My Christmas trip home

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Way back in the summer of 1976 I quit my job of three years as a reporter at The Augusta (Ga) Chronicle. As an irresponsible youth with little to do, I decided to make a motorcycle trip up to Pittsburgh, where my brother Henry was doing a post-doc at Carnegie-Mellon University. After I reached his apartment (that trip is a story for another day), we heard from my old roommate and friend, and Henry’s friend as well, Tom. He had landed at Lake Tahoe after being out of touch for more than a year.

Again, with nothing much to do, I decided to ride out to see him. After all, it was only about 2400 miles, which I didn’t really know at the time. I knew only that to reach Lake Tahoe, I needed to go west. And so I did, and that, too, is a story for another day.

Lake Tahoe was very pretty, so pretty, in fact, that I decided to stay. I flew back home, collected some belongings, and drove my little Fiat coupe from my parents’ home in Rome, Ga, to Lake Tahoe, a trip of about a mile less than from Pittsburgh.

Tom and I shared a little cabin for a while, then moved into a larger house, at which point we got a third roommate.

Life was good at Lake Tahoe. I had nothing much to do, so I did that. I had very little contact with my family back east — a few letters, maybe a phone call every once in a while. In the fall of the next year, my parents took a long trip with their little Jeep Wagoneer towing their Airstream trailer. They meandered around the country, finally ending up in San Francisco, where I drove my motorcycle down to meet them at a little trailer park south of the city. How did we find our way to out-of-the-way places before GPS? That art is lost, I believe.

We stayed a few days seeing the sights, then they and I drove up to Tahoe. They parked their trailer next to our rented house, and we saw the sights there. After some time they left, heading south to Yosemite. I followed a day or so later on my motorcycle., of course. We camped way up in the mountains above Yosemite Valley in a campground that was closed for the winter. After seeing those sights, my parents left to begin a long, meandering trip home, and I returned to Lake Tahoe.

As Christmas approached, I started thinking about going home, just for the holidays. I eventually decided to do just that, so I set off, on my motorcycle, of course, leaving my little Fiat coupe parked beside the house.

As you are no doubt aware, Christmas in the northern hemisphere comes around the Winter Solstice, which is historically quite cool at 6000 feet above sea level at the latitude of Lake Tahoe. In fact, it’s quite cool nearly everywhere from Lake Tahoe east to Georgia. Taking that into account, I took the southern route rather than setting off due east. That made the trip a little longer.

I was poorly prepared to ride in winter weather for 2500 miles or so. I had a sweater, a leather jacket, jeans, long underwear, and a rain suit, which I wore to block the wind. I took US 95 south towards Las Vegas.

Back I those days, the highway south from Vegas went right across Hoover Dam. I crossed the dam at night. The road snakes down towards the Colorado River, crosses the dam, then climbs back up. At the top there was a viewpoint that overlooked the dam. At night it looked like a set from a science fiction movie, with the black lake surrounding the four intake towers lit with reddish light.

I left the overlook and drove a few miles to a place where I could pull off the road and spread out my sleeping bag. I didn’t have, or at least didn’t use, a tent. I just slipped into the bag and stared up at the sky. That far from civilization, the sky was completely black and the stars were brilliant points of light. If you look up long enough in those conditions, you will almost certainly see a shooting star, even at times other than the well-known meteor showers.

I continued on, almost certainly going down south of Interstate 40 through Phoenix to reach I-10, the southernmost east-west route. I remember very little of that trip. I don’t even remember whether I stayed at any motels on the five-day trip. All I can say is that five 500-mile days wears on a man, even a man of only 27 years. So, when I reached Alabama in the evening of the fifth day, I was in a state of semi-exhaustion.

And, of course, it was raining. I approached Rome on what we call the Alabama Road, a road I would drive hundreds of times after I got my PdD from Georgia Tech and started working in Huntsville, but which I did not know at that time. I found myself behind a big truck and a line of cars. As the highway approaches the state line it has gentle rises and dips and fairly broad curves. There are few places to pass, and at night with rain falling, it’s hard to see when you’re at one of those safe places.

I eventually got a glimpse of the road ahead that seemed long and straight enough, and empty of cars. So I pulled out and accelerated to pass the truck. I was pulling up even with the truck when the headlights of an oncoming car appeared in the lane ahead of me. So I downshifted and rolled the throttle wide open.

Now, there are two things about my motorcycle. It was a 1974 BMW R60/6, a 600-cc motorcycle with low horsepower even for that size engine and those days of engine development. So, normally, downshifting and opening the throttle begins a fairly relaxed acceleration, but an acceleration which was completely adequate to pass the truck safely. 

The second thing about my motorcycle was that every time either of the bike’s tires had broken traction and slipped, I had fallen down. Every time. When I downshifted and opened the throttle, even with that mild, little engine, the road was slippery enough that my back tire skidded and the rear of the bike started swinging out to the side.

