On the Road Again: Chautauqua to Effington, IL.

Up before 6:00, as we are taking off for Kansas City today to spend a week with Tommy, Mary, Nick and Marlena.  It's dark, without a trace of light, as the sun doesn't rise till 6:55. Fortunately, it's not too cold out, about 40 degrees, so we won't have any snow on our trip, enshallah.  We are planning on stopping in Effington, IL, about 600 miles, ten hours from here, as Evie doesn't want to drive in the dark and we have stayed there before.  It also has a quite nice steak house next store, with excellent food, from burgers to steaks.  Tomorrow, then it will be about six hours to Lee's Summit.  I am not looking forward to the drive but am looking forward to seeing the family, especially Marlena's grandparents' day on Monday, our first ever.

We are relaxing at a Hampton Inn, after almost ten hours on the road and 600 miles, a dull, boring ride through middle America, occasional farms broken by crossroads, of truckstops, motels, and restaurants, with huge signs sticking out like necks or trees on a wasteland, signaling a place to eat or stay.  We c ould be anywhere in America.

Windy, Gray and Blustery Morning

A really unattractive morning, gray, heavy winds, actual waves on the muddy gray lake, as the weather certainly seems to have changed.  It's so shallow over by Leonards and Theissens that waves are rolling in, with small white caps.  I was off early  this morning, sort of , to get a blood test in Lakewood, around 8:30, then I got my first Starbucks in months, hit the bank, picked up some books at the Lakewood library for our trips West, put a hold on our mail and checked the tires.  It's now 10:30, around 40 degrees outside, and I have to finish my article for the Turkish NBA magazine and send it off, finish packing, work out later in the day at Turner Center, and look for a book on CD at the Smith Library.  In between, I will finish my Jack Reacher novel, tie up any financial ends, like paying bills, and wait for tomorrow, when we head West to Kansas City.  The weather is changing; I just hope not too much, as I don't want to fight rain, sleet, and freezing rain, which is a possibility.  This gives you some idea of how we fill our days, with small tasks like this,  Not to exciting but enjoyable, not having to go off and work, doing what you want, filling your day with mundane tasks so it seems like you are very busy.

Kind of a wasted day, as we got organized for our trip, and before we knew it, it was 5:00 in the afternoon.  The only physical activity was picking up down branches from the wind; I filled three large garbage cans full of branches and twigs, a result of the 40-50 hour winds.  I also went to the library, taking books back and getting some for our trip.  The wind has died down a bit, no more branches and I have sent off my article to the Turkish NBA magazine and also some pictures.  We see what happens.

At Sixes and Sevens

For some reason, I am not relaxed this week, most likely because we are heading off to Kansas City this week. I am looking forward to it, for sure, but I am beginning to think that anything that interferes with our routine, with living here at the lake, unsettles me.  It's now almost 10:00 in the morning and Evie's making cookies for our trip to KC.  I have settled on a date for my ablation, Thursday the 20th of January, which allows me to enjoy the holidays and yet get it done.  Not much to prepare for other than taking coumadin for the prior three weeks.

Last night Evie has her Ladies of the Evening gathering, at one of the ladies house in Chautauqua Shores.  She seemed to enjoy it, though playing Xmas trivia was not exactly her cup of tea.  Mostly, they sit around and talk and share stories, many it seems about the wives dissatisfaction with their retired husbands, who tend to sit around and do nothing but watch TV.  It seems like they are not shy about sharing their opinions and attitudes, even in front of others.  Next time they are going to take a personality test, something they have done previously and liked.  I guess they all thought it was very accurate and the person who shared it with them is a Pastor, Wendy Heinz, and she tends to use it quite often and feels it''s really helpful and useful.  It sounds like the dynamics are interesting as well, as Jane is their with Stan's new wife, Anne, and her mother, a very outspoken women.  I guess Anne and her mother are also very frank with each other.

