The Month That Was - September 2021

For the first time in my life, I think I'm really beginning to feel my age. This may be psychological as my 61st birthday passed in September, but it sure seems like muscle and joint soreness have kicked up a notch and I can't tell you the last time I made it through the day without a short (10 minute) nap.  And if you want to see what an old man looks like, you would look at me when I get out of bed in the morning.  You would think I was 90.

Still, I don't count myself out of any physical activity, and am in fact quite healthy in general.  My mind is not as pliable and quick to understand new concepts as it was, but I can still focus as well as ever (although that may not be saying much). So, no, as much as I may feel like I'm slipping, I am far from out of the game.

Aging is tricky.  It's easy to blame failings on age, but that can also be a convenient excuse.  Whenever I'm tempted to use "because I'm old" as an explanation I ask myself, is it really any different than before and often I find I may be romanticizing the past.  And, even though I can't do everything I used to, behaving as if I could at least keeps the degradation from being self-fulfilling.

I now have two separate versions of my manuscript.  One is not historically accurate but flows a little more smoothly and is more economical, the other is historically unimpeachable.  I'm on the fence about which one to publish.  I think the accurate one, since the work is very niche oriented, meaning the handful of people who eventually read it may be jarred by any inaccuracies. I remain disheartened by this last minute setback.

[House and Home] Amidst Pestilence

[TV] Outer Banks

[Travel] Weekend Warrioring

[House and Home] Amidst Pestilence

I am inundated with Stink Bugs.  These pestilential nasties are an invasive species from Japan.  They look like dime sized alien life forms.  If you crush them they make a horrible cracking sound and the smell they emit upon crushing is the very definition of dank.  To kill without crushing them you have to carefully grab them in tissue and flush them down the toilet.  They are slow and stupid.  All they do is fly around very awkwardly and haphazardly seeking heat sources and breed at an alarming rate. They thrive here as they have no natural predators (yet).  I have a south facing wall in my house and when the sun comes out, they cover the outside.  That's bad enough, but at peak times I'll kill as many as 20 that have somehow wandered inside over the course of the day.  I hate them.  I want to end their species.

Chemical warfare can help and I have called in pest control services for that.  I've also taken to sealing up any cracks in window casing or other structures like the fireplace where they might be sneaking in.  Still, it seems like an eternal battle.

There are some minor rays of hope.  One is that it seems local predators (birds, larger bugs) are very slowly adapting to eat these things.  More promising is the arrival of a new invasive species from Japan, Samurai Wasps.  These heroic little critters are the native predator of stink bugs in Japan and so it only makes sense they should follow the stink bug invasion with one of their own.  Not to be confused with murder hornets, samurai wasps are so small as to be barely visible.  They do pretty much nothing else but hijack stink bug eggs to grow more wasps.  God bless them.

Long term, it's hoped that the samurais will bring the stink bugs under control, to the point they aren't a nuisance.  I should note it's not just having these nasty things in your house that's the problem.  They can devastate crops.  So our little samurai buddies have real economic value.

You know, I post occasionally about what I call the "Roaring 20s 2.0" and the astonishing technological and scientific advances that will pay off in the coming years, yet here we are in the 2020s still fighting plagues and pestilence.

[TV] Outer Banks

A teenage acquaintance of mine developed a minor obsession with the Netflix series Outer Banks.  Evidently it's quite popular with teens so in an effort to be the World's Dopest Boomer I did a quick binge. 

It's a standard Romeo & Juliet variation.  Instead of Montagues and Capulets we have the Pogues, who are the poor folks, and the Kooks, who are the rich folks.  It is unclear where those labels came from, I suspect they are just made up words. (Insert Thor meme: "All words are made up.") The Pogues and the Kooks fight and rage against each other, while the Pogue boy and the Kook girl start at odds but eventually become a couple.  Their first kiss was named "Best Kiss" at the MTV Awards.  Because teens.

Interesting to me is that the Capulets and Montagues were equivalent families (IIRC). An R&J rehash from the 20th century, West Side Story, featured whites and Puerto Ricans, both equally stupid and racist.  In contrast, the factions in Outer Banks we have clear good guys and bad guys and, as you can guess, the rich Kooks are the bad guys. There is a think-piece to be written about how the earlier opposing sides have a rough moral equivalence, whereas this current one clearly has a bad guy and it's The Rich.  I will not be the one writing that think piece.

