I’m not sure where on the internet I travelled in the mid-nineties, but I know the vehicle was my first laptop.The costly box was a dark-grey hunk of plastic that was effectively a generic Dell or Gateway, but I can’t remember it’s actual “brand”. It weighed seven pounds, and despite being roughly the same length and width as the computer being used to write this, it was two inches thick. It was ostensibly for “school” but other than the occasional biology lab report, I can’t imagine what educational use it was through when the internet had to squeeze through a 33K (not big) hole on the left side of my laptop.

There was an unsatisfying absence of a “click” when I plugged in the modem card. It was the height of internet communication technology of the 1990’s, folded into a thick credit card that gave me access around the world, and had cost me a considerable chunk of my student loan money. It seated into its slot with more of a flaccid “splupsh” feeling, which would be followed by the screechy bird of analog phone connection, and then all the poorly formatted text the world had to offer. 

Technically it was portable, but my laptop memories take place at the MDF and brown metal desk, which I had moved into the trailer that Chinquapin installed in the parking lot between the 7th & 8th grade dorms. My only job there, in exchange for room and board, was to be twice the age of the students. I could sit at the desk near the door, available if the kids needed supervising, and play video games instead of studying. I fought the Battle of Gettysburg instead of counting fruit flies. I colonized Alpha Centauri, when I should have been memorizing kingdom and phylum. In retrospect, I guess I was studying Sid Meier games. I can’t honestly say the time was wasted, because I’ve used my knowledge of the Civil War exactly as many times as I have drawn a Punnett square in my medical career. 
As with all computers, toy cowboys and velveteen rabbits, the day came when I no longer loved my laptop, and it was replaced with another, “better” computer, which I can not remember at all. The best, most meaningful, longest lasting thing that that laptop gave me was the ability to play Age of Empires. I understand how vapid that sounds, but showing off a cool new videogame on my fancy laptop was the first real bonding experience I had with the new guy on campus: Jarrett Kupcinski. Watching over the shoulder while someone forages for  digital berries is not the foundation of a life-altering twenty-plus year friendship, I know. I agree. To build a friendship like ours, you have to play it’s sequel, Age of Kings, which will get it’s own post.

Michele and my preferred anniversary weekend getaway involves a good hike/bike followed by a nice high-calorie meal. Canyon of the Eagles is a vacation resort/campground about ninety minutes outside of Austin, TX that Michele and I have been to a couple times. It’s probably someone’s old ranch land that got converted into an eco-nature-retreat-center, but that’s not what this story is about. It’s got good camping, and cabins simple enough to be cosy, but with AC and heat and good showers. For the record, the restaurant there served me the SECOND largest piece of carrot cake of my life, the biggest being Gibson’s Steak House in Chicago. 

The first time we went there for an anniversary we brought our bikes, with the intention of riding back out the “canyon” for a long ride, and the previous night we’d loved the twists and inclines of the road as we drove in. That morning we carbed and geared up for the ride and promptly pedaled into a long, sustained grade of hill that we were NOT going to overcome. Looking at the map today, I can not see what section it was that did us in, but on a bike, years ago, it seemed like a monster.  I remember knowing that even if we made it all the way up the biggest hill, the rest of the ride was going to be a punishing uphill climb out to any semblance of civilization. We pedaled our poor bikes uphill at walking pace for a while, and even push-walked them a bit before giving up and turning around in frustration.

As our anger-adrenaline levels cooled, on the very pleasant downhill coast back into the resort, we agreed that it was too nice a morning to give up completely, so we loaded our bikes back onto the rack on the back of her beloved (and now very recently traded) Ford Fiesta, and drove into Burnett, the nearest town. We had a lovely ride around town and  into the surrounding, much more cycle-friendly, hills. There was a period of light rain, that we were able to experience as a cooling mist on a sunny day, rather than a road slicking nightmare that it would have felt like had we been struggling up and down our original route. It ended, as all my favorite rides do, at a kolache (Czech-German pig in a blanket) shop. 

We have not yet made it back to Canyon of the Eagles with our bikes, but mostly because of the many other wonderful bike-a-versary locations we’ve explored over the years. This year we will stay-ca-a-versary, for obvious reasons, but I’d like to try that hill again. We are due for a trip back, and I’m in the mood for carrot cake.

