Monday, June 21, 2010

My Last Night In London

My last night in London began with a morning in Paris. It was such a sunny pleasant day. My face sported a subtle green hue as a result of my new found affinity for escargot, which in a moment of weakness, I ate for breakfast. It wasn’t entirely good you might say. On my way to the train, I found myself along the wall overlooking the Seine and I encountered a gentleman whom I will call, the Japanese Business Man. The Japanese Business Man made a pleasant greeting, and we spoke briefly. He asked me about my Country, and told me of his. He observed that I did not look well, and I agreed. He inquired if I had a BM that day. I explained that I suffered nausea and not cramps, and thanked him for asking. And then we parted, I for my train, and he for Orly. That I can recall this moment of discourse all these years later gives me a smile.

The train I boarded was destined for Boulogne a few hours away. A bottle of Avian water helped to ease my discomfort along the way. At Boulogne we boarded the hovercraft, and then bound away across the Channel. From Dover, yet another train delivered us to Victoria Station at about 4:00 local time. It addition to tea time, it was also rush hour, and the lateness of our arrival did not disclose the recent local rail strike. My fellow travelers chose a prompt return to the hotel because tomorrow, we fly. Teresa and I decided on a last moment shopping trip to Oxford Circus. Due to the strike, there were two tubes opened in the city that day. One pulled up a block from our hotel, and the other passed through Oxford Circus. Our companions boarded the first train, and we boarded the second and went about our ways.

I recalled passing a shop in this neighborhood two weeks before, where I spied a set of Wedgewood; creamer and sugar. I knew that my Mother would be pleased with such a gift, and I had previously resolved to return and make their purchase. Teresa joined me at the shop, and watched me select the set in Wedgewood green (and my mother so loves blue). Teresa made her last buys, and we beat a retreat toward the tube station. The tubes were now closed.

Back on the street, we discovered that, unlike us, every single Londoner was already aware of the strike, and were patiently waiting in queue for the bus. We found our place at the end of a very long line as clouds began to pass across the sky. I’ll be damned if it didn’t get downright chilly late that afternoon, the beginning of another perversely cold London summer night (it was the first night of summer you see). Teresa had worn shorts for the occasion, and she didn’t seem comfortable at all. I felt bad for her, but there was little I could do.

Two hours later, we were still standing in the same place, in the same line. We had hardly budged a few short feet. My patience for enduring this adventure was drawing to an end. I tried standing in a different queue designated for the taxi. A cab was more dear, but what the hell, this is my last night in London. What else am I going to do with a pocket full of British change two weeks hence? The invisible hand of the extravagant fare made this queue much shorter, and after another half an hour, we fetched a ride directly to our hotel. We arrived just in time to step out for dinner, but first I inspected my lodgings. The room was more of a closet, but at least I had it to myself. I took a switchblade from my pocket and left it with my baggage, because in this country, it was against the law.

During my earlier stay two weeks before, I had developed a preference for a pub very near our hotel. I believe it was Fenster’s, and it was next to the tubes, which by the way, were now closed for the night. I journeyed to the pub on foot. The French cuisine in the morning had been a cause for regret, so I was wary of testing the British cuisine that evening, such as it is. But I was optimistic for a couple of rounds of ale, enjoying the chatter (in English) and watching the news on the telee. A sudden hush fell across the crowd.

The evening would be a celebrated moment across the kingdom. The reporter on the screen stood at the entrance of the hospital, just a few blocks away to announce the arrival to Princess Diana a son, the Second Heir Apparent, Prince William. I raised a glass to the health and long life of the royal mother and son, in spite of my Yankee ways. Later I would grieve on the night she died, but for that night, I shared their country’s joy.

That day, June 20, 1982, was for me a remarkable adventure off in foreign lands. I hope that Teresa did not catch a cold that afternoon, but after these many years, this is one detail I cannot clearly recall.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

A Token of My Esteem

The virtue of your pristine skin
Impaled upon my poisoned pen
Will swell my cheek with stifled mirth
I cast your values down to earth!

Your prudish howls of outrage flee
Before my sabled sense of glee
For sacred good I have no time
I'm busy with my nasty rhymes

Of naughty deeds my verse regales
For what's a wag without a tale?
I want to make small children cry
And the hope of saints to ebb and die

My insult's now almost complete
Your just dessert, a raspberry treat!
To those who whine that I disgrace
I present my arse for your embrace!

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Looking Forward to Closing This Sale

My enthusiasm for having a sale on my house pending has been tempered by all the last minute annoyances associated with the repairs that were made necessary by the burglary last year. For those who may not be familiar with this sad story, some unidentified person (who was never acquainted with his father as a result of his mother's failure to secure a marriage license. Presumably the fleet sortied before these arrangements could be completed) broke into the basement of my empty house that was for sale, and stole all the copper pipe he could lay his hands on quickly and conveniently. The process of getting the door installed proved to be excruciating in the extreme. The plumbing work was completed weeks ago and I supposed that it would not be a source of any further concern. I was mistaken.

I was shocked and saddened to discover during the home inspection that when the plumber was replacing copper pipes that had been stolen, he overlooked one pipe. there was a line that connected the drain underneath the kitchen sink to the main drain in the basement. We discovered it was missing when the home inspector turned on the kitchen sink and water started pouring out into the cabinet. This was somewhat embarrassing as you can well imagine.

I contacted the plumber last week and told the person who answered about the problem. What I left unstated (since I thought it would be understood) was that I had already received a check from my insurance company as a payout on a claim and that the payout was based on the plumber's original estimate. As far as I am concerned, the cost of completing this work was fully stated in the estimate. The person I first spoke to said he would deliver a message. I did not receive a return call.

I left another message earlier this week with the secretary, and she assured me with the most darling and cheerful attitude that the plumber would "make it right". I should be so lucky. I received a voicemail from the owner yesterday saying that while he would be pleased to complete this work, there would be an additional cost. This voicemail made me unhappy.

I sent a politely worded email yesterday insisting that he complete this work since it should have been done in the first place. Since the relationship we have previously enjoyed was never marred with misunderstanding, I have always considered word-of-mouth arrangements to be suitable and convenient for all parties. From now on, all communications will be in writing (this means business!). Even though this email was dispatched to the plumber yesterday afternoon, there was still no reply as of noon today.

So around 1:00, I sent the plumber an ultimatum.

Now I appreciate that some might ask, "If you want someone to agree with you, is it really wise to seek out a confrontation? Isn't an ultimatum too harsh?" Perhaps so; but I'm not willing to admit as much just yet. A classic ultimatum includes three essential elements; a demand; a deadline; and a threat. Below is the ultimatum I sent to my plumber. Judge for yourself whether I have been too aggressive for my own good.

Jolly Plumbing:

Yesterday I sent an email for which I have yet to receive a reply. Please know that since this email refers to a service issue on a property that is pending a closing on a contract for sale in two weeks, I consider a prompt reply a matter of urgency. I have attached a copy of yesterday’s email.

I will restate my request from yesterday’s email to have the replacement of the missing drain pipe in the basement of 422 Highway Avenue completed without additional costs to me, but with one modification. I am willing to pay for the additional cost of materials for the replacement of the drain pipe from the kitchen to the basement. However, I remain unwilling to pay for any additional labor costs. I am convinced that the replacement of this drain pipe should have been included in the original work, and I do not think it is reasonable to charge me for additional labor in completing this work.

I think that any third party reviewing the circumstances of this contract would agree that a home owner would not contract a plumber to replace some, but not all, of the pipes stolen during a burglary. My intention clearly was to have all the stolen pipes replaced. While I might concede that I would have incurred the material costs in any event, the labor cost I have already incurred should be sufficient to have the job completed in its entirety.

I must emphasize my need for a quick response from you to this email. The deadline of the pending sale causes this urgency. I need to know your intentions no later than noon Eastern Standard Time on Friday 09 April 2010. I have an urgent preference to resolving this matter amicably between us, and without referring to any outside or third parties for solution.

Respectfully,

JD Carruthers

I guess we will see tomorrow how well this works.

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Blogging In The Rain

So I promised to make an update on the weekend camping in the rain, but I never did. I also promised to make an update on my epic struggle with Home Depot, and I never did this either. Events and circumstances conspired against me in fulfilling these promises. The event was an offer tendered to buy our house which has been on the market for over two years. This was something of a distraction. The circumstances were that I occasionally undergo bouts of adult attention deficit disorder, and am also somewhat indolent by inclination. I get to these things when it amuses me to tend to them.

So about that camping trip; it was a blast as I might have expected. I am pleased to report that the rain was mostly intermittent during the weekend, mostly at night after I had taken shelter snuggled in my fifteen degree sleeping bag and reclining in my new Hennessey Hammock. The weekend was a fitting out experience of sorts; both the bag and the hammock were new gear that I was using in the woods for the first time. I found that setting up the hammock for the very first time under a drizzling sky in the middle of the night was probably not the best informed decision I have ever made, but I managed nonetheless. However, I have a confession to make. This camping trip was actually a training session for Leave No Trace (I am now a certified Leave No Trace Trainer, Huzzah!). But during that first night, as the midnight hour drew near and I was fumbling in the dark with the lines on my hammock, I inadvertently set it up directly over a thorny vine (we call these ‘saw briars’ here in the southern heartland). My dilemma involved moving the hammock to yet another set of trees in the darkness (this was my second site) or leaving a trace by cutting the briar. I will leave it to your imagination which choice I made.

