Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

It was still awfully rainy on Wednesday, but we decided we wanted to get out and hike anyway. There’s a short (3 miles roundtrip, but with 800 feet of elevation gain ) hike at the Cape Perpetua area from the Forest Service visitor’s center up to a whale-watching parapet. We felt this hike would be strenuous enough for a good workout, yet short enough that we wouldn’t die if we got rained on. Also, we hadn’t seen any of the grey whales that are migrating north this time of year, and this viewpoint gives a great panorama of a wide stretch of ocean.

As it happened, we got almost no rain on the hike, although you can see from the picture that it was never very far away. That virtual wall of water moved sedately from south to north, adroitly avoiding our little outing. We added on a two-mile jaunt back into the forest to visit a giant Sitka spruce that my wife loves to see. That’s where the picture of me reading Lolita was taken (Click to enlarge).

On Tuesday, the weather turned a lot less “changeable” than Monday; unfortunately, its needle got stuck on “nasty”, and we spent most of the day reading and watching the regimental waves roll hypnotically ashore. This was fine with me, as I’ve carted several half-finished books along with the intention of getting them finished and off my mocking nightstand. For a current book club read, however, I was in the middle of re-reading Nabokov’s Lolita - a nicely annotated version I bought in the 70s - and left it on the floor next to the bed at home. The lodge has a large library of books, but they’re mostly naturalist’s guides and environmentally inspirational testimonials of various sorts - not much fiction, and no nymphet lore to be found. I asked one of the owners if she had a copy, and she said she didn’t, but called a friend who had a used bookstore and found one available for $2. She seemed to welcome the excuse to run into town, and the book was waiting at my door that evening. It wasn’t my annotated edition, but it’s a “complete and unabridged” ca 1960 printing, with a sorta lurid cover, and I’m nearly finished.

We did get to scramble down to our beach here, visit the seals and collect a few agates. Later, we gathered up my mother in law, who is here with us (more on that later) and headed into Yachats for dinner at a restaurant that has become a favorite of ours called the Drift Inn. I know, it sounds like it should be full of smoke, fishermen, their lies and their molls, but it’s just this really laid-back place with reasonable prices and a terrific menu. On this night, there was a heavy-set 60-ish fellow with a Santa Claus beard playing acoustic guitar VERY nicely. His tune selections were an eclectic pastiche of 50s-60s-70s stuff, like some Peter Paul & Mary, some James Taylor, delta blues, the “If I Only Had A Brain” song from Wizard of Oz. My wife said he was like a sort of timeless jukebox, and told him so on the way back from the bathroom. He said, “yeah, but I don’t take no dimes.” The tip jar loomed at the door.

You never know when one will hit you. It might be while you’re in an elevator, or the supermarket, or a rental car whose radio is stuck on an AM band. And you can’t predict what song it will be - Hall & Oates, Harry Chapin, some country thing you’ll never ever hear again. But you’ll be in a mood or situation, or have been brooding about something, and this song, with exactly the right lyrics or evocative of some point in your past, will come screaming out of the ether and hit you right in the gut. On this night, it was Joni Mitchell’s The Circle Game, played by our jukebox friend.

As I’ve noted, we’ve been coming to this same lodging on the coast for almost 20 years, beginning when our son was 4. Almost everyplace we go here, there’s some memory of him associated with it: hauling logs to build a crossing over a creek, hunting agates, playing catch on the beach to keep his arm fresh for Little League, hikes he hated to do (loves to hike now), the image of him perched on a window seat with earphones in, reading or playing his Game Boy. The last time we brought him here, he was 14. We brought along his best buddy, partly because the kid’s parents treated Andrew so well and partly as an insurance policy against his being terminally bored by us. Our bad - boredom in teenagers is a multiplicative art form, and these guys were a dream team. It didn’t help that the weather socked in, much worse than this week, and just hosed us constantly each day. The friend had brought along a 9″ black-and-white tv that he’d rescued from a dumpster and revitalized, and a vcr, and they spent almost the entire week, in this very room, playing Forrest Gump and the Star Wars Trilogy in an endless loop. Talk about your Circle Game. We ended up leaving two days early, and for the next three years spent spring break on Maui.

