Something Serious
24.06.07 Education.
These days you hear a lot about education. Monkey boy himself started the no child left behind policy, but what are we really doing? If you ask me, it’s the fundamentals of our governing body that are killing the educational systems. The SAT’s and ACT’s are national standards. You have the FCC, ATF, FDA. 200 years ago, state’s rights was a different issue. Today, as the world globalizes, the politics of states rights are what is really holding things back, and that is the tip of a deeper ice berg.
The
Is it called the civil war, or the war of northern aggression? If we still have to ask that question, and cannot see past that, to why the war was really fought, then we are dead from the start. Equally, if not more concerning, is teaching about evolutionism vs creationism. Can we please separate church and state? Can we please accept new concepts and ideas, and leave insecurity behind? The creationists don’t get much credit from me. If we lived by their lead, the world would still be square in the middle of the geocentric model of the universe. So let’s stop with the bull, realize that some stuff is dust in the wind. Let’s focus on what we know, based on the evidence we have and try to build on that. If you want to stay and think the way people though in the stone age, move to a cave, make your clothes from animal skins and let me know when you finally see the light.
I don’t believe in mainstreaming either, certainly not for mental disorders. Personally, I might like to push for tracking students by three some what distinct groups; 1. mentally challenged (i.e. retarded), 2. ADD and slow learners and 3. hardcore learners. Let’s not bullshit ourselves, at the very least, there are those 3. When you mix them, you slow everyone down. There are too many disruptions and everyone looses, except certain kids parents who feel like their kid is getting equal treatment, while robbing other youngsters of a decent education. Note, feel. Each group has their own needs. Just like shoes, one size does not fit all.
When properly funded, all groups can receive “equal” treatment. Still, the slow learner will probably not become the next Einstein. The future for the mentally handicapped is probably the same, no matter what. One of the biggest problems education faces, is parents dreams exceeding what is possible from their kids. Furthermore, no one ever thinks to ask the kid if it is really what he/she wants. In all reality, the kid won’t know that till further down the road. Maybe the kid won’t ever know.
It is somewhat a chicken vs. the egg dilemma. If I knew at age 20 that I would have liked to have been a Formula 1 driver, but that the only way in this day in age, was to start driving carts at age 8, well, I missed the boat. But just like John Belushi in that film where he hits the home run, maybe that’s not really would have been the best. If I look back on what my life has been, the experiences I’ve had, I can’t even begin to knock what I’ve had. Being a race car driver would have surely presented its own experiences, and worthy ones to discuss at that, but there is no better between the two.
Back to education, to truly be successful, the content needs to be the focus, and the tests standardized to reflect the content, not the other way around. The test material should not be the limiting factor in the material covered. Now, the same trend is happening in the engineering world. Quality standards and what not are now breaking down projects so specifically that you can barely wipe your ass without the timeline telling you you can. What is one result of this? A whole lot more paperwork and documentation. This way, it is possible to trace a fault, when there is one, and make sure faults are caught early while they are still relatively cheaper to repair. Still, while check lists help ensure things are not overlooked, they are not a bible to replace good engineering common sense. There is no Engineers Book for Dummies. Furthermore, this work still needs to be performed, which requires more capital.
I believe the same is true for education, but it is good for nothing if we are not all using the same system of comparison. In engineering you always specify units, or else you have a wonderful Mars Lander event. Look at it this way, if I tell you it’s 32 degrees out, most will run for their winter coats and boots, a few will put on their wife beater, a pair of shorts and Birkenstocks. Fahrenheit or Celsius? Maybe they’re both wrong cause I’m talking in Kelvin and we’re in the middle of a nuclear winter.
The Japanese might rank pretty high up on the education list, but turn to page two and look at the suicide rate. That’s like little Bill Gates being excellent in math, but he can’t interact with his classmates worth a damn. When he gets to adolescence, he’s not going to know how to interact with women, but he will go on to create Microsoft because he was too sexually frustrated to do anything else. Maybe he gets even in the end with all the hookers money can buy, but would you want that for yourself? It’s tempting, isn’t it.
The Germans, in 4th grade you get to find out if you’re going to go pick grapes, be a welder, or become a doctor for the rest of your life. Ok, it’s not quite that strict, and there are many ways to work yourself up the ladder and chances to further educate yourself when you are ready to take the next step. But you are broken out onto your path long before you enter high school.
And the USA, educate everyone, although some will go to BOCES occupational schools for part of the time, and are expected to be on the same level as the kids who aren’t. Furthermore, it is expected of them to be on the same level as the near suicide kids in Japan, and compare 1 to 1 to Germany’s best and brightest because the “lesser” mortals have been skimmed off. Nope, it doesn’t match up, and it shouldn’t.
You’ll never be able to give all intellectual levels the same chance. It’s idealistic and nice, but just not reasonable. I’m all for helping bring those at the bottom up to a level, where they might become self sufficient, but in the grand scheme of things, you unfortunately have to make a business case out of it. The tax base is not an endless supply of capital, and so you kinda have to rate how much the investment now will be returned by less state involvement later on. Is it too cold? Tell that to the guys at the bottom of the tax base trying to make ends meet, and hope their average kid might have a chance to get into college if proper funding can be secured.
On the world stage, the push is to make college level degrees comparable. If you graduate from college in
Some in
Not to mention there exists different caliber students. You can have an A student and a B student, and if you were to test each again, 1 year later, you might be surprised. It is not always the case, but many students learn for the tests and then have a blue screen moment, memory dump. Whereby the B student might remember that 80 or 85 percent of the material covered, and be more valuable than Mr. GPA. It’s a point to consider, at any level.
I draw on what I heard from a manager once. His engineers and co-op’s were more productive than the Dr. and PhD’s of his peer. I’ve seen this myself too. You get some engineer who can quote you formulas non stop, but doesn’t understand the physical limitations and/or interactions of what he/she is talking about. It all boils down to understanding the relationship between theory and practice, but this is easier said than understood.
In the grand scheme of things, there will always be a certain group of people who cannot take care of or think for themselves. There will always be those who are laborers, and perform physical and basic work in the world. There will be those who are the next step or two up, and have a form of higher education, and there will be those who will be seen as genius intellects. How should each be rewarded for their work and contribution to society? Pure communism is just as unrealistic and unfair as pure capitalism. In the end, we need to be wary of the difference between idealism and reality. We need to create justifiable standards which show the true caliber of the person. There is more to education than the traditional subjects taught in school. In this day in age when morals and ethics do not even rank in the top 5 for importance, I wonder if any of it matters. Surely it matters to some though, and eventually the pendulum is bound to swing back. I only hope that it is not a perpetual cycle, and that sometime in the future the world will even out at a fair and sustainable level. Idealistic? Sure, but also possible.
14.06.2007 Relationships & Love, love and relationships.
They are separate things, but often we find ourselves stuck between them. I guess when it comes down to it, I have one thought, everyone should have their heart really truly broken at least once. It puts perspective on things. Of course some people get hit really hard by that kind of stuff, and that’s one reason people need to experience them.
Sure it’s hard. Things are seldom easy. The things that make you grow as a person seldom are without a little pain or are even rarer. The thing hardly anyone can ever remind themselves of, is that they had a life before, and they will again. For guys, it usually takes a night of all out drinking and then some. I refer to this as formatting the C drive. Women will call up their girlfriends and spend a night eating chocolate, a chick flick, or something like that.
As a guy, I find it’s best to avoid women at this point in time, and at least wait for them to hit that “I’m going out, getting drunk and maybe going home with some guy if my girlfriends let their guard down” state. Even then though, it’s a dangerous time. At any moment, she might flip out and loose it. All kidding aside, I’ve been a shoulder to cry on, and gone out with the intention to get completely obliterated myself. The only thing I ever get out of that, was that my body felt as bad as my heart, but that was the intention, right?
To be sure, there’s always that hole. There’s always the hollow empty feeling. There’s the feeling of rejection. And what can you do except tell yourself that it just wasn’t meant to be, and that your true love and soul mate must still be out there somewhere. At the other extreme, you spend your life between relationships never knowing or giving up. I won’t go as far to say that you become a hermit and die alone. At this day in age, especially with the internet, there is no shortage of mail order brides out there. If the warm body of another is comfort, there is Adult Friend Finder and the likes. In all honesty, they should legalize prostitution world wide. Then again, with things like AFF, who needs to go to a cat house?
