Nowhere Near the Edge

Making A Difference

2012-02-21T10:26:00.002-08:00

One of my high school classmates, now a successful biologist, is the subject of nice feature in the local newspaper, detailing the work he is doing to battle brain diseases. He and his father, a chemist, are working together to develop a drug that may prevent the progression of brain damage.

It is fun to say I went to school with professional sports figures, but I am particularly proud to say I know people doing things like this. Wreck the curve all you want, Paul. Having seen two grandparents-in-law succumb to dementia, any progress toward beating brain disease is most welcome.

Wrecking The Curve

2012-02-16T12:04:00.000-08:00

We spend our days doing the best we can with whatever gifts, talents or insight we have been given. We strive to make our little personal world, and the people who inhabit it, as pleasant as possible. We succeed daily, in greater or lesser measure, and move on to the next day with the general expectation that we will rise to the challenge of whatever comes next. That challenge is usually pretty moderate on the Grand Scale Of All Things: will I have enough milk to go with my Cheerios? Will I make someone at work laugh with me and not at me? Will I trigger the 30-second fast-forward button on the DVR this evening so perfectly that I skip the commercials in the show I recorded without going even a nanosecond into the show itself (which, if not done correctly, will trigger a back-and-forth with the rewind and fast-forward buttons that takes longer than the original commercial break)?

Then there are the people that make us all look like chumps.

This article tells the story of a fascinating kid who just happens to have figured out how to create nuclear fusion. In a garage. The really interesting kicker is that he has come up with a way to adapt his work to create a bomb scanner for cargo containers. I don't think I would want to be this boy, or his parents; his brain seems to work at speeds and levels that are scarcely recognizable. If he can harness his frighteningly powerful mind to work for good in the world, and he doesn't become a bizarre hermit along the way, more power to him. From my perch on the couch, I will gladly raise my TV remote to him in tribute.

And then there is this guy (video link). Unless you are a tall, tanned, muscular Adonis-type who could make Renaissance sculptors weep at the perfection of your abs, with a peerless sense of drama and timing, you cannot approach the sublimity of his marriage proposal.

Thanks, pal. Now I'll have to pick up an extra dozen roses at my next anniversary just to retroactively make up for not proposing marriage with such awesomeness.

Freddie Solomon, R.I.P.

2012-02-15T09:21:00.000-08:00

Freddie Solomon, who died this week of cancer at the too-young age of 59, was an essential yet understated pillar of the first great San Francisco 49ers Super Bowl teams. Less celebrated than Dwight Clark (the player who gained immortality for making The Catch) and less renowned than Jerry Rice (the transcendent player who is considered by some to be the best NFL player ever), Solomon was the veteran presence that the budding dystasty Niners teams of the early '80s headed toward greatness. Anyone who followed the Niners in those exciting days knew that Solomon was a dependable and indispensible part of that team. Unlike so many wide receivers over the last 15 years, who preen, mope and strut all over the field, Solomon was a team-first player who, it seemed, was always where Joe Montana needed him. He earned two Super Bowl rings with the team, and then quietly tutored Rice to take his job and usher his exit from the league.

Solomon went on to enjoy a fruitful career of service to the Tampa community, where he is as beloved for his post-football career as he is in the Bay Area for his expoits on the field. Solomon is the sort of sports star we heard about too seldom: supremely talented yet humble and dedicated on the field, and equally diligent, talented and sacrificial when his playing days ended.

Local Hoopsters Making Good

2012-02-13T15:03:00.000-08:00

Jeremy Lin, late of Palo Alto High and Harvard, has been a minor local sensation for several years. Lin led his high school basketball team to a highly unlikely state title over a nationally ranked foe. After generating no interest with west coast basketball programs, he took his talents to Harvard, where he led the Crimson to new successes and notable victories over traditional hoops powers like UConn.

No NBA drafted Lin, but the Golden State Warriors signed him as an undrafted free agent, and he made his professional debut for the home-town Warriors last season. It was a big deal for the local community, and particularly the local Asian-American community, as Lin is of Taiwanese descent. Lin was very popular, but still raw and a bit overmatched by the situation. He bounced between the Warriors and their developmental team, and was released in December as the Warriors geared up to make a run at trading for more accomplished players. Those deals never materialized. Lin ended up with the Houston Rockets briefly, without making much of an impact, then moved on to the New York Knicks, where he again shuttled between the big club and the developmental team.

On the verge of being released yet again, injuries forced the Knicks to play Lin. What he did in the five games became a matter of instant legend. Immediately averaging more than 20 points a game, his court vision, toughness and athleticism envigorated a Knicks team that was swiftly sinking to the bottom of the league under the weight of disinterest. As the media frenzy built, the LA Lakers came showed up in Madison Square Garden last Friday night for a game televised on ESPN. Always a prime draw, the Lakers arrived to find themselves supporting players in what had become a national story.

By chance, we were in a restaurant that was showing the game. I rarely watch NBA games, and won't go out of my way to turn one on until the playoffs, but I gladly turned my attention to this mid-season game. Like something out of a sappy Disney sports movie, Lin lit up the Lakers. He was involved in the Knicks' first 15 points (scoring or assisting on all of them) as the Kicks jumped out to a big lead. He made spectacular passes. He drove the lane for crazy layups. He stole the ball. He made three point shots. He did everything you could possibly ask one player to do, under the biggest spotlight imaginable for a non-playoff game. The joy with which he played, and which his teammates returned, was palpable. Kobe Bryant eventually brought the Lakers close, as he always does, but Lin stepped up yet again, sealing the game with two three point shots, two free throws, and a tremendously alert defensive move to take a charge and generate a turnover (he is a Harvard grad, after all). From my vantage point in the dining area, I could not always tell who had made the play to send the Knicks fans into unbridled joy, but over and over, inevitably, it was Lin.

Lin's rise from NBA obscurity, after rising from the obscurity of schools with no basketball tradition, all while commentators try to explain the significance of his Asian-ness, marks the best way that sports can elevate a community. That community may be defined by geography, educational institution, league, the sporting world in general, or race. The "experts" remain skeptical that he can keep up the pace he has set, but just about everybody is delighted that he made so much of the opportunity he was given.

At the other end of the basketball food chain, Michael's basketball season came to an end this weekend. His team also played with characteristic enthusiasm, but in this case with a pronounced lack of success. We went winless this season, and it wasn't even very close. Nobody on the team could shoot the ball reliably, so the offense suffered in all ten games. Michael was the primary point guard and played well at that position. He was near the team lead in points, he reliably ran the offense (to the limited extent that the team could be said to have an offensive system), and played tenacious defense with a lot of steals. The boys, to their credit, never showed any ill effects from losing games. They seemed to accept the fact that they collectively and, for the most part, individually lacked basketball instincts, and simply enjoyed their time on the court doing the best they could. Michael got a chance to play on a team with his best friend for the first time, which was a treat for both of them, and they both played better as the season progressed.

The most fun game, certainly for me and, I think, the players, was when we were matched up against the other team from our parish (I think that is the right term). That team, which was mostly the team Michael had played on last season, had killed us in scrimmages and a practice game. Our regular coach was gone (along with his son, who was our leading scorer), so I stepped in for my basketball coaching debut. I said a few motivational things, reminded them of some basic offensive and defensive principles we had worked on in practice, and turned them loose. When the other team immediately dropped in two baskets, I thought we were in for a long evening. I kept barking instructions, though, and they kept listening (amazing!), and we toughened up.

The only special play I put in was to match up Michael one-on-one with the other team's best player to keep him from dominating the game. I warned Michael I was going to do that earlier in the day, and understood immediately why, and how to do it. While the rest of the team played zone behind him, Michael shadowed the other team's star, denying him the ball, harrassing him into turnovers, and basically taking him out of the game. By midway through the fourth quarter, Michael was called for his fifth foul and I had to sit him to keep him from fouling out. He was devastated that he had committed so many fouls, but the fouls were a measure of how tough he played and that intensity was exactly what we needed. The other team rested their star at the same time, and I was able to return Michael to the game before the end without our guys losing ground. The game hung in the balance, 10-9 (yes, after 38 minutes of play, that's all that had been scored) until the last minute, when the other team put the game away with a single basket. Despite the loss, the boys came off the court excited by their effort. It was their best game of the year, and they knew it. For me, it was an opportunity to try on the coach's mantle for another sport, one I do not know well. It is always gratifying to see the boys respond to coaching, advice and encouragement, and that game is one I will remember for a long time.

It would have been nice to win some games. I am not a fan of valuing participation medals on the same plane as championship trophies. Character building through adversity is a delicate thing in youth sports, though. The older they get, the more competitive the competition, and the more losing hurts. Fortunately, these boys never lost their joy of the game and of competing, and their coach always kept them focused on their own improvement rather than how they compared to others. We can hope for better results next year, but we will not regret the games we played this season.

The Point Guard In Action

Time, It's All Relative

2012-02-08T13:49:00.000-08:00

Today's Mindblowing Fact of the, um, Day:

Two grandsons of President John Tyler, who was born in 1790, are still alive. In just two generations down the line, that family touches four centuries.

This interesting article offers a few interesting examples of these "human wormholes" in time. In a week in which the world's last known veteran of World War I passed away, it is incredible to think that widows of American Civil War veterans were still collecting government pensions as recently as 2004, nearly 140 years after that conflict ended.

A New Day

2012-02-07T09:41:00.000-08:00

One of the timeless beach-trip pleasures for small children is to cover dear old dad in sand using colorful plastic pails and shovels. It is all fun and laughter, but when dad has finally had enough, he may be surprised to find that the sand, applied in child's-toy increments, is heavy enough to make movement difficult.

The last month was like that. (Metaphorically only, sadly enough; it has been far too long since I have spent any time on an actual beach.) The last week of January was one of those weeks that, in retrospect, I realize I spent more than a month aiming toward. Monday was a showdown with a federal judge. Wednesday was a mediation starting in the late afternoon and running late into the evening, the third straight Wednesday mediation for that case. Friday was the ruling on a motion in yet another case. In hours in between, there was a motion to write and a massive client report to prepare. It was a week heavy on firm deadlines and big outcomes, after a month full of similarly time-sensitive or otherwise significant activities.

The accumulation of a multitude of burdens snuck up on me. I usually do not appreciate how much weeks like that weigh on me until they are over. This weekend felt like that part of a hike when you finally crest a hill and see the next valley spread out before you. You have been so focused on each footfall on the way up the trail that you forgot about even the possibility of a summit, let alone what might lie beyond. It was a time of great relief and lightness.

I'm still busy, and there are no indications that I will be anything less than busy for the foreseeable future. However, it is a relief to be through that particular set of rapids. I will be content to merely paddle with the current for a while.

And perhaps pull up on a beach every now and then.

Silent Putridity

2012-01-06T15:40:00.000-08:00

Along with deer and wild turkeys, skunks make up a significant portion of the wild animals that roam through the neighborhoods in our semi-rural neck of the woods. A few times a month, it seems, a skunk will make its way into our backyard, probably seeking refuge for the night under our backyard deck. We know this, of course, because we wake up with our eyes watering from the acrid smell that follows skunks around like Pigpen's cloud of dust.

Last night we experienced a new chapter in human-skunk relations. Around 3:30 a.m., we heard a scuffle between small animals on the deck just outside our room. We don't know exactly what happened, but we know with absolute certainty that one of the animals involved was a skunk, and that it was not a friendly encounter. Whoever was involved in the altercation was on the receiving end of a heavy dose of a skunk's essential oils.

I got up to investigate the fight just as the initial cloud began to silently infiltrate the house. Closed windows and doors are no match for the skunk smell under ordinary circumstances. With our bathroom window slightly ajar, we never stood a chance.

I have frequently smelled the aftereffects of a skunk in the area, but I do not think I have ever been in close proximity to the immediate aftermath of an actual spraying. There's something quantitatively different about a skunk's spray deployed in anger compared to the skunk smell we all know and love. The noxious stench smells like burning plastic, and spreads quickly and thoroughly into every corner and crevice of your house, clothing, and nasal passages. It is astonishingly strong, an assault on the senses. Our candles usually employed to neutralize doggie indigestion were powerless against the skunky onslaught. The plug-in scent dispensers that we previously banished to a storage closet after less than a day because they made our eyes water and skin itch were welcomed back with heartfelt apologies. Their chemical approximation of smells were are supposed to find inviting, ordinarily obnoxious and fake, was now like rosepetals and jasmine compared to the forces of evil we were battling, but gained territory against the skunk offensive only within a pitifully small radius. We could hardly get back to sleep, and both kids woke up recounting dreams revolving around horrible smells.

Today was our normal morning to run. We were more eager than usual to get out, if only to gulp in as much fresh air as we could. After clearing our senses for half an hour, opening the front door and entering the foyer was like getting smacked across the face with a 2 x 4. We can almost accept and deal with the normal skunk smell, but the ultra-repellent burning plastic smell was simply intolerable. We sprayed Lysol everywhere, opened windows, and bundled up against the pre-dawn chill. Unfortunately, we discovered that stench had made its way into every corner of the house, including closed closets. Our clothing and towels bore the unmistakable aroma of eau de skunk.

Our weekend will involve washing clothes nonstop, cleaning the carpets and spraying the drapes with Fabreeze.

And cooking with lots of garlic and basil.

We Have Been Assimilated

2012-01-05T11:22:00.000-08:00

Automakers report that sales were up industrywide. In 2011 in something of a surprise, we contributed to that uptick. We added to Volvo's 25% increase in sales for the year by taking delivery of a 2012 XC90 just before Christmas.

We can now say we are fully assimilated to life in Moraga, because if you had to pick one automobile as the official town car, the XC90 would be it.

On the way home from the dealer
Over the last few years, as Michael grew too big to be carried on a lap, it became impossible to travel anywhere in one car, even for short trips, whenever we had visitors (i.e. grandparents in town). The need for 6+ passenger capacity forced us to consider the possibility of acquiring an SUV or [shudder] a minivan.

For a long time, some portions of our family have lived in Oregon, which requires travel through a snow zone during the winter. We met that challenge once, with chains on the Passat familymobile. In general, however, traveling through snow is something we would prefer to avoid, so we usually limit our Oregon trips to the summer. For some time, we knew that Cheryl's parents had thoughts of moving to the Lake Tahoe area. Once that finally happened this past year, and we visited to play in the snow in November, it became apparent that, with our proximity to Lake Tahoe, traveling through snow would become a regular consideration for our future. If we were to get any sort of new vehicle, all-wheel-drive became a necessary consideration. ~~Thankfully~~ Sadly, that ruled out minivans.

There are a ton of SUVs in the market, but many are no larger than a station wagon. They are just taller, heavier, less capacious and more thirsty than the wagon we already had. We needed something a little bigger, with the third row of seats to allow for more passengers. We were very systematic in our approach in evaluating larger SUVs, spending focused time at the San Francisco Auto Show for the last two years, dispatching the kids to clamber in and out of the third row seat of a variety of vehicles. At the show this past November in particular, we were ridiculously thorough at my direction, sampling each of the likely contenders twice so that we would not be swayed by either first or last impressions. Although they rolled their eyes a bit, the kids played along and contributed significantly to our evaluation.

Ease of ingress to, egress from, and stowage of the third row seat was a high priority. Each manufacturer handles that engineering task differently, some with more success than others. We looked at a Buick that required near disassembly of the flimsy second row seat. The Ford Explorer operated the third row by pushbutton, giving me visions of expensively failed servomotors at some post-warranty moment down the road. The BMW X5 (never really a serious contender), which really is not big enough to have a proper third row seat, awkwardly pivoted its second row forward, leaving the third row traveler with an gymnastic squeeze into the back. The Audi Q7 (also not a serious contender) was enormous, enormously expensive, enormously comfortable, and not nearly as large inside as its exterior dimensions would suggest. The Toyota Highlander, as could be expected, did everything well, albeit with a deficit of style. Our collective consensus settled on the Volvo, which had a third row that was easily accessible and stowable, wrapped in a package that was very comfortable and attractive inside and out, and priced at the low end of that particular niche of the market.

Over the Thanksgiving break, Michael and I slipped out for a morning of test driving of some of the contenders. My interest was not so much how the vehicles drove, but how useful they truly would be. Testing my theory that most SUVs below the Suburban class are little larger than midsize station wagons, I took measurements of every useful dimension of our Passat wagon's luggage compartment I could think of: width, depth, height, height below the window (i.e., space below the cargo cover) and how much the slant of the rear window intruded on the cargo space. The cargo areas in the SUVs proved to be wider than the station wagon, but, for the most part, were no longer or taller, with a much greater intrusion from the slant of the rear window. The Volvo was the big winner, larger in every dimension, particularly width, then the Passat. It also had more room behind the third row than any of its competitors.

Having concluded that an all-wheel-drive SUV satisfied our semi-critical needs that have developed within the last couple of years, it became a simple matter of timing: if we were going to do this at all, when would we do it? The sad reality is that Kelly will be leaving home to go to college in less than four years. If we were going to do this at all, we decided should do it sooner rather than later in order to enjoy the benefits of the greater passenger capacity and ability to drive through snowy mountain passes.

It hit me the Sunday before Christmas that we could take advantage of favorable lease terms offered by Volvo during December and get started on this adventure right away. I flirted with marital Armageddon for couple of days, thinking I would re-create a Lexus commercial by parking the new car in the driveway with the big red bow on it. Wisdom most certainly comes with age, apparently, since I came to my senses and brought Cheryl into the decision-making process. Not until after I had worked out the outlines of a deal through CarsDirect.com, though (I regard that as "marshalling all of the facts"). After getting over her shock, Cheryl offered smart counsel. Over the course of our discussions, I reversed course and decided we shouldn't get the vehicle now, while she transitioned at the same time from being opposed to it to being excited about it. It didn't take anything more than that for me to be enthusiastic about the idea again, so we went ahead with the deal. We managed to keep it a surprise for the kids for Christmas, which was every bit as fun as I thought it would be.

(While I am generally a buy-and-hold person, the abundance of electrical and electronic gizmos on modern cars, especially Volvos, frightened me. Until proven otherwise, I see most modern cars as rolling storehouses of expensively-failed-silicon-brains-to-be. Hence, the three-year commitment, with free service for everything but gas and tires, will help me sleep at night. The much more modest initial financial outlay of a lease was ~~absolutely necessary for us to pull this off~~ nice, too. We have been able to hold onto the Passat, a fact that did not slip past the delighted aforementioned high schooler.)

The experience of actually acquiring the car is a story unto itself, and the subject of a future note. Having now had the vehicle for a couple of weeks (I have a hard time calling it a car, especially because I grew up with an International Scout that we always called "the truck"), including a shakedown cruise to Los Angeles and back for Christmas, we're very pleased with it. It is roomy, comfortable, versatile, and meets every expectation we had for it. The design is a little long in the tooth because the sale of Volvo from Ford to China's Geely delayed the development of a successor model, but it has aged well and remains attractive and useful.

The only real trick is figuring out which Volvo is ours in the local supermarket parking lot.

Not Found On Expedia

2012-01-04T12:23:00.000-08:00

The truly intrepid traveler can now book passage online to anywhere on earth, or beyond. Virgin Galactic is now accepting reservations (directly or through a "local accredited space agent") for its upcoming flights into space. Just go to their booking website to schedule your voyage.

Make sure your AmEx has a credit limit of $200,000, though. And bring your own peanuts.

Charge Of The Forehead Light Brigade

2011-12-22T10:25:00.000-08:00

We have discovered a strange phenomenon in our neighborhood. In the hours before dawn, around 5:30 a.m., week after week, season after season, there are people who voluntarily roust themselves from warm beds not only to go outside into what are currently below-freezing temperatures, but to run for an extended amount of time. Of course, running in the pre-dawn darkness carries certain hazards, given that there is actually no light in the sky and little useful light from irregularly-placed streetlamps. That means anyone daft enough to be outside at that hour needs to bring their illumination with them. The generally accepted means of doing so involve strapping a light to your forehead. It may be a fancy set of LEDs that puts out more light than the typical 1960s-era automobile headlight, but in the end, it is still a getup not far removed from a minor's torch.

I know all of this because I am one of those people. So is Cheryl. In fact, she is to blame.

Back in July, one of our friends convinced Cheryl that a successful exercise regimen did not have to mean going out and running a marathon every day. A simple commitment to a combination of running and walking for relatively short (but increasing) durations would yield health benefits while staying within our physical limitations of endurance and fitness.

We are an unlikely pair to take up running as a regular routine. At least I was a runner once upon a time, but I have tried without success to resume the practice since high school. Cheryl has been a committed non-runner her entire life. Nevertheless, since late July, we have arisen at 5:30 a.m. three times a week to run and walk a nearly three mile loop in our neighborhood. Over the summer, we were privileged to enjoy the early-morning sunrises. As winter approached, however, the days got significantly colder, and even more significantly darker. After following this regimen for more than a month, we felt committed enough to the practice to justify some dear appropriate for exercising in the cold and dark. We rewarded ourselves with new running shoes, reflective apparel, and cold-whether running gear. And, in a final, unmistakable symbol of our resolve, forehead lights.

After almost 5 months, we have only missed a couple of regularly scheduled running days, mostly due to my work schedule. Amazingly, I think we have missed only two days because of rainy weather. Over that time, we have steadily increased the length of the run portions of the loop (which are interspersed with regular intervals of walking). I have even kept up with the routine while on a business trip, and took a another run on my own to test my limits and found I could run a mile again (baby steps, granted, but it has been a long time since I could do that). Maybe in a couple of years we will enter a 5K race. That won't happen anytime soon, but against all odds, we are enjoying the commitment, the afterglow of the effort, and the demonstrable benefits of the consistent exercise regimen … dorky headlights notwithstanding.

We are either rationally coming to terms with the increased effort required to stay healthy as we age, or we have completely lost our minds. The jury is still out.

We Are The Champions, Local High School Edition

2011-12-12T12:15:00.001-08:00

Against most if not all of the odds, Moraga's Campolindo High School, Kelly's alma mater to be, won the North Coast Section football championship at the Oakland Coliseum on Saturday night. Campo, projected to finish last in its own league, continued a true Cinderella season by knocking off heavily favored Marin Catholic 20-18 on a last-second field goal to go 14-0 on the season.

We managed to watch the last part of the game through a video feed online (the internet age is great for this sort of thing), and were able to witness our local boys work for the winning score after giving up their game-long lead with only two minutes to go. Campo had stopped Marin on fourth and two at Campo's 10-yard line halfway through the fourth quarter, but allowed Marin to go the length of the field on the next drive to set up a go-ahead field goal. On that drive, Marin survived a fourth-and-eight play, but also dropped a pass in the end zone. Campo returned the ensuing kickoff well to about their 35 yard line, but still had to go the length of the field with two minutes left and their starting center out of the game with an injury. On the first play, Marin had Campo's quarterback in their grasp, but he wriggled free, running for his sporting life to his left. Stunningly, he found a teammate (the older brother of a boy with whom Michael plays baseball) 45 yards down the field to immediately put Campo in position for a game-winning field goal. Campo milked the clock with a series of runs to put the game on the shoulders of the sophomore kicker. After a timeout with two seconds remaining in the game, enduring what had to be the highest-stakes moment the kicker had ever experienced, he coolly put the ball through the uprights, setting off a joyous celebration among the team, their families and fans.

Kelly, who has no real love of football, got an unexpected charge out of the winning kick. As it turns out (but she had not figured out until she heard his name announced on the webcast), the kicker is not only in her biology class, he is her lab partner. We went to one home game earlier this season, which she did not find all that interesting, but stuff like this could make a girl start to enjoy football a little bit more.

Campo has won NCS before, but not since 1986. To put that in perspective, that was when I was a junior in high school. Our football teams were terrible in those days, though, so I didn't pay too close attention at the time to what anyone else did (although I did go to the CCS final game in 1984 with a friend to watch his St. Francis beat Bellarmine 5-3 at San Jose State ... and Bellarmine is the CCS champion this year). With Kelly now a freshman, it truly has been a generation since Campo last reached this lofty height.

The magical season is not quite over. With its win, Campo earned a trip to the Division III state championship game in Los Angeles. Campo will match up with Washington-Union of Fresno ... the city where Kelly was born. We might have to figure out a way to watch this game.

