Week 36 - Centerville

It was another sunny but chilly spring morning when I packed up and rolled out of Wayne National Forest on my way northwest. At first the land was still mountainous, with beautiful steep and winding roads through deciduous forests, but little by little it began to flatten out, first into rolling pastures and woodlots and then into flat fields and grain elevators. I had definitely crossed the Appalachians. And as the land got flatter, people's accents shaded from Southern toward Midwestern. My route was very direct, and yet it was almost entirely pretty country roads, sometimes passing through picturesque historic towns like Rarden and Hillsboro. I passed a small college and a massive logistics hub, then a few more miles of country roads and I was suddenly at my destination in a subdivision in Centerville, just to the south of Dayton.

I was visiting my long-time family friends the Gs. SNG, the patriarch of the family, moved from India to the Dayton area in 1969, having just graduated with a master's degree in industrial engineering. He had been hired to do motion studies for a manufacturing line that made cash registers and ATMs. To help with the calculations he started fooling around with a DEC PDP minicomputer that was gathering dust in a corner, and pretty soon that became his job. A few years later he was writing software for grain elevators when he met two brothers doing technology sales, who recruited him to start a contract software development company. They evolved into producing a popular word-processing system, and my dad became the second programmer at the company, adding a spell-checker and a technical drawing system to the software suite. SNG and my dad became friends and traveled to India together many times, and although the word-processing company eventually splintered and was sold off, our family businesses have been intertwined ever since and we've gotten together over the years for vacations and weddings. So SNG is a bit like an uncle to me, and his children are a bit like cousins. Both of his sons have moved to Centerville in the last few years, the eldest RG and his wife SG, and the middle child AG and his wife ML. Their younger sister NG lives in Vancouver BC, and although I'd love to visit her and her husband and daughter there, whether it's possible will depend a lot on my timing, the weather, and the status of the Canadian border.

Anyway, I arrived at AG and ML's house in the mid-afternoon. I hadn't seen them since their wedding in 2016, so ML's daughter BL had grown and was getting ready to go to high school in the fall, and there were two children I hadn't met: 3-year-old AmG and 1.5-year-old RvG, who I think must be among the most adorable children I've ever met. After saying hello to everyone and explaining my unusual lifestyle, I found a spot on the lawn in the back yard to pitch my tent, a satisfyingly easy setup on the soft, flat, and level sod. Then I went with AG to Dorothy Lane Market, a deservedly beloved local grocery store, to pick up dinner for that night and groceries for the week. It was my first time riding in a Tesla, which felt surprisingly normal apart from the unusual door handles. Back at the house, I thoroughly enjoyed the convenience of a hot shower, cooking a sweet potato in the microwave, and chopping my salad on a flat and level counter top.

I was up early the next morning, and could hear the dog Samosa (known as Momo) barking at the strange new structure in the yard. All the kids were also up early of course, hanging out with the nanny who I later found out had been taking care of them all through Ramadan. Now I may be tough when it comes to the great outdoors, but engaging with small children all day with no food or water must take a kind of toughness I can only imagine, and now that I think about it Muslim women have been handling it for fourteen centuries now. Speaking of which, it was Mother's Day and a very rainy Sunday, and I had no plans of my own so I joined in the family activities. AG and I went to pick up a takeout brunch from a restaurant. Despite the weather, the parking lot was nearly full, and there was a line out the door that often overflowed the tiny awning so that customers had to stand in the rain (getting takeout was a really good call). After brunch, we went plant shopping at a local nursery with a lot of indoor space, and I enjoyed looking at the broad selection of statuary and fountains. Then back at the house I helped assemble ML's other Mother's Day gift, which was an elevated planter for all the new plants, with a clever water reservoir in the bottom. BL displayed her construction skills with a drill and her strength by carrying bags of soil back to the patio as fast or faster than me. In the afternoon we visited SNG and his wife MG (who is of course a Mother and Grandmother). RG, SG, and their daughter PG were all there as well, and apparently they hadn't been told I was coming so they were quite surprised to see me suddenly show up out of nowhere after for some reason never having visited Centerville before. In the evening we chilled back at the house, and the rain kept coming down, at times very heavily. When I finally went to the tent after dark, it had stopped raining but I discovered the downside of that soft, flat, and level ground: it doesn't drain well at all. The bottom of the tent, which has no floor, was basically a puddle, and although my bedding was still dry, I decided I'd prefer not to soak my feet every time I got in and out, and slept inside on the carpet instead.

On Monday I spread all my wet gear out to dry. It was a pretty great test of what would happen if I got flooded (I'm sure it won't be the last time), and I think it went pretty well. Everything was dry by the afternoon, and the only real damage was the new audio recorder, which I'd failed to put in a plastic bag. Oh well, easy come easy go I guess. After a day working outside on the patio, I went over to RG and SG's house for a delicious dinner of home-cooked Indian food, the first I'd had in a long time. I met their dog Andy who was a very enthusiastic but smart and sweet collie. It was great to catch up with old friends who I hadn't seen for a long time. On Tuesday I went to lunch with SNG and AG at an Indian buffet, which was somewhat less delicious but, being a buffet, had more variety. Then ML made a fantastic dinner and one of their friends came over. The lawn dried up enough to go back to sleeping in the tent, and I got to test out my new bivvy sack, an Outdoor Research Wilderness Cover, which also doubles as a poncho and a tarp, kind of like an old-school military poncho but with more features and more modern textiles. I was pretty pleased with it in bivvy mode and trying it on briefly as a poncho, but the true test will require really wet conditions. On Wednesday afternoon I did a bunch of maintenance on Punkin, including installing a new rear tire I'd had shipped there and changing the oil. On Friday I went out to lunch again with AG and SNG, and at dinner AG's cousin AnG came over, who I also hadn't seen since the wedding. All in all it was a pretty great week, and a pleasant change of pace, although I was exposed to near-toxic levels of Baby Shark and the like ;-).

Things I Learned

• I think riding off-road and on rough roads like I do just shakes stuff loose. I discovered the taillight cover barely hanging on with one screw missing and the other loose. I taped it up until I could get to the hardware store, and then had a heck of a time finding fasteners that fit, because apparently it uses some weird thread. The old screw seemed like an M4, but didn't have an 0.7mm pitch, and although it threaded into a #8-32 nut, #8-32 screws would jam up when used to replace it, so I'm still not even sure whether it's SAE or metric. In the end I got frustrated and forced a couple #8 screws in there, which works for now, and hey, at least they're not going to come out easily. The lesson, which I really should have learned by now, is to regularly tighten everything.
• Camping gear in constant use needs a lot of repairs. I've broken out the sewing kit quite a few times, and already have a backlog of things that will need mending soon.
• There's a new trend called StretchLab, where you lie on a table and someone stretches you.
• AnG has watched Disney's Frozen a difficult-to-count number of times, but only the first half of it. I told her I often put off watching the end of something I like a lot too because I don't want it to be over.

Wonderful Things

• The smell of bush honeysuckle, which seems to be a very prolific understory plant in Ohio. It's subtly different from the vine honeysuckle that's most common back home, sort of more soft and rounded.
• Watching a blue jay and a cardinal flitting around the backyard, sometimes sitting on the fence next to each other against a background of green grass.
• Watching a baby delight in simple pleasures.
• Hearing new stories from old friends.