Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in borisxusa's LiveJournal:

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Sunday, January 18th, 2009
5:41 pm	"If you live long enough, everything will happen during your lifetime. Just make sure it won't put you out of business." "You never know what will happen." "Make sure the people running things have the same time horizon as the things they are running." Boris Furman That's really all you need to know about controlling risk. The rest is commentary. Here's some commentary. Society has a very long time horizon. For all practical purposes we should run our society as if everything that could happen eventually will. How do we know what could happen? Start with what has happened. We've had plagues that have wiped out whole civilizations. We've had plagues that have killed large segments of societies. We've had plagues that have been averted. Which plagues should we prepare for? Should we not worry about the plague that will wipe out our civilization because there will be no one left who has prepared to deal with the consequences? Should we  prepare for the plague that will kill up to 90 percent of the population ? How about 95 percent? Maybe we should just prepare for the plagues we can avoid. What about the plagues we are living with every day? If we weren't willing to live with disease risk, we wouldn't have a society at all. We wouldn't be willing to breathe on each other. How do we decide? Clearly there are some plague risks society must be willing to live with just to exist. Otherwise we wouldn't go to the movies, get on a bus, or shake someone's hand. Financial risk is about the same. We need to take financial risks in order to have an economy. Trading your goods or effort for currency is like shaking someone's hand. There's not a big risk you will get a disease that will kill you, but there is a bigger risk than if you just wave. When you entrust a bank with your hard earned money you are taking a risk that you'll never get it back. Of course the federal government will guarantee your bank deposits up to some amount.  What if the whole system blows up? At some point you would might have been better off keeping the money in your pillowcase or turning it into bags of rice and jugs of clean water. It's the business of banks to take risks. They lend money to people and businesses hoping to be paid back. If they don't lend money, they don't have a business, and we don't have an economy. This assumes the banks have money to lend. The problem we are having is that the banks are losing hope of getting paid back the money they have lent out. That's what all the write downs and bank losses are about. Now they don't have money to lend. The economy can't function this way. The government steps in and provides the banks with more money in the hope that they will lend it. The bankers have lost faith in people's and business' ability to make a return on the money the banks lend them. The bankers hold on to the money the government  has provided them. They hope that their bank will stay in business while the others fail. They'll buy the failed banks assets on the cheap and make a killing. Wait a minute. That hasn't worked very well for Bank of America. Merrill Lynch's cheap assets are draining them dry. No money gets lent.  Nobody will shake hands. How did we get here?  What do we do now? (Comment on this)
Sunday, June 29th, 2008
5:34 pm	Ezra's Big Day Sunday June 29   This morning I dragged all the kids out to the back yard to look at my tomato plants. They're doing fine. Some have tomatoes already. Soon we'll be eating them with the basil that I am also growing.  As I show off the plants' progress I'm a little embarrassed. They're nice tomato plants. Every couple of days I do something for them that I hope will help them along. I water them, but I worry that it's too much. Today I found some pieces of wood in the basement and staked the plants that were growing wide but not tall. I powdered them with pesticide, not organic. That's what the farmers do. It rained yesterday. No water necessary.  I wanted to show them off. So I took the kids two by two for a tour of my tomato plants one by one before they went their separate ways for the day's activities.  I don't know why I'm proud of these tomato plants. They're a product of other people's skill and knowledge. I didn't even plant them really. They were well along when I bought them. My only claim is that they haven't wilted under my care. Other than that they're just doing what they were made to do, grow and produce fruit.  I am proud though. It's so much better to marvel at their robustness and growth in the company of my family. We count the tomatoes together.   My twenty one year old songwriting son who just graduated from college, Ezra Furman, has a show today at 4:00 at the Belmont Art and Music Festival in Chicago. I'm going. So is my wife, Mel. I love to see Ezra perform. The other kids all have something else to do. Jonah is playing in a new band out in Glencoe. I wasn't invited. As we drive down Western Avenue to the show, it starts raining. Hard. Of course the show is outdoors. It's a typical Chicago summer festival. They close off a few blocks of a main street, this time Belmont Avenue. They put a music stage on each end and various tents selling food, T shirts, beer, sausage, wireless phones, and whatever else in between. This is what makes Chicago a great place to be in the summer. Never mind the Gay Pride Parade and the Cubs Sox game, also today. So it's still raining as we pull into the artist's reserved parking spot at quarter to four. No they don't play in the rain. We sit in the car. Does Ezra still get paid if the show is rained out? He pulls out the contract and starts reading. What qualifies as an act of God? Is rain an act of God? Three hundred dollars hangs on the question. Four o'clock comes around. The sun comes out, an act of God. Fifteen minutes to dry off the stage and the show begins. People stop. People listen. They seem to be enjoying themselves. Ezra notices that some are mouthing the words along with the songs. They know the songs. They came to see him. He gains confidence. He sings "kirsten Dunst." He sings "The Worm in the Apple."  "Do you like the show?" he asks the crowd. They do.They applaud and cheer.  "I wasn't fishing for that," he says. "I just wanted to know." The Sunday night Green Mill Poetry Slam is one of the seven wonders of Chicago. Mark Smith started it here in 1986, the year Ezra was born. He hosts it every Sunday from 7 to 10 p.m. It costs six dollars to get in. It's the best six bucks you'll ever spend. I can't see why everybody doesn't go.  The show starts with a warm up band. Then there's an open mike where anybody can read their work. Mark encourages the crowd to show their approval or disapproval of the poems. He says criticism is important because how can a poet improve without it? So it's a scary thing for someone to get up in front of this rowdy drunken crowd of poetry critics and perform. Mark likes nothing better than a "virgin virgin," someone who's never read his poems there before. So along with the regulars he encourages newcomers to stand up and read.   Ezra, Mel and I sat at the very front table next to the stage. So when Mark asked for people to perform it was easy for him to see Ezra pull his poems out of his front pocket. A virgin virgin,  Mark Smith was delighted. He asked Ezra his name. For the rest of the night,  Ezzer was the star of the show.   The Green Mill is a Mecca for performance poets. The first few poets to go up on stage were seasoned performers. They had friends in the audience. The crowd knew their work. They were established and confident members of the spoken word community. They were good. Then it was Ezra’s turn. Ezra is no fool. He had been to the show once before and knew the lay of the land. He brought his best poems with him, poems that had won him the poetry prize at Tufts just a few weeks before. These were not slam poems or performance poems. He just knew they were good. He was not afraid.    The band was available to accompany his reading if he wanted. It was encouraged by the crowd. “No music thank you, “ he said. He unfolded a single sheet of paper, took a deep breath and began reading.   It started: “Karl Marx sat down at his desk  With the twentieth century burning in his brow”   It ended: “Something is happening to me” The poem was only twenty lines long. It couldn’t have taken much more than a minute to read. In that minute Ezra captured the Green Mill crowd of   drunken, rowdy and accomplished poets. He picked up that room full of masters of the spoken word with the first mention of Marx and slammed it way deep down into the Al Capone basement of the old Chicago jazz bar with the simple last line “something is happening to me.”   At the end of the poem the crowd erupted. I don’t know if it was their delight in the poem or the surprise that a kid they had never seen before could come up with something so different and so good. They didn’t just cheer. They exploded as only a bar full of  people who love poetry and go to bars could. They weren’t even that drunk. It was only the beginning of the show.  When Ezra sat down, it took Mark Smith a minute to get control of the audience. He asked Ezra if he had any more poems. Of course he did. “Go back and sign up for the slam,” he told him. For the rest of the open mike every performer had to have a reference to Ezra. We were sitting in the table directly in front of the stage after all. Somebody had a reference to Ezra Pound in his poem, “Coincidence? There are no coincidences,” he said. Mark tried to get Mel to read a poem. He thought it would be fun to have a slam with Ezra competing against his mom.   During the break a nice looking young woman in her late twenties came over to talk to  Ezra. She was wearing a strikingly low cut top and was having trouble keeping her breasts covered with her hands as she bent over to tell the seated Ezra how much she enjoyed the sound of his voice. She would love to hear him read anything, “even Dr. Seuss”.     The slam competition is always the last part of the evening. Mark Smith chooses the judges “at random” out of the audience. They tend to be attractive young women. Wouldn’t you know that he chose low cut top woman and her pretty friend to be co-judges? He called them the Blow Job Girls.   Ezra’s other poems were just as good as the first and just as well received. Of course Ezra won the slam. Somebody even threw in an extra two bucks to the normal ten dollar prize because the quality of the poems was so good.   After the show there was a line of people who came to congratulate Ezra, give him their emails, cd’s , and generally invite him to perform with them. One poet told Ezra, “Don’t think that this is the reaction every winner of the slam gets, because it isn’t.”   Mel and I sat at the back of the bar waiting for the crowd to finish lionizing our son. We couldn’t stay too long because he had to get to a gig at the Beat Kitchen singing between sets of a jam band, the kind with two drum sets and a trumpet. This would not be his natural audience, but he was raring to go.   It was a big day for Ezra, and it was a big day for me too. It started with showing off my tomato plants to the kids. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, June 21st, 2008