Fall Fell

2011-12-01T22:30:00.001-08:00

We are very efficient around here. Autumn may be a season on the calendar, but we take care of Fall in one day. Over the last 24 hours or so, most of the southwest of the country, including the Bay Area, has been subjected to heavy, sustained winds. The windstorm caused serious damage to the Los Angeles area, but around here it has simply taken care of denuding the trees. It was strong enough that when I stepped out for lunch with some colleagues yesterday, we put our conversation on hold until we reached the restaurant because the noise of the leaves swirling around us was too loud.

Nearly overnight, we went from enjoying colorful foliage to being ready for winter. Oddly, nearly every time we experience wind conditions like this, unlike Nor'easters on the Eastern seaboard, our temperatures pick up. We will be back to freezing nighttime temperatures and foggy mornings soon, but for now, we get to enjoy mild days with crystal clear air and blue skies.

I'm not looking forward to cleaning up the yard now, though. Drat this wind.

Hoop It Up

2011-11-07T10:13:00.000-08:00

Once the calendar kicks over to November, our sporting life transitions from soccer to basketball. The two sports have been going simultaneously for the past several weeks, but yesterday was the first basketball game after several weeks of practices, a day after Michael's final regular-season soccer game.

The basketball league organizes the players into teams based upon their relative ability so that they can compete against teams of comparable ability from other parishes. This year, there were enough players for four fourth grade teams. Michael was placed on the third-level team, along with most of the players from his team last year. It seemed to be a good fit. We looked forward to picking up again with what had become a pretty decent team.

Somewhere along the way, it was decided that the third and fourth level teams were meant to be one large pool of players from which to relatively equal teams would be created. A few players, including Michael, ended up changing teams. He is now on a team without anyone from his squad last year.

Our first game was against that other team, and they annihilated us. Much like Michael's first game last year, the score was lopsided (32-8), and Michael scored three of the team's four baskets. Taking last year's experience as a guide, we can hope for substantial improvement as the players learn to work with each other and develop a set offense, which they did not have last night.

For his part, Michael played reasonably well at point guard. He had a few turnovers, but he showed advanced ballhandling skills with both hands, and late in the game blew away the other team's most athletic player with a killer crossover and drive down the open lane (he missed the layup, but that part will come later). The fun thing for me is that we had discussed that very move earlier in the afternoon. We talked about how the other team would grow to expect him to work the ball around to teammates, which would present a late-game opportunity to surprise them with a crossover penetration to the basket. Other than missing the shot, the play worked perfectly. He may not have a lot of experience, but Michael can put coaching into action as well as anyone.

The rest of the team shows promise. We have two very tall twins who show a lot of promise in particular. We would probably have more immediate success, and maybe more fun with people we already know well, if Michael had stayed on the other team. On this team, however, he will be the undisputed point guard and get a ton of minutes at that position. Given his small stature, that will work out well for him in the long term.

Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On

2011-10-28T16:30:00.000-07:00

Despite having lived more than 30 years in California, I have never lived someplace as seismically active as I do now. In the last six months we have had at least five earthquakes around 4.0 on the Richter scale within 5 miles of home, and a couple others of similar size and proximity in the two or three years before that. Three of those earthquakes have occurred within the last week, with an epicenter in Berkeley.

A 4.0 is not a tremendously strong earthquake, nor does it last long. However, an earthquake that size that close definitely gets your attention, and usually knocks over a picture frame or two.

Last Thursday evening, I experienced the second of two earthquakes that day while stopped at the ticket booth leaving the Oakland airport. I had missed the first earthquake earlier that day because I was out of town. (As is the new normal, I found out about the first earthquake because all of my Bay Area friends on Facebook started yammering about it. I could localize the earthquake based on which of my friends discussed it; in that instance, it was all the East Bay people. The South Bay people didn't say anything.) While waiting for my receipt at the parking lot booth, I had the sudden, queasy feeling that somebody had rolled into the back of my car. Having had that unfortunate experience several times, I checked my mirror, expecting to see headlights practically in my backseat. However, the car in line behind me was 30 feet away where it should be. I realized then that we had had another earthquake. I jabbed the radio preset button to the news station, which interrupted its regular programming a moment later to announce the earthquake, provide the preliminary strength numbers from Caltech, and offer the usual did-you-feel-it jabber. At that time, Kelly was at a choir performance, watching her high school choir try to stay focused while their risers swayed and everyone in the room got wide-eyed and whispery.

Yesterday morning at 5:35, the earth moved again. I had just awakened but had not summoned the energy to get out of bed when I heard the rumble of the earthquake approaching, which then hit with the resounding thump. I jumped out of bed, and Michael popped out of sleep and out of his room nearly in tears, afraid to go back to his bed. I don't think I have ever felt his heart hammering as fast as it was as I held him to calm him down. The moment his pulse returned to normal, though, he turned around, flipped his light on and eagerly went in search of things that had fallen down.

With all of these moderate earthquakes, we have not suffered any damage. I would like to believe that these quakes are relieving pressure on the two local faultlines so as to keep the "Big One" at bay. The many large earthquakes around the Ring of Fire over the last couple of years point in an ominous direction, though.

Time to restock the earthquake kit.

Soccer Update, Fall 2011

2011-10-22T16:25:00.000-07:00

Here is, perhaps, the best way to understand the Michael's soccer season. After today's game, the opposing coach stopped him in the parking lot to ask, "so, are you going to sign with Barcelona?"

Through seven games, Michael has scored 16 goals. Early in the season, he scored a lot of breakaways. Lately, it seems that word has gotten out about him, and the defenses are collapsing all over him. Now, he is scoring goals on crosses or set pieces, and setting up teammates for goals with crosses.

Last week, our boys avenged their season opening loss by shutting out Germany 3-0. Michael set up the first goal on a long run to the corner, looking up to find a teammate in front of the goal, and delivering a 20-yard aerial cross for the assist. Later, he scored a goal on a free kick from just outside the penalty area, sending a hard shot high into the net above everyone, including the defenseless keeper. He scored a second goal in the second half when his strike partner sent a ball in from the side. Michael gauged the bouncing ball perfectly, sending in a one-touch volley with his left foot.

Today, our boys faced a winless Netherlands team that we had beaten 7-0 previously. Predictably, we came out flat and quickly went down 2-0. The coach had planned to play Michael in defense and goal, but as we fell behind, he kept Michael up front as usual. Late in the first half, we got a free kick on the edge of the penalty area. By now, everyone on our sideline knew what was going to happen. Even though the goal was 15 yards away with lots of players in the way, the coach called out for Michael to send it in. Sure enough, he drilled a hard swerving ball just over everybody's heads and past the frozen keeper. Early in the third quarter, one of our players took the ball down and out past the goal with Michael open in the middle. The coach told him to look for Michael the next time. Sure enough, on an identical play, our player took the ball to the side, looking to the middle the whole way. He delivered a perfect cross, which Michael again volleyed of a bounce with his left foot into the goal. Maddeningly, Netherlands went ahead again. Right at the end of the third quarter, a teammate sent a free kick to Michael in the middle. His first shot was blocked, but he stayed in and volleyed a ball out of the air into the top of the goal.

Most of the season, we have had just enough players to field the team with no substitutes. Today, a player who almost never attends practices or games showed up (late), giving us one extra player, so we had to play him. The coach picked Michael to sit out the fourth quarter, since everyone is supposed to sit out on occasion and he had not yet missed a minute. Predictably, we did not threaten to score for the rest of the game. Fortunately, we withstood a heavy assault to finish in a tie. We would have liked to play for the win, but sitting Michael was the right thing to do under the circumstances. The referee, who has seen Michael play for a couple of years now and saw what he did today, sought out our coach to praise him for sitting Michael, recognizing we were essentially conceding our chance at a win by doing so. His hat trick kept us in the game, but without him, our offense just did not work as well.

Michael will miss two of the last three games, unfortunately, but he has done plenty to distinguish himself. He says the opposing coaches have all sought him out after games, and he has gained a tremendous amount of confidence. His team, more importantly, has learned that relying on each other leads to success. Their best games have been marked with solid defense and crisp, heads-up passing that is rare at this level in a recreational league. It has been a very fun fall.

Just Respect, Baby

2011-10-18T11:40:00.000-07:00

Oakland has its issues, but one thing that unites the city is its Raiders. The death of Al Davis, the general managing partner and longtime NFL firebrand, touched the community.

That is Oakland City Hall, across the street from my office. In the foreground, the city is flying the Raiders flag at half mast. That, folks, is civic pride.

Priorities, People!

2011-10-10T16:04:00.000-07:00

I happened to hear the classic Harry Chapin tune "Cat's in the Cradle" the other day on the local "New Oldies" radio station that plays your favorites from the 60s, 70s and 80s (um, what?). The song is, as everyone knows, an achingly melancholy ode to fathers, sons, and life happening while we are busy making other plans. An unbridgable gap between father and son played out over a lifetime lies at the heart of the song.

Listening to the lyrics anew, I was suddenly struck by the obvious source of their problem. "My son turned ten just the other day," Chapin sings, "he said, 'thanks for the ball, Dad, come on, let's play. Can you teach me to throw?' I said 'not today. I got a lot to do.' He said, 'That's okay.'"

No, no it isn't. Why does the son turn down the father's entreaties later in life to finally spend that precious time together? It's not because of any quaint notions of the son ironically following the father's too-busy-for-family path, reversing the generational stiff-arm. No, discord is sown right in the heart of the boy's childhood, planting a demon seed that would grow into a pestilent weed in the years to come, leading the son to reject the father with malice aforethought.

The answer is right there in the lyrics. The boy turned ten, and he asked his dad to teach him to throw. (Insert screeching LP sound here.)

The boy is ten and he doesn't know how to throw? Come on. If a kid can't at least throw a circle change under the hitter's hands in a fastball count by the time he's ten, he might as well just find himself an ice floe and head on out to sea. Are you telling me this Chapin son doesn't even know how to throw a ball at ten? Everyone know he should be able to turn the double play pivot at seven, and find the receiver on an up-and-out pattern in the back of the end zone by nine. No wonder the son resents the dad, and the dad is too clueless to notice. The kid probably spent most of junior high stuffed in a locker.

Clearly, Harry Chapin didn't spend any time in our neck of the woods. Whiner.

(Or maybe having a son who actually "turned ten just the other day" caused me to pay a little closer attention to the song. I can't explain why it got so dusty in the car at that moment, though.)

How Many Birds Can One Stone Kill?

2011-10-04T11:54:00.000-07:00

Some of the details of the president's plan to ~~force the federal government to live within its means~~ fund the federal government are coming to light. Included in the package of taxes and cuts is a proposal to increase the taxes assessed against commercial airlines. The lead of this USA Today article could not softpedal the issue more delicately:

President Obama is asking passengers to pay a few dollars more in taxes for an airline ticket...

Those "few dollars more" are actually a $100 fee per departure. I have made made numerous round trip flights between the Bay Area and Los Angeles, San Diego or Las Vegas for less than this proposed $200 tax. Those flights, which are available even now, will double in price instantly. The $450 business-ticket round trip flights I take to Las Vegas periodically will suddenly become $650 flights. This weekend our family will travel to Orange County to attend a family memorial service on round trip tickets we could afford with frequent flyer credits. Those tickets would increase by $800 under the president's proposal, which would have made them unaffordable.

Maybe it takes people who are accustomed to traveling on business class or first class tickets that cost thousands of dollars, or who always travel on expense accounts and never see what tickets cost, to conceive of a plan to increase round trip tickets by $200 that takes no account of what a shock to the system that is for the rest of us. The $200 increase will be a drop in the bucket to a traveler who is already spending $2000 or more for that ticket, or for someone who neither knows nor cares how much the ticket costs. For most people, however, the cost of an airline trip, especially if traveling as a family, already pushes personal budgets to the limit. Now comes the proposal to effectively double the cost of travel for the many who carefully plan their trips. Increasing the cost of any good or service 50-to-100% in one fell swoop simply by the imposition of a tax is unconscionable. The airlines are crying foul, and for good reason. Speaking as someone for whom airline travel is a luxury that is just barely within reach, and only for the right occasion under the right circumstances, it is an absolute certainty that airline ridership will decline. The proposed tax will damage the airlines directly, but also all of the many industries and businesses that depend on people who travel via air for vacations.

Airline travel seems poised to return to its roots, priced out of reach of the vast majority of travelers. Perhaps that is what our ruling class would prefer.

Bigtime Coach, Well Grounded

2011-09-28T15:45:00.000-07:00

This interview with St. Mary's men's basketball coach Randy Bennett is a nice look inside the personal life of the man at the helm of a collegiate basketball program that has made some waves on the national scene in recent years.

We go to the same church as the Bennetts, and they just completed their first year with the swim club we belong to, where their two young boys are both strong competitors. They are also, unsurprisingly, involved in the local basketball youth league. Coach Bennett helped out at the league's evaluation day last month (held at St. Mary's, shockingly enough). Michael ended up scrimmaging in front of Coach Bennett a couple of times; he even pulled off a sweet crossover dribble and drive to the hoop under the Coach's watchful eye. Is it too early to start thinking about scholarships?

Belying his growing stature in the very public and glamorous world of Division I college basketball, Coach Bennett is quiet and unassuming. He and his family have committed to setting down roots in Moraga (Coach Bennett recently signed a 10-year contract extension), which is the intention of most families with kids in elementary school around here. This portion of the article shows why he is such a good fit here (because he shares my views, of course):

Bennett and his family are Moraga homebodies, he confides. A sandwich from Bianca's or pizza from Panini's is about as good as it gets.

"We kind of stick around here; Walnut Creek is a long trip," he laughs, but isn't kidding.

It is a little exciting to have a semi-celebrity in your midst on a regular basis. Even better, though, it getting to spend time around a terrific family that shares your interests, values and goals and struggles.

What A Difference A Week Makes

2011-09-17T14:35:00.000-07:00

Last week, Michael's soccer team was blitzed by, um, Germany, ending up on the wrong side of a 4-0 deficit by halftime. Michael's hat trick made the game exciting, but it was only a moral victory.

Things were different this week. It was our turn to come out of the blocks blazing. The boys passed really well and put the pressure on the other team from the opening whistle. The ball was never played on our defensive side of the field in the opening half.

Michael didn't score three goals this week.

He scored four.

He also had two assists in the 7-0 victory, and could have scored at least two more in the second half had he not terminated several of his breakaways to look for teammates to pass to. His coach has now made Michael the designated taker of corner kicks after he deposited one into the middle of the goal box in the first half (past everybody except one of our players, who was so shocked to see the ball he whiffed on the shot). Michael's second assist came off a corner kick in the second half.

This little guy (for once I'm not referring to Michael) scored that goal. Pound-for-pound he is our best player: clever feet, good vision and judgment, a motor that never stops, and surprising speed and power for his size. Michael is the best player overall, a deadly finisher with skills and a lot of power and speed when he chooses to use it, but our little number four is an indispensable piece of the team.

That didn't stop us from giving him and our other best player to the other team for the second half to even things up a bit (they were already missing a player and used one of ours in each quarter, and we gave them another for the second half so that we were playing a man down), but we still scored two more goals and they only had a handful of threatening moments against us.

The boys are very squirrelly in practice, but apparently something is getting through. They scored well because they played well, for the most part. They will come crashing back to earth at some point, but for today, they got a taste of what happens when they follow their coaching to distribute the ball around and play hard.

Who Is That Old Guy In The Mirror?

2011-09-14T08:40:00.000-07:00

Being the parent of an elementary school student and a high school student creates unexpected fissures in your sense of self. At the gradeschool back to school night last week, I looked around the room at all the young, attractive, fit parents and thought with satisfaction, ah, these are my peers.

At the high school back to school night we attended last night, I looked around at all the old, tired, weary people filling the room and thought, this can't be right -- these are my peers?

The Forgotten Sport Resumes

2011-09-12T08:51:00.000-07:00

In my childhood, and in the first part of my own children's childhoods, soccer was the only youth sport of note in the household. Soccer has always been an integral element of the fall frenzy, a seasonal houseguest with a standing invitation.

Then the kids got older, and we found ourselves in a community with many more sporting options. That, and the implication of public shunning if your children do not compete in at least three sports or the course of the year, two of which must be played simultaneously, led us to a multitude of new sporting arenas. Basketball, baseball, volleyball and swimming quickly took over our youth sporting lives. We have all had great fun, made many friends, and experienced many new highs and lows with these sports.

The one constant over the years, though, was soccer. The local program is not as far-reaching as the AYSO of our early years, nor is it as intensely competitive or time-consuming as the local club systems. It provides the essential opportunity, however, for hundreds of kids to stay connected with a game that is as much a part of the lexicon of childhood these days as the Nintendo DS and SpongeBob SquarePants. Personally, there is a comfort to returning to the soccer fields every fall, a settling and resetting of the psyche in line with the new school year.

Sadly, Kelly no longer plays. If AYSO had managed to secure a beachhead in our community, she would. Her last coach – my baseball co-coach – attempted to bring AYSO to town last year to supplement the local organization's program, which essentially ends at eight grade. Although many saw the wisdom of giving our kids access to AYSO's established program, which would give older kids an opportunity to play regular season games as well as in post-season tournaments, the entrenched powers-that-be in the local organization would not hear of it. That may change sometime in the future, but too late to prolong Kelly's career. Instead, she gets to be a (reluctant) spectator like the rest of us at Michael's games.

When Michael's coach first contacted us, we did not recognize any of the names on the e-mail list. In contrast to the other soccer teams he has been on over the last three years, when nearly everyone on his teams was a classmate, all but three of the kids on this year's team go to one of the other elementary schools in town. After the first practice, his reviews were not good. He was not impressed by the skill level or attention span of his teammates. I had to remind him that he was the big fourth-grader now, on the team with a number of third graders. Last year he had the luxury of being a third grader on a team with a couple of dominant fourth-graders; now he has to be the player the others look to.

At the first game this Saturday, things went as expected, unfortunately. Against a team full of Michael's friends, we were down 4-0 by halftime. Michael was playing a center forward position, but hardly had any opportunities to do anything with the ball, as most of the gameplay was in front of our own goal.

Michael facing off against his friend Nick.
To start the second half, we made a couple of small adjustments to the lineup. Within a couple of minutes, one of Michael's teammates got him the ball in the opponent's side of the field. Michael took the breakaway and slotted a strong shot between the goalie and the near post. Thirty seconds later, he did it again. A few minutes later, he had another breakaway opportunity. He put good moves on the two defenders, then scored on a cross-goal shot as the goalie came out to take away any near-post opportunities. In the span of a few minutes, what had seemed to be the harbinger of a very long season became an energetic, fiercely contested game. Our defenders suddenly figured out how to play with energy and the other team lost its swagger. The game was still played mostly on our end of the field, but it became an entertaining game to watch rather than the beat down it had been in the first half. One of the other parents even came over to Michael before the fourth quarter to thank him for making the game fun and interesting again.

On the way to a breakaway goal.
We spend much time shaving seconds off of lap times in the pool, tweaking batting stances and honing free-throw form, but without any fanfare, Michael dropped right back in the soccer with a hat trick in the first game. The team still lost, and has a long way to go to figure out how to play good soccer as a team (including Michael; he is a great finisher, but needs to figure out how to be part of the overall flow of the game). Fortunately, the team also knows that it has at least one solid offensive weapon. With any luck, the goals will still come, but in support of at least a few wins.

Bright(ened) Eyes

2011-09-08T21:19:00.000-07:00

Three day weekends at home generally mean projects around the house. In the past, many rooms have received fresh coats of paint. Running short of compelling home improvement ideas lately, I have found myself taking care of little projects with the cars that are not crucial, but scratch certain itches that are peculiar to me.

On Memorial Day, I polished the exhaust tips on my car:

Yeah, they will be dirty again in a day. What's your point?
Over Labor Day, I finally tackled the plastic headlight covers on the family car, which had begun to develop the cataracts common to so many cars these days (now that glass headlights are rare):

Before. Click to enlarge to see how bad they were.
I had previously tried a fix that used only a polish and a drill-mounted soft buffer, which did absolutely nothing. Stay away from that snakeoil. This time I went with the big guns, a wet-sanding process that I hoped would clear the lenses and not ruin them under my inexperienced hand. The technique involves using the drill to sand with 500 grit paper, then 800 grit paper, then a wet foam pad, and finally a sponge with a rubbing compound.

After sanding. I sure hope this is going to work.
It is counterintuitive to induce clarity by adding scratches, but for the most part, it works as advertised:

After. Sparkly.
The lenses are not as good as new and never will be, but they are far better than they were before. Mission accomplished.

The Boys Of Summer, Anytime

2011-09-03T08:21:00.000-07:00

Yes!

Just in time for the pennant races. This will really be nice to have in January when the season is still two months away and we're tired of basketball, hockey and football. Baseball will always be the sport of summer. A breath of the green warmth of summer will be most welcome in the frosty depths of winter.

Better Living Through Gluttony

2011-08-30T11:41:00.000-07:00

According to some people in white lab coats, eating chocolate can reduce the risk of heart disease by as much as 33% or more. The research boffins are from Cambridge, so they must be right.

Another study by people who probably spent too much time indoors in college has found that drinking up to a bottle of wine a day reduces the risk of heart disease by as much as 50%.

Fantastic! All I need now is for the next study to confirm that consumption of filet mignon on a regular basis will take care of the remaining 20% of risk of heart disease, and my life will be complete.

I might eventually tip the scales at 300 pounds, but by golly, my heart will be disease-free.

Eventful Beginnings

2011-08-25T16:03:00.000-07:00

After weeks of intense anticipation, the school year started vigorously.

Michael got the fourth-grade teacher he was hoping for. Several of his best friends are also the class. Equally important, most of the problem children of his grade are not in his class. As he describes it, the people in his class are "all friends." He had been looking forward to school starting, and the first day did not disappoint.

Ready For 4th Grade, Freshman Year
The focus this year has been on Kelly as she starts her journey through high school. The adventure began in early July when she began taking herself to school on her bike three times a week for open gym volleyball sessions. Two weekends ago, she attended two six-hour days of training camp. A week ago, we went to the campus for Cougar Day for the yearbook picture and to pick up her schedule, and came back in the evening for a physical for the athletics program. Thankfully, she got all the classes she signed up for, alleviating one worry that had nagged all summer. Last Friday, tryouts for the freshman volleyball team began, and continued each weeknight through last night, the first day of school.

Kelly's first day of school went well, with no problems being lost on campus or getting stuffed into garbage cans by upperclassman. She came home with geometry homework, an assignment to read and analyze the first chapter of “The Old Man and the Sea,” and to write a Spanish essay. She also had her fourth evening of volleyball tryouts. At the end of the evening, the coaches advised that they would post on the team website the names of the players asked to return for the final tryout session on Thursday – the first cut.

Unfortunately, she did not survive that first cut. Over the course of the summer, she improved her skills significantly. However, in a volleyball-mad town, at the high school that won the state championship last year, the competition for roster spots is fierce. Ultimately, there is not much she could do about being 5’1”, playing against girls who almost universally played for club teams. There was not a single player in the gym, Kelly included, who was anything less than a good volleyball player. In the end, there were simply too many who were better than she was.

When the list was finally posted and her name was not on it, Kelly received the news with a smile and a shrug of the shoulders, saying, "really? Darn." She admitted that as the tryouts went on, she found her desire to make the team growing. However, she treated the disappointing news with grace and good cheer. I think she knew, better than we did, the high level of competition she faced. She took the news well, without outrage or surprise. She accepted the finality of the decision far better than we did.

I struggle with the knowledge that her athletic career is over, in all likelihood, without ever having had the opportunity to compete for her high school. She developed such a strong connect with volleyball in such a short time, it is disorienting to have it all go away so suddenly, even as her skills continue to increase and her knowledge of the game grows. The recreational league is not available for kids in high school, and the club teams require a greater commitment of time than she, wisely, is willing to give (and the logistics of any club team would be impossible for us anyway). In the end, there were too many other girls better than she was. That is the nature of competition; sometimes, you don't win, not because you were cheated, but because you weren't the best. Wisdom dictates that you accept defeat gracefully and grow from it. Kelly, apparently, is extraordinarily wise.

There is a slight possibility that she will try out for the school soccer team, competing against legions of girls who have played for club teams for years, and she might give volleyball another go next summer. The chances of making the those teams, she knows, are slim, but she might do it anyway just to get it all out of her system.

For now, though, she will just have to fall back on schoolwork. That is not bad option. After going through three years of middle school without a grade lower than an A, the classroom is a place of pride and accomplishment for her. After the first day of high school that she just had, it is also hard to imagine that anything to come over the next four years will be able to throw her off her stride.