The extra-warm sleeping bag I was using for the first time offered its own challenges. Ordinarily I would use a mat underneath a sleeping bag for insulation purposes. Since this was the first time I slept in the hammock, I had not taken the precaution of bringing a sleeping pad on this trip. This was a mistake. For all those campers who plan on sleeping in a hammock in cold weather, if you do not have an insulating pad, you will get cold eventually (even if your bag is rated for 15 degrees). The first night I got cold about 2:00 in the morning and slept fitfully afterwards. The second night I was lucky in that I did not get cold until 4:00 in the morning and slept fitfully afterwards. Fortunately, the rain fly over the hammock functioned like a dream and I stayed nice and dry inside my digs in spite of the overnight showers.

I was also trying out a new rain suit on this trip. The suit was ‘FroggToggs’ and shed the rain quite nicely thank you. I wore a pair of rubber boot all weekend long which was handy since I spent much of the weekend standing about in mud and water above the ankles. They were not insulated, so eventually my feet got cold as the wool socks I was wearing began to get damp with perspiration and condensation. But what would the fun of camping be if not for a few adverse moments?

So what did I learn about leaving no trace? Lots of stuff; more things than I can reasonably relate in a single blog; perhaps I will devote more time to the details in smaller doses as time progresses. The most important lesson from my perspective was a reinforcement of a set of values that I already had. My personal sense of spirituality derives in large part from my love of the outdoors and the environment. Spending a weekend considering the means of preserving that environment unspoiled was a devotional moment; the cold and rain and mud and comradeship of likeminded fellow travelers were nothing less than unique facets on a rough diamond.

But enough of my amystical post neo-pagan views (I have long resolved to keep my religion to myself because I consider spirituality similar to sexuality; personal and not generally a topic for public discussion). I promised an epilog of the door drama, and the epilog you shall have. When last I wrote about my struggles with Home Depot, I was negotiating with the store manager for an alternative installation date. During the middle of this negotiation process, the offer to buy the house arrived and changed our plans somewhat. Originally our family planned to travel to Hometown to visit the Grandparents on the weekend of the 27th, but since the home inspection was now scheduled for that date I asked for the installation to occur at the same time. I could kill two proverbial birds with one metaphorical stone.

It is important in my view always to accentuate the positive when there is opportunity, so I will say that the contractor retained to install the door arrived on time. Also, the door is now fully installed and looks good.

So now that I have said good things about this experience, I feel at more at liberty to give voice to some bitterness I harbor over the installation process. I have two major objections in mind. First, the contractor arrived with the correct size door, but without any of the hardware that goes with a door such as door knob, lock, etc. His strategy was to remove the hardware from the old door that was to be removed, and this would have worked fine had not the original door been kicked in during a burglary. The kick unfortunately damaged the bolt for the doorknob, and in the process of trying to repair it, the contractor lost one of the pieces. He scratched his head and advised me in a down-home folksy sort of way that I would need to make sure the replacement part I purchased at my earliest convenience should be manufactured by Schlage so that it would match the undamaged parts that he had cannibalized and was condescending to install in the new door. Since by this time it was mid afternoon, and I had a ravenous eleven-year old boy with me who was in desperate need of feeding, I let the opportunity for one of my famously caustic replies pass with merely a grim smile. Next, the contractor chatted with me cheerfully about how the manufacturer had sent the wrong sized door on the previous occasion, and how annoying that must have been to drive all the way from Lexington, all the while assembling on my basement floor a large pile of dust, debris, broken glass and scrap wood with bent and rusted nails jutting menacingly all around. It dawned on me fairly quickly that the friendly contractor with such sensitivity to that which is irksome in the customer service process had every intention of leaving this pile behind for me to deal with. To quote Hamlet, “Oh my prophetic soul!” The contractor smiled and waved as he drove away. I didn’t bother returning the compliment; I only gave him another grim smile.

That afternoon I returned to Lexington after feeding Primo at the Old Country Store. The next day I returned to Northern Kentucky (my third trip for this one door installation) to purchase and install the door bolt on the new door, and to clean up the mess left by the Happy Contractor.

Did I mention that I would never do business with Home Depot again?

Friday, March 19, 2010

More Drama With Home Depot Disservice

As each day progresses, I am impressed by the ability of management at Home Depot to intensify my dissatisfaction and sense of outraged annoyance with their service. Unfortunately this is not a favorable impression.

When we left off, HD had called me to say that they did not have an actual door to install, which presented a technical difficulty since I had paid for a door installation. I was told that a door had not yet even been built for this order. And as you might recall, since my wife was at that moment taking a vacation day and sitting on the porch of the house an hour and a half drive away in another city awaiting the installer, I asked the next logical question, "how long shall I tell my wife to wait?" "It won't be today" was the reply. So I called her and told her to come home.

Fast forward about 7 hours later, I received a call from a manager at HD who left the message that they now had a door to install (earlier it had not yet been built; I wonder if they bought it at Lowe's). By this time the since of liberation that came when they had compounded their error was wearing thin, and since I have used all my cell minutes plus some working on this problem, I resolved to return their call later. I wanted to give myself some time to cool off.

I received another call from the HD store manager today. Since I was at work and on a call with one of my own customers, I let it go to voice mail. Mr. Manager's message was an invitation to call him back on his direct line to discuss the tragic tale of the wayward door. In addition to his number, he said that I could return his call until 2:00 when he would leave for the day.

My lunch is from noon until 1:00 and since I had already wasted considerable time during my working hours with this (my supervisor has the patience of a saint) I decided to call him back in the last half of my lunch hour; around 12:40. I wanted to keep the conversation short, and I didn't want it to spoil my appetite.

When I called the manager's direct line, it rang about twenty times before a woman answered. I introduced myself and asked to speak to Mr. Manager.

"Oh, he's gone for the day".

It was just now 12:45. "He told me that he would be in until 2:00" I replied. I did not bother to point out that it was not yet 1:00; I presumed she understood this subtle yet crucial point.

"Uh, well I just spoke to him a half hour ago and he said he was leaving for the day".

Given the long sad history of this process, I was not surprised in the least. But wait, it gets better!

"May I leave a message?" I asked in my most polite, professional tone.

Wait for it...

She replied, "well, if you leave a message here with me, it will never get back to the managers". This was a refreshing breath of honesty, even as it was not particularly reassuring. "Let me transfer your call to the back".

Apparently when she said "back" she was referring to the "outback" because I spent the next ten minutes on hold. Did I mention that I had already used up all my cell minutes for this month? Their hold music was not even as entertaining as "The Girl From Ipanema"; it was a loop of advertisements about opportunities to purchase quality products from Home Depot ("just ask any of our associates for details"). When my lunch hour was over I abandoned the call and went back to work.

So now it is 2:20 and I just received another call from Mr. Manager. He left a voicemail. This time he gave me his cell number to call. Unfortunately, by now I have exhausted my cellphone battery along with all my minutes.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

And the Saga Continues...

Anxiety and liberation. Those are the themes for today's blog. Think of these as the metaphorical cousins to "War and Peace".

Yesterday was a day of anxiety for me. You recall that I wrote about my tumultuous dealings with Home Depot and the installation of a door at my house that is for sale (by the way, are any of you interested in buying a house?). St. Patrick's Day was D-Day in this dispute. When I did not receive a return call after leaving two voicemail messages, I called HD's corporate "customer service" telephone number and pretty much read the riot act. Without dwelling too much on details, let's just say that I was not my ordinarily charming self (I was not vulgar, but I was also not pleasant). After a half dozen more calls and spending all my lunch and break time in wrangling negotiations, it was finally settled that my wife was taking a vacation day from work and traveling the hour and a half to Northern Kentucky to sit and wait while the contractor installed the door. (I would have gone myself except that I don't have any vacation time; taking off work for me is money out of our household resources). The installation was scheduled between 9:00 and 10:00 this morning.

It might interest the reader to know that I have twenty years of experience in customer service including experience as a supervisor for a brokerage company. As a matter of fact, my current employment has me working in a telephone call center as an information technology customer service specialist. This is relevant for two reasons. First, I have a keen understanding of what companies should do in order to deliver quality customer service. HD has been the poster child for what not to do. Second, I was busy on the telephone this morning delivering quality customer service to my customer when my cell phone rang with HD's number populating the caller id window around 9:30.

This did not bode well.

Since I was busy with my own caller, I disregarded the call for the moment hoping that they would leave a voice mail. In less than a minute, my phone was ringing again, and again it was Home Depot.

This really did not bode well.

On this second call I saw that there was a voice mail, so I devoted my attention to my customer's needs and wrapped that business up before calling my inbox. This is where the moment of liberation began.

The manager at Home Depot started by saying there was a problem. The manufacturer had built and delivered the wrong sized door. They would need to make other arrangements for installing our door. Sigh.

Some people given my circumstances might have been inclined to lose their temper at such news, but I confess that I take too much satisfaction from being in a position to say "I told you so" to view this as anything but amusing. I called Home Depot back with a sense of calm confidence.

The woman who answered was already familiar with my case, and explained that the manufacturer had built a 36" door instead of a 34" door, and it could not be made to fit. Since there were none in stock anywhere physically proximate to our doorway, other arrangements would need to be made.

I pointed out that my wife had driven an hour and a half this morning to Ludlow and was waiting on the porch for the installer even as we were speaking. I asked the manager how long should I tell her that she could expect to wait today.

"We won't have a door today" she replied. I knew beforehand that was going to be the answer, but I wanted to hear her say it. She went on to explain that they would have to have a door built, and they would be back in contact once they had the correct door in hand. I considered for the moment of suggesting that they call Lowe's to see if they had one in stock, but I decided that they may not view this as particularly helpful. Instead I started to point out all the inconvenience my wife had taken to be at the house and on time for the installation, but the manager hastened to add that there would be compensation for us in the form of a rebate.

