Bedlam 2018

After taking a year off, I'm reviving an annual tradition I started in 2011—taking a moment at the turning of the calendar to summarize where I slept during the past year.

I refer to this as "bedlam" because: a) I'm on the road a lot and have a chaotic and confusing distribution of sleeping arrangements; b) some think that my travel schedule is prima facie evidence of mental imbalance (and I don't want to deprive them of data); and c) I have a congenital weakness for word play.
So here are the highlights of where I was when the lights went out each night. Because I didn't post about this last year and 2016 was anomalous for health reasons, I'll compare my 2018 stats with 2015 as I sift for trends.

o  It's always good to start with home. In 2018 I slept in my own bed (the one I share with Susan) 216 nights, or 59% of the time, which is about average.

o  I stayed with clients 67 nights, which continues an upward trend in that regard (it was only 51 nights three years back, and that was an increase from 2014).

o  I was with family 27 nights, down slightly from three years ago.

o  I visited friends overnight a meager six nights, which was down dramatically from 42 nights in 2015. (I'm scratching my head over this one as I don't have the sense that I'm visiting friends less—maybe I'm just not spending the night like I used to?)

o  As a cancer survivor I live with a compromised immune system and I was reminded of that last winter when I spent two brief stints in the hospital battling respiratory illnesses, trimming my total at home by five nights. 

o  Coincident with my retiring as FIC administrator at the end of 2015, I only attended one set of meetings (as a Board member of the Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions) and one event (the Canadian Cohousing Conference in Vancouver last spring) in 2018. 

o  As an inveterate train traveler I slept on the choo choo 30 nights, plus an additional three nights as Amtrak's guest in a hotel when I missed a connection. (Incidentally, those were my only nights in a hotel, for which I am thankful.) This was about average for nights on a train. I also spent one short night on a plane, winging my way from Atlanta to Madrid, where dawn and I arrived simultaneously.

o  As an artifact of my battle with multiple myeloma, I have three collapsed vertebrae at the top of my lumbar section. While I've been able to adjust to this with minimal residual pain, I can assure you that I thoroughly enjoy lying down at the of the day on a nice mattress and letting my back unwind. As such, I'm happy to report that my days of sleeping on floors are completely behind me (as opposed to beneath me), and I was only on a couch or air mattress 10 nights. Whew. Sleep is important.

o  Over the course of the year I slept and schlepped (my luggage) in 16 states, one province, and three cities in Spain (where Susan and I vacationed for nine days in October).

o  It's amazing to reflect on my ability to resurface as an active consultant and teacher after my cancer was discovered three years ago. I was one sick puppy at the time, but responded well to treatments and here I am. Since then I have experienced full cognitive recovery, and my constitution has rebounded sufficiently that I can work an intensive four-day stretch with no loss in function. (Fortunately, faciltating and teaching are not aerobically demanding vocations.) Three years after dancing on the brink of checking out, I'm not only still getting up each morning, but have good things to do and good people to do them with. In all, I've got a pretty good deal.

So that's my bedlam synopsis for last year. Here's wishing you and yours happy days and gratifying opportunities in the year ahead.

Olé

In a few hours, Susan and I will depart Duluth for the start of a 10-day adventure on the Iberian peninsula, and we're psyched.

This is a vacation we've been pointing toward for two years, ever since I started recovering from my stem cell transplant for treating multiple myeloma, and it looked like I'd have some extended play after experiencing very dodgy health the front half of 2016.

Being near death helps bring life sharply into focus. Upon reflection, I liked most of what I'd been doing before cancer revealed itself in my bone marrow, but there were nonetheless a few adjustments I was determined to make, principal of which was more time spent enjoying relationships. (I also read more and am less reactive, but in this essay I want to stick with the main line: placing relationships more squarely in the center.)

Some of that is friendships and some of that is family, both of which are scattered all over North America—after nearly 40 years of community networking and process consulting, and the diaspora pattern that characterizes the typical modern family. Thus, when I travel for work (continuing my career as an itinerant process consultant) I try to take the time to visit area friends along the edges of my time with clients—which process is made easier by having a number of clients as friends—double dipping, as it were. And now, after nearly three years in Duluth, I'm developing local relationships as well, notably in the Chester Park neighborhood where we live and among the players at the duplicate bridge club in town. 

Yet foremost among my important relationships is the partnership I'm forging with Susan. That's the one I really want to focus on. She was there for me immediately when I stumbled sick into her home at New Year's of 2016, and almost didn't have the energy or wisdom to make it to St Luke's emergency room at the end of January, where I finally discovered how sick I was.

For the first few months it was nip and tuck whether her relationship to me would more accurately be portrayed as hospice nurse than partner, but now that I've come back from that precipice, we have a chance to create a relationship with room to breathe and laugh and play. For two years now we have been holding onto our upcoming trip to Spain as a marker for where we wanted out relationship to go: I worked on recovering my energy and containing my cancer, and she got ready to retire as the church lady at St Paul's Episcopal, where she had been running the office since 2010.

