Jumping out of a perfectly good plane near San Diego

I knew for a long time that my son was plotting for me to experience skydiving.  A jump had even been scheduled on a previous California visit but had been canceled due to bad weather.  Therefore I approach it as a mission, something I am committed to do.  When it comes right down to it, I could be a sack of laundry falling out of that plane for the amount of responsibility I bear.  We approach the plane.  It is a fairly small 2-engine plane with long benches along the fuselage, seating a dozen.  It reminds me a little of the Cessna I learned to fly 25 years ago.  There’s a vertical rolling garage-like door in the back.  The flight up to altitude is an event in itself.  What a beautiful day!  You can plainly see the barrier island known as the Silver Strand, there is San Diego proper, there is the Pacific Ocean, Imperial Beach, Tijuana.  And then it’s time to roll up the door, and the first solo jumper steps out and drops away.  The greenish brown mountains look so far below us.  Then my son steps out, then his friend Jack does a forward somersault out the door.  Showoff. 

 

Then it’s my turn.  I walk up to the edge of the door with my instructor strapped tightly behind me. Jay gives me a nudge and I step out.  The best way I can describe the feeling is it reminds me of the anticipation of the first time I stepped off the swimming pool high dive or perhaps the first time I ever stepped on stage.  Although this time there are no lines or blocking to worry about.  Gravity does all the work.  That moment at the door is the biggest emotional flashbulb of the experience, and like a flashbulb it does not last long.  Oddly I have no sensation of falling, just wind.  The plane is flying maybe 100 mph and I’m eventually falling 100 mph.  That’s a lot of wind!  The falling part seems like it lasts a long time.  I checked the video later, and it was fully 50 seconds of free fall.  You’re supposed to look around and I do, but it was easier to enjoy the scenery from inside the plane.  It wasn’t as windy in there.  Once the parachute opens the falling screeches to a stop and then it’s another couple of minutes of gently gliding back to the starting point.  Chris, would you like to help steer us using these ropes?  Sure.

 

So, why?  As I said, my son Ben has wanted this experience for me for a long time.  He has jumped over 60 times for work and for fun.  I thought of the paratroopers of World War 2 jumping into enemy-held Europe.  Their jump was a lot harder than mine.  Darkness, unfamiliar territory, heavy equipment, people wanting to kill them.  We still train people to do that job, Ben included.  Now I have a little taste.

 

Useful skill?  In the unlikely event I ever have to jump out of an airplane it won’t be my first time. 

 

Risky?  Sure.  But I do other risky things too.  I am an overweight middle-aged man who consumes meat and alcohol.  I ride a motorcycle.  For skydiving the list of legal disclaimers to be signed was extensive.  As an aside, one of the disclaimers asserted that I completed a 5-minute training session with my instructor.  I’m still waiting for that training, although I suppose I received it OTJ.  But I went horseback riding the next day, and the disclaimers were nearly identical.  Ultimately, I’m probably in more peril just driving to work.

 

Hobby?  The first jumper out of our plan was a fellow named Alan.  He had maybe five or ten years on me.  This was his 92^nd jump.  Like me, his son introduced him to the sport.  He said it keeps him young and vital.  I enjoyed my jump, and there is a lot of technique and mastery and learning available to me.  I’m not sure that’s an investment in time and resources I want to make.  But would I do it again?  You betcha.

Happy New Year! Ringing in 2015 in Times Square

 In the early eighties my cousin Bob drove with his wife to New York on New Year's Eve, parked a few blocks south of Times Square, and walked over and watched the ball drop. I found this to be charming, but this little story adds to the body of evidence that the eighties were a long time ago.

The plan was to arrive in New York around 7:00pm and see how close we could get to Times Square. My thinking was that driving in Manhattan would be a ridiculous fiasco, so I opted for Mass Transit.

 So here are the steps we followed.