And that was all I really wanted to hear from the beginning; a little flexibility on their part.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Home Depot: The Sanctum Sanctorum of Corporate Policy

The Home Depot store located at 500 Clock Tower Way in Crescent Springs Kentucky, 41017 specializes in customer DIS-service. There, I said it; and I meant it.

Last August, some disreputable punk or punks kicked in the back door to a house that I have for sale in Ludlow Kentucky in order to steal the copper pipes from within. This caused about $2000 worth of damage in order to retrieve about $20 worth of copper. I can laugh at these creeps because I would have gladly paid them $50 just to leave my house alone. I guess the joke is on them, isn't it?

By the way, are any of you interested in buying a house?

Anyway, I summoned the police and filed a report, and then went about contacting my insurance company to file a claim. Before the claim could be processed, I needed to have estimates in hand, and since Ludlow is an hour and a half drive from my new home in Lexington, and since about this same time I took a second shift job, the process of obtaining estimates was long and arduous. I had to contact at least a half dozen plumbers before I could finally get one to do the estimate and work.

I made the arrangements for replacing the back door in person at the Home Depot store referred to above during one of my rare return trips to Northern Kentucky. I explained to the salesman my need for the installation of a replacement door, and I emphasized at the very earliest moment that I LIVE IN ANOTHER TOWN AN HOUR AND A HALF DRIVE AWAY; RETURNING HERE IN PERSON IS INCONVENIENT TO ME. It seemed that he understood my point.

It is important to note that the background story to my need to buy a door involved a personally invasive and highly charged emotional experience. I think that the salesman understood this point as well.

To make sure that I was purchasing the correct sized door, it was necessary for the contractor retained by HD to go to my house and take measurements. At first the manager at HD said that it would be necessary for me to be there to open the door for the contractor. I took this opportunity again to emphasize that a round trip of three hours was in convenient for me under the circumstances, and that the house was empty and for sale. The contractor agreed to use the realtor's lock box containing the key to gain entry, and I did not need to make the trip.

When I finally received the settlement check from the insurance company, I first contacted the plumber who gladly came and worked on my house, using the lock box key, at his convenience. I did not need to be personally present in my empty house during this installation, which was great since taking time off work and traveling all that way is such an inconvenience.

Next I contacted Home Depot to schedule the installation of my door. The store first insisted that I pay for the door and service, and after taking my payment informed me that I would need to contact the contractor separately to schedule the installation. I was mildly annoyed that Home Depot did not handle the scheduling, but in my gladness to see a end to this process that was now into its seventh month, I set that annoyance out of my mind.

Within a few days I spoke directly to the contractor, who suggested that the installation could take place between 1:00 and 3:00 on Tuesday, March 16th (yes, that is today as I write this). I said this would be fine, but that since I worked in another city an hour and a half drive away, I could not be there in person. The contractor said this was fine with her.

So I'm thinking this is a done deal. I go away for the weekend to camp in the woods and in the rain and mud for two days. At some point during these two days in the woods, the contractor called again and left a voice-mail.

Essentially her message was that Home Depot had contacted her and advised her that she may not do any work on my house without my being personally present. Recall if you will that I have made it clear at every step in this process that my being present personally is an inconvenience. In fact, it is a hardship. I just started a new job and I do not have the ability to take a paid day off. Attending to this personally means losing a day's pay. Considering that this is a service for which I am paying, for which I have already paid in advance, I do not consider this requirement at all reasonable. But my far deeper concern is that I had already made these arrangements with the contractor who did not object at the time the arrangements were made, and somebody at Home Depot came along afterward and disrupted my plans. The unnamed party at HD who did this acted after I had already paid for this service in advance.

Naturally I saw that the obstacle was at Home Depot, and not with the contractor. So last night I called HD and insisted in a rather urgent and yet professional tone that I was due an explanation and a correction. The manager that I spoke to advised me (get ready; sit down for this)...

...what I was asking for was against company policy.

The rest of this conversation degenerated fairly quickly. The manager claimed that the forms HD uses include a disclosure about having the property owner present during work, to which I replied that they had already waived that requirement by coming out to take the door measurements when I was not there. "Well that shouldn't have happened; against company policy". I pointed out that actually acting in a manner contrary to what one has written down on paper isn't much of a policy, is it? He asked me to (brace yourself) to "work with me" on this. This of course means that I should give in and accommodate their convenience in receiving the services that I have already paid for in advance.

Each passing moment of this conversation intensified my resentment. "I am BITTERLY dissatisfied with the quality of Home Depot's customer service, and I will NEVER do business with your company again" I advised him. "Furthermore, I intend on telling all my friends about my experience, and I have many friends". Now it was his turn to show resentment. He insisted that I was being unreasonable since, after all, this did involve a question of theologically correct corporate policy. And don't forget that the forms had a disclosure and all that.

"The friends I tell won't care or even hear about notes or policies or disclosures" I told him. "They will only hear that I was bitterly dissatisfied, because that is all I am going to tell them".

The idea that I would not act as a fair and impartial advocate on behalf of his employer apparently had not occurred to the manager before I pointed it out, because this was followed by a moment of silence.

"My point in this dispute is that your company took my money and now you are not delivering that which I expect. If your company policy requires you not to deliver what customers expect, perhaps it is not such a hot policy."

This was followed by more babble about taking it to another level of management but it would be to no avail since, after all, this was a company policy and all that. He couldn't understand why I wouldn't agree to driving up after work some day during the week. I pointed out that since I worked until 5:00 each day, a three hour round trip plus three hours of installation time (sitting around in an empty house) would put me back around midnight. Rather than argue, I told him that I could be personally present for the installation anytime next Sunday (incidentally, the reader should take note that I have plans for every Saturday from now until June). Manager said he would investigate that alternative and call me back Tuesday (today; this morning).

A different manager called me this morning. After welcoming me with a "good morning" she advised me that contractors never work on the weekends, especially not Sundays, but that they could make an exception by having someone come to work on my installation on Saturday March 27th. "Will that work for you?"

"No, it won't." Silence. "I have plans to travel out of town that weekend". (Which is true; our family is traveling to Murray to visit the grandparents so that they can celebrate my son's 11th birthday. This has been planned for weeks). There was more silence on the line.

Needless to say, this conversation (during my work hours I might add) did not go any better than the conversation the night before. The only consideration this new manager was able to provide was the telephone number for the corporate offices where I could call to complain (and presumably receive yet another sermon on the sanctity of corporate policies).

In deference to myself (which I think is fair since I am writing this), I have spent the past twenty years as a customer service professional. I demand quality customer service precisely because I deliver quality customer service to my clients.

Several years ago, when I was a brokerage supervisor, I worked for a manager named Dave who I looked to as an exemplar and mentor. Manager Dave once told me, "the customer is not always right; but he is always the customer". I think this is a lesson Home Depot should take to heart.

Friday, March 12, 2010

Greetings Crimefighters

Have I ever told you that I cultivate pet peeves? I’m sure I must have mentioned this before; my sense of annoyance at such things as conspiracy theorists and left lane vigilantes. At the top of my list of pet peeves are liars and thieves, which in my experience are typically two sides to the same creep. Nothing pleases me more than to catch a thief (or a liar) in the act of practicing their sordid little business and personally to lay them low for it. Here is an account of when I busted a particularly insidious thief.

I have a really good friend I’ll call Bear. He is an honest hardworking sort who’s society I have enjoyed through many libations and many adventures. Nearly twenty years ago, when his mother was still alive, I received a call from Bear one night asking me for my help. His Mom had been chronically sick for some time, and she had come to rely on a nurse to help her with her day to day needs such as running errands, fetching her prescriptions and other odds and ends. Among the things Nurse was helping Mom with was keeping her banking records in order, but the arrival of Mom’s most recent banking statement disclosed that not everything was in order. Bear stated that the balance on the statement did not reconcile with the balance in her ledger, and since he knew I was a banker by profession (and that I had attended two years of law school; impressive to someone who barely finished high school), he asked if I would visit Mom and help her straighten out her books. Naturally I was eager to agree.

When I arrived at Mom’s apartment, the first thing I did was to examine her bank statement. This was back in the days when banks still returned cancelled checks with the statements, and I began by comparing each check against the list of checks on the statement. It did not take long for me to spot a red flag. One of the cancelled checks in the returned batch had a serial number that was out of sequence with the others. Furthermore, the check was made payable to cash for an even dollar amount (a hundred dollars). I quickly compared this check against others in the batch and found that the signature on the questionable check did not really resemble the signatures on the other checks. Alarm bells began ringing in my head.

Next I examined the ledger for Mom’s account, and became even more alarmed. Mom confirmed that all of the entries in the two ledger books she had were mostly done by Nurse, who regularly made a habit of collecting her mail, and reconciling her ledger with her bank statements. One of the first improprieties I noticed was that the ending balance on the older ledger did not match the beginning balance on the newer one. The difference in balances was several hundred dollars. I began to expand my research by looking at the bank statements for the previous six months (the period of time that Nurse had been working for Mom). In every single statement, I found examples of check numbers that were written out of sequence. Upon searching through the returned checks in each monthly batch, I found that the checks that had been written out of sequence were all missing.

Next I turned to Mom’s box of blank checks. All of the checks that had been written out of sequence had been removed from the end of the respective book. Upon flipping through the blank check books, I was able to identify almost a half dozen checks that remained unaccounted for either in the blank checkbooks or bank statements.

