide the affectations of World Cup parlance once every 4 years), I started digging in the yard. Flattening a mound, shall we say. When we moved into this ever-changing house 11 (!) years ago, the interior was acceptably appointed but the exterior needed lots of work, and work we have done. The back patio has been a mosquito infested bog with backsloping concrete into an areaway that we never use anymore and tends to flood in heavy rains. A large raised garden surrounded by dry laid stone was smack in the middle of the concrete patio slab, someone's idea of bringing landscape and hardscape together in a most clumsy manner, as the negotiations required to get to the grill involved stumbling down 2 oddly placed steps and avoiding the stones. So that Sunday I started moving stones and dirt, making sense of the yard that had been a cluttered mess.

Six weeks later we had a party upon which many of our friends ate and drank merrily on or near six tons of bluestone dust, 400 square feet of flagstone, 2 glass block window panels, low voltage lighting, a buried areaway, and a revamped subgrade drainage system from the roof. We did it ourselves, and much credit needs to go to the patient family, who put up with the mess for a good chunk of the summer. Pictures in a future post, since I'm lazy right now. We worked morning and evening, weekend days and whenever we could squeeze it in. Throw in a family vacation to the Outer Banks, as is our routine, and various other things that I forgot since that's what I tend to do, and it was a great, no, actually a GREAT summer.

What else...turned the corner on playing the guitar, thanks to my partner/teacher/high school kid named Adam who happens to live in this house...got in some miles, but not a lot, due to the patio work, but definitely benefitted from the cross-training effect...went to another family reunion at Deep Creek Lake after a day and night at Lake Holiday with friends, in which my friend Mike LOST HIS WEDDING RING IN THE LAKE but then IN AN IMPROBABLE TURN OF EVENTS HE FOUND IT ON THE SANDY LAKE FLOOR because that's just the way life has been treating us...set up the 'cross rig with Campy 1 x 10 (sooooonice)...watched the cats slack off in the rodent killing department...participated in an impromptu IPA tasting session with our neighbors...figured out how else I'm going to tear apart the house this fall to "improve our quality of life"...lost about 5 lbs. per month since June in my effort to get down to a manageable weight so that I can stop getting dropped on hills slightly bigger than speed bumps...and changed the way I eat, what I eat, and how much I eat, which means that I will need to refresh the old wardrobe soon, which is money I'm happy to spend...and got to see lots of my friends at Susanna's Back to School Night tonight. Don't ask me what I learned about their curriculum. I think it was something along the lines of homework blah blah blah deadlines blah blah blah due dates blah blah blah [euphemisms endemic in school chatter] blah blah blah. It was all very nice to hear, but I was more jazzed by seeing all of MY friends, who(m?) I see every year at this function.

And of course, the patio isn't done yet, but it's SUBSTANTIALLY COMPLETE.

A bit of footie

Last time I played competitive soccer was back in '58, when I was a wee college lad on the intramural pitch. Couldn't quite make it to the college show, as they say, nor was it even an option. Soccer was a a game to dabble in, and now that I understand it better I wish I did more than dip my toe in.

So now, by word of mouth, I got to play with 29 other like-minded old geezers on a lit high school field, in the humidity of the post earthquake DC suburbs. Only some of them did play high school and college ball, and those of us who didn't were only saved by the fact that we're all in poor soccer shape, which makes it easy to hide the poor skills because no one can finish plays the way we once did or like to think that we can. If only...

A couple of pulled hamstrings and tweaked knees tonight, but not as bad as the dude who tore his ACL last time they did this. I'm feeling pretty good right now, but I'll be thinking differently in the AM.

So in about a month we'll do it again, before the maelstrom of the fall routine sets in. I can't wait.

Stan the man

Didn't know you too well.

Seems like you lived a full 48.

Your knives were things of beauty. Shiny, sharp, wood grips that showed the beauty of the grain.

On that one ride, I was singing Story Of My Life in my head; I pulled up to you and you were actually humming THE SAME SONG. From now on you will be in my head when Social D comes on the radio.

Snuffed out, just like that. One too many beers? Texting while driving? Driving while talking? We'll never know. You were doing everything right on the bike, on the road, right place, right time.

Only not at that moment.

Requiescat in pace.