This Day In History

2011-08-15T10:57:00.001-07:00

1965: The Beatles perform at Shea Stadium.
1969: Woodstock music festival begins.
1993: Two otherwise sensible people get married at the tender ages of 22 and 23, doing what the modern world said that we need not or should not do.

Eighteen years later, the marriage endures happily, with much less screaming, hearing loss, mud or drug use (non-prescription, anyway) than the other two events.

Spring Sports In Review: Volleyball

2011-08-05T15:37:00.000-07:00

Kelly's career in recreational league volleyball came to an end in early June. Her team ended up playing very well over the course of the season, losing only one match (unfortunately, it happened on a weekend when grandparents were visiting). The coaches were enthusiastic, but knew nothing about volleyball. They were lucky to have several good athletes on the team, but the gameplay was rarely high art. Nevertheless, the girls dispatched nearly every appointment on their way into the playoff tournament.

Unfortunately, they lost in the first round of the playoffs, and under the odd structure of the tournament, they could not play themselves back into the championship game. They lost to the team that they shared their practice gym with and scrimmaged frequently. Until the playoff game, our girls had never lost to them. For the playoff game, though, the coach's daughters who played club volleyball, who seldom appeared at that team's practices or regular-season games, showed up ready to play and dominate. Our girls eventually won their next playoff game before losing their last game.

On the whole, Kelly had a great season. As an eighth-grader, many of the girls were automatically deferential to her; the fact that she was among the best players on the team made them even more willing to fit their games to hers. She encouraged players to work together for sets and spikes, even though the team did not practice that at all (I attended all of the practices, and there was not a single setting drill all season). She also led the way in setting positions on the court so that players with complementary games could be next to each other (I may have had some influence of that).

One moment halfway through the season helped chart a new course for her in volleyball. After a special practice with several students and graduates of the local high school as coaches, Kelly and I "peppered" the ball back and forth as we usually did before and after practices. One of the student coaches noticed and uttered the most complimentary words to Kelly she could have said: "do you play for a club team?" Kelly didn't, of course, but was deeply flattered that she played well enough that someone thought she did. The coach then asked her where she'd be going to high school. We then got into a brief discussion about the structure of the high school's volleyball program, the freshman team, and how to make the team. The coach was enthusiastic about Kelly's play and her chances to make a roster at the high school, and encouraged her to take part in the summer "open gym" program. Both of us went home from that practice very excited and encouraged.

Kelly has followed through. Since the beginning of July, she has been attending open gym volleyball sessions at the high school three days a week, which also include an hour of conditioning work. In a major step of independence, she has used her bike to get there and back. That has led her to visit the library several times, and even go out of her way to stop at the ice cream store to buy herself a treat once. She has had the opportunity to play with very skilled volleyball players, nearly all of whom have far more experience than she does. I have not seen any of the practices, but by her description it sounds as if she is holding her own. She is critical of herself when she makes mistakes, but I know she is already a much better player than she was two months ago. Just a couple of weeks into the open gym sessions, we played a little pepper at a local park, and she was already dramatically more capable in all phases of the game.

Kelly has had very few auditions or tryouts in her life. Making the freshman team is an extremely high priority for her, which is why she has gone to the lengths she has two attend the open gym sessions. A weekend minicamp begins in a week, and then tryouts. I can feel the tension rising in her. We just have to trust that she will do her best during the tryouts, and that by her participation in the summer workouts the coaches will know how dedicated she is.

Even if she doesn't make a team, the work she put in the summer will bear fruit. The independence she has developed from riding her bike across town three times a week has been invaluable, and the necessary step out of the home as she prepares to become a high schooler.

Still, she really, really wants to make the team. Truthfully, we do too.

Spring Sports In Review: Baseball

2011-08-04T17:06:00.000-07:00

With summer half over, now seems as good a time as any to take a look back at the busy spring sports scene in our household. First up, baseball.

Coaching the team, even as an assistant coach, ended up being one of the most challenging things I have ever done. I want to say it was also one of the most rewarding, but I'm not sure I can go that far. I lost an awful lot of sleep thinking about game situations, practice methodologies, lineup strategies and the unhinged psychologies of both some of the kids and the parents. We had our challenges, as did all the teams, but I would like to believe the boys learned something about baseball and themselves over the course of the season.

Overall, our season was characterized by consistent inconsistency, punctuated by memorable triumphs. We finished with a 4-2 record against non-league opponents from Orinda, including a tense 1-0 victory in the last game of a mid-season tournament. In that game, in the top of the first extra inning in the scoreless game, an Orinda player drilled the ball deep into right field with a runner on base. Right field, of course, is the traditional home of every team's weakest player, and we were no different. Just as we saw a long weekend of baseball games about to come to a dispirited end, our right fielder stuck his glove out and made an excellent catch of a very well hit ball, ending the threat. Unfortunately, the bottom of our order was coming up. Happily, Michael, who had gotten his first hit of the season the day before, led off with a ringing single to left field. He managed to get to third on ground outs, and scored on an infield single off the bat of another of our weakest hitters. It was a memorable and thrilling win, with the players enthusiastically yelling and hugging each other.

Another high point of the season was knocking off the best team in the division, the team that went on to win the championship. They had lost their first game only the week before after starting the season with 10 straight wins. It was a close game throughout, with both teams playing well. We managed to hold a lead going into the last inning, but their big bats would not be denied. They went up by two runs in the top of the sixth, with their ace on the mound poised to shut us down. Once again, we found ourselves at the bottom of our batting order, needing two runs to extend the game and not knowing where we would find them. Fortunately, their ace pitcher was in his third inning of work. He started having trouble finding the strike zone, then had to be pulled because he had reached his pitch limit. The next pitchers couldn't find the strike zone either, allowing our two weakest hitters (who had only one hit between them by that point two thirds of the way through the season) to get on base. That got us to the top of our lineup, and they came through. A double tied the game, and a single wanted in walkoff fashion.

Another highlight of the season was winning our first playoff game against the number two team in the league. That game proved to us what we knew all along: when all of our players were focused, we could beat anybody. Our final highlight of the season came in the last inning of our last game. Our weakest player had not gotten a hit all season. He, along with only a few other players, came out to our optional practices over Memorial Day weekend, working hard on his game. We were down by a bunch of runs, needing to get something out of the bottom of our lineup yet again. We managed to get some runners on base (Michael was on third, as it happened). Thrillingly, our batter dropped down a perfect bunt, something he worked on diligently in our extra practices, earning his first hit and a critical run batted in. Even in the midst of a difficult game when some of the kids had started to tune out, seeing them go bananas for their teammate’s first hit helped me appreciate them again.

What we were unprepared for was how fragile the psychology of some of these kids was. Some days, some of them just could not get it together mentally, leaving us with gaping holes in our lineup, our pitching mound and on defense. When our best overall player was fully engaged, he was unhittable as a pitcher, unstoppable at the plate and on the base class, and flawless in the field. He proved the point at a late-season all-star tournament, where he was the undisputed star of the team, batting around .900 for the weekend. Yet there were some days when his head was not in the game and his performance fell off substantially.

In the end, we played about .500 ball overall (albeit our in-league record was not as strong). We learned that the mental makeup of a player is far more important at that age than we would have guessed, and not just in terms of discipline. Desire and intensity turned out to be extremely important, and surprisingly lacking or inconsistent with some of the players. What wore me out by the end of the season was a sense that, with many of the boys, I felt that as coaches we were constantly pulling them along toward a goal that we constantly had to point out to them, rather than riding alongside with them, guiding and molding their enthusiasm in pursuit of that goal that they grasped and sought on their own. There were some issues with a couple of parents as well which dimmed our joy to some degree, but for the most part our parents were enthusiastic and thankful for our efforts.

I never had to worry about Michael's enthusiasm or focus. He was the model nine-year-old player. He worked hard, always wanted to improve, struggled at the beginning of the season but finally figured some things out toward the end. He did not collect his first hit until the mid-season tournament, but by the end of the season was our team’s median player for hits – five players had more, five had fewer. He had a number of opportunities to pitch, where he performed relatively well, particularly considering his age and size. On the whole, it was a good year of development for him. By the end of the season, we started having him practice at shortstop, anticipating that he will be expected to play that key position at some point next season.

It looks unlikely that I will coach again next year, mainly because my co-coach’s son is not likely to play and he probably will not coach as a result. I will be quite satisfied to return to the sidelines, offering support when needed but willing to leave the sleepless nights to others.

Before the season began, when Michael first found out I would be his coach, he said he was so happy, it didn't matter how our team would do: "we are going to have fun!" In the end, he was exactly right. It did not matter that our team did not go undefeated, did not win the league championship, and lost (slightly) more games than we won. We had our triumphs along the way, we won some big games in memorable ways, and we learned a lot about the sport we love. In the end, as I reminded myself many times throughout the season, we had the opportunity to go out and play baseball together three or four times a week. What is not to love about that?

Hot Enough For Ya?

2011-07-25T15:41:00.000-07:00

While the Bay Area continues to enjoy relatively mild temperatures this summer, much of the rest of the country has faced oppressively hot conditions for weeks. How hot? Hotter than you think. From the AP:

"Northeast Braces For Temps Near Boiling Point."

The headline is not misprint; they really mean it: "The extreme heat that's been roasting the eastern U.S. is only expected to get worse, and residents are bracing themselves for temperatures near and above boiling point... Washington, D.C.'s 103 degrees may seem the same as a melting 116 degrees."

In other news, the AP has modified its hiring practices to require its writers to demonstrate a grasp of the differences between the Celsius and Farenheit scales. Applicants may be granted a waiver of this requirement if they can demonstrate proof of possessing at least a fourth-grader's understanding of the boiling temperature of water (or any other liquid they care to discuss).

Last Flight

2011-07-08T08:11:00.000-07:00

The Space Shuttle will launch for the last time in a few moments (11:26 am EDT). I got up early to watch the first shuttle launch on TV. Thirty years later, I'm sitting in my office, mid-career, watching the last launch on my computer screen.

The shuttle was more expensive and cumbersome to operate than was promised. But it was always a magnificant machine. Here's hoping that sometime in the future we will get back to designing, building and using machines that are even more extraordinary and inspiring.

Ask A Pilot

2011-06-14T16:14:00.000-07:00

I love airplanes. I generally enjoy air travel, and as a kid entertained the notion of becoming a pilot. Of course, becoming a pilot requires a lot of time, effort and money, none of which I cared to part with when it was so much easier to just go off to college like all my friends, so I never pursued flight as a vocation. I remain fascinated by aviation, however.

I recently stumbled across a very interesting discussion thread in the most unlikely of places. A Delta pilot, who happens to be a gambling enthusiast, started an "ask my about being a pilot or flight in general" thread in the off-topic section of a gambling website. He started the thread a year and a half ago, and is still contributing to it. His online persona is exactly what you would hope for from a pilot of a major airline: knowledgeable, methodical and thorough, with a sense of humor and good cheer.

The discussion thread now numbers over 3600 separate posts. I'm not sure what it says about society, but the first questions all seemed to focus on the salacious: how, and how often, do flight attendants ... attend ... to the flight crew, and so on. However, once the frat boys in the audience got that out of their system, the thread settled into a wide ranging exploration of piloting techniques and practices, aerodynamics, airline industry protocols, and analyses of specific air disasters. (It was a post on another internet forum discussing the Air France 447 crash that alerted me to this one.) The feedback the pilot received from his thread was so positive, he was invited to start a blog with the Smithsonian's Air & Space online magazine. Several readers have also gone on to take private flight lessons as a result of the enthusiasm generated by the pilot's discussion.

If you have even a passing interest in aviation (and can slog through the sophomoric early questions about stewardesses), the discussion is an incredibly interesting and comprehensive peek into the world of pilots and flight.

Summertime Tour

2011-06-14T08:35:00.000-07:00

As of this moment, Kelly is here:

She is on a trip to Philadelphia and Washington DC (via a connection through Atlanta) with a gaggle of her recently-graduated classmates. This is a trip the school has been making for many years. Coming on the heels of a year spent studying American history, it should be a prime opportunity to make that history come alive. Their schedule over the next six days is packed with visits to all of the historically significant points of interest in Philly and DC.

I delivered her to the school parking lot at 3:15 this morning. A couple of the kids were running late, but most were there ready to board the charter bus to the airport. The four girls on the trip took a row of seats near the front of the bus; the twenty or so boys all piled into the back. Just when you think they are growing up a little, they let you know that they are still kids.

Kelly is not close friends with anyone on the trip, so she was a little apprehensive about the whole thing, but we know (and she does, too) that it will be an experience well worth having. Our kids will link up with students from other schools for the tour activities, so there will be opportunities to meet people from all over the country.

In the meantime, I'll spend my time watching flight trackers whenever Kelly is in transit.

Overprotective parent update (10:30 am PDT):

Kelly's flight has now landed in Atlanta. The flight from Atlanta to Philadelphia will depart in about 90 minutes. I don't envy the two chaperones (teachers at the school) who must herd their young charges to the right locations at the correct times for the next several days.

Paranoid parent update (3:15 pm PDT):

Our intrepid Moragan youths are learning the harsh realities of air travel. They ended up stuck in Delta's Atlanta hub for three extra hours. They are now boarded on the flight to Philadelphia, due to arrive around 8:30 pm local time rather than 5:30 pm. Kelly called home during the delay; it sounds like all is well. By the time they arrive in Philly, their west coast stomachs will be crying out for dinner, so I hope they can work a late dinner into the schedule. It will be nonstop action for the next few days, once they eventually get to the City of Brotherly Love.

Endings, And Beginnings

2011-06-08T09:55:00.000-07:00

This spring has differed little from recent prior springtimes in form. The weight, the sheer mass of the season, however, overwhelmed those that came before. Work was busier. Coaching baseball exacted a substantial cost in time spent on the field, awake at night, and, during most other waking moments, in puzzled contemplation of the psychology of 10-year-old boys and their parents. The pastor of the church we attend retired after 29 years of ministry, in the same season that I added the challenge of playing guitar to the singing I was already doing during the services. Volleyball kept up its familiar twice-weekly pace. Cheryl's tutoring business turned into a 10 hour per week (afternoons only) job. Over at all, the skies cast the gray pall, raining throughout Memorial Day weekend and the first weekend of June.

The baseball and volleyball seasons have now ended (more on those to come in other posts), and swim season has begun. The school year ends this week, and with it the departure of most, but not all, of the tutoring clients. The ponderous sense of finality that has loomed over this season comes from one of those endings. Kelly graduates from middle school tomorrow.

She will be leaving the only school she has known in this town. I feel the evening before her first day of sixth grade on my fingertips, when she and I walked around the unfamiliar campus charting out her route from class to class, a new habit at a new school. Even though she quickly learned the layout of the school and the location of all of the classrooms, we repeated that reconnaissance every year the night before school began, just the two of us. I would share knowing smiles with the other parents wandering around the school grounds doing the same thing. We were easing our own fears for our kids as they stepped out further away from us under the guise of helping them quell their anxieties about finding their way around the school.

And now that is over. The next scouting trip we take will be at the high school, where parental guideance will be even more conspicuous and awkward than before. Kelly is looking forward to the next level already, though. She has been drawn in to the volleyball program, which will hold thrice-weekly practices throughout the summer in preparation for an August minicamp and tryouts. She is eager to challenge herself against better players, and in tougher classes.

Kelly did fantastically well in middle school. She was a straight-A student, a video star, a two-year volleyball player, and a valuable aide to several teachers and administrators. We could not be more proud of her. When her name is called tomorrow night at the graduation ceremony at St. Mary's College, it will mark time well spent and accomplishments well-earned. We hope for the same for her as she starts high school in a couple of months.

It breaks my heart that she has to keep growing up, out and away from us to do it.

Dateline: Moraga

2011-05-24T12:10:00.001-07:00

My new sideline career as a ~~griping busybody~~ stringer for the local virtual newspaper has dawned. In this fine piece of investigative journalism, I help expose the seamy underbelly of our fair community, where people (presumably rogues from other towns, of course) engage in roadside trash dumping.

It doesn't paint our community in a particularly flattering light. But we hardened, veteran jounalists know that although the news - yea, the truth - is seldom pretty, we will not shy away from our solemn duty to lay bare the soiled fabric of our society, that it may be washed clean in the light of day and the firm conviction of our citizens.

Cue "It's A Grand Old Flag" ...

The Professor on TV

2011-05-12T12:55:00.000-07:00

My college roomate, the erstwhile Professor, left academia recently to return to government work in his field of human factors analysis, with a particular emphasis on driver distraction. This is a big deal these days, what with the proliferation of cell phones and GPS devices. California has passed a law banning the use of cell phones without hands-free capabilities while driving, and our local police made a concerted effort last month to crack down on texting-while-driving.

The CBS national news caught up with the Professor (the dapper fellow sending texts to the correspondent driving the simulator) and his team to report on their analysis of the effect of texting on a driver's capabilities behind the wheel. (Alternate video feed here.) We will continue to hear about more studies of this nature. Much of the data that will be cited in future discussions about driver distraction issues is likely to come straight out of the Professor's labs.

By The Light Of The Moon

2011-04-16T23:09:00.000-07:00

Took a couple of interesting pictures today. One of the northern tip of the Upper San Leandro Reservoir:

Another of my car:

Fun fact: both pictures were taken about three hours after sunset, under a nearly full moon. By playing with shutter speeds, apertures and "film" speed, I was able to take some curious photos. Having now seen them on the computer, I have some ideas about how to make them better. The basic exercise, however, reveals how the light the camera takes in from the moon is a little different than the way we see things by the light of the sun. The colors are just a little different somehow. (That's an airplane outbound from San Francisco streaking over the hills behind the car.)

I even received a friendly visit from our local constabulatory (and his megawatt spotlight); I resisted the urge to rebuke the policeman for ruining my shot with his lights. He was satisfied that I was out after dark in an unlit hiking trail staging area to engage in legal, if odd, pursuits.

The Rollicking Skies

2011-04-11T14:48:00.000-07:00

The sturdiness of airliners is in the news these days, what with a Southwest 737 recently shedding a few pounds of fuselage over Arizona. In a related way, I imagine the same unpleasant thought comes to most travelers' minds when their aircraft shudders through turbulent air: how much can a big airliner take before it, you know, can't take any more?

Consider this video from Boeing, showing some of their flight testing for the new 747-800. They subject the airframe to repeated positive 2.5 G loads and negative 1 G loads, a true roller coaster far beyond what most airline passengers will ever experience.

I used to think being a flight engineer or pilot for Boeing would be an incredibly great job. The prospect of five hour flights of endless high-G loads in a windowless cabin, though, is enough to satisfy me that I made a reasonable career choice to sit in front of a computer monitor that is not trying to escape to the ceiling only to clout me over the head a moment later.

At least we can be reasonably sure that the air sickness bags are flight-tested.

City By The Bay

2011-04-08T11:19:00.000-07:00

San Francisco is one of the world's great cities in many ways, not the least of which is its beauty (when it is not enshrouded in fog). Living nearby, we have the frequent opportunity to capture more-interesting-than-average snapshot portraits simply because the City provides such an interesting backdrop. To wit:

With apologies to portrait photographers I may know, that beats "brown muslin #1" out the door and down the street.

Happy Birthday, Kelly!

2011-04-08T11:14:00.001-07:00

After 14 years, she continues to charm, amaze and make me proud to be her dad.

14 is a great age. Solidly into the teen years, you rule the school as an eighth grader, with summer just around the bend.

And then you become a freshman in high school and are immediately shown that at 14 you're still just a kid. Oh well. Enjoy a couple of months at the mountaintop!

Another Rite of Passage, Take II

2011-04-07T09:17:00.000-07:00

It was only a matter of time. When Michael was little more than a toddler, we were told that he would have major issues with his teeth coming in crooked. An extra incisor was a major part of the problem. The extra tooth (which turned out to be two co-joined teeth) was extracted last fall. Now, the inevitable corrective measures have begun:

With both kids now in braces, that means one happy development for sure: I don't have to share my popcorn anymore.

Return of the Champs

2011-03-29T22:24:00.000-07:00

Thanks to a Christmas gift from Cheryl, we went to the Giants' first game in San Francisco since the World Series (which, in case you had not heard, the Giants won). It was a spring training game against the A's, but that didn't stop a crowd of 38,000 people from coming out to the park on the first day of good weather the region had seen in about a month.

I had wanted to be at the first game back, and it was worth it. We made an outing of it, cooking hot dogs and wrapping them in foil for the trip to the park, hauling in peanuts and Crackerjacks for the game itself. The Giants played well and won the game, but the most gratifying part was what we heard in the game reports in print and on the radio the next day. The story of the game was the crowd. The players and broadcasters marveled at the size of the crowd and how enthusiastic we all were. The stadium, with the pent up energy born of a winter's afterglow of the championship, had the energy of a game from a late season pennant race, with raucous cheers for every 2010 hero (Rookie of the Year Buster Posey, whose jersey Michael was wearing, getting the loudest ovations). Not bad for a preseason game that didn't count.

Savinging Us All From The Tyranny Of Hyphenation

2011-03-23T09:28:00.001-07:00

The AP Stylebook has announced that henceforth it will refer to electronic messages as "emails," not "e-mails." This comes on the heels of the Chicago Manual of Style excising the second space after a period at the end of a sentence, saving typists everywhere entire milliseconds over the course of their lifetimes.

In a tight economy, any savings is good savings. The thought of the energy saved by eliminating those pixel-hog hyphens makes me giddy.

Game Day

2011-03-15T21:29:00.000-07:00

Saturday was one of the sports-intensive days we get every once in a while. We were on the go from 8:30 in the morning until after 4 in the afternoon, with about a total of an hour at home over the course of the day.

Because of a rainout the prior weekend, Michael's first baseball game was up first.

We were up against what most people consider to the be the best team in the league, featuring the two best players. The top player could easily play (and dominate) in the next division up. Our Cubs lost, but we played reasonably well. Michael played second base with distinction, making three critical putouts.

He worked a walk in his first at bat.

He stole second, but was stranded there.

He took three great cuts to finish the game against that great player. He struck out, but did so with style.

Next up was Kelly's first volleyball game of the season. Her team is "Penn State" again, as it was last season. Oddly, all but one of the other players are from Lafayette, so she does not really know anybody on the team. She showed off her skills, though, saving the team repeatedly with tough digs and strong serving.

It was clear in the first game that the other players are comfortable deferring to her, the first time she has been in that position in volleyball. She seems to be okay with it. Whatever works; her team won easily.

We finished the afternoon with Michael's last indoor soccer game. This was a more casual league, with a team hand-picked by Michael's soccer coaches from the fall. He missed a few games due to illness or conflicts, but had a fair amount of success, scoring four goals in the five games he played.

Our group of suburban kids always played visiting club teams from more urban areas, but we held our own, finishing with a record around .500. We discovered indoor soccer to be a very fast-paced, intense sport that taught Michael some additional skills.

We are now settled into the routine of baseball and volleyball for the spring.

Until swimming preseason starts in three weeks.

A Bad Day In Japan

2011-03-11T11:05:00.000-08:00

This image, from the US Geological Society's earthquake reporter, shows how active the ground has been off the coast of Japan over the last day:

The boxes that are the most numerous indicate aftershocks in excess of 5.0 on the Richter scale (red means within the last hour; blue means within the last day; yellow - a few of them peek through the mass of blue boxes - means within the last week). A 5+ shaker is quite a jolt if it is nearby; the sheer number of aftershocks of that size or greater is staggering. It is of small comfort that nearly all are away from land, since the tsunami danger has proven to be very real.

So It Begins

2011-03-11T08:44:00.000-08:00

We met with the student counselor yesterday at the high school Kelly will attend in the fall. Or, rather, Kelly met with her counselor, and we were allowed to be in the room. With great intentionality, the counselor directed Kelly to the prime visitor's chair, and pointed out to us where we could find additional chairs. Her discussion of Kelly's proposed schedule was a conversation between her and Kelly. At the end of the discussion, she asked if Kelly had any questions. After that, she turned to us to see if we had any questions. We did, and she answered every question we asked.

The whole exercise is designed to indicate to students that they have a right, privilege and responsibility to begin taking control of their own lives. The message is aimed more specifically at the parents, however. For some kids and their parents, that transition has already begun. For others, and I would have to put us in that category, a parents are still heavily involved in the child's life, an arrangement that suits of the parents and the child. From the very first meeting, then, the school sets a new course for the parent-child relationship, at least as it pertains to school.