Instead of sitting home last night, with Evie gone, I went to the James Prendergast Library in Jamestown to a lecture by a distinguished professor from Fredonia SUNY on Nietzsche's "God is Dead" passage from his writings.  There were about 50 people there, mostly my age or there abouts, and it was quite good  Instead of lecturing, he elicited our responses to the text, using our thoughts and ideas as a well to unpack the text.  He was very accessible, congenial, listened well, and yet helped explain what Nietzsche meant, where his thinking takes us.  Most of the audience was interested and asked good questions.  I did force myself to respond two or three times, but then felt like I was showing off, so I basically sat back and listened, wondering if people like to her themselves talk or were really trying to understand at the talk.  I agreed with most of what the lecturer had to say, and especially Nietzsche's belief that we ought live in this world of uncertainy, avoiding the trap of routine, complacency, the easy road as it were, of avoiding action/doing and its consequences, often pain.  He believes to be alive we must act, do, search, constantly seek truth, understanding, and never sit still.  It's an ideal, no doubt, one even Nietzsche was unable to accomplish.  Yet the ubermensch is someone we should all try to copy, as he strives toward truth, creation, and understanding.  Clearly, he sees religion as a palliative, something that offers answers to questions that really don't have answers, and it stands in the way of achieving his goal of constant change, of growth, as if once you understand something or an idea, it can stand in the way of further understanding unless you jettison it.  Humankind can never live without religion because for most it solves life's major questions: what to believe, how to act, and what happens when we die...an its real virtue is that if its God's word, there's no argument with it..there's certainty.

It's late afternoon, nasty out, gray rainy, the lake rough, the wind howling and we love it.  It's a great afternoon to sit, reading my 2nd Jack Reacher book, Echo Spring, much better than the first.  We did get an hour walk in this morning, as we drove into Mayville to the Webb Trail, an abandoned railroad track that runs East West and connects with the Overland trail.  It winds between various properties, none looking very prosperous, a half hour out, a half hour back.  Then, we stopped at the Lighthouse, got a chicken for dinner, and have taken it easy the rest of the afternoon, as its too wet to do much outside and we are a bit tired of organizing inside, other than packing for our trip on Thursday  Time for some Turkish tea and back to figuring out how Jack will get out of the latest dilemma.

Darkness at 6:00

I was surprised how dark it was when I got up, and I have been used to brilliant clear mornings, where off in the distance, I could see light building,  I walked outside and there were stars out, not as bright as other mornings, but visible.  And now, about a half hour later, a pink gash just above Tom's Point lights the sky, then dark clouds, then a clear sky just above our trees. The lake too is shrouded in black, just beginning to become visible, with a swath of light.  It was 31 degrees when I got up, another nice day with high in 50's.  Not much on my plate for the day, at least as in my mind.  Let's see what Evie has in store.  Actually, I do have to revise my piece on playing basketball for Besiktas.  The editor asked for around 1500 words, and I have 4000 so far.  A bit of cutting is needed.

It's now 7:00, Evie's up early, and the sky off in the distance is slashed with pink, making the lake in front of our house pink with its reflection.  Every morning is different, though I am running out of words to describe it each morning.

Rippled Lake, Western-like Sky of Pink/Gray/Orange

An unseasonably warm morning, as I arose at 6:40 to partial light, partial clouds and what looks like a day of changing weather.  The wind has picked up, the lake has wrinkles, and I sense a change coming, perhaps rain later in the day.Today's sour dough bread day, so I fed my starter last night, left it out, and its doubled in size. ready to go.  I hope to start early, as we need about 10 hours total to finish the mixing, two risings and baking.  We are going to the Mc Clure's at 5:30 so it needs to be done by then.  We have not baked in the last week and i miss it, the steps, the smells, the final product.  We have yet to make the perfect loaf but we are getting better.

Sunny November Morning after seeing the film INCEPTION

It's amazing to wake up late, for me, around 7:30 and walk downstairs to a living room filled with blinding light from the sun.  I finally figured out why it's so different from the summer...no leaves on the trees, a clear sky, and a change back to Greenwich time.  I cannot even sit in the living room unless I face the fireplace its so bright.  I also could not get on the Net, a real disaster as I found, as if I had woken up in a foreign place. I did not know what to do with myself; NPR was not enough as I needed my fix, just like coffee and caffeine, of email, Facebook, Wall Street Journal, Hurriyet, and the New York Times.  Finally, I just pulled the power cord to our everything, waited five minutes, rebooted the entire system and voila, i am back on.  What a relief and a discovery to find how dependent I have become on my fix each morning.  A bit disturbing to see how dependent I have become.

