19 April 2013

A Continental Journey, Day 1

Southwest Airlines Flight 361, somewhere over Iowa:

The frequent traveler is well versed in the many tricks, broad and subtle, that smooth the rough edges of air travel in this era of TSA handsiness.  Slip-on shoes.  Keys in the carry-on.  Toiletry liquids in a clear plastic bag pre-set on the top of the clothing just inside the zipper of the shoulder bag.  Laptop out and ready to go on the conveyer.  No overalls.  Business travelers always regret flying on Fridays and Mondays, when their fellow passengers are not equipped solely with a single small case and an innate sense of where they will sit, but instead are burdened with extra luggage, Macy's bags, unchecked strollers and unrestrained children.   Still, the smart traveler can insulate himself from most of the annoyances, gliding serenely by satisfied in his demonstration of superior traveling acumen.

Even the best laid plans remain are still subject to the whims and vagaries of the airline, however.  Little strikes fear into the heart of the proudly efficient traveler who has built a delicate daisy chain of connecting flights more than to hear the pilot announce, while still parked at the gate, that a gizmo in the cockpit is not working correctly ("oh, that little scamp," the pilot's tone of voice seems to say), and that you will all have to wait "until a new part is installed."  Then comes the heartbreak of the engines powering down.  Out come the mobile phones to bring up the airline's app to search, hoping against hope, for a later connection to make up for what will certainly be a delayed first leg of the trip.   Despair reigns, for of course it only takes one slip up, one small delay, for the entire itinerary to become utterly worthless.

Such was my state of mind this morning.  I spent the week monitoring a massive storm that laid a thick swath of snow across much of the middle of the country, among other effects essentially shutting down Wyoming for business.  Road conditions across the plains and Rockies will be of critical importance in the coming days, but all the projections showed that the weather should not be a factor for the latter, returning portion of my trip.  All I had to do was take a couple of closely-scheduled flights east to get to the launch of my adventure.  I did not count on the possibility that I might not even get to my starting point on time, however.  All this careful planning, undone by some glitchy line of code in a cockpit computer?  No, I've worked too hard to have it all fall to bits now.  Unpossible.

The travel gods took mercy on me.  After a twenty minute wait in which I thought of the terrible ripple effect on my plans that would follow from this single delay, the flight attendants called for the doors to be shut and secured.  The lead attendant stood by the cockpit door, looking like she meant to close it.  The engines began to spin up, and we were away.  Such joy!

Segment one took us over Nevada and Utah into Denver, at times revealing a glimpse of the road on which I will spend the next three days driving the opposite direction.  An interminable taxi in to the gate at Denver followed, but we were right on time.  Even better, considering the scant 40 minute overlap in my flights, my next airplane was directly across the concourse.  I had just enough time before boarding the next flight to check email, return a message to a client and send some emails home.  And throw out a post on Facebook, of course.

The aircraft is now angling downward toward a uniform cloud cover obscuring all of the upper Midwest.  I will soon bid farewell to the sunshine for a while.  Considering the treat that awaits, I don't think I will care much about the weather.

19 April 2013

A Continental Journey, Day 1 (Prologue)

Southwest Airlines Flight 315, somewhere over Nevada:

They say that every journey begins with just one step.  What they don't often mention is how early that first step usually is.  

The alarm roused me into 4 a.m. darkness, forcing me to bid a dreamland auf wiedersehen to either Sigfried or Roy ( I'm not sure which; it was the darker-haired of the two, the one mauled by his tiger).  We, along with a tiger or two, clearly were headed for a memorable quest.  No gathering of flamboyant Vegas showmen or large, dangerous cats could match the adventure awaiting me in the real world, though.   

My day would call to mind the toy cars from the days before microchips became the principle component of children's playthings.  You pull it back, away from its intended target, as the clicking spring gathers tension, anticipating the sudden release of coiled energy when at last you unleash the toy to dart pell-mell clear across the room.   Like the toy car, my pre-dawn alarm presaged a day of traveling east just so I could travel west again.  

A small car darting pell-mell would be involved.

Let's Put On A Show!

The rhythms of life change a little once your kids start high school.  Free time evaporates, and schoolwork is a constant presence.  The daily grind of school becomes an ever present drone that must be endured on a daily basis.

Kelly attends one of the best public high schools in the state, and has done extremely well in the three semesters she has completed so far.  The school prides itself on the sheer number of Advanced Placement classes offered (whether that is a legitimate cause for self-congratulation is debatable), and Kelly is well into her share of advanced courses.  The work is difficult and constant, but her effort and commitment are high and she brings home terrific grades.

