The Icelandic Saga of Gnarfigbjorn continues....

So now I know it's the compressor, a part that is expensive to replace and not a DIY job... not even for a genius like myself! I had been assuming that I only had a 1 yr warranty but that was based on bad info. I called Sears and they said the compressor was covered but only for the parts... not the labor which could easily run $300 or more... who knows?

So do we buy a new one? Although you can get some for pretty cheap, we were likely going to drop a grand for a nice albeit scratch'n'dent one. I scheduled a tech to come in... which meant 8-4 on Saturday... joy. But, par for the course this week, last night I came down with some kind of achy flue so staying home was no big loss.

The guy walked in at 3:30, looked at the model #, and said "compressor's shot". Apparently this particular model has a compressor that routinely shuts down after 3-4 years. AND I wouldn't be able to get it replaced until NEXT FRIDAY! But, guess what, it's all covered... woo hoo! The very knowledgeable guy gave me basically the entire recent history of Sears refrigerators which I will spare you although a tad unwillingly.

And, instead of living out of an ice chest like we've been doing for the past week we bored a little fridge which will be a relief. And no more APPLIANCE FORUM blogging... for a while, that is.

An Inconvenient Truth

Continued from Box'o Bugs...

As is typical for a Kerry-hosted party, there were cakes galore but one of the highlights specifically requested by the birthday boy himself (a strict, no nonsense event coordinator) was an ice cream cake. Unfortunately, although it had been in the freezer for hours, it was still ice cream soup. I didn’t have time to check it out but it turned out that the refrigerator was busted and the compressor wasn’t working.

Searching the Net for clues and hearing a few stories over beers with some guys pointed in the same direction: get a new one. If the compressor’s fried, it’s not worth replacing what with the refrigerant restrictions and welded connections and all.

But dammit, I had bought this fridge myself only about 5 years ago. Every other fridge I had ever lived with in the past had been handed down through the generations like a painting or an ugly lamp. And I had never seen one fail. I had lived in digusting, roach-infested student ghettos where apartments were routinely abandoned and often ransacked and yet the fridges survived. I remember walking through one place right next to the building that my own apartment was in where the patio door was shattered and the fire extinguisher had been expelled everywhere. The place had been this way for weeks and weeks and stupidly, I opened the fridge… a glimpse of a completely black/green interior caused a quick closure but the whiff was there. But I bet it would still run if the power were on!!!

So I pulled it out from the wall, lied down in the crud behind it, and pulled off the lower back panel. Being an engineer does give me the knowledge that machines aren’t magical creations and actually work by definite and logical processes but it doesn’t tell me how those processes are done by a big metal ball with copper tubing and several small buzzing plastic boxes with wires all over the place all coated in a half inch of lint.

As I posted earlier, having had a lawn mower, a washer and dryer, a CJ, an Isuzu beater of a truck, and most importantly, a lack of funds to spend on maintaining them, has taught me that having monkeyed with and lost is better than never having monkeyed with at all. Some folks, knowing that they have no idea what’s going on will understandably call for the repair guy or buy another. I, knowing that I have no idea what’s going on, will now go in both guns blazing. Poke around, blow on a few things, connect and reconnect wires, screw and unscrew… I’d say 8 times out of 10, this will fix whatever it is.

And that’s exactly what happened.

Let me point out here that typically I do seek a jog in the right direction before diving in. I don’t jump in totally blind. I’ll look at the manual, maybe talk with a handier friend, and peruse a few Internet forums on the more serious ones. But I’m not breaking out a voltmeter or measuring spark gaps or anything… mostly just un- and reconnecting. So far, it’s worked pretty well and I’ve hardly ever actually had to replace anything with this method.

So I had taken off the back of the fridge and had found out on the Net that a warm freezer but cool fridge section was likely a bad compressor. The recurring whining followed by a click and silence that I heard was probably the compressor trying but failing to start. In desperation, I hung my hopes on a “bad relay” diagnosis I had caught in my search and removed a few components trying to identify the relay.

They all seemed fine and I figured I’d be spending all the next day shopping for a new fridge and dealing with getting it installed and the old one removed. But I followed my gut and at 2am, re-installed everything and turned it on. It hummed smoothly and after an hour was still purring along and it seemed like the inside was cooling.

I slept well that morning.

