Dad TGAW

When I first told my father about the Appalachian Trail, his response took me offguard.
Boy, I sure would like to ride my motorcycle on that.
Once I got over that shock, I explained to him that it was a footpath and that it was very rocky and not designed with motorcycles in mind and, in fact, motorcycles were prohibited.

That didn t bother my father.  He countered by telling me how when he was young, he used to ride his motorcycle everyday through the woods in Rock Creek Park as a shortcut for his D.C.

commute (Apparently that particular habit came to an abrupt end one day when my father was driving through the woods and found an authority there waiting for him).
I think my father has dropped the matter I haven t heard him say anything on the subject for years.  If the aspiration should resurface, however, perhaps he can follow in the footsteps of this particular enthusiast.

  Here s a 2001 article from the Washington Post where Peter Mandel talks about his unique AT adventure.  He followed the nearby roads and visited the trail crossings in his Geo Prizm!
When I was twelve, I started playing with my father.

  That following March my father took me to my first National Tournament.  His thought was that it would be a fun trip and I would get some experience under my belt.  He didn t have any expectations of winning.

  Well it turned out he and I won the opening event of the tournament!  And fifteen minutes later, the clock struck midnight and I turned thirteen years old. 
In , the demographic of the competitors is very heavy in the senior citizen range.

  To put it in perspective, USA Today reported in 2005 that !  My father, with his prematurely white hair, blended right in.  But it is safe to say a little twelve year old girl stuck out in the crowd.

  I was instantly recognizable. 
My father played bridge for 20 years before I ever realized Notrump was something other than the name of our dog.  If I had been a novice playing with a novice, I doubt I would have had any success.

  But I was a novice playing with an aggressive bidder and a talented declarer with a fondness for No Trump contracts.  My father was the reason for my success.  Yet, even with all his experience and exposure, he often found himself in the backstage role of Vicky s Dad.

  People would approach us because they recognized the little girl, not the man.  And even though I haven t played a physical game of bridge in about eight years, my father still reports being approached by strangers asking about me and how I am doing. 
I guess what goes around comes around!

  Now it s me playing the tag-along role!  Twice recently, I was contacted by geocachers who recognized not me, the one who actually holds and interprets the GPS, but Jimmie and Henry from my profile picture! 
Geocaching profile picture Henry, Me and Jimmie at War Spur near Mountain Lake
One group of cachers recognized us coming down the Blacksburg s Gateway Trail to Heritage Park.

  Meanwhile another cacher spotted a limping beagle at a trailhead in Catawba and thoughtfully contacted me to make sure Henry was accounted for (he was).  I bet I could have matched my father s pre-Vicky bridge career of 20 years without drawing much notice.  But apparently, the two dogs stick out.

My father never minded the extra attention I brought to the bridge table.  And you know what?  I really can t say I mind that it is the dogs who are drawing the second glances.

Actually, it s sorta neat.
Yesterday while I was cleaning the computer room, I found an old video tape which included our Thanksgiving 2001 celebration.  That is the Thanksgiving where the oven broke which threatened not only our Thanksgiving Day meal, but also .

  At the last minute Dad called around and found an oven that fit our unique measurements.  He rushed out to pick it up.  Alas, by the time he got to the store, the oven with the measurements he needed was already taken.

  ( How could it be gone?!?

I thought you were holding it for me?   Well sir, we thought that was you! )
So for Thanksgiving, our entire clan ended up eating at Market Street which is a buffet.

  It s safe to say Sean was not impressed.  On the way in, Mom mentioned that Market Street used to be my favorite restaurant, which is true (When you have emetophobia and you are never sure what your nerves will let you eat, buffets are perfect you don t have to commit to a single dish).  Sean quickly snapped his head around, Wait a second, let me get this straight this was your favorite restaurant?

!?
The others weren t quite as skeptical.

  It turned out to have its benefits.  We had a giant TV where we could watch football.  My cousin, Frank, got to eat lasagna instead of turkey and no one had to clean up.

  It was such a hit, my mother talked about doing that every year.  That following Easter, we made a return trip.  Luckily for Sean, since then we ve opted for the more traditional home-cooked meals instead.

Anyway, Sean gave me a quick tutorial on digitizing the video and a lower quality copy is below.  I think it is probably of more interest to family members or friends who are familiar with the Occoquan house.  I m missing a lot of key footage to fully relay the details above, but the stuff I do have summarizes the experience and hints to the four-dog chaos of a Sawyer Thanksgiving.