12:13 pm	Saturday June 21 Matt’s Party Saturday June 21  Matt’s Party   My nephew, Matthew, graduated from U. Mass. medical school a couple of weeks ago. His party is today. It’s a big deal. His graduation I mean. The party is a big deal too, but the graduation is bigger. It’s always a big deal when someone becomes a doctor. When it’s in your own family, especially when it’s the first in your family it’s a huge deal.    It makes me think of my mother, Matt’s grandmother. She was in the hospital, Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, being treated for ovarian cancer when Matt was born just a couple of floors below. She died a few months later about this time of year. Matt was her first grandchild, the first of ten. He was the only one she got to hold. She would have been such a wonderful grandmother.    My mother Nora worked in the lab at Boston State Hospital. She drew blood from mental patients. She was a Jewish mother. She worked with doctors.  Think of how happy she would have been to see her grandson become one. So it is incumbent upon us all to celebrate the graduation of her grandson Matthew, her only grandson that she got to hold in her arms, from U. Mass. Medical School. The more we celebrate, the more praiseworthy it is.   It is in this context that Mel and I asked Ezra to get up early and drive us to Midway airport for the Airtran 7:45 A.M. flight to Boston. We landed at 11 A.M. and took the 66 bus to the airport pier for the boat to Fore River Shipyard in Quincy.     You can do that in Boston. Depending on the day of the week and your schedule, you can take a boat from the airport to downtown Boston or Quincy or even Hull, where my brother lives. It’s exciting and it's fun.   We took the 66 bus to the pier to wait for the MBTA boat to Quincy. The boat to Hull doesn't run on the weekend.Quincy is a few miles from Hull. Matt and his fiance Irina would pick us up there and drive us the rest of the way to Hull. That way nobody had to drive to the airport and we would get a beautiful boat ride on the first day of summer.    The fare is twelve bucks. If you're going to Boston just across the harbor, it's ten bucks, the same as a water taxi.  There were a couple of water taxis hanging around looking for business. I chatted with the drivers. I wouldn't mind having that job.   The boat came. Nobody got off. We got on. In ten minutes we were docked at Rowes Wharf in downtown Boston. Almost everybody got off, suburbanites out for a day in Boston.In a few minutes we were on our way to Quincy.   Boston Harbor is like most harbors, some portion of a circle. What makes it a harbor is that its shape prevents waves coming straight from the open ocean. You can leave your boat in the water without it being broken up by crazy waves. Growing up in Boston and not being a sailor, I had no sense of the harbor as a whole. All I knew was that there were some dirty beaches like D Street beach in South Boston where you would never go.Wollaston Beach had jellyfish. Nantasket had fun waves, but the water was cold. Revere Beach was from the distant past. They said there used to be a roller coaster there, but I had never seen it. Quincy,  Hingham, and Weymouth were for the gentiles. I remember going fishing once and catching a flounder from a party boat. We wouldn't have eaten it.   I decided that I would spend most of this coming week exploring Boston Harbor on the Mass Bay  Transportation Authority, the MBTA or T.   Boston Harbor used to be the sewer for the metropolitan area. All toilets led to the harbor. The same qualities that protected the boats by limiting direct flow from the ocean, kept all the sewage from flowing out of the harbor into the Atlantic. After three hundred years the waste water overwhelmed the harbor. It became stinky and unusable for anything but shipping. In the nineties after I left Boston they started cleaning it up. Ten years and eight gazillion dollars later, Boston Harbor is pretty clean. While we were waiting at the airport pier we watched a lobster boat emptying traps a few feet away, unthinkable in  the seventies.Revere Beach is nice. I've heard that people use D street Beach and city point.   It was a half hour ride from Boston to Fore River ship yard in Quincy. The weather was sunny and gorgeous. We sat on the top deck outside. The route takes you back past Logan airport where you can watch planes landing. We passed between two islands. We went under a long bridge that connects Moon Island in Quincy to Long Island in Boston. It's old, skinny, and rusty. I noticed a sign that said the speed limit was ten miles an hour.  I had never been over that bridge. One of my missions for this week was to do that. I had no idea how to get there.    Pretty soon we took a right turn around Hough's Neck in Quincy past Raccoon Island and Grape island toward the Fore River shipyard. The wind picked up just as we made the turn. The shipyard was founded by Thomas Watson, Alexander Graham Bell's assistant. During World War II, fifty thousand people worked there as part of  Roosevelt's  "Arsenal for Democracy." The last ship was finished there in 1982.To reach the shipyard we had to pass under the "temporary" erector set bridge that connects Quincy and Weymouth. It goes up a couple of times a week to let through the occasional sailboat much to the chagrin of the drivers on rte. 3a. We were lucky enough to get there just as the bridge was going down. I got some pictures of the bridge part just connecting to the land part.     As you go into the shipyard there's a retired cold war heavy cruiser, the USS Salem. It's a museum now. In the fifties it was the flagship of the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. It has a lot of big guns, "never fired in anger." It did however rescue some Greeks after a big earthquake on some Greek islands in 1953.On the other side of the MBTA slip is a huge rusty old barge with the name Cape Cod painted on the side. I hope it never goes back there.     My nephew Matthew and his fiance Irina were waiting for us on the dock to take us the rest of the way to Hull. We stopped at the Super Stop and Shop on 3A to pick up the big supermarket sheet cake for the party.     The party was great. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 15th, 2008