Unfortunately, Kerry didn’t as Erin decided to continue the “I Hate this Cast” campaign.

D’oh!!!! And here, as I was actually writing this a few nights back, was where I heard the compressor whining and shutting off again… right at the point where I was practically gloating about my manly powers of mechanical ability.

So no fridge once again. And this after we had emptied the fridge of food, brought it to a neighbor’s, then when I thought I had fixed it, cleaned it all out and re-populated it with the grub. Faaaantastic.

Kill Your YouTube

Great... here I am once again, up at all hours watching Ren & Stimpy and Starblazers reruns.

Joy.

Box o' Bugs

A rather hectic 3-day weekend so far.

Thursday afternoon. It’s near the end of the fiscal year so I’ve got to get my orders shipped which makes it all the more tough when my boss signs me up for a 3-day training class… there’s no one else doing my job when I’m gone. So this means late nights and when I get home it’s rush-rush trying to prep for Liam’s Halloween birthday party.

During a meeting at work, the office administrator interrupts and asks me to step outside. Kerry’s been trying to reach me. I call her up. Erin’s fallen down some stairs and likely broken her arm.

Turns out she’s broken it in three places and now has a cast… she picked blue which surprises me given her and every single other 3-year old girl’s predilection for pink. Kerry was with her at the hospital for a draining 7 hours while they looked her over. For a bit, surgery was discussed which did wonders for our nerves but it turned out not to be necessary.

She spent the first night here at home waking up every few hours yelling about how she wanted it off. This breaks your heart coming from a 3-yr old little girl but it’s a lot better than “It hurts!”. Her anger and legendary stubbornness I can take but I’m glad I haven’t yet had to deal with her pain.

Friday was the day of Liam’s shindig. He’d been planning this for months. We had had a big party for his 5th so we weren’t planning on anything huge for his 6th but he kept building it up. At first he wanted a “trick party” in which various shenanigans would be played on the kids… the piñata would be filled with jello, the cake would be loaded up with salt and pickles, you know...fun stuff like that.

But as Halloween rolled around, it evolved into a haunted house theme. We put up a graveyard in the front yard and set up a haunted house in the garage complete with “m.f. snakes in the attic”, me lamely dressed up as a mad scientist, and one of those kiddie rows of boxes with holes in them where you poke your hand in and feel eyeballs (peeled grapes), dead bugs (packaging peanuts), worms (spaghetti), or a brain (a head of cauliflower dripping in vegetable oil).

She had spent most of the day resting in bed watching Dora and Backyardigans but, never being one to be left out of anything, Erin joined in the fun a little but was very low key compared to the usual fireball. Liam had a good time especially when he and all the other kids were chasing the mad scientist with squirtguns through the graveyard.

And then... with Kerry's coup de gras ice cream cake inside, the fridge decided to crap out.

It's the killer crabs!!!

Last Saturday, a friend invited Erin and me to go with him and his daughter to the Georgia Aquarium. His company was giving everyone an "office picnic" for everyone that included tons of food, crafts for the kids, free parking, and free passes for family and friends to the aquarium.

Must be nice.

Although there are plenty of good things about my job, in the 13 years I've been there, we've never had a company-sponsored "event".... unless you count free Domino's in exchange for spending your lunch hour listening to the group's growth numbers as an event.

Anyway, like we figured she would, Erin loved the aquarium. We had a conference room with it's own huge window on the main tank with the floating bus-like whale sharks as well as one on the beluga tank. Pretty sweet!

In amongst the commoners, we saw sea otters, penguins, giant sea crabs, eerie sand worms,luminous jellyfish slowly dancing as if to Lush, squadrons of rays, and a very creepy school of piranha. They all stood still in the water.. each one barely moving a fin... staring at the crowd... as if in wait for a pudgy hand to break the surface to spring into action.

We walked the entire thing without a hitch. She's gonna love the zoo.

Now Liam is another story. I can talk with him for days about lightning or icebergs or even glue machines but he couldn't care less about animals. Erin has had a pretend dog named Charley for a few months but when asked if he wants a dog, Liam will give an unequivocal "No". We took him to the Chattanooga Aquarium when he was Erin's age but he mostly just wanted to jump around on things.

When I took Erin with me to the Georgia Aquarium Saturday, he didn't bat an eye. No "What? Why can't I go?" He was way into helping Kerry setup the garage for his upcoming Halloween-style birthday party. More on that later....

