Given that we live in the county that occupies the bottom of California, just above the Mexican border at Tijuana, we find ourselves regularly heading north and debating the best way to do that. For reasons I can guess at, but cannot really explain, we do not head south into Mexico…ever. We used to go down to Cabo San Lucas with some regularity and I used to visit the west coast of Mexico mainland with…
About seven years ago, Kim and I were headed to a motorcycle ride that was to take us all across the mainland of Greece. In searching for the cheapest business class seat to that distant locale, I found that Turkish Airways had a great flight direct from JFK to Istanbul. From there it was a small hop to Athens. Since Kim had always wanted to go to Istanbul and I hadn’t been there for a…
It is not so unusual for guys of my age to say that they only wear a jacket and tie anymore to weddings and funerals. The last suit (and I really do hope it is the very last suit) I bought was last year when I needed to buy a tan suit (the sort that got President Obama into trouble) for my son Thomas’ wedding last Labor Day (2023). I haven’t worn it since and…
I have two motorcycles, a 2021 BMW R-Nine-T, which is a 1200cc cafe racer that I have no business riding too far since my knees are tucked up and it has no wind fairing other that a small shield covering the front light. I bought it to have a spare bike for when my son Thomas comes out and and wants to ride or if another riding friend (fewer and further in between) comes to…
For several weeks now, Kim and I have had time to leisurely decorate the house for the holidays. I have gone through many different stages with regard to holiday decorations. In the mid-Nineties I can recall paying as much as $5,000 to a local decorator to decorate our ski house in Utah for the holidays season so that we could enjoy all the festive atmosphere of the holidays without having to detract from our one…
I feel like I am less inclined these days to write about politics, but that may or may not be true if you tally my stories about politics versus those about everything else. What I do sense is that I want to hold back and not just repeat my shock and awe over every new challenge put forth by the Trump team. I feel like I’m happy to let the system and others more activist…
Every morning now, I am watching Kim’s face as it goes through the process of healing itself from the traumatic faceplant that she inflicted on it on Thanksgiving day. The real cause for thanks that day was certainly not the fall or its cause (digestive distress due to her bariatric surgery…now over three years ago) or even the concussion and broken nose that she suffered, but that her ER doctor told her there was nothing…
When I lived in Toronto, Canada for two years, I heard more Canadian colloquialisms than I remember hearing anywhere else. My time in Canada was an interesting few years that was a mixture of how to survive a remote distance existence (the kids were still in the Metro NYC area) and yet I needed to be onsite and resident in Toronto and all the other big cities in Canada (Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver, primarily, but…
Way back in 1991 I discovered Utah. I had been to Utah a few years before to ski with a bunch of my gang from my Latin America Division. We had rented a cabin at Sundance, the quirky ski canyon in the lower Wasatch Mountains that was owned by Robert Redford. He named it after his breakout role as the Sundance Kid in the 1969 classic Paul Newman / Robert Redford film, Butch Cassidy and…
The 1989 Academy Award choice for Best Picture was a story of aging, friendship, racism and antisemitism in the socially turbulent era of WWII through the 1970’s. The Deus Ex Machina of the story is Daisy’s (Jessica Tandy) inability to drive safely after she drives her Chrysler into the neighbor’s yard, giving rise to her son Boolie (Dan Ackroyd) hiring Hoke Colburn (Morgan Freeman) to drive her wherever she needs to go. I have not…