Still you have the proven star-crossed romance theme coupled with a Scooby-Doo level missing treasure mystery as the McGuffin.  Pile on more teen targeting: The adults have little effect on the teen scene, they don't understand them, they just want control.  The teens want nothing more than independence and to pursue their lives away from the pesky grown-ups. Yup. Another timeless theme.

Apart from the class warfare thing, it's not overly wokey.  It's a pretty solid teen fantasy aimed mostly, but not exclusively, at girls.  If your teen is obsessed with this, it's probably nothing to get too concerned about.

Three further observations:

First, I don't know if the soundtrack is a good source for understanding what music teens are listening to.  I don't recognize the songs so I guess it's possible.  One exception was at the high point of the season when we got an episode closing to "Police On My Back" from the Clash.  Straight out of the late 1970s.  Yes, I did think it was better than anything else on the show, by miles.

Second, there is absolutely no reason for this show to be called Outer Banks.  It is not shot in the Outer Banks -- evidently the producers disagreed with the politics of North Carolina on woke grounds.  There are no Outer Banks locations referenced.  The show-specific vocabulary -- Kooks, Pogues, The Cut (where the Pogues live), Figure 8 (where the Kooks live) -- is entirely made up.  Literally the only thing related to the actual Outer Banks (a place I love) is the name.  I supposed they started by hoping to really create a locally flavored show, but when they needed to cancel the State of North Carolina, they decided to keep the name because it's so cool sounding.  It's actually shot in South Carolina near Charleston.  I guess "Hilton Head" wouldn't have gone over so well.  Hmmm.  There's also a Folly Beach nearby.  That would have been more apropos.

Third, everything I said about the show only applies to Season 1.  Season 2 is abysmal by any standards. Just astonishingly bad.

[Travel] Weekend Warrioring

I took three long weekends in a row for differing reasons.

Savannah/Hilton Head

The purpose of this trip was to help a college student at Savannah College of Art and Design move from one apartment to another.  That was a trip down memory lane -- last minute packing scrambles, multiple trips with large boxes, scumbag landlords, unexpected expenses -- been there, done that.  I didn't get any time to see Savannah, but I've been to Savannah on several occasions so it was a small sacrifice in the aid of youth.  

Fortunately once the moving was over we were able to decamp to Hilton Head, about an hour-ish north into South Carolina, for some beach and chill time.  I knew enough to snag a well located airbnb in the Sea Pines plantation.  A quick explanation:  Hilton Head is divided into districts which they call "plantations" although they are nothing of the sort.  They are basically gigantic homeowners associations with their own commercial district and services. A couple have gone so far as to limit access by the public.  To my mind, the best of these is one called Sea Pines.  It has the best commercial areas and a fine beach club.  If you're not a resident or renter it'll cost you a tenner to get into the plantation.  As snooty as that sounds, it works to keep the area from being overcrowded.  (I would say "works to keep the riff raff out" but really there is very little riff raff on Hilton Head.  You have to pay a toll just to get on the island to begin with.)

Even within Sea Pines parking can be tricky.  The beach club parking is limited to actual residents, not renters.  There is a shuttle of questionable convenience for renters.  So if you're going to have a beach day, the smart thing is to get your rental within walking distance of the beach club as parking elsewhere, while troublesome, is manageable.  Of course, the better plan is to ride a bike if you can.  (I write this as much for my own future reference than for any other reason.)

This was the last weekend in August so it was quite warm, both air and water, but the beach breeze was strong and 4-foot waves were rolling in steadily. I can't imagine better beach day conditions.  It was a perfect reward for a couple days of hard moving. 

We also managed to take an afternoon sail on the Stars and Stripes, the America's Cup championship sailboat from 1987.  In 1983 the America's cup was lost (to Australia) for the first time in 132 years.  In 1987 this was the boat that was built to win it back.  It has been modified for safer cruising, but you still have to crank on massive winches to raise and adjust the sails.  In this activity guests are recruited and naturally I volunteered.  It's a workout, believe me.  The gearing is very long to facilitate precise adjustments, so cranking is a very arduous task.  The winds were light so the sailing was sedate.  Still a great way to nab some drinks out on the water.

Hilton Head is a good spot and worth a visit if you have the means.  (If you don't have the means, you go to Myrtle Beach.)  A little intense at times, in the sense of crowds and money and rules, but it's as fine a beach vacation as any.  

Mackinac Island

Or "The Island'' as I refer to it.  The Island is a paradigmatic wedding destination and that's why I was there this time.  The wedding itself was being held at Stonecliff, a lovely country house-style resort about a mile and a half outside town and a truly beautiful setting for a wedding, in fact weddings are kind of their thing.  

