Travelling Man

Everyone at some time has gone to the grocery store and gotten the cart with the one rogue wheel that goes in a different direction from the other three. What you probably have never seen is the team of researchers who steal those carts and take them off to the lab for study. Their job is to clone those mutant wheels in a larger size and attempt to develop a hotel luggage cart with 4 wheels that go in four different directions. So far they have only been able to breed carts with two coordinated wheels and two randomized wheels. These carts have been distributed to every hotel chain in America (except the ritzy ones with bellhops whom you pay to give your luggage a ride on the Lexus of hotel luggage carts).

You might guess that we are on vacation. We have survived the rollicking trip in and out of the elevator and down the hall with two luggage carts in two hotels. We are in California working with Arnold and Maria to solve the budget crisis. Currently we are staying in Carmel, visiting Clint Eastwood.

We spent our honeymoon in Carmel 30 years ago and have returned to see what they have done with the large sums of money we spent back then. They apparently added more galleries. The place is beautiful but it’s hard to imagine living in this town unless you long to spend your final years eating in expensive restaurants and shopping for jewelry, artwork and t-shirts every day. Where do these people buy hardware, Slim-Jims and Slurpees?

But we are tourists and we are having a good time. Highlights of today:
Sat out on our balcony early in the morning watching the fog swirling around over the ocean and listened to the garbage trucks working through the town. But I didn’t mind – I also smelled wood smoke that held the promise of grilled meat.
We went to the beach and I walked in the frigid water.
I parallel parked on a hill in one shot.
We went to the bakery and had giant rugelach nuts and sweet stuff that is wrapped in pastry to make it remarkably similar to pie.

I am writing this in the lobby of our hotel because the internet does not work in our room. Therefore they gave us a big reduction in our rate. In addition our rental car turned out to cost 15% less than we had been quoted originally. We have taken these savings and immediately plowed them back in to the local restaurant industry so that we don’t have to carry the extra weight of the money home with us. When we return in 30 years we will see what they have done with our investment.

While I am in vacation mode, the humor in this blog will be much more relaxed as you can see. Now I’m off to enjoy the day.

It's Like Rain On Your Wedding Day

March 28 was the 30th anniversary of the 1979 Three Mile Island Meltdown. Walter Cronkite labeled it the “worst nuclear power plant accident of the atomic age.” (And somehow Walter Cronkite’s fatherly delivery makes that sound comforting. “America has achieved another record and we are all safe and Mom is making cake to celebrate.")

In December this year, it will be the 30th anniversary of the stampede at the Who concert in Cincinnati. (You may recall that being a plot driver in a “WKRP in Cincinnati” sitcom episode. Yes, sitcom.) Yes, I live in Cincinnati, but, other than that, why am I bringing this up?

On May 27, sandwiched between Three Mile Island Meltdown and The Who Tragedy anniversaries, Karen and I will celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary.
Natural and man-made disasters happen every year and most couples can probably share anniversaries with memorable horrific events. So, TMI and The Who? - no big deal. However, we have another tragedy preserved forever in our memories.

A friend of the family was into photography and took photos at our wedding. He knew that a cool way to provide a sort of time capsule to the event was to photograph the front page of the local paper on the wedding day. We got married in Cincinnati and the front page of the local paper that day had a half-page photo very much like the one here of a plane turned sideways about to become, “In terms of total fatalities … the deadliest single airliner accident on US soil.” (The crash occurred on the 25th, but in those days, boys and girls, there were no 24-hour cable stations and it took the Pony Express two days to get the photos from Chicago to Cincinnati.)

His photos in our album start off with that newspaper story on the front page, as if providing a theme for our marriage: “The worst disaster of its kind in America. Ever.”

The front page also shows that it was cloudy that day and I seem to remember that it rained a bit. Rain is supposed to be bad luck on your wedding day - except when it isn’t. (see #1 here). I don't know if whatever rain we had was a worse sign than a plane crash, but probably neither really means anything.

The plane crash was a discrete event, hardly remembered now. There were other disasters of the era that spanned years – the Carter Presidency and Disco, most notably - but they are also long gone.

Yet, despite the tragic portent of the Cincinnati Enquirer, 3o years later, like the cancer-causing toxicity of Three Mile Island, our marriage lingers on.

Isn’t it ironic?