Now I know you don’t need to take things quite so far. There are plenty of sites out there that will help you find that someone special. I suppose the good ones all charge money. They should call it eHandoveryourcreditcard. I dunno, I suppose there is a huge mass of people out there who want more to go on than the look of someone sipping on their drink at a bar. I think it would be easy if we all had our status in an easy to read fashion across our foreheads, but that would take some of the challenge out of it. So, as one of my co-workers referred to it, a little “online benchmarking” isn’t such a bad thing. I am partial to agree, it turns it into something a little like car shopping. You can go through your options list and see you’ve found. If you like what you see, you can initiate contact and maybe go out for a metaphorical test drive in the form of having coffee or something like that.
No matter how we each go about it, I suppose the rules of attraction are pretty much the same as they’ve always been. We are bound to the things that turn us on, to finding the right smile and the right form of understanding, the right bond or form of bondage. It’s an uncanny thing that belongs to human nature. And so for all the heart breaks and heart aches, and the moments that can only be described as perfect, I say, risk it all as long as it’s worth risking.
27.02.2008 Retiring the Breeze
So it is with sad regret that I would like to inform everyone that the Breeze has been retired. The old gal has over 180k miles on her, the number 3 cylinder is shot and it’s time to lay her to rest. Included is are my thoughts and memories of the car I knew and loved. We spent the better part of my college career together, and I will miss her deeply.
It all started back in ’99. I was driving the Lancer, a car we knew whose days were numbered. She was 13 by that time and up in the 130k miles range. I had been teaching Tony to drive since he turned 16 that February. Planning ahead with the foresight my father has always seemed to have, he was car shopping that summer for the Lancer replacement. I went and test drove a Neon at the dealership one rainy day with Tony. It was ok, but it wasn’t the Lancer. It was smaller, and didn’t have the pep the 2.2l Turbo had. Even with 130k and the second turbo, she still had enough torque for me to impress someone who had never ridden with me before.
Our goals were simple. We wanted something with 4 doors and stick shift, and not red or white in color. There might have been some other parameters. Cost was obviously a consideration. We were looking for a mopar, but it wasn’t necessarily a requirement. Dad wasn’t in any rush really. He was shopping around, looking at what was available, stroking the salesmen to keep an eye out for what we wanted.
Eventually, someone (namely himself, - so much for salesmen knowing what they have) turned up the Breeze, one of Chrysler’s cloud cars, scheduled to go to auction after having sat on the lot too long. She was 3 years old, with about 70k on her. 5 speed, 4 doors, dark green. A good looking machine, although the Stratus grill was more appealing to me. She had probably been a rental car, but being stick hadn’t really seen too much abuse. She was still really tight, and had a fairly short throw, especially compared to the Lancer.
But I wasn’t interested. The Lancer was still my gal. The Breeze was for Tony. The Lancer was really the only car I knew up until then, and we had already been through a lot together over the 30k miles I had put on her. I left to go to
Tony was still in high school, and I was going off to school. As part of the agreement, I wasn’t allowed to have a vehicle my first semester. Dad had his truck, mom was still driving the van and Tony needed the Breeze. I hitch hiked to and from school that year with friends. D-dog was also out there, and I’d get picked up from Bainbridge. Eventually I had the van out to school to move home with, but that was it. It must have been that fall when Tony needed something on the computer, drove out the Breeze and claimed it only took <2.5 style=""> Cruising at 75 mph on the thruway it took a good 3 hrs to cover the 200 mi. stretch.
My first real experience with the Breeze came that fist winter out at school though. Through complications with a snowstorm, my then girlfriend spent New Years down with me. We had gone in with Tony, but he was going to ride over to the party with Joe in his LTD. They lost us at a stoplight, and since we couldn’t reach them right away, I drove around town. What do you show a girl in a rinky dink town like Oneonta? I thought about it a minute and thought about the view up at Hartwick college. That must be nice. Nice, but I didn’t realize the college was closed. We had just gotten new rubber for her, and Tony said she would go anywhere. Almost. I didn’t quite make the hill, and being flustered, I got too close to the guard rail backing down. At
Tony was going off to school in
I didn’t know the car yet, but when I got invited out to
I was back up at camp that summer. My relationship with the Breeze had yet to blossom, as she was mostly used to shuttle the waterfront staff into O-town Wednesday nights on our nights off. The first trip we went on was out to RIT one weekend for the race car design meeting. I didn’t use the AC, and never ever really did. Didn’t want to steal the horsepower off her or pull the gas mileage down. She didn’t have foot vents like the Lancer either, pity. But there was the sunroof and the fan. I had the windows, but didn’t want to hurt the fuel mileage too much. She did about 5 mpg better than the Lancer, but also with about 25 hp less. No cruise control, just like the Lancer, but she held her own really nice through the back roads over to
One highlight of the summer was when we ran out of watermelons for the water carnival. I was sent into town to get one so we could close out with the key event. I didn’t have a lot of seat time in her yet, but I knew her pretty well. We sprinted into town, getting up to about 105 mph and holding it for a short stretch before arriving at the next exit. We picked up the payload and made it back up to the hill after about 25 minutes time. Foolish? Perhaps, but my driving record was clean again and I was experienced enough to know how that game worked. If I calculated out what it would cost if I got nailed, and compared that to what Tony was costing, I was still the cheaper deal. I would do whatever I had to to have it my way.
I also got to know
I have a fuzzy memory of how things worked out when I went to school in the fall of ’01. I think I took the Breeze out with the initial load, kayak on the roof and then took the van with the couch for the second run out. Dad was in the hospital for his second heart valve and I had the van for that. The van was practical with the middle seat out and the back seat moved up, especially till the race car shipped off to
Still, it was nice to get the Breeze back and I’d run her over the back roads on the way home, stopping at grandma’s for a visit before tearing the back roads up. I got to know that stretch a bit that fall/winter/spring. I got to know the back loop at RIT too, making regular speed runs from the dorms over to the girlfriend’s place out in UC starting in Dec. ’01. I received one on campus ticket that spring. It would not be the last. Of course she was a real warrior that spring, bringing me dead tired out to and back from
At some point, Noodles, Moshier at I piled in to go over to the McDonalds over on West Henrietta by
Paulie got his Eagle Scout that spring, and I went home to see the ceremony. Well I was supposed to see it, and the gf was supposed to go with. When I swung by to pick her up, she was still in her pj’s. Fuck. She hadn’t showered or anything, and we got a late start, one I was going to try and make up. I played the rule of the blocker on the thruway, finding someone who thought the 80+ mph range was ok, much to the dismay of the one sitting in the passenger seat. I must have taken Rt. 28, cause there is less chance of getting stuck behind someone with plenty of places to pass. The woman wouldn’t have been able to handle the back roads either. Still, there were some. When I made the turn over by BOCES, I had slipped into the primitive animalistic hunter driving mode.
When I drive on the limit, I slip into the zone. My brain devotes its full attention to processing everything the eyes throw at it, the ears tune everything out except for the sound of the motor and the tires. My right foot becomes ultra sensitive to the pressure on the gas and brake, coordinating with the hands on the wheel, while the left foot is timed with the right hand to provide smooth shifts. I was booking at 40 or so, about to take the 90 degree at the T. You can see if there’s any traffic there too, and there wasn’t. There was a little gravel though that I had spotted. Ok, swing out to the left a little, and take the ideal line through it. It meant the Breeze drifting on all 4 through it, before hooking back up with me on the throttle through it. She never changed her yaw through it, it was just right. Of course there was a lot of screaming going on and all I could do was laugh out of enjoyment. We caught the end of the ceremony, and someone wasn’t happy with me, but I was happy with the Breeze.
4 of us piled in to her to go out to
The brilliance of my father is that he always gets a full size spare. We did it pit crew style. Star wrench out and one guy breaking the lug nuts, 3 guys unpacking our bags, then one on the jack while we pulled the spare out, fully inflated. We were back on the road in a good 10-15 minutes tops.
The Breeze had good brakes, and it was a good thing because a guy came whizzing through an intersection in a 40 zone at 75 or so. One minute the coast was clear, the next minute he was flying by on the brink of loosing control. If I hadn’t had a stick I might have been too far out, and too late. Of course that wasn’t enough to keep me from getting a speeding ticket 15 minutes into my 21st. Well, I came out of the Silverdome after working on the car late, and decided to treat myself to a little acceleration run up to the little knoll before the stoplight. I think I peaked at about 72 mph. Wouldn’t you know it, the under cover cops were out that night and she caught up to me right before I was in the hotel parking lot. I guess I woulda been better off if I had gone out drinking, then I wouldn’t have been driving.