With both of those objectives accomplished here we are—finally ready for our first major trip together, where we both have the time and energy to enjoy it. To help contain expenses, we're participating in a loosely organized tour through Gate 1 Travel, that provides air transportation, rooms each night, breakfast each morning, a few dinners, and a few tours (think Prado, Escorial, and Gaudi architecture). The rest is free time as we explore Madrid, Toledo, Valencia, and Barcelona. We're thinking about tapas, riojas, and seafood, as well as off-season Mediterranean vistas. Yum.

And this adventure, we hope, is just the start. We also have designs on trips to other places as energy, enthusiasm, and money intersect—Mesa Verde, Quebec, Iceland, New Orleans, and Argentina are at the top of the list. 

It's great to be alive, and have one's consciousness focused on the wonder of it.

Bedlam 2016

This is my final post for 2016 (actually, my it's my first for 2017, but I'm invoking poetic license,) and I'm going to use it to continue an annual tradition I started five years ago: by summarizing where I've slept this past year.

I refer to this as "bedlam" because: a) I'm on the road a lot and have a chaotic and confusing distribution of sleeping arrangements; b) some think that my travel schedule is prima facie evidence of mental illness; and c) I have a congenital weakness for word play.

So here are the highlights of where I was when the lights went out each night. (Due to health challenges this year was quite distinct from any other, yet hopefully entertaining nonetheless.)

o  I moved to Duluth last winter (relocating from Chapel Hill NC) and spent a whopping 209 nights at home, which is 57%, up a modest 4% from the previous year, and down 5% from 2014. So a run-of-the-mill total.

o  The single stat that's off the charts is that I spent 81 nights in the hospital, at a rehab facility (in Duluth), or at Transplant House (in Rochester) where I bivouacked while undergoing my stem cell transplant. In toto that was nearly a quarter of my nights in a type of location where I had not spent even one night in the prior five years!

o  I stayed with clients 31 nights, down sharply from 51 a year ago (essentially that's a function of having placed my consulting and teaching career on hold for eight months while I arm wrestled with the Grim Reaper—and was sufficiently successful to win a reprieve).

o  I visited family and friends a modest dozen nights, down precipitously from 74 last year. When you're seriously sick you just don't get around as much.

o  I traveled to attend FIC meetings and networking events a mere eight nights, an anemic total compared with 36 the year before.

o  I slept on a train 25 nights, which was rather a strong showing considering that the total was just six before Labor Day. Nonetheless that was down from 42 nights on rolling stock in 2015.

o  All together, I slept in 10 states and one province.

What's ahead? My FIC administrative days are behind me and I'm cutting way back on attending events. Travel in the year ahead will be focused on consulting and teaching, with occasional trips to visit family and friends. Once Susan retires there may be more vacation travel but that's mostly on hold for now. Meanwhile, sleeping in my own bed never looked better… nor was it better for my back.

Happy New Year one and all!

Bedlam 2015

Continuing a yuletide tradition I started in 2011, I'm dedicating my final post of the year to a summary and analysis of where I laid my weary head each night.

I refer to this as "bedlam" because: a) I'm on the road a lot and have a chaotic and confusing distribution of sleeping arrangements; b) some think that my travel schedule is prima facie evidence of mental illness; and c) I have a congenital weakness for word play.

So here's the summary of where I was when the lights went out each night:

o  I spent 74 nights at home in Rutledge MO, during the stretch Jan 1 through June 8, at which point I moved to Chapel Hill NC, where I slept an additional  53 nights. All together I was only home 53% of the time—down from 62% the previous year.

o  I started the year married to Ma'ikwe and we spent 23 nights together, until she voted me off her island in early Feb and asked for a divorce. Coincident with my move to The Tarheel State I started romancing Susan. Even though Susan's home is in Duluth MN (over 1250 miles from Chapel Hill), I managed to be with her 30 nights.

o  I stayed with clients 15 times for 51 nights, up slightly from a year ago.

o  I visited family 32 nights, almost double a year ago.

o  I stayed overnight with friends 42 nights, down a hair from 2014.

o  I traveled to attend FIC meetings and networking events adding up to 36 nights, almost twice as much as a year ago.

o  I was in a motel or paid accommodations just seven times. Though that's up from four in 2014, it's not bad for guy who's on the road as much as I am. Mostly I stay with friends or clients, for which I'm thankful.

o  I slept on a train a whopping 42 nights (way more than the 17 nights I did in 2014), plus two nights in a car.

o  As I was wrestling with a sore back or torso all year, I was fortunate to sleep on an air mattress or a couch only once each—down sharply from  the 30 times I did that the previous year.

o  All together, I slept in 21 states in 47 different locations. That's a lot of schlepping luggage and adjusting to different beds. (No wonder my back is sore.)

As I peer into the fog of the year ahead, my FIC duties have fallen off sharply now that I've stepped down as the main administrator, so I expect to travel much less in that capacity next year. Going the other way, my process consulting and facilitation trainings have been picking up, so it remains to be seen how much I'll be seen more at home next year. It could go either way.

Right now, my highest priority is healing my back. If that means less travel, then so be it.

In the meantime, I wish a happy new year to one and all!

Trial by Travel

I'm in Duluth MN for a week, visiting my partner Susan Anderson. For a while Tuesday—from midnight to 7 am—it wasn't clear that I was going to make.