We had a good time last night, starting with really good Mexican food at Taco Hut, in downtown Jamestown, right across the street from the Reg Lenna theater.  We had been there a couple of times about last night the food was especially food, chicken flautas with a white garlic sauce for Evie, and a fried taco for me.  Ron and Linda also had good meals; for Evie and I, our bill was 18 dollars, really reasonable.  The film, Inception, was as I expected, very difficult to follow, though reading the review had helped.  What surprised me was how like a video game, like Call of Duty, the film was. Supposedly it was about our dreams, about planting or stealing ideas from our minds, without our knowing it.  Christopher Noland, director and writer, imagined this journey as a shoot out, chase, you name it.  Thus, the film was filled with lots of action, violence, car wrecks, and destruction.  It did keep our attention, perhaps cause we wanted to make sense of the plot.  Ultimately, I think, the realization came that we were not going to make 'complete' sense of things, just parts.  The end, where we suddenly cut back to the beginning, where the journey begins, with them on a 747 mimicked the wakening from a dream, which we all recognize.  I don't think I would want to see it again but I am glad I saw it.

Venus...morning star

I was up by 5:30, went outside to a brilliant sky of stars, especially in the southeast, a brilliant planet Venus, off over Tom's Point.  I could see the Big Dipper, up over our house, and what looked like the Milky Way.  It's amazing the stars are so bright, at this time in the morning.  It's now 7:45 and once again, I have to move to another chair, as the sun reflecting on the lake is so bright I cannot read nor work on my computer if I face the lake.  It looks like another beautiful day, like yesterday, with highs in the 60's, the Indian summer I have been waiting for.  This morning's Post Journal had an interesting article about winter spear fishing on the lake in the late 1880's.  According to the archives, the lake froze in 1888 in October, and there were over a thousand fishing shacks on the lake, with the largest fish speared weighing over 46 pounds.  They clear a 2 foot hole, put the shack over it, climb into it, keep it as dark as possible so they will be able to see the fish, float a decoy to lure the fish upward, then spear him.  Sounds easy in the paper but I am sure it's difficult.  That year they caught so many fish that the summer yielded very little success for the fisherman, which forced them to set up dates for Spear fishing, even going so far as to outlaw it for a couple of years. It sounds like it was more successful than using a fishing rod but I find that hard to believe.  The next year the lake froze for only 3 days during the fishing season.

When I woke, it was frosty outside, hovering around 32 degrees.  Now, it's 38, as the day is warming up because of the sun.  We are thinking about going out for dinner at Taco Hut, in downtown Jamestown, then seeing the movie Inception at the Reg Lenna Theater, but I cannot find out if it's showing for sure,  The paper says yes, the website says no, only tomorrow, Saturday night.  Why can't anything, even going to a movie be easy.

After we rearranged the living room for about the tenth time, we went for a hike in the Dobbins Woods Nature Preserve, a 60 acre plot about ten minutes from here.  We like it because of the combination of pines, especially small hemlock forests and other trees.  The pathways were strewn with brown leaves, covering up the dampness and the paths as most if not all the trees had lost their leaves.  Because the trees are so close together, they have narrow but very tall trunks, with the tops only spouting leaves.  Anything below the 20 feet line either has died off, from like of sunlight, or never grew in the first place. Some of the older pines have dead branches that rise up perhaps 50 feet, the top then green with pine needles and cones.  Obviously, at one time, there was more sunlight for the lower branches but as the nearby trees matured, they blocked out the light.  The walk is fairly short but pleasant, about 35 minutes, following a man made path.  In one area, what we call the cathedral of hemlocks, a huge tree had fallen over the path, and we noticed a dead deer right near it.  I cannot believe the tree fell on it, but it was right next to the tree.

Later, we went for a kayak ride over to Long Point, paddled to the marina, then back, a pleasant ride over but on the way back, the setting sun was so blinding that you really could not see a thing, only a  vague outline of the nearing shore.  A few more boats were on the lake fishing because of the spectacular weather, sunny and in the low 60's.  It's supposed to hold through Sunday I think.

Ron and Linda are coming over at 5:30 for a beer, before we head off to Taco Hut and the movie Inception.  I hope we are not too lost in the plot, despite the cheat sheets.