She moved a mess of stuff home at the end of the year. Tony had come out and helped with the couch. She was home for 3 weeks while I was in
There was one Wednesday afternoon when we were scheduled to clean the showers and latrines. Just up behind the dinning hall, Josh remembered I had my appointment for my wisdom teeth appraisal. Shit, I had forgotten all about that. I ran, jumped in and took off. We hit 90 on the little level stretch on the
That summer was the watermelon run part deux. I swore every time I left the hill I was in for a ticket. It was only a matter of time and I knew it. But first we’d set the great Utica-Blockbuster to
We offered to drop the movie off. It was the summer I had my one mix cd of Billy Joel, Pink Floyd and other classics that Orrin liked to jam to. I always used to rock my hips back and forth in a sexual fashion to Another Brick… I still do. That day would be its own semisexual experience as Orrin wanted to see how fast we could make it back to Camp. I asked Josh if he thought he could handle it and got the nod. The tunes were going, but I had them dialed down. I needed to hear her, every whisper, every note. It was the stretch I had been practicing for almost a year.
We rocketed down the roads. She was in good form. They were doing the one bridge and I had to go a little further down Rt. 51, that was going to cost time, precious time, time I was going to have to make up. And we did. It was probably one of the peak points of driving her. We made it back in good time. I don’t remember exactly how long, but we were back way ahead of the other group. I think it was something like 40 minutes on a trip that normally takes about an hour.
Tony was living with Joe on
Kiss my ass, I was well within the limits of everything. Those were bogus tickets for them getting a DD but not a DD in the drunk driver sense. For all the crap driving I’ve seen out there, me getting busted for being such a proficient driver hardly seems fair, but that’s life.
It was good though, it slowed me back down a little till I took the van back out that fall quarter to move into the Formula 161a Perkins Apartment. I’d trade the van for my ’85 Lancer I had bought that summer, but she dropped out with tranny issues that December. Soon it was back to the Breeze.
I was brake group leader that year, and on co-op that winter quarter living back home. Mornings I’d go take I-88 down to
The best that winter was the night it took us 5 hours to get out to school though. Up by
I co-op’ed on campus spring ‘02. We went down to BW3’s in the ice storm people were so afraid to go out in. Bah. I had the whole loop at RIT down pat. Once in a great while, there would be a convoy of us, but I was never a big fan of horsing it when it was like that. Too much testosterone, too much to go wrong. I was more of a one man show, my girl and me. As much as I pushed it with people in the car, it was always different from when I was alone. I never tried setting the limits when others were with me. One of my favorite things was to do the stretch to and from the shop. There was a nice straight stretch down past the apartments that T’ed in leading into a nice sweeper. Down at the other end, there was another 90, and a tight S on a slope. We got a lot of practice doing that or going down through the S, making the turn towards the front circle, blasting down the straight before slowing down to enter the circle before getting her set to ride around the 180 bowl. Coming out it was a straight shot down to the stop sign. That was life. Co-op by day, workout and dinner afterwards, race car till it was time for a few minutes of sleep and repeat.
We’d go down to
I ended up making a road trip down into PA that summer. It wasn’t the first time. Tony and I had gone down to look at a Shelby Lancer shell that never worked out back in the summer of ’01. This time, two years later, it was to see about a girl. It was the first week of classes, and the lab, my only class that day, had been canceled. As said in Animal House, “Road Trip.” I went down and back in a day. I’d go down once more a month later. I’m pretty sure it was the Breeze I was in the one night that summer, when I was making a speed run down to the apartment and came across the rent-a-cop sitting there.
I was already doing 40 or better when I saw him. I knew they liked to sit there, and I was usually pretty good at spotting them in time. This night and this time though, I had already committed. I knew he had me and started to lift, but then mashed the pedal down and kept going. I could hit about 70 before breaking to turn into the parking lot. This time I didn’t start breaking till about the turn. I went the little bit to the intersection, made the turn and was off campus before he could even hit the lights and come after me. The rule is, they’re not allowed to follow you off campus. Thank god Weber had filled me in on that little bit. The formula team had all sorts of experience with Campus Safety. Some of it was better than others. I had my own experiences over my tenure there.
That summer was great. I had the apartment to myself most of the time. A couple of the guys were around and we did a lot of barbecuing and driving.
The campus and greater
I don’t remember anything too special going on in the fall of ’03. I was still out in 161a, doing the formula thing. It was always interesting switching between the two vehicles. All of the sudden, the brake pedal felt a mushy, there was no acceleration, but plenty of body roll. Well, that’s the difference, but you don’t drive a race car on roads with potholes measured in inches either. Tubenut was ridding with me back up after we were out driving one day and commented on my driving skill of not reving it all the way up to redline like some did. Well, I knew my girl, knew where her range was and shifted accordingly.
That winter after a very successful trip to
I wasn’t one of the idiots who got going full speed and spun it around a few times for kicks. It was all about building skill and I used to leave when those bozos would show up. There were a couple nights when I went out with a couple guys on the team that I had some trust in. I never used the hand/parking brake to induce them. I either wagged her back and forth till she broke loose or combined it with a little bit of braking to make her snap. The one treat I did allow us, was once in a while going backwards at a little speed, cranking the wheel, letting her come around while shifting into first, catching her and continuing in the direction we were going in. I used to do that with my RC car back in the day too.
I moved out of 161a that Feb. and down to Scottsville. In the cold mornings, I’d make the trip up to work. It was quite dangerous in winter. Right after getting on 390, I had to cut across to make sure I was in the group staying on for 590. In the morning traffic and winter conditions, this could be quite tricky. Winter turned to spring. In the mornings, I’d shoot up to 390, 390 to 590 and 590 to B&L, in the evenings back down before going up to the shop to work on the formula car.
That summer would be one of my finest and the Breeze was with me the whole way through it. With renewed traction came renewed ram roding around. I was in class and RIT was still my race track. I’d get up in the morning, make my thermos of coffee, as I had been since winter and head out the door. I was still working 20-25 hrs. a day at B&L in addition to 20 hrs of class and about another 20 hrs of homework/labs and crap. I went home a few times and while my sister hadn’t quite turned 16 yet, we went out on
As a Capristo, it was practically law that she learn to drive stick. She stalled the car out so bad the one time, it tripped the airbag sensor and we had to call it a day. I cleared the fault by disconnecting the battery and hoped the airbag wouldn’t go off unless I needed it to. Luckily it never did and I never needed it to. We had a good summer, but at 8, she was starting to make her age a little known.
That fall we made our way out to
A few weeks later we’d make a run back to
Returning one such night, the roads were wet, but it had stopped raining. I figured I could still take the on-off-on S-ramp at about 75 mph / 120 kmh. The limit was more like 72. About ¾’s the way through the corner, I felt the back end start to step out. I corrected, but at that speed and momentum, she was going to come around. I knew this from driving the formula car. I turned us into the spin, watching the rough grass and bush line pass by. After coming around towards 180, I started to turn the wheel back. She came around 270 and I hoped I’d catch her by the time we got back to 0, but she wasn’t done. I had to turn back into it and saw the grass and bushes passing by a second time. I was certain we were going to end up down there this time and was contemplating what the tow truck driver would say and how much damage she’d have. We got back around to 180 for the second time and there was a car off in the distance approaching. I turned the wheel back and we came past 270 again, by the time we were almost back in the direction we had been heading in when she caught herself. I’d say we were about 30 degrees short of a full 720, still on the road after having spun through the rest of the corner onto the short straight.
I had put the clutch in and the engine had stayed running the whole time. I gave her some gentle left and right turns through the wheel. She felt fine and we were now down to 20 mph, so I shifted into 2nd and we drove home. While I had been going too fast, I also felt it was time for her suspension to get a little rework.
I ordered a full set of Eibach springs and a set of struts to go with them. The guy working Advanced (Auto) pronounced it Eee-bach instead of I-bach. Guess he doesn’t have any German ancestors. It was a week or so before it all came in. Paul said he would help me do it and one night after work, we went at it. The springs were supposed to lower her, but I didn’t notice much of a difference. Anyway, we gave her an alignment and you could feel the difference.
Before I was going to leave
James went out in lead and Kyle gave chase. I was pushing hard to stay with them, but overheated the brakes on the Breeze in the first stint. Later, Nick would tell me the left front was smoking when I let him by. I thought we were in for that the whole day, but never had any more problems. I guess it was just outgasing, it certainly wasn’t that I stopped pushing. I stayed with those guys pretty good the whole time. The fun part was, the Breeze and I had to take it a lot closer to the limit with those guys to stay with them. Good times.