12:38 am	April 15 Game One Toronto at Baltimore April 15 Game One Blue Jays 11 Orioles 3 Stadium: Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Baltimore, MD Attendance: 15,017 (31.2% full) Game Time: 3:19  night game Weather: 62 degrees, clear My son Jonah, a non-attending senior at Evanston Township High School, has been accepted at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. We're visiting the school to see what it's like. The campus is green. Flowers abound. Spring is a few weeks more advanced here than in Chicago. The daffodils are almost over. The tree are fully leaved. It feels more like summer than early spring.     Jonah wants to go into public health. He read the book, Mountains Beyond Mountains, about a guy who devoted his life to helping poor people in Haiti by improving public health. It inspired Jonah to want to devote his life to helping people through public health. As I sit listening to Jonah explain this to the head of Johns Hopkins undergraduate program in public health, I am so impressed with my son. This is the first I've heard of his interest in public health. It's the kind of thing he would keep to himself. I realize that he has thought long and hard about how he could make a contribution with his life. Jonah thinks long and hard about everything he does. He read the story of Dr. Paul Farmer, and decided public health would be a way of living a meaningful life. Jonah has been grappling with the question of how to live a meaningful life for some years now. For a while he felt living the life of an observant Jew, according to God's word, might be the way. I think that he may have decided on our recent trip to Israel that that wasn't the whole answer.    Sitting there I find out that JHU is one of two colleges in the country that has an undergraduate major in public health. So that's why he applied to Johns Hopkins. Dr. Goodyear, associate director of the program,outlines the courses that he should take for the next four years. There are two tracks in the program. One is the natural sciences. The other is the social science track. The natural science track assumes the student will go to medical school. The other doesn't. They both require Jonah to take Biology in his freshman year. I recall how my poor performance in Biology at college relieved me of any thought that I might go to medical school. Sorry mom.   I'm sitting in the dean's office biting my tongue hoping that Jonah will realize that of course the med school track would be most appropriate for what he wants to accomplish with his life.  It's all I can do to keep from screaming out my opinion as Jonah and the professor discuss the virtues of each program.     This is the first time that Jonah has visited the JHU campus.It's a beautiful day. I have heard that the biggest determining factor of whether a high school student will want to attend a particular college is the weather on the day of his campus visit. If the weather is sunny and beautiful, it's a cool school. If the weather is crappy, the school sucks. Jonah is the fourth of my children to go to college. So far all of them seem to me to have chosen their college based on weather. So does he. He loves it. This is where he wants to go to school.      Great. Let's go to the ballgame.      We're staying at the Radisson Plaza Lord Baltimore, an old  hotel that I got on Priceline. The lobby is impressive. It's walking distance from the ballpark. Baltimore's downtown seems to be divided into two parts, downtown and the sports complex. Downtown seems to be mostly old stores and government offices. The bus stop has only black people waiting. The ballgame has only white people.    I bought tickets from a scalper (black) for half of face value. They were box seats at just about first base. During the game an older Jewish woman set next to us and muttered, "Yeah, these seats are better." She had owned season tickets since the opening of Camden Yards. This year they switched for "better" seats behind home plate. She liked her old seats more. Oh, the angst of a season ticket holder!    As we entered Jonah and I got free bright orange Oriole  T shirts with #10 Jones on the back. He hit a home run, about the only thing the home team fans had to cheer about that night. In the eighties Baltimore was the most winning team in baseball. Not now. I hear the fans mutter as the Blue Jays beat the home team 11 to 3.       During the national anthem the fans screamed out the letter O for Orioles during "o say can you see". I didn't know about that local custom. The obligatory jumbotron race advertised Bay Seasoning and involved crabs moving around on the big screen.       I bought an Orioles hat and a bat and a program. I had a hard time choosing the right hat.  I kept score during the game. That would be my souvenir take from each ball park, a hat, a miniature bat, and a program with the box score of the game. (Comment on this)
Thursday, April 10th, 2008