There was a time when sports dominated Kelly's calendar much as Michael's.  Kelly loved volleyball and soccer, played them both intelligently and well, and enjoy both sports up through eighth grade.  Upon entering high school, the sporting scene shifted to either the high school teams or expensive and all-consuming club teams.  Without recreation-level teams available, Kelly has had to put aside her athletic career.  We expect that she will find plenty of opportunities to play intramural sports when she gets to college, but organized sports teams are just not in the rotation anymore.

Nevertheless, high school, even for most focused students, should not be entirely about class work.  With sports exiting the picture, Kelly has turned her extracurricular energies toward choirs and musicals.  The school has a well-organized choir program that integrates singers of all abilities in the first year, and distributes them throughout the program over the following three years depending on their experience and abilities.  The choir program also supplies the cast for the spring musical each year.  Kelly had a blast as a member of the ensemble in last year's production of "Guys and Dolls."  This year, she is in the ensemble for "Legally Blonde," a successful Broadway musical based upon the Reese Witherspoon film.

As with almost every extracurricular activity, parents are called upon to contribute their time and skills to support the musical.  Last year, Cheryl worked a concession stand during the performances.  This year, I volunteered (or rather, she volunteered me) to be one of the manly man who builds the sets.  Every weekend since January, shoehorned around baseball tryouts, practices and games, I have put in many hours helping construct sets for the musical.  My primary task was to assist the primary set designer/constructor with the most prominent background, a two-story apartment and curving staircase complex.

I have now spent more time in the cafeteria of Kelly's high school, where the building materials were located and where we did all of the initial construction, than I ever did in my own high school's cafeteria.   

The raw materials

 I had a great time working with a number of the other dads, learning about set construction (which is a bit more elaborate now than it used to be), and, of course, using power tools.  It will be nice to see a little bit of me up on stage.

The nearly finished product

Kelly spends more time at school than she does at home in these days of final rehearsals.  She is starting to see the whole show come together and is very excited for the performances to begin.  I am certain the students will put on a terrific show as always.

Turn The Page

The calendar imposes upon nature an artificial sense of renewal every thirty days or so, and on a much grander scale every 365 days.  By the fortuity of a flip of the calendar page, January is the month when everything starts over, fresh and new.

Poppycock.

January 1^st charms, with its parades and football games.  The day is lit less by its own brilliance, though, than by the leftover glow of Christmas, glad tidings and good will to all family who don’t see each other often enough and thank God for these few days off.  New Year’s Day stands against shadow, because it marks the end of the seemingly interminable holiday season, which sputters to a start with tykes in costumes, picks of steam through the feasts of Thanksgiving and lumbers to its happy crescendo at Christmas.  After a month of office work slowing down, vacation plans consummated, gifts purchased and given and idle time rediscovering the people we believe we really are when not tearing around trying to meet the unstoppable demands of the daily routine, the gleaming newness of New Year’s Day is a mirage.  It is not a day that looks forward to the shine of the year to come, it is a day that reflects all that came before it.

Because January, truth be told, is a miserable month.  February is not worse only because there is simply less of it.  January is dark, cold and wet, and treats December like a houseguest who has overstayed his welcome.  Business that slows over the last six weeks of the preceding year in deference to the holidays snaps to warp speed to pack the work of eight weeks into four.  Many students must endure finals in January, after spending the Christmas break trying to ignore the building dread that they really should be studying during all that time off.   Christmas seems nearer in June than on January 3^rd.   

So the weather has generally been sunny for the early part of this year, Michael has made us all proud by earning a spot on the travel baseball team and proving by his play that he belongs there, and Kelly survived finals to turn in excellent grades in a full load of terribly demanding classes.  That’s about the best that can be said for the month this year.   I am only now (literally, today) finally digging out from under what has been the most burdensome, stressful eight week period of work in my career.  And when the month starts like this, it is not destined to go down in history as one of my top-ten favorites:

Unscheduled airbag test -- yep, they work

And yet, while I have no desire to live these last couple of months over again, I can’t help but be content with all we do have, even in this deepest of winters:  our health, our family, our faith, our jobs, and our friends. 

Still, March is just hours away.

Called Up To The Show

January means baseball, right?  Our youth league begins its practices in February in preparation for the March-to-June season, so the evaluation day to give the coaches a look at the players they will pick for their teams always happens in mid-January.  This year, the evaluations were last weekend, under clear blue but very cold skies.

The evaluation for Michael was a little different than in years past.  The division Michael has moved into is no longer limited to teams playing other teams from within our league.  Three teams will compete against each other and teams from the two immediately adjacent towns.  Two additional teams, divided by age, will compete as travel teams against leagues from a broader local area.  The players trying out for those teams had to attend two days of evaluations rather than one.  They also knew that the rosters for those teams were largely set before the evaluations even started, based on the All-Star teams from last summer.  For 11U new team, it was widely known that one of the star players had decided to play in a different league this season, freeing up one roster spot for the team.  Every other player was planning to come back.  The 10 or so kids trying out who had not already played on the All-Star team last year were essentially competing for a single spot on the team.