Some fine pitchin'

In no particular order, in the last few weeks since I have chosen to jot down thoughts I have gone to Akron to visit my sister and her family, checked out the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, fixed their fence, ate a Primanti Brothers Cap and Provie sandwich in Pittsburgh, visited my grandmother's grave in Braddock, hung out with my cousin from Brooklyn, her family, and 3 of their friends, hosted 3 dinner parties with some friends, saw Neil Young at DAR, saw the doctor who told me I needed to "make some changes", rode my bike a few times, watched Susanna score a goal in her last game in the Takoma Park rec league (now she's joining the Catholic Church of soccer leagues), watched the building that I have been working on for the last 4 years grow another story (roof slab to be poured this week!), made an unfortunate staff change at work, celebrated the graduation of our neighbor's son who looks like the Flying Tomato, almost went to Miami for the AIA Convention, and saw Steven Strasburg (live) make his auspicious debut as a Washington National.

I think it's safe to say that he'll have a slightly better baseball career than I ever had.

Eureka...sort of

So I'm taking a shower in my "substantially complete" bathroom on Saturday before the 2nd of two parties this weekend when it hit me.

Ever since I started working in the field of architecture, I've collected bits of paper filled with data, sketches, all sorts of information that was immediately important at a particular moment in that slice of my career. I've collected it in 3 ring binders, file folders, magazine holders, piles...then the internet happened and I've got a digital version of this pile of bric-a-brac that we all recognize as the unorganized "Favorites" or "Bookmarks" bar. My own memory serves as the organizational traffic cop that determines to which projects these bits of information are connected.

The beauty of the field I work in is the relentless accumulation of knowledge based on practical problem-solving, puzzle resolution, iterative design flow, and plain old curiosity. The problem has always been to compile it all into a searchable, accessible reservoir of information that isn't a pile of useless paper or an unnavigable sea of web addresses.

I think I'm onto something. I'll just organize this "data" into some sort of "base". Oh yeah. That's been done. So instead I can just scan everything and have electronic versions of paper cluttering up various drives. Or I can organize my favorites bar. Stop laughing.

So I took a little bit of that and a little bit of this and created this:

The Elusive Binder

I figure I've been blogging for some time now and the format lends itself to a flexible, expandable, searchable, editable document that I can access from anywhere. I can even add anecdotal comments that will trigger synapses that will open up memory currents that will feed my creative lobe so that both of you can read more utter scintillation on this blog. My favorites bar can shrink and be filled with more important things like how to pitch a tent made of ham or quick access to the activities of Chad Vader, day shift manager.

Like all of my compulsive organizational tendencies, I wonder how long this will last. Two blogs. Wow, that's livin'.

The better team

Two weeks ago tonight we sat in disbelief as we saw Montreal take apart the Caps in the first round.

Tonight we sat in awe as they did the same thing to the reigning Stanley Cup champions.

When my sister and brother in law (Caps season tix holders) watched the dwindling minutes of the home loss two weeks ago, the Habs fans in their section were shaking hands with Caps fans, and told them (in accented French Canadian English) that the better team did not win.

I beg to differ with our northern neighbors, as the better team did win that night, and tonight against the Pens. Perhaps the more talented team did not win, but certainly the better team did.

Now that I've watched 14 straight games featuring the Montreal Canadiens, I am invested in their future success. Here's to adding a 24th (!) Stanley Cup banner to their rafters.

Crazy boys

"It takes a special kind of craziness to be a professional athlete", so sayeth my wife, who is married to a doughboy who eschews all kinds o' pain.

While I hold these lunatics in high admiration, I am glad I don't have to earn my paycheck with these sorts of "workplace hazards", like:

Losing eight teeth in the first period, getting your roots trimmed, and coming back into the game in the third period (with about 100 stitches in your mouth). "It's the playoffs", he says.

Or take a puck in the face FOR THE SECOND TIME IN A SEASON.

Breaking a collarbone or clavicle while training or racing, and figuring out how best to prepare for the Tour de France, less than two months away.

Takes a certain type I guess.

The epitome of smooth

Pay particular attention to 0:17 to 0:25 of this vid:

Cyclocross dismount/remount at race speed on road shoes on cobbles (fercryinoutloud!!!) and doesn't miss a beat. Oh and he won the race too.

Also of note is the Mike Green-like mohawk (but with added mullet effect) hairdo on his mechanic who sighs relief.

Fabian Cancellara, man and beast.

Remember when?

It was way back in April of 2010, way back when (remember the good old days?) the Washington Capitals were the best team in the EN-tire NHL, finishing out the last week of their storybook season against the Bears of Beantown. Adam's friend Andre got an extra ticket to the game, so the two of them went downtown to watch the Caps take apart the Bruins (it was actually a close overtime win for the hometown boys). I drove down to pick them up, and I waited as the red-clad throngs left the arena with a promising spring of playoff hockey. We had, after all, re-acquired my favorite Slovakian defenseman in a late season trade for 2nd round action (he was injured). Sorry I didn't get to see you this spring, Juice.