Depart Maryland at around 6:00pm, three hours later than intended. Drive to Jersey City, New Jersey. Following the directions on the PATH (Port Authority Trans Hudson) website, immediately get lost and resort to the Maps App on your son's Iphone. Find not the intended subway stop, but the one two stops further on. Receive instructions from the friendly PATH employee on purchasing and loading your fare card (Up to four round-trips can be loaded on a single card.) Ride the PATH train to the last stop at 33rd Street. Head for the ball-drop venue about ten blocks North. Walk up Broadway past the Macy's Christmas windows, lingering for a moment to enjoy them. Walk to 38th Street before being redirected West by an NYPD barricade. End up in a huge mass of humanity moving slowly up 9th Avenue, taking up the whole sidewalk and a good portion of the road. Feel the chill on your face but notice that the combination of walking, the long johns and the layers of clothing are feeling pretty good. Observe dozens of street entrepreneurs hawking gawdy New Years Eve hats, glasses, horns, and LED attire. Observe several dozen push cart food vendors grilling cheesesteaks and chicken kebabs, all luring you with delicious aromas. Look in the restaurant windows at folks eating pizza and drinking coffee and cocoa. Observe a huge police presence, every single officer friendly and professional. Be repeatedly hindered from turning East by, uh, hindersome police barricades. Finally turn East at 57th Street. 57th! Find a large gathering of people in front of the Ed Sullivan Theater watching a videocast of the Times Square festivities. And the videocast is counting down! Five, four, three, two, one, TWO HOURS UNTIL THE NEW YEAR!!!

Very funny.

Move further East, hoping to find a better vantage point. Finally find the back of the line at a closed-to-traffic 7th Avenue at 54th Street, a little South of the Carnegie Deli. You can't see the ball from here, but you can at least see into Times Square about six blocks South. This is as good as it is going to get. Look around. These are the folks who will help you ring in the New Year. Listen to the languages spoken. Middle Eastern dialects, Spanish, a little French. Folks are attempting to start a stadium-style wave. Glance behind you to the North and observe that the crowds have filled in several blocks behind you! Groups of revelers occasionally shout, "WOOOOO!" Helicopters hover overhead. Some 15th floor balconies are decorated for Christmas. A paper airplane of unknown origin soars thirty feet above. And then, after just a moment, the Times Square video screen is counting down from one minute.

This is the moment I finally feel chills. How many times have I watched this countdown from the comfort of my sofa or a friend's party? What happened to the year? It all seems to have gone by in a blur, a blink of an eye. Five, four, three, two, one,

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Cheers! Fireworks! Both in Times Square and behind us in Central Park. And now the mass exodus, unhurried but deliberate. And now we can move closer to Times Square glimpsing the performance stages, the accidentally left-behind hats and gloves, the confetti still hanging in the air, and the huge amount of trash strewn in the street. We walk a now chilly dozen blocks, find the PATH train, Jersey City, Jersey Turnpike, and home by 4:30am.

We didn't even see the ball. It doesn't matter. We were in a happy crowd of a million people gathered to ring in the New Year in Times Square, the #1 place in the world to do so. Times Square! It was wonderfully, intoxicatingly exciting.

There are some that say that an adventure like this does not appeal to them at all.  Pity. HAPPY NEW YEAR!

A Spring Day in the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania

 I have been here before.  That’s what I thought gazing 800 feet down at Pine Creek from Leonard Harrison State Park near Wellsboro, PA.  This gorge is known as the GrandCanyon of Pennsylvania, and it is beautiful to behold.  But it hadn’t occurred until this moment that I had paddled a canoe down there 40 years earlier.

It was 1981 and half a dozen of us Boy Scouts were being treated to one of Scoutmaster John Marley’s private stash of favorite places.  We were the elder Scouts, the Leadership Corps of Troop 802.  In rented canoes we paddled through 60 miles of the some of the most beautiful countryside I had ever seen.  The peaks towered over us and the creek revealed new pleasures at each bend.  I remember that even though Pine Creek varied in depth from inches to 15 feet it was always crystal clear to the bottom.  There were a few minor rapids.  We had to jump out of the canoes a few times to get through the shallow spots.  There were submerged rocks smudged with the colors of our canoes – apparently our canoes had been this way before.  We camped overnight around the halfway point.  I wrapped my gear-securing shock cord around a nearby tree so I wouldn’t lose it in the dark.  Looking for recreation after dinner we jumped back in the canoes and attacked each other with our water bailing scoops.  In the middle of the quiet night I was awakened by a terrifyingly loud freight train passing by on the opposite shore.  Except for the train and the occasional bridge crossing we were the only witnesses to this place.