When I started PA school in the summer of 1998, I got A’s all the classes that summer term. I distinctly remember telling Michele “I didn’t go to PA school to get C’s”. I don’t remember if it was the very next Fall semester, or I made it to Spring term when I told her “Huh, I guess I did go to PA school to get C’s”, before I started playing golf during the really boring class. I respect the work and the results of my most motivated version of myself, but some days he doesn’t show up. During PA school, on the hard days, I went downstairs some days and got myself a Snickers bar and Diet Coke. Today is that kind of day. So I’m going to go get myself a hot-fudge Sundae, and leave you with this image of me at my most half-assed: 

One day while teaching at Chinquapin, either Janet Johnson or I discovered a dead dog on the side of Wade Rd while driving home to the school. We both took our science classes out on a “field trip” to see it to waste a period of instruction. Hers at least was a Biology class. I had no excuse. That thing inflated like a balloon, though. It was really cool.

The first time I looked at Jupiter through a telescope was on a wintery night in the Adirondacks. Anticipating the (ultimately disappointing) return of Halley’s Comet, my grandfather had purchased a refracting telescope, or perhaps been given one for 

Christmas. The arm-long black and white tube was set up on the edge of the driveway of his house in Westport, NY, which gave pretty good night-sky. The pin-head sized white circle had three or four white pin-points aligned with its equator. The Galilean moons aren’t as visually arresting as they are conceptually bright. First seen more than four-hundred years ago, they helped convince Galileo that the earth was not the center of the universe. It had similar effects upon the psyche of my teenage self. 

Galileo’s initial telescope gave such a fuzzy image of Saturn that he recorded that the planet looked like it had “ears” instead of rings, a description for which I have always had a bit of a solipsistic soft spot. More than thirty years after viewing Jupiter, I got my first glimpse of Saturn through a telescope, at the  McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis, TX, which gives amazing night-sky. The astronomy grad students manned the scopes for the guests and watched the cloud cover roll in. The view through the more expensive glass and thinner air let me see the rings as sharp ovals surrounding the dime-sized white circle. I could convince myself of seeing some variation in greys on the planet, but only because we all have such glorious pictures in our heads from Hubble and the fly-by satellites. 

Any photographer or astronomer can tell you, the view through a lens is a funny trade off. Gains in magnification are losses in field of view. The closer you concentrate upon a subject, the less you can see its surroundings. You lose the context. 

To focus on the pinpricks of Jupiter’s moons you must take your eyes from the uncles and cousins orbiting Gramps and the telescope, and the lights of the warm living room. And that face of earless Saturn, the old god who ate his children, pales in comparison with the wondrous smile of my wife as she looks up from the lens, having seen him. It is a cool night on an anniversary vacation, and we will drive home illuminated by the moon and the light from stars far more ancient than Galieo’s drawings, or Homer’s myths, or humanity’s memory.

Summer of 1991 I lived on my brother’s couch in Hawaii. He was stationed there with the Marines, and I leeched off of him for an amazing tropical summer. One week I flew to Maui for an incredible solo bike tour on the cheap. Each day was its own magnificent adventure, but right now I want to share snapshots from the nights.

Night 1: Because the sunrise atop Haleakala is sublime as the road to its peak is steep, I rent a car, with a trunk big enough to fit a fully assembled bicycle inside. The backseat is big enough to sleep in, so I spend my first night in the parking lot of the Food Land grocery store in Pukalani. About 3 am, a police officer knocks on the window to tell me to move along. It’s time to head up to the park anyway, so I drive off to catch the sunrise before hiking into the crater for a few hours before returning my luxury bedroom to Hertz.

Night 2: Somewhere at the south end of the growing condo stretches of Wailea, I find a completed construction slab, which is a nice place to eat, but too hard and visible for sleeping. Further out in the waist high grass, I find a six foot wide trampled circle, which is perfect for sleeping. I stretch out as the stars ignite above me. About 3 am, a group of wild pigs snorts and tussles out there in the grass, complaining that I am in their bed. I eat my breakfast on the condo-crete floor before heading further south to a lava field where the word “road” gets a serious redefinition.