I even saw one of my college/racing friend and his girlfriend as they were leaving too. The boys met me at the car and we headed home, talking about the game. Andre actually plays hockey, and he's a great kid. Parents and older sister are good people, too. So then Andre drops the bomb that later that week he's going to Children's Hospital to get one of his heart valves replaced. HOLY COW. I figured that once he recovers from that he'll be able to play hockey again, but apparently the doctors are recommending that he doesn't do strenuous activity anymore. That's quite a shattering realization when you're 15, and he puts on a brave face every day. As it turns out this was his third major heart surgery in his short life, and maybe not his last. He is in my thoughts often.

So after yelling at the Dallas Ave ruffians yesterday I saw him standing in his driveway a few houses away and checked in on him. He can't do a whole lot for another week or so, and we chatted briefly. Then it dawned on me that the Caps gave him a gift that was better than anything they would've done this spring. By losing like CHOKING DOGS in the first round, they spared Andre's heart from any additional stress as he recovers from this surgery. No need to tax that muscle anymore, we can wait for spring of 2011 for that.

Speaking of the Bruins, here's one of many of their stellar ads. Kay I know you're not a hockey fan but I think you'll like this.

Chain tension

While I was bloviating yesterday about how great single speed bikes are, I forgot one minor detail. Chain tension.

Almost had a "call home to get picked up" type of day, as my chain came off not once but twice. These ENO eccentric hubs, while very cool, are finicky if you don't get the rotation dialed in properly. Second time was the charm.



And it was nice to have some of the clubmates stop by as I was resetting the whole smash on the side of the road, as Paulie V, Karim, and Phil P. were out on this beautiful afternoon.

I was also thinking that the hipster fixie and single speed culture that has been hijacked by the big manufacturers is akin to stone-washed jeans, "distressed" furniture, and most things retro. Did you hear that? That was late 2007 calling me to ask for its cultural criticism back. I don't have new thoughts.

Back to the commute. Two blocks away from home the Dallas Ave ruffians were running willy nilly through the streets, so as I watched them traverse the street with oncoming traffic for the third time I made sure to yell at them in my best grumpy voice that next time I saw them making bad decisions I'd call their parents. Last thing I want to do is call anyone's parents, but I fully expect a call if my kids do something to sully themselves.

I do enjoy yelling at other people's kids, though. Something about making them feel that there are eyes on them all the time, even when they think they're pulling one over on us. Takes a village, right?

Hipster script

There's a bike shop near my office that sells reaaalllly expensive bikes, but then again, most shops do. In the effort to capture as much of a broad marketshare as possible, bike shops jump on the bandwagons that bring in the cash. While feeding fads in the short term, the products are so contrived as to be date stamped by their own style.

Fixies have been on the fringes of cycling since the eighties, when Kevin Bacon made courier chic, well, chic.



[Even though his "fixie" had a freewheel body, but that's like Bruce Willis using Pacific Bell telephones at Dulles Airport...details, details]. In the past 10 years or so fixies and single speed bikes have been in vogue as "edgy" ways to ride two wheels. I can't hold a candle to the written social criticism surrounding this culture, so I won't even try.

My teenager just entered his third year of teenagerism, so we decided to get him a bike that doesn't require the seatpost to be way past the minimum insertion point and a drivetrain that is orange with rust. As he rides his bike to school everyday and spins around the neighborhood just as often, a new ride was, and is, the perfect gift. We settled on a single speed Bianchi which is delightful in its simplicity and will give him years of service--the drivetrains and suspension systems of bikes geared (get it?) toward the Axe smelling crowd usually results in creaky, maladjusted, dilapidated bikes within a year, and that's just criminal. The best thing about this ride, though, is the non-obnoxious style of the bike itself. It's a Bianchi. It doesn't sport the dominant color, Celeste #227, though there is a small highlight on the top tube and the graphics are classic Bianchi bold. World Championship stripes at a few key locations. It's a bike that's meant to be ridden and used.

It doesn't have this:



Or this:



The suffocatingly unctuous cursive graphics on the Pinarello, coupled with the track bars and the half rubberized grips and the color coordinated deep rims on the Raleigh scream "phony baloney". I could go on and on, but that's done to so much greater effect here. And actually the bikes are overall not that bad, there's just something so irritating about the marketing efforts behind the designs...

Adding the Bianchi to our family stable made me re-think the configuration of one of my bikes, the one that I built when I succumbed to the fixie fad about 4 years ago. I converted my old Giant Cadex racing frame into a fixed gear machine with an Eno eccentric hub and some bullhorn bars. I enjoyed riding it for awhile. I perched on it and took the picture, with the sun behind me, of my shadow that is the masthead of this here blog. But then I didn't ride it for a long time. It just wasn't quite the right bike for itself.

