Week 51 - Hadley, Whitehall

This was my last week of visiting home, so I tried to pack in the social time. On Saturday night AP and GB came over and we had a light dinner on my parents back porch. On Sunday morning I went over to my friend JD's house to have brunch with him and his Croatian girlfriend N, who had finally managed to get a visa to visit the US. He was making biscuits with eggs and bacon by way of introducing her to some local cuisine, and I brought over a few tomatoes from the garden. Everything was delicious, and as N pointed out it was also very filling. We talked for a few hours, a bit about adventures and sailing, but mostly about differences between Croatia and here. Time after time, Croatia came out looking like the more sensible place. Many pesticides and herbicides are outright banned. There are no factory farms, so all meat and eggs are produced on a small scale. Doctors prescribe dietary and lifestyle changes before pharmaceuticals. Political lobbying is considered corruption and is illegal. Working more than a certain number of hours is considered a health hazard and is not allowed. The quality of a neighborhood is judged by how many things you can get to in a 15 minute walk. There are cafes everywhere where people eat, drink, and socialize with neighbors. It really got me thinking about all the things I've lost trust in. There's low-grade poison in the food supply, so buy organic. There's low-grade poison in some tap water, so you need to filter it or buy quality bottled water. Doctors will miss rare diagnoses or recommend expensive and unnecessary drugs and procedures, so get a second or third opinion. Modern city planning is hostile to the pedestrian, so pay a heavy premium to live in a walkable area. I could go on but you probably know what I'm talking about. I guess I'm used to having this level of distrust, but I wondered what it does to a person's psyche. Coincidentally (or perhaps not) my news feed the next day had a story about an American living in Croatia on a one-year visa for digital nomads and loving it. Very tempting!

I spent the rest of my Sunday going to Carrboro to spend 90 minutes in a float tank (aka sensory deprivation chamber). I had bought credits years ago when the place opened and still had one left, so I figured I should go ahead and use it while I was in town. The session wasn't as good as the last one in the winter, possibly because my body was a lot more relaxed going into it, but it was restful and gave me a chance to get really clean. When I came out it was raining, so I ducked into a restaurant patio and ate Neapolitan pizza while I waited it out. The ride home featured towering clouds lit by the sunset. In the middle of the week, I spent an afternoon down by the Haw River with my parents, AP, GB, their 2-year-old daughter A, and their newborn M. It's a spot my family's been going to for a long time, with smooth water-sculpted blue rocks and a massive boulder extending out into the water like a dock with pebble and sand beaches on either side. It added some gravitas to think that every time we went there could be our last, since the land is for sale and the new owner might not be okay with neighbors swimming on it. But we had a wonderful time and the place was as beautiful as ever. I supervised A as she crawled around on the rocks exploring the little round pools carved into the stone, filled with sun-warmed water and other fascinating things like pebbles and the shells of mussels and black walnuts. At first I was sure she was going to fall at some point, but she was actually quite nimble, despite seeming not to hear all my friendly advice about what to be careful of.

On Friday I went into Durham for a few more social calls and to prepare to fly back to Montana. On the way there, I stopped in to get my tattoo touched up (which took like 5 minutes), and then checked in at my lodgings right next to Duke's East Campus. I took a nap in the grass near a spreading magnolia tree, and then it was time to meet my friends AA and RF to hang out and see Eddie Griffin doing standup comedy in Cary. It was great to catch up with old friends and see them thriving, and I also got to see RF's wife DF and her sister RH, who'd gone to the earlier show. The opening act of the show was by a local comedian named Mike Mellow, who I liked a lot but only did about 5 minutes of material. Eddie Griffin was a bit shouty and most of his humor leaned on unsophisticated violation of taboos around race and sex, which is not my favorite style, but it was interesting to hear what someone says without the mediation of big media or big tech. I doubt you could've put any 5-minute section of that show on YouTube without it getting removed or buried by the algorithm, yet people paid real money to see it. I hadn't really thought of this as part of the value of in-person entertainment before. I spent Saturday morning and early afternoon with my friend DN, and we had a lot of catching up to do because the day we'd planned to meet up when I was in town back in April, he had an unexpected health crisis. It was good to see him recovering from that, and to hear all the things he's been thinking about, like a racing sailboat design that splits the boat into a hydrofoil and a power kite. It's always nice to spend time with my fellow eccentrics :-). In the afternoon I took a walk with HW on the Ellerbe creek trail and we caught up on the last few months. Then I sorted all my gear, took things back to my storage unit, and went to bed.

On Sunday I was up well before sunrise so I would have time to ride Kiddo back to AA's house and take a Lyft to the airport from there. My driver was talkative, and I learned that he had recently retired, but had been annoying his wife by hanging around the house, so his son recommended he try driving for ride-sharing apps. He wound up loving it so much that he drives eight thousand miles every month. "Every day is an adventure," he said, "I just never know where I'm going to wind up." I asked him if he met any interesting people and he said he met all kinds of interesting people. As much as I hate how ride-sharing apps are brutally competing for monopoly power, I've met drivers from all walks of life who say they love what they do, but I think wouldn't have fit into the old taxi framework. The flights to Denver and then to Bozeman were uneventful, and the two hour time change meant I arrived in the early afternoon. SE picked me up at the airport and we stopped at the co-op in Bozeman so I could stock up on food for the next leg of my motorcycle journey. It had been raining a lot in the last few weeks and Montana was greener than I had left it; farmers were cutting a second crop of hay. The jet stream had shifted and there was much less smoke. So when we got back to the ranch it was a lot like it had been when I arrived, except that the crisp, dry snap of fall was in the air.

Things I Learned

• There's a kind of toilet flushing mechanism I hadn't seen before, where inside the tank there's a pivoting plastic basin that fills up with water, and the handle tips it over and spills the water down the drain. The filling mechanism is supported by the copper tubing that feeds it water, and sits all in a line down the axis of the semi-cylindrical basin. It's very elegant and seems like it would be reliable and easy to repair.
• The Denver Airport has signs everywhere pointing you to tornado shelters, at least some of which are simply the bathrooms.
• Even at the airport Chik-Fil-A is closed on Sunday. Not that I would have eaten there if it was open (for a number of reasons), but it's unusual to see a business have enough conviction to resist the demands of our go-go-go culture.

Wonderful Things

• Sungold tomatoes eaten right off the vine, which basically taste like solidified sunshine.
• Water snails with brilliant green spots on their shells, the color of verdigris.
• Mist spilling out of a roadside field at dawn.