Montreal

Trav,

I went to Montreal a while back – long while back now. July, I think. Great town and I attended a decent work event. The front wall of the conference center was unique. Being inside seemed like some sort of Skittles commercial.


I didn’t have much time to sightsee, but I got the crux of Montreal, I think. I walked through Old Town, down by the water. Heavily trafficked by tourists, but still worth the time. Here it is as night fell.


My last night there I looked up what was reputed to be the best pizza in Montreal, which is, by the way, a real foodie town. I took a C$15 cab ride to the place and got out. The cab sped away. I walked up to the front door, only to read a sign telling me the place was closed for two weeks. Why not put that on your website?

But I was in Little Italy, so I walked around until I found some other pizza place to eat. Inside it was quiet, and I guess that should have been a hint. The pizza was pretty bad.

I decided to walk the entire way back to the hotel, because I knew the street was a main thoroughfare and went through a lot of neighborhoods. Once I left Little Italy, I went past lots of hip bars filled with Montreal’s cool people. I passed an outdoor viewing of some movie in a small park, and I leaned against the light post on the opposite side of the street to watch it for a bit.

Not two blocks after that, two kids stopped me and asked if I knew the location of an outdoor movie showing. You should have seen my grin. I love to help people with directions, and here I am, my first time in Montreal and I knew the answer! I was so happy about this that I admitted to them that I was a tourist before telling them it was just blocks away. It was as if I wanted them to know how fortunate they were to have run into me.

Further down the street, I went through a tiny red light district, or so it seemed to me, because I saw a strip club or two and a working girl propositioned me on the street. Then through Chinatown, which looked like this.


The next day I considered jogging in Mount Royal, the hill and huge park that the city is built around. But my right Achilles was bothering me, so I figured I should skip the run and walk it instead. I got about halfway up, to a decent vantage point before I had to turn around and go check out of the hotel for my flight home.

Through those trails in the woods, when I was alone, I came upon this scene.

Thoughts on just what this could be? Because all I can picture is a huge bear standing in the middle of this mess, a rabbit held by the ears in each hand, having just bashed them to pulps against the rocks.



Brady

No Other Likely Survivors

Travy,

There’s not a whole lot to do in Iron Mountain, which is one of the reasons I like it. Another is the name: Iron Mountain. Sounds like a place to fight the battle for middle Earth.

But it’s called Iron Mountain because it used to be an iron mining town. On a gray and overcast Saturday, my dad and I parked in a lot with this guy and bought a ticket to ride into the side of the hill.


Tours run about every 45 minutes, and anyone waiting can peruse a dazzling array of tourist kitsch – everything from koozies that cleverly ridicule your spouse to football figurines, including a very current Drew Bledsoe in a Patriots jersey. I could not believe the amount of crap fanned out on the tables.


Here we are listening to our guide’s robotic spiel on mining equipment – seriously, she spoke the whole time as if she were reading a dictionary for the millionth time. Eventually, we boarded a little wooden train and chugged into that hole in the mountainside just beyond my dad.


Here I am in the tunnel.


Tours last about 35 minutes. We stopped at the Little Stope and the Big Stope (What’s a stope? A room opened up in the rock while mining, I learned), and heard about life underground. For instance, the mine stays at 42 degrees year round, and the highest paid position in the organization was the blaster: 14 cents an hour.

The Big Stope was pretty amazing, really. On the other side of the guardrail yawned a huge black hole in the earth – so deep, our guide monotoned, that if you stood the Empire State Building in it, we’d see only the top 50 feet of the flagpole sticking out. Across this expanse we could see a tiny statue illuminated by a light. Big John again, our guide told us, this one 10 feet tall, but it was so far away across this black cavern it looked more like a tiny Drew Bledsoe action figure than a statue.

This constant homage to Big John had me wondering who the fuck he was: I assumed he was some miner that got his legs blown off, or a guy who wandered down a shaft and never returned. Or some local guy killed in a cave-in. So I asked her. She told us he was a sort of patron saint of all miners, a guy immortalized in the song Big Bad John, sung by Tennessee Ernie Ford.