Much as we'd like them to be, everyone knows that travel plans and travel reality are not always the same thing, and I got a solid reminder of how easily those two can get out of alignment with each other.

To get to Duluth from Chapel Hill NC is not a straight forward endeavor, especially if you, like me,  eschew air travel and don't own a car. It entailed four separate legs of train travel, and ended with a van ride via a shuttle service linking The Twin Cities and Duluth. Here's the way it was supposed to work:

train #79 (The Carolinian) from Durham NC to Greensboro NC
  (eight-hour layover)
train #20 (The Crescent) from Greensboro to Washington DC
  (six-hour layover)
train #29 (The Capitol Limited) from Washington to Chicago IL
  (five-hour layover)
train #7 (The Empire Builder) from Chicago to St Paul MN
  (two-hour layover)
van #810 from the State Capitol to downtown Duluth

This added up to 58 hours of "en route," including the need to stay up in Greensboro to catch the Crescent at 3:44 am, and a 2:45 am arrival in Duluth. So this itinerary, even under optimal conditions, did not involve a lot of sleep until after I'd arrived on the shores of Gitchi Gummi.

As it happened, all four train legs offered checked bag service, so I availed myself of that in Durham, handing over my somewhat heavy suitcase (laden with presents for Duluth), checking it all the way through to St Paul, saving myself having to wheel it around on my three intermediate stops. Before making that choice, I carefully took into account that I had generous layovers in Greensboro, DC, and Chicago, which meant that there would be ample time to effect the appropriate transfers. At least that was the theory.

Things started to go off the rails (so to speak) when The Empire Builder's departure from Chicago was delayed by 50 minutes due to a mechanical problem with the equipment. That meant I'd lost half the time available for me to navigate the distance from the train depot to the van rendezvous point (at the intersection of Cedar St and Martin Luther King Blvd, within sight of the state capitol building). Fortunately, whatever the mechanical problem was, they dealt with it sufficiently that the train lost no additional time chugging north and west, and we pulled into St Paul the same 50 minutes late we were out of Chicago.

Then the wheels fell off my plans. I had a narrow window in which to collect my bag, walk to the nearby light rail station, and make my way to a stop within a long uphill block of the van pick-up location. Unfortunately, my bag and I did not reunite in St Paul. Everyone else happily collected their luggage and departed, and there I was at 11:30 pm with an empty carousel and a station agent, getting nervous about making my connection to Duluth.

I took a deep breath, gave the agent my baggage claim, my train tickets, my local phone number, and my address in Duluth. He dutifully filled out the form and I bolted out the door in search of the light rail stop, one block away.

I was able to catch the 11:47 pm headed for Robert St (only three stops from the train depot), anxious about arriving in time for my scheduled van collection at 12:05 am. I got there, out of breath, at 11:57 pm. Whew! I enjoyed a few minutes while buoyed by the thought that it was all going to work out in the end (after my wayward luggage caught up with me), but it turned out I was not yet done with misadventuring. The van never showed up. 

Here I was at a deserted intersection in downtown St Paul after midnight. After waiting in vain for an hour, I had to face the music: the van wasn't coming. I carefully checked my confirmation, and, yup, I was in the right place at the right time, and on the right day. What happened? 

Amazingly, I was able to catch an open wifi signal from the street, and was thus able to tell Susan to stand down on collecting me at 2:45 am in downtown Duluth, and to send a message to the van service apprising them of an unhappy customer stranded in downtown St Paul—and would they please collect me at 7:05 am, when their next scheduled trip was due to swing by Capitol Hill.

Then I took the light rail back to Union Depot, where I there was a pay phone (although I had charged my track phone battery right before the trip started, the phone was dead on the streets of St Paul) and I'd be in a warm building. The temperatures had dropped into the 60s and I couldn't put on more clothing because my suitcase was wandering the rails somewhere between NC and MN.

Luckily, the train station remains open until 2 am, and I arrived there at 1:40 am. That gave me enough time to call the van service. Though there was no one in the office in the middle of the night, their system gave me two options: a) leave a message that would be listened to when their office opened at 6:45 am; or b) be transferred to an emergency number where an on-call staffer would be awakened—though be advised that I might be assessed a $10 charge for waking them up. I figured my situation justified option b) but no one answered and I was shunted back to option a). Sigh.

So, after doing all that I could to let the van folks know that I was rattling around loose in St Paul and really wanted to be collected at 7:05 am, I could do no better than wait for morning. I left a detailed email for Susan laying all this out, asking her to call the shuttle office right when it opened—as there wasn't much time between 6:45 am and my hoped for rescue at 7:05 am.

Then I took the light rail back to Capitol Hill, arriving about 2:40 am and began my all-night vigil as the temperatures slowly descended into the 50s. It was a long night. As there was a slight breeze out of the north, I relocated to a nearby parking garage that had a low retaining wall that I could hunker down below and that helped conserve heat. Still, it was not warm enough to nod off, and the minutes crawled by very slowly.

Susan had emailed me, "Oh no! Are you laughing or crying?" It was hard to not feel sorry for myself, but I also knew it wasn't going to do any good. So I went through about 10 minutes of woe is me, and then concentrated on staying warm until dawn.