1:44 pm	Commitment Tuesday April 10 2008 Commitment  I am committing myself to seeing a game at every major league baseball park this season. Why? No reason. It just seems like a cool thing. It's one of those things that some people dream about but never do. I've got the time this year. I'm doing it. I don't care how stupid it sounds. It is stupid. I admit it. But you have to admit it is something. If you get it, you get it. If you don't, I'm not going to argue with you.    There are thirty major league teams , 29 in the U.S. and one in Canada. Going to every ballpark entails visiting 26 cities  between April and September. I'm doing it. I don't give a crap how dumb it is.And I'm not doing it alone. I vow to find somebody to go with me to every game.   You learn a lot about a place by going to a ballgame.  Every baseball team has a symbol, a color, a star, a history, a culture. When you go to a ballgame you see a lot of the people who live in the city. You get a sense of what they're like. How do they treat each other? Are they friendly, cheerful, chatty, helpful? Or are they in a hurry, competitive, uptight? You cheer with them. You suffer with them. You share their hopes and disappointments. You wear their hats. How full is the stadium? Do they serve beer in the stands? What kind of ice cream do they have? What's the local food? What happens when the home team hits a home run? Are there fireworks or just a jumbotron celebration? How do they treat fans of the visiting team? Do they wear team shirts? Do they bring their kids? Do they serve beer in the stands? How loud are the drunks? What races on the jumbotron in the middle of the game? In Chicago it's pizza. In Baltimore it's crabs. In San Diego, sailboats. You don't learn that at the local art museum or the symphony. I am committing myself to seeing a game at every major league baseball park this season. Why? No reason. It just seems like a cool thing to do. (Comment on this)
Sunday, September 11th, 2005
8:29 pm	NYC Century 5:00 A.M. It's dark as Matt and I ride our bikes North on Central Park West. Out of the darkness we are joined by other cyclists on their way to the starting point at Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and 110th St. I have to wait in line to get my official bib which of course didn't arrive even though I signed up in July. I get a cue sheet. It's 15 pages. No matter. I never used a cue sheet anyway. By 6:30 Matt and I and a group of about fifty cyclists are given the go sign. Mile 1.9: Amsterdam Ave. St. John the Divine Cathedral Still unfinished with a 600 foot long nave, it is the largest load bearing wall cathedral in the world, whatever that means. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, September 10th, 2005
7:49 pm	nyc century Mel drove me to Midway this morning for a 10 o'clock ATA airport in LaGuardia New York. I am excited. Tomorow I'll be riding in the NYC century bike tour, a 106 mile bike ride within the confines of NYC. The plane is on time. It's a beautiful day in New York. On Matt's advice, I instruct the cab driver to take the 59th street bridge rather than the triborough bridge. We crawl through the saturday afternoon traffic of Astoria side streets. I know that this is a foretaste of tomorow's ride. Matt Bass is a friend and classmate of mine from Harvard Business School. We will be taking the ride together tomorow. When we were in school, we spent a lot of time playing gin rummy and watching Star Trek and the Untouchables. In 3 weeks, we will be in Boston celebrating the 30th year reunion of the Harvard Business School class of 1975. That class has the dubious distinction of including President George W. Bush among its members. I have spent some time fantasizing what I would say to him if he showed up at the reunion and offered to shake my hand. I doubt that he'll show. I think he's out of vacation days. Matt lives in Manhattan at the corner of 79th street and Riverside Drive, not far from the start of tomorrow's bike ride. He lives there with his wife Andrea, and their two teenage daughters. A pipe burst in Matt's apartment last sunday. The whole family had to stay in a hotel while the apartment dried out. They moved back in last night, and, lucky for us all, the apartment is now habitable. I'll be sleeping on an air mattress on the floor in the living room. Back to the cab ride. We crawl through the streets of Queens. We crawl over the 59th street bridge. The cab driver takes Madison Avenue uptown. The saturday afternoon traffic is heavy. We get to 79th street. The street is blocked off. I see some green to my left. I have lost confidence in this cab driver's ability to get me to matt's apartment in a timely manner. It's a beautiful day. It's Manhattan. I'll walk. I pay the cab driver and get out. He acts a little surprised. I was a little surprised, too, when I realized I had to walk through Central Park to get to matt's. Somehow I had thought the green on my left was Riverside Park. No matter, it's a beautiful day. The park is full of people. I enter it just to the south of the Metropolitan Museum. I go up the hill to a castle-like lookout. I go past the Swiss puppet cottage. I skirt the Diana Ross playground. I finally emerge from the park near the Museum of Natural History. I marvel at the monument to Teddy Roosevelt outside the front entrance and continue to 79th street. I'm reading a book about Teddy Roosevelt. Soon I'm at Matt's place. It's 2:30. Matt has to hang around and wait for the Disaster Recovery Company to pick up the blower and dehumidifier they were using to dry out the apartment. I present him with two of my son Ezra's CDs. I make him listen. "Sounds a little Dylan-ish, right?" I suggest. He likes the music, but he isn't as excited about it as I would like. I get his high school junior daughter Julia to listen. She is more enthusiastic. I tell her that she can have this CD because she likes it more than her father. Allison, his 8th grade daughter, doesn't like it at all. What does she know? She's only in 8th grade. ( http://www.purevolume.com/ezrafurman ) - if you want to listen to a sample of Ezra's music. I like the second and third songs better than the first. I had called my friend Bob Posner from the cab on the way from the airport. He now calls me back. Bob lives in Manhattan with his wife Joyce. Bob is about my age. Joyce is about 10 years younger. They were married about six weeks ago. Joyce