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of gas alone

Happy Monday team.  I spent most of Saturday putting the finishing touches on the RV route/itinerary.  Since that’s all I did, it’s what I’m going to write about (again).

An engineer decided to go on a cross-country RV trip.  One of his chores in preparation, most assuredly, would be to create a spreadsheet.  Spreadsheets are great for everything.  Budgeting; planing back-country hikes; cataloging collections of things; and of course charting the miles and stops of a cross-country RV trip.  My spreadsheet does this and more, and is, not to put too fine a point on it, a fantastic achievement of nerddom.  Want to know the minimum speed (miles per hour) you’d have to cruise at to get from A to B in the estimated time?  OK.  Want to know how much you’ll likely pay in sum-total for the horrendous cost of “crisis in the Middle East” gasoline required for the trip?  Sure!  Some of the more interesting figures (and the ones with the most complicated nerd-math behind them) are those which I use as “indicators” for the overall “fun ratio” of the trip.

While I’d imagine there is “fun” to be had while driving on a RV trip: seeing the sights, hugging the curves, waving at other travelers, etc., I’ve decided that the most heavily-weighted predictor of “fun” is actually going to be the amount of “free time” we have.  This is defined as non-driving time, but is more complicated than that.  What I wanted to ensure was that our “usable non-driving” time (I notion I defined for the purpose of this calculation) is by far greater than our “non-usable/driving” time.  I wanted that ratio to favor the usable non-driving time by a lot, more than 2:1 if possible.  In this way, I felt like I’d be giving us the best possible amount of “family time” or “free time” to see sights, hang out, and enjoy the rest and relaxation.

For the record, “usable non-driving” time is defined as any time each day that not sleeping, driving, setup/takedown, or “breaktime.”  For the further record, there are about ~14hrs each day of this type of time (for the adults, that is).  This may sound dumb and overly analytic.  It is.  Oh it really is.  But I wanted a “finer grain” way to conceptualize how much of our time is really our time. My previous method – comparing the number of days with any driving to those with zero driving – is still a valuable statistic, but it’s not detailed enough.  You have to look at both to get the whole picture, see.  No… maybe you don’t see.  Maybe it’s only me who sees like this, who cares like this.  On the off chance not, here are some fun statistics about our coming trip:

Total miles 8,037
Total days 45
States driven through 28 (+ DC!)
“Zero days” (parked; no driving) 19
Days driving/not-driving (ratio of days with some driving to those with none) 57% / 42%
Hours driving/not-driving (ratio of “usable hours” spent driving vs. spent doing whatever we want) 23% / 77%
Estimated cost of gas alone assuming national average of $3.75/gallon $3,265.42

I love data. I really do. As you can see, I was able to do really well (I’m happy with it, at least) with that “usable hours” ratio – spending less than a quarter of our “free time” driving and the rest of it doing whatever it is we’ll be doing.  I was also happy that I was able to arrange several different “kinds” of RVing: big-rig restort camping, state/national park camping, truck-stop camping, and boondocking.  There were so many “layers” of things I wanted us to be able to do, and my anal data-addiction enabled me to get most of them accounted for.  Let’s hope that it’s worth the planning, right?  To close this trip-narcissistic entry, a compiled list of the places we’re going that I’m most excited about, in-order per our planned route:

Although we’re booked pretty solidly, I’m hoping there’ll also be plenty of “World’s Biggest Ball of Twine” and “96oz Steak Challenge” stops to boot.

OK… I think I got it out of my system for another week at least.  Apologies for the indulgent Monday.

See ya.

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a sound that any kid knows

Tuesday night Keaton had a bad dream.

No, I mean a baaad dream.  The kind you used to have when you were little and you were being chased by skeleton and you were running for your life and you woke up just as he was about to grab you with his bony fingers – only to see him, to really see him, standing there in real life at the foot of your bed.  Of course, he wasn’t really there, you were still dreaming or in some half-dreaming/half-waking state where you haven’t quite shaken off the residuals.  Oh… do you remember the fear?  I do, friends; I do.  One time there were sharks “swimming” around on the ceiling above my bed, like I was looking up at them from somewhere deeper underwater.  I was terrified because I knew I was awake. The dream was over but here were my dreams, crossed over to haunt me in real life.  It’s the fear come alive.