We went back home for Thanksgiving and I’d move out to
Going up was interesting enough, but it was still somewhat light out, even if it was more white than anything else. The trucks were out on top of it, but it was still falling pretty fast. By the time we got up to Illion around 2 or 3, the roads were sporting 3-4 inches. Uncle Bob was somewhat surprised to see us and didn’t know if we’d be able to make it. Hell yeah, of course. My winter driving had come a long way since I had gotten stuck that one New Years.
We went to dinner, the whole lot of us, and then over to the place they were keeping her. We had some cake and said what we all figured would be our good byes. It seemed much later, being winter and all, but we probably got started back around 7. Everything was the fuzzy glowing orange that falling snow makes in the incandescent lights. It reminded me of nights skiing over at Deer Run.
I wasn’t trying to set any records that night. The task was simple, trudge through the snow and drop the precious cargo off at home. I had my complete wits about me, as I always seem to when the pressure is on. I love it. When it absolutely positively is on, I almost always am too. Sometimes the road had been recently plowed, sometimes not. I didn’t try Crumhorn that night. If I had been alone, I would have.
We got back home around 9 or so. Tony and I had agreed to go out that night. Who would go out when they were already safe at home on a night like that? These guys and their noble steeds. I went into Oneonta and we left the Breeze at the hospital parking lot along
We didn’t care, and it was warm at the Fox. We stayed out till closing time and then went over to
The drive home wasn’t anything special, but I love the way it all looked in her headlights, just us on the road, the whole world seemingly asleep. I made the turn up the hill and wondered how we were going to get in the driveway. The plows had been through not more than a few hours before and on top of the 2 feet of snow we had, they had piled and packed it up. I thought about going up to the grandparents up the road and burying her in their yard, but I figured I’d give it a try here first. At the very least, if I got hung up half way out, the big shovels were no more than 30 feet away and there’d be a spot light to throw on.
We came up on it at about 20 mph, I turned in and we hit. Snow flew up in a big cloud and I couldn’t see anything. It must have looked pretty magical. It’s too bad no one saw it. When it all went white I put in the clutch and stopped the car, although the snow had done a pretty good job of doing that too.
There wasn’t that much snow on the windshield and a few swipes later, I could see that I had the car all the way in on the front half of the driveway. We had made it that far and I decided the best place to put her, would be out of the way down in front of the blue spruce. I wasn’t sure if we would have any traction, but down the hill we went, nose first. Getting down there, I figured what the heck, let’s try a 3 point turn, but I didn’t quite make it all the way, getting caught on some of the hard pack that was buried under the fresh stuff. Till morning then, and so it was.
I think we must have been back out on my way to school the next day. Maybe it was a couple weeks later, but that winter all the same. We were cutting over Crumhorn going down the
I started digging and had to clear out a good 10 feet in front of the car to make it back out. While in the middle of it, a sheriff deputy came rolling by. He asked me if I needed him to call anyone to come help, etc. I told him I had my cell phone with me, but that digging her out was easy and that the car was fine. If I needed anything, I’d call my old man. He also made a crack about how I should get winter tires. Eh, I was the driver, it was my fault, not the tires. And it was. I had given her a little gas coming out of the previous corner and probably gotten a little too much speed up.
You’d have thought I’d have learned my lesson long ago. I suppose it never woulda happened if I had had someone ridding with me. I woulda been playing it more careful. If it had been the next curve, I also woulda been playing it more careful as going off there would have been fatal to the car. A calculated risk. In fact I had considered trying to cut the inside corner, but figured if I lost her going out of it, I might end up over the bank. I chose the smart place to go off, at least from my perspective. The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful.
Spring wasn’t quite officially here when I finally got sick that winter. It was a couple weeks before Easter. I felt like crap so I stayed in that night. I got up the next day and wanted to run down to the local supermarket to get some drugs. Walking up the sidewalk, there were pieces of a busted up side marker, and I figured some idiot had had issues trying to parallel park.
I got to the Breeze and realized we weren’t going anywhere. Someone had come into her just in front of the rear taillight, caught the rear left wheel and shoved everything forward into the rear door.
There was a good 3/8 inch gap between the wheel and the tire.
The suspension was collapsed. We weren’t the only victims. The stupid drunk 40 year old bitch driving her fat ass SUV and then come back into the car in front of me and the next, damaging 6 cars in total plus her own. One was a brand new Impreza wagon. She had to ditch her vehicle a little ways away because it was undriveable, and fled the scene, but still gotten busted. There was a number to call for the claim.
I had the unfortunate luck of having the same insurance company as her. Instead of making this easier, my company didn’t want to pay out any more than they had to, and she had bare minimum of coverage. The Breeze, at age 9 and all her miles was a total write off. Totaled. I was short a vehicle and would have to miss a week of work while getting a ride to class every day with my roomie.
I had her towed over to the place that I had do work on her out there, just for a quote on the work. They said it would cost what the insurance company was paying me just to get the mechanical work done. At least I had AAA and the tow job was free. The tow job that lay ahead of me would be $230.
Well, it was born out of a conversation with the old man. We decided the best thing to do would be to bring her home, and see if we could get the work done cheaper. At the same time, I would seal Bethann’s red-orange Neon, Pepe. She was still in high school and he wasn’t essential to her daily needs. Being in the situation I was in, I didn’t mind. Pepe had the same drivetrain, but a little bit different final drive ratio. He didn’t get as good of mileage as the Breeze, but he was good off the line and up through. Anyway, I shopped around and ended up at Penske for the rental. I was going to have to go with a 15 footer because the smaller trucks weren’t allowed to pull the trailer. I wanted to drop the combo off in Oneonta, but that was a no go. At least the guy must have felt for me, as he didn’t charge me for the trailer. We dropped Aaron's car off at school and hit the road.
Here it was, my first towing experience and I had a 15 foot bed with a 4 wheel trailer off the back. I couldn’t go with a 2 wheel job, cause the back end was messed up. It ended up working out alright, and I ended up parking everything up at the grandparents, backing the Breeze down and bringing her down to the house. We had Easter and then it was time to go back late that afternoon. Up went Pepe and we went back out.
I was half toying with the idea of making the Breeze a parts car and went out looking for another one just like her in the greater
Over the next while, the Breeze would go and get her body/suspension work done for right around what the insurance paid off. What worked out against us, was the little plastic piece in the clutch had cracked and she needed a new one of those too. Oh well, She had over 170k miles on her back then, it was about time.
She wouldn’t be back on the road again until Feb. ’06. By then, I was already in
After his ’96 Dakota lost its brakes and got totaled, the Breeze became his daily driver for a time. The old man had been driving her and his truck (up till July) and she was still getting over 30 mpg, usually around 32-33 mpg. It was great being on the road again with her. She went up to camp with dad and I for some Christmas Day Kayaking on Ice.
We took a road trip out to Columbus to go visit James for New Years, stopping back in Rochester to visit the B&L crew for a few. There was also a run out to
I wasn’t sure if I’d get to see her again, if she’d still be there the next time when I came home. I had been through that once already with the Lancer, back when the Breeze was still young and vigor. We had come many miles together since then, and in a way, I was even more attached. I went home at the end of May ’07 again, and again, she was mine to run around with. With dad’s surgery, I pretty much restricted my outings to the local region. Still, we hit up all the old roads and I was able to get a little footage of her going down 7 into town. She could still go through the dip at 75 mph.
I wish I had been able to get a run in up to
In fact, I’m not even sure if I got up that way that trip home. What the Breeze got, was another scar. The night before the old man’s surgery, we came back from kayaking and backed the bed extender on the truck into the left front corner. She slid back a good 18 inches on the dew, but it tore the front cladding and bend the light and hood down. We felt bad, it’s no way to treat a lady.
Again I said my goodbyes not expecting her to be there when I got home. The old man had already gotten a new truck by then, and we weren’t sure if she’d go before the winter, or if we’d wait till spring. Although she needed a little maintenance, she was still cheap transportation. Not too long before coming home for Christmas ’07, she started having a hard time starting. I noticed it too when I came home and drove her. Sometimes she’d start hard, and sometimes when she was warm, she’d take off without too much trouble.
I didn’t go too far with her, a trip down to
We got it done without too much trouble and then it was back down to
I thought we’d ditch them when we turned off rt51, but the BMW was going our way. I think he meant to leave us behind, but I gave the Breeze the go and we gave chase. We were no match for him. He was making over 200 hp and we probably weren’t even making 100. Still, I had her gears to use and managed to catch a glimpse of him here and there. It worked out nicely for us, because I knew I had a cop catcher out in front. I didn’t drive her as hard as I used to. I too was out of practice of driving out on the limit, but we had fun. Even after he turned off and was gone, I kept it on as we came
We decided if all she needed was a headlight and nothing major, we’d keep her going. We weren’t sure what the hard starting problem might be. It sounded at first as if it might have been ignition cables, but didn’t act like it driving her. In the end, when it came time to do inspection on her at the beginning of the month, it turned out that the number 3 cylinder is completely shot. She pukes oil out when turning her over without that spark plug in.