Now, here's the thing about The Island: Staying anywhere outside of town presents difficulties unless you are in good physical condition and inclined towards activity.  It bears reminding you there are no cars.  You can get a horse drawn taxi with a significant wait as long it's not too early in the morning or late at night.  Otherwise you will be biking or hiking anytime you need to get somewhere and back, often up steep hills.  As there was no way the Stonecliff resort was able to house all the wedding guests, there was much long range to-ing and fro-ing among the wedding party.  In my case I made a couple of trips back and forth on foot, including one at about 2AM in a state of significant inebriation.  Since I am in good physical condition and inclined towards activity, I was mostly fine.  The inebriation part was a throwback to my college days from whence I knew most of the attendees, and was mostly less than fine.  It has been decades since I was in a true state of drunkenness and I'm good if it never happens again.  I did a 6 mile run the next day as penance...although you'd have to define run very broadly to include any manner of forward locomotion.

That aside, it was still a wonderful trip to The Island as always.  The wedding went off beautifully. Though it was a rainy day, the rain timed itself exquisitely to allow the ceremonies to continue unhindered.  And it was good to see many familiar faces from all around the country -- Virginia, North Carolina, even as far as California.  The Island is such that in a situation like that you will randomly happen across folks you know as you are trolling around, making it all feel very serendipitous.

More often than not, my trips to The Island have been solo; occasionally I've had Island-savvy friends along, but this is the first time I got to see The Island with a number of first-timers.  They confirmed my view of it as a very special place.

Saugatuck

A last word about The Island is that it was packed.  It was as busy as I have ever seen it.  Frankly, I was lucky to get a room.  The following weekend was the weekend of the 8-mile race I did for ten straight years pre-covid. I could not get a room for that weekend, and believe me I tried everything.  That has never happened before.  I have occasionally

had to pay an arm and a leg for a room at the last minute, but I have never been skunked. That left me and a few friends with no destination, no race, and an empty weekend.

Enter Saugatuck and the Mount Baldhead Challenge.  Saugatuck is a little "arts" community on the west coast of Michigan.  By "arts" I mean a very picturesque, wealthy, walkable town with lots of shops and bars, frequented by boaters, with a sizeable and visible gay community. I'm sure there is some actual Art involved too.  It's a sweet little place about a 2.5 hour drive from my house. It's actually closer to Chicago than Ann Arbor or Detroit, so it gets a lot of weekenders from the Windy City environs.  So when The Island fell through for us, I picked it for an alternate destination.

Serendipitously, this was also the weekend of the Mt. Baldhead Challenge, a short-ish (less than 10k) but truly brutal trail race through the woods and dunes of Saugatuck.  So, lucky us, we not only had a new destination, but a new race also.  

The race was beautiful.  It started on the beach, wound through wooded trails of rolling and fairly steep hills, featured a stair climb of 300+ steps (a staircase built over the highest sand dune -- Mt. Baldhead, hence the name), and a beach run.  Beautiful, yes, but I bonked early and it became real torture for me.  I struggled as hard as I ever had in a race, even though the distance was relatively short.  My friends were a decade or so younger than me, so I had an excuse, but these are folks I was generally able to keep with previously.  Now I was finishing a short race 10 minutes behind them.  The specter of my age, and the degradation of my body, is starting to hover over everything I do.  Something must be done, but I don't know what.  But my angst aside, it was a great race in a great setting.  I'd probably do it again, and endure more angst.

One thing that stands out about this weekend for me was how compatible everyone was.  When I travel with others, I usually find that my inclination is to be more active than everyone else.  Not this group.  No ubers were ordered for short walks into town.  Walking a more scenic route was gladly accepted at the cost of an extra few hundred yards.  Besides the race we had a beach day that included a 5k beach walk in addition to the usual sitting and sunning.

Another thing that everyone was agreeable about was food and drink.  Usually in a group of people you have strong feelings about where to go and who likes what kind of food and who wants to go somewhere nice or somewhere casual.  Again, not here.  Nobody really worried about where we ate, knowing they could find something they liked anywhere. 

I am fond of saying that, while traveling with others is good in that you create shared experiences, it also means everything is a negotiation.  This weekend was a counter-example to that.

The last thing that stands out to me is how everyone (all Michiganders) commented, "how did we not know about Saugatuck before this?"  As with the newbies to Mackinac Island the previous weekend, it felt wonderful to share such a gem and have it so well appreciated.

So that was that.  Three great weekends in a row.  Could I live my whole life like that?  Make every weekend a fabulous getaway with friends? I'd like to try.