Until last week, when I added a single speed freewheel and converted the stem and bars to their original configuration. Now it's a sweet singlespeed commuter, and suddenly I'm commuting again, on the bike. Which may be the domino that tips a bunch of other dominoes that may straighten some things out personally for me, since the last 18 months or so have been weird, as I have written. Or not.

Regardless, it's a great feeling to be able to commute to work on two wheels in the same amount of time as it takes in a 4 wheeled cage, with that much more clarity due to a short spin before and after work.

Not a good way to end

Groundhog day???

ed. note: I can't strikethrough on this dopey blogger word processing "application", so apologies for the italicized boldness masquerading as parenthetical asides.

Les Habitantes march into DC and steal one (series). Not a good way to start the Stanley Cup run (or end a first round upset which results in a meltdown of historic proportions).

Jaroslav Halak was a stone wall for most of the game (series).

Alex Ovechkin (Semin & Green) was (were) barely there tonight, as all the left-handed sticks of Habs defensemen seemed to always be in his (their) way (and all the d-men too).

Ouch. (OUCH)

Hoping this trend doesn't continue

I majored in history.

I've been a Caps fan since the mid-eighties.

They now face yet another Game 7 in a series that should not have gone this long.

Historically, though, it doesn't look promising. See the cogent recap of their 7 game series collapses here.

Here's to hoping that history doesn't repeat itself tonight.

Hit and run

On my way into work today I was at the light on Connecticut Avenue where the Cap Crescent Trail crosses. Just sitting there, waiting for peds and cyclists to cross. It is a heavily travelled commuter arterial, and since it's a long green light, people are happy to dash across when their turn comes around.

Except for the young woman on the Trek road bike who was beginning to cross (in the crosswalk, with the walk signal in her favor) when suddenly she was tapped by a car that was turning right to go north. Not hard enough that she was thrown off her bike and severely injured, but hard enough to force her to unclip her pedal and put out her foot to make sure she didn't go down softly. Certainly enough to raise her adrenalin level, as the next thing I saw was the woman carrying her bike across the street while yelling at the driver who was pulling away.

Technically that was a hit and run, and it happened so fast that the victim didn't get a license number. I know this because I immediately pulled over to see if she was OK, and I asked her about the exchange. No "Are you OK?" or "I'm so sorry". Instead it was "You were in my way." I don't think I would be thinking clearly enough to get a plate number if some doorknob had the gall to be miffed at me for inconveniencing their right turn.

I told her I used to wrench at bike shops for a living and did a quick once-over. Her wheel was toast, but barely rideable once I opened up her rear brake. She headed out after thanking me for stopping, rear wheel ka-klunking down the trail.

It bugged me for the rest of the day that someone could be so callous as to "tap" a cyclist with their car and not think that there could be any repercussions at all. Worst case scenario ends in death; in this seemingly minor incident a rear wheel is ruined, trust that one is safe in a crosswalk with a favorable signal is eroded, and someone is driving away in a two ton behemoth thinking that cyclists are all assholes.

I hope the 20-something woman in the Washington Broomball League t-shirt on a mid level Trek road bike had a better day after that crappy start.

Not a good way to start...

Les Habitantes march into DC and steal one. Not a good way to start the Stanley Cup run.

Jaroslav Halak was a stone wall for most of the game.

Alex Ovechkin was barely there tonight, as all the left-handed sticks of Habs defensemen seemed to always be in his way.

Ouch.

Easter Sunday

There’s a guy I work with every once in awhile whose career revolves around making sure that sewage gets from where it starts to where it needs to go in a manner that does not attract undue attention. Usually this work is just once of the many things that Joe the Plumber does, but this particular guy doesn’t assemble pipe or solder fittings or install water heaters. He spends his days clearing out sewer lines by jetting water at high pressure through clogs; using medieval style cutting heads on the end of his jets to cut through nasty debris; and checking his work with a camera that scopes and locates lines far underground and tells us what condition they’re in. The resultant video tapes (now he uses DVDs), known as “dirty movies”, are invaluable to property owners and landlords that need to maintain the arteries of crap, as nothing defines squalor more than sitting in 2” of filth because the orifices in your waste pipes are overwhelmed with, well, waste.

He is an interesting character, Robert is. With a Scottish brogue that is not nearly as thick as Groundskeeper Willie’s, he still talks about extracting DEbrree from pipes with a glint in his eye, as if the relief exacted from the operation is actually a release of pressure in his own body.