That sounded fine to me, but it bothered my dad, who swore the song was sung by Jimmy Dean. When we got home, he looked it up to find he was right. Which brings into question every other single thing our guide told us. I now suspect that huge hole in the Big Stope really peters out a few feet into the darkness and blasters made $200,000 a year.

We piled into the train to depart, my dad and I in the second car from the front, arms and legs pulled inside for safety. But we bumped over something, then the train groaned to a halt and the engine died. “We jumped off the tracks,” the family ahead of us said, but I’m not sure our guide heard us. She backed it up a few feet and tried forward again, only to grind the front end into the tunnel wall, bringing us to a shuddering halt.


The lightbulbs meant we could see enough to step around the thickest mud and deepest puddles as we made our way out. As we walked, I thought, This is just like being in the NY subway during the 2003 blackout.

Our little group was ahead of the rest of the tour, and as we squished along they fell far enough behind that I no longer heard them. I suppose there is something significantly symbolic about following your father out of a long dark tunnel into the daylight, but I was too focused on how I might screw with the next assembled tour to think about it. I hoped I might burst from the mouth, breathing hard with wide eyes, talking about cave-ins, no other likely survivors and please, god, call for help. But the waiting area was empty, so instead I ambled into the gift shop to put away my hardhat and jacket, and we casually mentioned to the people behind the counter that the train had jumped the tracks inside that mountain, and the rest of the people were struggling out on foot.


Brady

Announcement!

This probably should have gone up months ago, but I've been busy ... with things.

Joss Rides the Rails

Trav,

Thanks for the help getting Joss over the East River. I've been planning on taking her on the subway for about two years now, prepping by putting her in shoulder bags and uncomfortably carrying her around for a few minutes at a time. The idea back then was to get her into Manhattan easily – instead of walking her over a bridge or putting her in a taxi. This picture was taken about two years ago.


Look at that smile. She thinks she's doing a job, and doing it well. But I realized that a shoulder bag was not the answer. She's willing, but she was too unstable in there, and 40 pounds hanging off your arm gets heavier with each passing minute.

I figured what I needed was a big backpack – an Army-sized duffel. I found an Army/Navy military store on Houston and went in to check out the wares. The place was run by a middle-aged Chinese guy, and he eagerly followed me about, dropping details on which bags were largest, which ones had closing tops, and which ones were "the best." All I knew was that it required sturdy stitching and be deep enough to restrain my dingo. He pointed to one bag that had a rain-proof top. I stood taking this all in, and then mused off-handedly: "I won't need that. I'm using this for my dog."

He stared at me and considered his next words carefully. "You torture you dog," he said, eyes narrowing suspiciously.

I grinned. No, of course not, I told him. I won't close the top, I said. I want to take her on the subway, and she loves to go see new places.

That calmed him and we settled on a big black one for about $20. The idea now, though, is to be able to take her back into Brooklyn. You and I almost ran this experiment last summer, but we canceled it – can’t remember why. I felt that someone talking to her on my back for the first trip would calm her – I was pretty sure the train and the noise and all the people would scare her. We needed a short trip: one stop on the L train into Williamsburg. And yesterday was the day.

This was us practicing getting her into the bag.


And here we are on the train.


Note my left arm curled behind my back, supporting her legs. It seemed like a nice way to make her feel secure back there. It helped, I think, though I felt her trembling against my spine for the entire short ride. When she's super nervous she really sheds, and when you reached over to pet her, I noticed a chunk of hair trailing your hand when you took it away.

The whole thing took maybe seven minutes? Ten total underground, perhaps. My left shoulder ached terribly when we were done, but I say she took the whole thing pretty well, wouldn't you? As always with this dog, she's trainable and eager to please. I think she'll eventually settle in, if I do it enough with her.

The end result? Playing with a new toy on a towel at Suzy and Joe's.