At a little after 5 am, cars started coming into the parking lot, as the early bird government workers arrived in preparation for a normal Tuesday. Noticing the guy huddled against the retaining wall, it wasn't long before a had a visit from the Capitol Police, many of whom had already noticed me earlier in the night waiting to no effect at the intersection of Cedar and MLK.

While I didn't know what to expect when I was hailed, it was only fair to appreciate that they didn't either. While they had questions, they were not rude or aggressive and at least my story hung together (the shuttle did make regular stops at the intersection I was waiting at, and I had been there for five hours). When I walked through all the things I had done to try to reach the van people, they duplicated my efforts and were satisfied that there wasn't anything more I could do until the office opened at 6:45 am.

Although there's no way to be certain, I suspect that the police were somewhat skeptical about my story. Although my possessing a laptop helped, my not having a suitcase didn't, and they must have been wondering whether the potential problem I represented (they don't want homeless people lurking around the Capitol) would go away at 7:05 am or not. 

Fortunately, after reaching my nadir when the police introduced themselves to me at around 5:30 am ("Excuse me, can we help you?"), they were willing to give me the benefit of the doubt, and it was definitely mood elevating to see the sky gradually lightening in the east. Construction workers punched at 6 am to restart their renovation of the capitol, and the stream of incoming vehicles to the parking lot surged. I had made it through the night! I was shivering slightly by then but, happily, the shuttle appeared on time and I gratefully sank into a seat in a warm van. Even better, the driver was appropriately apologetic, and assured me that the dispatcher back in Duluth would "make it right."

From there on, everything improved. Susan met the van mid-morning and there was a lovely warm bed at the end of my extended play Tuesday. While Susan was shocked that my hands were still cold when she collected me after two-and-a-half hours in the van, I was able to successfully re-fire my boiler sitting on her living room couch sipping hot coffee, such that I was warm again by the time her work shift ended at 1 pm.

In retrospect I had a couple more reasonable options available to me after I was stood up by the van—either of which may have occurred to me if the weather had been more inclement: 1) taking the light rail all the way out to the airport, which would have been open all night and offered shelter at a pleasant temperature; or 2) simply hailing a taxi from the train depot and having them take me to a nearby hotel, with the expectation that I'd have the van service reimburse me for the cost. 

My stubbornness in finding the least expensive solution cost me a miserable night, but the van service accepted responsibility for not collecting me and refunded the cost of my round-trip fare. Plus, Amtrak eventually found my suitcase in DC (don't ask) and it's now on the floor beside me as I type, having just been delivered by FedEx—arriving in Duluth a mere two days after I did.
 
All in all, this was not an auspicious start to my monster road trip—but, you know, it could have been worse.

To Be Young and 34

On Tuesday my son, Ceilee, turned 34.

I recall being told back in the '70s, by the older brother of a college friend, that the ancient Greeks considered the prime of life to be 34 (which just happened to be that guy's age at the time). Who knows, maybe it's true. In any event, I hope it's an auspicious year for my son.

Thinking back to when I was 34, a special memory from that year (besides being iconic for George Orwell fans) was my going on a major summer adventure, principally to visit a college friend, Peg Kehrer, (different than the one above) and her partner, Paul Otte, in Juneau AK.

My odyssey began with a short train trip from La Plata MO to Kansas City, where I spent the night with Everette Wright, a good friend of Sandhill's. In the morning, Everette dropped me off at the driveaway place where I'd arranged to take a Datsun Maxima (1984 was the last year before everything became Nissan) from Kansas City to the suburbs of Seattle.

En route, I stopped by a monument in central Kansas that claimed to be the geographic center of the continental US (which means that if all the land comprising the 48 states were of equal density you could balance the whole of it on the top of the monument and it wouldn't tip in any direction). Kind of an odd thing to erect a monument to, but I can get into geeky math stuff on occasion.

The next day, in the sparsely populated Sandhills of western Nebraska I witnessed a mile-long fully loaded coal train chugging south… only to encounter another fully loaded coal train headed north two hours later. (Do these people talk to each other?)

I stopped by Devil's Tower National Monument (Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind made a big impression on me in 1977), Mount Rushmore, and Yellowstone National Park (where I loved all the geysers and brine shrimp). After a weekend visiting Nancy Shrader (the sister of my partner and Sandhill co-founder, Annie) and her family in Missoula MT, I pressed west across Idaho (where I paused in picturesque Coeur D'Alene long enough to enjoy a serving of apple pie with chocolate ice cream—something I'd always wanted to do after reading about Clancy Sigal doing it in his 1962 road trip cum political memoir Going Away).

In the final leg I drove across the Palouse, visited the Grand Coulee Dam (think Woody Guthrie: Your power is turning our darkness to dawn, so roll on Columbia, roll on)—which I learned is still shedding heat from all the concrete pouring in the '30s and '40s—and sampled aplet (apple/walnut) and cotlet (apricot/walnut) confections in Wenatchee.