The experience was not as off-putting as it may sound. I spent most of the meeting being amused by the counselor's kind but firm focus on Kelly and away from us. Message sent and received.

I don't take it personally; I know the high school still loves us. They will prove it every time we get an athletic boosters/drama boosters/choir boosters/textbook fund/PTA fundraiser letter.

An Open Letter

2011-03-03T14:47:00.000-08:00

To the person in front of me on the narrow two lane country road near home driving seven miles per hour below the posted speed limit:

You know you are doing it. If you have looked in any one of your three rear-view mirrors in the last 10 minutes, you know I know you are doing it, since I am close enough to dust off your rear license plate. Let's not kid ourselves. The only reason you have not pulled over into one of the three dozen wide spots on the shoulder is because you intend to annoy me. Know this: I am not so reckless as to put myself or anyone else at risk by crossing the double yellow line to blast past you in a cloud of dust and blatting exhaust. I will not give you that satisfaction. I will not give you the opportunity to wave your arm in self-righteous frustration at me as I accelerate all the way up to the speed limit to pass you, allowing you to then lapse back into your vehicular torpor. I will make you acknowledge the intentionality of your rolling roadblock by living in your trunk every millimeter of this road, to force you to contemplate your utter failure as a driver.

And to the bicyclists traveling in a pack on the same narrow country two lane road:

Your all-too-clingy spandex fools no one. You are a rolling advertisement for companies that suckered you into wearing their bright colored garb without even paying you. You are dangerous. You are not a Tour de France competitor on a training ride -- riding three abreast does not mean you are in the peloton, it means you poseur and a moron. You and your "teammates" take up an entire lane of the road on which people with actual jobs are commuting, a road with blind hills and curves. You force cars in both directions to slam on their brakes to avoid hitting each other while at the same time trying to avoid hitting you. And for the record, I do not deserve your glare as I have to pass you in the opposite lane after waiting for all other traffic to clear your aerobic road-clot. I deserve your thanks for exercising enough car control and patience to keep both of us on the road and out of physical contact with each other or any of the other cars passing by.

Running late for baseball practice dramatically lowers the temperature at which my blood boils, it appears.

The Cruelest Season

2011-02-28T20:25:00.000-08:00

All week, the media were abuzz with the thrilling news that the Bay Area would see snowfall by Friday night. Even San Francisco residents expected to see a dusting of snow, setting off a flurry of homages to those rare snowy days of yore.

As expected, the Arctic system brought heavy rain and cold temperatures to the area for the week. Friday was to be cold, with the snow to fall that night. The rain arrived, the cold descended.

And then, nothing.

Friday night, temperatures dropped below freezing, but under crystal clear skies, each twinkling star a mocking beacon of non-precipitation. We awoke Saturday to a winter wonderland of temperatures in the twenties, sparkling frost everywhere, and the clearest of clear skies. Sunday was more of the same. Frosty morning and glorious sunshine.

The final indignity is that everyone we know in Burbank was raving about the historically rare and exciting snow they got. Our snow. What did we get? Gloriously sunny skies, perfect for baseball games and spring gardening.

Life is so unfair.

Distant Early Warning

2011-02-25T07:20:00.000-08:00

A Silicon Valley startup (of course) has come up with an earthquake warning system. The device detects the "P" waves that humans cannot sense and sends out a warning, giving people a brief amount of time (less than a minute) to find cover before the slower-moving but destructive "S" waves hit. The amount of warning depends on the distance between the device and the epicenter. The system can be set up to automatically shut off utilities, send warnings to schools and turn on hospital generators. In view of the scenes of destruction and loss coming out of New Zealand this week, any amount of warning would be welcome.

There is no truth to the rumor that the device looks like this:

Time To Start Shopping For Scholarships

2011-02-24T08:24:00.000-08:00

I am soon to be the parent of a high school student. If I seem distracted from time to time, if I occasionally sleep poorly, this graph may be part of the reason why:

These Are The Days We'll Remember

2011-02-14T11:05:00.000-08:00

Our annual February heatwave hit its climax this weekend. Even though Saturday dawned below freezing, by midafternoon we basked in 70° weather under clear blue skies. We made the most of it.

Saturday started early with Michael's last basketball game for the season. We were up against a team that had annihilated us in the first game and which had gone on to an undefeated season. Our boys played extremely tough, keeping them from scoring through most of the first quarter. The other team played a difficult pressing defense, and we did not get the opportunity to run very many of our offenseive set plays, but we hung tough. We also made six free throws at halftime to pull within two points. The other team opened up a lead in the third quarter when we were unable to score and they got a few easy fast-break opportunities. We tightened up our play in the fourth quarter, though. Only a bad shooting day, affected in part by the other team’s tight defense, kept us from putting a real scare into the opponent. Nevertheless, we held them to fewer points and we scored more points than in the first game. More significantly, we played substantially better basketball throughout the game than we did in the first game. We played tight defense, we rebounded the ball, we had fewer turnovers, we made more than half of our free throws overall, we managed to run a few of our set plays late in the game, and I never sensed that the referees were calling the game unevenly to hold the other team in check or give us a boost up.

Michael was not feeling well the morning of the game, but gave his usual dogged effort at point guard and shooting guard. Other than a halftime free-throw, he did not score, unfortunately, but he had a positive effect on the game. He handled the other team's press well, consistently making long, accurate passes to the teammate left open by the double-team press. I have a fun photo sequence of Michael bringing the ball down the court after a steal in which he changes direction to throw off two of his three pursuers, eventually ending up surrounded by all five members of the other team. In one of the more remarkable sequences of the year, Michael was stripped of the ball while on offense, chased down the player with the ball in the opposite corner of the court deep in our defensive end, cleanly stole the ball back, and threw an outlet pass most of the length of the court to a teammate for a fast-break that led to a foul and two free throws. Great stuff.

Looking for the open man
Moving without the ball on a double screen
As parents, we were uniformly delighted with the excellent coaching our boys received and the success they showed on the court. I think nearly all of the boys came away from the season enjoying basketball far more than they did when the season started.

After basketball, Michael and I spent the quickly-warming early afternoon at baseball practice. Few sporting activities are as pleasant as two hours in the sunshine on a baseball field. It's not like you have to exert yourself much, you know.

Picture day two weeks ago
Weekday practice earlier this week
After bringing Michael home, I changed out of my baseball gear and took Kelly to a local park to prepare her for her volleyball league evaluation. We spent nearly two hours in a beautiful park enjoying each other's company and working out the kinks of a three-month volleyball layoff. Kelly's skills came back quickly as she hit serve after serve over the net in the sand volleyball court framed by redwood trees.

Taking a break from working out
On Sunday, Kelly's evaluation went very well, as she displayed excellent skills in all phases of the game. I then put my baseball gear back on and Michael and I headed out for another two hours of baseball practice.

My throwing shoulder is sore, and I wasn't quite able to finish pruning one of our trees in between all of the activities. Years from now, though, that's not what I will remember.

Apple, Making Friends As Usual

2011-01-21T11:43:00.000-08:00

The genius of Apple's rise over the last decade has been its success in putting good technology (or even industry-changing, in the case of the iPhone) into unique, innovate boxes. The iMac line has always been interesting from a form-factor standpoint, from its colorful one-box hues, to the attractively spare desk-lamp model, to the current flatscreen design. The iPod and iPhone have also paved new ground for the design of the devices in their respective sectors.

A fundamental tenet of Apple's design philosophy, however, harkens back to Henry Ford. The old joke about the Model T was that you could get it in any colored you liked, as long as it was black. With Apple, you get everything you want in style and substance, as long as that is all you will ever want. The days of popping open the box to swap out memory chips, sound cards and hard drives ended when Apple began its iMac design aesthetic. Apple products are intentionally difficult to open and service, and replacement parts are not available in abundance. I have opened both my iMac and iPhone, but neither one was a particularly fun experience.

Now it turns out that Apple is turning the screws on shade tree mechanics even harder, as it were. New iPhones, or iPhones that are currently being serviced by Apple, are now assembled with screws that cannot be turned by consumers. Apple uses a screwhead design called a Pentalobe, for which there is no corresponding tool commercially available. iPhone owners will be unable to open their phones for any reason, whether to engage in mischief like changing the battery (horrors!) or to fix it.

It's about time to crack open my iPhone again to clear out the dust under the screen and devise a permanent solution to that problem. If the iPhone 4 were to collect dust under the screen the way my 3G does, and I were prevented from opening it to do the simple screen cleaning just because Apple doesn't want anyone else controlling the income stream for service, I would be mightily ticked.

Put Me In, Coach

2011-01-10T07:21:00.000-08:00

After helping out with Kelly and Michael's soccer teams for a collective 12 years or so, and after playing the sport myself for six years as a kid, it makes perfect sense that my first foray into the official coaching ranks is in ... baseball, a sport I never played. Not only that, I managed to allow myself to be roped into coaching in the competitive baseball league. Just attending a coaches meeting a couple of weeks ago, there were a lot of sweatsuits on display. It is a congenial group, but make no mistake -- these guys are there to win.

The head coach I will be assisting was also Kelly's soccer coach from last season. We hit it off early on, I filled in for him in a couple of games, and Michael and his son became friends. He is new to town (but not the area in general) and has a way of getting to know people incredibly quickly. He responded to a call for additional coaches by asking me to coach with him. Knowing that he has coached baseball for years, after playing for years, I figured we would be in good shape on the coaching front, even though we would be at a distinct disadvantage in two ways: we don't know the kids as well as some of the other coaches (which could hurt us in the player draft), and neither of our kids are top players, which puts us immediately behind most of the other teams.

The coach is fearless and outgoing, so he already knows more people in my own social circle than I do, and is a genius at uncovering information about people. That will solve the player information problem. The player talent handicap will be partially alleviated by the way the league commissioner will set up the draft, in which the teams with the top "coaches' kids" will lose high draft picks.

Just like last year, we held a player evaluation day on Saturday, this time for the 98 kids signed up for the "Mustang" division. It was a cold, misty day that never rose much beyond 40 degrees. As we sat shivering in winter coats and gloves, the boys showed off their arms, speed, defense and hitting, as well as they could with numb hands and heavy, wet baseballs. We coaches did our best to assign quantitative assessments to each area for each player so that we can compile our draft lists. It's a little unnerving to judge players so young so starkly. For our team, we are also taking into account a variety of intangibles, including helpful or problematic parents, personality issues (our own kids get the right to request a few vetoes) and other subjective elements. My coaching partner has created a series of spreadsheets with data, adjustment factors, notes and various other proprietary elements that will ensure that we have a successful draft that will give us a championship team ...

Yeah, it's easy to get swept up in this stuff. Fortunately, most of the parents handle this reasonably. We all enjoy good games, but we also understand that we're trying to teach these boys how to play the sport and how to be good sportsmen. For his part, Michael is so happy that I will officially be his coach that he told me he doesn't care whether we win, he just knows we're going to have a great time.

Here is a highlight package of what the evaluation process looks like. (I tried but was unable to embed the video.) It helps to remember that we are still talking about little boys, even if some of them are amazingly capable at ten years old.

We picked the Cubs as our team name. Maybe taking the name of a perennially hopeful yet annually inept franchise wasn't the best idea, but our other choice was the Pirates, a laughingstock of a franchise for the last twenty years. If the characters of the professional franchises are to be imparted to ours, it has to be more satisfying to believe we have a shot and be disappointed than to know we will fail from the outset. Just to be safe, however, we will avoid any and all billy goats.

A Point To Ponder

2011-01-07T10:34:00.000-08:00

Sage wisdom I ran across on the interwebz today:

“The problem with Internet quotations is that many are not genuine.”

– Abraham Lincoln

RIP, Gerry Rafferty

2011-01-04T14:58:00.000-08:00

Gerry Rafferty is dead at 63. Along with Seals and Crofts' "Summer Breeze," little else transports me back to the 1970s more quickly than Rafferty's "Baker Street" and "Right Down the Line." Both were great songs with strong lyrics and easy-on-the-ear grooves. It can't be said that he was cut down in the prime of life, but it is always sad to hear of the passing of someone who made a mark on the popular culture, if only because it reminds us of how old we are all getting.

Now I'm in the mood for one of those "Mellow Hits of the Seventies" Time-Life infomercials.

Santa's Work Is Never Done

2011-01-02T19:48:00.000-08:00

Just because Christmas Eve is over doesn't mean there isn't some assembly required. Lots of assembly.

Sadly, You Get What You Pay For

2011-01-02T18:55:00.000-08:00

Let's hope the real NASA puts more effort into its spacecraft that the maker of our spaceship-like cargo carrier. We went the budget route, buying a non-brand-name product from Sears. It looked good, but it proved to have some shortcomings.

For one, the mounting system was an inelegant system of flat metal plates and ordinary bolts rather than quick-release brackets designed for the purpose. More critically, the cheap plastic had all the torsional strength of a vinyl record. This proved to be a significant problem on our five hour drive on Christmas day.

Everything worked well for the first stint. As expected, the carrier cost us about 3 mpg, but it carried all of our luggage plus some additional items. The tradeoff was well worth the extra gas. After lunch, though, things started to go awry. I noticed that the car was suddenly very susceptible to the strong sidewinds we were facing; oddly, our fuel economy had also dropped substantially. I took a peek through the sunroof at the front edge of the carrier. The wind had pried the front of the carrier open by a full four inches. The whole thing hadn't opened, but the lock only latched the long side of the carrier, not the front. The force of the airflow acting on the soft plastic forced the leading edge wide open. The physics of the event were startling; examining the carrier later, I couldn't pull the cover as far open as the wind had.

Realizing that we had all the aerodynamic efficiency of a barn door, and fearing that we might lose our gear, I pulled over. The carrier returned to its original shape and we were not in danger of dropping our luggage, but there was no latch on the front and no way to prevent it from reopening. We spent the rest of the trip at a somewhat more relaxed pace, more in the interest of saving gas than holding onto our stuff, since we were going through gas at about a 40% higher rate and ran the risk of needing an unprecedented second gas stop. We were just lucky that there was no rain.

Before our return trip, I devised a crude but effective solution. Taking advantage of the overlapping lip that funnels the wind between the upper and lower halves of the carrier, I added a couple of chain links (which I'll probably switch out for carabiners eventually) through the front lip to keep the carrier closed. I also put some adhesive weatherstripping inside the front part of the carrier to keep out any rain that could slip through even when the carrier is closed.

The formerly swoopy cargo carrier now looks like the bepierced nose of a bookstore clerk, but now it works as intended.

Your Transport Is Ready, Mr. Jetson

2010-12-24T16:02:00.000-08:00

We have finally joined the crowd and added a rooftop storage unit for the car, now that the dog's crate takes up half of the luggage compartment.

The thing looks like one of NASA's experimental flying wing space planes. If only our suitcases were so swoopy. It's soft-sided luggage for us from now on.

Early Season Basketball Report

2010-12-23T14:32:00.000-08:00

Michael's basketball team of runts and wallbangers compiled a 2-3 record before the Christmas break. The most recent game was both typical and fascinating. The other team, while not much more talented, jumped out to a lead early as our boys could not put the ball in the basket for the entire first quarter. They play tenacious defense and run interesting offensive plays, but they can't shoot a basketball to save their lives. By halftime, they had clawed back a little bit of the deficit, but Michael was the only one of our players to sink one of the halftime freebie free throws.

The second half was a completely different story. Most of the story, as it turns out, was written by Michael. He turned a steal into a fast-break layup, turned another steal into a fast-break pull-up bank shot jumper, and in the late stages of the fourth quarter, finally put our team ahead on a jump shot off a pass from teammate. He was fouled as he shot; the shot was a perfect swish and the foul call on top of it nearly brought the crowd to its feet. Michael knew the importance of what he had done, raising his fist in the air and grinning like any other veteran basketball player would on the receiving end of an "and one." (He has picked up the nuances of basketball astonishingly quickly.)

Sadly, that was the end of the scoring. The other team sank a basket nearly at the buzzer to send the game into overtime, and they scored a couple of buckets to put the game away. Seconds after the buzzer sounded, Michael appeared at the scorer's table where I was keeping score, crying, devastated to lose after working so hard to come back and take the lead. For his part, he had played exceptionally well, scoring seven of his team's 14 points. He became philosophical later in the day, commenting on how frustrating it was to have a great game personally and still lose as a team. Immediately after the game, most of the other boys felt the same way, initially disappointed to lose, but heartened by their comeback and near victory.

I love Michael's competitive spirit. It is not accompanied by poor sportsmanship, it is pure love of competition. Failure drives him to work harder to prevent failure in the future. We spent the next afternoon in occasional rain showers on the junior high playground shooting baskets and playing games with the basketball for more than an hour... at his request, not my direction.

I have said it before, but I become more convinced of it as time goes on. Competition, and understanding that you have to take initiative to look out for yourself because the world won't do it for you, are tremendously valuable experiences for older children. There is perhaps nothing kids need more than a sense of confidence and self-responsibility as they lurch toward adolescence. In our case, sports have provided those lessons for both kids, and very successfully so. It isn't everybody's cup of tea, but it works well for us.

What Is The Opposite Of "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer"?

2010-12-23T14:26:00.000-08:00

'Cause I just did it.

We live in suburbia, but only just. We are surrounded by beautiful open hillsides even as we live close to the densest urban complexes of the Bay Area. Wildlife of all description ranges through the local fields. Deer, in particular, are sufficiently numerous as to nearly constitute an annoyance, particularly for those who try to cultivate roses in their yards.

As in other parts of the country where deer live and breed in abundance, roadways can turn unexpectedly hazardous in a moment. A few months ago, returning home late after visiting a friend, an odd sense of foreboding washed over me as I zipped down the very familiar (and very dark) canyon road near home. At work, we had recently discussed how deer are both numerous and functionally suicidal when it comes to roadways. Not five seconds after I slowed my pace out of the sudden and unprompted concern that a deer could jump out of the brush into my path, a deer did just that. I had just enough time to slow down to allow the deer to have its "deer" moment of staring stupidly at me bearing down on him before he dashed into the brush on the other side of the road.

I wish my deer encounter stories stopped there. They would have until last night.

After spending an evening out, we were returning home on the freeway, cruising along in moderate traffic at normal freeway speeds. Without any warning, my headlights picked up the prone figure of a deer lying in our lane. The car ahead of me, an SUV with better than average ground clearance, had not swerved or even hit his brakes to give me any warning that something bad might be coming.

I had no room to maneuver out of my lane, and insufficient time to do so even if I had. All I had time to do was adjust my trajectory slightly so that I would not hit the already dead animal with my wheels, and pray that the car was big enough to clear it.

It wasn't.

The sickening thud right under where I was sitting told me all I needed to know about whether we would clear the animal unscathed. In the mirror, I could see that the collision with the deer had ripped a plastic undertray off the bottom of the car. Otherwise, though, the car seemed to be running normally, with no problems with oil or water temperature to indicate broken engine components.

We arrived home without further incident, and I inspected the undercarriage of the car. Other than losing the plastic cover, nothing appeared to be broken. On the car, that is. The deer did not fare as well, judging by the bits of fur stuck to various cross braces. Toward the back, sadly, it looked as though someone had dragged a very wide paintbrush dipped in red enamel lengthwise down the underside of the car.

At that point in my inspection, we realized that the garage smelled horrible, like... a dead animal. I immediately pulled the car back out of the garage, and the smell went away. I found myself praying for a continuation of the heavy rains we have had for the last week so that I could drive the car to work and get a free undercarriage wash along the way. Today dawned sunny and beautiful, of course.

Reflecting upon what happened, I realized there were a few lessons we could draw. It could have been far worse. We could have been the car that killed the deer, which would have inflicted tremendous damage on the car and put us at risk of injury to ourselves. (The deer was in the middle lane of five lanes on a busy freeway, which makes me wonder how it got there in the first place and what kind of chaos it caused.) We were lucky that the deer was not lying at right angles to the lane, which would have caused me or, more likely, someone before me to hit the animal in a way that would have disabled the car and caused a traffic accident. Other than losing a plastic panel, the car was not damaged, and it did not leak any fluids overnight. I kept my cool and did not take drastic evasive actions that were unnecessary and dangerous; I did what could be done reasonably within the second or so I had to react.

What I should have done, on the other hand, was to call the CHP to alert them to the problem and have them send somebody to clear the animal from the road. I engaged in the assumption that I think most of us make in this day of 99% cell phone ownership, that somebody else surely had already reported the problem, or that somebody immediately after me would do so. In the moment, I was more concerned about assessing the status of our car and giving thanks that it was no worse than trying to figure out how to contact the authorities. Later in the evening, I checked traffic condition sources, but there was no mention of the hazard. The positive I took from that was that the hazard did not create a traffic accident.

I don't think I have ever taken the life of an animal with a car, and I hope I never do. Last night's encounter was traumatic enough, not necessarily because of the gruesomeness of the event but because of the realization of how suddenly a seemingly innocuous drive can turn unexpectedly dangerous. I console myself with the knowledge that I did everything I could to minimize harm to my family and others around me; it is knowing how little I could actually do that worries me.

Non-Standard Deviation

2010-12-09T09:10:00.000-08:00

On my way to pick up Michael from his basketball practice earlier this week (because really, all I do with my time is leap from sporting event to sporting event), I came upon an unusual sight in our town: the brightly flashing lights of police cars and fire trucks. Oddly, they were just in front of our nearest fire station. It became clear that they were attending to a car accident of some sort. As I drove by the scene, I could see that the firemen were working on extracting someone from the car, which had overturned just about in the driveway of the fire station.

The story in the local virtual newspaper reported that the 83-year-old driver suffered only minor injuries, thankfully. The story also contained this curious tidbit: "Investigators said the crash was caused when the driver violated the California Vehicle Code section for deviating from the roadway without signaling."

Interesting theory, but I have a feeling that failing to signal when "deviating from the roadway," a straight and level double-lane street, was not the cause of the accident. I have a suspicion, although I must emphasize this is only a theory, that "deviating from the roadway" was the more likely cause of the crash.

But ring him up for failing to signal, too, boys. We can't have scofflaws like that in our town.

Hoops, Anyone?

2010-12-06T11:57:00.000-08:00

Until baseball restarts in February (not counting multiple clinics and camps between now and then, and the player evaluation day in early January), and indoor soccer starts sometime after the start of the new year, Michael is down to one sport: basketball.

Basketball has never been high on the list of sporting priorities for us. For one thing, it is a sport that is not well suited to young kids. It requires an amount of strength and coordination to get a ball into a 10-foot hoop that most kids younger than eight years old simply don't have. Michael's first exposure to the sport was in a low-key summer league two years ago. As it turns out, that was a fortuitous activity because the father of one of his teammates became Michael's baseball coach last spring. At our party for the end of the baseball season, the coach referred back to that basketball team as giving him the idea to draft Michael for his baseball team because of the spirit and athleticism Michael showed on the basketball court. Last winter, Michael played basketball in a slightly more formal league on a team populated by people we knew from baseball, soccer and swimming (an increasingly common occurrence). We all had fun, but it was still a fairly rudimentary introduction to the sport.

The word around these parts is if you want to continue to play basketball, you need to play in the local Catholic Youth Organization league. Back in September, Michael participated in the tryout along with just about every third-grade boy we know from all the other sports teams. Michael gave an accurate accounting of himself as a basketball player: he is short, not terribly strong, and couldn't make a basket.

He looks stylish warming up, though

CYO creates teams based on the ability of the players on each team. In our area, that means there are three teams of third-grade boys, each of which will play teams from other churches on the same level. Michael, unsurprisingly, is on the lowest-ranked team, along with all the other kids who couldn't shoot straight. Coming into this season, it looked like we were headed for a very long, tiresome winter of bad basketball. The players are not particularly gifted at the sport, and the team existed at all only because one parent, a Russian immigrant who has never played basketball, stepped up to be the head coach.

As happens so often in life, the content of the book should not be judged by the quality of its cover. Another parent answered the call to help with the coaching, someone who lives in the next town, doesn't have anybody playing on the team, but knows basketball and loves to coach. His knowledge and enthusiasm have turned a ragtag bunch of kids for whom basketball is perhaps the fourth or fifth priority sport in their lives into a surprisingly cohesive unit that plays hard, is starting to understand the nuances of the game, and even runs designed plays that lead directly to good scoring opportunities. If these boys could shoot at all, they would be pretty dangerous.