By this time it was absolutely clear in my mind that Nurse had been defrauding Mom on a fairly routine basis. She was stealing blank checks from the back of blank books, writing them payable to cash for an even dollar amount for anything from fifty to a hundred dollars, forging Mom’s signature, and then covering her tracks by collecting the bank statements from the mail before Mom could, and removing the forged checks from the returned batch of checks. The final step of her cover-up was to make entries into the ledger that conveniently left out the stolen and forged checks.

This made my blood boil. I was determined to burn Nurse for her duplicity.

Now that I had caught Nurse dead to rights in her theft, I recognized my next task as determining just how much Nurse had ripped off from Mom. This was easy enough; just identifying all the checks that were written out of sequence and missing from the bank statements, and adding them up. Mom was stunned to find that the woman she trusted to help her with her finances had stolen almost $900 dollars from her over a six month period of time. Since Mom was on a fixed income of disability payments, this blow was a disaster. I felt a calm sense of controlled anger as I sat explaining these facts to this frail old lady as tears began to drip down her cheeks. Now I didn’t only want to see Nurse in jail; I wanted to get Mom’s money back.

All of the complex little details I had uncovered seemed to mystify Bear and Mom, and I knew that if there was to be any chance of recovering the loss, they would need to have a clear statement of the case. I took a yellow legal pad and began to draft notes in bulleted format; A, B, C, and D. “Here”, I said, “take your banks statements, your batches of checks, the blank check books, and your ledgers to police headquarters tomorrow. Ask to speak to a detective. When you interview with the detective, present these things I have outlined in this order. The detective will understand and know what to do”. I closed by making the sad observation that Nurse almost surely spent Mom’s stolen funds by now, and recovery of the property wasn’t very likely. I left Mom’s apartment late that night, with Mom appearing puzzled and sad, and Bear in a state of cold fury. Secretly I hoped that he wouldn’t go find Nurse and harm her, but as I left I wasn’t so sure he would control this impulse that I knew he was feeling.

The next evening, I received a call from Bear. He thanked me profusely for my help with a glad tone to his voice. The interview with the detective had gone very well. Bear reviewed the evidence and my notes exactly as I had instructed while the detective listened patiently. After Bear was done, the detective only asked a single question; “Do you have Nurse’s telephone number?” Mom gave him the number and Detective gave nurse a call. He politely introduced himself, explained that Mom and Bear were in his office and disclosed the reason why they were there. Detective informed Nurse that she was to have the full amount of the missing funds, in cash, in his office within one hour if Nurse were to harbor any hope of spending that night in her own bed rather than in jail.

An hour later, Mom and Bear left the Detective’s office with $900 in cash.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Ubiquitous Serendipity

I love history and geography almost as much as I like collecting pet peeves. Anyone who knows me beyond a casual acquaintance will affirm this to be true. After years of observation and study, I have formed the unshakable opinion that these two subjects are complimentary and supplementary in much the same way that math graces science, or mornings go with coffee. An integral part of my pastime of studying history has been to travel to those places where history occurred. This is particularly true with respect to the American Civil War. While I have not visited all major battlefields of that war, I certainly have visited most. During the spring of 2008, fresh from accepting a severance package from a former employer that left me unemployed yet possessing a stream of income, I realized a long held dream of touring most of the Civil War cites in the eastern theater in a marathon ten day camping trip. I started at Gettysburg, and proceeded on to Antietam, Harpers Ferry, Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania, Chancellorsville, the Wilderness, Guinea Station, Richmond, Cold Harbor, Gains Mill, Glendale, Malvern Hill, City Point, Petersburg, Five Forks, Saylors Creek, and Appomattox (I left out Manassas because of limited time and I have been there before). This trip included so many fascinating adventures that I could fill a book with them, and perhaps one day I will. Along the way I made a new friend.

My third day on the road found me standing alongside the old Hagerstown Pike on the south west corner of Miller corn field at Antietam National Battlefield Park. Anyone familiar with the events of 17 September 1862 will recognize that this infamous cornfield is one of the most hotly contested and bloody spots anywhere on the North American continent. Immediately next to the old turnpike (which is now a drive through the park; the highway has now been rerouted) stands an elaborate monument dedicated to an Indiana regiment that fought there at Sharpsburg Maryland. I was by the monument as a soft rain began to drizzle down, cursing the fact that the batteries in my GPS were beginning to fail. My self-appointed mission that day was to photograph and collect GPS data for as many of the monuments at Antietam as I could (by the end of the day I had completed this task for about 75 of the 80 or so monuments in the park), but with dying batteries and the prospect of a downpour, I wasn’t anticipating a successful outcome for that day’s work. I was in an increasingly sour mood because of this.

The fields around had been entirely empty that Thursday mid-morning, but suddenly I noticed a middle aged man with a baseball cap walking up to greet me. He hailed me by observing that I looked like I was “really into this stuff”, and then pointed out to me a trail a few hundred yards down the road where a person could hike into the center of the Corn Field and get a really good view of Nicodemus Heights from whence artillery had shelled the position all day long. “You mean Hooker’s artillery?” I inquired thinking he was referring to the Union corps commander who had commenced the battle. “Oh no, that’s where Stuart’s horse artillery was stationed” he replied with a grin. I was embarrassed. Since I fancied myself a historian, I should have known that he was referring to Confederate artillery belonging to JEB Stuart rather than union batteries. My sour mood soured a bit more in annoyance with myself. But my visitor didn’t seem to notice. He continued with friendly banter about the events of the battle for a moment or two, and then introduced himself as Ken.

Since we shared a common interest in Civil War history, and because the causes of my annoyance had nothing to do with him, I consciously changed my attitude and struck up a friendly conversation with him there in the light rain. Ken obviously had a detailed if not encyclopedic knowledge of the Civil War, and he was so enthusiastically gregarious that I immediately took a liking to him. He explained that he was also on a tour similar to mine; to visit several battlefields for a few days before returning to his home in central Ohio. I remarked that my home in Lexington was just a little over two hours driving time from his. Next he worked on proselytizing me to join the Civil War Preservation Trust; an organization dedicated to protecting Civil War sites from modern development. Since I was unemployed, I was not immediately convinced I should make any serious commitments to a non-profit organization while standing by the road next to a corn field, so I was politely non-committal. After a few moments we parted ways. I explained I had to drive back into Sharpsburg to buy some batteries, and Ken stating that he was meeting a licensed battlefield guide for a tour of the southern end of the park.

My circuit of the park generally progressed from north to south in much the same way that the battle of Antietam itself raged like a burning fuse from north to south during twelve hours of fighting. By the middle of the afternoon, I had made my way to the heights overlooking the Rohrbach Bridge over Antietam Creek where General Burnside wasted so much time and so many troop’s lives in a frustrated attempt to force the Georgian defenders to flee (later this was renamed "Burnside's Bridge"). I planned on hiking the Snavely Ford Trail, which is where Burnside would have crossed the creek if he had had any sense at the outset. As I made my return to the parking lot, hot and sweaty from the hike under now sunny skies, I encountered Ken once more accompanied by his guide. Naturally I stopped to chat again.

The guide pointed out an interesting monument nearby dedicated to the memory of assassinated president William McKinley. Soon after his murder in Buffalo New York, this monument was erected to give notice to the military service of the martyred president. However, the guide pointed out that closer scrutiny of the text on the monument discloses that McKinley’s military service at Antietam was as a quartermaster sergeant and included fetching pots of coffee back to the troops where were actually busy in combat. We all chuckled a bit over the late president’s intrepid exploits, and then Ken started once again to convince me of the advantages of joining the Civil War Preservation Trust. I smiled and assured him I would give his suggestion serious consideration, and this time I asked for his address information so I could contact him again later.

The next day I spent exploring the town of Harpers Ferry West Virginia, and hiking a short segment of the Appalachian Trail. Perhaps I will relate the details of this adventure in a later blog.

After Harpers Ferry I proceeded next to Fredericksburg Virginia where I planned on camping for two days. This scenic and historic piece of land along the Rappahannock River is another of those hotly contested pieces of ground of which I spoke earlier. In Spotsylvania and adjacent Orange Counties, no less than four major Civil War battles were fought, in addition to dozens and perhaps even hundreds of minor scrimmages. The contending armies of the Potomac and Northern Virginia occupied this ground for nearly two years.

My first stop was to be the National Parks visitors’ center located at the base of Marye’s Heights in Fredericksburg. I had many stops planned for that day, so I arrived early in the morning as the center opened. As I strolled up the sidewalk toward the front door, I was amazed and pleased to see Ken walking toward me on the sidewalk. “Man! You are everywhere!” I said as I shook his hand. He explained that today he was part of a tour group exploring Fredericksburg, along many of the same areas that I was planning to visit myself. Once again he put in a plug for the Civil War Preservation Trust, and this time I relented and agreed that I would make sending them a check my first order of business upon my return home. I saw Ken several more times later that day, mostly from a distance as his group and I explored the Confederate defensive line along the base of the ridge.

I didn’t see Ken again during the balance of my trip, but I did correspond with him by mail and by email after my return to Lexington. One day, I received an invitation from Ken. He was organizing another tour of Civil War battlefields, this time near my home in central Kentucky. He graciously invited me to join him as my guest, and I gratefully accepted. For three days in October, a group of thirty or so Civil War enthusiasts toured battlegrounds such as Richmond, Munfordville, Bardstown, Frankfort and finally Perryville. While Ken was the organizer of this tour, it was actually led by a fellow named Chris Kolakowski who just so happened to be the chief historian at Perryville battlefield. I was pleased to see on Amazon recently that Chris has just published a book on Perryville. I can’t wait to read it.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

It's a Boy!