That’s the kind of dream Keaton had, and it really got her twisted.  Bedtimes have a foreboding quality not unlike the bygone “bedtime hell” days of 2009.  She’s genuinely afraid of her room.  See, it was a pretty traumatizing dream: She awoke because she heard a noise, a growl – the growl of a monster, a sound that any kid knows.  Wanting to be brave, she boldly growled right back.  It was then that the monster, according to the story, a story which is consistent and has never varied even in one tiny detail over repeated re-tellings, replied with two short grunt-like noises.  Immediately after, it jumped on her bed and popped up from under the covers.  It looked like the dog-thing Kyle from the movie Despicable Me, I hear.  This is when the screaming started.

It was 3am and I was dead asleep.  Keaton’s scream ended that instantly.  It wasn’t a “normal” bad dream scream, it was a horrible pure-fear kind of thing that registered deep in some primal part of my parental response center.  Before I really knew what was going on I’d tossed aside the covers and was running towards her room, calling to her that I was on my way as her screams frayed and tattered with fright.  As I turned the corner into her room I half expected to see a real problem – the terror in her voice was palpable and it got my adrenaline running hot in the seconds between our room and hers.  But it was just her, screaming, legs held in the air so not to touch the bed (from whence, I’d later learn, the monster had sprung).

She slept the rest of the night with us and I thought that’d be it.  Nope.

Sharaun texted me at work the next day, “Tonight is going to be tough; she’s too scared of her room for quiet time.”  I hadn’t even thought of it.  That night was tough.  That was last night.  Tonight was tough.

We tried a lot of things.  “Bravery gummies” for naptime (Sharaun’s idea, think of them like when you used to pretend Smarties actually made you smart).  A “bad dream alarm” plugged in and running (Dad’s idea, an unused ethernet-over-powerline converter with blinking lights that could easily indicate dream-warding).  Prayer.  We gave her a good set of options and tools, I thought.  Nothing really worked.  Tonight, in fact, she just wore herself out.  Under thread of cancelled playdates tomorrow and numerous attempts at cold rationalization (“There is no such thing as monsters, and you know that”), she finally collapsed on her bedroom floor near the door (the monster lives, somehow, in the bed… so it’s the worst possible place to be).

I can remember bad dreams.  Poor thing.  But this cannot stand.

Goodnight.

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way to go, song-picker guy

Hile, internet.

I don’t know if you guys have seen the movie 127 Hours.  I don’t write about pop-culturey things all that often (I did moreso back when the blog started in the aught-tres, when I was still figuring out what this thing was for), but I wanted to write about this movie a bit.  Not about the story, but specifically about the use of one song in the film.  For those who’ve not seen the thing, I won’t be ruining it or anything so no worries (not that most everyone isn’t at least passably familiar with the story anyway).  Is a movie even pop-culture?  I think so.

Anyway, I wanted to write about how expertly the film used the Sigur Rós track, “Festival.”  Gotta be my favorite use of a song in a movie in a while.

If you’re not familiar with Sigur Rós, you’ll likely react like my wife did when I tried to get her to appreciate them so many years ago.  Honestly, her reaction wasn’t entirely unexpected… they aren’t the easiest act to get into for most.  I mean, if you can get around their lengthy songs you’ve then got to make peace with the fact that the band is from Iceland.  Not that Iceland is a bad place, but, moreso that this means the band sings in a foreign language – which by itself turns a lot of folks off.  Worse even than that, most of the time they sing in a made up foreign language – one that has no meaning and sounds like gibberish (the rest of the time they sing in Icelandic; I can’t tell the difference).  The “language,” called Vonlenska, or “Hopelandic when translated to English (hey, the name of the language is a real Icelandic word, at least), is entirely unintelligible and the band has stated that they want folks to hear whatever they want to hear in the lyrics.

Sharaun, like many, doesn’t really do songs with no words (ala Mogwai, Mono, or Explosions in the Sky, etc.) or songs in foreign langauges (Air, Malajube, Dungen, etc.).  You better bet, then, that a band whose forte is either songs with no words, songs sung in Icelandic, or songs sung in a fabricated nonsense language ain’t high on her list.  That’s cool, I can accept that.  I actually kind of like the notion of lyrics in an imaginary meaningless language.  For one thing, it’s kind fun to make up your own words and “sing along” to whatever you hear.  I mis-hear and sing words to songs wrong all the time, and Sigur Rós solves that problem out of the gate by not having any real words to mis-hear.  For another thing, my opinion says your music has to be pretty darn strong to pull off singing in gibberish.

