Queen Size Is Not a Scrabble Word

  

When I was a kid, I was sent to the store at the top of the street for everything imaginable, milk, bread, the newspaper, batteries when we were desperate. Once my mother needed some pantyhose so off I went. When I was half way up the road my father stuck his head out the door and yelled,

 

"Queen size!"

I gave him the thumbs up. I knew the color as well. It was something easy like "brown." I readily found the item then skipped home proud of my success. When I arrived my mother was not speaking to my father. The tension was a little more palatable than the Joint Security Area in the Korean Demilitarized Zone. My father was sitting at the kitchen table in his chair with the newspaper open to the word jumble. My mother, manning the kitchen sink, was slamming dishes and cups signifying her disdain for something unbeknownst to me that went down not to her liking.

"I got the queen size," I said raising the bag aloft.

My mother threw a wet dish rag across the kitchen which landed squarely on my father's newspaper. I stood their motionless, holding the bag like one of those jockey lawn ornaments, the slightest move and Swartz was going to get his. My father carefully folded the rag then placed it on the table. He stood up then discarded his newspaper into the wastepaper basket with a thud. He stoically walked to the front door to peer out the small pie shaped windows. I put the bag on the counter and got the hell out of there since from experience I knew when a blowout of this magnitude erupted anyone of us kids usually ended up caught in the crossfire. Unfortunately I was the omega in my family so when tensions ran high the corporal usually paid me a visit.

"Now everyone knows," my mother muttered as she scrubbed a bowl.

I wasn't sure what she was talking about. The best I could come up with was she was referring to the size of her pantyhose, but I didn't get why she was mad about that. The girth of her rear end was common knowledge. I mean, it was no secret my mother had a big ass. It's not like you couldn't readily ascertain such a boldface fact just by looking at her. My mother graduated from the Harvard School of Cold Shoulder earning a PhD with honors. When it came to ignoring someone in the same room, she was master class. She didn't speak to my father or me for three days. One morning she ripped into me for not putting my clothes in the hamper. She unfurled her well rehearsed rant to satisfy her blood thirst for controversy,

"Is that your sock on the floor by the hamper?" she launched.

"I think so," I answered.

"You should be more appreciative of everything you have," she recited.

"I am."

"You kids don't appreciate anything your father and I do."

"I do," I said even thought I knew where this was going.

"You always had a roof over your head, food on the table and clothes on your back."

"It must have fell when I stuffed my clothes in the hamper," I explained.

"You left it there on purpose."

Even though arguing never led to a more agreeable outcome I did it anyway. They say when you have children you realize the sacrifices your parents made for you. I realized that you don't get credit as a parent for food, shelter and clothing. If you don't do those things, social services comes and relieves you of your children. Eventually everything went back to normal. My parents were talking to each other albeit in short incoherent grunts. In the afternoon, they resumed their epic Scrabble campaign.

My mother and father loved Scrabble. They tallied who won every game they ever played. After nearly a thousand matches, the winner was up only by one, and that changed weekly. My parents, if nothing else, were each other's Scrabble equals. They knew all the two letter Scrabble words like "xi," a Greek letter and "xu," a Vietnamese penny. Whenever my father went out playing an eight point "x" on the two letter Vietnamese penny, sometimes dropping it on a double letter, he would say,

"Thank you dong!"

"Dong" is the Vietnamese dollar. So a xu is one hundredth of a dong. They knew all the "q" words that didn't require the "u," as in "qi," "qat," "qaid," "qadi," "qintar," "qanat" and several others. Most of these words had their origins in the Middle East, and my parents hadn't a clue what any of them meant, but they used the various length words to drop the ten point "q" on a choice square. My father never said,

"Honey, when you finish your qat, the local qaid said we should check the qanat."

"Qat" is a leaf chewed in Yemen, "qaid" is a Muslim chief and a "qanat" is an ancient Persian irrigation system so it was unlikely that these words would be spoken in casual conversation in Rhode Island in 1975 or any time soon for that matter. At the time my father was one game down on my mother. Whoever was winning had bragging rights as well as feudal decree. No matter what the argument was over the reigning Scrabble champ had hand over the loser. They conceded right from wrong based on the Scrabble tally. The winner would say,

"Alright for you. We'll see who wins the next game."