Dunks are not going to be part of the game plan

In the first game, they played what was rumored to be a team one level up. The game certainly played out that way, with the other team overwhelming our boys on defense, collecting every rebound and scoring from all over the court. However, in that blowout loss, I could see a kernel of ability and ambition coupled with good coaching that suggested things might turn out okay. Michael was our team’s high scorer with four points, but that only tells part of the story. One of those baskets came on a designed play that the entire team worked to perfection. With our offense arrayed with two players down low, two players at the elbow of the key and one point guard up top, the coach shouted out the play. Michael, the player on the left elbow of the key, ran around the post player on his side, under the basket, and looped back up around our post player on the other side of the key, dropping into an unguarded space on the right side of the key between our post and wing players. The point guard fed the ball to Michael who turned, shot and scored. Our little team of undersized nine-year olds had just run a double screen scoring play that Mike Krzyzewski would've been proud of. The fact that we lost by a score of something on the order of 39-11 really didn't matter. They showed that they were starting to soak up what they were taught.

Planning the next move

The eye of the tiger on defense

We were out of town for the next game, but we heard afterwards that our boys won the game by a score of something like 24-15. Clearly, something is starting to click.

The boys had their third game this past Saturday morning. It was a good match of teams with comparable abilities, or lack thereof. The score was 2-2 at halftime. However, our team was by far the better coached squad, working the ball around with multiple passes to find the open man. It was primarily our inability to shoot effectively that kept the game close. In the second half, we finally made a few baskets, continuing to work hard on defense and play relatively disciplined offense. Michael got another good look at a shot off a double screen (he didn't score this time). He also made a nice dribble penetration to draw the defense, then kicking the ball out to a teammate who buried a jumper. In all, everybody on the team contributed to the 13-5 win (yes, we found a team that had fewer shooters than we do). It is inevitable that our boys will lose some more games, but they are also learning some very good basketball strategy that will serve them well both this year and in the future.

Working on basketball with Michael is a new adventure. We have spent hours practicing and talking about baseball, soccer and swimming, but we have never taken any time to work on basketball. Over the Thanksgiving weekend, we made a couple of trips to the schoolyards where, in addition to just goofing around, we got some good shooting practice in. Michael is also very comfortable on the strategic aspects of the games he plays. When we were playing on the schoolyard, when Michael was dribbling, I set a pick on Kelly who is pursuing him. We all got a good laugh out of it, but I reminded Michael of it the morning of his most recent game. I told him that if the other team played man-to-man defense, he should try what we did at the schoolyard. I told him he should run right at one of his teammates to run his defender into the teammate to get open for shot. I have no idea if any of that would get through, since I'm not sure he necessarily recognizes when the defense being played against him is zone, man-to-man or free-for-all swarmball. At his height, the game is a swirl of arms and legs anyway. Yet he got it. Late in the game, he dribbled the ball toward his teammate in the post. If his teammate had recognized what was happening and simply stood still, it would have been a perfect pick leading to an open shot. Unfortunately, his teammate didn't recognize the play and moved, which allowed the defense to follow the ball. Even so, after the game, Michael asked me if I had seen what he did, referring to that particular play without me prompting him first.

These kids are sponges at this age. They are just getting to the point that they can handle both the physical and mental requirements of the game. We are fortunate to have a good coach who knows how to give these kids enough instruction to make them competitive. Kids know when they are being coached as opposed to when they are being babysat. Kids will accept losses if they know they are being coached well. Kids will be bored with wins if they perceive they are simply being left to participate in an activity. We have experienced a mix of both ends of that spectrum over the last few years. Since basketball season runs until early March, we're very glad, for Michael's sake as well as our own, that it seems that boredom will not be a hallmark of the season.

Fall Sports Review, Girl Child Division

2010-11-26T08:12:00.001-08:00

Being an eighth grader with very high academic achievement did not keep Kelly from adding on to her schedule with two sports simultaneously. Building on the enjoyment she has found with volleyball, Kelly played on her school's eighth grade "B" team. The tryout was immediately after Labor Day and she was too rusty to show her full capabilities, so she did not make the "A" team, but the blessing in disguise is she was always on the court.

The team was a mixed bunch of good players and novices. They did not receive much in the way of coaching, but they practiced three days a week (including a pre-dawn Monday practice), and played a lot of games against other schools in the area. There is something qualitatively different about playing for your school, and I think they enjoyed it. They won several matches to end with a record somewhere around .500. They were swept out of the season-ending league finals tournament, but they played with spirit, had fun and might have learned a little volleyball along the way. Kelly played well, improving all parts of her game, and developed a dangerous serve that saved the team many times.

Even though she does not play on a club volleyball team like many of her peers (especially the players on the "A" team), she is looking forward to continuing her volleyball career in high school. At a minimum, we expect that she will be able to make the freshman team. With regular practices and good coaching, maybe she will be able to continue on beyond that level. If nothing else, she will always have a sporting skill she can enjoy on beach trips, at picnics and with her kids for the rest of her life.

One sporting career that may be coming to a close is soccer. Soccer was our first team sports venture as a family. It was the only point of reference I had for youth sports, so the many, many afternoons I spent watching Kelly practice, or the collective hours we spent after practice kicking the ball to each other, reverberated across years for me. Soccer also gave Kelly a sense of identity and pride when she really needed it at times during elementary school, when the vicious society of girls bared its sharpened fingernails from time to time. I have been dreading this year, knowing it would represent the closing of a major chapter in her life, and my life as well.

Kelly's team, unfortunately, had an overabundance of seventh graders and just didn't quite have the skill to keep up with the other teams in the league. They did manage a win against an Orinda team, a game in which Kelly scored twice, and forged a draw with an archrival Moraga team that was as thrilling as a win. For her part, Kelly had a good year, scoring most of the team's goals and putting in lot of time as goalkeeper as well. She hated playing goalie, but she had good instincts for closing down opposing breakaways (which she faced too often), and the coach needed her back there as much as he needed her offensive skills. To his credit, the coach also put his own daughter, the best player on the team, in goal as well. Because of volleyball, Kelly missed most of the practices, as did several of her teammates, which probably contributed to the poor showing on Saturdays. Overall, the girls played good soccer, better than their record indicated, and they had a good time together.

The bonus to the season was that Kelly was selected to play on the All-Star team for the second year in a row. The game was again played on the football field at the local high school. Kelly played well, offering several dangerous crosses to her fellow strikers, although none turned into goals. Also for the second year in a row, our Moraga girls beat the team from neighboring Lafayette. That allowed all of our eight graders to finish their soccer careers on the highest note.

Kelly rediscovered her love of the game of soccer by the end of the season, and was reluctant to let it go. As with volleyball, Kelly never played soccer with the local club team, which will probably keep her off the high school roster. Still, she is thinking about trying out for the high school team next year. Every time I surprise my kids with my few stories of high school track, I think about all the stories Kelly will be able to tell, amazing her own kids with tales of her All-Star days and afternoons spent in gyms and on fields.

Kelly's achievements in the sports arena are praiseworthy, but it is the self-confidence that sports have brought her that make me glad we gave these opportunities to her. Selfishly, the hours Kelly and I have spent together working on her skills, when she willingly sought out and soaked up my guidance, will be what I will miss the most. It's what I miss already.

Fall Sports Review, Boy Child Division

2010-11-25T07:15:00.000-08:00

There is no time of year more hectic that the fall. Forget spring and its lazy rhythms of winding down of the efforts of a school year and the carefree summer to come -- autumn has become the foremost season of renewal and growth. School resumes and proceeds with as much focus as it will ever have. Church and community groups restart programs with fervor. And youth sports dominate the landscape, at least in our town.

Of the many sports available to him (including swimming, lacrosse and flag football), Michael played soccer and fall baseball. Playing up in a new age division, Michael's team played on a dramatically larger field with full-sized goals. Nine-year-old boys are growing fast, but they still look very small when they are dispersed on a soccer pitch usually used by junior high students. Michael's "Brazil" had a good season, coming in third (one of their losses was to a good team they had beaten in an early season game that did not count in the standings). The coaches were great, somehow convincing the rambunctious group of boys to sit still for several minutes of chalk talk at every practice.

Unfortunately, I saw fewer than half of his games because they usually overlapped with Kelly's games, which took place a couple of miles away. They games I did see I usually observed at a run, since I somehow became the go-to guy as a side judge. I would spend the game sprinting up and down the sideline with a small flag, indicating which team would take throw-ins while also keeping an eye on offside positioning. I was happy to help, but it rarely allowed me the luxury of simply observing the game and cheering for the team. After all, I had critical throw-in judgments to make.

Michael's baseball season was less focused but perhaps more instructive. October was a tough month; because of his own outside commitments or rain, we was not able to play in any of the games, returning for the last game at the beginning of November. A relaxed attitude can sometimes be a welcome break from the relatively intense focus of the regular spring baseball season, but there comes a point at which casual becomes apathetic. The Saturday practices were rarely attended by the best players on the team, which meant that the younger players only played against their best peers in the games. That was not an ideal system for fostering skill development. Michael, like all of the players, needed experience facing kid pitchers, who, unlike the coaches, rarely throw strikes. Worse, the umpires call a very broad strike zone, so that balls that are barely hittable are often strikes anyway. Coming out of the coach-pitch system, the boys learned to lay off anything but a perfect pitch. As they enter the kid-pitch realm, they will have to learn to be less selective. Michael, who has a very well-developed eye for the strike zone, worked many walks and was reluctant to swing the bat. His biggest challenge in the spring will be to learn how to be aggressive at the plate while still retaining a sense of which pitches he should not hit. The fall ball season was not as exciting as the spring season was, and Michael was rarely put in a position to have much of an impact on the games, but the season was valuable for the insights into the new difficulties of batting. It will give us plenty to work on over the next couple of months.

The fall sports season flows seamlessly into winter. In the middle of the soccer and baseball seasons, Michael went through tryouts, first practices and a first game for his new basketball team (more on that later). At the end of the soccer season, his coaches also approached him to play in an indoor soccer league with a bunch of the fourth graders he played with this season. That season will overlap the end of basketball and the beginning of baseball.

We would be utterly lost without multiple sports going at the same time.

At Last

2010-11-10T12:55:00.000-08:00

Against the predictions of just about every "expert," the San Francisco Giants not only made it into the World Series, but won the title. For the first time in its 52-year tenure in San Francisco, the Giants franchise brought the trophy home to the Bay Area.

The buzz around these parts was unlike anything this area has seen since the first Niners Super Bowl season in 1981-82. Even the success of that team, though, did not carry the deep resonance of the Giants' World Series win. A franchise that generates numerous Hall of Fame players, sets up an entire generation of loyal followers (from the 1960s) thanks to superior players and perennial second-place finishes, and tantalizes its fans with occasional but not frequent visits to the postseason develops and loyalty among its followers that is both broad and deep. The outpouring of joy was astonishing in its intensity and purity, and continues to reverberate more than a week after the clinching game. Anyone who says that baseball has been supplanted by football as the nation's pastime has not experienced the intense concentration and outpouring of joy of a World Series championship.

The fan bases in Boston and Chicago receive a lot of attention for the perceived "curses" on their baseball franchises as they went decades without World Series titles. The media never tire of telling stories of the fans' misery, and the fans never tire of serving up the stories. The Bay Area is different. The fact that the Giants franchise also endured a decades-long championship drought was seldom noticed or remarked upon, even by the team’s fans. Maybe it is a matter of an easygoing California vibe, but Giants fans never regarded the failure of the team to win championships as some kind of cosmic referendum on the team or its fans.

Speaking as a relatively long-term fan (more than 30 years at this point), it is, frankly, baffling to think of the Giants as the World Series champions at all. I am conditioned to expect the Giants to get very little attention nationally. Growing up in an era when the team was bad and the only national sports programs were This Week In Baseball and the George Michael Sports Machine, it was a huge thrill when the Giants would get so much as 20 seconds of airtime each week. They almost never appeared on NBC's game of the week or ABC's Monday Night Baseball, so the Giants felt like our little regional team. The got all the attention of a minor league team, and during most of my youth, played like one.

When they made their run to the World Series this year, it never failed to catch me up short to see the Giants discussed by the same talking heads that routinely spend most of their time (especially in October) talking about the Yankees or the Red Sox. My astonishment often turned to amusement when the national media folks got their facts wrong or tried to create a clumsy narrative (“they’re a bunch of cast-offs!”) to explain the team.

In the end, winning the World Series was a fantastic experience for the team and its fans. The parade through San Francisco was an unprecedented outpouring of civic pride. One of the attorneys in our office went into the city that afternoon; it took him an hour and a half to get across the Civic Center Plaza, so stuffed was it with orange and black clad, deliriously happy fans.

It will be impossible for next year to live up to the excitement the Giants gave us this year. In fact, it will almost certainly be disappointing since expectations for the team have changed so dramatically after the last few rebuilding years. We will have no cause to complain, however. After 52 years in San Francisco, and 56 years in franchise history, the Giants are the World Series champions.

Pinch Me

2010-10-27T14:33:00.000-07:00

I cannot stop being surprised that the San Francisco Giants are the focus of national attention at this time of year. At a time when the sporting world, and its eastern seaboard media base, routinely turns its attention to the New York Yankees, it blows me away that our local team, usually ignored nationally, is the lead story for all baseball coverage.

The Giants have been to the World Series three times in my lifetime. The first time in 1989, the series was not only limited to the two Bay Area teams, killing national interest, but the series itself was interrupted by a catastrophic earthquake.
And, in 2002, the Giants were at the height of their (evil) powers with Barry Bonds, the player everyone, including his own teammates, loved to hate. That team got within two innings and a five-run lead of winning the World Series, but lost it anyway.

I did not live in the Bay Area when the Giants went to the World Series the last two times, and could only agonize from afar. This year is different. Not only have I relived my childhood by living and breathing Giants baseball all summer, but I have infected my son with the same virus as well. There is no way for these national media folks to know more about this team than I do. Even Michael could give you their lineup, their pitching rotation, and a good imitation of each hitter's batting stance. Astonishingly, in an era when only the most prominent teams are expected to reach for the biggest prize, our crew (who have been lazily pigeonholed by national media as a ragtag bunch of castoffs) is four games away from the title, beginning with the first game tonight.

We won't be going to any games, I don't expect, which is just as well. I watch Giants playoff games the way a teenage girl watches horror films -- through my fingers, often followed by dashing out of the room. I was so worked up during the Giants pennant-clinching win in Philadelphia on Saturday that it took me most of Sunday to bleed off attention.

During the latter stages of that game, I left the TV in the family room and listened to the game on the radio with our hometown announcers. I absently scrubbed surfaces in the kitchen that may or may not have needed scrubbing while I listened to the game, just to keep the tension at bay. Because the television is on about a 10 second delay, anytime anything interesting happened I would dash down the hallway to see on TV what I had just heard on the radio. Just before the game ended, Michael joined me in the kitchen, but decided he really needed to watch the game on television. He made me promise not to yell or come down the hallway, no matter what happened, so that the result would be a surprise to him as he watched it on TV. I agreed to this wholly reasonable request. When Brian Wilson struck out Ryan Howard on the last pitch of the game, I jumped exultantly but silently around the kitchen in joy and disbelief. Ten seconds later, a great whoop emanated from the family room as what I had just heard was shown on TV, and then Michael sprinted down the hallway to give me a great leaping hug.

We all have our ways of celebrating success. Being one of 50,000 people screaming in the stadium could not have been better than that.

Talkin' Baseball

2010-10-14T10:18:00.000-07:00

The Niners, doing their best to tarnish the image of a great franchise, are off to an 0-5 start, the Warriors have not yet started their latest losing season, and the Sharks – well, that’s hockey, so nobody cares. This could have been another dismal October for Bay Area sports fans, but not this time. After seven years, filled with Barry Bonds drama and bad, no-name teams, the San Francisco Giants have returned to the playoffs.

Sometimes the experts are right. Even as the Giants fell into the massive hole left behind by Bonds, his ego, and his roster-draining contract, most knowledgeable baseball pundits looked ahead from the miserable 2007 and 2008 seasons toward a successful future for the Giants. The conventional wisdom was that once management shed itself of Bonds’ declining skills on the field, his dour presence in the clubhouse, and its own compulsion to surround him with veteran players (i.e., old, cheap and deferential), the franchise would be able to devote itself to finding and nurturing good young talent. The first fruits of this were already in place in 2008, as Tim Lincecum came from nowhere to win the first of two consecutive Cy Young awards. Lincecum joined a staff already anchored by youngster Matt Cain, as well as bad-old-days holdover (but former Cy Young winner) Barry Zito. Over the next two seasons, the Giants drafted and brought to the majors stars in the making such as Pablo Sandoval, Madison Bumgarner, Jonathan Sanchez, Brian Wilson and likely rookie of the year Buster Posey.

Adding to this outstanding core of youngsters capable veterans such as Aubrey Huff, Freddy Sanchez and local boy Pat Burrell, the Giants now field the most energetic and likable team they have put on the field since their last Will Clark playoff team in 1989. The team is loose, happy, and skilled. The rebirth of the franchise came to fruition this season, after the team played meaningful games into September last season. This year, the Giants chased down the San Diego Padres, finally surpassing them in late September by taking three of four games in a series in San Diego. The Giants won the games they had to win, including the very last game of the season at home to finally eliminate the Padres and win the National League West title.

There’s something unique about to hold a baseball team has on the region. The Sharks have been one of the best teams in hockey over the last several years, going deep into the playoffs every season. You would only know it, however, if you pay close attention to the evening news. The Warriors can capture the area’s attention if they make it to the playoffs, but that happens so rarely that it is truly a unique and exciting event. Plus, nobody pays attention to the Warriors during the regular season. The Niners, thanks to their history, bring attention to themselves once a week each fall, but the season is too short to hold the attention and capture the imagination of the area for long. The Giants, on the other hand, have a way of riding momentum from the spring through the summer and right into the fall.

On the day of the last game of the season, we were at one of Michael’s baseball games. The parents in the stands are paying as much attention to reports coming out of San Francisco on the Giants game (on our mobile phones – someone should have brought a transistor radio for old times’ sake) as we were to the game in front of us. Soccer moms were knowledgeably debating the relative strengths of the Padres speedy lineup, and grandmothers were sagely opining on the remarkable maturation of Giants pitcher Jonathan Sanchez as he looked to pitch the Giants into the postseason.

We got home for the last couple of innings of that game. Predictably, it was a close game, but there was true joy in the stadium and at our house when Wilson struck out the last Padre batter. I watched every minute of the clubhouse celebration that the local cable network broadcast. Ever since then, the whole area has been abuzz with excitement over the Giants making the playoffs for the first time in seven years, and for only the sixth time since the franchise came to San Francisco.

The Giants dispatched the Atlanta Braves in for extremely tense games in the first round of the playoffs. Thanks to a historically great pitching staff and a still-anemic offense, each of the games was decided by a single run, and the Giants scored a total of only 11 runs in the four games. They now draw a matchup against the Philadelphia Phillies, which can boast a pitching rotation equal to the Giants, and a much more formidable offense.

None of the national baseball experts, who foresaw the eventual rebirth of the Giants, have picked the Giants to beat the Phillies. Well, what do they know?

This season has been tremendous fun for me, and reconnects me with how excited I was in the late 80s when the Giants made the playoffs twice in three years after many years of mediocrity I’m probably no fun to be around in the late stages of a close game, but it is nice to be rewarded for all of that worry with little success for once.

I suspect that my strong emotional ties to the Giants just might rub off on the kids (even Kelly, who gleefully remains loyal to the Dodgers, her own team for most of her life). Michael still enjoys playing baseball; we have marked out the distance in the backyard for the regulation mound-to-plate distance so that he can practice pitching to me. He probably will not have too many more opportunities to pitch during the fall baseball season, as the coach has said he wants to give the majority of the innings to the older kids who will be depended upon by their spring teams. However, Michael wants the ball to prove what he can do. Batting against other kids and their erratic picthes has been the biggest challenge this fall, but he enjoys the challenge and pressure of being the pitcher, and he still plays every other aspect of the game well. We love watching him do it.

Airport Levity

2010-09-29T15:16:00.000-07:00

Broadcast over the San Diego airport PA just now:

"Will the owner of the lime green Ford Pinto parked curbside please move your car immediately. It is not being cited. It is not being towed. It's just really, really ugly."

Time's Up ... Someday

2010-09-28T14:18:00.000-07:00

A group of physicists from our local UC Berkeley has delivered a chilling bit of news: time itself has a 50% chance of coming to a halt. This conclusion is based on what they term the "measure problem" of an infinitely expanding universe. As the report states,

If the universe lasts forever, then any event that can happen, will happen, no matter how unlikely. In fact, this event will happen an infinite number of times.

This leads to a problem. When there are an infinite number of instances of every possible observation, it becomes impossible to determine the probabilities of any of these events occurring. And when that happens, the laws of physics simply don't apply. They just break down. ...

The only way out of this conundrum is to hypothesise some kind of catastrophe that brings an end to the universe. Then all the probabilities make sense again and the laws of physics regain their power.

Really, that's the argument. Douglas Adams is dead, so despite all appearances, it didn't come from him.

There is good news, though. Time is not expected to stop for another 3.7 billion years.

So go ahead and buy the green bananas.

Michael's 9th Jamboree

2010-09-22T12:19:00.000-07:00

Michael thoroughly enjoyed his extended birthday celebration. He had a party for a few friends on Saturday, and we celebrated his actual birthday last night. Like most soon-to-be nine year olds, he was very focused on these events, and the gifts he hoped to receive.

He and his friends had a good time at the party, which was shoehorned into the only free hours we could find among all the soccer, baseball and football commitments he and his friends had. Most of the time was spent in a noisy wiffleball game in the street. The game brought smiles to our neighbors, who noted that it had been a long time since kids played games in the cul-de-sac. Pizza and cake followed, along with plenty of boys being boys (i.e., burping and uncontrollable laughter).

Last night, we provided Michael his chosen dinner: microwaved cheeseburgers from Costco. I feel that I have failed somehow. We also got him the chocolate cake from Costco that he points out every time we go there. You know the one: deep, rich brown, and about eight inches tall. He was overjoyed to find it in the fridge. He was also overjoyed to receive the specific Pokemon videogame he requested, and was so intent on playing it that he didn't focus carefully on the last gifts we held back. First was a baseball game for the Wii system; he was disappointed because "we don't have a Wii." We assured him he could play it on his cousin's system. Then he unwrapped a spare Wii controller. His brain must have still been on his new Pokemon game, because he didn't pick up on the clues. Finally, after he had fully unwrapped the last gift, he understood with a shout that his longest-held gift request (going back years) was finally realized:

We have received many spontaneous hugs over the past few days. He's a blessed kid.

We're even more blessed to be his parents.

Duck!

2010-09-08T11:21:00.000-07:00

Early this morning, an asteroid zipped past Earth, at a distance of just over halfway from the earth to the moon. This afternoon, another asteroid will do the same, at about 20% of the distance from the earth to the moon. Astronomers figured out on Sunday morning, three days ago, that these hunks of rock would be coming. And impressive hunks of rock they are, both estimated to be about forty feet across.

In the vastness of space, we manage to avoid direct hits from full grown asteroids most of the time. The impact from something the size of a small cottage would almost certainly be locally devastating. Monitoring for potentially dangerous asteroids has apparently only been in practice for the last couple of decades. I imagine the astronomers on Sunday got a bit of a fright until they were able to calculate that the asteroids would miss us.

What about the day when the calculations say we will get hit? What purpose will knowing the invitability of the impact serve? If an asteroid were expected to hit somewhere in a 100 mile radius of a heavily populated area within the next three days, would people take to the roads, skies and waterways to escape, as before an incoming hurricane? Would that do any good? It would depend in part on how precisely astrophysicists could predict where the asteroid would hit, presumably based on the trajectory and velocity of the asteroid, the rotation of the earth, and a bunch of math that uses more letters than numbers. It would be fascinating to know what sort of procedures and contingency plans are being developed by scientists and, presumably, government and military leaders to prepare for this unlikely yet potentially catastrophic event.

I fully expect Bruce Willis to be part of those plans.

Heavy Machinery

2010-08-31T14:09:00.000-07:00

I hate vacuum cleaners. Not vacuuming; the OCD part of me has always found the patterns vacuums make in low pile shag carpeting very soothing. The devices themselves, though, confound me.