And so it goes, with about 190k miles and 12 years on her, it’s time to retire her. She’s at home, down back with the 50
Like a lot of things, she was a car that I didn’t think too much of when I first saw her, but proved herself to me over time. She was an underdog, a warrior, and fighter till the end. She will be greatly missed. We spent the best of times, the worst of times and over 2/3rd of my driving lifetime together.
The Good Old Days
17.05.07 The old man recently wrote to me to remind me that these are the good old days. I thought about it, but I have long struggled with this point. Even back in middle school, teachers were telling us of “the good old days.” We were living them they said. Of course the one was a big time basketball star back in his high school career. Me? At the time I was a second class geek. I wasn’t a first class geek. I couldn’t even get that right. That’s how it was.
Of course my opinion then is the same as it is today, every day is one of the good old days. Today will be yesterday tomorrow, and all we have is the now. It’s what we do with the now that influences how we will remember it.
I’m a sentimental hopeless romantic. It doesn’t take too much to come to that conclusion. Life is a journey. In the end we die, and what we do up until that point is what makes us individuals. Life is a series of phases, the steps in the journey. If you’ve ever been on an adventure, journey or something of that nature, you can probably pick it all out.
As a scout, we often went camping for a weekend. First, we all got together. There was waiting and chatting with people as they showed up. A kind of nervousness always seemed to be in the air. Eventually, all the packs were loaded and it was time to head out. We drove, cause usually it was a weekend where we would compete against other scout troops. In the more rarer cases, we took to the trail with map and compass in hand. Regardless, eventually we reached our destination.
We had to pick out a campsite. We’d clear sticks and stones before getting out tents. We set up tents and dug a fire pit., setting the sod off to the side. We’d gather wood to burn and get a fire going. There would be dinner, belly stretcher or a derivation of, clean up and then relax around the fire until it was time to turn in. Even then, there would be some gossip about which girl was looking good. Sometimes there would be a wrestling match (over a girl), but more often the chatter was held over a game of cards. For those who had been exposed to it and knew how to play, drinking games were played with Kool-Aid or water.
It would be a brisk morning. Usually a cool dewy air, maybe the crisp sharp frosty air in the fall. It was fresh though. Most mornings the sun would be shining or it would be the morning shimmer before the sun came up over the hillside. Other times there would be the familiar sound of rain drops bouncing off the fly, which had probably woken you up briefly in the night. The air was damp and heavy, so was everything else you had brought with you. It didn’t matter how well you had packed it.
We got up begrudgingly for breakfast. Perhaps instant oatmeal with water heated up over the fire or something of that nature. Maybe it was beacon and eggs cooked on the griddle over the fire. You were constantly trying to keep the smoke out of your eyes, especially if you were cooking. After cleanup, it was time to start the morning’s events. Each patrol divided up and went off to start at a particular even, tree identification or the compass course, maybe fire starting.
We’d go through and knock them down, one event at a time. Eventually, it was time to go back to the site to make lunch. Soup, sandwiches, maybe some art of goulash. Sometimes you didn’t want to go back out, but eventually it was time, and you did. You’d wrap things up, and maybe end up socializing with some guys from other troops that you knew from other schools, either from sports or classes at scout camp.
Dinner was a bigger affair. There might be a glazed ham in a box oven. Peach cobbler in the Dutch oven for dessert was a time honored tradition. There would be assembly around the big campfire and the evening would be passed watching skits, cheers and songs backlit with yellow orange red flames. The sparks would stream up towards the stars. Eventually awards would be handed out, more ribbons of green, red and blue to be hung off the troop flag pole.
After such a full day, things were usually a little quieter. Everyone had worn themselves out trudging through the forest, meadows and everything in between. The day’s rewards had been hard fought for, and while the bodies were not yet sore, they were worn out for the time being. It didn’t matter what the weather was like, when the eyes finally closed and one dropped off, a freight train wouldn’t have been enough to wake him.
The next day, we’d wipe the sleepers out of our eyes, and again go make breakfast. Afterwards there would be the closing ceremony and everyone would head back to break camp. The grass would be matted down from where the tents were, paths to where the dining fly was, and around the campfire, where the sod was now back in place.
The ride home always felt different than on the way over. You had changed, but you didn’t know how. After getting picked up, you went home and showered to rinse the smell of campfire off. You were human to your parents again after that. Gear was unpacked and prepped for the next time.
It was all a journey. For me to pick out one part that I liked better than the rest is almost impossible. Life has thus far been the same. For me they are all the good old days. I treasure and already miss the days that have yet to come.
Sure it’s easy to reminisce about the teens and twenties. First kiss, driving, the bar scene, sex, making money with no one to spend it on but ourselves and/or significant others. Still, there are kids to come and no reason to stop having fun. Maybe some grow out of, and get tired of getting blasted on the weekends every now and then, maybe not, but there’s no need to grow out of having a good time with friends and doing the things we love.
Of course later on in life, I might change my mind. Time goes by, and as it does it seems to go quicker. So these are the days that will all too soon belong to our own personal pages of history. And to this I say make every page a page turner. Want to read the next page, but hate to reach the end of each chapter, and the book itself. We can’t make it last any longer, but we can make the pages come to life in the most vivid imagery, colors and feeling. We can leave something behind, so that those that follow have something to remember, and a good story to tell. Hopefully they will be inspired and can live just as well, if not better. And then, then they will be the good old days.
It’s Not All About the Benjamin’s
It’s always a different perspective. Those that have it will more than likely have a different view from those who don’t. And what does it mean? Being rich 200 years ago certainly means a different thing from being rich today. Even going back to Roman times, what was it to be rich? Sitting around in pools and what not? Getting you hand chopped off in the street for no reason? I have to believe that the sex is about as promiscuous, we’ve just improved birth control.
The issue of making a buck has plagued man for centuries. “No bucks, no Buck Rodgers.” Well we all have to make a living somehow. We all have to support our activities and agendas. In the more modern times, this has meant the career. The career has influenced modern man on a number of levels. Still, some say you can know where you’re going, or even where you’ve been. And times they were different.
Up until the 19th century, you had barons of power. Go back as far as you like, there has almost always been a rich trader in the bunch. The whole
The industrial age got things caught up in a hurry. There was lots to be done. It was possible to go from rags to riches with the right idea and the right backing. They’re in the history books, there are colleges and building named after these greats of their time; Carnegie, Mellon, JP Morgan, Rockefeller, Ford & Hearst to name a few. They struck it rich while many struck it poor. Inventions like the telegraph, telephone, light bulb, the automobile and record player changed the way people spent time together and stayed in touch with one another. National pastimes developed, specifically base ball for the time. For those who couldn’t make it to a game, there was the grand new invention of the radio.
The post world war II era defines the more modern times. The Automobile has come into its own. You can fly across continents in a matter of hours, even fewer while the Concords were still flying. The television was invented. You didn’t have to travel to the stadium to see the big games. It was brought to you over the airwaves in 2D form in addition to the 1D sound.
With generation x came the age of the internet, the dot-com boom, and the development of all the modern pc based things people occupy themselves with today. What the internet was 15 years ago, and what it is today is a truly outstanding development. Of course there are pros and cons, but it has indeed provided in making the world a smaller place. People can more easily find others with similar interests. Letters go from point a to b in a matter of seconds, and without causing paper, postage and days-weeks. It is now possible to better research products before buying them, and find out about bad products. People can now scan and print in photo quality. This is complimented by today’s digital cameras. 10 years ago an extra gig was an extra couple hundred bucks, now you pay less than a dollar a gig.
The whole world has gone and gotten itself in a big hurry. In the business world, you can give presentations to multiple continents at a time. It has brought the business world closer together and thus brought the demand for those who are culturally aware. To move up the ranks requires moving around. Changing departments, changing companies. Hands shuffle themselves and the guy who used to be your customer might end up moving within your industry and working as your supplier. There are those who seek to move up, move around. There are those who are only swiping the proverbial punch card, and there are those who will perfect their craft.
At some point, everyone reaches to point to which the quality of their life meets their expectations. It’s not all about the money, about moving up and moving around. It’s about looking forward to work each day. It’s about having enough time to enjoy a family and watch it grow. It’s about friends and having the time to spend with them.