Night 3: After an exhausting day of black lava rock, carrying my bike, and the glorious sensation of fresh pineapple stinging my dehydration cracked lips, I use my cell phone to check in with Jim, and watch the sun set just outside Maui Wine. When it gets dark enough, I cross the road, toss my bike over the wire fence, and curl up in a drainage ditch by the roadside. About 3 am, a group of cows comes by to investigate this strange object by the tree. Their wet noses are the scariest thing that will happen to me the entire trip. 

Night 4: After the Most GLORIOUS downhill ride of my life, where I spend all the potential energy I had stored up the previous day, I coast all the way through Kahului without seeming to peddle and keep going to Iao Needle State Park. By sneaking off the trail at closing time, I have the entire place to myself. I find a huge bush to hide myself and my bicycle under as the sky slowly fades through purple to black. About 3 am, every mosquito on Maui comes to investigate the rumor that a single warm human has stayed after sunset. 

Later that morning, I become some airline passenger’s smelly tale titled “The world’s worst seatmate.”

I am thinking about geometry class. Geometry was the most comfortable part of tenth grade. It was about rules and building up order from a handful of self-evident truths. Even more than most math, geometry and I got each other. The curvy lines in my brain straightened out every day for forty-five minutes, while my talents of logic and focus were rewarded. I’m pretty sure that’s the year I got a 100 percent on the Math Regents exam. Although it might have been the 99, and I pined over the single lost point for a summer in the way only a kid without a girlfriend could. 

In general, I liked taking math tests. Clearly that’s because math was something I was good at from the beginning, which meant I was successful at them, and praised for. The feedback loop is potent. It took another five years until I met a math subject that pushed me into the choice of work harder or fail/quit. I can admit to some regret at not working harder. My math books are the last vestige of those college books you hold onto in case you want to crack them open again someday. I think I’m still fantasizing about math in the way only a man who’s lost a love could. 

I’m pretty sure we used those light blue square composition “notebooks“ that only had a dozen or so pages, when we took our Geometry Regents. I can’t remember if we used them for other tests, but I can feel the sensation of flipping from one page to another with a pencil in my hand to start another geometry proof. I can see a circle and a tangent line on a page. My drawn circles never approached the beauty of the one on the paper, or the one my mind tried to make my hand produce. I could copy Euclid’s logic, but not his drawings, no matter how much I practiced. We could get these little quarter-sheet booklets of old regent’s exams for extra training, I think. They could fit in a pocket. Maybe they had a green cover. Did we have to buy those, or were they provided by our chalky little math teacher?

Later on in math, you learn that modern mathematicians “discovered” that every one of Euclid’s self-evident rules could be broken. Every “proof”, everything I learned, only remains true under a very limited set of circumstances.

Happy Birthday to my dear and lovely sister-in-law!

Jim and Denise met In a bar or a beach in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, as per the law of beautiful people, but he introduced me to her after he’d moved to Washington. She’d drive up for weekends from her Air Force posting in Norfolk Virginia, between her ICU nursing shifts. I don’t think I can describe what a perfect couple they were (and still are). I don’t just mean in the wonderful, permanent, eternal loving partnership meaning of perfect. That was inspiring then and still. I mean in the Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie so beautiful the rest of us needn’t bother, meaning of perfect. She, like Jim, was fit and active and gorgeous, confident and successful. It was intimidating as hell. She still has the best abs in the family. 

One night Jenn Goetz and I went out to dinner with Jim and Denise to one of their favorites: the wonderful Fascia Luna pizzeria. Denise drove. As Jen and I unfolded from the back of Denise’s red BMW convertible, we watched tiny Denise in her high heels cross the street beside starched, rail-straight Jim, and we looked at each other. One of us mumbled to the other, “Here we go. Barbie, Ken and their mutant siblings.” The wine at the restaurant was not ruined by my sour grapes. 

One of my favorite sounds in the world is of Denise laughing. Specifically, it’s of Denise laughing at my dad. If you don’t already know this, you’ll be unsurprised to learn that my family is the kind of family that plays Pictionary, Trivial Pursuit, or other party games when we get together for holidays. Any game like Balderdash or Scattergories, or even a tight game of Boggle, brings out the snake-oil salesman in almost every member of my family. 