In seventeen years of marriage, we have owned two vacuum cleaners. (Did I own a vacuum cleaner before I was married? Don't be silly.) Both were light weight uprights, constructed almost entirely from plastic. The more recent is one of the bagless, HEPA filter equipped machines that are so popular these days. It also comes with an automatic retractor for the power cord, an excellent way to take out an eye.

Both vacuums offered multiple height settings, various attachments to enable the removal of schmutz from crevices nobody ever sees, and the new one even had a light, perfect for those times when you are vacuuming at night with the lights off. They also shared another, damning characteristic: they can't pick up a darned thing. They both sported stiff-bristled brushes that whirled noisily and made those nice patterns on the carpet, but whose purpose appeared to be mostly to collect hair, string and carpet fiber until the accumulated mass choked the machine to a smoking halt. Or wound up the entire hall carpet from one continuous fiber, whichever came first.

Even more vexing was their propensity to clog their innards with whatever it was that they were supposed to be removing from the carpet. The dust, hair, hole punch circles, glitter and bread crumbs that were supposed to be deposited neatly in the bag or cannister routinely gave up their journey somewhere in the middle of the various hoses that connected the business end of the vacuum with the bag. In machines that moved air as well as an asthmatic kitten on a good day, ten minutes of vacuuming closed down the airways enough to render them capable of little more than indifferently relocating life's sloughings from one part of the room to another. Leaving behind a satisfying pattern in the carpet, granted, but that is only a mild comfort. More than once, as I blindly probed the vacuum's intestines with screwdrivers or repurposed coathangers, searching for the last clot of debris, I wished for something to just suck all the dirt out of the hose. Like, a good vacuum. Too bad I didn't have one handy.

The really don't make them like they used to. I grew up with my Mom's Electrolux cannister vacuum. It required a team of horses to haul it through the house, and imprecise aim with the metal extended tube could rip the curtains off a wall. I was a church janitor in high school, where I wrestled with an fifty pound industrial upright every day. Not only could it inhale inattentive cats from across the room, it toned my pecs as well. When it came to actually doing the job they were purportedly designed to do, our recent feature-laden, plastic vacuum cleaners couldn't hold a candle to these beasts.

With the new dog in the house burying us in a cloud of sheddings, I finally could take it no more. Our vacuum cleaner hid in the front closet and refused to come out (I know this is true because when I did force it to go to work on the carpet, it spit the dog hair everywhere, just for spite). We gave up, and resolved to do what so many other defeated homeowners have done: we bought a Dyson.

Buying a Dyson vacuum cleaner is a little like going to the hospital with a splinter and insisting on seeing the world-famous heart transplant specialist: you don't really know if he's right for you, but everyone says he's great -- at least, you're pretty sure that's what you've heard -- and he costs orders of magnitude more than anyone else, so he must be perfect for the job. We went with the biggest model Dyson makes, with the additional "Animal" features. That screams of marketing hype, but it does come with a handheld powered head for cleaning upholstery in houses where pets are allowed on the furniture. Ours is not such a house, so that's clearly money well spent.

After one usage, I have to admit that the carpets did look noticably better. The garbage can was also full of several cannister-loads of grit and hair, one of those things that we are sometimes better off not thinking about. Best of all, the machine has not burned out a motor or flung paper scraps everywhere. Yet. After three days of ownership, I consider that a victory.

Begin the Begin, Again

2010-08-31T11:54:00.000-07:00

If it's almost Labor Day, the kids must have been in school for a week already. It's a mildly momentous year. Third grade is often a pivotal year, when students start to develop their intellectual skills beyond the most basic primary tasks. It was a year of tremendous growth for me, and for Kelly as well. We anticipate the same from Michael. He is excited about the year because as a third grader, he now has access to the larger part of the school playground. It is important to have priorities.

Kelly has started eighth grade, our last pre-high school year. Her schedule worked out well; she was assigned to the English teacher that everyone has recommended for two years now, she is a last-period teacher's aide for her sixth grade language arts teacher, and, well, she's an eighth grader. That alone is cause for celebration. The first week of school has brought a slight shift in her lunch and brunch social groupings, and a new level of confidence that comes from being at the top of the school food chain. The homework load has not hit yet, but it cannot be any greater than what she has had the last two years. Academically, this year will be a step up, especially in English and math (algebra). Kelly has proven that she can handle anything the school can throw at her so far; we will do our best to give her the same support as she tackles this year's challenges.

School volleyball for Kelly starts soon, community league soccer for both kids will begin this week, and Michael has already started fall league baseball, with basketball to follow in a couple of months. The now-customary fall frenzy has begun.

These are the days we'll remember.

Swimming 2010 Finale

2010-08-29T19:52:00.000-07:00

The swim season finished on a dramatic upward trajectory. Our four youngest divisions (6-and-under boys and girls, and 7-8 boys and girls) dominated the league finals; our swimmers won three of the four high point awards, and the fourth came in third while setting a league record along the way and finishing behind the high point winner of the entire meet. Our young guns lifted our team to a highest-ever fourth place finish, just ahead of our rival, the local country club. We were a very spirited group, and it was a tremendous feeling to be a part of the historic effort the kids achieved.

Michael did his part. He improved his times in each of his events (free, back and fly). Butterfly was his last event of the year. At the beginning of the year, his goal was to do a "no-breather" in free (no breaths for the entire 25 yard race) and earn "bronze" times. By two thirds of the way through the season, he had achieved those goals, consistently improving his times as he went. As we prepared for the league finals, he announced that his final goal was to earn a silver time and do a "no-breather" in fly, something almost nobody attempts. I normally guide him toward lofty goals, but the morning of his final swim I let him know that one strategically taken breath would be just fine, and a bronze time would be just fine, too. Michael insisted on a silver with a no-breather.

For his heat, he had an outside lane, so I found a good spot to take pictures as he swam toward me. I snapped pictures as he steamed toward me, but it dawned on me, as he approached the flags (about five yards from the end of the pool) that I had not seen him take a breath, which he ordinarily would have taken by then.

I watched in disbelief as powered full speed into the wall, finishing his no-breather. Incredible. Try it sometime. Try taking even four butterfly strokes without pulling up in exhaustion. Michael, barely four feet tall, went 25 yards without a breath.

On top of that, he won his heat, from the disfavored outer lane (indicating a lower seed time), by .02 of a second.

Oh yeah, and it was a "silver" time, by a good margin. He swam nearly four seconds faster than his prior best, earning his silver just like he said he would. Like us, his feet hardly touched the ground for days afterward, he was so proud of himself. Last year, his name would appear very nearly last on the list of 140 or so swimmers in his division. This year, he was solidly mid-pack for free and back, and 43rd in fly, appearing on the first page of the leaders as posted on the board at the meet. Not a bad way to finish a great year: three "popped" times, no-breathers in free and fly, two bronzes and a silver time, and a heat win in the league finals.

But it wasn't over. At tonight's awards ceremony, Michael won the "Coaches Award" for the second year in a row. The award is given to a few kids in each age group who work hard, swim well and are generally good kids. Kelly and Michael have won these kinds of awards in soccer; as a parent, this is a nice award to see your child earn this kind of award. It tells you that your kids act the way you always hope they will act when you are not there to monitor them.

Any reservations we may have had a year ago about joining a swim team have long since been abandoned. Michael has learned a crucial life skill (and Kelly has as well through swim lessons, even though she is not on the swim team itself), and has developed another athletic skill, while we have greatly enlarged our social group. The experience has been nothing but satisfying, even without meet wins, "gold" times or any other indicia of superior performance. Mere participation truly is enough to be fulfilling.

But we're pretty proud anyway.

iDust

2010-08-26T11:49:00.000-07:00

This post is for the benefit of anyone who, like me, was driven crazy by dust that got under the glass of their iPhone. Welcome, Google travelers.

Not more than a couple of months after I got my iPhone 3G (nearly two years ago now), a large speck of dust settled into residence under the glass. It was soon joined by another similarly sized speck. As time passed, many more flecks of dust made their way under the glass. After I dropped the phone one time, an entire cloud of tiny dust particles lightly powdered half of the screen, as if I had bumped a bottle of talcum powder. The last straw for me was a relatively huge chunk of dust that found its way to the very middle of the camera aperture. At that extremely close focal length, the dust did not prevent me from taking pictures, but it caused some unwanted shading and coloration problems, and killed any hope of low-light (i.e., indoor) photography.

My exploration of Apple message boards on this problem was less than satisfactory. Few people seemed to have experienced the problem to the degree I had, and fewer still had a definitive confirmation of the cause, which seemed obvious enough to me. The data/charger port is a large rectangular opening that collected a ton of dust. I suspected that it was not sealed off from the rest of the innards of the iPhone (since dust seemed to be gathered more heavily at that end of the glass), but nobody online confirmed it. Some speculated that dust could get in around a rubber seal that runs around the entire screen, but that seemed unlikely. The tightly fitting screen or a gaping wide hole? I had a pretty well developed theory about how the dust got in. All it would take was actually opening the case to know for sure.

Opening any Apple product designed in the last decade is a difficult exercise, and one that will almost certainly void any product warranty. The design of Apple’s products has become one of the company’s hallmarks, but with the fabulous form comes an almost complete prohibition on tinkering under the hood. Other than the motherboard and the box that contained it, almost no original parts of my first PC remained by the time I finally discarded it. I frequently changed video cards, sound cards hard drives and monitors as the technology improved, and replaced a hard drive and power supply when they broke down. Modern day Apple devices, in contrast, are not intended to be opened by the consumer. It can be done, however. I have replaced the hard drive in our iMac, and after getting to the point that I could hardly take pictures and could barely see the screen in normal sunlight because of the layer of dust under the glass, I was finally determined to crack open the iPhone as well.

To all those who have had the iPhones for a long time and have become frustrated with the dust: you can solve the problem, if you are willing to open the case. Opening the case and the components inside is not difficult, if you are willing to accept a little cosmetic imperfection on the case thereafter.

To open the iPhone case, I followed the clear directions found here. Everything is as described. Undo the two screws at the base, insert a knife between the top surface and the silver rim (this is where a small amount of cosmetic damage may occur), pry up, and you are in. Disconnect three leads near the top of the phone, and the phone splits into the glass/LCD portion and the battery/phone portion. Great care should be taken when working with the glass and LCD screen. Don’t lose the tiny screws that hold them together, for one thing. Also, the LCD must be pried out of the glass casing. It does not take much pressure, but it must be done delicately. Finally, use extreme care when handling the exposed LCD screen itself. I did not touch the screen with my fingers; I only lightly wiped a lint-free cloth (the kind specially made to clean LCD computer monitors) across the screen. I supplemented that with a blast of compressed air. I cleaned the underside of the glass thoroughly, then mated the glass and LDC together again to prevent any ambient dust from returning. I took on the slightly trickier task of removing the camera lens to clean the aperture, but if you are deft with tiny screws, it can be done relatively easily. Putting the phone back together was as simple as reconnecting the leads and squeezing everything shut again.

Remarkably, the iPhone worked after I put it back together, but not without some drama. For some reason, the screen did not turn on again, even though it made the same noise it always did when I put it on the charger. I stewed on that overnight, and had to shut the phone down using the hard reset technique when my alarm went off the next morning (without a screen, you can’t tell the alarm to stop). When I plugged it back into the iMac, the startup screen reappeared, just like normal. Although I had already started to investigate replacing my phone with a 3GS (I’m going to wait for the next version of the 4G), I was delighted to get my old phone back. Even better, the newly cleaned screen was a revelation. I did not realize how obscured it had become until I saw again how bright and clear it could be. If you are out of warranty and reasonably adept with small screwdrivers and knives, recommend this bit of maintenance highly. Also, back up the phone before you start.

In poking around the case, my suspicions were confirmed. The dust flooded in through massive openings around the charger port, as well as smaller openings in the SIM card dock and perhaps the headphone jack. I consider this a design flaw. There are a couple of solutions. One would be to seal the openings somehow. A simpler solution would be to use something that Apple appears to favor in its machines: black electrical tape. I found large quantities of it in the iMac to seal seams, which is a problem for the do-it-yourselfer because tape does not return to its original position the way a screw will; every invasion weakens it. Very thin strips of the stuff were also inside the iPhone, but not one place it could do some good: the seam between the outer glass and the LCD. If I get inside the phone again, I will lay in strips of tape along the top and bottom edges of the glass to prevent anything from getting between the glass and the LCD. Unless the glass itself were to crack, there would be no need to separate the two in the future.

Poking around inside Apple products is not necessarily recommended, but it can be done, with significant benefits to the user.

"Cheese Clogs Major Artery"

2010-08-06T12:28:00.000-07:00

That should have been the headline on this story: a truck carrying 39,000 pounds of shredded cheese caught fire and blocked traffic on Interstate 10 in Florida for five hours. If only a Tostitos truck had rolled through at the same time ... mmm, nachos.

Front And Center

2010-07-30T22:34:00.000-07:00

One of the Silent Auction items available in the swim team's fundraisers was a set of four tickets to a Giants game. We won the tickets and went to the game this week. It turns out that the seats were pretty good.

We were in the third row of regular seats (behind the section of crazy-good special seats behind the backstop) almost directly behind home plate. It was a terrific place to see the ballgame. You could see everything that happened in the field, and the players seemed larger than life rather than the distant tiny figurines you see from our usual seats in the bleachers or upper deck. It didn't hurt that food was delivered to us in our seats, either.

Being close means you get a good look at the players.

Giants starter Matt Cain:

Rookie of the Year candidate Buster Posey, who got a hit for the 20th straight game:

Local product (Bellamine HS) Pat Burrell:

The game was exciting, with two top notch pitchers playing well, several home runs, and an eighth inning comeback by the home team (fueled by two home runs) to earn the win.

We don't get to too many games, but we try to make them memorable. This one is right at the top of the list.

Swim Season In Review

2010-07-30T21:50:00.001-07:00

The regular season for the swim team has come to a close, with only the massive nine-team finals swim meet to go. It has been a terrific season for Michael, who has achieved nearly all of his goals, becoming a pretty quick swimmer along the way.

The swim league has "bronze," "silver" and "gold" time standards for each event. A "gold" time is the ticket to the County meet and the measure of a truly fast swimmer. The "bronze" and "silver" times are great targets for all the other swimmers. Last year, as a truly beginning swimmer and in the bottom part of his 7/8 age bracket, Michael improved over the course of the year, but only got to the point by the last meet that he could start to think that maybe he would get a "bronze" time. He came into this year with the firm goal of earning "bronze" times in his main strokes of free, back and fly.

Before the season was half over, he earned his first "bronze," in fly. A couple of meets later, he earned his "bronze" in free by a solid margin. Just last weekend, in a 25-meter pool (a bit longer than the more common 25-yard pools), he finally earned a "bronze" in backstroke.

Another one of his goals was to do a "no-breather," in which he swims the length of the pool without taking a breath. After achieving the goal in practice, he accomplished the feat in a meet about halfway through the season, and has done so in every free race since then. The first time he did it, the coaches were ecstatic, giving him a ton of praise, recognizing that he met one of his most important personal goals.

Over the course of the season, Michael also had the opportunity to participate in several freestyle relays, including one with three of our top swimmers (Michael filled in for a faster swimmer who didn't get to the meet). He also took part in medley relays (swimming the fly leg), and on one memorable evening, the individual medley. He nearly got a "bronze" time in the IM, even though he was dead tired by the end.

The season culminated in a nearly perfect meet this week. Michael won two of his three heats and set personal bests in all three, including finally breaking the 20 second mark in freestyle. Last year, he always placed at the bottom of every group of swimmers. This year, by the last meet he was solidly in the top 40%. He is not big enough to have a ton of speed, but his strokes are technically correct, and he has learned a lot this year about competing across the whole length of the pool. He has a drawer full of first place ribbons, which represent many come-from-behind victories since his starts are always the weakest part of his races. In all, he has become a faster swimmer and a mentally tougher competitor.

Through it all, Michael had fun with his friends, swimmers of all speeds.

But how could he not be faster ... the kid is ripped!

A Subpar Day

2010-07-28T20:51:00.001-07:00

When I started the day in a dentist's chair, I thought the day could only get better. I was wrong.

On my way into work, my teeth and gums still aching from the determined attention of the hygienist, I heard and felt a fluttering from the back tires, then the whole car squirmed a little bit. Luckily, I was coming down a hill toward a small park, the only level, open area in my commute (anyplace else, and I would have been faced with a steep, winding road with no shoulder, or a freeway). I pulled straight to the side of the road and got out, expecting to see a flat tire. For once, I was disappointed that my diagnostic skills were so sharp:

I have taken the wheels off the car on multiple occasions to engage in the seemingly pointless pursuit of cleaning them thoroughly. As a result of my vanity, I was well versed in how to jack up the car and remove the wheel. What I was not so sure about was the spare tire. It looks like this:

In typical Germanic fashion, the spare tire system is unduly complicated. Also in typical Germanic fashion, it worked flawlessly. The spare tire is deflated; Porsche considerately includes a small air compressor designed to inflate the tire. Porsche also includes a full tool kit, a huge plastic bag perfectly sized to carry the bad wheel to keep the interior clean (there is no way to fit it in the trunk), and plastic gloves to keep your hands clean. My only concern is whether the thirteen year old, unused spare and compressor would work.

They did.

The car looked a little humiliated.

Complex though the spare system was, it worked perfectly and got me home safely.

Set The DVR

2010-07-23T15:41:00.000-07:00

Although our television is usually tuned to Giants games, news or the Disney Channel, we make a little bit of time for series television. For instance, we watch Burn Notice on USA, a breezy crime/spy program, because one of our friends is a writer on the show.

When we lived in Southern California, nearly everyone we knew was connected to the entertainment industry somehow. Some were very successful, whether on screen (such as the Little Mermaid) or as part of the vast army of busniesspeople, cameramen, technicians, scenery and makeup artists and the like. We knew just as many people who spent year after year trying to gain a foothold in the industry, whether as a writer, actor, editor or some other capacity. When the dream of Hollywood takes hold, it does not let go. The tenacity of these people in the face of daunting odds is inspiring.

Our friend the Burn Notice writer lived the dream. Not long after he and his wife arrived in Hollywood, he managed to meet the right people and intern for the right projects so that he was in the right place at the right time when Burn Notice came along. He started off as a writer's assistant, and as the show became a hit, he worked his way up to become one of the senior writers, with at least a couple of the episodes to his credit. The show is enjoyable in the manner of a summer movie -- fast paced and witty, with explosions. It has an honored place among Mythbusters and Top Gear in our DVR's schedule programming.

Another show that we will add to our DVR roster starting this weekend is Mad Men. We arrived late to this party. Over the past three years, Mad Men garnered enormous critical acclaim even as it toiled in the far reaches of most cable lineups on AMC. We finally gave it a shot a few months ago, Netflixing the series DVDs. It quickly became one of those shows that we could not turn away from. The next disk could not arrive in the mail fast enough. The show expertly evokes the look and feel of the early sixties, or at least the early sixties as we imagine they were. The smoking, drinking, casual sexual harrassment ... it's all there. They even use these glasses, which I grew up with, and I'm pretty sure still live in Dad's cupboards:

The show plays like a long movie, with multiple story arcs given plenty of opportunity to live and breathe. The story payoffs are satisfying, and there is a depth of character that can only exist in long-form TV series, of which Mad Men takes full advantage. The lead character is one of the most intriguingly flawed figures in recent TV history; you find yourself questioning why you like him so much and pull so hard for him. The show is highly stylized, yet it is the imperfection of its lead that gives it deeper roots in humanity than almost anything else on television. Sure, it's a soap opera with moodier lighting and better clothes, but it is produced with great care and expertise.

We finished going through the first two seasons just as the disks for Season 3 were released, which we dashed through quickly. Season 4 begins on AMC Sunday evening. Now that we have caught up to the broadcast schedule, we will have to suffer through weeklong delays as each episode is released. The horror.

Summerime, And The Livin's Easy

2010-07-21T12:02:00.000-07:00

We have enjoyed a summer that has felt as pleasantly aimless as we imagine summers ought to be. With the exception of occasional bouts of morning gloom, the weather has been sunny and warm without being uncomfortably hot. Our new resident has added a dimension to our activities without overwhelming us. Most importantly, from my working-guy perspective, our weekends have been relatively open and stress-free.

The Fourth of July weekend was about as perfect as one could hope for. The weather was great, sporting events were on hold for the holiday weekend, and we did not use up hours of our free time traveling. We love to visit family and friends, but sometimes using all of the available hours in a holiday weekend to simply be at home is as refreshing as a week in Hawaii.

(Okay, that’s crazy talk, but spending the holiday weekend at home is pretty nice.)

I started the Fourth of July weekend right by finishing a light remodeling of our guest bathroom. My household projects tend to happen on three-day weekends, which is why the spackling and repainting that I started on Memorial Day weekend did not conclude until the Fourth of July weekend. After pulling the last piece of masking tape and hanging the last towel rack, I found myself contemplating something I don't often face: a fully completed project.

We maximized our fireworks exposure, too. On the 3rd, we went to an event in Concord that has been going for more than 20 years. In a large public park, a local church sets up what amounts to a small county fair, with games for kids, food, and a concert/fireworks show. The stage backdrop is a 30 foot tall American flag which doubles as risers for a choir. From our ideal seats on a grassy knoll under a cloudless sky, we enjoyed a show with dancers, soloists and funny characters to entertain the kids of movie and musical numbers, worship songs, military service academy anthems (including Taps) and American patriotic songs. The evening ended with a suitably energetic fireworks display.

The next night, we went up to the hillside parking lot of our church to see the fireworks show that would be set off from the golf course immediately below. For being such a small town, Moraga puts on one heck of a fireworks show. Many years, including two years ago when we rolled into town in our first moments as residents, fog creeps over the hills to put a damper on the fireworks display. This year, the weather was spectacularly perfect. Not only were the fireworks visually enjoyable, but the sound they made, reverberating in rolling thunder up and down the little valley, was stunning (and possibly frightening to anyone who has dealt with explosives in a less festive context).

We closed the weekend on the holiday Monday by fulfilling one of Michael’s long-term ambitions: a lemonade stand. Lemonade stands are a frequent sight in our neighborhood; we had three within five blocks this past weekend. Michael and his good friend Lily had agreed to run a stand together, which meant their parents found themselves bound to get the venture off the ground. We all helped with the materials, but the kids did great job. They positioned the stand across the street from Lily’s house at a wide spot on the main road at a four-way stop. Lily put together a great sign, mixed lemonade and made rice crispy treats, while we supplied ice tea, ice, brownies and a cooler. They kept at it for more than three hours, doing brisk business and pulling in more than $70.

That, right there, is Americana.

The Quantum Physics Comedy Club

2010-07-16T15:33:00.000-07:00

A cop pulls over Schroedinger.

During the course of the stop the cop asks Schroedinger if he can look in the trunk.

Schroedinger gives him permission. The cop looks in the trunk and finds a dead cat.

"Excuse me sir, do you know there's a dead cat in your trunk"

Schroedinger replies,

"Well, there is now!"

End of an Epoch

2010-07-16T11:36:00.000-07:00

Hewlett-Packard, the original pioneering company that helped create and define what become known as Silicon Valley, will be closing its Cupertino campus. Although HP is more closely associated with its birthplace in Palo Alto, its Cupertino operations were extensive in size and longevity. I grew up within a couple of miles of the Cupertino campus, went to a church that was across the street from one corner of the 100-acre site, and even worked there for two summers. Many friends of mine, or their parents or grandparents, worked there. Consolidation and retrenching is a normal part of the long-term business cycle, but it is nevertheless a pity to see the closure of a campus that has been a presence in that part of town for as long as most people there can remember.

I don't quite buy all of the stated justifications for the closure, however. In the politically correct speech patterns that seem to particularly afflict South Bay PR personnel, the closure has come about because consolidating local operations "will create a more productive, flexible, ecological and highly energized work environment." HP also stated that the closure "allows HP to better use space, continue to reduce our carbon footprint and provide employees with a more collaborative work environment." I track with everything except the "ecological" and "carbon footprint" remarks. These buzzwords must be used to ensure that the corporate image is one of a progressive caretaker of the earth, a de facto requirement for anyone who wishes to do business around here. However, I doubt very much that changing the commute of several thousand people from a couple of miles across town to a dozen miles up a gridlocked 101 to Palo Alto is actually a net positive from an ecological, carbon footprint viewpoint.