  Plus it has my late Grandpa in it.  That was such a welcomed surprise to see him again.
One day, I ll have to do a version my directors commentary or something along the lines of Popup Video to point out little details that are meaningful to me five years later.

  For now though, you can read my timestamped notes.
Next week Sean and I are getting hardwood floors installed on the entire first floor of our house.  As part of that effort, we have to move everything off the first floor (And by we , I mean those of us who don t have crutches).

  I was going through some papers and I found a number of letters from my mother to her parents.  From context, I believe it was fall of 1970, but I don t know for sure because my mother did not date the letters.  Tsk tsk  Just like .

My parents were newly married (they wed July 22, 1970) and were living outside of Savannah, Georgia where my Dad worked in the army.  They lived in a trailer park with two dogs Chico and Susie.
Anyway, I found the letters to be incredibly interesting, so I m going to share installments:
Dear Mom and Dad,
     I decided to write a new letter instead of continuing Friday s.

     Another weekend went by very fast.  We went to a party Friday night.  It was fun and something different, a halloween, ETS and birthday party all in one.

  ETS means getting out (End of Term of Service as far as I can figure).
Now I love this next part.  My entire life, my mother was picking up stray animals.

  We had quite a zoo in Occoquan (goats, dogs, cats, ducks and a pony).  Nowadays, my mom is pretty satisfied with two dogs and three cats.  She takes her dogs for long walks regularly and knows all the other dogs and dog owners in town.

  This next tale just really sounds like my mother.   But my father s reported behavior doesn t sound like him at all!
     We found a new dog Saturday.

  It had a leash and collar on and our dogs were playing with it under the trailer.  I walked around with it a little and started talking with my neighbor down the road.  I have never met her before, and she seemed very nice.

  Well, Lowell came home from golf and thought it was Chico, then realized it wasn t and wondered who resembled me so much.  We kept it a couple of hours and Lowell gave it a bath, then I suggested we walk around with it and see if someone happened to recognize it. 
Hold up.

  My *DAD* gave the dog a bath?!?

  That doesn t sound like him at all!  My Dad s job is to pretend he doesn t like the dogs and then cook hamburgers for them (my mother got yelled at when she started to throw away meat Dad was planning to prepare for the dogs), slip them food (like ) or take them for rides in the surburban.  But baths?

  That s not in his repertoire. 
So we walked around the trailer park for the first time, and it was really a lot of fun.  It was the first time we ventured out of our little area.

  Chico and Susie followed us and we acquired five more dogs along the way. 
My mother always refers to Henry as my mother s little orphan because my grandmother died when he was just a puppy (Sean and I inherited him).  It appears that Henry wasn t the original little orphan.

 
I really think Lowell was disappointed.  I sure wasn t.  I wouldn t have minded the chihuahua, though.

  I just realized I forgot something - the dog was a Pekinese.
     Halloween was exciting.  We stayed here to answer the door and really got into wild moods.

  Lowell made snowballs from our undefrosted freezer and went outside and threw them at trailers, we dressed Chico in a towel to look like a ghost and laughed at the kids.
My Dad was throwing snowballs? 
I forgot to mention, one time we were sitting here and there was this hug[e] bang on the door.

  It was two little girls on bicycles who Susie was bothering.  So Lowell went outside, asked [their] names, told Susie who they were, and had them pet her.  They got carried away, and stood next to Lowell and said he was taller than their fathers.

  Well, Halloween we had this big bang on the door, and I said it must be Sherry and Michelle.  Sure enough.  Michelle s mother was with them and she was as cute as she could be.

  I would say she s about my age.  Well, Michelle dropped her trick or treat bag, so Lowell got a flashlight.  The mother told them not to pick up anything that wasn t wrapped.

There s a sign of the times unwrapped food given away at Halloween.
Then she saw Susie under the trailer, so she handed her a cookie.  Chico appeared right then, so she emphatically said, Share it!

 It was really hilarious.
     We didn t do anything yesterday but sleep.  We went to the movies last night to see The Landlord.

  It was an interesting movie.
     How are you doing there?  I hope the job is going along fine and you find a buyer soon.

  Write back soon and tell me all the news.
A couple of weekends ago, Leith Speiden and I took a trip to The Nature Conservancy s near Bent Mountain.  Bottom Creek Gorge is a great outing.

