Paging Doctor Cohen with an Assist by Cliff Davis We are spending the weekend at Camp Davis on Lake Ariel in the Poconos, the lovely vacation home of our dear friends Cliff and Linda. I met Cliff and Linda fifty-one years ago on the second floor of University Halls Dormitory number Four (called U-Hall 4 by its denizens). The greatest difference between this U-Hall and the other five identical cinderblock post-WWII buildings was that unlike…
Ten-Digit Dialing I got an interesting notice yesterday from my mobile phone service provider, which happens to be Spectrum (since they offer the Verizon system without the added Verizon cost structure and smarmy, cheating ways as documented in previous stories). The notice was intended for their customers to inform them that from now on there is no such thing as “local calling” and that all calls must heretofore be placed with a full ten-digit number…
Advice and Nonsense I mentioned in my recent Into Thin Air story that I was heading to my local REI (Recreational Equipment, Inc.) store to buy rock climbing gear for my latest rock climbing wall project. I mentioned that I would be seeking their advice, but I had no idea what a tale that would become all by itself. I have been to REI and survived that experience, coming out with about 75% of what…
A Dental Damn OK, admit it, you just had to start reading this story with a title like that, didn’t you? Don’t worry, this story has nothing to do with the latex product sold by that similar name, though I bet a lot of you are as curious about the device as I am. I have no particular reason to be so curious, but its just one of those things that you hear about along…
Arbor Arboretum Arbutus Carborundum Trees are once again on my mind at the moment. In the same way that I felt compelled last year to hire a consulting horticulturalist to teach me what I didn’t know about gardening (his message can be distilled to two words – MORE MULCH), I have just hired and spent two hours with a consulting arborist. I found him much more professional and credible than the horticulturalist, though they did…
A Fistfull of Vomit One of my personal quirks is that I have only very rarely thrown-up over my 68 years. I know this isn’t a particularly pleasant topic, but it is one of life’s little events that we almost all have to face every once in a while. For my part, I can recall facing that physical requirement once in the 60s, once in the 70s and again once in the 90s. The first…
So Hard…and then, So Easy I have lately been reminded over and over again about how hard life can sometimes be. That is actually a silly thing to say or think in a world overwhelmed with so many devastating events every day. For the better part of four months now we have lived day-by-day with the Ukrainian situation, one day exposing more atrocities by the Russians in their quest for Putin’s world dominance play, than…
The Five A’s of Ride Leadership Today was day three of our AFMC Moab ride. The most important element of a good ride is always the weather and it has been superb, so that has been a blessing. We are all appreciating this good fortune. It is hard not to when you are sitting out in this magnificent landscape in near perfect weather that is warm and sunny and yet not too hot and with…
Everyday Risks Today is the first morning of our Utah motorcycle ride. We picked up Chris and Ann at the airport on Saturday night and began our journey into the event by finding that one of their three bags got lost. San Diego airport, technically named Lindbergh Field in honor of Charles Lindbergh, who flew the Atlantic Ocean on a solo flight 95 years ago this month, was the venue. That was considered an amazing…
Campus Life I never spent any time on a college campus until the summer of 1971 when I left high school in Rome and flew to Cleveland, Ohio to spend the summer working in the Department of Sociology at Case Western Reserve University. My mother was friends with the Department Chair and he gave me a summer job as a research assistant, mostly coding forms on a study that the Department had conducted about he…