What Else Could Go Wrong?

 Note: this is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland.] 

5/22/21

We are finally home after an unexpectedly long journey and we're now recovering from 6-hour jet lag and a sore butt.

The trip over to the mainland went so smoothly it was eerie. No delays, quick check-ins, even managed to have an open seat next to us on the long flight from Kona to Denver despite a very full plane. We had a very short connection time in Denver but made the next flight with time to spare. Had an efficient Covid-style check-in at our hotel in Cincinnati (electronic registration, no-touch key cards), easy Lyft ride to the car rental office the next morning and a beautiful drive to Knoxville, ending with great barbecue and beer that first night on the river.  Then the weather crapped on us, with temps dropping so low that it frosted for two nights in a row, thus putting the damper on our goal of seeing spring flowers and bushes in bloom.

Still, the Tennessee/North Carolina trip itself was interesting and we had enough good days that the weather wasn't a total buzzkill.

 

At the end of our itinerary we were able to reconnect in person with a number of good friends from our working days in Ohio. Sadly, one especially close Ohio friend passed away while we traveling in North Carolina and we were unable to see her before her death. However, by delaying our return home a day we were able to attend the funeral -- a sad event yet a heart-warming tribute and a chance to see many mutual friends.  Another Ohio friend also died while we were there, the husband of a very close colleague in my department, but in this case the funeral wasn't for several days after we were scheduled to return and it would have been difficult to change our arrangements again. 

It seemed fitting that the journey home would include some definite travel challenges that reminded us that snafus are often a part of the deal.  Our flight from Cincinnati to Denver was delayed by about six hours when the plane's computer found a part that was malfunctioning.  To determine that it was really a part and not just the computer itself fritzing out, the pilots had to conduct several time-consuming reboots and diagnostic checks (I suggested my method of giving it a good whack to see if that would help but they didn't follow my advice).  The part wasn't stocked in Cincinnati and had to be flown in from Chicago, which took a couple of hours. Thankfully, rather than having to wait for the part to be installed, we were put on the plane that brought the part, and finally took off for Denver.  Of course we arrived way too late to make our original Kona flight, and all the later flights were totally full.  So United put us up in a Denver Airport hotel and re-booked us on the next day's flight. All went pretty well after that and we even arrived in Kona a little ahead of schedule.  

 

The next day we had a beach breakfast picnic that was very nice, but Karen lost her Iphone in the process.  Fortunately the phone was locked, and as soon as we discovered it was missing I went online and put it into Lost Mode -- making it worthless to anybody who found it.  I also made the phone display a message saying that a reward was offered for its return and giving my own cell number to call.  Sure enough, around noon we got a call from a woman who said she had bought it from a homeless man (probably not true) and would meet us to return it for the reward.  This turned out to be close by and we gratefully gave her a generous reward just a short while later.  Whew!  Crisis averted. But then this morning MY phone suddenly turned into a techno-brick.  I'm still working on this problem and will catch you up next week.

 

There's more to the saga of our return journey but I'll stop there for now and let you ponder the old saying, "what else could go wrong?"

Hope you are all well and enjoying your late spring.  Carpe diem!

Travel in the Time of Covid 3

Note: this is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland.] 

5/8/21

Aloha All --

Travel always includes things you can't control no matter how much careful planning you do. The weather is one of them. Although we've had some nice days on this trip, much of the time has been unusually cool and rainy. We've often been able to roll with this by doing inside stuff, like the rainy day we visited the Biltmore mansion in Ashville.  Or by taking refuge in a shopping mall.  Normally I hate shopping but the mainland offers us a chance to buy things not available at home, and if there's nothing else to do,  I'm ok with it.  I still find it mentally exhausting, though -- I'm definitely better at buying than shopping.

I also have found I can survive outside at 60d as long as it is sunny. My toughness has allowed us to do a fair amount of nice hiking, mostly in the late morning and afternoon when the temperature hits my minimum.  But if it's 60d AND cloudy, I'm by a heater somewhere. 

After our bucket-list visit to the Biltmore we headed back north and spent a couple of nights in Berea, Kentucky.  Berea is home to a small college of the same name that was founded in 1855 by an abolitionist Presbyterian minister who felt men and women of all races deserved equal education.  It was closed by the Confederacy during the Civil War but reopened afterwards and is still going strong. It is so well endowed by private donors that since 1895 it hasn't charged tuition. The 1600 students are selected from applicants who have high academic potential but who can't afford a higher education without financial support. The school's funding supports a beautiful campus with first rate facilities. We were very impressed. 

We're ending our trip in Ohio, where we're visiting old friends-- and sadly attending the funeral of one of them -- before returning home. I probably won't write next week to accommodate our very least favorite part of the trip-- the long journey itself. 