Michael was apprehensive going into the evaluations, as he usually is.  He had a good first day, though, simply playing the way he knows how to play.  His pitching, in particular, caught the attention of a lot of the dads and coaches.  A number of them came up to me to say that they noticed how well Michael was playing.  Some of the boys who clearly would be on the team told Michael the same thing, offering their opinion that he had taken the available spot on the team.

After the first evaluation session, Michael was flying high.  He knew he had done well and was rightfully proud of himself.  He returned to the field in the afternoon with me to help administer the rest of the evaluations; I could hardly keep him off the field.  Michael's coach from fall ball made a point of telling me that he had spoken with the 11U coach about Michael, and that in his opinion.  Michael was a lock to make the team.   

It was only after the good first evaluation that Michael allowed himself to want to make the team.  I assured him he had done well, but that was always on the bubble.  I told him that even if he didn't make the travel team, he would have a great time on the house league teams, one of which would be coached by his fall ball coach.  He was fine with that, but knowing that he stood a good chance of making the top squad made him want it more.  After second day of evaluations which consisted mostly of hitting, Michael was nervous that he had not hit with enough power to wow the coaches.  What he didn't see was that a lot of the power hitters performed very poorly against the soft-toss pitching at the evaluation, while he always made solid contact.  All he could think about was the roster announcement Wednesday evening.

Wednesday evening, the call came.  Among eleven familiar names, his was the new one for the 11U team.  After three years of playing in this league, Michael has clawed his way to the top.  This is a very nice validation of all the extra work he has put in to improve.  He is a fun-loving kid, but there are not many out there who listen to coaches better or train as seriously as he does.  He could not be more happy, and we could not be more proud. 

It's official

Now, of course, the hard work starts.  He will get a uniform with his name on the back, but he will also be expected to play at a very high level.  It seems daunting, but I believe he's up for the challenge.  As I constantly tell him, if he simply plays the way he knows how to play, he will give the team what it needs.  Plus, with expert coaching and excellent teammates, he should make rapid progress in his own development.  I suspect games will be a bit more tense than they used to be, as the play transitions from purely recreational to largely competitive.  However, all these boys feed off of competition, no matter how nervous it may make them.  Whether I will survive the season is a different story entirely.  Thankfully, all I will have to do is go to games and take pictures.

Best of all, Michael's peers made it known at the evaluation how glad they were that it looked like he would make the team.  He drew more satisfaction from that than anything else.  We all yearn for a place to belong, and that place is almost always defined by who occupies that space with us.  Sports may be in many respects a world of artificial urgency and ad hoc camaraderie, but the bonds between peers are real.  Right now, before any strikeouts or errors, hits or wins, the joy of making the team matters most of all.

An Unusual Weekend Getaway: The U.S. Grand Prix

It escaped the attention of most American sports fans and nearly all other Americans, but Formula One returned to the United States in November.  Not only that, the F1 circus came to a brand-new, purpose-built track constructed for that very purpose just outside of Austin, Texas, something unprecedented in American sporting history.  In the motorsports world, this was a Big Deal.  Amazingly, I was able to be a part of the race weekend.

My friend Kevin was not only my baseball co-coach and Kelly's last soccer coach, he is also an auto enthusiast of the first order.  We first connected in a way that went beyond youth sports at one of Kelly's soccer games when he drove his race-prep Audi to game.  I noticed the track number decals on the car, struck up a conversation about it, and a friendship borne of a shared, unusual hobby began.

With the US Grand Prix scheduled for November, tickets for the event went on sale in April (when the track was still very much under construction).  Kevin alerted me to it and proposed that we both go to the race.  It was a no- brainer for me, pending approval from Cheryl.  She graciously gave me a hall pass for the weekend, recognizing how excited I was, even though, even after more than 20 years of being around me, does not understand the appeal of auto racing.  With that, we booked hotel rooms in San Antonio (Austin hotel rooms were scarce and pricey, and San Antonio was only an hour away), booked the flight with frequent flyer benefits, arranged for a rental car, and then sat back and waited for six months.  

I'm really going!

When the weekend finally arrived, we flew directly to Austin and stayed Thursday night with one of Kevin's colleagues and his wife, a sociology professor at the University of Texas.  Kevin obtained his masters degree at UT, so he and his friends had a lot in common to talk about and fun little haunts to show me around town.  We had a great evening in their home, and did our best to explain what the whole Formula One thing was all about.  The people of Austin have lived with the battles -- political, financial and otherwise -- to get the track built in their community, and the day of reckoning had finally arrived, bearing with it a sport and personalities about which the locals knew almost nothing.