And strong songs they are!  Sigur Rós has a knack for laying down songs which often border on “anthemic.”  Things that get stuck in your head and make your chest swell with feeling, things that sound like national anthems for pretend countries or old familiar spirituals or other such emotionally-tied things.  In fact, the band’s music seems to inspire all sorts of folks – particularly those in the advertising world as the Sigur Rós themselves pointed out on their blog about being ripped off in commercials all over the world (it’s so prevalent they actually wrote about it again here).  Their stuff is catchy and often big and important sounding.  And the track used in 127 Hours is one of these grand affairs.

The song (listen here while you read), used in an emotional climactic scene near the end of the movie, is called “Festival” and is a nine minute piece (I almost called it an “epic,” but length is fairly common for the band) from the 2008 effort, með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust.  The first five minutes or so of the song are quiet and singsong, all done in Hopelandic (and this meaningless).  Around the five minute mark the meat of the track, a crazy-good bassline which dominates, kicks in.  The track ends with an crashing and repetitive

In 127 Hours the song more than merely underscore or support the film, it absolutely defines and in fact drives the emotional engine of the scene.  Yes, the viewer has a lot invested in the story at this point, but even still the scene wouldn’t be nearly as effective with the volume muted (says me).  Honestly, whoever picked the song did such and excellent job, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to listen to it again without thinking of the release of pent-up emotion that came with it during that scene.  The closing minutes of the track are so well-matched to the tenor of the scene.

No for real guys, if you haven’t seen it you really should – and pay particular attention to the finale, the denouement, the emotional climax of the thing.  Hear your heart beating in time with that crazy-good song?  Feel the way you’re edging up on your seat as the kick-drums go double-time and the strings inch towards cacophony?  Watch your fists clench as the horns come shining into the party, brassing things up and taking the layered madness just another notch towards the precipice?  What’s that, crazy cymbals?  Insane rain-on-a-tin-roof snares, trumpet-gone-wild, do I hear an ever-loving glockenspiel?!  Land of Goshen!, who picked this thing?!  I gotta buy this cat a beer.

So kudos to you, soundtrack-type person for 127 Hours, you masterfully applied this wonderful track to the film.

Goodnight.

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for sitting

This Saturday dawned with a blissful five hour preview of Spring.

I was up early and had the house thrown open entirely, every window and every door, before the big hand was on the eight.  Around 9:30am, having lounged about the house for a few hours and enjoyed a few cups of coffee, I decided to fire up the compressor and put some air in the bike tires.  You know you’ve not been riding your bike enough when every time you want to haul it down and go for a roll you’ve got to inflate the tires.  By 10am I was bidding the family farewell, my headphones already on my ears and my helmet in hand.  I hit the road with a vague idea of a two hour loop I wanted to do.

I always try to go somewhere new.  This morning I rode alongside a large undeveloped ridge northwest of our house.  I was riding through neighborhoods and along developed trails, I kept looking at that ridge, all green and full of trees.  It was blocked from the subdivisions by a high wall, but I wanted up.  I decided to ride the length of the wall.  I did this for maybe a mile, not long, and found a way around.  Through a No Trespassing sign and around a gate and I was on a dirt access road, obviously intended for future home construction as there were completed drainage systems and buried sewer lines with manholes.  Didn’t look like there’d been any work done for quite a while though.

At the top, after one huff and puff of a ride (where, I admit, I hopped off and walked for a while it was so steep), the dirt road followed the ridgeline into the distance.  I was rewarded with perfect solitude and some amazing vistas of town, city, lake, and forest.  I rode leisurely along the ridge I stopped near a big oak where the view was particularly impressive.  That’s when I saw that someone else had been here before me, and had a great idea.  They’d built a series of sitting platforms into the oak with castoff wood.  There was a crude ladder leading up, and footholds nailed in along the way.  I felt like Tom Sawyer, and thanked the resourceful teenagers I imagined laboring on the thing out loud.

I dropped the bike and climbed up to take the perch with the best vantage.  I brought my water bottle and my music and just sat there swinging my legs.  I sent a few texts to a few friends, sending pictures of my explorations.  The ride was so awesome.  I saw a turkey and a coyote and “found” a waterfall and the treehouse thing and a charted a whole new awesome loop-ride I can do on another day again.    I made it back to the house just a little more than two hours after I’d left.  Now I want to go again.  Bring Keaton, maybe a sack lunch.  A little secret wildnerness (well at least a few acres worth) in the middle of suburbia.

It rained the rest of the weekend.  Goodnight.

 

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new headphones again

I ordered a pair of new headphones for work.  My old ones are beginning to disintegrate, or biodegrade, or simply disassemble themselves to protest the long working hours.  Every few years I need a new pair.