Today's blog is dedicated to my son Primogenitor on the occasion of his 11th birthday. I will commemorate the occasion by telling a brief story about him.

I am proud of Primogenitor for many reasons, not the least of which is that he shares my love of the out of doors and sense of adventure. Of of these adventures was a two week long family camping trip through twelve states of the south-west, with a week of camping on the south rim of the Grand Canyon. Among the activities we planned for our stay was to take a short day hike with a park ranger down into the interior of the canyon on the South Kaibab trail. Hiking in the canyon during late June can be a warm proposition, so the hike was scheduled to begin at 8:00 so that the group could return to the rim by 10:00 or so. I arose about 6:30 that morning to fix some coffee and breakfast. As I stood by the gravel road running through Mather Campsite sipping on my coffee, a woman walked by, paused, and then said to me, "I just saw the largest elk I have ever seen in my life just down at the end of the road here."

The night before I had witnessed a heard of mule deer migrate quietly through our campsite, and I was convinced she was mistaken. She had seen a muley and not an elk; and I told her as much. However, she insisted that it was an elk and ambled along her way. Naturally I had to take a walk down to investigate.

So I was wrong. About fifty yards down the road was indeed a very large elk, grazing passively in the early morning just along the roadside. Quickly I returned to camp and fetched my camera. I also fetched Primogenitor out of bed to join me in viewing this magnificent animal. We walked back down the road and found the elk still in the same place, placidly munching on grass. After snapping a few photos, I regretted that I had not also rousted my wife and daughter out of bed to see the elk (I had left them behind because I expected the growing crowd around the elk to frighten it off; that it wouldn't be there anymore by the time we returned). I left Primo behind and returned a second time to camp to retrieve the rest of the family.

I should not have worried about the elk leaving because it was in its natural element and was obviously hungry; not going anywhere fast. When I returned again with the rest of our household, I was amazed to see that my son had approached the grazing elk very carefully, and was standing less than ten feet away from it. I snapped a couple of quick photos which have become basis of family legend: Primo the elk whisperer.



After this fun little adventure, Primo and I gulped down some breakfast and coffee and were off on a bus to the trail head for the South Kaibab. This ranger hike was supposed to be three-quarters of a mile down, for a total round trip of a mile and a half. The ranger would stop at various points along the trail and explain natural features such as flora, fauna, and naturally geology. This was all very interesting; for example we learned what a pack rat midden was, and saw one first hand (Google this if you are curious). Once we reached the end three quarters of a mile down, Primo asked me if we could continue further down the trail to the next major point on the trail, Cedar Ridge. This was another three quarters of a mile down. I asked the ranger if this was okay, and she said sure, as long as you have enough water (we each had a full 1 liter bottle).

The day was gloriously sunny, and actually not all that hot considering that it was the desert in late June. When Primo and I arrived at Cedar Ridge around 10:00, a thermometer on the side of the latrine building read about 85 degrees. We offered to snap some photos for a family who happened to be there at the same time, and they returned the favor by taking pictures of us posing in front of the Cedar Ridge sign. We might have stayed there about 15 minutes before thinking of making the return walk back up to the top. At this point Primo asked me, "Hey, where's my water bottle?"


I did not want to hear this.

We made a brief yet frantic search for the lost bottle, but it was nowhere to be found. Rather than wasting time looking for what I knew to be lost forever, I resolved to abandon the search right away and start the trek back up the switchbacks. Thus began the grueling leg of the trip.

The heat and dry desert climate was certainly challenging, but I was surprised that this was not the worst difficulty to overcome. It was the altitude. The south rim of Grand Canyon is around 6 thousand feet above sea level, and our home in Lexington is about a thousand feet in altitude. This means that the top of Grand Canyon is about a mile higher in altitude than I was generally accustomed to. Now here is the deceiving part; since the first leg of this trip was downhill, one does not feel the effects of altitude. But when we turned around and headed back up, we soon found ourselves puffing and winded, stopping every few dozen yards in order to take a drink and catch our breaths. As we struggled to make our way up the hot dusty trail, I was amazed by how many other hikers we encountered on the way down, without water, without packs, without proper sunscreen or suitable foot ware, trotting along as if they were oblivious to any potential danger for sunstroke or dehydration. "You people are going to die down there" I thought to myself.

For a while, I thought I might break down in exhaustion. Luckily we encountered a park ranger who was well fitted out with a bulging pack and plenty of water. He was searching for a hiker reported to be in distress (presumably one of those I had seen earlier casually meandering down the trail to their doom). I asked him if he might have seen our lost water bottle, and when he heard our story, he volunteered to give us a bottle of Desani. To this day I am deeply grateful for this little bottle of water, because we would have been far more miserable than we actually were by the time we returned to the trail head.

Fortunately, the rest of the walk back up the switchbacks to the the trail head was uneventful. There was a faucet at the top and Primo and I fell upon it greedily. We must have drunk a gallon of water apiece. One adventure still awaited us. I let Primo go first, and he wandered off to wait at the bus stop as I lapped the cool water directly from the tap. While I did this, a bus arrived and Primo boarded it. Suddenly, the bus driver started to pull away while I was still at the spout. Primo begged the driver to wait for me, but he insisted on driving off immediately without me on board. Primo quickly dismounted the bus so that we were not separated, and the damned driver drove off leaving us there at the trail head, standing in the sunshine and waiting for another bus.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

I Can See It Coming

Have you ever been able to see disaster coming right at you, with little means of avoiding it?

About a month ago, I signed up for a Leave No Trace Trainer course which will qualify me to conduct LNT Awareness Workshops. I love the out-of-doors; I love camping. I want to help preserve nature for my own enjoyment and for the benefit of my kids (and perhaps grandkids one day). When I signed up a month ago, it was freezing cold and snowing every day. I was looking forward to some fresh springtime weather for a change. And this course involves camping for two nights, Friday and Saturday; gotta like that.

Well, according to the forecast, it will indeed be fresh springtime weather. There is a 60% chance of rain Friday night; 30% chance of rain all day Saturday; and 40% chance of rain on Sunday. I can already see how this is going to work out.

Oh well, I have been camping in the rain before, and no doubt I will go camping in the rain many times after this next weekend. At least the forecast gives me plenty of warning so that I can go well prepared. Tomorrow night after work I am headed for the sporting goods store to purchase a new rain suit. I already have a tall pair of rubber boots in addition to my regular kit of outdoor gear. This is going to be fun regardless of the weather.

Next week I will write about this little adventure and let you know how it turned out.

Speaking of camping in the rain, last July I went out camping in the second worst rainstorm in which I have ever camped. It was the last night of Webelos resident camp (a total of three nights of camping on this trip). All day Saturday there had been threats of rain on the horizon, and my son Primogenitor and I made the mistake of lingering at the camp dining hall a bit too long before beginning the mile long hike up the hill to our campsite on a wooded ridge line.

About half way there the drizzle began. About two hundred yards from camp the downpour started. This was about 10:30 at night and it was pitch black on the trail that wound through the woods in the ravine below our camp. We were fairly damp by the time we got back to the tent (a cabin style tent set up on a wooden platform) and after shooing away a wolf spider about the size of an Eisenhower dollar from inside the tent, we bedded down with a steady racket of downpour hitting the canvass above our heads. The lightning started before 11:00, and for the next four hours there was a constant din of non-stop thunder, with little respite. On the rare occasions when the noise of the thunder wasn't deafening, the roar of the rain was.

Sleep was impossible under the circumstances, and occasionally I would take a peek outside to check on the rising torrent of water streaming through the center of our campsite. The rising flash flood was a bit alarming considering that we were camped on the crest of a ridge and theoretically there should not be a flood at the top of a hill. Fortunately there was the ever-present flash of lightning with an immediate report of thunder indicating an uncomfortably close strike that took my mind of the threat of being washed away in the flood. I was thankful for the wooden platform upon which my tent was pitched because that raised us off the ground by about 8 inches. However, upon my last check outside I found the stream had almost reached the top of the platform. I wasn't interested in looking outside anymore after that.

The storm never lost any of its fury until it suddenly stopped (almost as if someone had turned off a faucet) around 3:30 in the morning. Primogenitor and I finally got to sleep around 4:00 and I let him sleep late the next morning. I have camped out in one other storm that was more relentless and lengthy in duration that this (about 12 hours of steady downpour, the last six of which included galeforce winds), but this thunderstorm was the worst I have encountered as far as near misses from lightning.

The next morning in the cool misty dawn as survivors crawled from their tents to survey the damage and the signs of flotsam left in a trail through the center of camp, conversation naturally turned to each individual's experiences and observations from the night before. One of the adult leaders informed the group that he had monitored the storm's progress on his Blackberry which was able to retrieve weather radar data. Ordinarily storms in this part of the country are oriented north to south and proceed from a westerly direction. This storm, on the contrary, was a series of super-cells aligned on a east-west orientation, but yet still tracking from a westerly direction. Since the storm passed directly over our camp, we were subjected to the terrible brunt of the tempest.

As we stood about chatting, a tree just outside our camp that had been undermined by the flood suddenly came crashing to the ground.

Friday, March 5, 2010

There is Only One Conspiracy

I have a pet peeve. Okay, those who know me well will affirm that I harbor a treasure trove of pet peeves much like the miser hordes ducats. But today I am particularly annoyed by my pet peeve involving conspiracies.