Take care. Carpe Diem!

Travel in the Time of Covid 2

Note: this is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland.] 

May 1, 2021

Aloha Everybody --

While we were traveling in Europe it was not uncommon to pass through a town with one or more attractions that we wanted to see on our way to the day's destination and find them either closed for the day or for the hours we had before having to move on. This same thing happened to us in Charlotte NC except that we had two whole days there.

The attractions were the NASCAR Museum and the highly acclaimed Museum of the New South (i.e. post Civil War). We did manage to get to the NASCAR museum but the other was closed the entire time.

In Charlotte we stayed at the Duke Mansion in an area called Myers Park, designed by John Nolen, the same urban planner who designed Merimont in Cincinnati. Despite the sightseeing woes,  we enjoyed staying in the mansion very much -- it ranks in the top 10 of all our travels. Also, Charlotte may be short on historical sights but it has to be one of the most modern and livable cities in the country.

The weather has been a yo-yo.  Nice in Charlotte but now in the Smokies at Blowing Rock it has turned windy and cool again. It is sunny, however, and today we managed a couple of nice hikes. Having a lot of good food and excellent beer so we need to work it off!

Take care. I imagine your spring is in full swing. Enjoy!

Traveling in the Time of Covid

[Note: this is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland.] 

April 24, 2021

I can't believe it has been so long since we experienced traveling.  So far some aspects have been very familiar and some very different.  For example, the journey itself is normally exhausting and uncomfortable.  This time was no exception.  On all three legs of the mainland flight the planes were nearly full --very normal for us B.C. (Before Covid), and just as cramped as always. However, wearing masks was definitely not normal. (Btw, we were pleased to see that UAL rigorously enforced the mask at all times requirement.) Also, I noticed that people used the bathrooms very infrequently compared to previous trips -- either from lack of beverages or from wanting to avoid a high-risk environment. 

Our first hotel experience was also not normal --check in/check out was online with no waiting at the front desk. Indeed, so far this has been the most online trip ever. Since our last trip over 1.5 years ago we have both acquired cell data plans that keep us constantly connected to maps, gps directions, reviews of restaurants,  and in text communication with mainland and island friends. This has been very convenient at times -- limited seating at restaurants has meant making online reservations for anything decent. But we've had to learn to put our devices aside at times and just be together. 

The trip so far has reminded us that it is normal for weather in most parts of the world to be very variable and occasionally sucky. Our first day in Knoxville was very nice. The next was cold and rainy.  I have learned a very positive feature of masks is that they make good face warmers. 

I'll leave a more detailed description of what we've seen and done for another time. For now I'll just say that we're enjoying the trip overall and glad (as always) that we're making the effort. 

Take care. Stay safe and healthy. 

Me and My Guitar Part III: Audiophonic Fermentation (?)

Decades (!) after my first encounter with the guitar I couldn't play a single recognizable song (I had long since forgotten Kumbaya and Wayfarin' Stranger).  However, I could produce some pleasing sounds by noodling around and practicing my chords -- something that has eventually become extremely important, as I'll try to make clear.

My wife and I retired in 2000 and move moved to Hawai'i a year later. The guitar she had given to me 30 years earlier successfully made the trip with us.  However, somewhere in the discombobulation I lost my pitch pipe and with it the ability to keep the guitar in tune.  For a while this didn't matter too much, because (a) I was busy with many projects around our new house and didn't play much, and (b) I could keep the guitar acceptably close to being in tune just by ear.  My intent was to eventually buy a new pitch pipe but something always seemed to get in the way.  As months and years went by the guitar got more and more out of tune and my tuning-by-ear approach didn't work.  I played less and less.

A few years ago while hiking with a new snowbird friend I found out that he was an accomplished guitar player.  When I briefed him on my own interest and my current tuning problem, he offered to tune my guitar for me and also suggested I go online and buy a cheap electronic gizmo that would allow me to easily and accurately tune it myself.  At the time I had never heard of such a thing, but it turns out there are several different brands of these nifty little things, most of them less than $20.  They clip onto the guitar and register the frequency of the string that is vibrating, transforming it into a visual display that shows how close it is to a particular note. By watching the display as you turn the tuning knobs you can dial precisely the correct tension for each string.  Damn!  Not only is this gadget helpful for those of us who don't have perfect pitch, it also has many of the characteristics of a Geezer Techno-Toy -- it's cheap, has colored lights, involves sounds, and runs on batteries.  Sold! A few days later mine arrived in the mail and it has changed everything.

My Friend

For the first time ever I began playing regularly.  At first this was mainly rediscovering the basics and toughening up the fingertips of my left hand.  Most beginning guitar players have to go through the somewhat painful process of building up callouses that come from pressing down with your fingers on thin strings of metal or nylon.  Gradually I could play longer and longer without pain, but initially five or ten minutes was all I could take.  Today there doesn't seem to be a limit.