Is the best career move the one where you set yourself up to climb the corporate ladder, or the one that provides you with the best ‘play time quality’ to ‘free time’ ratio? And how does one reach this plateau? It’s always been there. It was just harder to jump. In this day in age, there is more available, and yet people are content to just let it go by. It might be a generational thing. I still feel the generation x-ers are fighting the over driven life, the corporate policy of do more with less.
None the less, the power lies pretty much within the individual. There is always hope. There is always the inner will. There is always the morning sunrise and best of times amongst those who are simply the best people to be around. It’s not about the Benjamin’s, it’s not about whoever ends up with the most toys at the end wins. It’s not more money, more problems, but less life is no life. Get busy livin’, or get busy dyin’. Here’s to doing what makes you happy, what makes you feel like you belong and what let’s you live the way you want.
There Go My Heroes
It’s been rolling around in my head for a while now. It’s something that drives me to do what I do, the way I do it. You can let the Foo Fighters play in the background for this one. Here are my heroes.
I don’t know if it’s universal. I’d be willing to agree, when things work out the way they’re suppose to, every sons greatest hero is his old man. In general, he doesn’t do it alone, but there’s a male to male bond. The male role model, and it may be equally arguable, that if done right, every guy searches for a wife he hopes will do as good with his children as his mother, but then I’d have to change the title.
My greatest hero is indeed my father. A kid the doctors didn’t think would live past 12. He didn’t have it easy growing up. My grandfather worked 3 jobs at one point to make ends meet. My father could play sports, at least not in school. He couldn’t play a musical instrument, since they thought it would kill him. Still, he played ball in the park and was a pretty mean pitcher. He rode his bike where he had to go. His parents split when he was 16 and he went to live with foster parents. He worked on the farm there and then summers at Tenaco.
His grades landed him a scholarship, which allowed him to go to college. My father became a pharmacist because he wanted to help people. For over 30 years, in the hectic hospital environment. He could have moved on to bigger and better positions, but stayed put and gave his family stability. I know it’s probably one of the most important background things that had an effect in my life. I know I grew up in a place that I will always love. His self sacrifice has paid off many a dividend to me.
You have to respect someone that knows when it’s time to take themselves out of the game. It was a hard choice for my father, but he had the courage to do the right thing. A weaker mortal would have kept going until they hurt themselves or someone else. Pharmacy is a business where an error can cost a life. Dad had the guts to resign, and judging by the responses, it sounds like he created something more at work. Something that made people’s day brighter. Of course I know because I grew up under his roof, by his rules, his wit and his humor.
I have many a memory. I can remember before I was too big to be thrown up in the air and he playfully threatened to bonk my head into the light fixture in the kitchen. I can remember his 79 LeBaron, the car that was immaculate and too good for my brother and I to ride in on most occasions. I didn’t understand it then, but I did when I taxied my friends around in the four wheels that were mine. I can remember him always building something in the basement, or the shed. I can remember the 86 Lancer when it was brand new and him running up through the gears, the turbo snapping our heads back on the way over to
Of course it doesn’t stop there. Growing up I had a number of role models and heroes. I’ve always had a fascination for people who went out and did things before they became easy, and those who have gone old school to make things more of a challenge. You had the golden era of flight with the prop driven planes and the men who pushed them in the second world war. The 60’s and into the early-mid 70’s was the golden era of racing. They didn’t just push a button to fire a missile, or look at data acquisition results to figure out how to best set up the car.
It wasn’t until I entered the work force as a co-op till I found my next group of heroes. I had worked at a scout camp for 6 summers and had my crews, but a crew is a group of buddies. We’d kill for each other, we were that tight, but about the biggest amount of stress we ever encountered was the lack of women for 7 weeks straight and having to control the libido when the occasional scoutmaster’s daughter came up to visit.
When I started co-oping I quickly came to realize there are a few different types of people in the working world. There are those who are there for just a paycheck. It’s just something to do 8 hours a day in exchange for the ability to afford alcohol, toys and woo members of the opposite sex for the purpose of intercourse. There are those who are all about themselves. You are an object to them, no different than a piece of office equipment. They are looking to climb the ladder and you might just be another yellow brick on the road to Oz. You have the full of shitters who do more harm than good, and you have the people who make it happen.
I have had four jobs where I worked with quite a bit of the doers. I’ve been fortunate to come into teams and work with the best of the best. It’s been the down to earth people who had more intelligence in their little finger than some hot shot phd that mean a lot. I had my first one of these during my first co-op. Every morning, we’d spend a half hour before starting the day drinking a cup of coffee and I’d eat my bagel while discussing the world, the world of engineering and whatever else. It was a year later when I came into my next group of heroes. They gave me the tools, a bit of direction and no chains to hold me back. Their effort inspired my effort. There was and still is a core of characters punching away, spending critical periods working hours on end. There always has to be good fodder about your sister.
I left this group one fall to answer one of the two questions that would nag me about my career if I didn’t answer them. Automotive, or not? This was as good a time as any to check one off. It had been a goal to try that industry out since before I started college. By the time I got there, I had seen a good portion of what lay under the tip of the berg people call engineering. I was just hoping I’d end up in an area that suited me. It worked out well. I was there too short to really work myself into anything special. Still, I was able to contribute. I had a team which taught me the essence of doing more than just working together. Afterwards, I went back and finished my degree. I spent that time and the summer back where I had been, trying to help put and prepare as much of my baby for it’s grand preview as possible.
I left the following fall to go after question number two, and I’ve been here ever since. With the stereotype in the states, I can get away with quoting the line from Top Gun, “I heard the best of the best were here, so I thought I’d come on down.” Well, everywhere I’ve been, I’ve been on a different side of the coin. It is of course different. It’s even different from what it was a year or even 6 months ago. I’ve come a long way and it is because, as before, I have the best examples to follow. It’s a combination of everything I’ve experienced up until now, and more. While I have come into and have a lot of contact with virtually every department required to develop a product, it has been my fellow project managers and apps who really out do themselves. And I don’t see them as successful just at work, but outside of work too. They are and have what I hope to have on a variety of levels, not just the ones at work. I always enjoy the time we share outside of work, and of course the friendly quips at work. We sit at work in our threesome. When one suffers, we all suffer, but we hold each other up and make things right.
And those are most of my heroes, or at least the type.
Top: "Gurney fights from the first to the last minute of a race with complete dedication and is equally fast, never wearing out. His style is smooth and thus elegant." Richard von Frankenberg
Bottom: "After the race all the drivers and mechanics went to a restaurant together. We lived and we worked together. I enjoyed that the most." Jack Brabham,
the only man to ever win the championship in his own car.
Looking Back on the Attack
11.09.06 It’s hard to think back on the last 5 years, and realize it’s been that long already. We all remember that morning. People in other parts of the world remember that afternoon, or early morning, when radio and television stood on their heads.
I remember walking back from class and hearing bits of conversations. From my understanding, it sounded like two planes had collided over downtown NYC. I remember thinking to myself shit, but thinking how it was probably only a matter of time as most airport electronics dates back to the 70’s. I thought good, maybe now they’ll invest a little more in keeping things up to date. I was as shocked as most of the world. I remember watching the second collapse. I was sad, and pissed off. The media was coming off like a bunch of 3rd grade rejects. I don’t remember what they said, but it just pissed me off. Of course that was the year I was an RA and my thoughts ran threw the names and home towns. No one I knew lost anyone, but I know there were people who did.
As a upstater, we constantly bash NYC, but it’s a brotherly kind of bashing. You don’t actually try to drive a stake through his heart. We don’t talk like them, and we don’t drive like them, but they’re a part of us and we’re a part of them. I know I wish we still had the Statue of Liberty license plates. Growing up I visited the Big Apple a couple times. I can remember riding past the towers in the school bus a couple times. They were
Some things will always irk me. The event brought people together, like tragedy always does, but there were enough people running around with a kind of drunken grief as well. People caught war fever overnight. We wanted justice, but what is justice itself if unjustly achieved? Like most events, the details, the important measures got mixed up, forgotten or swept under the rug by politics.
They had all died heroes. Still, were they any different than any other fire fighter or policeman killed in the line of duty? Granted, they had died almost all at once, it a great tragedy, but they were still the same as any Joe in that sense. All of the sudden people cared more, they were enlightened. They became band wagon fans, because suddenly it was in fashion. And I’m happy people have more respect for those who perform some of the toughest and more honorable work in the world. I just think it shouldn’t have been riding on such an even.
I honestly don’t feel any safer on an airplane than I ever have. I don’t think our ports are safe either, and rather than go wage a war, those are the two places I would have beefed up first. If drug traffickers can still smuggle their deliveries into the country, how hard can it be for a terrorist to do the same? But I say no risk, no fun. My chances of dying are what they are, take it or leave it, just make the best of it.