My first interest in conspiracies began when a friend of mine (my lawyer) handed me a well worn book and advised me to read it; my eyes would be unburdened and the truth would be known. The book was entitled Best Evidence by David Lifton. (As a footnote here, we later had a bit of a falling out when her fiancé started stalking me, and I never returned the volume to her. If she wants it back now she knows how to sue me for it). The book was about the assassination of John F. Kennedy which at the time was a topic about which I knew very little. Naturally I was intrigued and I consumed the book voraciously.

The first thing that struck me was the unaccountable audacity of the work. David Lifton freely confesses early on that he became so consumed with his research into the crime of the century that he washed out of engineering graduate school. That I would not hold against him, but when he suggested that as a failed engineer he had some superior knowledge in the physics associated with the murder of the president, he began to loose credibility with me. His rambling style of organization and fantastic claims (e.g. body snatchers switched coffins at the airport and performed post mortem surgery on his Excellency’s corpse, making it look like he was shot from behind) cinched the deal for me. While I’m sure his intention was to create conspiracy buff proselytes, I completed the book firmly convinced that he was full of shit. Critical reading will do this for you.

In a way, reading Best Evidence changed my life. Once I recognized what an empty house of cards supported the Kennedy conspiracy, I became emboldened to question the authority of other conspiracy buffs.

I will pause here to express a corollary pet peeve. What in the name of Ford is a buff? Do they not realize this is short for buffoon? I would rather someone call me “Late for Dinner” than to have them call me a buff.

But I digress. My newly found awareness of the brazen mendacity of these self styled “buffs” prompted me to scrutinize all things mysterious with the zeal of an evangelical polemicist. “How about crop circles?” Easiest thing in the world to make with a tent stake, rope and a board. “What about Atlantis?” It’s a fairy tale; grow up and stop believing in fairies. “Have you seen the Shroud of Turin?” The bishop thought it was a fake when it first appeared in 1385; what makes you think it is real now? “Loch Ness Monster?” “Sasquatch?” “UFOs?” “Poltergeists?” “WMD in Iraq?” Without hard evidence that can withstand rigorous examination, it all has lost its mysterious luster in my eyes. They are all jewels of brass.

There is a new breed of conspiracy buffs skulking about the dark environs of the internet now that call themselves Truthers. This is a particularly insidious breed because their preferred cause is the tragedy that was September 11. I am like many others regarding this topic. I harbor my latent anger over this event next to my collection of pet peeves. Truthers assert that the thousands and tens of thousands of victims from that day suffered their loss as a result of a government conspiracy, and not a foreign terrorist conspiracy. They will make claims such as, “even a restaurant busboy can see from the video that the North Tower was collapsed by explosive charges placed in advance by government agents”. Most often such claims are indeed advanced by restaurant busboys or someone with similar authority on matters of engineering and building design. The community of professional engineers understandably distance themselves from such spurious rants.

I hold Oliver Stone accountable for propagating a generation of buffs. He elevated the paranoid ranting of a shameless self promoter (Jim Garrison) to an art form; although I would not suggest it is high art. I have visited Dealey Plaza in Dallas Texas from time to time, and each time there was a collection of buffs milling about the grassy knoll peddling their particular theory on the crime, but more importantly peddling their publication explaining their favorite flavor of conspiracy theory. It’s funny how a presidential murder has become a cottage industry, and I don’t mean funny in the good way. This is the one real conspiracy. Charlatans turning a profit from public gullibility, exploiting a national tragedy.

In the years following my conspiracy epiphany, I have developed creative ways to voice my distain for all things conspiratorial without incurring opprobrium of polite society. I do this through satire. I recall once that I was at a business party, well lubricated with an open bar, and someone brought up the subject of some conspiracy theory or other. “You realize” I said to the chap, “there is only one conspiracy”. He regarded me with befuddlement and asked, “What do you mean?” “Well,” I replied, “all these conspiracy theories you have heard about”; I leaned in close “they are not separate conspiracies. They are all related. There is only one big conspiracy”.

For a brief moment he was uncertain whether this was true or whether I was full of hyperbole, so I plunged ahead. “Sure, it all starts with the Knights Templar. They had to protect their secrets, but when Kennedy told what he knew to Marilyn Monroe, the Freemasons had to eliminate her. Then, they used their connections with Opus Dei to contact the Mafia to get rid of both Kennedy and his brother Bobby. Richard Nixon found out that the Masons were going to hit Kennedy using their contacts at the CIA, and he flew to Dallas that day to try to warn him. This made the CIA retaliate against Nixon by setting him up with the whole Watergate thing. But Nixon was smart; Howard Hughes tipped him off to what the CIA up to, and Nixon shared that secret with only one other person. That was Elvis Presley.” Then I added with a wink, “and you know what happened to him”.

By this time the polite smile had faded from my friend’s (victim’s) face. He shifted from one foot to the other, eyes darting furtively about the room seeking some familiar clique or clutch of revelers to which he could retreat from my onslaught. I decided then it would be much more entertaining to freshen my cocktail rather than to torment him any longer.

“But those that understood him smiled at one another, and shook their heads; but for mine own part, it was Greek to me.”
Casca from Julius Caesar Act I Scene II.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Beer Machine Bomb

The following story is entirely hypothetical for all you know; and furthermore I would never do it again.

Suppose just for the sake of argument that when I was in college, my fraternity house had an old Pepsi machine from which our brotherhood generated a few extra dollars in revenue by selling beer instead of Pepsi (this alleged college being the only state university in Kentucky situated in a dry territory at that time). And picture if you will that some unidentified person not having the key to said beer machine while yet suffering from a compulsive sense of thirst, smashed off the existing lock to gain entry to the wonderful contents inside. Now later, as the brothers wanted to continue vending beer through the beer machine, but being unable to secure it given the broken lock, imagine that they affixed a hasp to the machine so that it could be padlocked shut. Picture all these things if you will.

Now imagine that later the machine fell into disuse. It was relegated into storage in a glassed in greenhouse room just off the main living room at the front of the house where it sat, sad and lonely for a year or so. Nobody paid it much thought; at least not until finals week in my senior year. Consider a warmer than average spring in an un-airconditioned house, and the subtle smell of putrefaction beginning to permeate the living-room area. Nobody understands from whence the smell of death was issuing until the weekend after finals and someone ventured to open the door of the office. As soon as the door opened, the overwhelming, sickening stench of rotten flesh poured with a vengeance from the glass room. The hapless victim who had opened Pandora’s Box of Stink immediately slammed the door, but noticed that the beer machine had a brand new Master’s padlock on the hasp just before closing the door.

It turns out that this (hypothetical) situation was a grim sort of prank. Some unidentified person had killed some poor vermin in the woods, taken its lifeless carcass, and stuffed it deep into the beer machine, before affixing a padlock for which only he had the key. This course of events was about six weeks in the past by the time it was discovered.

Did I mention that it had been an unusually warm spring?

The situation proved a difficult problem to solve. No one could remain in the glass room long enough either to saw off the padlock, pry off the hasp or attempt to move the very heavy beer machine. And yet as long as the machine remained in the office, we anticipated that the stench would continue to intensify. Isn’t this quite the conundrum?

Someone once said that there are few problems in life that cannot be solved with the suitable application of explosives. This little dictum became our salvation. Picture for just a moment if you will, an anonymous person who owns a CO2 pellet gun, and being a thrifty sort decided to recycle the spent CO2 cartridges by fashioning them into bombs. The process is quite simple if you think about it. Take a nail and enlarge the puncture in the nozzle so that it is large enough to hold a small funnel; pour in an ounce or two of very fine black powder (available at many sporting goods stores); insert plastic coated cannon fuse (also available at many sporting goods stores); and seal it with epoxy glue. If someone were to do such a thing, it would make quite a nice, waterproof miniature bomb.

Let me add here that I have never, ever owned a CO2 pellet gun; for real. If someone else made such a bomb, it wasn’t me. Seriously.

Let’s pretend that on a sunny Sunday afternoon in May, a small group of fraternity boys gathering in the front yard of their house and discussing what to do to get the lock off the beer machine. Brother Boom (you might remember this name from my Cats blog) might have suggested, “Why don’t we blow it off with one of my bombs?” (Ergo the nickname, Boom). To this suggestion, I could have replied, “If we can blow off the lock, I will get the dead animal out of the machine”. There probably was a handy wheel barrow and shovel nearby to facilitate this awful task.

So the group reassembles just outside the glass windows to watch while I and one other brother hold our noses and venture into the charnel house with a roll of duct tape and a bomb in hand. Holding our breaths, we tape the bomb to the side of the beer machine just underneath the lock. Just as my face began to turn from red to purple from oxygen deprivation, I gave a quick flick of a lighter and touched off the end of the plastic fuse, which began to burn furiously. The other brother and I ran for the back door.

By this time the group of witnesses had retreated through a gate and was hiding behind the wooden privacy fence skirting the house, laughing and giggling hysterically. Now about this time, imagine that it was such a pleasant sunny Sunday afternoon that an elderly lady came walking down the sidewalk, on her way to church or perhaps to the grocery. No one noticed that she was passing slowly right in front of the fraternity house as the fuse was lit. We knew that it was way far too late to go cut the fuse, and she was moving awfully slow…

KABOOM!

The bomb detonated just as the old lady was directly in front of the fraternity house, about 100 feet away (imagine a rather large front yard). The resulting blast caused a deafening boom accompanied by the crash of broken glass as shrapnel shattered the windows of the glass room. Fractured steel and broken glass sprayed across the gravel parking lot.