Fast forward to the present.  The railroad is gone now, replaced by a fabulous rail trail ideal for biking.  When we walked the upper portion on a chilly Mothers’ Day we encountered few others, but clearly this is area is now available to the many.  The trail hugs Pine Creek from Ansonia to Jersey Shore, more or less the end points of our canoe trip.  Spring-fed creeks flow under the road bed.  The rock faces drip eagerly and some of the bigger spring outlets produce miniature waterfalls.  Geese pairs shepherd their young broods along the edge of the creek.

Up in Leonard Harrison Park the Turkey Trail takes you all the way down to the creek.  It is steep descent, but there are wooden stairs and railings at the most treacherous points.  And remember you have to walk back up to the top!  The whole walk is beautiful, but at the halfway point you encounter a spectacular waterfall as extra compensation for your effort.  There are other vantage points at various places in the gorge, but Harrison is generally regarded as the best.  A couple of State Parks abut the creek in this area and there are many trails to explore.

The town closest to the upper gorge is Wellsboro, a charming Norman Rockwell sort of place with an easily walkable Main Street with several restaurant and lodging options.  We stayed at La Belle Auberge B&B and enjoyed The Roost sports bar.  We narrowly missed seeing (by one hour) a local community theater production, and Gail was mesmerized by a store called The Enchanted Hollow. 

One thing I have wondered since that 1981 canoe trip.  Will I ever see my shock cord again?

San Diego and Southern California. More Than a Place, It's an Attitude.

Not enough has been written about San Diego and Southern California, so I’m going to pitch in.  I visited there recently to witness my son, Ben, get married on the beach.  That was terrific, and there’s a whole story about it worth writing.

But what I want to tell you is that San Diego is all that.  There is a difference in how you feel the moment you arrive.  The change in attitude is immediate.  When my teenage children emerged from the San Diego Airport terminal and saw the bay on this side, the city on that side, and the palm trees all around they said something along the lines of “Whoa.”

Other whoa moments.  Hiking on the trails at Torrey Pines as a soaring hawk comes eye-to-eye with you.  You might know Torrey Pines for the televised golf tournament, but it is also a public park with trails threading through the arid cliffs to the beach.  The moment you first see the distant ocean the topography silences the surf.  That’s when the hawk stared me down.  Whoa.

 

I use the word “arid.”  The air in San Diego is dry, and a lot of desert flora thrives.  There is a wild succulent related to aloe that calls to mind string beans.  It’s everywhere and it’s fascinating.  If I awakened in a bed of that stuff I would question where I was.  Saturn, maybe?

Downtown San Diego is, according to Gail, like Baltimore.  With less strife, I might add.  There is a Little Italy, an historic bar and restaurant Gaslamp District (like FellsPoint), a touristy waterfront.  But if I had a 9-5 there, what might I do after work?  Surf, sand, kayak, beach sunset all minutes away.  Whoa.

Daytime temp: high 70s.  Nighttime temp: low 60s.  Pretty much all the time.  But wouldn’t that would get boring, you ask.  Not immediately, I say.

 

So you take your rented convertible and drive 10 minutes and cross the spectacular bridge to Coronado.  I have been on some pretty nice small town Main Streets, hello Ellicott City.  This main street has a dozen excellent restaurants and cafes, drug store, grocery, hardware, post office, tourist shops, hotels, and is two blocks from the Pacific Ocean.  The other end of the main drag boasts a splendid panoramic view of San Diego andthe bay.  We ate three meals at McP’sIrish Pub because Gail became addicted to the avocado toast.  Whoa.

 

From here drive south on the Silver Strand, a 5-mile strip of beach between Coronado and Imperial Beach, the Pacific on your right and the bay on your left.  You could throw a stone and hit either one. IB reminds Ben of Rehoboth, Delaware.  Maybe.  There is a commercial stretch similar to Del Rt. 1.  Every daybreak a dozen wet-suited surfers convene near the pier.  There is fantastic burrito roadside stand (of course) called Don Pancho's.  You could walk to Mexico on the beach.  Gail did it.  Whoa.

Next time I would like to sample local fast food.  Don Pancho's, El Pollo Loco, City Tacos, Jack in the Box are all in my sights.  Ben says this is wrong-headed.  Instead I should seek out the best rendition of the California Burrito.  This sounds to me like an argument with no losing side.

The travel sites are necessarily concerned with things to do, points of interest and top-10 lists.  Those are great, but maybe what is missing is some sort of barometer of how the place makes you feel.  How does San Diego and environs make me feel?  Whoa.