Downtown Bombshell Yesterday was another day of rest for me. I was enjoying being back home after three weeks away, so I just lazed around opening mail, sorting through motorcycle gear, organizing stuff, watching a bit of MSNBC to catch up on the news (though I must say these days none of us is further away from it than our smartphones) and waiting for our evening adventure. Kim had booked us for another SAG/AFTRA…
I Walk the Line No, this is not a piece about Johnny Cash, though I imagine that his song by the same name talks to a similar problem we all face in one way or another. And there’s yet another song title. What exactly is a line? Is it simply a demarcation or is it a barrier not to be crossed. Is it about providing guidance and directionality or is it a warning not to…
The Small Wide World I am in Milan for a series of meetings with a small private Italian chemical company that is partnering with us on a small pilot plant to make hydrogen and/or ammonia. I have combined this trip with my return from my motorcycle tour of Turkey, so it feels like a bit of a drawn our return home. Nonetheless, I am rallying to the mission. I met up with my two colleagues…
Whistling Past the Maelstrom We’ve been planning this trip to Turkey for a year. We have a group of motorcycle buddies (couples and stags) that like doing an international bike trip each fall. In the recent past we’ve done Croatia, Greece and Sicily. While sitting on a terrace in Palermo last October, we agreed on a Turkey trip for this year. It started to take shape in February, came together as a committed plan in…
Taking a Day I am something in between a workaholic and a lazy bastard. I truly do not know which of the extremes is more prevalent. I know I have worked for forty-three years mostly non-stop. I had several instances when I could have and perhaps should have reasonably taken a break from work of something like six months. There was always something that drove me to keep working or, most often, jump into my…
Keeping Secrets We recently saw a pre-screening of the Martin Scorsese epic The Irishman, starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesce with a great follow-on ensemble including Ray Romano, Bobby Cannavale, Harvey Keitel and Anna Paquin. It is probably Scorsese’s last great mob movie and it details the life and death of Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino) as seen through the narrated eyes of his surviving bodyguard, Frank Sheeran (De Niro). One of the great…
Putin Everything in Place This morning’s headline in the Financial Times is that Russia has come to an agreement with Bashar al-Assad\ of Syria and the Kurds to fight back against Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey and its attempt to create a 20 mile-wide barrier between itself and Syria. This is all done by Turkey in the name of national security, presumably mostly against the Kurds, who have an historical habit of deciding which national…
Up, Up and Away There comes a time in every trip when it’s not technically over, but you feel that you are just biding time until you flight home leaves. That time has now come for the 2019 Turkey Tour. We are in Cappadocia in a lovely hotel called Argos. It’s funny that Argo is the name of the Ben Affleck film that tells the story of Tony Mendez, the CIA exfill specialist, who draws…
Like Water for Camels Our last day of riding was not really about riding, but more about mimicking a caravan across the Silk Road. The path was arrow-straight for 130 miles from Konya to Cappadocia and we flew like the wind in our set formation. The only stop we made was at the Sultanhanı Caravanserai, conveniently positioned just off out path and about half-way between the two cities. In the heyday of the Silk Road,…
Stepping Up I began this trip by describing our journey to the center of the earth, which I described as the Steppes of Central Asia. Well, today we said goodbye to the Mediterranean Sea and rode over the Taurus Mountains to the Anatolian Plateau or Plain, what we can reasonably describe as the Westernmost Steppes of Asia Minor. Specifically, we have entered the Konya Ovasi Basin, what those in the Western U.S. would call the…