is 7 months pregnant. Mel and I attended their wedding reception at the 25th street pier. I thought it would be nice to see them and introduce them to Matt and Andrea, both experts in Manhattan child-rearing. Why am I not surprised that they are free? We plan to meet at the 79th street Boat Basin Restaurant at 6:30. The Disaster company shows up and removes the blower. Matt and I go for a bike ride. There is a bike path along the Hudson that goes all the way to Battery Park. We go to the Bike Room in Matt's building's basement. Matt has arranged for me to borrow his neighbor's bike, a hybrid in decent shape. We get on the Hudson river bike path and head downtown. To say the path is crowded would be an understatement. It's late saturday afternoon on a beautiful warm day in New York. What do you expect? The ride is slow but glorious. There is every matter of obstacle; baby carriages, roller bladers, other bicyclists, dog walkers, pedestrians, construction, detours. They even have special traffic lights for bicycles, with red and green lights in the shape of bicycles instead of circles. We go by the giant cruise ships, the old docks, the aircraft carrier museum, the new park across from the Trump Apartment development, basketball courts under the highway, sea grass, the 25th street pier where Bob had his wedding. The trip ends by Battery Park, with a distant view of the Statue of Liberty. We stop for some pictures and head back. At 6:30 Matt, Andrea, the two girls, and I walk down to the 79th Street Boat Basin Restaurant to meet Bob and Joyce for dinner. There are some tables overlooking the river. The place is loud and full of people. There's an hour wait for a table. Why am I not surprised? There's a big bar area. I found out that you can order food from the bartender. There's also a big circular area away from the water. There are tables and chairs there, and no people. We find Bob and Joyce. We sit down at one of the empty tables, and I go to the bar to order food. This will work as long as we bring the food up ourselves. This is typical New York City. The place is impossibly noisy, there's an hour wait for a table. 20 steps away there's a big empty space that's just fine. This will be a pleasant evening after all. We had a nice dinner. Andrea and joyce bonded. They started with some business networking, and then got down to the real business of the details of bringing up a child in Manhattan. Andrea has raised two, so she had a lot of advice to impart to Joyce. When the restaurant manager noticed that I would be bringing seven meals from the bar to the table myself, she took pity on me and sent a busboy with the food and silverware to our table. New Yorkers are not heartless, you just have to meet them halfway. After dinner, the kids went home. The adults took a stroll along the same path that Matt and I had biked early in the day. We walked Bob and Joyce to their car. I went to the Fairway Supermarket on Broadway to buy a gatorade for tomorrow's bike ride. I had deja vu of this summer's bike trip. Every evening we would get gatorade for the next day. I recall the gas station near the hotel in Holbrook, Arizona, where I bought Gatorade and some petrified wood. At Fairway, the woman in front of me bought 250 dollars worth of groceries to be delivered. I noticed that almost none of what she bought would be attainable in Holbrook, AZ. On the other hand, I didn't see any petrified wood for sale at the checkout. Matt prepared a blowup air mattress for me to sleep on. It took him a long time to pump it up. That's because it had a leak. It was soft when I went to bed. By 4 A.M. it was flat. No matter. Wake up was at 4:30. (Comment on this)
Friday, July 1st, 2005
5:47 pm	Lexington, Ma to Boston (Revere Beach), Ma 20 miles 200 ft elev EFI BABY!! The day began almost like the forty odd days before it. 6:15 breakfast.7:15 sign out. One thing was different. We didn't need to pack our bags. Today was to be a short day, 20 miles, nothing more than a victory lap. The excitement was palpable. Today was the end of our collective adventure. There was a slight drizzle. I wore my rain jacket for the first time on the trip, more to stay warm than dry. I rode with Nick and Kendee, but not at the front. There was no point to being at the front. MILE 15 REGROUP FOR FINAL RIDE TO REVERE BEACH! --- We gathered in a parking lot. Gradually all the cyclists arrived. We waited patiently. Fittingly, Debby had gotten a flat along the way. A bunch of people had stayed with her to fix it, one final flat for the road. Tracy gathered us in close. She reminded us of the magnitude of our accomplishment. For the first time I felt that I would finish. By twos we rode up the little hill on Branch St.in Malden, the SAG van in front, our little orange flags fluttering in the wind. We were a troop, a tribe, a force, a group of people who had started in such a procession six and a half weeks ago on the beach in California. Now we were riding in triumph to the Atlantic shore. I imagined we were a troop of cavalry in a John Wayne movie leaving the frontier fort to rescue a wagon train. I was near the back of the parade so I could fully appreciate the spectacle. MILE 16.7 L AT BLINKING LIGHT ON MALDEN ST --- The parade wound its way through the morning traffic. One unfortunate motorist decided he had to take a right into the middle of the procession causing a near miss with Vicky. He got an earful from the next twenty two cyclists. In our numbers we felt cocky. We spit on Boston drivers. Only three miles to go. MILE 17.8 L AT LIGHT ON BROADWAY/PASQUALE SQ. UNMARKED. "DO NOT ENTER" SIGN AHEAD --- This is a typical Boston area intersection. Just follow everybody else. MILE 17.9 R AT 1ST LIGHT ON REVERE ST. --- We passed an Italian funeral home. Three men in black suits looking