  It provides an overlook to Bent Mountain Falls which are the second largest falls in Virginia.  A number of historic structures remain on the trails as well.  It was a dogless trek, however, as the preserve doesn t permit pets.

  Some excerpts from my January 20, 2007 journal entry:
There was a lot to see too an old cemetery, remains of old log cabins, woodpeckers, deer and of course, Bent Mountain Falls.
I remember in 2003 taking a picture of a bunch of downed trees in the preserve and .  My father used to love finding downed trees and then chopping them up for firewood.

  He started chopping wood when he was five years old (he actually asked Santa for an ax) and had been doing it ever since.
Now that he lives in a townhouse, his lifelong habit is no longer needed.  At first I felt bad, but Dad  just shrugged and said, I ve been chopping wood for 60 years.

  I don t need to do it anymore.
Anyway, the Bottom Creek Gorge Preserve still has a lot of downed trees and even though my father no longer chops wood, I still thought of him.
Leith and I passed a very rough looking tree on Duvall Trail.

  It had obviously weathered some tough times.  It sported multiple knots and big gaping holes.  That tree still stood despite its sketchy past.

  And that tree was surrounded fallen and decaying brothers who weren t quite as lucky.
That tree was surrounded by the carnage of its own kind.
It was a neat statement.

  Here was the survivor out of many trees but it didn t make it through unscathed.  Its bark and trunk documented its struggle.  Its wounds, deformities and scars remain.

Speaking of scars, Leith and I passed an old wire fence which left its mark on surrounding trees.  Last week on my blog I talked about the .  Leith and I saw trees that took an entirely different approach.

  When impeded by the wire fence, the trees did not grow around it  they absorbed the wire into their trunks and grew through it.
Some trees, we would see the wire go right smack through the middle of the tree as if someone specifically threaded the wire through.  Not all the trees were that far along in their progress.

  On some, the wire was just starting to get assimilated by the bark.
All the trees, no matter how deep the wire, had tell-tale parallel lines on its trunk.  You could see where the wire once rested before it just became another part of the tree.

Leith and I saw about eight deer and a few woodpeckers as well.  We also ran across one tree a woodpecker had a field day with.  A great portion of the tree was littered with little tiny holes.

I was amazed at how straight the lines of holes were that circled the trunk.  Every now and then the woodpecker would have lines of holes that were slightly skewed.  But most of them were as straight as an arror and perfectly parallel to the ground.

The woodpecker accomplishes that with only the body he was given by the Good Lord.  Laser levels?  Bah!

  The woodpecker needs none of that!
On Sunday, Mom, Dad, Sean and I went to see in the theatre.  I was very much looking forward to this outing.

  One of my life s great pleasures is sitting next to my father during a good comedy.  His laughter is so hearty and loud, that it s infectious.  You can t help but laugh yourself.

  I had specifically requested to be seated by Dad.  Somehow this wasn t communicated to anyone but Mom, so when we got to the theatre, there was an awkward shuffling and offset of seats until we finally got situated.  Mom-Dad-Me-Sean.

  We were good to go.
It turns out there was a problem.  Night at the Musuem, it turns out, isn t particuarly funny.

  It s amusing enough and entertaining and cute but just not that comedic.  In fact, throughout the whole movie, I only heard my father snicker at one item (How Sacajawea tracked down the van).  I did not get to hear my father cackle and that alone made the movie a disappointment to me.

But I do not go home empty handed from his trip.  For Christmas, Carolyn and I got Dad Da Ali G Show - Da Compleet Seereez for Christmas.  It was a good bet.

  In the summer of 2005, and loved it.  And he continues to have praise for the movie.  As late as Christmas dinner he was declaring Borat to be the best movie he s ever seen.

  He also likes to claim he had to go to the hospital for a hernia after the film. 
Tonight, Dad, two neighbors, Cody and I watched 3 episodes of Season 1.  I sat next to Dad, ate popcorn and listened to him laugh.

  Just as good a movie theatre. 
There are a few reasons why I think I enjoy programming after normal business hours.  Lack of phone calls and interruptions is a pretty obvious appeal.

I think another factor may be nostalgia.  When we were children, my father used to go to work in the evenings and weekends and he would take me and my siblings along.  While Dad worked, we d each take a desk and play office calling each other s extensions, writing memos, photocopying important documents and one time accidently discovering a porn magazine in the desk of one of my father s subordinates (Dad was not especially thrilled with that discovery of ours).

