TRAVELS WITH DUSTY-Day 1-San Diego to Tucson, AZ

Sunday January 10, 2010 was the first day our road trip from San Diego, California to Bethel, Maine for Dusty (my 10 year old cat) and me. After packing the last of our belongings in the 26 foot Penske Truck from our apartment yesterday we spent our last night at the Villas of Renaissance in UTC in a furnished corporate rental. The Villas is a very nice apartment complex where we lived for more than three years when we first came out to San Diego. Lauren and I soaked our aching muscles in the big Hot Tub while Eva came over to visit and say good bye. It was an appropriate San Diego send off; a Hot Tub and a bottle of Long Board Red Wine. Before leaving I gave Eva my San Diego tool box with a good assortment of Craftsman screwdrivers, a couple of pliers, hammer, tape measure and a cordless Black and Decker Portable Drill.
Lauren said good-bye to me and Dusty Sunday morning after breakfast and we were off. The big question was how Dusty would do because she usually pees, poops, and sometimes throws up within the first 3 miles of any car trip she has ever taken. Well I’m pleased to report she made it about 8 miles before she peed and pooped. So I pulled over and changed the liner in her pet carrier and rolled down the truck window. She meowed pretty constantly for about one hour and then once she realized she wasn’t going to the veterinarian (her worst nightmare) she actually stopped and started to relax.

It was just about noon when I saw the IN-N-OUT sign from Interstate 8. I was hungry and I thought who knows when the next time I’ll be able to eat an IN-N-OUT Burger will be? After eating my cheeseburger, fries, and chocolate shake in the cab of the truck I tried to see if Dusty was thirsty. Instead of drinking she just wanted to get out of her cage. So I let her check out the cab and she immediately went under the seat beneath me and stayed there for the rest of trip which was about 5 more hours. During the trip we had to stop at two US Border Patrol checkpoints where the questions were basically the same: Are you a US Citizen? Yes. What do you have in the truck? My personal belongings. Are you moving? Yes, to Maine. Thank you. Have a good day Sir. The second agent asked me one more question though that had me thinking. Are you a Border Patrol Agent? No I said and started driving away. Now why would he ask me that I asked myself and about 30 minutes later it dawned on me? Maine. Maine has an international border. Ironically I sold my car earlier this week to the wife of a Border Patrol Agent. When I told her we were moving to Maine she said “we almost moved there because of my husband’s job.”
Dusty and I drove into Tucson about 7:00 pm that night and checked into the Motel 6 because I had already looked it up and knew they were “pet-friendly”. I had some Chicken Pad Thai at the Miss Saigon Bar & Grill next door and then hit the hay. America is an interesting place.

A Picture is worth a Thousand Snowflakes

As I enter what will be my last week living in San Diego I look at the picture to the left and wonder what other people think of our decision to move to Bethel – now? So help me out. Do you think that we’re?
a) Crazy
b) Snow lovers
c) Sun sensitive
d) Adventurers
e) Other
Your answers will be collected and given to our therapist who will then recommend the appropriate treatment. I wish all you crazy adventurer’s out there a Happy New Year!

A TRIBUTE TO DAUGHTERS

I have a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving weekend but one of the things that I’m most thankful for is my daughters.

Amber and Eva, they are beautiful in so many ways. What I’m thankful for is that at ages 26 and 22 they are both taking control of living their lives as they want to live them. Amber and Eva are very different even though they have the same parents and grew up in the same neighborhood. During those first few years of life Amber was the loud one and Eva was the quiet one but then it flip-flopped and Amber became the quiet one while Eva roared to life.

Amber was academic, organized, and diligently doing her homework saw mostly A’s on her report card. Her bedroom was a showpiece of neatness and order. Eva was social and it seemed to me that maybe she thought the purpose of school was to meet and talk with your friends. Her homework usually got lost under some mound of clothes on her bed or the floor.

As time went on the differences became clearer and I realized they were being true to themselves. Nowadays Amber will drive an hour to hear a poetry reading while Eva will travel to a local pub to belt out a song on Karaoke. Amber reads Edith Wharton while Eva listens to Lady GaGa.

Impossible as it is for me to be unbiased, let me say that Amber is a wonderful writer and poet. I hope she continues to write more. Amber who is very careful in her decision making process decided she wanted to move back to New England last May. So both her and her boyfriend Tommie quit their jobs in San Diego with no prospect of a job in their pockets and put themselves where they wanted to be. Amber has already said no to jobs that don’t match her desires. She’s picking, choosing and trying out things that interest her. Right now she’s working at a place where she meets with different artists every day. I know if these jobs don’t remain interesting and fun she’ll move on. I love that she’s making those scary and unknown choices and testing the world to see what’s best. I know she will find a very comfortable balance in her life.

Eva is a wonderful teacher and karaoke singer. For years she’s been known in the family as a kid magnet…they gravitate to her. Now she has her own preschool class of 3 to 5 year olds that she handles 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year. She does projects with the kids, she nurtures them, she loves them and they love her. Eva says she’s never going to leave San Diego. She loves the glitter, the glam, and the pop culture. She loves her gay neighborhood of Hillcrest with all it has to offer. She has good friends and good times. I’m thankful that she’s independent and in a good place in her life.

So there sisters….this blog’s for you. Keep following your dreams and desires.