Remotely Chipotle

Today, lunching at Chipotle Grill, sitting out on the porch… I bathe in suburban splendor. I am surrounded by a busy parking lot in a strip mall itself surrounded by traffic-choked roads and I am sure that 80% of the people in the cars work within 2 miles. Not that I walked… I’m just as guilty myself but it made me wish fondly for the pedestrian areas in Europe, in which even the small towns have festive plazas bigger than anything similar in the entire city of Atlanta. And before any dittoheads start start telling me to emigrate, believe me, I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else but the US… it’s just this automobile prison we’ve built for our fat asses is stifling! And we’re so used to our cozy, air-conditioned, XM radio-bombarded, cup-holder-festooned personal spaces that actually interacting with the environment has become strange. There are at least 20 other tables on this porch and it is an absolutely perfect day and my cow orker and I share the outside dining area with no one. It’s almost as if they add these just to put on trendy, urban airs knowing that rarely will anyone use them.

But I am ranting… and need to get another beer.

There… that’s better.

Now, where was I? Oh yeah… so I’m telling this guy how some friends and I got lost mountain biking in Amicalola. We parked our cars at the top of the falls and hit the trail with about 4 guys (Mark, Keith, Ashim, and myself) and 2 dogs (Andy and Sasha). We ride around for a while… not a great trail nor even good but when it got even worse, we realized we were lost. But given that we had rode a lot of downhill, damn if we were going to go back.

We kept up our backcountry wandering and, at one point, came out on Springer Mountain, right at the start of the Appalachian trail. About half a mile down a fast hill from there, I realized I had left my helmet behind. Again… damn if I’m going back!

We emerged on some paved roads… still with no idea where we were and, in front of a house with a kennel full of what must have been around thirty Jack Russell terriers, all bouncing, barking, and kinetic in a blur of canine Brownian motion, we hailed down a passing Camaro and got directions to a main road.

We were all pretty exhausted, each having ridden further than we ever had before and the dogs were in sad shape. We got to the main road and realized we were now in the area of another mountain bike trail, Bull Mountain, which was 8 miles along mountain highway back to our cars!

Ashim and Keith stayed with the dogs who’s paws were bleeding and Mark and I began the up and down road trek back to Amicalola. When we got there, it was almost too dark too see and I begged a ride up the hill to my Jeep from a couple at the Visitors Center… a hill I would not have been able to make. I was feeling ill so Mark drove us back to pick up the rest of the crew and return them to their car.

Unfortunately, I did not bring the top along with the Jeep… nor did I include a parka… something I realized I was in desperate need of on the long, cooold drive home. We stopped at a Burger King at some point and I puked in the bathroom… from exhaustion, I presume.

We ended up getting home around 10 and relaxed a little, overcome by the day’s ordeal. Someone rang up saying there was a big party at the Black Hole and we stayed out until 5 in the morning.

One Day in the Life of Jim Kindovisonovabich

A typical weekday in my life in 2006 starts at 6:20am. After I pet the cat a little (no, it’s NOT a euphemism), I shower and do all the other morning grooming routines. I get the coffee going then wake up Liam and fix his breakfast (usually cereal but starting to become oatmeal more and more as the cold weather seeps in) while he dresses then chat with him for a little. Kerry usually wakes up around now and sometimes Erin too. I munch on a bagel at the bottom of the driveway and chat some more with Liam until his bus picks him up.

I make about a 20 minute commute to work which isn’t too bad for 8am traffic in my neck of the woods… the rapidly-disappearing ones splitting their seams with giant showpiece homes, “lifestyle” centers, and Chipotle Grills. I spend about an hour answering e-mails then onto my usual stuff: answering questions from Sales, putting together Bills of Materials for Quotes, and trying to expedite parts for my system orders. At lunch, I’ll either run or work through most of it.

Back at home, I play in the backyard with the kids a little, we eat dinner, then a little more play until it’s time to get them to bed. If I’ve got Erin, then it’s an ABC or Richard Scary book then another one or two from the library then maybe a made-up Dora story. If I’ve got Liam, probably one of the kid science books my Mom got them then a library book and then we talk about stuff or I make up a story about Transformers or something else sci-fi. Then the rest of the night I'm making my lunch for the next day, getting my jogging stuff ready, cleaning up around the house, and talking with Ker.