Brady

She was so good, clearly nervous, but she never let it get the better of her. I see it getting easier next time. Soon she'll associate good things with a trip in the bag. A day with friends in Brooklyn rather than a day home alone. I wouldn't be surprised if when you grab your house keys she hops up, finds her way over to the bag and tries to climb in "Let's go to Brooklyn!". Now if I could just find a bag big enough for Cass ...
Trav

The Strawmen

Trav,

I had an email from a friend the other day who basically said, Look, would you please post something to that dead blog of yours? She’s right – we’re close to losing our sponsors at this rate. You’ve got a new baby as an excuse. I have nothing.

So I’ve boiled down my trip to Ireland for Teresa and Rick’s wedding to a few things. First, my rental car at the Shannon airport was a manual transmission, so I not only had to drive on the opposing side of the road, but shift left-handed, too. Looked like this.


Thank goodness I spent all those years brushing my teeth left-handed because I hoped to be the next Larry Bird. It was a two-hour drive that was exactly what you’d think it would be – narrow roads, troubled Irish skies, a light rain and lush, green countryside. My destination was the tiny town Cong, notable for being the setting for the movie The Quiet Man, filmed in 1952. It won two Oscars but all anyone at the wedding seemed to recall about the film was John Wayne dragging some woman by her hair through the fields of Western Ireland.

Anyway, it’s a beautiful part of the world. It remains quiet and quaint, and the people are unreasonably friendly. For the wedding, we were all staying at Lisloughery Lodge. You can check the link for more, but it sits atop a small hill and overlooks a bay and was a perfect combination of modern luxury while still seeming rustic.

On Friday I managed to get a jog in, so I could see some of the countryside. I ran down from the lodge into Cong proper, where I took a left onto a thin road, passing a church and a field. As the town center fell away behind me and I saw things like this tree.


From there, I turned a corner and found a huge castle sitting across from an inlet. I mean, I sure everyone else in Ireland knows it is there, but it was a huge surprise to me.


It’s now a golf resort and restaurant. And it has a helipad, for fuck’s sake. It was weird to run through this quaint little town, through some green fields and then come upon a helipad. I kept on, through a heavily forested path, then past an equestrian school and finally it opened back up to country homes and rolling hills and sheep. The middle of the road turned to grass, and I knew I was seriously out in the country. My legs felt great, and I wanted to run forever.

But I turned around, ran to the lodge, cleaned up and went back into Cong to take pictures of the river there, and an old abbey. Here are a few shots.




Saturday broke rainy. The wedding was at 1, and I rode to the Ballintubber Abbey with a Norwegian couple I once met in Oslo. The rain spattered down most of the way, and we followed another couple of cars and got briefly lost. That meant we showed up late – the wedding already under way – and when I pushed open the church door, I smacked Katy and the other bridesmaids waiting to make their procession. Nice job, American.

Here’s the abbey, apparently the oldest one in Ireland.


The ceremony was long enough, and the weather Irish enough, that the sun came out during the event, light streaming in the high windows. Long enough for a Rick-and-Teresa receiving line outside.


This is the best picture I think I got from the grounds.


The reception was back at the lodge, but as we prepared to leave, a woman slowed her car and rolled her window down alongside us – “Your tire is flat,” she said. Geoff came up from his car, and us three men stood around in a semi-circle in our suits, a light rain coming down and staring at the flat wheel. Say what you want about American culture, and our cars, and our driving and our obesity and McDonalds (believe me, Teresa has said it all to me over the years), but I’ll say this: I’ve been driving since I was 15, and I’ve changed tires in rain, snow and sleet, in driveways and on soft shoulders, day and night. I took my jacket off, tucked in the tie and changed that tire in little time. Score one for America!

The reception started around 5:30 pm. The rain came and went, but the skies stayed light until nearly 10 pm, and we sat around tables inside and ate five courses, spread out for hours. The band started playing around 10:30 and stayed past midnight, with the dance floor busy.