I will always honor those who have given themselves unselfishly in the service of others. And I will try to strengthen cultural bonds instead of breaking them, so that some day, we may all live as an international family. For now, I will honor the fallen with a heavy heart and a tear in the eye. May we never forget, but honor their memory by holding first ourselves and then others to higher standards of conduct.
Following Through
I heard it for the first time when I was a wee lad. For our coaches it was a part of their favorite repertoire. Follow through. My father never put it that way, he always told us that we should finish what we start. In my grandfather’s words, he didn’t care who started it, but that he was going to end it.
Now as I was growing up, I had my share of unfinished projects. Did I lack the know how at the time? Did I need help and didn’t know it? Maybe I needed a little motivation. Things always go better when there is more than just one person doing the work, although I must confess, I do enjoy working alone at times.
Regardless of working alone or on a team, if it’s one thing I learned over the years, it’s that you have to follow through. The world loves those who have the drive to finish what they start. If you’re a special kind of person, you get sent in to fix things, usually when they’re totally f-ed.
That’s it though. Nothing worthwhile ever comes without some sort of adversity. It’s adversity that brings out the true colors in people. It’s pressures that show the character people are made of. It’s temptations that show us where we’re weak.
It’s tough. Sometimes you get into something and it turns out to be the exact opposite of what you were expecting. Sometimes you have to cut your losses, but that’s usually only a requirement in the business word. It’s usually a matter of constitution, a matter of drive, and a balance of commitments.
I’m a pretty firm believer in that people can will themselves to do almost anything, if they want to bad enough. Sometimes you can will yourself to do something by telling yourself that it has to be done, that failure is not an option, that there are no limits. This works well for personal things, but can be difficult in a team setting. Again, it boils down to each individual to decide their own level of commitment.
Things don’t always happen as planned. That’s life. Sometimes you have to be able to change gears with the changing conditions to stay within the power band. Sometimes you have to set priorities, but you should never forget. You can usually come back to something, but you can’t postpone for forever.
It can be a matter of self commitment, but maybe you owe it to others to get it done. Maybe you have come this far, it would be a shame not to complete the last piece or two of the puzzle. And what I’ve noticed, at least for myself, is that it always feels better that way. It feels better to have things completed rather than have them laying around, or remembering that once upon a time, I wanted to do that. It’s always nice to look and say yeah, I was there, I was a part of that, that’s mine.
It’s always a compliment when people say with amazement, “damn, I never would have been able to do that.” But I’m always reminded that there was once a point in time when I probably thought the same thing, and then I dared and willed myself to give it a go. I know they could do the same, if they wanted to and could follow through.
It’s a shame to be a quitter. It’s a shame to give up because something is too hard. There is almost always a way. You just have to believe. You just have to try, and sometimes more than once, character belongs to those who have the commitment to follow through.
Punks, Drunks, Shit Like That
Personally, I think it’s part of that generation. I know that generation, I spent enough summers at scout camp to know that there’s something wrong with generation R. Why R? Cause they’re the Ritalin generation. They’re part of the generation that grew up without ever being hit by their parents and would threaten to call the police if they ever were. They watched too much Barney and Teletubbies. They can’t remember what it meant not to have internet, let alone what people did before the modern age of computers. They’ve grown up thinking they deserve ever modern accessory; game cube, playstation, mp3 player, cell phone, palm pilot, laptop. There’s still one thing they’re lacking, the maturity. They’re all dick and no brains. Maybe that’s just men in general, maybe it’s the modern era of MTV that has turned their brains all to crap. Maybe it’s all of that.
My opinion is that they’re all just a bunch of softy clown punchers. I remember growing up when spanking and corporal punishment was still allowed. My mother didn’t like it, but I think a little bit is good. Sometimes you have to learn children a little respect via tough love. I can remember being little and arguing with my brother over something. I remember our grandfather telling the both of us that if we wanted to cry about something, he would give us something to cry about. We understood the meaning and the tone and straightened our act right up. It was either that, or that if we wanted to bang heads, he would knock our heads together and we wouldn’t like it. I remember the cuff across the face the first time I dropped the f-bomb. I remember that if Orrin and I thought about getting out of line, we could count on a size 10 from his father to our backsides. The instructions to the babysitters were always the same; “If they get out of line, don’t hesitate to smack them.” We knew our place.
We were the generation that grew up playing Atari, Nintendo and Sega. We had duck hunt and Super Mario 3, with the game genie. We didn’t have cell phones or have to worry about running out of minutes. We weren’t always accessible to each other. We had to be home to receive calls. We still had to use rotary dial phones. None of that cordless touchtone crap. The old man used to flip the shit a little when he got the phone bill and saw how much/long I had been talking to the girl the next town over. “I never talked that much on the phone when I was your age.” That’s cause the telephone hadn’t been invented yet when you were my age….
He didn’t do a lot of things back then, but did other things. I never had a rock salt pistol with three different barrels to go play with. No one ever stormed our shack to try and tip it over. But what did we talk about all the time? I don’t know, but I think it was cooler to pass notes in class than write text messages. You could sit at home, watch Saved by the
My generation has been in the middle of all the modern electronic developments. We went from cassettes and walkmans to CD’s to mp3’s. We went from no hard drive to 200 gig of portable USB power. Processors and memory from double digits to quadruple, from green on black color screens to 32-bit. Cameras have gone from Fisher Price to 4 mega pixel digitals. Printers from dot matrix to photo quality. People used to have date books, now people have to check their Outlook calendar or pda. If your cell phone takes a dump, you’ve probably lost whatever form of a black book you have. And that’s why I say today’s generation R is different from all the ones before it, but that they still need a good smacking.
It’s Frank’s World –we just live in it.
People always get a kick out of that postcard. I’ve had it quite a while now, a picture of me plastered over Sinatra. It’s from the second year at school. Maybe I should change it, but what one would I put up instead?
If it’s one topic that comes up every now and then, it’s how my co-op is going. People here want to know if I’m having a good time and enjoying things. People back across the pond want to check up on me, and see what’s the next adventure I’ve taken. People here usually follow things up with a “What made you come here,” and “Is it hard to find a job in the
Homesickness for the times gone by
I have homesickness for the things I can never go back to. The times that belong to the history books, the times we can never get back. With every day, every week, every year that we are away from each other, we change. You can always meet back up, you can always go out and do something, but the virgin times, the golden times, they always belong to a time when people grew up together.
They told us those days would be the best days of our lives. We had fun, and before we knew it, we had gowns on. We would take awards home from school for the last time. No one would ever again worry about perfect attendance, or a regents exam. We would never again, sit out in from of the school in the June sun, talking about the questions and answers. In a small school, you spend 12 years with people and then get scattered to the wind. Sure you keep in touch. The last 10 years have been magical allowing people to stay just a couple keystrokes and mouse clicks away from each other.
But as I said, you loose the closeness. Your experiences differ from theirs. You can share, and on some levels, you are going through the same things. Still, there’s a difference between relating to someone and living the blood sweat and tears next to them in the proverbial trenches.
You end up having to build a new life of some sort. For some, who stay in the area and go right to work, the transition is smaller. The area, the people, a lot of those things stay the same. Your crew of friends may change some, your idea of sports might end up being league baseball and bowling, but the social net is fairly well established. People around know who you are. You’re still so and so’s kid, you’re still the one who was on the sports team who went to sectionals and so on.
For a few daring souls, the transition is abrupt. They leave it all behind, language included and go to another country. They leave it all behind, but carry it deep in their hearts. They start from scratch, building the best they can. A year will go by in the blink of an eye. The path will most likely bring them back to the point they started from, but it will be they who will be different.
In what has become the most common way, most go on with their education. In the various shades of this new world, some will live at home and commute, some will travel across the country to get out of what they see as a small town trap and some will be a days drive or less away from home. The experience is shaped more for the out of towner.
“College is the best time of your life. When else are your parents going to spend several thousand dollars a year just for you to go to a strange town and get drunk every night?” David Wood
It’s not quite that extreme, but the theme is concurrent for what most hoped it would be. Sure, there would be classes, but most hoped that there would be plenty of time to party. College was going to be National Lampoon’s Animal House. There would be frat parties with sorority girls. Everybody would have lots of sex and be merry.
In reality, it would be shaded the way high school was. There was a hierarchy. The underclassmen would all think that they were big stuff. They felt that they had earned everything already and expected to be on the same level as the upperclassmen. The upperclassmen in turn would throw it back and explain how they hadn’t earned squat yet. “The stuff we’re doing would make tears run down your face and make you cry for mommy it’s so hard.”