The old lady had stopped frozen in her tracks when the bomb went off. She stared at the front of the house in horrified silence, mouth agape. Perhaps she may have been mystified that a half dozen laughing college boys would have come pouring out through the wooden gate so soon after such an alarming explosion, but if she had lived in the neighborhood for any length of time, this really shouldn’t have been such a surprise.

If of course any of this actually happened; which I’m not really saying it did.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

There Is Justice After All

Several years ago, my wife and I took a trip over Labor Day weekend to historic Charlottesville Virginia to visit Monticello, the home of our third president, Thomas Jefferson (being the avid historian that I am, our family vacations typically involve some historic theme). The house was fascinating; I would recommend that everyone add this destination to their bucket list.

However, Monticello is not the topic of this blog. The Sunday morning parade is.

We spent Saturday night in a hotel located on a strip of generica on the main highway at the edge of town. The view from our second floor balcony was the parking lot of a Home Depot, and to the right was a six lane highway almost choking with retail sprawl; convenient stores, strip malls, Asian buffets, bistros, gas stations, and the like. Below our window a service road passed between the hotel and the HD parking lot and connected with the main strip at a traffic light. Our plan for that Sunday morning was to sleep late and make a leisurely return trip to Louisville to pick up our son, Primogenitor, from the grandparents who were babysitting (our second born was not yet our second born).

Our plans on a leisurely morning began to fall apart about 7:00 that Sunday morning when we were awakened by the sound of sirens. Not just a siren; no literally dozens and dozens of sirens. I hopped out of bed in alarm, pulled on a pair of jeans, and raced to the balcony to see what kind of emergency was happening.

But there wasn’t any emergency; there were emergency vehicles. Every emergency vehicle in Albemarle County must have been parked in the HD parking lot; police cars, sheriff’s cars, fire trucks, ambulances, heavy rescue trucks, game wardens, fire wardens, constables, deputies. I even saw a police SUV with a police boat on a trailer behind. Every one of them had their lights flashing insanely, and every one of them had their damn sirens blaring.

Did I mention that this was 7:00 on a Sunday morning of a holiday weekend?

Needless to say I was feeling less than charitable toward the local emergency service agencies. While I stood there on the balcony amazed and fuming with indignation, the host began to stream in single file out of the parking lot onto the service road, sirens still blaring, up to the traffic light before turning right and disappearing. I’m sure it took over ten minutes for the lot to disgorge this caravan of racket, and it was another ten minutes before the noise faded in the distance.

I returned to bed to try to get a bit more sleep, but this proved fruitless. Within ten minutes we could hear the cacophony making a return. Again I pounced out of bed, jumped into my jeans, and stormed furiously out to the balcony. Apparently this entire exercise was part of a Labor Day parade or celebration, and after disturbing the more remote neighborhoods of Charlottesville it was making a return trip to annoy bystanders closer to downtown. Again I stood on the balcony fuming in a helpless rage while watching the screaming tumult pass by on the main drag.

Before long I noticed that the column began to slow down a bit. The head of the parade must have been either slowed by narrower congested streets. The progress continued to slow until cars were moving at a crawl, and then stopped entirely (but still with lights flashing and sirens wailing). I noticed that the cars toward the back had apparently been trying to catch up, and one had to pull up short. The next car had to slow and stop even more precipitously. Behind this car there was a considerable gap in the column, and I noticed about a hundred yards back a sheriff’s deputy moving along at a quick pace to close up. As he approached the stop light where the parade had stalled, I thought for a moment that he must be in the far right lane and intending to pass the stopped traffic. I was wrong.

BOOM! CRASH! The deputy hit the car in front of him without so much as a whisper on the breaks. He must have been going about 35 mph, and the resulting crash was so violent that his airbag deployed and he launched the car he hit into the rear of the next car in line. All three police cars were totaled.

I immediately threw my arms up and cheered with glee. I danced and jumped about the tiny balcony, giggling and shouting with joy. There is justice after all. When just a moment before I had been glowering with resentment, now my mood had improved in an instant of distracted driving. It was only 8:00 in the morning, but I already had my favorite moment of the day. My wife and I laughed about this for the balance of that Sunday, all through the five hours it took to drive back to Louisville.

My only regret was that in those few moments of joyous transport after the wreck, I did not have the presence of mind to call 911.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Welcome to the Hotel Cincinnati

Many years ago when I was busy partying my way out of law school, I tended bar in a really cool music venue called “Bogart’s” in a really cool neighborhood just off the University of Cincinnati campus. I met many good friends there and had many fun and scandalous adventures in the process. Some of those friends I cherish to this day; one of those friends was my Best Man.

When I first met Best Man he was a top seed amateur barfly (I think he considered going professional for a while) who frequented a small dive across Vine Street from Bogart’s. Another bartender who worked part time at Bogart’s and part time at the dive (I’ll call him Bear) introduced me to Best Man, who in turn immediately invited both of us to a party at The Hotel.

The Hotel was really nothing more than a quiet townhouse on a dead end street in the Western Hills neighborhood of Cincinnati. On the outside it was an unassuming clapboard house, but on the inside it was party central. Best Man has a talent for construction and he had converted the home by tearing out part of the floor of the attic and created a loft master bed room with a balcony overflowing with hanging vines and overlooking the second floor living/party room with a vaulted ceiling. Just below the balcony was a built in glass cabinet with a state of the art sound system and home theater system. Opposite the entertainment cabinet a wicker chair swung from a chain suspended from the ceiling next to which a squatting stone gargoyle stood guard (Best Man was kind enough to give me the gargoyle when the Hotel finally closed; it’s nearly three feet tall). Two narrow passages on either side of the entertainment cabinet led to a saloon room featuring a wet bar and built in refrigerated beer tap. Above the bar a neon sign announced, “Live Music Nightly”. Situated in a corner opposite of the bar was an antique barber’s chair (which in time became a Hotel legend in its own right). To the right of the living room was a set of French doors which opened into a music studio equipped with several electric and acoustic guitars, a drum set, keyboard, tambourines, microphones, and speakers, everything needed for an impromptu musical performance. Best Man had even converted an adjacent closet into a sound booth with a multi-channel sound board and recording equipment.

But wait, there’s more. Across the hall from the door to the music studio a wooden door with a stained glass window featuring a beach scene (complete with palm tree) led out to a second floor covered deck with its own marble top bar. All the rooms were amply decorated with tasteful art and curious knick-knacks to stimulate the amusement and conversation of guests.

The Hotel reflected two of Best Man’s most compelling interests: live music and living sociably. Over the years I spent many a night listening to an impromptu concert or celebrating late into the night and into the next day (or maybe even the day after that). I have more Hotel stories than I could possibly relate in a single blog. Our little group of friends gathered at the Hotel before concerts; to watch football games and election results; to get married (I served as Best Man’s Best Man in an outdoor wedding in the garden below the deck), and once or twice even for a wake. We partied at the Hotel before, and after the notorious Riverfest year after year after year; and the night I got engaged my new fiancĂ© and I celebrated New Years at the Hotel.

Which brings me to the point of this particular story; the special annual traditional New Year’s Eve party at the Hotel. Each year guests would assemble at the Hotel for a live concert and social lubrication. As a former sailor in the United States Navy, Best Man considered it a patriotic duty to celebrate the New Year as it arrived at each time zone across the continental United States, so these parties always lasted until well past dawn. On this particular year, Best Man decided to enhance the celebration by making it a pajama party. Everyone arrived wearing their customary nightclothes with the exception of one guest. Triumph John was a motorcycle enthusiast with a quiet demeanor and dry sense of humor. Triumph John was not the type to arrive at a party on the back of the expensive Triumph motorcycle he rebuilt wearing anything less than a full set of leathers. But on this occasion, in addition to the really cool bike he brought an interesting piece of equipment for the entertainment of the other guests: a homemade carbide cannon.

Calcium carbide is a chemical that appears much like the grey limestone gravel one sees paving driveways and country roads; except that this gravel gives off acetylene gas whenever water is added to it (acetylene is used to fire up cutting torches). In bygone days miners once used this technology for their headlamps, but John had devised a means to use it to power a small artillery piece. The cannon consisted of a galvanized steel plumbing pipe about three feet long with an interior diameter about the size of a tennis ball. The base consisted of a steel cap large enough so that the pipe would fit snugly inside. On the side of the pipe John had welded a flint and steel striker from a Zippo lighter next to a port in the side of the pipe. Firing the cannon involved filling the base cap with a cup or so of water, and inserting a tennis ball into the bore of the pipe. A few calcium carbide pellets were dropped into the water, and then the pipe set inside the base thus sealing in the accumulating acetylene gas. After a few moments, the pipe was lifted above the rim of the cup just enough to allow a fresh supply of oxygen into the tube, then the pipe is reset and the Zippo striker struck. The resulting explosion is channeled by the steel pipe and propels the tennis ball into a suborbital apogee. Nothing says party like a thunderous bang and a flash of fire.

Now remember how Best Man had a fondness for celebrating the New Year at the top of each hour until 4:00 in the morning? As the midnight hour approached in the Eastern Time Zone all the party guests poured out of the stain glass door and assembled (in their pajamas) on the deck and in the yard while Triumph John quietly and calmly prepared the cannon for firing. I stationed myself by the bar and admired a lady nearby wearing a baby doll nightie. She was Bear’s girlfriend and our job was to retrieve the tennis ball upon reentry (if there was anything left of it). The countdown commenced amid a terrific din of hysterical laughter and shouts; FIVE, FOUR, THREE, TWO, ONE!...then nothing. The gun misfired. John patiently manipulated his equipment briefly and produced a disposable lighter then BOOM! Fire shot out three feet from the muzzle of the cannon, and all the neighbors windows shook violently and dangerously. The back yard soon filled with screaming laughing party guests scampering about in their pajamas searching for the tennis ball before firing another shot, and then another.