After turning in my wheels in the home of this year's defending Super Bowl champions, I spent the night on a park bench in downtown Seattle, and caught the morning sailing of the Princess Marguerite to Victoria BC. After a day of gawking at all the boutiques in that tourist town (where I scored a terrific deal on a used 105 mm Pentax telephoto lens), I caught a bus the next day that took me all the way up the east side of Vancouver Island and deposited me at Port Hardy, just in time to catch the once-a-week BC ferry headed for Juneau, via Prince Rupert, Wrangell, Ketchikan, and Petersburg. The best part was witnessing humpback whales skyhopping at dawn in Frederick Sound. Wow.

I had a lovely visit with Peg & Paul in Juneau, the only state capital inaccessible by car. Highlights included:

o  Hiking up Mount Roberts, just above Juneau. From the summit you can look west over the archipelago of a temperate rain forest. Turning 180-degrees in place you see an alpine desert, replete with marmots that will steal your lunch if you turn your back.

o  Noodling around the Mendenhall Glacier north of town. It was incredible witnessing color shifts in the blue and purple range when peering into deep crevasses.

o  Witnesses a salmon die-off at the end of their spawning run (the bald eagles were so thick that it was impossible to conceive of them as an endangered species).

o  Enjoying the gustatory pleasure of beer-battered halibut, which allowed me to grok why Alaskans consider that gargantuan bottom feeder a superior delicacy to salmon.

o  Exploring the ruins of the Treadwell mine on nearby Douglas Island—once the largest hard rock gold mine in the world, from which over 3 million ounces were extracted during 1881-1922. I managed to come away with a souvenir valve handle (suitably rusted) that we welded onto the air control of our blacksmithing forge back home at Sandhill.

o  A side trip to Tenakee Springs (on Chichagof Island, about 60 ferry miles west of Juneau), where there is only one street, four-feet wide, and no cars. In the center of town is a natural, sulfurous hot springs that alternates between men's and women's in two-hour intervals around the clock.

o  A solo ocean canoe trip between Hoonah and Tenakee Springs (in and around Chichagof). I did about 50 miles in two days. The sobering part was waking up the second day and finding the canoe right-side up and full of water. After two decades of lake and river canoeing in northern Minnesota and interior Canada, I had neglected to take into account the tide. In freshwater canoeing, the waterline stays put overnight; in salt water it doesn't. Having gone to sleep at low tide, I was damn lucky that high tide was only enough to flip my canoe over and not float it away. Whew.

When it was time to head home I advertised in the paper for a ride to the Midwest and caught gold. A person answered that he was driving his pickup straight through to within 10 miles of my sister's place in the suburbs of Chicago, and would be happy with a co-driver who would spring for half the gas. Hot damn! We rendezvoused on the ferry to Prince Rupert and off we went. Stopping only for gas, food, and bathroom breaks we covered 3000 miles in 60 hours. While one drove, the other slept. Though the pickup was equipped with off-road suspension (read bumpy), at a certain point you get tired enough that you can sleep in any conditions.

After a much-needed night of sleep in a bed that wasn't moving, I took the train home. My enduring image of that first day back was getting reacquainted with my three-year-old son. We went for a walk around the farm together and I still have the photo of him buck naked, trying to smell the big face of an eastern drooping sunflower head, growing on the edge of the north garden.

All in all, it was a fine highlight to a perfect year.

Bedlam 2014

Continuing a holiday tradition I started in 2011, I'm devoting my final post of the year to a summary of where I laid my weary head each night.

I refer to this as "bedlam" because: a) I'm on the road a lot and have a chaotic and confusing distribution of sleeping arrangements; b) some think that my travel schedule is prima facie evidence of mental illness; and c) I have a congenital weakness for word play.

So here's the summary of where I was when the lights went out each night:

o  I spent 226 nights in my own bed, a whopping 62% of the time, up sharply from 185 last year. Even taking into account that I missed a week of travel in December due to my strained lower back, it appears I'm trending toward being more of a home body in my dotage.

o  I slept with my wife 235 nights, or 64% of the time—which was nearly double the total from the prior year, and was one of the main motivations for our moving into the same house a year ago. It nice to know that strategy was successful. (Of course, I wasn't in exile pending divorce for any of 2014, so that helped, too.)

o  I was guested by clients 13 times for a total of 48 nights, which was down slightly from the year before.

o  I stayed with family a meager 17 nights—less than half of 2013. The main difference was seeing my kids markedly less. There was only a single visit to each in '14 (Ceilee and my grandkids are in Los Angeles; Jo is in Las Vegas) where there had been three each the year before. I'll be trying to manifest more work out West in the coming year.

o  I had 47 overnights with friends, which is about normal.

o  I traveled to attend FIC meetings and events enough to claim 20 nights.

o  I managed to stay in a motel overnight a mere four times, which pleases me (at this point in my career as a consultant and community networker I know folks almost everywhere, obviating the need to pay for a bed).

o  I slept on a train 17 times.

o  While mostly I was in a bed with a real mattress, 17 times I slept on couches, and 13 times on air mattresses (kinda like camping in someone's living room).

o  All together I spent the night in 38 different locations away from Rutledge, encompassing 18 states and one province, plus all four time zones—all of which is about average.