After a very fun evening, we headed to the track Friday morning.  The track was built out of scrubby ranchland a few miles east of Austin.  The biggest fear for all who would be attending was access, as there are only two or three small rural roads that went to the venue.  The organizers arranged for hundreds of buses to run between the track and the city, which did an admirable job of alleviating traffic congestion over the course of the weekend.  We opted for a parking pass, and had no trouble getting to our assigned parking lot.

It had been years since I had been to a professional auto race, and I was as giddy as a five-year-old pulling into the parking lot at Disneyland.  We arrived just as the first Friday morning practice session for the Formula One cars was coming to an end.  Grinning like an idiot, I rolled my window down as we parked just to hear the scream of the race cars' engines.  Those engines, incidentally, are mind-bogglingly loud.  Ear protection makes the whole thing easily tolerable, but being around those cars driven in anger with my ear buds out made me very glad I had them.

We spent the entire day at the track, exploring nearly all of the grounds for the best vantage points.  All the while, the track was filled either with Formula One cars, or cars from the supporting races, including the Ferrari 458 Challenge series, a Porsche Cup series, and vintage (1965-1983) Formula 1 cars.  After the last practice session in the afternoon, we drove to our hotel in San Antonio using the brand-new 85 mph toll road, which took us about halfway to San Antonio.  The road was a marvel: gentle curves through low rolling hills, no billboards, the strip malls, and no traffic.  Oh, and an 85 mph speed limit.

 

In San Antonio, we stayed along the Riverwalk.  That may be a cliché, but it was fun to be among tons of other race fans.  The tire manufacturer Pirelli posted an enormous contingent of their personnel in our hotel, and many other fans were in evidence, sporting various automotive and racing-affiliated gear.  We fielded questions from several people who were trying to figure out what all the fuss was about.

Saturday morning the hightailed it back to the track to spend the day watching more practice sessions and the qualifying session for the races.  The race was next to last on the calendar for the season, and the battle for the driver’s championship was close but could be determined at Austin, so there was a lot of intensity surrounding the Formula One qualifying session.  Surprisingly, even though the live experience at an auto race is much different than the televised experience, in that there is no commentary and it is difficult to know what is going on out the far reaches of the track, the many video boards and rentable real-time telemetry gadgets did a good job of keeping us informed of each new development as the best drivers topped each other to reach pole position.

After another full day (and a pretty pronounced facial sunburn), we stayed in Austin for dinner and to explore the fan events that took over downtown Austin.  We also had a chance to walk around the legendary Sixth Street, where live music tumbled out of nearly every doorway.

Race day dawned just as every other day had: comfortably warm with not a cloud in the sky.  Attendance at the track increased each day, and peaked on Sunday at about 117,000 spectators.  We encountered some traffic entering the track, and there were many more people that found our chosen seating area on a large slope overlooking turns 19 in 20, but overall the crowds were not a problem.  

The race itself was tense and dramatic, as the championship leader was unable to hold off a strong challenge from a rival, guaranteeing that the championship would not be resolved until the next race.  All told, the racing all weekend was excellent; the venue, while barely finished, was terrific for the drivers and spectators alike, and even the feared traffic hassles failed to materialize in any significant way.

Although the event was the United States Grand Prix, held at the Circuit of the Americus, it might as well have been the Grand Prix of Texas.  Half of the food concessions were Texas barbecue, the national anthem was sung with the twangiest of country twangs, and instead of traditional baseball caps emblazoned with the sponsor's logo, the podium finishers received massive cowboy hats … emblazoned with the sponsor's logo.  The drivers and teams, by all accounts, had a great time, enjoyed the region and the festivities, and loved the new track.  It all bodes well for the future, although it remains to be seen whether races over the next coming years will draw as well as this year's did.  I expect many people were like me, looking to fulfill a long-time dream of attending a Formula One race.  Having done so, I and many people like me will probably not go back every year.  It would be a shame if attendance declined, because the event is well run, the track is a great venue and the overall experience is that of a top-notch sporting event.

For those who like this sort of thing, the opportunity to see vintage old racers like these take the track at speed was an unexpected and welcome pleasure:

 Of course, we were all there to see these guys:

These short clips do not begin to convey the noise these things put out, nor does it transmit the excitement that comes from experiencing these beasts rip into view and hammer away into the distance, but it is at least a sample of some of what we saw:

Historic Racers:

 The Race:

Boring?  Not a chance. Anyone who has been enthusiastic about anything knows that the enjoyment comes from knowing and understanding the details.  By the end of the weekend, we could identify several teams just by the sound their cars made (and, knowing those teams, where they probably were in the running order).   It was a spectacularly fun weekend for me, partly because I enjoy this sport, and partly because it was the first “boys’ weekend out” I’d had in about a dozen years.  Other than trashing my phone the morning we were to leave (there’s another story), it was an absolutely perfect trip.