Since he’s been in college, our spring breaks haven’t coincided (my wife teaches in elementary school), and we’ve been coming down here without him, and there’s a certain freedom to do things we like to do without regard for teen angst. Then some song comes along in a seaside restaurant and it’s all you can do to keep your tears in your head:

We can’t return we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

The weather, after Saturday’s stunning summer preview, has turned decidedly.. changeable. Meaning, it changes every 5 minutes or so. It’s beautiful and fascinating to watch from our heated and well-caulked redoubt, but tougher to deal with if you have designs on vigorous physical activity.
We have a couple of short hikelets among our favorite things to do here that take advantage of breaks in this sort of weather, and we did one of them Monday. It starts in a beachside campground, meanders for a mile or so on a wide, sandy beach, heads inland through salal and spruce forest, climbs a 700-foot headland ridge, then drops down to one of the most scenic lighthouses I�ve ever seen. The picture attached to the Road Trip entry below looks back at the beach/starting point of this hike from the headland.
When we arrived at the lighthouse, we saw that it was open for tours. We took the tour last year, and weren�t inclined to do so again, but one of the volunteer guides, a gentleman about 60 � 65, was hanging around outside and engaged us in conversation immediately. It looked like a pretty slow day for him, and when he asked us if we�d like the tour, we felt like we�d be disappointing him mightily if we refused, so up we went.
The lighthouse was built around 1890 using materials hauled up by ship from San Francisco - there was no coast highway at that time. It was fitted with the Fresnel lens shown below, and was fired by kerosene. It revolved using a grandfather-clock-like mechanism and a 200-pound weight. It required 3 keepers, all part of a federal lighthouse service, to reset the weight and replenish the kerosene every 4 hours, plus keep it spotlessly clean. It was electrified in the late 30s, and now is completely automatic. The keepers are long gone, and their former residence is operated by the National Park system as a bed & breakfast.
Lighthouses themselves are now more or less an anachronism, now that most vessels are fitted with GPS and other guidance gear, and you may have read that many of them have been decommissioned and are being given away to municipalities and charitable organizations.
Our guide was part of a retired husband and wife team who spent a couple months each year volunteering with the park service, and had done similar duty at a number of other little museums and monuments. He ventured well beyond lighthouse lore, and we learned, for instance, that some Japanese submarines that patrolled the Pacific coast during WWII actually carried disassembled float planes, which they could launch for sorties such as dropping incendiary bombs in an attempt to start forest fires. Apparently there is a monument to such a mission near Brookings, OR, the dedication of which was attended by the Japanese pilot and submarine captain. We eventually extricated ourselves, signed the log book and hiked back over the ridge, hoping to reach the beach before the tide completely engulfed it..
A successful afternoon � we took very little rain and got 5 -6 miles of pleasant hiking in the bargain. In the final frame of the picture below is an epitaph of sorts which we found attached to a bench in front of the lighthouse. It�s a perfectly succinct telling of a story, needing no further embellishment (Click to enlarge).

We happened upon the place we�re staying about 20 years ago while sampling the Oregon coast on another spring break trip. It�s a house-like structure set on a rock outcropping between US 101 and the ocean, divided up into about 6 units. It�s a bit on the funky side, comfortable and well-furnished, but unapologetically lacking amenities such as telephone and TV. It compensates by offering this killer view from our window (Click to enlarge):

And ready access to a really nice beach. From the windows, you can see a gang of sea lions sunning themselves on a rock, and, in this season, grey whales headed north to Alaska after their winter�s debauch in Mexico. If you hike down to the beach and walk along, you can find tidepools laden with mussels, anemones, hermit crabs and starfish� (Click to enlarge)

It�s a 5 � 6 hour drive from Seattle to our destination on the Oregon coast, which is halfway between Florence and Yachats (ya-HOTS). Our route involves two cognitive segments: a 250-mile slog down I-5 to Corvallis which, to be fair, can be really scenic if it�s clear and you can see Mts. Rainier, St. Helens, Hood and Bachelor, as well as the Columbia River crossing and a panoramic view of Portland; and a winding 70-mile run from Corvallis thru the coast range to the ocean that nicely draws a curtain on the I-5 corridor.
We reached the coast about 5 pm, had dinner in Yachats and then headed south to our lodgings. It was an uncharacteristically warm, sunny day on the coast � nearly 80 degrees � and I felt a kickass sunset coming on as we drove along US 101, the coast highway. I pulled off the road at Cape Perpetua, a campground and scenic area maintained by the Forest Service, and laid my trap for the sunset. Here are the results, framed by a Sitka spruce (Click to enlarge):

We’re off to the Oregon coast for spring break. Internet access will be sketchy to non-existent, as the place we’re staying has no phones or TVs in the rooms, and they kind of scorn you if you use the guest phone in the office to plug in your laptop.  Have a great week, everyone!

I was out running one night last week - a different route than I usually do, as I was combining the run with an errand - and the route took me through a park where I played softball in the early 80s.  A team was out there practicing, and I heard that unmistakable “ping” that happens when an aluminum bat makes contact. Though I don’t play softball any more (a circumstance that I’ll cover in a bit), I got this itch, like they say about people that have lost a limb.

I played on softball teams for quite a few years after graduating from college, mostly associated with firms I worked for.  Not that I was especially good at it; I had a barely average arm and couldn’t hit for distance, but I COULD run pretty fast, and in the leagues I played in, that was usually more than good enough.