Even though they had seemingly moved beyond the pantyhose incident my mother was plotting against my father over the next Scrabble match. Much later in life she admitted to making his coffee extra weak in hopes that he would fall asleep. My mother was the Scrabble bluff champion. The way bluffing in Scrabble works you can play any word you want. If another player calls your bluff, you go to the official Scrabble dictionary to look up the word. If it's not in the book, the person playing the bluff takes their letters back and loses their turn. If the word is legit, the challenger loses their turn. My parents used to put the Scrabble board on a revolving platform called a "lazy susan" so each player in turn could face the game. The board spun around all afternoon as they battled it out, my father trying to tie the score, my mother secretly trying to levy a brutal punishment for my father's town crier role in the pantyhose affair. As the game wore down and the last letters found their way onto the board, my mother went out with,

"Zick."

She smiled with delight as she began adding up the letters.

"Hold on there!" my father protested.

My mother kept on counting.

"What is 'zick'?" my father asked.

"It's a technique of decorating objects with printed media," my mother responded authoritatively.

My mother was an accomplished artist. Although she was describing decoupage, my father wouldn't have known this. He was a silversmith. He was about to challenge when I walked by. My father turned to me and said,

"You know what 'zick' is?"

Now I heard my mother's definition as I approached, and I wanted to sound like I was smart so I said,

"It's an art form using pictures from magazines or something."

My father sank back in defeat as my mother continued to tally the score. She smiled condescendingly while periodically letting out an irritating chuckle as she added up the totals. In Scrabble when you go out first, you get the points for the letters that everyone else got stuck with. My father was left with the ten point "q." When my mother finished, she announced,

"I win!"

My father slapped on his glasses then snatched the score sheet from my mother. He looked over the columns of numbers incredulously then scanned the board attempting to locate the words that matched the numbers on the sheet. Eventually he relinquished the scorecard for the Scrabble dictionary. He dove for the back of the book.

'What the hell!" my father exclaimed.

"What?" I asked.

"'Zick' is not a word!"

He looked to my mother.

"You bluffed!"

My mother had a smirk on her face that even a middle school jerk like me thought was mean. My father then turned to me and said,

"And you lied too!"

"I... I... thought that's what it was," I exclaimed defensively.

Front Door on Our House
with Semicircular
Window

My father got up from the kitchen table, turned and walked to the front door, then peered out the small pie shaped windows. He always did that when he was angry. Our house sat at the junction of a tee and faced down Jacques Street. The view out the semicircular window of the front door was that of a middle class neighborhood, filled with tightly packed houses. There was no ocean, no mountains. We were lucky to have a few trees. That's what middle class suburbia offered in the 70's. I don't know what he was thinking as he stared at length out those windows. My father never smacked us kids like my mother. She was short and couldn't look out the front door unless she stood on a stool. Growing up I thought that the view out the window was the difference between catching a beating or not, but in truth, it wasn't that simple.

My mother was two games up on my father, something that never happened in all the years of their gameplay. My father was crushed, a beaten man. He wanted a rematch, but my mother refused. She wanted time to rub Scrabble debris into my father's open wounds. It was a painful week for my father, waiting for the next game. He overheard my mother talking on the phone with one of her friends, saying,

"Oh yes, we still play Scrabble. I'm up by two games."

My father's pencil would break as he stabbed in the words of his crossword puzzle. He wasn't speaking to me either. As far as he was concerned I was a traitor. On the following weekend my mother and father reconvened for another match. My father brought his A-game. He had played many of the money letters including the "j," the "x," the "q," and the "z." He had won with an unusually large margin. My mother refused to play a second game. Still in the lead she wanted another week to gloat.

The following weekend the Scrabble game was uncommonly quiet. My mother typically talked non stop, but today she sat silently looking over her letters while occasionally surveying everything my father did. I passed by a few times only because you had to go through the kitchen to get to my room. On one pass my mother had played the "z" with the word "size." My father spun the board around and to my horror immediately predicated her word with "queen." My mother turned red as she stared at the letters my father arranged on the Scrabble board. He had played five letters with the "q" and "z" and picked up a double word to boot.

