A couple of trips back, I found this very comfortable coffee shop called the High Ground Cafe in Iowa City. Reasonable prices (in the greater scheme of things), free wifi (de rigueur these days), nice open, modern space, with a fireplace going in the winter (a real draw now, with the temperature at 24 degrees and the wind blowing at about 20 mph). I’m sitting by the door, so I […]
We had a bizarre airport experience just now in Kalispell, Montana. An experience that makes you wonder about the people running security at our airports. Here’s the story. We met the mother of one of Andrew’s housemates, and the four of us had a nice dinner on Friday. She was slight and shy-seeming, with a soft voice and a gentle laugh. Charming and obviously smart. The 180 degree opposite of […]
It was brutal this morning getting up at 3:30 a.m. Following nights of 4 hours and 5 hours of sleep, it was painful. Why I had scheduled a flight out of SFO at 6:55 escapes me. But I did get up, and managed to cajole my son Will into truly believing that we needed to get into the car and on our way by 4, a process that involved some […]
We’re back in Sonoma County after a long, stressful, long, hard, long, hectic, hard day of travel, which started when I woke at 4:30 a.m. in Paris and ended 25 1/2 hours later when I finally climbed into bed in Santa Rosa. In between, it was a combination of stress, boredom, irritation, and anger … anger like I haven’t felt in a long, long while, at the rude, smug, arrogant, […]
I golfed today for the first time since I’d broken my arm. I had to be half talked in to going to the very pleasant, pretty, and laid back Ponderosa Golf Course in Truckee. Not without some trepidation did I approach the first tee, both because it had been well over a year and a half since I’d golfed and, more importantly, because I feared screwing up my arm if […]
After my last post, I remembered that we did meet once perfectly charming group of Brewers fans, three lovely and engaging young ladies in the booth next to us at the Perkins off of I-94 in Waukesha (I think), where we had stopped to engage in our last fried-food hurrah of the trip. They were pleasant and nice and interested in the fact that we’d come all the way to […]
We are staying with our friends Marcy and Randy Boyd in their home on the east side of Madison, and as usual I’m struck by the differences between the Midwest and California. Most prominent is the fact that there is so much land here; it doesn’t feel like everything is so crowded and pinched together. An example: While Randy and Marcy were at work Friday morning, we took their dog […]
We saw the Giants-Cubs game yesterday at Wrigley Field, a wild game that featured radical weather changes, the Giants giving away runs like a Little League team (at least 4 Cubs runs scored that shouldn’t have, the difference in the ball game), two Barry Bonds homers (one crushed out of the park, the second to almost-dead center against a ferocious wind), but with the same old result, a 9-8 Giants […]