On the weekends, I’ll work on the outside (mowing, raking, etc.) and we usually have a soccer game or a birthday party to go to and hopefully we fit in a hike somewhere. This weekend, we found out a way to go camping even if we have some kind of engagement to attend. We camped at Shady Grove Campground on Lake Lanier… it’s about 15 minutes from our house so we did two nights and a soccer game! We found a great spot right on the lake.

Yes, it’s a far cry from backpacking through the Smokies but, hey, I can sit around a fire, drink beer, and eat campfire hot dogs… the best meal in the world!

Waiter! What's this fly doing in my soup?

I tried to find the non-jokes I mentioned in the replies to the last post without success.

The only one I remember goes something like this:

As the doctor was setting his arm, the patient asked, "When my arm heals, will I be able to play the violin?"

Doctor: "Yes, definitely."

Patient: “That’s a relief… I’m a concert violinist for the London Symhony.”

But I did find this.

The waiter/fly joke is the closest to the jokes Mark sent me but the Holocaust one is a keeper....although the whole humor analysis thing pretty much knocks the funniness out of it.

I just got back from Vegas and boy are my arms tired…

It’s a good thing I went out there for the end of the trade show… things were winding down and some of the crew I was with took the “what happens in Vegas” thing pretty seriously! Just my two nights had me feeling wiped out the entire day I headed home. The whole city is a giant adult playground for endless drinking and spending lots of money and I don’t know how some of the salesguys did it for 5 nights in a row.

Actually I do know. People always say how they can’t drink the way they could when they were young but I don’t think age has much to do with it. It’s the tolerance you lose when you stop livin’ the viva loco. These guys probably pull a bender at least once every week… like I did back in the day when I could wake up after a night of carousing and go mountain biking. Now I’m lucky if I can stay vertical for longer than 5 minutes straight.

Vegas, Bobby.... Vegas!

No bloggin' for a few nights as I will be carousing with adhesive dispensing equipment salesmen and window manufacturers in Vegas.

Yes, son... some day, all this will be yours!

A Busy, Busy Day in Busytown

Started off last Saturday with the East Atlanta Strut 5k. I parked behind Grant Street Pizza but they were telling everyone that you couldn’t park there. They said I was ok because I was coming back after the run but apparently 3 ladies emerging from a hair salon draped in shampoo capes didn't get the word. Definitely a bizarre sight at 7:30 Saturday morning in East Atlanta!

Then a girl was going off about an empty beer can (stressing “Budweiser”) on the base of a lightpole. What type of person would be surprised at this? It’s a bar area downtown. Even the cleanup crew at the Country Club misses the occasional empty, right? Am I some sort of hip cynic for being annoyed?

Ran the race. Drove BACK to Cumming for Liam’s soccer game. It was a hot game and they had no subs, partly thanks to another winy girl… however this one was 5 years old so a little more understandable but I was not too happy seeing my son exhausted while she sat on the sidelines in her uniform the entire game.

Builds character, I guess.

Then off to one of those bouncy-room birthdays we OTP’ers occasionally have. Typically, it’s a large unit in a business area or a strip mall with a giant room containing half a dozen inflatable rooms… sturdy, well-constructed ones, not cheapies. They pump in the latest bubblegum techno tunes and the kids (and a few of the adults) go nuts.

Then BACK downtown to the East Atlanta festival where we promptly escape the heat by plopping down on the comfy chairs in the corner of the Graveyard, the newer restaurant/bar place. We stay there for almost 2 hours… some festival! Actually, K and I loved seeing all our old friends but I figured the kids were bored. Turns out it was Liam’s best time of the entire day.

Oh, you guys!

Ok… a little break from the end of the world stuff… plus I reached the end of what I’ve typed so far and I’m not in the mood to continue.

A few days ago I was eating my lunch at work. I bit into my polyvinylturkey (PVT) sandwich and, about ¾ of the way into chewing it, my brain started registering that something was a little off. Part of me knew exactly what it was but the part of me that doesn’t care about anything said keep going, maybe it’s your imagination. Plus I was on the Net with one hand, sandwich clenched in the other, so investigating would’ve meant stopping what I was doing.

So I took another bite.

My hunch was confirmed. It was a piece of the plasticy paper they put between cheese slices. But instead of spitting out the bite, I finished it, swallowing away, before dissecting the sandwich and getting rid of the paper.

