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Park Avenue Cornpone

During all our meetings yesterday, my co-workers and I nociced an odd flashing light coming from the north side of the building. Was it sunlight reflecting from windshields twelve floors below? A broken fire strobe? The white-dwarf implosion of the NASDAQ market, converting ruined value positions into bursts of photon emissions?

When we finally got around to looking out the window, it turned out that the penthouse of the “Hotel Giraffe” across 26th street had been taken over by a photo crew, and they were shooting a pastoral scene on a small scrap of concrete apron. A patch of astroturf was stretched out across the corner of the eleventh-floor balcony, with various potted plants arranged in a semi-circle around it. On the green plastic carpet, an elderly man in a plaid shirt and suspenders mussed the hair of a six-year old in pajamas, over and over. Muss-(flash!) Muss-(flash!) Muss-(flash!)

The Brandywine Valley Association Point-to-Point Race
(click each photo for an alternate one)

This past weekend, Kate’s parents invited me and my parents to come to the Brandywine Valley Association’s Point-to-Point race, a series of three-mile races over open country from, well, point A to point B. The race is observed from a tower, and an announcer calls the horse’s progress to the crowd below, which streams from hedgerow to hedgerow to watch the pack thundering past. It was one hell of a lot of fun, not least of which since I remembered to pack a bow tie, and had a great time wandering around taking slugs from a silver flask and generally trying to act like a toff.

There were Corgis and handlebar mustaches in abundance, and there were engraved silver cups and plates presented as prizes to the winners. Hamburgers and hot dogs were served from under a striped awning. Every twenty minutes, a new post parade would begin, as the horses were led up and down in front of the tower, then ridden slowly off to be shown the first jump. Suddenly, all the spectators would stream towards the start, the announcer would begin his fast-paced droning over the PA system, and two minutes later the horses and riders would burst out of the woods, fly over a fence, and thunder across the finish line. Kate said that it’s like watching crew racing — you only get to see the competition for a few fleeting seconds as the racers pass by you, so you have to know who you’re rooting for well ahead of time.

The competitors were followed by a carefully restored 1954 Jeep CJ40 with a red flag mounted on the back. Three men and a black springer spaniel were on board, staring importantly through binoculars over the folded-down windshield into the middle distance. Each time the riders thundered past, the jeep would roar to life and dash to another spot chosen for maximum visibility. That is, I think it was for maximum visibility of the spotters’ jeep by the spectators — note the way that the race official in the fedora and camel-hair coat clenches the roll bar in a wide, Pattonesque grasp. Of the four on board the jeep, the spaniel was the most dedicated to the jeep’s mission. Fifteen minutes after each race was over and the officials had climbed out, the dog would still be poised on the passenger’s seat, staring straight ahead with an air of deep and noble concentration. “Look at me, I’m an IMPORTANT dog, in an IMPORTANT jeep! Look at the INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT task that I am discharging here!!”

Needless to say, I was incredibly jealous.

For some reason, traveling home on the train — Septa to 30th street, Amtrak to Penn Station, the 1 train to 23rd street, the walk to my office — was filled with a jumble of strange images. I saw a man scuffling with a plainclothes police officer, breaking away and running to crouch, half hidden, behind a turnstile. When the plainclothes officer rounded the corner, he jumped the turnstile and ran off into the crowd in Penn Station, totally silent, with a look of abject fear in his eyes. The officer, trailing handcuffs, was silent too. I saw a homeless man throw half a loaf of bread over the steel barrier that kept him off the subway platform — it was wadded up in two large balls and landed with a muffled “plop.” The man looked right through me, turned around, and climbed up the stairs to 34th street. I saw a woman begging on the train; she said that she had been laid off, that she needed money to support her child, that her husband had fled the country. She was in her early 20s, white, well-fed, and clean with new clothes. I looked through her as she walked past, then realized that Phyllis Trible, my Old Testament professor at Union Theological seminary and a Biblical scholar of note, was sitting on the car as well. Had she given the woman money? It made me very aware that I had chosen not to believe the beggar’s story. I saw a huge conical vat of cement come plummeting hundreds of feet through the air, to slow and stop neatly behind a cement mixer truck, get filled, and hoisted up again at the same dizzying speed. I had a headache by this time, and I stopped at the drugstore to buy aspirin — packets of Bayer were sixty-five cents. I asked for two packets and pulled two dollars from my wallet, but fished for change to see if I had it. The man behind the counter helpfully suggested that I buy three packets for two dollars, which I did, not catching on that I was losing five cents in the bargain.

I’m sitting on the platform at the Bryn Mawr train station on an impossibly beautiful spring afternoon. I came down for the day to attend the burial and memorial service of my step-grandmother, Betty Young. The urn with her ashes was placed in a plot next to her husband, ‘Dizzy’ Macleod, who died in the sixties. I’m very sorry to see her go — she was tremendously tall, extremely intelligent, and always spoke her mind.