So what do I play?  This is where it gets a little weird.

As I've continued to "noodle around" I find I really like the melodies that emerge from sequences of chords that I seem to choose almost randomly.  Not only that, but I can now pluck individual notes within the chords -- something I've never done before -- and this adds interesting variation and complexity to the sound.  But the really weird part is that I'm doing this without really thinking about it or intentionally choosing the chord sequence or the notes.  I find myself just listening to what is being produced and being amazed at how pleasing it sounds.  If I start to focus on the mechanics of playing or on consciously trying to choose chords or notes, the whole thing goes sour and falls apart.

I don't know where this music comes from.  It certainly isn't from any natural talent that has ever been apparent before, nor is it the result of disciplined study and practice, as I'm sure I've made clear in recounting my saga.  As a crackpot pseudo-explanation I offer the term "audiophonic fermentation," an invented process whereby my brain has absorbed decades of visual and auditory encounters with guitar music and performance and somehow processed it into a potentiality for musical expression. (Wow, my knack for b.s. is still intact!).  Anyway, it is certainly enjoyable to be able to do something now that I couldn't do in my younger years, contrary to the usual Geezer trajectory of losing function.

Over time I've created a number of "structures" or "sequences" each with a different tonal quality and progression. I can choose to return to one of these, but once I begin to play the pattern takes on new nuances and embellishments that I don't plan nor consciously control.  An overly generous and limiting name for these structures would be "tunes" or "songs."  At present there are about a dozen of these, giving me a "repertoire" of roughly 40 minutes of music.

I should emphasize that this new-found skill is restricted to making stuff up -- I still can't play any well-known specific song, nor can I mimic a musical piece that I hear being performed by someone else.  However, what I invent does have a vague similarity to music I've listened to over the years,  and I can often detect the general influence of certain favorite performers and genres.  Maybe it's part of the "audiophonic fermentation" process -- my brain has extracted and distilled music I like down to different patterns of "potentialities" that are favored when I noodle around.

Some people have suggested that maybe this is the time to take lessons and develop my skill in a disciplined way, or that I try harder to perform known songs.  I'm not interested in doing either of these, at least for the time being.  For one thing, my childhood aversion to formal training has stuck with me.  A more palatable alternative is the rich trove of excellent instructional videos available now online, and I've sampled a number of them.  Although I get some good tips from these, I've found that attempting to copy the style or technique of the teacher leads to a degradation of my own.  I also don't have much interest in learning songs or tunes that other people might recognize because my current goal isn't to entertain other people -- it's a more selfish goal to explore a creativity I never knew I had.  If people like what I play, I am certainly appreciative.  But my main motivation is to produce new music that I enjoy.

It's also been suggested that I should buy a better guitar now that I'm taking it seriously. I've looked at a number of them and so far in every case decided that my old guitar sounds better.  It may be my pro-geezer bias operating, but I swear that my old Aria has a resonance and tone that the new ones don't have.  If I find one that is truly better, not just newer and more expensive, I might buy it.  But for now I'm following the example of Willie Nelson, who refuses to give up his 50-year old "Trigger" even though the sounding board is starting to look like Swiss cheese. [Take a look at this great video made by the man who is entrusted to care for Trigger, and also this one where Willie tells the story of Trigger.]

There are a few lessons from this 55-year saga.  First, never assume your abilities and limitations are fixed, nor that you even truly know what they are.  Processes we aren't aware of can lead to some very surprising developments in what you can and cannot do.  Second, conscious awareness isn't always necessary or even desirable for controlling behavior. There is an interplay or a balance between conscious and non-conscious control that can produce some astonishingly positive outcomes.  Finally, sometimes even very small things we do for other people can have dramatic effects on their lives. There are several examples of this in my guitar saga, but the most recent obvious ones are the impact of my friend's casual remark about electronic tuners and his spending 5 minutes to retune my guitar.  These small acts have opened up a whole new world of experience for me at just the right time in my life to me to greatly appreciate.  Me and my guitar are very thankful..... 

Medical News, Travel Prep

 [Note: this is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland.] 

4/17/21

 Medical News, Travel Prep

Aloha Everyone –

I see from my daily weather reports that you seem to be into some nice spring weather.  Our rainy spell has at least temporarily let up, and we’ve had a string of gorgeous days, highs in the low 80's and a cranking PV system.  The pool has been a comfy 80-84d and we’ve really been enjoying it.  Of course, during our trip we will leave the cover off for our pool service to have easier access, and that will likely drop it down into the chilly range by the time we return.  Another reason for leaving the cover off is that we are due for a new one – they last about 3 years here and it has to be handled delicately. I’ve been having trouble this time finding one locally and online.  This will be a top priority project when we return. It’ll work out somehow, I’m sure.