Now I knew that "queen size" was two words. I read it on the pantyhose packaging, but I wasn't saying anything. My mother was too angry to draw any logical conclusions. She just sat their and seethed. My father picked up over fifty points sealing the tying game in his favor. He was certainly going to win. He reached for the bag of letters, pulled out a few new ones, then he topped off his tray with another trip to the bag, and then he got greedy. My father in his glee forgot himself for just one critical moment. Through her anger my mother peered down at the word on the Scrabble board which slowly rotated in front of her. She looked to my father as he attempted a third trip to the bag.

My father was mildly good with slight of hand tricks. He used this skill, honed as a teenager, to cheat at poker. Now it came in handy to palm Scrabble letters then reach in the bag to drop them all while attempting to retrieve a new more higher scoring letter. The mistake he made was he had seven letters already on his tray when he had made a third trip to the bag. My mother saw it right off.

"Stop!" she ordered.

My father froze with his hand in the cookie jar. Midway through the kitchen I also stopped dead in my tracks.

"You had seven letters, and now you have five!" she summoned.

"I need two more," my father explained.

"You're swapping letters!"

"I am not!" my father said indignantly.

Then he extracted his hand from the bag. Panicing he returned a letter he was holding in his other hand back to his tray.

"You had a letter in your left hand!" my mother shouted.

"I did not," my father protested.

My father was busted. He had taught me how to cheat at checkers, Chutes and Ladders, Sorry, even chess. He honed his cheating skills when playing us kids so that the game moved along more quickly, and he could return to his newspaper and crossword puzzles. My sisters used to cheat every time they played a game with me. They were not as clever at concealing their tactics as my father, but I didn't care. I just wanted someone to play with me. My father tried to teach me to palm playing cards, but he gave up because my hands were too small. He never taught me anything of value like math or French or how to ride a bicycle. He grew up full of mischief with an absent father who was murdered in New York City in 1938. Once my father taught me how to make a time bomb with a cigarette and matches. My knucklehead friends and I blew up a mailbox on a four minute delay, time enough for us to get away. His palming skills came in handy when playing Scrabble. My mother might have been the Bluff Queen, but my father was the Palm King.

Now you might be thinking that I was devastated to embrace my father being caught cheating in Scrabble, but it was not so. Back in the 70's being a successful cheat was highly regarded in middle school. The movie, The Sting, staring Robert Redford and Paul Newman as con men won four academy award for best picture, screenplay, directory and costume design. Con men were cool, and that's what my dad was. The same year my father took me to see Paper Moon starring Ryan O'Neal opposite his real life daughter, Tatum. The two played partners during the Great Depression in a scam to bilk widows out of money for bibles that they claimed a recently deceased family member ordered. Tatum won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress at ten years old, becoming the youngest winner in any category.

"That's how you got all those high scoring letters in the last game!" my mother reasoned.

My dad got up from the table and walked calmly to the front door to peer out the pie shaped windows. I resumed my progress towards my bedroom.

"You!" my mother shouted.

I froze yet again.

"You see what you father did?" she exclaimed. "He cheated!"

Being accused of cheating by the Bluff Queen had a certain irony. As far as my middle school mind was concerned bluffing was lying even though it was in the rules. I resumed walking without saying a word.

As I got older and tall enough to look out the pie shaped windows of the front door I found reason to do so occasionally when I did badly on a test or a girl in my class "didn't like me back." I never knew what went though my father's mind as he often stared blankly out that window. For me the view was just the closely packed houses of our neighborhood. There was no sense of relief, no cathartic release. One time as I gazed out the window I saw a father teaching a young boy how to ride a bike on Jacques Street. Eventually the little dude found his balance and took off up the road to the great delight of his father.

We see the same things with different eyes. Eyes that are new and hopeful, sometimes wet with laughter or bruised from abuse. Many things are in the eye of the beholder, and the view out that window certainly was one of them.

Editor's Note: Originally posted on December 27, 2016.

Make Greenland Great Again!

Recently, the Trump administration has considered purchasing Greenland which I think is a great idea. The country has been part of Denmark since 1814. Today, Greenland costs the Danish people $3.4 billion annually so I can see why they might want to unload it. Denmark's Prime Minister told President Trump,

"Greenland is not for sale, but if we were considering it, what kind of numbers are we talking about here?"