My father is a wonderful mix of good and bad at this. He’s quite skilled at coming up with things that might be plausible, but he has no poker face. He inevitably breaks up midway through, and for some reason that just lights a fuse for Denise’s laughter. I have watched my father descend into giggles as he attempts to convince a room full of people that Legos are a type of vegetable or that a hippopotamus could win a gymnastics competition. You have not lived until you have watched Denise cackle-gasp at some piece of bullshit my father can not sell without cracking.

Commonly at the clinic, a boy, seven to ten years old, will head down the hall into the bathroom, do his business for 10-20 seconds, open the door and head back down to mom, who will ask, “Did you wash your hands?” The answer is usually “Yes” despite the fact that everyone involved knows that there is no way on earth that kid’s stone-dry hands got washed in the amount of time he was in the bathroom.

I don’t know exactly how old I was when my mother left me in charge of my own hygiene. It was about the age of those pee-handed boys, and like them, I was not worthy of her trust. I’m sure for a while I was, and followed the rules like a good boy being given responsibility, but that’s not what I remember. What I remember is a period of time, probably when I was nine or ten, when I would go through an increasingly elaborate facade of taking a bath, all to avoid taking a bath. LIke all kids, I was convinced that my ruse was working, and I am guessing that I fooled no-one. Obviously the stakes were low enough that allowing me to “have my way” was fine. 

The wild thing is that by the end, I would get undressed and sit at the far edge of the tub while the shower ran.  I would estimate the five or so minutes it would take by pantomiming the actions, then rub a trace amount of water onto my skin and towel after turning the water off, so all the evidence would align if checked. I have no recollection if I made sure to wet the soap as well, which might have been a failure point in the scheme. 

A “famous” medical study from 2001 showed that at least some of my idiocy is chromosomal. It showed that male medical personnel washed their hands less often than women did. I sure hope that pattern has changed since publication, especially now, but I doubt it. A study published in May showed that men were much less likely to wear a mask, because they perceived mask-wearing as “shameful, uncool, and a sign of weakness.” You just know that some of those dudes are pretending to bathe by standing outside a running shower reading their phones every night.

I’ve got a quilt made of t-shirts from runs I’ve competed in. Each square of fabric, each logo, represents weeks or months of training. Time, sweat, money, all culminate in a parking lot some Saturday morning, and then a shirt-scrap of memory. Some retain meaning better than others.  The Gruene 10k is a run through a nice riverside community not far from where I live. In the early fall they host a popular race that is now too crowded, but I used to love it. 

The most distinguishing feature of the Gruene (pronounced “green” around here) 10k (pronounced “ten-kay”) is the one big hill. Now, to non-Texans, I have no way of defending it as either “big” or “hill”. It’s a pretty steep grade though, and most people couldn’t ride a bike up it. Around here that’s a mountain.

For quite a few years they set the race up so the hill came at the end of the course. I respect the diabolical bastard who made that choice. The knowledge of the big challenge waiting for you at your most fatigued is brutal. It impacts how hard you push yourself during the entire race; to keep a reserve for the end. After about the first ten percent of finishers, most people walked at least part of it, then had to decide how motivated they were to run the last hundred yards to the finish. The race planners switched the course so the hill came at the midpoint of the race loop not long ago.  This layout also has a certain vicious “I can’t believe I paid you bastards money to do this to me” charm.  Now if I’m a serious racer, I have to decide how much I am willing to push up the hill, and how crappy that  will feel for the second half of my race. Novice runners had to decide if they really wanted to continue out and back to finish the whole 6 miles, or maybe they could just stop now, and get a beer. It’s right there. It’s mean, and I love it. As much as I like running, it is a masochist’s sport, and I have a soft spot for races that acknowledge that. 

Before the race, I could always tell the “serious and experienced” runners: they were the ones that warmed up on the hill. I was part of that crew. I liked to have an idea what heart rate I wanted to be at when I approached the bottom, and what pace I could sustain all the way to the top. During the years I raced it, when I hit that hill, it was like the rest of the runners started sliding backwards around me, as their bodies started screaming at them to slow down. I am not a “fast” runner, but I know how to hold a pace. Consistency is a form of speed. It is even more evident when you hit the hills.

One time I served a dinner of take out barbecue brisket to my friends. As I was cleaning up my dinner mess I licked the delicious meat off of one of the serving forks on the counter. Unfortunately, it was the fork I had used to serve wet food into my cat’s dish. 

It’s a really vivid memory. 

It was tonight.