My favorite type of book in those days was science fiction. In one or more of the lurid books I had read, an author used the expression “the metallic taste of fear.” When I had read those words, they had no real meaning for me. I understood each word, but the collection of the words themselves carried no meaning. Until that night.

On that night, at that time, on a slippery, black highway, with raindrops smeared on my helmet visor and spray from the big truck I was beside billowing out over me, I experienced the metallic taste of fear. Even in the few tenths of a second that I believed I had left before I crashed down beside a big truck, and right in front of an oncoming car, I had time to think, “Ah, so that’s what they meant by ‘the metallic taste of fear’.”

I did not die on that night. I did not fall down. I reflexively grabbed the clutch lever, which allowed the rear tire to grab enough traction that the bike straightened out and I retained control. I slowly engaged the clutch, watching the oncoming car but unable to do anything any faster, and gently opened the throttle. I accelerated slowly the rest of the way around truck, and no one even suspected the drama that had just played out on that road. Of course, the drama was all in my mind, but, still.

I never told anyone about my brush with death, or possibly serious injury. I am also thankful to be able to say that that night was the only time I have experienced the metallic taste of fear.

I continued on to my parents’ house and pulled into the driveway. I parked the bike and went to the front door, still in my gear. I don’t remember whether the door was unlocked or I had a key, but I went inside. I don’t remember the details, 42 years later. But the house was light and warm. There was a family Christmas gathering. My parents were there, of course, and Henry as well. There were other relatives, too. And there was food.

I remember that my family greeted me as if they had not expected to see me, and all these years later I have no idea whether I had even called them to let them know I was coming home. Years later, when my brother was dying from cancer, when his wife’s son did a video interview with him, he remembered that night. He said it was like the return of the prodigal son.

That surprised me. I have remembered that trip and that homecoming, but I had no idea of the impact on the rest of my family of my Christmas trip home.

Dog update

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It’s been a while since I posted. There hasn’t been much going on here worth mentioning. I am doing some programming work for the company I used to work for. I wrote a pretty complicated program about 20 years ago to read NOAA satellite data, and I have to update it. I’m glad I put copious comments in it so I can figure out what I did all those years ago.

Zoe is making slow improvement in the two areas that need improvement. The first is in not chasing cats. Here she is with Mollie in calm times.

Unfortunately, Mollie tends to run when she sees Zoe, and a small running animal triggers Zoe’s hunting instinct.

Zoe and Sam are getting along quite well. They play well together. I have been taking them into the front yard after lunch almost every day and letting them have 15 or 20 minutes of very vigorous biting and chewing on each other.

I originally let them both off the leash, which worked well for a few times, but they decided to take a four-hour trip around the neighborhood a couple of times, so they are now playing on leash. My arm has been almost jerked out of my shoulder socket a couple of times when Zoe gets a good head of steam and runs to the end of the leash. I got a nice rope burn another time. But they enjoy it.

Zoe has snarled and snapped at Sam twice, if I remember correctly, but this is more typical of their relationship now.

As both of my readers know, I have been taking our dogs on a longish walk every morning for several years, down the road and then back up. I have always looked forward to it, but not so much now. Sam and Zeke were so well behaved on their leashes that I could just walk and let my mind wander. And I like to let my mind wander. However, Zoe is not leash trained. She pulls so much it actually makes my arthritic knees hurt. So now I usually turn around and head home about halfway through the normal walk.

I have a head collar (Gentle Leader), which is supposed to help train dogs not to pull. It has two loops, one that goes up high on the neck like a normal collar, and one that goes around the muzzle. When the dog pulls, it puts pressure on the muzzle and tends to turn the dog’s head back towards the person holding the leash. Some people think the Gentle Leader will train a dog to walk without pulling while wearing the Gentle Leader, but not when not wearing it. In any event, it’s a trial for me to walk her right now.

I try to give the dogs enough freedom on their walks to investigate since they spend most of their lives inside. Lately, that has involved leaves in the ditch beside the road.

They run their heads under the leaves and push forward, like they are plowing the leaves. The leaves are pretty deep. I imagine they provide good cover for little creatures like mice.

So, for the next little while, I expect to be trying to leash train Zoe, and trying to remember how to write the code to apply response function files to spectral radiance files.

November Sunrise

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This was what greeted me last Monday morning when I got up a little earlier than normal.

A few minutes later it was lighter, but the sun was still below the horizon.

I would get up early every morning for sunrises like this.

I hope everyone has a good Thanksgiving today, if you celebrate. We are having Thanksgiving with my aunt, the last surviving member my father’s generation.

Victim of the window

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A few days ago Leah and I heard a loud thump that sounded like it came from our hall bathroom. I went in to check, but found nothing to account for the noise. Later I went outside and found this bird lying in the driveway, close to the house.