The way I see it, Denmark should downsize before Justin Bieber ruins the country like he did Iceland. After Bieber filmed a music video in the Nordic island nation, Iceland was inundated with fans who apparently trampled a remote scenic canyon. With plant and animal life found nowhere else in the world, the terrain couldn't absorb the millions of "beliebers" urinating on the fragile ecosystem. Rich in minerals and other resources, Greenland is primarily an exporter of fish and shrimp. The Northeast Greenland National Park, the largest and most northern national park in the world, gets as many as two visitors each year. The vast majority of Greenland is covered by ice, upwards to 3/4 of the country. Most of the resources are buried under twelve feet of snow. If the people of Greenland ever catch onto the shovel, we're screwed. They'll never sell.

Greenland has very little illegal immigration. In fact, upwards to sixty percent of the country's 56,480 inhabitants don't want to be there either. They also have very few mass shootings which after becoming part of the United States will help us lower our stats. It makes perfect sense why President Trump wants to purchase Greenland. By ignoring global warming, the United States will become uninhabitable in twelve short years while Greenland will transform into a seasonably warm, resource rich, destination vacation hotspot. Trump will be selling time shares to his resorts in Greenland while the rest of us will be living beyond Thunderdome.

The last time the US tried to purchase Greenland, it was 1946. Harry S. Truman offered Denmark $100 million, $1.3 billion in todays' dollars. Although a lot of money, it would cost the US mint only about two hundred bucks in ink and paper to print up that kind of scratch. I'm sure Greenland has appreciated a bit since then, but I would be careful when dealing with a wheeler-dealer like Donald J. Trump especially when it comes to real estate.

The way I see it if history repeats itself, after purchasing Greenland for a little more than a keg of beer, a mirror, two horses and some trinkets and baubles, Americans would pile in and settle the country. After an extensive government campaign to educate the local inhabitants about the perils posed by vaccines, ninety-five percent of the indigenous peoples would be wiped out by a particularly resilient strain of swine flu. The remaining roughly three thousand native people would be relocated to reservations until someone finds a resource underfoot which can be exploited for profit. The government would simply move them to some other, less inhabitable, more northerly part of the island, clearing the way for industrial scale strip mining. Federal recognition based on a minor portion of their nationality would spurn on a claim of heritage allowing for the construction of casinos on the reservations. Entertainment venues at the tribal casinos would draw in musical legends like Hall and Oats, Neil Diamond and Bowser from Sha Na Na. Even though they will have lost their sovereign lands and traditional fishing grounds, they would still have plenty of money for flat screen TVs. And I'm not talking about those crappy 40" models either. They'd be able to buy the big ones.

Norse legend says that Erik the Red named Greenland to attract people to settle there. Conversely, Iceland was named by a Norwegian Viking who didn't want anyone to come to the country. Even though the latter story, occasionally taught in middle school, is probably a fable, I would think as the Trump administration continues to develop a plan to acquire the vast island of Greenland, the tale is more true today than ever. If the people of Greenland want to keep the Trump administration at bay, they could always try renaming their country to a less attractive, unpopular name like "Shithole" or maybe "Thunderdome." Something like that.

A Level Playing Field

 

Waiting awkwardly for the teacher to arrive she tried to blend into the back of the group of high school freshman. Although athletic, she hated gym class. A thin teen who needed to be reminded to eat, she said that back then she hadn't a disorder. She just forgot. Trapped in the gangly last stages of puberty, the normally outgoing young girl chose to hide from the world when in her gym clothes. A once accomplished half back on the soccer field, her journey to adulthood brought on uncertainty as she balanced her academic studies and athletic achievements in high school.

As an engineer in the male dominated shipbuilding industry, her boss told her on the first day of work that he would escort her down into the shipyard just this once; afterwards she would be on her own. A grown women in her early twenties, she had interned one college summer for the Building Department of her local town. She was tasked with calculating the pressure drop in the potable water system of the bathrooms and showers in the county jail. It was a simple task made difficult by the fact that the facility was occupied. As a summer hire, she often worked in the same space with men charged with murder and rape. Now she was venturing into a shipyard where she would be the only woman among thousands of men.
 