No sooner have Ma'ikwe and I gotten used to living together—all of 2014, no less—but we'll be branching out into new territory as road warriors in 2015. Ma'ikwe will not be doing as much facilitation teaching with me as she experiments with giving sustainability talks on university campuses. Last year I only spent 21 nights at home while Ma'ikwe was elsewhere; next year that may double. 

We like to tell people that there's nothing like simple country living—and believe me, the way Ma'ikwe and I do it is nothing like simple country living. 

Bedlam 2012

This is my final post for 2012, and I'm going to use it the same way I did last year: to review where I've lain my weary head this calendar year [see Bedlam 2011 for my prior entry in what now appears to be an annual event, and refer to Sleeping in the Bed I Made for my inaugural posting on this obscure topic].

I like referring to this as bedlam because: a) I'm on the road a lot and have a chaotic and confusing distribution of sleeping arrangements; b) some think that my travel schedule is prima facie evidence of mental illness; and c) I have a congenital weakness for word play.

So here's the summary of where I was when the lights went out each night:

o I slept in my own bed at Sandhill 85 times, down by nearly half from last year, largely due to my having spent the first three months of the year at Dancing Rabbit, experimenting in cohabitation with my wife. That represents 23% of my nights.

o  I spent 98 nights with Ma'ikwe at Moon Lodge, her house at Dancing Rabbit. That's an additional 27%. Plus there were 30 nights we spent together on the road, and five nights together at Sandhill. Taken all together, we were in the same bed—wherever it was—36% of the time, up 10% from the year before, so that's progress.

o  It's amusing to note that if you add up my nights at Sandhill and my nights at Moon Lodge, 85+98=183, which is exactly half of the 366 nights available this year. I've been telling people I'm on the road 60% of the time but I reckon I'm more of a home body than I thought.

o I slept at clients' homes (usually in guest rooms) 14 times for 47 nights in total—pretty close to the same as last year.

o I slept at the house of family members seven different times, for a total of 28 nights.

o I slept at 21 different friends' homes for a total of 45 nights.

o I slept 11 times at places associated with FIC meetings or events, totaling 36 nights.

o  Only once did I end up in a hotel (when the Empire Builder arrived too late into Chicago to make my connection home and I inadvertently woke up Thanksgiving morning in downtown Chicago).
 
o I was on overnight trains 24 times and once took a red eye from the West Coast to the East Coast.
 
o Most nights I was in an actual bed. Only two nights were spent in tents, four on couches, and 15 on air mattresses. (I'm noticing as I get older that my hosts are more solicitous of finding me a bed—and I'm not complaining.)

o All together, I slept in 52 different locations outside of Rutledge (up sharply from 39 last year), which placed me in 20 states and every continental time zone—and that's only counting the beds that weren't moving across state lines while I slept.

While I've always wanted a life that was full of moving experiences, it was not always clear to me that I'd be moving around so much to accumulate them. As an ardent fan of whimsy it amuses me to realize that my life has become an enactment of a Dr Seuss title: Oh, the Places You'll Go!

Beached by Sandy

I was supposed to be in Ann Arbor this morning, orchestrating agenda prep for the fall organizational meetings of the Fellowship for Intentional Community. Instead, I'm in Watertown MA, visiting with a dear friend (Tyler), waiting out Hurricane Sandy.

As a wilderness canoeist, I often look for a sandy beach when scanning the shoreline for an overnight campsite. In the Precambrian granite geology of northern Canada's premier canoeing territory, such sites are few and far between, but every now and then you can luck upon one. They represent a safe harbor, easy on the canoe and less treacherous for bathing.

Much as I enjoy being on a sandy beach, however, I'm not enjoying being beached by Sandy. 

As someone who's been involved with FIC since its beginning in 1987, I've never missed any of our semi-annual organizational meetings (board meetings plus committee meetings combined). That's 51 in a row. Tomorrow, for the first time, I'll not be in the room at the opening bell, because I didn't get out of Dodge Boston fast enough after wrapping up a weekend consulting gig with Jamaica Plain Cohousing Sunday afternoon.

My plan was to board the westbound Lake Shore Limited at South Station at noon Monday, getting off 18 hours later (at dawn Tuesday) in Toledo—which is only an hour south of Ann Arbor. Not worrying about the weather (big mistake) I had a lovely visit with Tyler Sunday evening and then got the bad news from Amtrak: my Monday train had been canceled in anticipation of Boston getting slammed by Sandy. 

Hmm. Logan Airport was also shut down, so I looked into Greyhound. There are two buses daily that go to Ann Arbor: one leaving at 12:15 pm and another departing at 7:40 pm. They both take about 23 hours and have a couple of transfers (one at 3 something am in Cleveland—talk about a good time), but at least they'd get me there. I could also rent a car, but the fees were stiff ($336 plus gas). What to do?

I have a decided preference for the train because it takes less time, costs less, offers reclining seats for sleeping, and I can work on the train (as opposed to the cramped seating on buses, or the psychic drain of driving 13 hours solo through driving rain with winds gusting to 70 mph). So I switched my reservation to take the Lake Shore Limited Tuesday and crossed my fingers. Maybe I should have crossed my eyes also. 