Reduce your carbon footprint all you want, HP. Kudos to you, but retain your integrity. Closing the Cupertino site has nothing to do with advancing environmental issues; by redirecting employees north to the Palo Alto mothership, the closure will create more traffic and pollution than before. Close the site if you must, but leave the dishonest feel-good lingo out of it.

Willful Ignorance

2010-07-13T17:42:00.000-07:00

It has come to light that people are shocked -- shocked! -- to discover that compact fluorescent light bulbs, those magnificant, earth-saving gifts from the gods themselves, are a bit problematic when it comes time to dispose of them. It turns out that CFLs, like all fluorescent bulbs, contain mercury, one of the more virulent toxins. (It's not like we didn't know this was coming; I wrote about it more than three years ago.)

Fine print on the packaging, of course, alerts consumers to both the presence of mercury and the fact that you cannot just throw them in the trash. Undoubtedly, CFLs are showing up in dumps, leaching mercury into the soil. Experts are now coming out of the woodwork to point out that these devices, which use less energy than incandescent bulbs, require special disposal infrastructure. Those extra collection points and processes come at a cost; not just the direct cost of the materials and procedures needed to collect, dismantle and dispose of the CFLs separately from all other refuse, but also the environmental damage done by improperly discarded CFLs.

Considering how careful those who are particularly passionate about environmental issues tend to be about toxins like mercury, I confess I'm a bit baffled by the lukewarm response to the hazards posed by improper disposal of CFL. People are willing to balance poisoning the soil or exposing oneself to mercury if a CFL were to break, again saving a few bucks on an electric bill, and come out in favor of the cheaper bill. As a person interviewed for the linked article says, "if it's really toxic, I'd probably stay away from it. But,if it's a really small amount, and if the bulb's really energy-efficient, then I'd say the good outweighs the bad, and I'd buy it."

"Really" toxic? It brings to mind Kevin Pollack's takedown of Demi Moore in "A Few Good Men," ridiculing her for "strenuously" objecting when her first, ordinary objection was overruled. Being a little toxic is like being a little pregnant: either it is or it isn't. When did a little bit less electical consumption become good enough to outweigh the bad of a toxin that can injure or kill you right now in your home by the simple accident of dropping a bulb, or poison acres of soil or groundwater?

I guess every principle has its price.

Another Sign You Are Aging

2010-07-13T14:29:00.000-07:00

When you are young, drama sometimes follows your favorite bands. Singers end up in drug rehab, guitarists take a leave due to "exhaustion," and drummers end up with broken bones from random tumbles off the stage, or hotel balconies. Those are young peoples' afflictions.

You know you are getting old when your favorite rock group, the iconic band for an entire generation of rock music, must delay its tour to your area because the lead singer has ... a bad back.

Lunacy Central

2010-07-09T20:40:00.000-07:00

Oakland tried to tear itself to pieces again yesterday. The city had been on edge for weeks, waiting for the verdict in the trial of a BART policeman who shot and killed a passenger in the aftermath of a fight on a train after New Years Eve last year. The fact that the cop was white while the victim was black created an instant flashpoint for unrest. Rioters broke windows and looted businesses downtown when the officer was first arrested. The city was ready for another eruption of violence, with law enforcement officers prepared to drop in from neighboring communities to assist the overburdened Oakland police department. Self-appointed civic leaders planned peaceful demonstrations at the central plaza, and pleaded for calm in anticipation of a verdict that would anger the black community.

My office is across the street from City Hall, which gives us a front-row seat for any demonstration any given day of the week. It put us in the eye of this particular storm, however. Starting last week, I noticed numerous local businesses putting up posters in their front windows expressing support for (or at least empathy with) the victim. These businesses did not necessarily have anything to do with the victim or his race (our local burrito shop, for instance, or a nearby Korean-owned hair salon). The posters were the modern equivalent of Old Testament blood spread across the lintel, praying that the curse of rioting will pass over these stores. It was well established that most of the rioters in the first event were from outside the area, anarchists just looking for any excuse to destroy property and spit (literally) in the fact of authority.

The word filtered out to us yesterday at about 2:30 p.m. that the verdict would be read around four. Several of our people commute via BART, and we all had to be able to get home. We, like most businesses, decided to send everyone home. Outside, I could see people streaming from the nearby buildings toward BART or their cars. The street outside the building jammed up, which never happens. In our parking garage, the public level quickly became gridlocked as the clerks could not process the ticket payments fast enough to accommodate everyone who wanted to leave at the same time. The attendants eventually just let people leave without paying. On the permit level in which I park, there were lineups about ten cars deep, something I had never seen before.

Once out of the garage, I found a massive police presence waiting for the verdict to be read and the hordes to descend. I was able to get across Broadway and on my way without any further trouble, and arrived home just as the verdict (involuntary manslaughter) was read.

Thankfully, there was less violence than before, although a lot of anger and a few clashes with police, all of which were at intersections right around our building. It was not until night fell that the professional anarchists arrived to commit random acts of violence. These low-lifes, dressed in black hooded sweatshirts, spray painted slogans, confronted police and looted businesses (most notably relieving a Foot Locker of its inventory of sneakers).

Putting aside the merits of the trial itself, there is something fundamentally tiresome about the threat, partially realized, of the rioting. A few months ago, four Oakland policemen were killed by a criminal. The criminal was black, the officers were not. In spite of this senseless tragedy, there were no riots. There was not even a thought that there would be. In the case of the BART cop, riots were expected, simply because the victim was black and the cop was white. It is both patronizing to assume that those conditions will result in rioting, and deeply disappointing that it did.

Bronzed

2010-06-28T10:41:00.000-07:00

Not quite halfway through the swim season, Michael hit one the goals he set for himself all the way back at the end of last season: he earned a "bronze" time in butterfly. He has been right on the edge of this all season, getting within a second and a half of bronze-level times in three of the strokes. He finally got the breakthrough yesterday. He is still not one of the fastest swimmers, but he has proven to himself that he is capable of performing at a competititive level.

Even more gratifying for me was what came later in the afternoon. Michael and I went to the pool in the scorching hot afternoon. One of Michael's closest friends was there, along with his twin sister and younger brother. All three are top swimmers; the sister won a trophy earlier that day for earning the most points in her age group. The four of them spontaneously set up a half-pool medley relay, with each swimmer taking a different stroke for their respective legs of the relay. It was all encouragement and fun, with no adult involvement whatsoever, and they kept it up for more the better part of an hour. Energetic, friendly free play: that is what childhood should be.

A New Mouth To Feed ... And Walk

2010-06-26T20:41:00.001-07:00

This is Daisy.

She is a border collie/Aussie shepherd mix, about five years old. She was the first dog we saw, on the first day of exploring what it would be like to search for a dog. We did not intend acquire a dog impulsively, and had previously ruled out border collies, but when we found her as the only dog at a cat adoption event, we connected immediately. She has probably had a hard life, likely as a breeder, so she is not very trusting of people. She was hours away from being destroyed when the rescue people found her. Although she is predisposed to be wary, she is very calm, though, and handles walking on a leash very well. Within a week, after a vet check and spaying, she came to live with us.

We have hired a dog-whisperer sort of trainer who has helped us with ways to jump-start her socialization. She now spends her time with us in whatever room in which we are spending time. Where she once paced frantically looking for exit doors, she has now learned how to be content. An open door or gate is still the surest way to get her to move quickly, but she is showing signs that her stress level has dropped considerably.

It will probably be a long time until she greets people without cowering, and she may never enjoy playing with toys. She seems to have gotten used to us, though, and will lie down curled up at our feet in the evening like a member of the family. In some ways, she is as much work as a baby, but as she starts to approach us for affection, the work will be worth it.

Arizona Had Nothing To Do With This ... We Think

2010-06-25T17:13:00.000-07:00

If you haven't been following soccer's World Cup (or, as the broadcasters are annoyingly required to say, "the FIFA World Cup"), you are missing out on some amazing theater. True, some games have been boring, but not necessarily because of low scores. You may have heard that the US won its final pool game (its four-team mini-tournament to determine which two of the four go on to the single-elimination stage) 1-0 on a 91st minute miracle. Only one goal was scored, but the game was taut, well-played, and ultimately exhilarating because the win put the US through to the next round. YouTube is full of footage of gatherings of people in bars, restaurants and outside department store windows going bonkers when Landon Donovan scored the winning goal.

Mexico, like the US, is one of the 16 teams that qualified for the next round of the tournament. You have to wonder how the Mexican team feels, though, when they look at the brackets for the single elimination phase. In its four-team bracket, the US (ranked 14th in the world) will first face Ghana (32nd). If they get past Ghana, to get to the final four the Americans will have to take on either Uruguay (16th) or South Korea (47th).

Mexico, on the other hand, will face down a murderer's row of historic (and current) soccer powerhouses. Mexico, ranked 17th in the world, faces off against Argentina, ranked seventh in the world, coached by legendary former player (and legendary buffoon) Diego Maradona, and featuring Lionel Messi, generally considered the best player in the world. If Mexico somehow survives that test, which would be a noteworthy upset, they will have to beat either England (8th) or Germany (6th, and one of the favorites to win the Cup).

Ghana, Uruguay and South Korea, or Argentina, England and Germany. Sorry about that, amigos. Just luck of the draw, I'm afraid. I'm reasonably sure that Governor Brewer is not a member of FIFA.

[Programming note: the US plays at 2:30 pm Eastern on Saturday]

The Man Most In Need Of A Wayback Machine

2010-06-24T12:12:00.001-07:00

Ron Wayne has been getting a lot of attention lately. It is well-known among Silicon Valley greybeards and Apple fanatics that Apple was started by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak (like me, Homestead High School graduates). What was not well remembered until recently is that Ron Wayne was the third founder of Apple.

As Wayne tells it, the Steves brought him in to help with the logistics of starting Apple and to be a mediator between them. Wayne wrote the agreement that created Apple, designed the first logo, and received 10% of the company. Less than two weeks later, for $800, Wayne became the first ex-employee of Apple. Instead of being a billionaire, he is a coin-and-stamp collector who spends his days and Social Security checks in Las Vegas-area casinos.

I first ran across Wayne's story about a month ago, which finally percolated up to the big media outlets, with a feature running today on CNN.com. Tracing the story back, it looks like Wayne emerged into the limelight in April, when a short article on Applematters.com commemorated the anniversary of his departure from the company ... potentially a $20 billion decision.

Some commentators (and many commenters) express amazement that Wayne could have walked away from the company the way he did. At the time, Jobs was leveraging the company to the hilt to get it off the ground, and Wayne was uncomfortable with the risk he was exposed to with the always volitile Jobs at the helm. What people tend to miss is just how common these circumstances were in the halcyon early days of Silicon Valley. Growing up, it seemed like we were always hearing of this person or that person going to a "startup." Or thinking about going to a "startup." Or thinking about someone else going to a "startup." This seemed to touch just about everyone's dad at least once. It was the culture of the place and the time. The optimism for the big score was rampant, inversely proportional to the actual rate of success. Ventures like Apple were everywhere, and they failed all the time. When one company failed, another three began. It was entirely reasonable for someone like Wayne, twenty years older than the brilliant but impetuous Jobs, to see that the risks facing the company, which along with a bunch of other tiny companies was essentially attempting to invent an entire industry, were too much for a man in mid-career to bear.

Some people have suggested that the Steves should throw a little money Wayne's way in recognition of his historic role at the creation of what is now a cultural touchstone as well as business dynamo. Wayne's current circumstances are too close to destitute to be comfortable for fans of the glossy Apple empire. While that would be a nice and humane thing to do, Jobs has never been accused of being either. Philosophically, return on investments come from investments that are actually made. Those who can't stomach the risk (which is most of us) don't earn the right to enjoy the reward. That is not a value judgment, it is simply the reality of capital investment.

For his part, Wayne seems remarkably upbeat about the trajectory of his life, considering how it could have gone. Of course, fabulous riches cannot be assumed; he could have been purged or suffered financial ruin back in the dark days when Apple nearly failed a time or two. It is not for him, or anyone, to know. Ron Wayne will forever be one of the foremost examples of "what if ..."

Champions At Last

2010-06-09T10:08:00.000-07:00

It took an extra game, but our A's finally got their hands on the champion's trophy. The top half of the order was productive all game, the bottom half of the order did its part, they had few defensive gaffes, and the Orioles did not hit as many bombs as they had in the last game. After two innings, we were ahead 10-0, held on as the Orioles closed the score to 11-8, then tacked on another four in the last inning to wind up with a final score of 15-8.

For his part, Michael went 3 for 3 from his customary second spot in the batting order, including a shot over the second baseman's head to drive in two with two outs to ignite a second-inning five run rally.

Ready for the pitch at second base, as usual:

Trying to score from first on a teammate's double:

In January, many of these boys had trouble playing catch. Now they carry trophies. Smiles all around!

Sports Weekend ... Continues

2010-06-08T15:54:00.000-07:00

Our championship weekend turned out to be less hectic, but also less triumphant, than it might have been. My volleyball coaching debut offered me great hope for the future: it can only get better. Missing more than half our team, we cobbled together a squad with a few girls from another squad. All of them were reasonably good players, but they did not play team volleyball the way we did, which quickly pushed us into some bad habits. We beat Hawaii in the first game, but they took the next two. We had to stay in the stifling gym for a second game, this time with our own players but still missing two of our best. We went down to a quick defeat in two games to Pepperdine, a team that had trouble serving the ball over the net. We simply stopped playing our team game. Kelly acquitted herself well, being the only one of our girls who served overhand.

Logistically, losing both games on Saturday simplified Sunday dramatically, because he no longer had to run across town in the middle of swimming time trials and before the baseball party. Kelly was as down about losing as she ever has been about losing a sporting event, though. It was frustrating to think that we were unable to put our best team on the floor, and that if we had, we probably would have won the first game and played for the championship. Still, it was a great season, and Kelly now enjoys the sport so much that she is enrolled in a volleyball camp at St. Mary’s later in the summer.

After volleyball, we dashed back across town to catch the beginning of Michael’s championship baseball game. It had all the trappings of a big game: player introductions and the national anthem. It may only have been eight and nine year old boys playing on a small, imperfect field, but the pageantry gave me goosebumps anyway.

Lining up for introductions:

“And the rockets’ red glare …”

It was a tight game, but the Orioles hit well, we did not field particularly well, and we gave up the lead in the fifth inning (of six) that we could not recover. Because the tournament is double-elimination and we had not yet lost, we get our rematch tonight. It will be a true championship game: the winner gets the trophy, guaranteed.

On Sunday, swimming madness began again. It was far, far more relaxing this year for both Michael and I (although not so much for Cheryl, who has snack shack duties this year). Michael had a good warmup, and set personal bests in freestyle, breaststroke and backstroke, all by wide margins. Simply being a year older has made a huge difference. Once he adds a few weeks of conditioning (which he has missed because of baseball practices), it seems inevitable that he will snag a “bronze” time or two. He is still not one of the fast swimmers, but fortunately he is self-motivated to compete against the clock for intermediate goals other than winning the meet.

On the blocks for freestyle:

Stylin’ in free:

Ready for backstroke:

On his way to a heat win in back:

After time trials, we went to the baseball coach’s house for a raucous party for the baseball team, with a barbeque, cake and awards for the boys. We love baseball, but it will be a bit of a relief to spend the summer with the fundamentally individual (less stressful) sport of swimming. Tonight will tell us if we go into the summer with a finalist’s medal, or a champion’s trophy.

Tiger and Phil, Phil and Tiger

2010-06-08T10:49:00.000-07:00

One measure of how precipitously Tiger Woods' stock has fallen was my surprise at seeing him featured in a television commercial this week. As the advertisement eventually revealed, the next edition of his eponymous videogame is set to be released. The game manufacturer has little choice but to feature Tiger in its advertisements, but it is conspicuously odd to see him endorsing a product. I did not realize quite how I felt about his personal fall from grace until I found myself consciously wondering why I was seeing him on my television in an advertisement.

Tiger's life, both personally and professionally, is not irredeemable. There is little question, however, that the broad-based enthusiasm for both his persona and his golfing prowess has diminished significantly. Even with a golf fan like me.

As the U.S. Open returns to Pebble Beach next week, I can't help but reflect on a few days I got to attend practice rounds at the Open in 1992. Like me, Phil Mickelson had just graduated from college. He was the brightest new star in golf, having already won a professional tournament while still in college, capping off a stellar amateur career that included a U.S. Amateur title and three NCAA titles. Personally, I had an automatic affinity for him simply because we were the same age and he was one of the first people of my generation to emerge on the world stage,and thoroughly enjoyed watching him play and gracefully accept the accolades of the fans. Just five years later, Tiger quickly eclipsed Phil as he hottest young talent on the PGA Tour, rightfully ascending to legendary status only a few years into his career. Even though I have loved following Tiger's career and have thoroughly enjoyed his talent, though, I have never stopped being a Mickelson fan.

While Tiger lived in seclusion off the course and surly isolation on it, Mickelson always offered smiles and high fives to fans, and eschewed Tiger's tactical perfection in favor of creativity that often crossed the line to recklessness. Critics blasted Mickelson's demeanor as insincere and foregave Tiger his tunnel vision. Although often derided for appearing to lack Tiger's focus and discipline, it was Mickelson's openness and brio endeared him to many fans.

As the sordid details of Tiger's life outside the ropes spilled out over the course of too many days starting last Thanksgiving, it became clear to me that Mickelson's reputation, both personally and professionally, would surpass Tigers again, arising from the very same characteristics that defined the two men. Mickelson, a handsome upper-class guy from San Diego who married the cheerleader and fathered three cute kids, stepped away from the game last year to be with her as she undertook painful treatment for breast cancer (at the same time Mickelson's mother was going through the same thing). Meanwhile, Tiger, all indomitable focus and private security, was exposed to be a cynical cad who compartmentalized his life and used countless people to satisfy his various demands.

Mickelson's victory at this year's Masters tournament, the tournament that initially defined the Tiger legend, could not have been sweeter. Tiger played well, but was too rusty from his self-imposed layoff from his personal scandals to win, and Phil was at his swashbuckling best on his way to a third career win at Augusta, one behind Tiger. For all of the heroics on the golf course, the tearful embrace between Phil and Amy Mickelson behind the 18th green will probably be the defining image of that tournament. That embrace, and all of the life in it, the twinned despair and triumph, fear and victory, stands in stark repudiation of the soullessness of Tiger's accomplishments. There will never be any question that Tiger's talent, ambition and accomplishments stand out as towering achievements of any sportsman of any age. The revealed emptiness of his character, however, will also be inextricably attached to his name. Any number of decent men on the PGA Tour offer a counterpoint to Tiger's story, but it was poetically appropriate that the answer came from his longtime and forever closest rival.

After five career runner-up finishes, here's hoping Phil will pick up his first U.S. Open title next week.

The Passing of a Bay Area Inspiration

2010-06-04T09:48:00.001-07:00

Former Los Gatos High School football coach Charlie Wedemeyer died yesterday. His passing is remarkable in part because of who he was, and in part because his life is being celebrated in 2010 and not 10 or 20 years ago.

Coach Wedemeyer was diagnosed with ALS in the late 1970s. By 1983, he was confined to a wheelchair, but continued to coach his team, enlisting the aid of his wife to enable him to communicate as the disease robbed him of muscular control. Los Gatos won a sectional championship that year.

Coach Wedemeyer's story was a big deal locally at the time, which expanded its reach when a movie was made about him. Upon returning to the Bay Area a couple of years ago and hungry to reconnect with things I remembered from my youth, I did a little reseach on Coach Wedemeyer, expecting to find his obituary. Instead, I discovered that he was still alive and continuing to be an inspiration through his dogged determination to thrive in spite of the death sentence that Lou Gehrig's Disease usually represents. Coach Wedemeyer defied his disease's grim odds to live with ALS for 32 years (the same number of years he lived without it), demonstrating along the way that an affliction need not bring the joy of living life to an end.

That Championship Season

2010-06-03T21:30:00.000-07:00

We are heading into one of the most intense sports weekends yet. Michael's baseball team practiced each of the three days of Memorial Day weekend, with the Sunday practice being a Dads vs. Team game. It was lots of fun, since I hadn't actually played a game in many years. Even though we were facing a bunch of pint-sized players, there was still something impressive about them arrayed in their positions around the field, resplendent in their crisp green and white uniforms. They played well for much of the game, reliably retiring the batboys (who played with the dads), and making some plays against the dads as well. Michael started a double play on a pop fly, doubling one of the dads off first (in the dad's defense, he's British and was lucky he found first to begin with). It took a couple of near disasters for all of the dads to realize that they had to dial their intensity at the plate way back, but once we did, the teams were on relatively level ground.

Only a poor last defensive inning and silent bats doomed the boys, but their spirits rebounded when we took them to the local ice cream shop after the game.

Michael and I went back to the ballyard Tuesday evening to watch one of the other games, which pitted the Cubs, the team we beat in the first round, against the Cardinals, the number one team (which had lost in the first round to the Orioles, our upcoming opponent). The Cardinals, who swept us in the regular season even though we beat them in a mid-season tournament, won the game, making them the opponent of whoever lost the Wednesday night game between our A's and the Orioles. Wednesday evening, the boys showed up to the field full of spirit and excitement. We immediately gave up five runs in the first inning, but got all five runs back with our first five batters. The game settled into a defensive struggle until we hung another five-spot on them in the fifth, and another three in the sixth. Like our victory over the Cubs in the first round, our A's played a very solid game (once we got past some errors in the first inning). Michael made a putout at second, had several hits including a drive well into the outfield, scored a couple of runs and drove one in for a very solid all-around game.

Tonight Michael and I went back to the field to watch the Cardinals in their rematch against the Orioles, and once again the Orioles bested them, again coming from behind in the last inning to prevail by one. The game ended with the Cardinals' tying run stranded on third and the winning run stuck on second. The tournament is structured so that we will now face the Orioles for the Championship on Saturday afternoon. Because it is a double elimination tournament, even if we lose on Saturday we will get another shot at the Orioles Tuesday night. I think we're all ready for the season to be over, so we're pulling for the boys to end it on Saturday.

Ah, Saturday. That's the day that Kelly has her second round game in the volleyball playoffs. If her team wins, she plays on Sunday at three for the gold. If her team loses, she plays immediately after the first Saturday game. If she wins that game, she plays again on Sunday at one for the silver.

Kelly's team has played well, but six of the ten players will miss the Saturday games because they are all eighth graders who will be attending their school's graduation ceremony. Since both coaches are parents of two of those girls, neither of the coaches will be there either. Since I went to all of Kelly's practices and helped out a little (and played a lot), I get to coach the Saturday game(s). We will pick up a couple of players from another team to add to our small but mighty band of four seventh graders and do our best.

Some scenes from our last game, two weeks ago, a too-close victory over "Cal":

Both Saturday volleyball games fall just before Michael's championship game, so I won't be able to help out with baseball field preparation as usual. The Sunday games, however, fall right smack in the middle of Michael's time trials that mark the beginning of the swim season. Sure, why not add a third sport to the mix? And immediately on the heels of both time trials and the later volleyball game will be the baseball team party.

If you understood all that, you're doing better than us. It has taken us days to figure out all the permutations of games, schedules and transportation issues.

It will almost be a relief to go to work on Monday.

Almost. But not really.

Strangers in a Strange Land, Day 9+

2010-05-31T09:00:00.000-07:00

With our flight leaving at 4 pm, we had about half a day left in Shanghai. We finished the packing and loaded the car with our bags (which had increased by one borrowed duffel bag to accommodate our souvenirs).

Kelly with her newest pal, Ryan:

Cheryl, Kate and the kids headed out to do some (more) last-minute goodie-buying. Greg and I headed back into town to see some of the massive electronic stores. You can travel miles and never go outside. These places take up floor upon densely packed floor of buildings spread across multiple city blocks, selling every piece of electronic gear imaginable. One or two items might not even be pirated. The only way to ensure that you are getting a genuine product, backed by a manufacturer's warranty, is to go to nearby Best Buy. The tradeoff for buying a legitimate item is that Best Buy's prices are not negotiable.

This is one of the fancier locations, which resembled an American mall:

In the basement of one of these places was one of the best food courts I've been two. That's not a high bar, but this one was great. There was a Burger King, but also counter after counter of Asian foods of all kinds, from Mongolian barbeque to Indian food to, of course, traditional Shanghai dumplings. For a couple of bucks, we happily spoiled our lunch.