I would estimate that at least 60% of my workdays are spent in meetings.  I’ve written about it before, but meetings are a large part of what I do.  Of those meetings, probably 75% are taken via phone.  This means that I sit at my desk with a little wireless headset, muted, often only distractedly paying attention, listening for keywords while trying to get real work done at the same time.  Sometimes I have to give 100% attention, maybe 40% of the time.  That’s a lot of percentages, and it makes me think there’s an equation in there which could give me an idea of the ROI I get from these things.  But I digress.

When I’m not on meetings, I’m listening to music.  I log onto the Subsonic server I have running at home and I stream tunes right from the machine in my closet.  While it never really happens, you can bet that if there were a day where I had zero meetings that that’s also be a day where I listened to nearly eight hours of music.  There are no moments, aside from meetings, where I’m not listening to music.  Because music is so ever-present in my working day (heck, in my waking day, for that matter), a good pair of headphones is essential.  I paid $80 for this latest pair.  German jobs; an audiophile rig although I didn’t realize this when I bought them.  They just looked comfortable and I like comfortable.  I don’t want active noise cancelling, but they have to be over-ear (“circumaural,” says the package) and they need to have padding at the top so they don’t dig into my bald head.

I am trying them out right now as I write.  Sharaun is watching American Idol but the room is dead to me.  I’m using Grooveshark to evaluate a bunch of new records which I’ve heard people say are good. They are comfortable and they sound good so I’m happy I bought them.  I’m not happy I spent $80 but I suppose if you amortize that over years I hope to use them before the biodegrade or disintegrate or whatever it’s not bad.

Why even publish this?  Makes the month count look better.  Goodnight.

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home from oregon, that is

Hey happy Tuesday internet.  Or Wednesday.  Whenever this gets posted.

Spent most of the night working on the blog I setup for Keaton to document the RV trip.  I get pretty silly about making it look and feel just so, and tend to spend way yonder too much time tweaking.  I think, however, that I got it just how I want it.  I also spent time mucking with my cellphone and laptop, getting things just right so we’ll be able to use the cellular signal/network to post from the road when there’s not a proper internet hookup available. I like to think that I’ll have energy and desire to update the page as we travel, but I also have doubts.  And again, yes I am obsessed, quite so.

Flying home yesterday we were the Van Winkle family. Each one of us, from the biggest and strongest down to me took advantage of the snap-quick flight from Portland back home to sunny California.  Cohen napped in Sharaun’s arms and Keaton fought it as long as she could, long enough to get her apple juice – you better believe that.  I was out with my paperback in my lap, I never even cracked the cover, and Sharaun with her head on my shoulder.

Three times on planes now I’ve had a front row seat to a guy having a stroke.  It didn’t happen yesterday or anything, but when I fly now it almost always crosses my mind sometime during the flight.  It’s a horrible sight, the muscled rigor and robotic vomiting and bulging full-of-fear prisoner’s eyes, stuck in a body that’s plain-out short-circuited.   I once watched it happen to a gentlemen just behind me and across the aisle, his wife was seated next to him and was first to notice something was amiss.  I turned to look as I heard her calling his name, at first with simple curiosity and later, by the fourth or fifth time unanswered, with panic ’round the edges.  You know that special “thing” you have with your mate, the “thing” where, with just a glance or maybe even conversation over the phone, you can tell something’s not right.  I imagine this wife having that feeling about as intensely as one can as she began to realize her husband was stroking out.

The poor guy was as stiff as a board, muscles standing out in knots like his whole body was a Charley horse.  His fingers were clutched in claws, and I could see his slacks straining against his clenched thighs.  His teeth were clamped shut but his lips were parted just a little in this confused and pained expression.  And his eyes, maybe that’s why the memory is so clear in my head, I can see his eyes.  I remember at the time, as I stole my quick glance at the poor man and his wife, that there were two likliehoods behind what I saw in those eyes.  One, the man’s eyes were the only part of him still “connected” and outputting the right readings.  Two, his brain had shut down and frozen them as they were, stuck.  Either way, they bulged and just looked terrified.  At the time I could almost read them, “Oh dear God what is happening to me?!  I can’t talk; I can’t move; there’s an electrical storm in my head.”  He vomited copiously through clenched teeth.  All this I saw in the span of one or two quick backwards glances; I didn’t want to treat it like entertainment.