I’ve never been particularly discerning about food. One roadtrip, long ago, a friend and I grabbed some food at a Wendy’s drive-thru. I got a burger and he got a chicken sandwich. When he started into his, he realized it was a burger. Unfortunately, I had already eaten half of mine… err… his. He was amazed that I hadn’t even noticed. In my defense, I don’t think I’m the only one who thinks all the gloppy fast-food concoctions taste like mayonnaise and salt.

My roommates in college, Matt and Mark, quickly realized this about me and exploited it for a laugh, as we all viciously did every single nuance about each other at every opportunity. A napkin in a Subway sub and one of those goofy rubber bracelets masqueraded as licorice were the highlights. Of course, there was no alcohol involved in either of these incidents. I’m shocked you would even ask.

911: 9/14 Bethany Beach, Delaware

Alexis decided she needed to get contact w/Kruel immediately so we left the shop and went across the street and up 2-3 stories to her office. By the way, we had passed lines of people waiting at pay phones because the cell’s didn’t work.

9/15/01
Today’s Anne’s wedding and all is chaos. The plan was to have the entire wedding, ceremony, and reception on the beach bit it’s gotten way too windy so the reception has been moved to a Holiday Inn… the ceremony should prove interesting.

Alexis’ office building was an old brick converted warehouse kind of place. Everyone was huddled around the PC screens and the phones trying to make sense of what was happening.

[again, note that this is a journal… days and events are happening while I’m tryin’ to record the day of 9/11. I had to cut in here because that whole wedding bit seems way out of place but this is life]

9/19/01 11PM
First the Trade Center attack (Liam, [sometimes I’m journaling to my kids] it’s still the biggest thing by far in the news… other stories are only just starting to crawl in at the end… everyone has flags on their cars and houses and they’re all over my office), then a bunch of decision wrangling about whether or not to take you and Kerry up to Amherst, OH, with me on a week-long trip next week, then closest to home, Keith…

[what follows is a around 4-5 pages describing a very close call with death that a friend of mine had that I’ll skip for this]

9/22/01
Right now I’m in a Comfort Inn in Lexington, Kentucky. I’m on a drive to Amherst where I’ll be staying all next week for work and decided to drive up and bring Kerry and Squeaky [Liam’s nickname back then]. Mainly because Kerry was a bit freaky about being left alone for a week with all these crazy things happening: new job for Jim, a friend dying,, and the US embarking on a military mission to “wipe-out” terrorism because of the Trade Center toppling (Jeez! Still hard to believe… I swear, a picture in the new Newsweek looks exactly like a movie poster). I hate this pen… going to the rental car to get a different one.

911: 9/12 - 9/14, back with Team K

The crazy thing is that if this had happened (wait… there were a lot of crazy things about this…) one of the sobering points about all this is that if it had happened about an hour and a half later there is a very good chance (I’ll say 75%) that I would’ve been up in one of the towers or at least at the base depending on how much the ascent cost and what the observation deck was supposed to be like. But I can easily see me grabbing a bagel and a cup of coffee after dropping off Alexis and heading to the towers. I had the whole day to kill and intended on walking all over Manhattan. Since I was right near Wall St and had already seen the Trinity Church before, I would’ve probably trekked over to the WTC and tried to replicate Kruel’s shot of the two towers from the ground between them. I had this as my PC’s background picture once.

RT: My stop’s coming up again. Hopefully this works out.

9/13/00
Two days after the attack and, of course, it is still about the only thing on TV. Right now, I’m at the beach with Kerry’s family. It was great to get back with Kerry and Liam… Team K is whole again! Kerry was pretty upset after the incident and is scared to fly a plane. I believe they resumed flights today.

Last night at the station in Wilmington, Kerry and Mr. Scanlon picked me up since no one could get in touch with Rosemary who was in the Wilmington area but her cell phone wasn’t working.

9/14/01
So I had about two hours to kill in Wilmington so I asked an attendant where to get some food and ended up down the block at a place called Bernie’s. I think it said on the wall outside “Since 1948” or something also that they were famous for chicken cheese steaks. A placard outside the door said tonight’s special was 2$ Juenling’s, a local beer (that I can’t spell… “Yuenling”?) that supposedly is one of the oldest beers in the States and I think it’s pretty good… sort of a perfect medium between the body and heartiness of Bass and the smoothness of Bud. [Yuenling is not really local unless you consider the entire middle east coast “local” and the draft is much better than store-bought].