By the late 80s, however, I wasn’t playing.  My employer didn’t sponsor a team, I had turned 40 and was happy enough with my other physical activities - running, bicycling, skiing.  Then a guy who was painting our house said he had a team that was short a couple players, and asked if I’d be interested in filling in for a couple of games. 

The “couple of games” stretched out to 5 or 6 years.  The team was comprised of a bunch of guys in their late 20s, and I was kind of flattered to be able to hang with them as a player.  By 1997, however, I was still making the occasional spectacular catch in the outfield, but increasingly those were plays that would have been routine outs a decade previously.  I was being platooned more, and they started using me as a pitcher now & then.  Basically, I was a geezer-in-training.

Then one game night I arrived at the park a bit late from work and had to take the field without a real good warmup.  We were playing a team from Microsoft, and I have to say that they were just as rabidly competitive playing softball as they are in business.  I was playing in right field, and someone hit a fly well over my head.  I turned and tore off after it, and after about 5 strides felt a rip in my hamstring like someone had taken a machete to it.  I tried to stretch it and walk it off, but it persisted, and started to stiffen.

The coach finally decided I was useless in the outfield, and brought me in to pitch.  I got through a couple innings in workmanlike fashion and was feeling pretty good about it when a hitter smacked a screaming line drive right back at me.  I had just enough time to get my right hand (the ungloved one) up to protect myself, and the ball smashed into it below the pinkie finger.  I was miserable with pain, and took a seat on the bench for an inning, leaving us with 9 players instead of the usual 10.

I hated letting everyone down, and convinced myself that I was feeling better.  The coach said I could play catcher for the rest of the game, so I went out to warm up the new pitcher.  I caught the first pitch, pulled it out of my glove and threw it back with my injured hand.  It just exploded in pain, and I felt a couple clicks as it came to rest.  I decided that I could get through the game by rolling the ball back after each pitch, but the ump told me to just catch the ball and he’d throw it back to the pitcher, and that’s how I finished the game - a catcher for christ’s sake, with one good leg and one good arm.

After the game the coach drove me to an emergency room, where xrays confirmed I had crushed the metacarpal leading to my pinkie.  They numbed me up, set the bone and placed a couple pins through them.  I was sentenced to 5 weeks with a cast and splint, and my season was finished.  My hamstring was an ugly dark bruise for a week or so, but I could actually jog on it after 2 or 3 days. It’s not easy, however, to make a living in the computer industry with only one hand to type and none that can work a mouse.

So, that’s how my softball career ended in one hellacious night - no extended Cal Ripken season-long farewell. I haven’t played softball since, except for a little backyard horseplay, and I’m mostly happy not to be chasing around to suburban ballparks on nice summer nights.  Still, there are those moments when I see people practicing or playing, and I get a rush of muscle memory, and a little tingle as I imagine myself scooping up a grounder and coming up throwing.  It passes, though, and I jog on into the night.

I guess it’s about time we had an enemy in Iraq.  Makes it feel like a war, finally.  While it’s tempting to ascribe the recent uprising and coalescing of shiites and sunnis to an ignorance and hubris permeating the Bush administration, this article from the Guardian posits that the administration may be eliciting the resistance on purpose:

Make no mistake: this is not the “civil war” that Washington has been predicting will break out between Sunnis, Shias and Kurds. Rather, it is a war provoked by the US occupation authority and waged by its forces against the growing number of Shia who support Moqtada al-Sadr.

On the surface, this chain of events is mystifying. With the so-called Sunni triangle in flames after the gruesome Falluja attacks, why is Bremer pushing the comparatively calm Shia south into battle?

Here’s one possible answer: Washington has given up on its plans to hand over power to an interim Iraqi government on June 30, and is creating the chaos it needs to declare the handover impossible. A continued occupation will be bad news for George Bush on the campaign trail, but not as bad as if the hand-over happens and the country erupts, an increasingly likely scenario given the widespread rejection of the legitimacy of the interim constitution and the US- appointed governing council.

While this gives the administration credit for more strategic intelligence than one would like, it’s not implausible that a war whose buildup and execution was a purely political exercise would be extended and exacerbated as a campaign tactic as well.  But it still seems to be an acknowledgement that our two choices are to leave now in failure, or leave later in failure.

Well, I’m on the road again, another week in Milwaukee. One saving grace is the electronic arrangement in the picture below. I was an early adopter of hard disk-based mp3, and bought the Archos Recorder 20. It’s a behemoth by iPod standards, but the 20gb  hard disk still has plenty of room, even though I rip music at a higher bitrate (192) for enhanced sound quality.  The speakers shown are a sweet addition - from Creative labs.  They’re VERY petite and deliver terrific sound.  They pack up into a padded case that can be hauled easily in a briefcase.  Now playing?  Santana’s ‘Caravanserai’ album, which I ripped from my 70s-vintage vinyl.