Once in the third grade Sarah Bean had an epileptic seizure in class.  I was off to one side of the room and only heard the commotion, not really seeing the action.  I can remember Mrs. Forinash talking to the aide in the room, hollering about, “Hold her tongue!  She’s choking on her tongue!”  At the time I thought choking on your own tongue seemed about the most impossible notion in the world to me.  Everything turned out OK, however, but it’s another one of those indelible things scored into my gray matter.  Sometime shortly after Sarah’s mom came into the classroom and talked about epilepsy and what a seizure is; I remember being fascinated.  Poor Sarah Bean, whose body had turned against her, just like these unlucky fellows whose relays and synapses revolted on them while we shared a flight together.

I honestly have no idea where this all came from.  Something about flying home from Oregon.  So… maybe I meant to say, “We’re home from Oregon.”

And… we are.  Home from Oregon that is.  Goodnight.

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can’t really avoid airplanes

I’ve been taken by this vision, fantasy really, of one imagined morning on our coming RV odyssey.

We’re in Yellowstone and the morning is cool.  Or maybe we’re in the grand canyon and it’s warm and the dust hasn’t yet been kicked up into the morning air.  Come to think of it, it doesn’t matter where we are.  Maybe it’s better in Yellowstone because we’re there so early in the season and we’re posting up at such out of the way campgrounds that there’s a good chance we’ll be the only ones there.  Maybe not, but I see it that way in this daydream.  It’s just us parked in the middle of some sprawling wilderness.  The kind of place where there’s a stream and maybe you see a moose wandering around in the morning mist.  But it’s just us.  Three or four little parking skirts on dirt loops, no hookups no wifi not even vault toilets.  It’s true, we’re staying two nights at places like this.  The ranger I called and spoke to said there’s a good chance we’ll be lonesome out there, since the spots only open that same week we arrive.  Maybe that’s what planted this seed.

Anyway it’s early morning and I’m awake and the family is awake and maybe I’m standing outside the RV smoking my pipe.  The scenery is enveloping and the silence is like when my buddies and I used to wake in the morning while camping – not a modern city sound to be heard.  Birds and condensation dripping and a stream rushing and maybe the rustle of a breeze.  But no engines and no sirens and no airplanes.  Can’t really avoid airplanes these days I suppose, even period-piece movies get shots fouled by airplanes missed in the editing room.  You’ve got Sir Gawain on his steed charging up a pastoral green hillock and real faint way off in the background the contrail of 747 bound for LaGuardia.  The bored passengers have no thought for their unintentional anachronistic cameo.  Some jerk on the internet first noticed it in the theater and then someone screencapped it from the Blu-ray.  So maybe there’s a plane; you can’t get away from them as well as you can everything else, but it doesn’t really matter.

I’m standing outside, the door to the RV is open and the family is knocking around inside.  Their close and I’m glad we’re here together but I’m having what they call a “personal moment.”  Gazing out into God’s country and thinking about how small I am how the stuff I worry most about in the world is some of the most insignificant in the world.  E-mail and human resources; paltry compared to the glacier-cut granite slopes hemming in our private campsite.  I’m out there marveling and puffing my pipe and – listen this is the important part, the part that makes the fantasy, the daydream capstone  – from out of the RV’s front-cab windows pours the Grateful Dead.  Yeah I said no noise but in this case it’s not noise it’s all compliment.

It’s not just any Dead.  It’s the 1976 New Year’s Eve show from the Cow Palace.  It’s one of my personal favorite shows; the band was so hot, 100% on and soaring.  I think it’s an underrated show.  If you haven’t heard it, you should go listen to it.  Sharaun says she finds the Dead repetitive; it’s actually a pretty fair criticism as criticism goes so I can’t really fault her.  But in the morning of this fantasy maybe “Eyes of the World” is blaring and it’s just blending perfect with my morning in the middle of everything and nowhere.  Tobacco always makes me salivate, so I’d be spitting on the very landscape I’d be adoring – maybe that seems contrary but it has some sort of old-country charm in my head.  Anyway, the Dead are just burning with a fever through the cab’s windows and for those ten minutes everything is about as perfect as things get.

It’s me and the family and God and the wildness and the Dead.  Oh man how silly.  But that’s the fantasy, that’s it to a tee.  I see it all the time and I’m the kind of foolish that’ll try and make it happen when that morning comes.  I’ll put on the Dead and light my pipe and stroll around and it’ll be good.  Kind of silly to pre-see it like that, though.  The best mornings will be the ones I haven’t pre-seen.  Those, those’ll be the knockouts.  I sometimes think I have too much time to think about this trip; that I better cool it with all the daydreaming or I’ll ruin the thing for what it can actually deliver. We’ll see.

No proofread; go.  Goodnight.