  I also recall races up and down the hallway to the cafeteria.  There was something invigorating, something exciting about being in that office building at night.  
Finally, a third possibility has come to mind lately I think I enjoy after hours work because I like to sing along to music.

  I m a horrible singer, so it isn t a luxury I can indulge in when there are witnesses around.  As a result, my routine has become at 5:30 I ll unplug my headphones and start playing music through the speakers.  There are still others lingering around, so I may sing along to choice phrases but very softly.

   Eventually someone comes by to tell me I m the last one in the building.  At this point, I have total freedom!  I increase the volume of my speakers and I increase the volume of my participation.

This evening, Ana came by to tell me I was the last one left and I commenced my crooning.  Things were going well a half an hour had passed and I was very much enjoying accompanying Kanye West with my shaky, offkey rendition of   Family Business . 
 All the diamond rings, they don t mean a thing .

mean a thing mean a thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnngggg.
Suddenly I heard laughter behind me and a sarcastic, You re awesome!
I turned around to find my co-worker, Chuck .

. AND his wife.
Also on Friday, Larry Bowman and I got to attend my Great Uncle Chuck s 90th Birthday Party!

  Great Uncle Chuck was visiting from his farm in New Castle, Pennsylvania.  He had Thanksgiving at his sister s house in Richmond and then she organized a surprise gathering the day after Thanksgiving.  Uncle Chuck thought they were going to eat at Wendy s (I suspect he is a fan of Wendy s everytime I visit the farm we eat a lunch there).

  The guest of honor did become suspicious, however, when his sister made him change out of his Virginia Tech sweatshirt and into a nice dress shirt. 
The party was held at a local country club.  For lunch we had a buffet that featured fried clam strips, hush puppies and some kind of chilled potato and shrimp salad.

  I got to sit near the head of the table and was squished between my father and my sister.  It proved to be the perfect locale.  I had easy access to my grandmother, Great Uncle Chuck and Great Aunt Carolyn.

  Plus I got to talk about Borat with my father and with my sister. 
After lunch, came my favorite part of any celebration the cake.  Again I profitted from my position at the table.

  Since we were near the honored guest, my father, myself and my sister were served pretty quickly.  After making a comment about how my sister got an icing rose and I just got a plain piece of cake (I don t think she picked up on my envy), I started to dig in.  I took my fork and scooped off that coveted inaugural bite when suddenly I noticed all three of my oldest relatives were not touching their cake.

  Uncle Chuck, Aunt Carolyn and Grandma all sat stoically with erect postures and hands no where near their desserts.
Oh whoops,  I said and slowly returned my cake-loaded fork to the plate, I guess we aren t supposed to eat yet.
Mmpf?

My father was in mid-bite and with a clank, he retreated his fork as well.
At that point I was glad to be sitting next to my sister, because we simultaneously noticed Dad s plate.  In the time it took me to balk about the rose and start to eat, my father had nearly devoured his entire cake.

  His plate was home to two measley bites (and I mean measley). 
But we sure do have some good laughs.
My speeches at the user s conference went well, but the week before I did have cause for some slight concern.

  During a meeting with a number of sales managers and resellers spread between the U.S. and Mexico, I was tasked to give an abridged version of items we d be covering during the conference.

  With my first sentence I wanted to express my intent to summarize a previous meeting.  As soon as I finished my thought, all my local colleagues started laughing and would not tell me why.  I carried on and after the meeting was over, I was enlightened.

  Instead of using the word recap , I managed to say, recrap
I shared that story with my father and he reminded me that my slip of the tongue is nothing compared to the linguistic missteps of my relatives!  The reigning champ would be my Uncle Mark.  A number of years ago, he was emceeing a banquet for about 200 people and part of his responsibilities was introducing the guest speakers.

  Well he managed to mangle the name of a nun.  Instead of introducing Sister Donna Maria, he introduced Sister Gonorrhea!  I m told the audience certainly found the mistake amusing, but Sister Donna Maria s red face indicated she felt otherwise.

There are a number of things I ve inherited from my father s side of the family and my use of recrap may just be a symptom of my heritage.  I guess I should be thankful that, like my greying hair, this trait seems to be diluted slightly through the generations.
A long period of peace, pure peace without any disorder of any kind, would be unbearable and it would be inevitable that peace would give birth to waves I am sure that once we entered [an age] of Great Harmony, waves of competition and friction would inevitably break forth that would disrupt [it] Human beings always hate chaos and hope for order, not realizing that chaos too is part of the process of historical life, that it too has value
So according to Mao the absence of misery (aka pure peace ) would bring forth boredom and unrest.