Turns out the place was like something out of a TV show: the wise-cracking, tough guy behind the bar (who I think was the owner), the heavy-set but fiery waitress, and the peanut gallery of regulars… plus the cheesesteak was great. Talking to a big beefy guy at the bar who was putting down shots of whiskey followed by beer, I found out the place is mainly a cop/fireman hangout.

The place was awash with the “Let’s bomb’em back to the stone age” sentiments but tempered more than you might think with reason especially from the owner. It’s going to suck being an Arab right now with the inevitable ignorant backlash. The whole attitude of some people that all people of a certain ethnicity are a certain way is the ignorant thing… people are individuals and though I’m sure some cultural stereotypes are true in general… you still can’t apply them to all.

Anyway, the bar was great. The guy bought me a beer. And both he and the waitress wanted to help the situation. He was planning on joining the military and she wanted to put up separated children in her house. Nice.

Now I’m back with Team K. It’s Friday and Kerry still maintains she won’t fly. I guess we’ll end up taking the train and might miss some of the wedding… we’ll see.

Alexis and I walked to a coffee shop across from her office in the South Seaport building. I think that’s where we saw a TV and realized it was two planes that hit… then we knew it was terrorists.

911: 9/12 on Broadway, then on a train out

I had mentioned that all the stores were closed south of 14th but there were plenty of food places and a bar or two… mostly, it was only little Mom and Pop-type stores that were open… none of the department-type stores were operating. Walked across Broadway… took a picture of the Flatiron Building framed by the dust cloud.

Of course, the attack is all anyone’s talking about. I’m in a perfume shop buying t-shirts (more on this later) and a master haggler mentions to the counter guy she’s furiously workin’ that her cousin was up in one of the towers and got away. The pizza guy is raving unintelligibly about it… an Arabian-looking homeless guy is screaming about Afghanistan… the guys behind me on the train are discussing it… the guy I asked about how you know what track to get on was down where I was and is only now getting out… amazing.

Around 30th and Broadway, which is I guess the perfume district given the abundance of fragrance shops… many open but most closed… I pass by a place selling t-shirts 4 for $10.

RT: On the train in New Jersey, looking back at the “adjusted” skyline , with the massive blot rising from the center of lower Manhattan. Weird how just 3 days ago I was on an identical train looking at the same scene only with the two beautiful towers pre-dominating the skyline.

I go in and look them over, looking for ones with the WTC featured prominently, the same thing I did about a half hour earlier with postcards… with the postcards, I got a plane one that even showed the seaport section Alexis and I ended up in when the towers crumbled I didn’t want the ones with a colorful “Welcome to New York!” Usually that goes well with my typically dark humor but, for some reason… too soon I guess, too all around me… I felt funny about the whole thing… especially about the shirts. I was thinking Liam might think it was cool to have a t-shirt (cheap that it is) with the WTC on it bought by his dad in New York the day after it happened. The whole “collectible” thing is ridiculous as they can always print these up and plus there’s millions of them… but then I felt funny again about it… like I was demeaning all the people killed, hurt, and affected by the tragedy… I feel like a newscaster using that word but it’s hardly an exaggeration… like I was cheapening the affair to tourist attraction. So I left.

A street away I called Kerry and talked to her mom about it and she thought I should buy them. My sister later agreed so I went back to the store and bought up shirts. Plus 3 baseball caps with NYPD on them as a tiny tribute… to the officers that (I believe) lost their lives and to all the men and women working hard to stabilize the city and assist with the cleanup and rescue efforts.

In Princeton Junction , grabbed a Village Voice that someone left on their seat. The cover is of the two towers… one burning, the other immediately after the impact of the airliner… “The Bastards!” is the headline.Only mention of it inside though is one pretty good account of a guy that must have been a little closer than me… similar story though. I guess the paper was all printed and ready to go but they worked overnight to change the front cover and add a story.

I’ll continue my account of the events yesterday. I left off just after the fireball from what I now know was the 2nd plane hitting the other tower. But the train is about to get into Trenton and I need to figure out how to get to Williamsburg… I mean, Wilmington, Delaware, around 6pm so Rosemary (Petunia?) can pick me up and take me to Bethany Beach.