as if they were straight from the Sopranos joked with us from the balcony. I waved to the staff staring from the window in an empty beauty salon. This was familiar territory to me. I started to feel the ocean. I was getting excited. Now I could see the water. I felt the breeze coming off the beach. We were almost there. I could hardly let myself believe it. MILE 19.0 R OCEAN AVE. --- A crowd of friends and relatives were waiting for us at the corner. They lined the sidewalk on Ocean Ave. As I heard them cheer my emotions overcame me. I saw nothing. I started to sob. I hoped that no one saw me. It was the relief. It was the cheering. It was the end of the journey. I had actually made it. The ordeal was finally over. I could finally let go. I could hardly let go. I know it was a group thing. It was a personal thing as well. I couldn't stop sobbing until I got off my bike. Mel was there waiting for me. So was my lifelong friend Wilson. He took videos. I hope to be able to get them on the blog soon. The cyclists were milling around the sidewalk with their friends and relatives. The cheering had been fantastic. I have never been involved as a player in any kind of organized athletics. No one had ever cheered for me before. I always thought cheering was a superfluous exercise more for the benefit of the cheerer than the cheeree. Today I learned different. The enthusiastic cheering of the friends and relatives of my fellow cyclists had a profound impact on me. I felt that these wonderful and caring people had gone out of their way to acknowledge and appreciate my efforts. Soon it was time to dip the front wheel of the bicycle in the Atlantic. I took off my shoes and socks. I removed my pannier from the bike. I carried my bike on to the beach. I knew what I was supposed to do. I waded in. To my surprise the water felt warm. I had often imagined this moment, especially at times when I was climbing yet another unclimbable hill at 6 miles an hour. I had enjoyed the thought of throwing the bike in the ocean. I never thought I would actually do it. I did it. I picked up the bike. I reared back. I flung that bike into the briny sea. It felt so good. It was the right thing to do. All my life I would have regretted that moment had I not done it. I jumped into the water right behind. No more sobbing. No more hills. No more desert. No more mountains. Nothing but joy, joy, joy, joy, joy. Now I was a hero. Now I was a conqueror. Wilson got it all on tape. The other bicyclists reactions ranged from mildly amused to horrified. Nobody else threw their bike in. So what. Sonja and Mike brought champagne. I drank orange juice. It was a joyous occasion. After a while everybody left. Wilson, Mel, Nick and I had a pizza on the boardwalk. We then drove to Charlestown to see the U.S.S. Constitution and Bunker Hill. 6:00 BANQUET --- Marcia was awarded the map. Sue Bartholomew got the 1,000 mile sign. Don Scherzer got the 2,000 mile sign. Sharon got the 3,000 mile sign. Everybody else got a certificate of completion. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, June 30th, 2005
5:45 pm	Brattleboro, VT to Lexington, MA 87 miles 3800 ft elev June 30 Brattleboro, VT to Lexington, MA 87 miles 3800 ft elev I was born in Boston. I lived in the Boston area until I was 28. I went away for weekends. I took drives. I went to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Brattleboro was always a little far. I wouldn’t go there for a casual drive. It would have seemed like a long trip. To bike from Brattleboro to Lexington would have been beyond my imagination. It would have seemed nonsensical. It wouldn’t have seemed possible. Brattleboro, Vermont, Lexington, and bicycle would not go in the same sentence. I’m sure other New Englanders know what I’m talking about. You go through three states in that trip, not unusual in New England. You don’t do it by bicycle though. Now that I had something real to compare it to, the enormity of our trip was starting to hit me. Mile 2.3 CAUTION: NARROW BRIDGE --- We cross the Connecticut River. The sky is overcast. It’s cool. Rain seems imminent. Mile 2.4 NEW HAMPSHIRE STATE LINE --- I sprinkle Pacific beach sand. We follow route 119 through small towns and thick forest, Fitzwilliam, Hinsdale, Ashuelot. Mile 10.4 BR DOWN TOWARD RIVER ON UNMARKED ROAD ---This gets us off rte 119 for a while. It’s a road a traveler would miss. Tracy has found us many of these beautiful side roads during the trip. They often involve steep hills. This one doesn’t. I smell the forest. I hear the river rushing jut below. I feel the damp cool of the mountain air. The Ashuelot River runs wildly along side the road. There is a lot of water there. We pass some old factories that take advantage of the power the rushing water has to offer. Still the river seems wild and beautiful. I am struck by the abundance of trees here. Mile 13.0 CROSS ASHUELOT COVERED BRIDGE --- There is a sign over this one lane wooden bridge that promises a fine of $5.00 to anyone who drives, walks, bikes or runs over the bridge faster than 5 miles an hour. Peter Crowell and I cross the bridge together. Peter lives in the Granite State. He owns a lumber mill in New London. He spent some time in the New Hampshire legislature. He has driven a recumbent bicycle across the country. This is his third cross country trip. He seems happy to be home in New Hampshire. He has imparted a good deal of wisdom to me in the last few weeks. I am honored to ride through the New Hampshire countryside with him. Mile 29.9 ST ON RT. 119E --- We climb for five miles. It’s steep. It’s hard. I don’t even care anymore. This is New Hampshire. There are supposed to be mountains. Mile 42.1 MASSACHUSETTS STATE LINE! CONGRATULATIONS! --- I’m starting to get excited. We take pictures. I sprinkle. Someone has tied