He’s done quite well cleaning and filming sewer lines, and the most tedious part of his job is cleaning his equipment. I’d say it’s constantly being covered in filth, but that’s just me.

I wished he was at my parents’ house on Easter Sunday.

While we were cooking and cleaning up after the feast, my mother and brother in law were furtively active in the basement, having mentioned that there was a minor stoppage in the wash basin that takes the discharge from the clothes washer. Nothing a little Drano couldn’t fix, so things seemed fine. Until we went downstairs and saw that the dishwater wasn’t going down the drain, instead it was overflowing the basin and creating general havoc on the floor. The kitchen sink sewage wasn’t getting past a clog just past the wash basin in the basement, so it was going into the only catch basin it could find, and Drano wasn’t working.

So we bailed the greywater into buckets and dumped it all into the toilet, continuing to do so as dishes were washed upstairs, and seeing how Drano splattered on my shirt creates neat new patterns, though not nearly as fun as tie dye. The next day the plumber came and used his electric snake to power past the clog, and everything is running clean again.

Turns out that the DEbrree in the pipes, which is usually loose, greasy, and in a more liquefied state in normal house operations seemed to calcify and harden over the past few months, as both of my parents were on the other side of the world while we were all being buried in snow. While we would periodically check the house to make sure that the mail wasn’t piling up and the roof wasn’t caving in, virtually no water ran through the waste lines. Therein lay the source of the clog—usually on the dirty movies we see a diaper or tampon or some other not-supposed-to-flush object as the major culprit, but in this case, a general lack of activity gummed up the works.

Much like the human body. Keep those wheels turning. Your veins, arteries, and heart will thank you.

Easter Saturday

We never bought a video game console until the Wii came out. It was a way to save myself from myself, as I was a bit of an arcade rat as a teenager and was addicted to Defender, among other games.

Those graphics are so AWESOME!

So now we have a Wii, and no doubt we all have seen innumerable YouTube videos showing the destruction wrought by inadvertent handling of the Wii remote (which is why they have straps now, which should ostensibly be used). Very funny in a "haha boy that's funny I can't imagine what it must feel like to have a piece of disposable electronic equipment become toast" sort of way.

Well that destruction visited our house this weekend. Being Easter weekend and all, families converged on our abode to visit and relax, eat and drink, and have the good times that families have, often magnified by the holiday (Thanksgiving comes to mind). So my nephew was bowling against my teenager, the latter of whom rolled a gutter ball (WHO ROLLS GUTTER BALLS IN WII BOWLING???) but that's another story which will be played out later in life, as he will be irreparably damaged by my criticism from failing in one frame of a fake video bowling game.

I digress. My nephew, who (or is it whom?) I love very much, and is named after me (only in his first name, and I think that was not intentional), was rolling some intense frames against Mr. Gutter Ball. His younger sister, who has a propensity to bother him in a most exacting manner, pushed him, which threw him off his motion and led to the unfortunate loss of grip of the remote, amidst much yelling and other consternation. Since none of this happened in slow motion, the resultant sturm und drang became the highlight of the day, as John was quite upset about destroying our TV and at one point would have gladly exchanged his sister for the TV. Therein lay the daily lesson where we told an 8 year old the major differences between people and things, and how they cannot be equated, and that his uncle and aunt were not really angry, because accidents happen. He's the type of boy that needs to process these thoughts and emotions for awhile before moving on to the next adventure.

So here's what the destroyed TV looks like now:

I know. If my iPhone had a better camera function, one would still not be able to see the tiny scratch a bit northwest of the centerpoint of the screen which looks so innocuous to the naked eye...until you turn on the TV, thusly:

Pretty cool. The emanation of the impact point is quite evident here. Unfortunately it's kind of hard to watch hockey and the Tur day Fraaaance when the technicolor dreamcoat is draping the screen like some sort of psychedelic Etch-a-Sketch.

So after everyone left I thought briefly about Lenten sacrifices (briefly) and then went to Best Buy and bought a new TV. I've been meaning to get one, as my eyes have been failing me as I age, so the obvious solution was to spend the money I would put into glasses on a new hi-def instead.

Priorities, ya know. You can't live a solid life without 'em.

First time ever

This may be the spring of firsts. It also may not, but I am guardedly and cautiously optimistic.

Caps beat the Pens tonight, and by doing so swept them in their season series for the first time ever. First time they've earned the President's Trophy too. And while they were at the 1998 Cup finals, they will hopefully celebrate another first sometime in June.

It'll take 3 divisional and conference series sets to get there, but I am guardedly and cautiously optimistic that it will happen.