It was hard enough to change into your gym clothes and compete in an inane activity like dodge ball for a grade without also dealing with the callousness of the student body. In the early 80's, there was no anti bullying agendas or focus on esteem building. No one wanted to stand out as doing so would draw the attention of the many assholes who filled the halls of high school. The teachers were no help either. Most gave little notice to the torment endured by the less popular kids. Assimilating into the pack on the gym floor, she pretended to participate in idle chatter. She was a top student with a bright future, but at this moment she wanted to disappear. For her, gym class wasn't something to be enjoyed. It was something to be endured.
 
She chose to work in Ship's Test Organization (STO) as a new engineer. Against her bosses advice, a job in STO would put her in the shipyard more frequently than most new hires. Her father always told her that struggle in the face of obstacles builds character, but she could never have realized at such a young age how dangerous of a choice she had made. There were some hardened people who worked in the shipyard. When she went down in the ways the workers would collectively scream and yell. I once experienced this firsthand. When I asked a colleague what was going on, he said "there must be a woman nearby." One time, a worker on a submarine in drydock removed his badge, then followed her as she ventured to a space she needed access to. When they reached a secluded spot, he pinned her up against the bulkhead. Remaining calm, she looked into his eyes in attempts to remember all she could. Luckily, he backed away. There was no one nearby who could've intervened if he attacked her. She recalls the story with a cold resolve, knowing that surviving meant facing aggression unflinchingly.
 
The gym teacher, Mr. Hinkley, was characteristically late. That meant that after changing up in the locker rooms, she had to hide in the outer edges of the herd while the cool kids summoned up their foolish antics, hoping to get a laugh from the crowd. Back then, in a group of high schoolers you wouldn't find a moral thought among them. They reveled in smoking pot and low achievement, bragging about receiving detention or scuffles with the principal, some with the police. She was silent about her stellar academic achievement, knowing full well that if revealed her torment would be even worse. She was often the target for her thin physique just as much as those who were overweight. Body shaming was just another tool used by the bullies to crush the spirit of others.
 
Eventually her presence in the shipyard was no longer a novelty. There were older men she routinely worked with who were probably fathers to daughters, and I surmise this made them look out for her. Decades before any effort to curtail workplace sexual harassment, she continued to toil in the hyper male environment sometimes experiencing unwanted sexual comments in office spaces as well as the shipyard. She rose to a senior engineer before the company elected to try an experiment in shipbuilding, the Major Area Team. Instead of focusing on systems, the design effort would concentrate on spaces. Having a sixty person interdisciplinary team of engineers, drafters and shipfitters, she was the first Major Area Team Leader focusing on designing and constructing the Auxiliary Machinery Room (AMR) of the next class of nuclear submarine.
 
It wouldn't have mattered if the gym teacher was on time. An out of shape drunkard, Mr. Hinkley had been a cool kid in his glory days. Now, he saw through the antics of the next generation of douchebags who guided the gym class into a collective symphony of mockery. She knew that Mr. Hinkley was harmless, unlike some of the other teachers. It makes for a wonderful story that a teacher pulls a student from the crowd after discovering a special something about them, but she knew that more often than not sudden interest from a male teacher was something to be avoided. Not all were creeps, but there were enough to form a pattern that raised a personal awareness among the female students.
 
They chose her to lead the effort because she was a woman. Not to fulfill any diversity mandates. There was none of that back then. She was picked for this grand experiment of concurrent engineering because many people in management didn't want to change the way they had always built submarines. The navy was pushing for the new construction philosophy so the company had to comply. Her team consisted of all the misfits, the beta workers. The top employees were busy designing the ship the old way. The truth was widely known that the company wanted the project to fail. They picked her because they believed a woman would be unsuccessful.
 
Fifteen minutes had passed since the last students exited the locker rooms. She relaxed a bit, confident that any lame activity they had planned for gym class would be over shortly. A student named "Andy," snuck up behind her like he had done countless times throughout middle school. Andy yanked her gym pants down much to the delight of the waiting crowd. With today's hyperaware woke culture, it's hard to fathom that pulling down a young girl's shorts in gym class wouldn't get someone expelled or a teacher fired, but that's what passed for education in the 80's. As the often target of ridicule, she wanted nothing more than to be left alone. Unfortunately, no one came to her defense, not even other girls. Instead they collectively laughed at her humiliation.
 