balloons to the sign. I know the hills will be gentler now. I’m coming home. We pass wetlands. The land is different here, lush, leafy and warm. The shoulder is treacherous with alternating drains and sewer covers. We descend into Ashby. It’s mostly downhill. It’s a beautiful bike ride. Mile 49.8 L RT. 119E and RT. 31 AT BOTTOM OF DESCENT. Mile 49.9 R 119 TOWARD TOWNSEND. --- This road leads through a state park along a pretty stream. I didn’t have to pedal for five miles as it was just downhill enough to enjoy the scenery. If you live anywhere near here you should come take this fantastic and easy bike ride. Make sure to go from Ashby to Townsend. The other way is all up hill. Get someone to pick you up in Townsend and then do the ride again. Bring someone who doesn’t bike much. Don’t tell them that all bike rides are not this easy. Have a picnic in the park. Fall in love. Mile 54.8 TOWNSEND STORES RESTAURANT --- A lot of people are stopping here for lunch. They call from the porch for me to stop and join them for our last lunch on the road. “I’m going home. My wife will be waiting,” I answer as I glide past. Mel is flying in from Chicago today. Mile 60.9 R AT SS ON RT. 225 WEST TOWARD LUNENBURG --- This is the first time in 3350 miles we’ve gone west. This is typical Massachusetts. You have to go west to get east. It gets worse. I ride through pretty residential streets. The other day I was talking to Nick about helmets. His son Luke had a bad accident doing tricks on his bike. He wasn’t wearing a helmet. Nick admitted that he didn’t always wear a helmet either. I reproved him. He told me of a case where a helmet had caused an accident. A bee had gotten into his friend’s helmet as he was riding. In his attempt to extricate the bee his friend had crashed his bike. I felt that was the kind of unlikely event that proved my point. When would that ever happen? Today as I was slowing to check my cue sheet while rolling over a small country bridge, I felt something sharp penetrating my upper left scalp beneath my helmet. I realized something was stinging me. I stopped the bike, ripped off my helmet and threw it on the pavement. It kept stinging. I had forgotten my about my head sweat, a cloth skull cap I always wear under my helmet. I tore that off. I watched the hornet that had stung me contentedly fly away from my head. I don’t remember having been stung by a hornet before. It hurt a lot. I remember seeing the bee sting antidote in Tracy’s first aid kit. “What if I am allergic to hornet stings?” I worried. “What if I die from a bee sting on this lonely country road in Massachusetts 50 miles from the Atlantic? Could this keep me from going EFI?” I imagined myself collapsing by the side of the road. There was nothing to do but keep pedaling. That has been the answer for the last six weeks. So I did. Mile 65.3 SAG AT DUNKIN DONUTS --- Vickie was there. She checked my scalp. I had definitely been stung. The stinger was out. I should be OK. I had missed the delegation from Andrew’s church that had come to greet him at the SAG. Margaret had a special treat for us. I ate pepperoni and bagels. Peter Rosner was waiting at the sag. Peter had ridden with us the first two weeks of the trip. He lives locally. He offered to ride with some of us and explain the local sights. We would not be going far off the route. John Hornsey and I accepted the invitation. We saw some cool stuff. Peter is very knowledgeable as I knew he would be. We biked to the North Bridge where the Battle of Lexington had occurred. It was under construction. Around this time Peter got a flat. How appropriate. John and I dropped him like a hot potato and headed for the hotel. Mel had recently arrived there. I was happy. We had dinner at the hotel, an aging Sheraton apparently built at the same time as route 128. It has a nice old, worn, somewhat shabby feeling to it appropriate to Lexington. After dinner each rider got up and said something. You will have to imagine what was said. There was humor. There was pathos. There was a lot of feeling. Bill Reiss got up and sang a professional quality rendition of “Oh What a Beautiful Morning.” He sings like he bikes, competently and with style. He got a standing ovation. After dinner Mel and I visited some friends in Lexington. . (Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 29th, 2005
7:47 pm	6/28 Vermont state line Bennington monument in three parts Hogback mountain and views ( 7 images ) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
7:43 pm	riders 7 Mike Sommer Barbara Sommer Mack McNicholas staff stalwart and my personal cheer leader Andrew Keane waiting for route rap in Albany Margaret Scwartz staff sag specialist and culinary genius ( 6 images ) (Comment on this)
7:36 pm	riders 6 Sue Bartholomew Lynn Barthel staff toucher Don Scherzer Gabe Scherzer Tom Gray staff nice guy Tracy Leiner staff big boss irresistible force ( 6 images ) (Comment on this)
7:29 pm	riders 5 Gary Broughton Sharon Lyons Peter Crowell Jim Heller Pat Thompson staff kiwi Rick Wardell staff country singer ( 6 images ) (Comment on this)
7:25 pm	riders 4 Nick Grant Bill Lyons Gian Aliprandi Ron Spaulding Kendee Blake Jere Cunningham ( 6 images ) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
7:21 pm	riders 3 Marcia Barr Debra Whifill Jim Whitfill Kim Brooks John Hicks Victoria Ives ( 6 images ) (Comment on this)
7:16 pm	riders 2 Gwynn Lott Karen Hurley John Hornsey Steve Long Debbie Long Al Simons ( 6 images ) (Comment on this)
7:10 pm	riders Sonja Wilmink Mike Bell Bob Carr Bill Reiss Carl John Wilhite ( 6 images ) (Comment on this)
7:03 pm	a hot ride electrolytes ( 2 images ) (Comment on this)
7:03 pm	Lake Erie New York line Lake Erie sights wine country ( 5 images ) (Comment on this)
7:01 pm	6/22 Pennsylvania line ( 1 image ) (Comment on this)