  My tournament bridge experience may support this theory.  At times, I managed to upset myself with a poor play more than I upset my partner, otherwise known as Dad .  In those cases, my father would remind me (paraphrased):
If we played perfect every time, it would be boring.

  There d be no point.
Another thing I find notable about the Mao quote is his thought that  chaos too is part of the process of historical life, that it too has value.   Historically the times of war are accompanied by periods of innovation, invention and increased productivity.

   WWII brought forth a number of inventions and new products ranging from the atomic bomb to M Ms.  It also brought strides in quality control processes as well as .  Misery brings with it necessity and necessity brings forth revolution.

  
Waits and Mao paint misery as inevitable part of life and Mao extends it to a necessary and valuable part of life.  In my life, I don t think I actively seek out misery (some may point to my work schedule and cite that as contradictory evidence).  However, I have a whole slew of recent examples where I am unnerved by the absence of misery.

  I ve grown accustomed to using it as a subconscious unit of measurement.  When the misery does not match what I expected from the task at hand, I feel out of sorts.
When Mike, Kipp and I went backpacking in the Smokies, we carried our heavy packs for 8 miles and ascended up (and back down) roughly 2000 feet.

  Although I struggled a lot that first mile and had my fair share of discomfort and doubt, I certainly did not have the magnitude of misery I expected.  I expected it to be harder than all other hikes I ve attempted.  I expected to want to turn around; I expected to want to cry; I expected to have to force my legs to keep moving on.

  That just never happened.  So when it was all said and done, it did not feel like we ascended as much as we did.  It still doesn t.

Last week was our annual User s Conference.  Like last year, I had some speaking engagements.  This year we had almost twice the amount of attendees, so the audience was quite a bit larger.

   Now, although I did have some nerves before I spoke, it was no where near the amount from the year before.  In fact, I believe last year my hands quivered at the very beginning.  This year said hands were steady.

  So this year, when my speeches were over, I found myself thinking, Wow, did that really happen?   The sensation didn t solidify in my head without the nerves.
Back when I suffered from the self-induced misery of emetophobia (fear of vomiting), traveling proved to be an ordeal wrought with all sorts of anxiety.

   It would start weeks ahead of time.  I d worry about getting the stomach flu or food poisoning when I was so far away from home.  I d worry about turbulence causing motion sickness on the plane.

  I d worry about losing my appetite from worrying.  Why?  If I lost my appetite and didn t eat, I d get so hungry I d grow nauseous and when I grew nauseous, I d gag.

  Even when I was already on a trip and I had some successful meals behind me, I d still worry.  Will I be hungry for dinner?  What if I m not hungry?

  If I am hungry, what will I eat?  What if they don t have anything I like?  I didn t realize it at the time, but all that worrying and anxiety really monopolized and taxed my body s resources.

  I would completely drain myself, adding to the misery that was already there.
Welp, it has now been years since I ve been liberated from that worry and I ve certainly traveled up a storm!   Without all the worry and anxiety, even the most unpleasant trips and circumstances, are so peaceful and pleasant.

  In other words, external miseries (flight cancellations, lodging mishaps, etc) are absolutely no match for the internal misery of my past. 
Despite all the years that have passed and all my successful travels, it still feels very weird to me that trips do go so smoothly without any mental anguish.  Very frequently, it almost feels like the trip did not happen.

  I marvel about the sensation in my journal entries from numerous trips.  Here s an excerpt from my trip to :
These latest trips I’ve been taking — it feels like they aren’t real — they feel like a dream.  Why?

  Because I have no anxiety.  It still doesn’t feel like a trip if I don’t have a horrid ado in my head for weeks beforehand.
I wonder how many decades will have to pass before I adjust to the missing anxiety?

Misery is the Unit of Measurement (for Others?)
I may not be alone in feeling surprised by the absence of misery.  Last weekend, Sean and I visited in their new home in Charlotte.

   During the evening, Jodi and I were talking about the birth of her daughter.  The reads, In what can only be described as very fast , Jodi had to push only 8 times across 3 contractions before Alison came out.   Jodi s account confirmed that as she described how quick and easy the actual act of pushing and delivery went.

  When she was done, she said (paraphrased):
It felt like it should have been harder.  It feels like it didn t really happen, you know?
I ve never given birth, but I knew exactly what she meant!