Here’s a bit of Irish history for you. In the old days, poor neighbors crashed weddings in order to get leftover food. But they were embarrassed about it, so they constructed straw masks to put over their faces and hide their scavenging shame. Teresa found and hired a group that dress up like The Strawmen and crash weddings, then do traditional Irish dancing. It was quite a sight. This is a terrible picture, but here it is anyway. You can barely see the masks.


Anyway, the problem for me was that I was due to get up and drive back to Shannon Airport at 7 am the next morning, so I cut my drinking off way early, and once the band stopped around 12:30 am, I started making my rounds, saying goodbye to everyone and getting ready to slip off to my room. As I slept, someone turned the place into a disco and people danced until around 3 am, Teresa told me later. After that, they all retired to the hotel bar to sing Irish songs until around 5:30 am.

I made the drive with no trouble and flew straight to Atlanta for a conference. It was a long day, and I was glad I’d gone to bed when I did. But when I checked out in the morning, the clerk saw I’d been there three nights and asked me how I liked the room. Great, I said, because it was. He said that normally when he asks wedding people how they like the room, they can’t answer because they spent no time in it at all – they check in and party until dawn, then check out. Sometimes their heads never hit the pillow.

Brady

Weekend Visitor

Trav,

I’ve got this guy living with me until Monday evening. Rufus. I call him Roofie.

He’s a smaller dog, which means Joss feels safe around him and, therefore, loves him. This morning she gleefully chased him all around the dog park and even ran solo circles herself, something she doesn’t do that often anymore.

Roofie is a cast off, much like Josser, and bounced around a bit before being shipped up to New York to be with his new owner, who promptly showered him with love. He now spends a fair amount of time on her lap, from what I’m told.

When I left them this morning, Joss was happily tossing about some of Roofie’s toys, and wriggling around on her back on my bed. Rufus, however, followed me from room to room and generally appeared unsettled.

Being the owner of a rather frantic dog with separation issues myself, I can see the signs in Rufus. But I figure he’ll settle into a pattern in a day or two. To be honest, his whining and following me around made Joss look almost normal in that regard. For once, I’m glad she’s there to keep him company, instead of the other way around. Honestly, I think she’ll keep him in line. I can see her now:

“Listen, little guy, stop pacing. He goes away right after his shower, when he puts all that stuff in that bag and grabs his iPhone. See? He just did it. You hear that? He just locked the door. Now we go lie on the bed and listen to the iPod on shuffle until he comes home. It’s pretty relaxing.

What are you doing? Stop staring at the door! Hey! I wouldn’t tear that up if I were you! Believe me, it solves nothing and you’ll just feel foolish when he comes home. Oh, and if you still feel on edge, he keeps the Prozac in the cabinet over the kitchen counter. He gives me mine right after breakfast.”

Brady

The Step Grinder and the Secretary

Travy,

I just came back from Michigan to visit my mom in Berrien Springs. I had not been out there since Thanksgiving, so I was due for a trip. It’s quiet and peaceful there, and I can run past apple orchards and sleep with the windows open in a farmhouse built in 1840. Here’s where I sleep.


Looks like we stepped back in time, doesn’t it? You can feel the years in this old place.

Anyway, we had a bunch of errands to run while I was there: a trip into town for some banking, a stop at Lowe’s, an appointment for my mother. But we also had tasks in the house, including going through her filing cabinet to weed out junk. I came across some pretty good stuff in those drawers: her birth certificate, complete with tiny footprints on back; her old driver’s license; her passport. And, most interestingly, my parents' marriage license.

My parents have been divorced for a long time, as you know. Long enough for them to both move on with their lives, and even arrive at a place of mutual respect. Which allowed me to view this piece of paper for what it is – an awesome piece of history.

Here’s what it tells us. They got married in St. Joseph, Michigan. My dad was 19. My mom just 21, though her birthday was the very next day, which really made her about 22. It tells us my mom was born in St. Joe, and my dad in Pittsburgh. I already knew they met at college, my father still enrolled, but my mom finished with a two-year degree and working on the campus. The document lists my father’s official occupation as “Step Grinder” – his job when he worked at Buck Tool while also a student – and my mom’s as “secretary.” (I have no idea what a step grinder is and had never heard the term before the marriage license. But my dad found and sent me a picture of him actually working the job.)