I’m in my new Herman Miller pod at [My employer]’ new space. On the whole, it’s pretty cool. Unfortunately, the computer I use to run the webcam hasn’t had its FTP port turned on yet, so the webcam is still showing the view from inside the box it was packed in. You’ll be able to see Park Avenue over my shoulder!

A Mentos-y way of getting Mentos


I visited 810 deli for the last time yesterday (for the last time, because my office at [My employer] is moving downtown to 25th street and Park Avenue.) Anyhow, I bought a roll of Mentos for a programmer I was working with, in case he needed fresh ideas while he was troubleshooting code. The guy behind the counter bagged up my BLT sandwich while I had my back turned; when I grabbed the bag, the roll of Mentos was still lying on the counter. There was a guy standing at the counter; I brushed past him, said “excuse me”, grabbed the Mentos, and walked out of the store.

Of course, when I got upstairs, I found my Mentos already in my bag. Just call me Arthur Dent.

I blame New York City

Of the dozens of everyday moral choices we make, few are more poignant than this: the decision whether or not to reach for the elevator’s “door open” button. It takes a hardened heart to watch a hapless office worker run towards you through a narrowing stainless-steel frame without reaching for that button — or does it? This morning, three people — myself and two others — stood at the back of the elevator car, staring blankly at the stockbroker jog-trotting towards the closing door with a mute plea in his eyes. We didn’t do anything; just stood there as the opening narrowed to a slit, then closed completely inches from the lapels on his Today’s Man jacket. And the other people in the elevator were not-for-profit staffers; one was carrying a guitar, for Christ’s sake! If they weren’t the kind of people who would lunge for the button, who would? What horrible miscarriage of human compassion was this?

I blame the city. If New York City specializes in one thing, it’s that kind of hardening — witness this horrifying downward spiral captured through a series of twelve consecutive mug shots.

Last weekend, I borrowed a copy of Jupiter’s Travels from Kate’s dad — it’s written by Ted Simon, a hero of the motorcycling world, who in 1973 set out to ride 78,000 miles across the planet on a Triumph motorcycle. Frankly, one of the things I was mesmerized by the most was the picture on the cover. Holy cow, is that an antidote to cubicle claustrophobia or what?

It seems that every motorcycle rider has a Ted Simon story — about how they met Ted at a rally or got involved in his trip, so naturally I wanted a Ted Simon story of my own! 26 years after the original trip, he’s setting out again (this time on a BMW.) I volunteered to help out on the site, www.jupitalia.com, and am writing a photo album script in PHP so that the pictures Ted takes can go up right away. You can see March’s photo album here.

I picked up my motorcycle this weekend! Kate and her dad came with me, and we rolled it up a 2×10 plank and into Kate’s dad’s van. He lashed it up straight with webbing, and we drove away with Arlo Guthrie’s “I don’t want a pickle” playing on the stereo:

“I don’t want a pickle

I just want to ride on my motorsickle.

And I don’t want a tickle

I just want to ride on my motorsickle

And I-I-I-I don’t wanna die,

I just want to ride on my motorcy…

    …cle.”

Later on, as I repeatedly stalled the bike at a redlight facing uphill, the situation was less idyllic. I managed to keep my cool (barely), gunned the bike, made it across the light, and finished my very first foray into traffic with no harm done. It’s just exactly like learning to drive stick for the first time in my mom’s Mazda station wagon. In moments of frustration or inattention, though, the station wagon didn’t have a habit of rolling slowly onto its side. Anyhow, I made it back safe, and I can’t wait for the weather to get warmer!

Votes for an Aerostich suit

I’m taking this purchase of an Aerostich jumpsuit very seriously, as it’s not every day that you get to select your own futuristic armored coveralls (my co-worker Jason Robinette mentioned the seminal jumpsuit film The Running Man, pictured at right.)

Votes so far:

• Red with silver trim: My stepfather Robin Staebler, who has seen plenty of motorcycle accidents in the emergency room, so he gets extra votes.
  
• Grey with black trim: My Mom, who will learn by reading this that I stole her book on “Professional Stage Hypnotism” when I visited her in Maine, and am committing it to memory. I’ll give it back soon!
  
• Grey with silver trim: My co-worker Ken Courtney.
  
• Grey with red trim: My co-worker Asad Khan. “…you have to match the bike, in my opinion.”
  
• Grey with red trim: My co-worker Jason Robinette. “I think hi-viz with red would be a good Devo/Radiation suit look, though.”
  
• Hi-Viz Yellow with Red Trim: My co-worker Bob Russell, who used to be a physical therapist and helped many people recover from accidents. Hmm, maybe I’ll have to get over that whole Ronald McDonald aversion I have to the yellow and red suit.