To get to the electronic stores, Greg and I had taken a subway line that had a station about 300 yards from their house. The line had been under construction since they moved in, and the new line opened that morning. We were among the very first people to ride it. Everything was ultra-clean, of course, but the new station also exhibited odd deficiencies in build quality that spoke to a general disregard for pride in workmanship.

We took a taxi back across town to meet up with the rest of our crew, who were having lunch at the Blue Frog, a restaurant on Hong Mei Lu, the pedestrian road with restaurants from all over the world where we ate breakfast our first morning in Shanghai. I bought my only personal souvenir there, taking home a tall bar glass to add to my growing collection. The restaurant advertised the glasses for sale, but when I asked for one, the bartender just grabbed one from the drying rack, toweled it off and put it in a bag. That's not quite what I expected, but at least I can say it's actually been used in Shanghai.

From there, we parted company with Kate and her kids and Greg drove us to the airport. The novel but somewhat useless Maglev train blasted past us on the way. We arrived with several hours to spare, and some airline seats to arrange. I tried to request the same seats in the back of the airplane we had coming out from Los Angeles, but they were already taken by some savvy travelers. We did manage to get seats together all the way home, though. I also noticed that our bags were only ticketed through Los Angeles, so I had them redo it to go all the way through to San Francisco. I patted myself on the back for that one; I'm way ahead of these people now.

The Shanghai airport has a very traveler-friendly departure lounge, with lots of food and shopping options in a wide, windowed concourse (which offered expansive views of the grey-brown smoggy skies). The airports in both Shanghai and Seoul situate the departure areas a floor about the actual walkway to the airplanes, which allows for broad views of the outdoors. This is far superior to the narrow , ground level views available at most American airports; the new Asian airports get this right.

The flights from Shanghai to Seoul, where we had a very short layover, and Seoul to Los Angeles, were uneventful. I was less comfortable on the long trans-Pacific leg, but the time passed reasonably quickly thanks to two movies and a couple of albums on the entertainment system. We landed in Los Angeles on a warm Saturday afternoon, about half an hour on the clock before we left Shanghai. You have to love the international date line. We trudged through the utterly charmless hallways to the customs checkpoint. We had nothing to hide or worry about, but there is still something unnerving about being interviewed by the customs agent. It seems friendly and innocuous chatter, but every word is spoken with a purpose. We were also informed that, notwithstanding the assurances that apparently every foreign ticket agent gives to travelers, you must personally collect your luggage to get through a second check point. In Asia, the airports were spacious, clean and well-organized. LAX was the complete opposite: crowded and chaotic, with poorly marked instructions. We stayed out of a very short luggage check line because it had a sign posted that restricted the line to handicapped people. As our line went nowhere, we watched with growing frustration as a few "unauthorized" people used the line and exited quickly. Two airport policemen came by and someone in the line asked about the restricted line. One of the policemen chuckled and said there was no restriction on the line. As the went on their way past us as people rapidly filled in the newly unrestricted line, the policemen laughed to each other, yukking it up in disbelief that anyone would follow the directions on the posted signs; such rubes. I guess a lack of pride in workmanship is not limited to China.

We took our luggage over to an intermediate room where people with connecting flights are to leave the bags (why doesn't teh airport do this?). There was no obvious place to leave the bags, as there were a couple of conveyer belts, a couple of counters, and an airport employee with a printed flight list in hand trying to catch people as they came through. I took our bags to her when she offered vague assurances that we were roughly in the right place. She started to check our bags against her flight list, but was distracted by the next glut of confused passengers, so we left the bags and moved on to the long hike down to the United domestic terminal.

Sitting in the United departure lounge waiting for the flight home, something nagged at me -- ah, hello again, worry demons. I pulled out our boarding passes, and checked them against the paperwork I received in Shanghai from the Asiana agent who had checked out bags. Sure enough, inexplicably, the flight numbers did not match. United did not even have a flight number that matched out bags at all. I jumped over to the United customer service desk to sort out this last travel issue. I explained that our bags had actually made it to LA, but they were labeled for a flight that did not exist. The best the agent (who, to her credit, was very friendly and appeared to be competent) could do was put a note into the system informing anyone who came into contact with the bags that they were supposed to be on such-and-such a flight to San Francisco. By that point, less than an hour before our flight, the bags may have already been picked up and dropped ... somewhere. I thought back to the transfer agent who had not taken the time to check our bags against her printed list of flights; I have learned to react when I hear that little nagging voice, which piped up when the harried transfer worker started but did not finish looking up our flight. I could only shake my head in rueful admiration at the determination of the travel-hell demons to screw up our travel. They were going to get me at the very end.

Our airplane had arrived, so I watched out the window, pondering how long it would be until we got our clothes and souvenirs back. That's when the luggage carts arrived. Incredibly, I saw two of our bags actually go into the aircraft. I figured that if two were there, the other two were also there. In another unexpected bonus, we had somehow ended up in United's economy plus section, which is the section for people who have knees. We had more room there than we had had on any of our other flights.

Finally, after hours of travel, we arrived back in San Francisco. Even better, so did all of our luggage.

After the hike to the shuttle bus, the bus trip to the car, and the drive home, we staggered off to bed by about 10 pm. I was the first to awaken on Sunday morning, at 10:30 am. Michael was the last up, at 1:30 pm. I went into work on Monday, but succumbed to jet lag for the afternoon. None of us felt back to normal until Wednesday.

Before we left, we were very excited to see our friends, but only generally interested to see China. It is not someplace I ever would have chosen to go. Having returned, we are all very grateful for the opportunity we had to visit Shanghai; it is an incredible city, full of energy and contradiction. There were no white-sand beaches (those will be for the next trip), but it was a fantastic trip of a different sort, where we soaked up a culture very foreign to us and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Greg and Kate were incredible hosts, and we enjoyed our time together as friends as we always have, wherever we have founds ourselves in the world. Our lives are better for having made the effort to go.

Strangers in a Strange Land, Day 8

2010-05-27T17:28:00.000-07:00

For our last full day in China, we decided to venture out from Shanghai to visit the watertowns, a group of villages built upon waterways much like Venice. Unlike much of Shanghai that we saw, the watertowns have been in existence for hundreds of years, where you can cross over (or under, on the water) bridges that date back to the Ming Dynasty.

A little more than an hour west of Shanghai by modern highway, our first was Tong Li. This little town had a conventional land-side commercial and residential zone.

With the payment of a few RMB, you could pass over into the much older waterside part of the town. This part of the town was marked with narrow alleys, slim canals, and ancient bridges.

We saw this unusual fishing vessel tied to the side of the canal.

The birds are tethered to the boat. The fisherman sends the birds out to hunt for fish, which they bring back to the boat in exchange for a portion of their catch. Avian sharecroppers, as it were.

We spent much of our time in Tong Li shopping for souvenirs in a few of the many tiny shops that line the canals. That left us with no time to visit the China Sex Museum. That’s probably for the best.

After a semi-harrowing tram ride back to the car, we took country roads to the next watertown of Zhujiajiao. I was particularly interested in traveling the smaller roads to get a feel for the Chinese countryside. Like much of America, the rural landscape is dotted with small towns and houses here and there. What was different and, I think, uniquely Chinese was that where barns would stand in farmers’ fields in a similar trip in the US, there were small factories rising from countless Chinese fields. They were not the massive facilities at factories usually become stateside; most were relatively modest in size, the size of a large gymnasium. There was no way to tell what sorts of widgets they were building, but it was clear that China’s status as the world’s preeminent producer of consumer goods is well-earned by the efforts of what must be hundreds or thousands of similar operations.

A typical truck on Chinese roads:

At Zhujiajiao, we dropped in on the local KFC for lunch. The employees were less adept with English than their counterparts in Shanghai (where I had no trouble ordering lunch at a McDonald’s several days before), but like most restaurants we visited, every item on the menu was shown in a picture.

After consuming chicken infused with the very familiar 11 herbs and spices, we crossed over a tall bridge and wandered about in the very charming town.

The alleyways were tight, full of a combination of traditional food establishments and tourist trinket stores.

Cheryl hard at work, hunting for souvenirs:

We enjoyed exploring the extensive gardens of a formerly private (and grand) home in the town:

We had our most unusual and overt "foreigner" moment in Zhujiajiao. Two young Chinese women approached Michael and I, pantomiming using a camera and pointing at Michael. I gathered that they wanted to take a picture with him. We were in a public place and I was bigger than they were, so I figured it was safe, and the novelty of it was too funny to pass up. One girl happily posed with Michael while her compatriot took a couple of pictures. For his part, he was too surprised to do anything but flash his smile automatically when the camera came out.

After the girls went on their way after offering gracious thanks to us, though, Michael had words with me. Sternly, he made it clear that I was to ask his permission before granting photo privileges. Point taken.

One of the reasons we went to Zhujiajiao in particular is because it is where a prominent paper cutting artist works and sells his wares. Greg and Kate have a number of his beautiful creations in their house, and we looked forward to finding one for ourselves. Unfortunately, on the day we visited, the artist was not working. Instead, we found another shop where a woman and her aged father created beautiful watercolor and calligraphy scenes. We bought a number of pieces from her, some the size of index cards that Kelly gave to a number of her friends, and some larger pieces. Although the town clearly caters to tourists, there is still something charming and honest about buying art that this woman and her father (who was outside in an alley working on new pieces while we were there) had created.

When it was time to leave, we took one of the many riverboats piloted by a man with a single oar off the back of the boat. With a well-practiced twisting action, he deftly propelled the boat forward and steered it with the single oar.

After we returned to the house, it was time to start packing for the trip home. Greg and Kate’s nanny (Xiao Wu, the kind young lady who had let us into the house the first day), had diligently washed and folded our clothes all week, which made packing a simple exercise. (Greg and Kate had advised us before our trip that Xiao Wu would take care of laundry, so we were able to pack very lightly. Considering the challenges we faced in the airports, packing lightly made a huge difference in simplifying our travel as much as possible.)

Packing to leave also meant that it was time to tackle the travel demons again. I had been unable to get seat assignments for our homeward flights, and knowing how full all of our flights had been, and how lucky we had been to be seated anywhere near each other, I was becoming worried that we would be scattered all over the airplanes for the trip home. Since we were within 24 hours of our departure, I made a concerted effort, through a towering display of patience, to work through the airlines’ phone systems to try to get our seats for the trip. After innumerable keypresses, I managed to get through to an Asiana customer service representative. She assured me, cheerfully, that the only place I could reserve seats was at the airport itself. Although that was disappointing, it was also somewhat liberating. We could not do a thing to control where we would sit until we got to the airport, so there was no sense in worrying that I was missing some opportunity to make our lives easier (which is how I spend much of my worry time on a regular basis anyway).

All that remained, then, was an easy morning of last-minute souvenir buying and a trip to the airport. We knew, though, that our adventure would not end until we got all the way home.

Strangers in a Strange Land, Day 7

2010-05-22T21:32:00.000-07:00

Day seven of our Shanghai tour held out the promise of viewing more Shanghai landmarks, plus a lunchtime visit to the visa section of the U.S. Consulate to catch Greg for lunch.

Once again, we bundled ourselves up in Kate's car for a trip downtown. This time, the traffic was snarled on the elevated highway. Poor Ryan. Not-quit-two-year-olds the world over object to traffic jams, and Ryan was no exception, especially since his mom was driving and could not comfort him. As we neared our destination, though, Kate found some time in the "stop" portion of the stop-and-go traffic to give Ryan her full attention, and he calmed right now. He's a great kid, and it was the only time all week he was anything but perfectly genial.

As Kelly and I had the day before, our whole family executed a perfect dump and run at the roadside so that Kate could find parking while we explored the Jing'an Temple:

This Buddhist temple takes up most of a city block, is surrounded by typically modern office buildings, and houses a variety of shops in its outer walls. Like so much else in Shanghai, the temple was freshly spruced up for the coming Expo.

The temple is not a mere tourist curiosity. It is a functioning house of worship; a service of some kind took place in one of the many altar rooms while we were there, while other visitors lit incense sticks or prayed to innumerable Buddhas.

Across the street from the temple is a very pretty park, with manicured gardens and an elegant waterside restaurant.

The park contains remnants of ramparts that once guarded the temple. Plaques in the park also describe various artifacts that used to be kept there, until they were destroyed during the cultural revolution. The destruction of priceless pieces of Chinese history is stated dispassionately, but the bland explanation only accentuates the needless tragedy of the cultural purges.

We walked from the park to the business district where the U.S. Consulate's visa office is located. Amid high-end department stores plastered with building-sized billboards for expensive European cars, the visa office is hidden away, nearly unmarked, about halfway up an office tower (which has a multi-story department store in its lower floors, complete with a Mercedes-Benz display). We were given a quick tour of the small office, which has a dozen or so portals through which diplomatic officers interview and process Chinese nationals who wish to obtain visas to visit the U.S. The diplomatic corps interviews a staggering number of people each day, yet still manages to flag and investigate numerous people who should not receive visas. There is also a small set of windows for U.S. citizens who need assistance. Still, unless you knew what you were looking for, you would have absolutely no idea that the U.S. Consulate was in the building.

We had lunch at the Crystal Jade, another fabulous restaurant where I had perhaps the best sweet and sour pork I will ever taste. Along with more delectable xiao long bao, of course.

Leaving Greg to his post at work and Kate to take her kids home, we found our way to the subway and went back to the People's Park to go to the Shanghai Museum.

The Museum is across the street from the Municipal Building, which was the most overt presence of the ruling Communist Party we encountered in the remarkably free-wheeling Shanghai.

Numerous red Chinese flags flew in front of the imposing building, and it was guarded by two young soldiers wielding rifles. None of it appeared to be particularly ceremonial.

I became a little more acquainted with the state authorities than I wanted when we went through security at the museum. As we approached the x-ray machine, a young soldier in an ill-fitting army uniformed became very agitated as I approached. He felt no need to attempt to communicate with me in English (for which I do not fault him), but he clearly had a problem with something I was carrying in my backpack. As it turns out, we had two water bottles in the exterior pockets of the backpack. I was already concerned that they would be a problem, but not for the correct reasons, as it turns out. Bringing water into the museum was not the problem. I was ready to dispose of the water bottles in the trash as we entered, which only upset the solder and another security guard even more. What bothered them was that while one of the bottles was well-labeled and had obviously been purchased in town, the other was a standard clear water bottle that unfortunately no longer had a label attached. After a few anxious moments of pantomiming, I realized that the security detail wanted me to drink from the unmarked bottle, to prove that it was, in fact, just water. Once I did so, they immediately lowered the alert level back down to Defcon 5 and turned their attention to the next visitors. (Although I initially thought the security stations in the subways were a joke, I was forced to drink from the unmarked bottle again that evening when we headed home from the museum.)

The Museum was not large, but had many galleries of Chinese art from various eras. We saw pottery from every dynasty, traditional calligraphic artistry, and clothing worn by the many ethnic minorities throughout China. We could have seen coins and other exhibits, but instead we spent significant time at a visiting exhibition of the Uffizi Gallery of Florence, Italy (yes, we viewed European art in a Chinese museum). It was a thrill to see paintings by the true masters of the Renaissance, including Botticelli (The Adoration of the Maji), Titian and Tintoretto. Kelly was in the middle of a project on Botticelli, so the opportunity to see this art first hand was a real treat.

After a stop at one of the ubiquitous Haagen-Dazs vendors and a subway/taxi trip home (we were pros by now), another successful day was in the books. We were just a little sad, though, knowing that it was our last trip into the city before the end of our vacation.

Spring Sports Update

2010-05-20T09:16:00.000-07:00

Sandwiched around our spring break trip to China, the kids’ spring sports seasons have been going full speed, winding up their respective regular seasons this past weekend.

Kelly has had a great time with her “Penn State” volleyball team. They have a lot of talent, get along well together, and have knowledgeable but nurturing coaches. They lost only one match during the season (in the last game, unfortunately). The team they lost to, Minnesota, lost their only match to Hawaii, which suffered its only loss at the hands of… Penn State. Our girls will be seeded second in the championship tournament, and will play their first tournament game this Saturday.

The season has been particularly fun for me, because I have been given the opportunity to help a little bit of practice, which has often involved getting into the game to play. Several of the girls also like to stay after practice to play pickup games that I and a couple of the other parents have participated in. More than once we stayed almost an hour after practice playing volleyball just for fun. I have the scabs on my knees to prove it.

Coaching matters. Not just Xs and Os, but style, especially for girls. This past week, after our practice was over, Kelly and one of her teammates stayed behind to work on their servers with me while a rival team held its practice in the next court. Their practice consisted essentially of a scrimmage, but they were a couple of players short, so the coach invited our girls to join in. Our two players played consistently well, passing the ball to the center position, making sets and generally showing that they knew what they were doing, much better than the players on the team they were helping out. More tellingly, their coach berated his players for everything they did wrong, although about the only thing he seemed to be concerned with is that they called out “mine!” if they were going to play the ball. It was immediately obvious to me (and Kelly) that his team is unified – against him. I saw more than one pair of shoulders slump when he lit into his girls for failing to call for the ball, regardless of whether it had been a good play. In my limited but growing experience with youth sports, I have found that boys can be challenged, but girls need to be built up. It sounds pat and condescending, but the evidence is in full view. Kelly would not be as fervently enthusiastic about volleyball if she had to play for a coach that always criticized rather than taught and encouraged.

Michael’s baseball season, which began in January, finally ended Tuesday night. Our A’s finished up with a 10-5 regular-season record. This past week was particularly heavy, with a practice on Friday, games on Saturday and Sunday, and another game on Tuesday (with practices to come on Thursday (today) and Saturday and the first postseason tournament game on Sunday). Although they finished with a great record, coming in second in the league, it has been something of an up-and-down year for our boys. Some days the offense is overwhelming, and other days it disappears entirely. Some days our defense is solid and intelligent, and other days we can’t catch a ball with a butterfly net, and have no idea what to do with the ball once we get it. Over the weekend, we blew out the Yankees on Saturday, then faced them again on Sunday and squeaked out an incredibly tense 13-12 extra-inning come from behind victory. On Tuesday, though, the first-place Cardinals finished their season sweep of the A’s in a game in which we could do nothing right. The positive to take out of those last three games is that we were missing one of our top three players, and our best player was stuck in a horrible slump on both sides of the ball. For his part, Michael played a lot of second base, a key defensive position. He also recovered his batting stroke, which went through a low spot halfway through the season when he struck out once in two consecutive games, his only strikeouts of the year. Like most of his teammates, however, he did not play particularly well in the last game, although he showed off a strong arm from right field with several pinpoint throws all the way to the pitcher.

Michael, like his teammates, has developed tremendously as a baseball player over the course of this season. His greatest improvement has probably been in his arm strength. At the beginning of the season, he threw across his body without much velocity. That still put him ahead of many of his teammates, but he could barely get the ball across the infield. Now, after hours of throwing with me as well as at practice, his arm is much stronger, and is very accurate. He may not be big and strong enough to pitch next year, but his accuracy may give him an opportunity to try it.

Even if the coaches sometimes get upset the boys for appearing to regress toward the end of the season, they know they have a good team. They also know they have a very supportive group of parents. We routinely have a crew of four dads helping with assistant coaching duties on game days, plus another few dads on call to help with field setup when we are the home team. Our grounds crew team shows up an hour before the game, which contrasts starkly with most of the other teams, which seemed to scramble to put together a grounds crew with one or two people half an hour before the game. Since field prep involves dragging the dirt with a metal screen behind an ATV, hosing down the infield, and laying down a lot of chalk lines, it is not a trivial exercise, and the commitment of our team’s parents to helping out has been a testament to the commitment our families have made to the team. During the games, I have become the bench coach, getting the boys ready to bat and calling out defensive positions in between innings. I love being around the boys, encouraging them, getting to know them, building them up when they are down and celebrating with them when they succeed.

Now the real pressure cooker begins: tournament play. Both kids start this weekend. I hope I survive it.

Strangers in a Strange Land, Day 6

2010-05-17T17:13:00.000-07:00

Day six dawned as sunny as day five had been gloomy. Venturing into the heart of Shanghai again, we utilized a more conventionally American method of conveyance: we piled into Kate’s car and she drove us into town.

With a little bit of patience, we made our way to Yu Yuan Gardens, a shopping mall of sorts for all manner of trinkets.

The shopping areas surround a traditional garden; until recently, everything had been hidden under scaffolding as countless workers refurbished the buildings in preparation for the influx of tourists for the Expo. Now, the buildings are freshly lustrous:

While there, Cheryl, with Kate’s expert help, haggled with storekeepers and came away with silk pajamas for herself and Kelly, a T-shirt for Michael, and some “Oakley” sunglasses, the last for about three dollars. We allowed ourselves to be drawn into the far reaches of the long, densely packed stores, but, again with Kate around to keep the shopkeepers at bay, we managed to escape without buying a bunch of junk… or at least without paying more than we should have for a bunch of junk.

Speaking of junk, we bought some AA batteries there for Kelly’s camera. They may have been labeled Duracell, but like just about everything other product in China bearing a recognizable name, their provenance was highly suspect. The batteries were dead by the end of the afternoon, under nothing more than light usage.

A special treat was a small area where artisans were available to create, on the spot, beautiful personalized drawings or traditional Chinese character stamps. While Kate purchased a couple of the brass stamps for her sons, we commissioned the artist to put together a beautiful drawing of bamboo with a special birthday greetings for Kelly, as it was indeed her 13th birthday. Dad was doing his own explorations of China around the time Cheryl and I were married, and he gave us a Chinese scroll that was personalized with our names and the date of our wedding. It was fun for us to see an echo of that special gift in the art we gave Kelly. The drawing is beautiful, but the opportunity to watch the artist create it was exquisitely deft strokes of his pen makes it a true keepsake.

After our shopping extravaganza, everybody but Kelly and I went home, and Kelly and I headed out for some dad-and-daughter time. With the beautiful weather, we decided it was our opportunity to try to go to the top of the World Financial Center again. In another only-again-Shanghai moment, Kate dumped Kelly and I out almost literally in the middle of a tremendously busy intersection, pausing at the curb after a left turn just long enough for us to leap from the car and hop over a low fence to get into the relative safety of the People’s Park. (I don't fault her for this; it was by far the best way for us to get where we were going, and it fit with the general unruliness of Shanghai traffic.) From there, we fumbled our way to the subway, for one stop to get us under the river.

The newer, Pudong side of the river is quite a contrast from old Shanghai:

Up we went, 474 meters to highest of three observation decks in the World Financial Center, at 492 meters (1614 feet) the third tallest building in the world.

Smog limits the view somewhat, but the vista is impressive. Looking north across the river and the Bund to the older part of Shanghai:

The Pearl Tower:

The Pearl Tower with the Jin Mao Tower in the foreground:

Looking south:

A view through the floor:

Kelly and I had a terrific time looking out at the city, taking dozens of pictures and watching other people do the same thing. The upper observation deck hangs below the large opening in the top of the building. We sampled each of the two lower observation decks, which are progressively wider as the building itself widens. We eventually made our way back down to the street and the subway, as we had to get back home to continue our day.

Successfully navigating the gauntlet of trans and taxis yet again, we returned home to take-out dinner (food in China – not limited to Chinese food – is commonly ordered for delivery) and a birthday celebration for Kelly:

We then departed for our evening activity: an acrobatic dance performance. This required us to go to a part of the city we had not yet been to, so we were a little less confident in our ability to get there. However, the taxi driver took a look at our tickets (which we had purchased the day before at a ticket agency miles from the venue and totally unmarked from the street – many thanks once again to our expert hosts) and grunted his acknowledgement. For once, we found ourselves not in one of the ubiquitous, rattling VW Santanas (a Chinese-made version of the Passat from two generations back) but a nearly brand-new Buick. Luxuriating in the quiet ride and comfy leather seats, we rode in style to the Shanghai Circus World, the circular theater where the performance was to take place. It was perhaps the one place we visited where non-Chinese easily outnumbered Chinese. The performance itself was astonishing, with amazing feats of strength, grace, flexibility and courage.

I was concerned that Kelly might feel let down by having her birthday in the middle of a family vacation. Happily, she had a great day and enjoyed all of it. Technically, given the huge time difference, the actual anniversary of her birth would not take place until about 5 the next morning, but we decided we would let her have her day anyway. In our defense (should a defense have been needed), we could say we went to the ends of the earth for her birthday. We could not have gone any farther from home, but our delight in her, and her innate joy of family, we brought with us.