It seems to be a sharp-shinned hawk (Accipiter striatus), a type I was not familiar with. It was lying close to the window in one of our bedrooms, the one we use for an office. The bedroom is next to the bathroom, which explains why we thought the sound came from the bathroom.

It’s easy to understand how this happened. With very little light inside the room, the window makes a good mirror. The hawk undoubtedly thought it was flying through an opening rather than a hard surface.

The sharp-shinned hawk is the smallest hawk in the US and Canada. It summers in the far north of Alaska and Canada and winters as far south as Panama. It’s a little hard to figure from the maps of distributions, but it seems that they are around our area during non-breeding parts of the year, but apparently are so secretive that they are rarely seen.

They are the most strong sexually dimorphic of North American raptors. The males average under two-thirds the mass of females.

Our house is on top of the ridge of Lavender Mountain within a mixed hardwood and pine forest, which is their preferred habitat.

The name comes from the sharp, laterally compressed keel on the leading edge of the legs.

We see other types of hawks pretty often, but I had never before seen a sharp-shinned hawk. It’s unfortunate that my first sighting is of a dead bird, and one killed by our house at that.

Sunrise, sunset

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And dogs

And cats

I got back from my trip to Colorado last week. I had two fairly long days of driving, splitting the almost 1400 miles in two equal parts. This was the view to the west at sunset on my first day on the road.

This was the view to the east the morning of the second day on the road.

Zoe was a great traveler. She stood, sat or lay in the back seat and never made a peep. Or a poop. Now that’s she’s home, she seems pretty comfortable on Leah’s side of the bed.

We don’t allow her on the furniture, but sometimes she jumps up if we’re not looking.

The main question was how the cats would react to her, and her to the cats. As it turns out, not particularly well. Zoe has a very strong prey drive, and cats look a lot like a dog’s natural prey. Zoe focuses intently on the cats as they walk around the house, and she chases if one of them runs. That’s usually Mollie. Mollie has taken to hiding under the sofa. She has hissed and swatted at Zoe a few times, but Zoe is oblivious. I think the two will eventually come to some kind of understanding. At least that’s what I tell myself.

The only other cat that comes inside is Sylvester, and Sylvester has his own story now. He disappeared Monday and didn’t show again until Tuesday afternoon. Leah was convinced he had been killed by a coyote as our gray cat, Smokey, was, but it seems he escaped by the skin of his teeth. Or maybe the cornea of his eye.

Sylvester’s left eye was completely covered with pus and mucus. We took him to the vet, who cleaned the eye and found a dent in the cornea. The vet also found a wound on the top of his head. She thought some kind of animal had bitten Sylvester on the face. It might have been a coyote, in which case Sylvester has used up yet another of his allotted nine lives. I’m not sure how many he has left.

So now Sylvester has to wear the cone of shame for a couple of weeks, until his eye heals.

He may end up completely healed, or he may end up with a scar right in the center of his cornea. In the meantime, he gets two eye drops once a day. Doing it has not been terrible for anyone involved, an unexpected blessing.

Sylvester’s vet visit was the third vet visit since I got back home. The first visit was when I took Zoe in for an ear check, which found a yeast infection. So she gets eight drops of medication in each ear for 10 days.

The second vet visit was Sam, who injured his dewclaw while playing with Zoe. Sam’s dewclaw was a bloody mess. The vet yanked off the outer part of the nail, which Sam did not like.

This is how they play.

Poor Sam used to be a runner, but Zoe’s legs are just too long. Zoe stays ahead, but I think she holds back a little, enough to keep Sam almost within reach. Occasionally when Zoe has to make a sharp turn at the edge of the grassy area, Sam can cut the corner, and then Zoe really has to pour it on to stay ahead of him.

When they stop, they lie down on their backs head-to-head, and continue to gnaw at each other’s cheeks.

Zoe is much taller and heavier than Sam. I was a little worried that she would play too hard for him, but he seems to take it in stride. They aren’t the buddies that Sam and Zeke were, but maybe they’ll get there.

The shelter where I got Zoe said she is a German Shepherd-Doberman Pinscher mix. I was not sure at first, but at some angles her head looks just like a Doberman. Her coloring is obviously German Shepherd. This is a nice coincidence, since I like Dobermans and Leah likes German Shepards.

I have already posted a photo of my friends’ dog Elroy, who looks a lot like Zeke, but here’s another.

Elroy did not like Zoe, pretty much the same way he did not like Zeke. I kind of understand that, since Zoe’s manners are somewhat lacking.

Elroy is pretty old now and has a really hard time getting around. He can’t take NSAIDs, the standard arthritis medication, but his mom and dad are going to try something new. I hope it works, because I really like old Elroy.

I told Elroy that he is to be there the next time I visit.

Oh, and fall arrived while I was in Denver. Here is some proof.

I see oak, which is mainly yellowish brown, some hickory, which is bright yellow, and maple, which is orange or red. There is even a green leaf.