This scene repeated itself all night long at one hour intervals. I think we even fired a shot at sunrise just for good measure. It’s a wonder no one called the police.

Cats

The Carruthers household has always been a dog family, and not a cat family. There is a very good reason for this: I can’t stand to be around cats. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t intend this as an indictment on the character of cats (or on my own character for that matter). It is not that I hate cats, but rather I hate the terrible physical consequences I suffer whenever I come into contact with them. My eyes swell, my sinuses water, hives erupt on my neck, and worst of all my chest closes leaving me gasping for air.

Many years ago before my kids were born and my wife and I still had time to be social, we regularly attended parties hosted by our Best Man, who was widely celebrated for the hospitality he provided at his home, sometimes euphemistically known as “the Hotel”. One New Years Eve (I think it might have been 1994) my better half and I planned on attending a Hotel party and celebrating until dawn (Best Man made it his regular practice to observe the countdown for each of the four time zones across the continental U.S. with fireworks and occasionally artillery in the back yard—more on that later). Sometime after dawn when the party wound down we would crash on a spare bed for a few hours before enjoying a late brunch at Crackerbarrel.

Best Man’s wife (I’ll call her Carla) was a felinophile and kept two cats as pets in and about the Hotel. Ordinarily the cats resided in the back yard, but with the onset of inclement winter weather they were spending much of their time inside. My first indication of cat proximity was an annoying watering and burning sensation in my eyes that would not relent for anything. This was quickly followed by a series of sneezing fits that rendered me entirely unsociable for the occasions. The itching and crawling sensation of my skin came next. The symptoms progressed from inconvenience to outright misery by the time midnight arrived. Soon after the turn of the New Year, my eyes were nearly swollen shut and I was suffering from a fever. By this time my wife reasonably insisted that we leave immediately, and I gratefully agreed.

I don’t recall much of the drive home that night except for a few moments as the car made its way up the cut-in-the-hill through Covington, Kentucky, when my chest began to tighten and close up. As I gasped for breath I tried not to reveal my sense of alarm to my wife, who in turn was trying to conceal her own alarm as well (but with not much success). “Do we need to go to the hospital?” she asked repeatedly. Each time I managed to croak out a negative reply, which was obviously more a reflection of my own stubbornness rather than an honest assessment of the truth. Instead of seeking the medical attention which I sorely needed, we returned to our apartment and vowed to stay away from cats in the future.

The resolution to avoid cats is one that I have found easy to keep as one might well imagine. I can recall the very last time I ever touched a cat; 12 April 2001. It may seem odd that I can recall the particular date, but coincidentally the occasion was a VIP reception for two National Geographic photographers, Nevada Weir and Virginia Swanson, that was being held at a swanky country club in suburban Cincinnati while riots were erupting downtown (it is easy enough to Google the dates of the riots). Virginia and Nevada had just returned from a photography adventure along the Nile in central Africa, and were on a lecture tour following the publication of their work in National Geographic. My wife helped organize the lecture in Cincinnati through her work at the local PBS station, so we frequently were invited to these special receptions. After dinner and a slide presentation by the photographers, they announced a special treat for those in attendance; at the front of the room a handler escorted in a Cheetah on a leash, accompanied by her pet dog. Yes, it was a fully grown African Cheetah, and yes, the cat had a small terrier dog as a pet (It was explained that the cheetah would get lonely and feel anxious without a companion). Obviously it is not every day that someone brings such an exotic animal to a party and in spite of my misgivings that another attack of asthma was in store I could not resist approaching the cat and giving it a few brief pets. Fortunately I did not get sick on this occasion. I have not touched a cat since.

I wasn’t always so perilously allergic to cats. My symptoms date back to a particular night in the late 80’s at a different party in a different city. I had a fraternity brother (I’ll call him Boom) who was hosting a back yard party for friends and neighbors in historic central Louisville. There was quite a gregarious crowd milling about and swilling barley and hops into the late evening, probably making enough noise to annoy those neighbors who weren’t invited. Around midnight an attractive young woman with fine blond hair arrived at the party and approached Boom with a stricken look on her face. “I’ve locked myself out of my apartment!” she exclaimed. “What am I going to do!?” She indicated that the second floor window next door with the light on was her apartment, and I immediately recognized that a gesture of gallantry at this moment might be rewarded with generous gratitude. Immediately I replied, “I’ll get you inside” with an unwavering tone of confidence. The second floor window overlooked a roof over the back porch, and it only took me a few seconds to climb onto the roof and pop open her window (don’t ask me how I know so much about B&E). I made my way through her cluttered apartment and unlocked her front door with a flourish.

This was a mistake. She did not tell me that she had a cat in the apartment.

The blond lady was waiting on the other side of the door which was situated at the top of a flight of stairs. Her grateful smile quickly evaporated as the cat shot past us in a flash, down the steps and out into the night. “My cat!” she cried with the same stricken look that she had earlier. Even though I had gotten her back inside her digs, I was quickly traveling the road from hero to bum.
I spent the next THREE HOURS chasing that damned cat around the neighborhood, cursing and fuming and disturbing the neighbors all the while before finally cornering the beast behind a hedge, against the foundation of the house next door. The cat tried to make a break for freedom by running along the foundation as I reached out and grabbed for it. I was only able to latch onto its tail, and by this time I was determined not to let it get away again. This was another mistake. The cat hated to be grabbed by the tail (not very surprising). As I carried it back triumphant to the blond lady, the disagreeable cat made good its escape from my clutches by pushing off with its hind legs, digging its claws into my torso in the process. In all honesty, I deserved this.

In spite of the bloody welts across my belly, I launched after the cat once again. This time it only took me an hour to recapture it. By this time it was nearing dawn, and my interest in the companionship of the blond lady had disappeared into a fog of annoyance and discomfort (and she probably felt the same about me by this time). I gave her back her stupid cat and left to return home (the party had broken up hours ago).

By midday the next day, I was truly starting to suffer. My eyes swelled shut; my sinuses watered continuously; hives began to erupt on my neck; and I started to run a fever. I drove from Louisville to Cincinnati in this miserable condition and was sick for the next two days (causing me to miss work that Monday). Ever since this party, I have been allergic to cats.

Some may scoff at “cat scratch fever” as a myth, but I assure you gentle reader that it is no myth.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Are You Experienced?

I often fancy making my status posts on Facebook something unique and amusing so that my friends may be entertained by a moment of whimsy. Recently I made a post about an unusual life experience I have had; I once slept under a pool table while people were playing pool on it at 3:00 in the morning. This life event took place a long time ago at an Air Force base in Oklahoma on the return leg of a Boy Scout trip to New Mexico. I think that unusual experiences and adventures are the spice of life and are what make it interesting. This blog posting is dedicated to recalling some of my life’s adventures.

I have:

camped in the snow;

slept in a teepee (in the pouring rain) and in a yurt;

gone swimming in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans;

climbed to the summit of an extinct volcano (from inside the crater);

spent the night atop an active volcano;

watched lava pour into the ocean from a black sand beach in the middle of the night;

visited another continent;

voted twice in a single election (a local option referendum);

drove a car over 120 miles per hour;

watched a Broadway musical;

smuggled a switchblade through customs;

been a pallbearer;

been a best man;

watched a person bleed to death;

backpacked the entire length of Land Between the Lakes in five days during late June;

flown in a helicopter;

hiked part of the Appalachian Trail;

shaken hands with a president of the United States (twice);

had in my custody $36 million dollars at one time;

cut my finger clear to the bone;

been followed by a stalker (actually three that I know of; two were the ex-husbands of lady-friends; the other was a private detective);

eaten a snail (several snails);

attended a murder trial;

killed a deer with a rifle;

seen the lights of San Francisco from 35 thousand feet at midnight;

crossed three North American continental divides within a four month period (eastern vertical, western vertical and horizontal);

gone skinny dipping with a co-ed group;

stood on the southern most point of the United States;

been issued a subpoena;

visited three national capitals;

appeared on Antiques Roadshow;

witnessed a moonbow over a waterfall at night;

smoked a Cuban cigar (several);

had a hangover;

caught a shark with a rod and reel;

seen a tornado;

piloted a boat through a storm in the Gulf of Mexico;

been in a hurricane;

accidentally started a brushfire (burned approximately 10 to 15 acres of brush);

successfully extinguished a brushfire without the aid of the local fire department (not easy; not recommended);

escaped from the police chasing me;

attended church services in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London;

felt an earthquake;

set off a pipe bomb;

fired a machine gun;

been in a fist fight;

been to the top of the Empire State Building (87th floor observation deck);

dined in a five star restaurant;

smuggled a keg of beer into a drive-in theater;

crossed the English Channel in a hovercraft (twice);

popped a wheelie on a motorcycle;

wrecked a motorcycle;

given a girl an abandoned tombstone as a birthday gift;

purchased a Saturday Night Special with the serial number scratched off (for $10);

hit a deer with a car while traveling at 75 mph at 1 o’clock in the morning;

celebrated my 18th birthday in Paris, France;

been repelling;

attended an opera;

comforted a dog while she was put to sleep;

had my life threatened (by someone who meant it);

given an anonymous tip to the state police (regarding an armed robbery).

I have done all these things. Perhaps some of my life’s adventures are a bit shocking, but I hope that you also found some of them a bit amusing. If you, dear reader, have any extraordinary, unusual, unorthodox, terrific or scandalous life experiences you would like to share, feel free to add a comment.