Monday afternoon, in the midst of the howling wind, Amtrak canceled Tuesday's trains also, and then Greyhound shut down the buses. Ain't nobody going anywhere out of Boston on Monday. It was about then that the lights flickered at Tyler's house and it occurred to me that I might be in for plenty more adventure yet. 

Worried about the rain and coastal storm surges, Ma'ikwe emailed me yesterday asking how I was faring—the weather maps looked horrific. I was able to assure her that I was removed six miles from Boston Harbor, and that I was hunkered down in the second story of a house built of brick—not the ones built of straw or sticks—and relatively secure from big bad Sandy's huffing and puffing. In short, I was riding out the storm in Watertown, not Underwatertown.

Fortunately, the power never went out and we've had running water throughout (not just in the downspouts). Last night I bumped back my train reservation once more, and now I'm crossing everything (not just my t's and toes). Today (Tuesday) the wind has died down to a modest 20-30 mph and we've even seen patches of sunshine bravely poking through the cloud cover. Who knows, maybe we'll go out for dinner tonight—something that only a maniac would have considered yesterday. 

While I am sad to not be with my FIC friends chewing on agenda this morning, they can get along fine without me. Everyone I know is safe and I can just as easily peck away at my To Do List from my laptop in Massachusetts as I could in Michigan. In the end, there are many worse ways to spend an unanticipated two-day layover than with a good friend who has reliable wi-fi and an ample stock of strong coffee.

With luck Amtrak will reinstate train service tomorrow, and I'll be to get to Ann Arbor for Day Two of our three-day meeting. Failing that, maybe I can catch the late bus (if they're letting the Greyhounds out of their kennel this evening). 

One way or the other, I'm optimistic that I'll find that sandy beach tonight.

Draft Day

This evening starts a three-day stretch that's the apex of the hot stove league for professional football. Even though the season runs September through December (through January if you count the playoffs) and late April is pretty far removed from the action on the field, this is when NFL teams select 620 of the top players coming out of college, giving them a chance to compete for roster slots. In the world of football, today is known as Draft Day.

It's also the day I drove from Carrboro NC to Floyd VA—a four-hour jaunt spent mostly on interstate highways where I frequently drafted behind semis amidst intermittent rain. The final 30 miles was spent winding along US 221 as it snaked northeast along the Blue Ridge Mountains. 

At an elevation of 3000 feet the air temperatures were in the 50s even at midday and a few houses were sporting wood smoke curling out of chimneys. I noticed that they seemed to be drawing well, which is something you can't always count on in springtime. If the chimney stone (or brick) is colder than the air temperature, you get an inversion which can result in a smoke-filled room. While that may be normal and expected in political caucuses, it's an altogether unpleasant surprise in one's living room. Fortunately, the chimneys appeared to be drafting well today. 

As I cruised past Fancy Gap, Galax, and Dugspur (I'm telling you, they have a flare for names in the hills and hollers of southwest Virginia), it was delightful to see the vibrant greenery interwoven in the rolling terrain, dotted with well-seasoned barns and colorful livestock—mostly cows, but every now and then I'd glimpse a flock of sheep, or a draft horse or two.

After dodging raindrops (and truck spray) for a few hours, I was grateful to pull into Annie's yard circa 2 pm. (Though I was still 125 miles southwest of Stuarts Draft VA, that was as far as I was driving today.) Luckily the rain had let up and we were able to tour her garden and new hoop house. Like many of her Floyd County neighbors, Annie had lit a small fire in her wood stove this morning to take the chill off. Afraid though that she might have overdone it, she had opened an upstairs window in the late morning before going out to putter. The first thing she did upon entering the house with me was to race upstairs and close the window, to stop the cool air from creating too much of a draft in her bedroom.

Now that I'm settled in for a two-day visit (I brought some wine, olives, and cheese that are open on the counter, plus a few bottles of draft beer that are cooling in the fridge), it's time to puzzle out a theme and start drafting today's blog…  

The Bicoastal Zigzag

It's with no small amount of irony that I reflect on the juxtaposition of my growing focus on sustainability [see my recent blog series from July 28 through Aug 12] and the goofiness of the travel schedule for my current road trip. It's embarrassing.

Right now I'm in Charlottesville VA after completing the first segment of a seven-week odyssey where I'll only be home for two brief stretches. Here's the sequence of my peregrinations:

Leg One—East Coast
o Aug 17-18 Shannon Farm (Afton VA) for FIC meetings
o Aug 19-21 Twin Oaks (Louisa VA) for the Twin Oaks Communities Conference

Leg Two—West Coast
o Aug 25-28 Yulupa (Santa Rosa CA) for facilitation training
o Aug 29-Sep 4 Las Vegas NV visiting my kids

Leg Three—East Coast
o Sept 8-11 Shannon Farm (Afton VA) for facilitation training
o Sept 13-14 home for 40 hours!

Leg Four—Third Coast
o Sept 16-18 Kalamazoo MI for process workshops with the Peace Center
o Sept 19 home for 16 hours!

Leg Five—West Coast
o Sept 23-25 Westminster Woods (Occidental CA) for FIC's Art of Community Gathering
o Sept 26-28 Frog Song (Cotati CA) for the FIC fall organizational meetings
o Oct 4 home for the sorghum harvest!