Love,
Dad

Front Doors and Porches of North and South Park

Current construction fashion in California and many other parts of the nation favor “gated communities” and “restrictive covenants” which tell you as the homeowner just what color and tone of that color you may paint your front door. Now I understand why some rules may be desirable, after all not everyone wants a double wide mobile home with cars jacked up on the front lawn in various states of repair placed next to their architectural crafted home. However, if we all agree to live in Vanilla homes with Vanilla doors it begins to look very boring and I would submit we begin to turn to Vanilla-mush, the perfect Stepford neighbors. The Craftsman Bungalows of North and South Park in San Diego were built during a time where the quality of construction was more important than the efficiency and cost of that construction and where getting to know your neighbor was an important function of the community. These homes were built on a human scale, where although small were big enough to raise a family, were close enough where to could yell over to your neighbor to borrow that cup of sugar and had porches to sit on the rocking chair in the early evening and chat with your neighbors as they took their walk past your doorway. Consider the new designs of today where the drive in garage is the predominant attribute and once in the owner closes the door behind them as they enter the house from inside never to see their neighbor perhaps for months and years. I love the inviting feel of the doors and front porches on these Craftsman homes in North and South Park and before I move away someday I want to be sure I have some photos to remind me of their pleasing architecture. The following homes were some of my favorites located on 28th Street and Pershing Avenue between Upas Street and University Avenue.

The View from my Office Cubicle

The photo to the left is the view I see from my office cubicle. Not bad, eh? Many people who see me at work have said “You have a great job”. It has made me stop to think, yeah…not bad. The fact is I don’t have an office cubicle. I currently work on two different boats most of my week on Mission Bay in San Diego, California. Families will spend their summer vacation here. I met one man who has spent every summer vacation here since 1962. Corporations will hold business retreats here. The point is people spend good money to be here, the same place where someone pays me to do my job. I purposely put myself here last July and it worked. I’m in search for something even better but like most directions in my life I can’t “see” too far ahead, yet I’m confident that if I travel long “enough” even if the direction is not clear, exciting and rewarding things will happen. In the meantime I’m consciously taking in all the moments I can each day working on the boats, talking to the people, enjoying my cubicle view.

The Signs of San Diego

Let’s face it there are way too many signs in the world. Some are useful because they tell you which direction you should go, others are just pollution trying to sell you something like legal services or warning you of some obvious or not so obvious danger. There are some signs however that are cool works of art, beautiful indicators that you have arrived at a particular destination. San Diego has a number of neighborhood signs that fit this description, mostly in the older neighborhoods closest to the downtown area. Signs such as NORTH PARK, HILLCREST, UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS, LITTLE ITALY, NORMAL HEIGHTS and of course THE GASLAMP DISTRICT. When you see one of these signs in person you have no doubt where you are and have a chance to admire a beautiful piece of art. Each of these signs have their own character and design and to appreciate them in full you should see them during the day and during the night when the neon gas is brightly lit within the tubing spelling out the neighborhood in their appropriate colors. It’s hard to explain the feeling you get by being near one of these signs but if you can imagine how it would look and feel without the sign; starker, empty, less warm then I think you can appreciate that the sign is there, for you. Thanks to the artists, sign makers, and visionaries who knew to do better than much of what we see today for signs.

Opposites

We live in a world of opposites. We all experience this take on life now and then. Maybe even daily especially if you're use to watching or listening to politics. You've got the Right and the Left, the Conservatives and the Liberals, the Republicans and the Democrats all saying pretty much the opposite of each other with each group feeling, knowing, that they are right and aggravated with the opposite viewpoint because they are soooo wrong.

How does this happen? Brainwashing by ones parents? Brainwashing by the dominant environment you live in? A gene that makes us believe one thing or the other? I don't know. What I do know is that for me it's easier just to accept this difference and then focus on what we have in common. Every Democrat and Republican loves their sons and daughters and they want the best for them.

Having moved to San Diego 4 and 1/2 years ago has been a living reminder of the physical and social differences between here and New England. For example I'll be putting on SPF 45 sunscreen later today before I go to work outside in the my short sleeve shirt while all my family and friends back east dress in multiple layers of thermal and down clothing protecting themselves from frostbite. It's 66 degrees and sunny in San Diego while back in Bethel, Maine it's 15 degrees and snowing hard. Just to rub it in tomorrow will be 75 degrees. This time of year these differences are really pronounced. I remember recently listening to the local San Diego news anchor complain because she was freezing at 50 degrees. That was the same day I spoke to my mom who lives in Lubec, Maine and was appreciating the day because it had warmed up to 38 degrees. They were both serious.

Here in San Diego people make a big deal about drizzle and rain. I can see why. It's because it never ever seems to rain here. Well it does rain, sort of, sometimes. San Diego only gets a total annual average of 10 inches of rain. Some years they don't receive that much. Here they measure rain in hundredths of an inch. The other night the weather person said it rained .09 hundredths of an inch. That means it would have to rain more then 10 times that amount just to reach an inch of rain. We call that drizzle back in New England and it's pretty much a non event.

But odd things happen in San Diego when it rains. You can bet on multiple car accidents and fender benders. I've heard reports of up to an accident every 2 minutes during some of these times. San Diegans definitively don't know how to drive in rain. Coming down a ramp towards a stop light at 60 miles per hour in the rain will be different. "Hey dude, whys my car not stopping? Oh crap...I hit the car in front of me. Stupid rain." Then other things can happen, like houses collapse into the ground or go sliding down a hill in a mudslide.

So what's the point of my story? Well I think in order to really appreciate a sunny day you need more rainy days. On the other hand when I have so many sunny days here I really appreciate a rainy day as long as I don't have any one driving too closely behind me.