Last Saturday I had my eyeball exam, about 6 weeks out from my last injection.  Nothing but good news, I’m happy to report.  Absolutely no sign of edema, low pressures, and I even picked up a couple of lines in the acuity test for my right eye – 20/60!  I did a central visual test this time – like the usual field test but the gazillion little dots of light appear in the center of your vision rather than out to the side.  Naturally it showed my right eye is a mess, but my doctor said that even so it looked a little better than the last time I had it done, not because the cells have come back alive but because the absence of goo allowed the ones that are left to function as well as they can.  Next exam will be May 23rd, and by then I am likely to need another shot, but I’m delighted with the longer intervals this new drug, Eylea, seems to allow.  On that front I also received good news this week – my insurance (Medicare/Aetna) has once again approved coverage for 6 months, until October. Good news for the wallet, since the uncovered cost to me could be north of $1k.

Also in medical news is that I had a pretty strong reaction to that shingles shot, and it took a few days to recover – mainly fatigue and a sore arm.  Karen wasn’t as bad as I was, but it definitely put me down big time – even more than the second Covid shot.  The alternative of getting Shingles, though, is way, way worse, so I’m quite ok with it.

Most of our time this week, aside from Karen’s golf and our workout at PF, has been dedicated to getting the house ready for our trip.  This mostly means getting our monthly trimming and cleaning done now so we can do it again when we return.  The gardening stuff is essential – to leave it for that long would produce a jungly mess, even though we have a gardener who works on the front area every couple of weeks. I’m also concerned that while I’m gone the coquis will move in without me here to catch them.  Of course I can get them when we return, but I don’t want to give them time to mate and start producing little coquis that I’ll have to deal with.  The best I can do is make sure we’re free of them at the moment and then be extra vigilant when we get back.

Ok, that’s about it.  I’ll try to write a couple of quick updates while we’re on the road.  Take care, stay healthy, and enjoy your spring flowers!

Dinner With Friends, Two Toys, Another Virus Vanquished

 [Note: this is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland.]

4/10/21

Aloha All –

Last Saturday evening we drove up to Waikaloa Village (about 30 miles north) and had a very good Italian dinner with mainland friends spending the winter with their daughter, who is a teacher in Waimea. It was a beautiful afternoon drive along the upper road with a brief stop at Makani Golf Course (the one where Karen saw

the 40-50 Nenes) to admire the Jacarandas, which are tall, stately flowering trees that bloom each spring for several weeks.  Since we arrived early at the restaurant, we decided to drive on down to the coast to assess the tourist population in the rental condo complexes in the Waikaloa resort area.  When we were there last summer it was a ghost town, and very eerie.  This time it was really jumping and nearly every parking lot was full – clearly one of the sources of our newly returned traffic jams. Anyway, we enjoyed dinner and seeing our friends (all of us are now vaccinated, so we were pretty relaxed being with them).

Speaking of vaccinated, on Thursday after our Planet Fitness workout we both had doses of the newest Shingles vaccine.  This was Karen’s second shot and my first.  Like the Pfitzer Covid 19 vaccine, this is also a two-shot combo administered about 2-6 months apart.  I was very relieved that Karen is now protected, because as you may recall, I had Shingles about 6 years ago and it is a really, really, painful experience that is best avoided.  We both had received the older vaccine, but it was only about 60% effective, and I was one of the unlucky 40% .  The new vaccine is over 90% effective.  I might have some immunity from having had Shingles, but I’m not taking any chances.  It is a long-lasting and sometimes excruciating rash that in my case reset my pain scale upward by a couple of notches.
    
Early in the week I finished setting up a new receiver that drives our home entertainment system.  The old one developed a problem holding a wireless signal, so it was time to upgrade.  The setup wasn’t too bad, except that the connections were close together on the back of the unit and it took me a couple of tries to get all them on tight.  Another techno-toy I played with this week was a new router.  The cheap unit I got to quickly get us connected again worked ok, but once I had a chance to do more research on the latest and greatest technology available, I decided it was time to go up the a more high-powered unit.  I ordered one online and I got it set up on Wednesday.  The installation went ok, except for way too many wasted hours and angst caused by putting the internet cable in the wrong slot.  Once I figured that out it all went smoothly, and the transfer speeds and strength of the signal are definitely better.  I’ll probably keep the other new one as a backup or I may try to sell it online.

Ok, that’s it for the week.  We’re going to be busy with our trip preparations next week, but I’ll try to send one more update before we leave.  

Take care.  Stay safe, enjoy your spring.