She knew her team was staffed primarily by beaten down unionized workers, older guys set in their ways, and younger less experienced people who knew how to operate computers. In addition to designing by space, the new approach mandated that all the drawings had to be done on a computer aided design station, a relatively new tool back then. She decided to team up the older more knowledgeable guys with the younger more computer literate workers. The cross pollination of experience helped the younger generation learn about design while the older workers picked up how to use the computer. She scoured the literature on concurrent engineering as well as design build teams as she quickly transformed her group into a high performing unit, hauling them forward into the future.
 
Andy in gym class was just another problem to solve. With her baby sitting money, she bought shorts with a tie string. The next time he tried to yank down her pants, his failed attempt caught him off guard. She looked Andy in the eyes which caused him to back away and trip over another student. His fall triggered the group into laughter. He never tried that again.
 
As a leader, she spurned on a drive in her people. She listened to their concerns and enacted sound policies based on their input. When unionized drafters on her team told her that they wanted to take vacation in hourly increments in lieu of eight hour blocks, she obliged even though contractually, she wasn't authorized to do so. This caused a rift with other designers in the union who had to take full days even if they only needed part of the day off. Eventually she was dragged into a meeting with her departmental manager, the union president and a company lawyer. The lawyer opened with,
 
"It's come to our attention that you are approving hourly vacation time in one hour increments against the legal labor agreement."
 
"Sometimes they need to take just part of the day off. So rather than lose a full day of work, I approve just what they ask for," she rationalized.
 
With that the top of the lawyer's head almost blew off. The union president chimed in,
 
"You can't do this. I'm getting complaints from other union members."
 
"Do it for them too," she insisted.
 
"We can't do that! It's not negotiated in the contract," the lawyer exclaimed.
 
Her manager sunk his head in his hands. He just wanted to go back to his office and smoke cigarettes. The lawyer continued,
 
"You do know that you are in violation of the collective bargaining agreement between the company and the drafter's union."
 
"There's no reason why this can't be done. People no longer add up hours by hand. It's all automated. It's good for the company and good for the employee," she argued.
 
The lawyer threatened,
 
"I'm asking you just this once. Are you going to stop approving vacation time in one hour increments for unionized employees?"
 
Her answer reminded me of Howard Hughes when he was being grilled by Maine Senator Ralph Owen Brewster in a hearing over cost overruns for war contracts. She answered the lawyer like the way Hughes answered Brewster when asked if he would bring in his chief engineer for questioning a second time. She said,
 
"No, I don't think I will."
 
This angered everyone at the table. A month later having retained her job she read in the company newsletter that her manager and the lawyer came up with the idea to approve vacation in one hour increments for hourly employees. After negotiating with the union president, they all agreed the new policy was best for the company and the employees. They touted the agreement as an example of cooperation between the company and the union outside of normal contract negotiations. She was never mentioned in the article.
 
Tragedy struck when a young family man on her team passed away suddenly from an undiagnosed ailment. She had an important design meeting in front of a tough as nuts admiral who was known for grilling engineers. Normally she had her design leads with her to answer the admiral's questions. The funeral was on the same day as the meeting. She let her whole team off to go to the service as she stood alone to fend off the admiral's barrage of questions. After the meeting, the admiral asked where everyone was. She told him,
 
"They had an important event to attend."
 
The admiral learned later what had transpired and the next time he spoke to company leaders, he declared the Major Area Team concept a success largely due to her leadership and contributions. She went on to train other teams in concurrent engineering such that the concept is still employed by the shipbuilder today.
 
Recently my wife, Christine, and I were reminiscing about our time back then when we had met, dated and fell in love. She told me that the location onboard the submarine in which she was accosted shortly after she was hired was the Auxiliary Machinery Room, the same space she designed for the next class of fast attack submarine by concurrent engineering. A few years after her success as the first Major Area Team Leader, she left the company moving to another industry where after twenty years, she became a vice president.
 