This piece of paper also tells us my grandfather was born in St. Joseph, which means he spent his entire life in that town – from birth to death. My grandmother's birthplace, however, is listed as "Russia." The truth is she was born in Kiev (though it was occupied by Russia at the time), and her family was descended from Germans. But none of that was needed for official paperwork in 1969 – "Russia" said it all.

That document put me in a nostalgic mood, sitting there imagining my parents much younger than I am now, a step grinder and a secretary, working their way through college and getting hitched in small-town, southwestern Michigan. My dad, just a year removed from his mother’s cooking, all at once a student, a husband and a full-time employee. My mom with a two-year degree and a household to run. At 22, she’s Mrs. Huggett, of all things.

So maybe that’s why, when the sun came out on Sunday, I wanted to poke around St. Joe. I wanted to go past the house my grandparents lived in when I was a kid, because that’s where my strongest memories of them are. Driving past that ranch house brought a lump up into my throat; I suddenly felt old, swimming through memories of me standing on that porch, of splitting one of the guest bedrooms with my big brother. And, most importantly, memories of my sister arriving into our lives in that very house, after my mom and dad brought her home from their overnight trip to the adoption agency in Chicago.

We left there and drove past my mom’s high school, past the homes of her childhood friends, even the house my grandparents lived in right after their marriage.


Then my mom and I headed for the water, but we passed a soft-serve ice cream shop and I had to stop, because the warm weather and clear sky made the day feel an awful lot like the beginning of summer. We parked in a lot at the water’s edge and sat on a swing in the sand, my cone already gone, the sun on our faces and a breeze coming off the huge lake.


I pulled a few stories out of my mom. St. Joe, nestled on the coast of Lake Michigan, is a nice beach town now, and rich folk from Chicago buy vacation homes on the water. But when my grandmother and her family, after coming into the US through Ellis Island, arrived to St. Joe, the homes by the water were for immigrants, and they settled into a little enclave of Germans. My grandmother and her sister spent a lot of time on that beach. In fact, that’s where my grandparents met. Part of my grandfather’s job was to keep hooligans and riff-raff off the carousel at the beach, and he noticed her while he was working. Eventually they went on a date, and that was it. They were together some 70 years.

The way my mom remembers it, when my grandparents decided to get married, my grandpa’s parents didn’t like it. They called my grandma a “beach bunny,” because she lived by the water with the rest of her lot, but my grandpa didn’t care – he loved his beach bunny and that was that.

Now fast forward some 25+ years. My dating parents come home from college to introduce my dad to my mom’s parents. And they had news, as well: my mom was pregnant and they were getting married. Boom!! Can you imagine?

My grandmother began to cry. “What will the neighbors think?” she sobbed. My grandfather, to his everlasting credit, slapped his thighs and said, No crying, this is a time for celebration. And he went down to his basement for a bottle of champagne.

This is where my parents got married.


Big church. But small wedding – punishment, my grandmother said, for my mom being pregnant. There was no party, no real reception, but your parents were there – not yet married but engaged. I guess my dad had to beat his big brother at something, and he won that race to the altar, leapfrogging your dad at the last second.

Some of this stuff I already knew, but it was a good trip. With my mom headed back to North Carolina, I’m not sure when I’ll be out that way again, unless I make it a habit of driving around Lake Michigan. And maybe that’s another reason why I felt so strange while there, because I don't know when I'll be back. Or maybe it’s the small-town feel of St. Joe that put an aching into my chest. But it can’t be that, because once my family moved out of Detroit, I spent years in a tiny town in Maine, and I had a great time, so what’s the problem?

Or maybe because being there screams the past to me, screams 1980, screams a time when we were young, my grandparents were alive, everyone was thin and we all had our health. But the truth is those times are gone forever. And maybe that’s what bothers me.

Brady