It wasn’t exactly true, everything would be relative. Every semester, every year you’d have to step up your game. By the end of things, your game was on a higher level than when you started out, but the difficulty of things had grown in proportion. You can’t compare little league to high school level to college level to the majors.
There would be club activities and a part time job. The safety net people had in high school would be gone. No one was going to tell you you couldn’t carry 18 credits, work 20 hours a week and spend 20 hours on club activity. If you were smart, you multiplied your credits by two because you knew there would be the same amount of time spent on doing homework, labs, projects and reports. Social outings and a significant other would also have to be factored in. All in all, even if you didn’t sleep, there still weren’t enough hours in the day to do it all if your eyes were too hungry. Everybody made their own cuts, had their own limits, and some would fall over the edge when they got the balance wrong. The good old days of high school were gone. The portions had grown, but the week remained the same. Those that used to do it all would find it hard to adapt.
Without say, it would be a grand old time, regardless of what happened, even if only for a little while. It would be a grand new world at the start. Sure there would be programming, people trying to tell you the same crap you learned in high school about drugs, alcohol and sex. But you would all be there together, in some dorm looking to refill the lifestyle each was accustomed to, some searching for something new. Never again would the opportunity present itself to be around so many people. Everyone would build new circles. Between classes, work, club(s) and the floor, relationships were there for the taking. All you had to do was be willing to open your door, your mouth, reach out there and touch it.
There would be late nights just chilling, a couple people in a room or a lounge. There would be all-nighters and jam sessions, rocking out to mp3’s over headphones while your roomie slept. There would be nights when nothing made sense, when you thought you would loose your mind. If you were lucky, you would find love, but as love goes, it’s risky at best and some would loose just as fast as they found. It would take a broken heart or two, but some would be lucky and find the one.
Most would move out of the dorms after their mandatory year of “hell,” but were established and hooked up. Most would move out with the crew they had established into a 3 or 4 bedroom somewhere. The routine was established, semesters and years were just variants of the first. You just had to up the antae every once in a while. With a good foundation, things would rock and roll. You could build your relationships and make a name for yourself in your activities. You got to know more and more of the classmates in your major. Your professors knew who you were.
You’d have summer jobs and internships. If you were lucky, you’d go back home for a summer or two to be near what you had lost. Otherwise you’d meet people in your field who had been out there in the thick of it for a while and could give you some advice. Over the course of things, you’d see the direction you wanted to take, if you didn’t already know. You’d get to see different companies and how they operated. If you were lucky enough to be at the right place at the right time, you’d be able to give as much as you got. Towards the end of things, you’d be able to shine and show your stuff as what you could be, and hint at what you would be in the future. The luckiest would find a workplace to call home after graduation through the course of it all.
And just like that, in the blink of an eye, it would be cap and gown time again. Another few years gone by. The memories aren’t of classes themselves, with a few exceptions devoted to a few professors who made it the best, but of the times. It was a repeat of high school, but on a grander larger scale. There was more to risk, more to gain. It was more personalized as everyone had the power to do it their way. By the end of it all, people had found out who their closest friends from the good old days were, with whom time could not divide. Most had found a few new close friends to keep in touch with. Some had even found the love of their life and would marry in the following year or two.
All had experienced the transition from high school to college and maybe experienced a couple transitions between internships and school. Some didn’t see the end coming last time, but the tunnel would be straight at the end for everyone this time around. Some rejoiced, some were sad and for most it would be bitter sweet. Everyone knew they’d all be scattered to the wind again.
Some would go on with school, but most would find a job. Everyone would follow their dreams the best they could. Those that hadn’t gone on to college had probably settled down, gotten married and maybe even had a kid or two. They had started the phase the rest would just be getting into.
There will be colleagues at work. There will be projects and deadlines. For most, the hectic days of late night sessions are over. For some, the traveling has just started. But if you ask me, it’s just the next level of the game. It’s the level where people get married, have kids and all that. Some went to it right out of high school, some took a little longer to get there. It’s the same game everyone’s been playing for a while now. It’s the same old balancing act of doing what you know you got to, having a hobby/interest or two and managing the social life. You need the first to be able to provide for the second two. It’s a bit more regulated, but you still need to find the right balance. You can still fall over the edge if you don’t watch yourself.
At some point it’ll be time to retire from being pro time and go old-timers. Things will hopefully be just for fun, for the spirit of the game. It’ll be more coaching and spectatting. The kids will have grandkids and all that stuff. Eventually we all go to the big sandlot in the sky.
I haven’t gone pro yet. I’m still pretending I’m in college, but you can bet I’ll make the jump when my time comes. I’ve seen enough to know what’s coming, but I know I’ll still have to up the antae when the time comes.
My mind on things is that they’re all the golden times. The times that have gone by have gone by too fast and I know the one I’m in will belong to that group all too soon. It’ll be the next level and then the one after that. But I’m not going to let a minute of it go by without trying to play the game the best I can. Sure you remember the best plays, but I say it’s the people that make the memories.
I am homesick for the times gone by. For the nights when we piled in a car and headed out for some adventure. For the nights we sat around talking about our goals and dreams, cracking jokes over a drink and card game or two. For the late nights, cool night air, clear sky and stars in the mid morning hours. For the games we played. I hate having each piece so far away, but it couldn’t have gone any other way for me. The world is dotted with places that are all golden to me. It’s not the places, but the people at them. The golden times are there when you belong to a crew, a bunch of people you can call your goodfellas and girls. It’s the bonds we built, the looks we exchanged. It’s the times we’ll create the next time we cross paths.
Scouting
When most people here that you were a boy scout, their first thought is of that guy in high school who did everything by the book. They think of that guy who was kinda the teachers pet, who did all of his homework, who never drank, never smoked and who wasn’t even going to go to first base with a girl until they were married. So I’m here to dispel the myths, or at least add some truth.
We all started off as goofy preadolescents, but no more so than the rest our age. Those who had been part of cub scouting, and especially Webelows, had been to camp and on an overnight campout or two. There would be many more to come.
Things usually started out with knots. It was a periodical ritual. In scouting you learned how to do lashings as well. Now you could build A-frame structures, cooking stands, bridges, tripods and catapults. You were armed with a bow saw and an axe, knew how to care for them, knew how to use them.
There would be first aid. If someone drops down with a heart attack in front of you, a scout is going to know what to do about it until help arrives. He’s going to think send for help, airway, breathing, circulation. If he comes upon something, he’s going to be looking around for power lines, sniffing for gas or checking for a source of carbon monoxide poisoning before he rushes in. He’s going to know how to apply direct pressure and elevate the wound. He’s going to know to look after the neck and back and keep the head isolated if a back injury is suspected. He’s going to treat for shock and keep talking to the victim in a cool and calm voice. Later on, he might learn lifesaving techniques on the water. He will know how to treat sun stroke and hypothermia.
A boy scout is a piro. He knows how to burn the forest down like any other idiot, but he also knows every step to take to prevent it as well. He can start a fire in the snow with one match. He knows how to make a good cooking fire and a bright camp fire. He knows how to put them out and how to leave the grounds with hardly a trace of things. If he sticks around long enough, he will learn the art of ceremony fires.
A scout is skilled person in the outdoors. He can pick out the 4 points of the compass if stranded. He can orient and follow a map miles over various terrain with a 40 lb pack strapped to his back. He is skilled in canoeing, rowing, kayaking and sailing. He can swim with known strokes. He can cook. He can shoot a bow and arrow, a gun and shot gun and care for all. He knows trees and what they’re good for.
With all of his skills, he is ready to face the outdoors in any sort of weather. Stormy or calm, rain, sleet, snow or shine, you can throw him out there and he will know how to make the most of it. From tarping it on the bare ground, to tenting to lean-toos, he’s ready for it all.
He is a fellow versed in skits, songs and cheers. He knows how to get up in front of a group of people and put on a show. He knows how to MC.
Through it all, he learns how to lead. He can lead by example, he can lead by showing and teaching the way. He is a spirited competitor and knows the essence of teamwork. In the nights spent with his peers, he has fallen asleep talking about the things most men talk about, sports, women and what’s going on. He’s a member in his community and gives time to help out and lend a hand around town.
He’s part of a brotherhood, a group of young men who will fool around and get into trouble every once in a while, but who would also go out on a limb for each other. He’s part of a group that earns respect. Above all else, he’s a hard working son of a gun who’s going to be able to save your ass if you plane goes down.
posted by CapristoIII at 11:22 PM
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