Sometimes I hear people suggest that when a woman or a minority is promoted, it's only because they are a diversity candidate, implying that a more qualified white guy got bumped, but then I think of what my wife endured when she was young over her many years in industry. I am certain that if the playing field was leveled to her experiences, people like me wouldn't go as far as people like her.

The Pacific Coast - The Other Story

The Route

Last week I wrote a piece about a three week bike trip down the Pacific Coast Highway my wife, Christine, and I did twenty years ago on our tandem. I offered a few pictures while concentrating on the most amusing events. A few relatives and friends on social media recalled aspects of the story I relayed over the years. True, I left out many things that happened to us due to the length of the tale, but not wanting to disappoint a readership I didn’t know I had, I agreed to write about some of the other events that occurred on that excursion so long ago.

As mentioned in last weeks post, we flew into Portland, Oregon then spent two days making our way to Astoria. A port city founded in 1811, Astoria was named after John Jacob Astor who built a trading post at the site. Known as the oldest settlement west of the Rocky Mountains, Astoria back in 1999 had seen better days. There were houses stripped of paint, falling to the ground, abandoned barges and beached fishing boats. There was a Nike plant nearby and other manufacturing facilities, but no tech industry.

Coast of Astoria

 Water views were in every direction, and there was no attempt at preventing access to the shore like in New England. We wandered about finding wild raspberries amongst rusty discarded industrial equipment. When we finally collected ourselves and headed out, the map we had guided us off Route 101 and onto Lewis and Clark Road which wound by a river of the same name. The road turned to deep gravel making traversal commensurate with the namesake expedition.


Pushing Forward

After pushing the bike eight miles and past three angry dogs, we were back on pavement. We met up with another tandem team ridden by a couple from Vancouver, BC. David and Kathleen were familiar with the area and offered many insights. We crossed paths and chatted often before we agreed to stay at the same campground. Kathleen was a doctoral candidate in psychology. A few years older than us, our new friends were enthusiastic parents of two children.


Canadian Friends

 We shared many breathtaking views along the roadside with our new riding partners. When we told them that our destination was San Francisco they informed us that a large avalanche the previous year cut off the highway just north of the city. They urged us to confirm that the road was passable.

Along the Pacific Coast Highway

One morning, we diverted from our route to venture into Cape Mears, leaving David and Kathleen back on 101. After climbing up a huge hill in the fog, we arrived at a vista. Someone welded up a motorcycle wheel onto a fork. We spun the wheel then moved on uneventfully as the view was obscured by mist. We learned not to ever again deviate from the main road when pedaling your vehicle.



The Wheel

Although our stock wheels were built for a tandem, the 75 pounds of gear we carried along with our bodies took a toll on the rear wheel. A few days out we snapped our first spoke. Luckily, I had spare spokes and knew how to replace them.

 

Fixing the Machine

When we were flying down the side of a hill with all our gear, a driver would give us a thumbs up or that three finger symbol for love. One guy yelled out,

"Free bird!"

When crawling up a hill, the comments were less optimistic. Once someone shouted out the window of a passing car as we were pedaling up a steep rise,

“How can you do that to your wife, asshole!”

We met a father, son and nephew team along the road. Jerry, Zak and Geof all hauled trailers holding all their equipment. Jerry was an electrician who had a penchant for zip ties. He was a last minute addition to his son's trip and as such was using his time trial bike for touring. The trailers they pulled were called "Bobs." Apparently they still make them. We called the group "The Three Bobs." Jerry also warned us about the avalanche and road blockage.

The Three Bobs

We travelled in a loosely formed pack, passing each other throughout the day. We met a young guy from England named "Tom," who had no cooking equipment. Tom was surviving on Slim Jims and Doritos. Jerry was meeting his wife at a campground in the redwood forest on their last day. He said that she was bringing pasta and invited all of us to dinner. As we travelled southward, I would scramble to the beachhead to write a message in the sand informing the group when we passed through.

Early Texting

The pasta dinner was very much appreciated. Jerry arranged for us to get our bike serviced when we would roll through his town, Eureka, in two days. He said he would look into the state of the road repair further south and let us know if 101 was open.