Note that I'll be at Shannon Farm twice and in Sonoma County CA twice in this sequence, but only after going to the other place in between. Oog! There's a ton of train miles embedded in this itinerary, and also about 5000 driving miles (to schlep books to each of the conferences in VA and CA). When I originally put my fall travel together, I had hoped to do the CA facilitation training right in front of the Art of Community event, but the scheduling didn't work out for the training participants (resulting in my doing a lot more training—of the Amtrak variety).

As I race around the continent advocating for the principles of social sustainability, it's reasonable to question whether my delivery is exemplifying the principles of environmental sustainability. While the dollars work out (that is, the cost of my travel is more than covered by the income earned and travel subsidies I'll receive), am I really doing all that I can (and should) to make each gallon of fuel count?

It's hard to say. I feel better when I travel by train (which is a relatively efficient way to move people long distances), and on each leg of my journeys by automobile we'll be using a van that gets close to 40 mpg, and doing our best to fill the vehicle with people and goods. At what point though, does it make sense to travel less, to start working with purpose toward the coming time when it won't be possible to travel more? Is it enough to wait until I'm priced out? In pursuit of one good, am I undercutting another?

This is a tough apple-to-oranges question and as I contemplate the answer, my mind zigzags almost as much as my itinerary.

Training one's mind

If you've ever been to downtown Portland OR, you can't miss the big sign atop the Union Station terminal, admonishing all who pass by to: Go By Train. For the most part, it's advice I've heeded.

     As a consultant and cmty networker, I'm on the road about half the time. As often as possible, I choose the choo-choo to get me where I'm going. (It doesn't always work out: sometimes I'm schlepping books for an event, or traveling to locations so remote that our skeletal national rail service can't get me close—but if Amtrak goes out of business for lack of ridership, don't look at me.)

     I love the train because it's slow. At least compared to a plane. It doesn't travel at 35,000 feet (which I don't believe our bodies were designed for) and you have time to finish digesting what you'd been doing and turn your attention to what's on the menu next without fear of dyspepsia. You even have time to look out the window, read a book, or take a nap—agreeable and rejuvenating practices that have mostly been squeezed out or banished to the very edges of modern life. The train protects my reflective time, allowing me room to pick up a thread of thought and see what I can weave with it. (Why do you think they're called trains of thought?)

     Unlike the plane and bus, your psychic space is not as likely to be violated on a train (traveling as a sardine may get you there quicker, but at what cost?). And unlike the car—that icon of modern mobility—on the train you don't have to pay attention to the road; you can even take a stroll, stretch, or get a snack.

     To be sure, not everyone can sleep well on a train, and it can be a mistake setting up appointments within four hours of scheduled arrival times. Yet for all of that, there is no more civilized way to travel.

     Most of Amtrak's rolling stock was constructed in the 80s—before the impact of laptops and cell phones on everyday life had been foreseen. While most cars have been retrofitted with electric plugs at every seat, they still haven't gotten around to updating the electrical accommodations on the double-decker equipment for the long runs to and from the West Coast. This is both a good thing (mercifully, batteries get drained for the cell phones belonging to people with more minutes than sense, and by the second day out you're not nearly is likely to feel trapped inside a phone booth, forced to listen to what your neighbor had for breakfast, or about Aunt Gerturde's bout with sciatica) and a bad thing (even the nimblest among us cannot always secure the one electric plug per car—usually at seat #55—that was installed to facilitate vacuuming but which will also keep a laptop humming productively for those not prone to motion sickness).

****

     Yesterday I boarded the eastbound Southwest Chief (train #4 if you're keeping score at home) in Albuquerque. While the train snaked through the snow-dusted southern stretches of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of northern New Mexico and rumbled up to Raton Pass, I dove into a Sara Paretsky novel, did an acrostic, and basked in the afterglow of two weeks of holiday down-time with my wife.

     This morning I awoke at dawn, just as the train eased into Kansas City 10 minutes early. I had time for a brisk walk to a nearby Panera and secure a large coffee with two shots of espresso (I pretty much know where it's possible to get good java at every service stop on Amtrak's system). The temperature was right at zero—welcome back to January in the MIdwest—yet invigorating. Back on board, I ambled forward to the lounge car to nurse my coffee and the last 60 pages of my pot boiler. About 20 minutes after pulling out of KC, I paused to absorb the full effect as we eased across the icy Missouri River. The random display of pale floes against the dark canvas of the brooding water appeared to me as the liquid negative of lichen rosettes on cemetery marble, or the overlapping mold patterns atop a long-neglected carton of cream. From the train, you can get angles on the landscape you can't get any other way.

     Two hours later I was in La Plata, where I disembarked at the refurbished art deco station and Gigi collected me for the hour drive home. Ironically, the Southwest Chief lumbers within a single crow mile of my home, but the nearest stop is 45 miles away. Living in sparsely populated northeast Missouri (in a county with no stop light), we are lucky to have the train service we do, and I don't begrudge the drive. It extends the trip that much more and allows me time to hear the latest news from home, in one leisurely telling.

     Now, about 22 hours from when I boarded in NM,  I am ready to be home.