Jerry and his Wife


Having to pedal hundreds of miles out of our way to circumvent a landslide meant we would not make it to the Golden Gate Bridge by the time we had to fly out. We had return airline tickets so we had to be in San Francisco on a specific day. Any delays meant we would have to quit and rent a car. As we pressed on through the redwood forest we reconnected with Tom from England. Christine and I were known as "The Couple from Connecticut" who ate really well. A few miles out, we would start collecting food for dinner which was often salmon, wild rice, bread and wine. Sometimes we picked up a bundle of campfire wood. Once, I was so hungry after a day of pedaling that when Christine asked how much fish she should get I answered,

"Five pounds."

Seemed like a good number. We invited Tom to dine with us that night because he looked like he was slowly starving to death, and we had plenty of food. I recall him snatching up my fork and knife before I had time to wash them and with the utmost manners, polishing off the rest of the salmon.

Dinner (note the lemons)

Back on the road the next day, we said goodbye to Tom, who had also heard that the road ahead was out. Seemed like everyone knew about the landslide except us, even a guy from England. David and Kathleen punched out as well just outside the redwood forest.

The Last of Tom


That night we stayed in a remote campground identified in a guide as being near a small town on a river so we elected not to buy a bunch of food on our way in. After setting up our tent and showering we ventured off in search of dinner. When we arrived at the settlement, all we found was sidewalks and a lone stop sign. The town had vanished. Returning to the campground, we asked a park ranger where the town was. He informed us that during the previous winter an ice flow, raging down the river, washed the town away. When we got back to our tent and took stock of our food, we found we had one package of oatmeal, an apple and a power bar. We saved the oatmeal for breakfast.

In Oregon, you crossed bridges and passed through tunnels as you travelled the coast. In California you spent half the day going down a switchback, only to cross a stream at the bottom, then spent the rest of the day climbing back up. The switchbacks were steep and challenging. The signs would read the road gradient as eight to twelve percent, but I thought they were steeper.


One of the Many Switchback Ascents


When we passed through Eureka, Jerry's guy restrung our rear wheel. Jerry and his wife put us up and fed us again.


Local Wheel Overhaul

Jerry gave us the good news that the repair to the road had in fact been completed the previous month, and he believed that the road was open. He said the road was closed only a mile from the slide so we wouldn't know for sure until we got fairly close. The next day, we said our goodbyes and thanked Jerry and his wife. Later when we got home, we sent them four jars of our homemade strawberry jam, and a package of reusable zip ties.

As we left Eureka, we pedaled through the town of Elk, where we ran into a parade. After stopping to watch the festivities, a group of people began chatting with us. The usual questions arose like where did we start, what do we carry, where are we from, how far are we going. A gentleman in the group was an avid photographer. He took this picture and others which he mailed to us.


A Quizzical Group

He also took the picture below which he said he used in a photo contest. We never learned if his entry did well. After telling them we were heading for San Francisco, they explained that the road was out. We had heard otherwise, but they warned us emphatically like concerned parents, explaining that landslides in California were much bigger than in Connecticut. I'll bet the wildfires are worse too.


A Contest Entry

In a few days after pedaling up and down some pretty impressive hills, we reached the area in which the avalanche had occurred. That's me at the base of wall, rejoicing.

Road Reconstruction

On the final night of camping, we reminisced about our adventure on the road. We planned many more grand journeys on our tandem, including a ride overseas, but we never did anything so adventurous again. As the fire hissed and snapped, we heard owls calling to each other. Huddling together in the night air, we were confident in our achievement, ever thankful for the help we received along the way. We had propelled ourselves over a thousand miles carrying everything we needed on a machine built for two. Not yet parents, nor tested by the chaos of life, we had more years ahead of us than behind, years that would see us through the births of our two boys and the loss that inevitably is experienced by those wishing to be parents. We had many of life's wonders, yet to behold, as the fire dwindled into a red glow. The next day we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge.


Final Night

Some have asked me what happened to our bicycle. Did we trade it in for a flat screen television and a reclining couch? You know, the ones with the cup holder in the armrest. For many years, our tandem hung from the ceiling of our garage, the tires flat, the handlebar tape dangling like the tail of a kite. I passed by the bike numerous times as I retrieved my weed whacker, gas for my lawnmower or mouse traps on a nearby shelf.

It may be hard at times to see the blazes on the trail, but life rarely leads you to a place you don't already want to go.