Now I’m on the SEPTA train, the subway system for Philly, heading for the center of the city (30th St. Station) where hopefully I can manage to change trains with the one going to Wilmington.

These three old “sitting around the bar, having a few cold ones, rehashing war stories”-kinda guys are making comments like “they oughtta dust off that old bomb they got and drop the big one on’em” and one guy’s talking about putting on his old uniform. Two ladies I was talking to getting into Trenton had come up to NYC just today to check out how everything was… I’m kind of surprised at that… but then again, after yesterday, I probably won’t be surprised again in my whole life. Man!

Right before the cops started moving everyone out, we were standing at the base of a small staircase going up to a plaza in front of a building. From what Alexis said, we were on Maiden Lane between Nassau and William looking W or NW at the north tower and the edge of the southern one (I’m looking at the map right now). I can’t remember what side of the N tower the news said the first plane hit… the north tower is the one… well, WAS the one with the huge antenna structure. But the side we were looking at (I assume this was the east face) was a fiery hellstorm of deep black smoke and giant flames. Apparently (and I could be wrong) the 2nd plane came from the south and hit the southern side of the south tower… I don’t remember hearing a plane but we were deep down between the buildings and there were sirens (actually the sirens didn’t start til a few minutes after we came out of the subway… I’m assuming the first plane must have hit at about the time we were rolling into Fulton Station) and all sorts of commotion. Apparently, the explosion and maybe even parts of the plane came entirely through the building emerging from the north face and, from our perspective, toward the “first” tower (the northern one). But, again, we were thinking the fire had set something off in the N tower causing the fireball.

After the fireball and the brief stampede, we moved down Maiden Lane to the stairway. There was a wall at the side of it that we could jump behind if there was another explosion so we stopped there for a while. That’s where we took some more pics including ones with ourselves in them and where Alexis picked up the papers. The one I retained must’ve been from the first hit on the N (or the NW) tower because I doubt all the papers coming down from the 2nd had landed by that time. [?]

RT: NE Philly is not very attractive in the slightest… old industrial areas, abandoned factories, empty parking lots, rundown houses… looks like Paper Street from “Fight Club”. My stop’s coming up.

Approx 6pm.
Now I’m on the train to Wilmington where hopefully I’ll meet up with Rosemary. My phone’s running down so hopefully things will work out. Damn those Amtrak’s are fast!

I think we were on the south side of the Fed Reserve Building but I’m not sure about that. So we were moved from our spot and began walking east making our way to Alexis’ office. There’s a large promenade we passed where apparently the Kruels had ate with Smulley and LP during their visit. Now it was a mass of people all staring over our heads as we came up to them. A limo slowly made it’s way west [this is wrong… it was going east… away from the WTC] along with us through the throng with it’s rear window and part of it’s roof completely smashed. It was like being in Beirut or something… insane.

911: 9/11 at the Kruels' in Brooklyn

9/11/01
Someone on the news mentioned the only significance of that date that I’ve heard: 911. I feel I may have come across as casual or flippant in some of my immediate conversations and and postings and the fact that we took pictures, picked up pieces of paper as souvenirs, etc. For one thing, the person at home is seeing the extreme scenes over and over interspersed with solemn newscasters gravely and emotionally trying to report the situation. For much of the early part of the action, we didn’t know what’s going on. We had no idea 2 planes full of people were destroyed and this lack of knowledge adds to the already extreme surrealness, the other-worldliness of the situation plus the fact that the whole thing seemed straight out of a movie enhanced the feeling that it wasn’t really happening. When extreme things happen to me (the bear, a crazy plane ride, etc.) I admit I often smile… I don’t really know why… the fact that the control of events is beyond me and I’m just riding it out… I smile. I also make extreme comments… I don’t know, it’s how I deal with the absurdity of the situation. I have yet to panic or feel an emotional rush in [any of] the extreme situations I’ve been in.

Besides we’re dealing with it in all real-time and I feel many people deal with it all by acting normal and matter-of-fact… everything’s ok here, just a normal day, etc.

9/12 About noon
I’m on my way back home. Although I could’ve taken the subway to 34th which is right near Penn Station, I wanted to see more. According to the news that we’ve been watching continuously all businesses south of 14th are closed so I figured the train wouldn’t stop. But it did so I got out at Broadway and Layfayette which is south of 4th. Right now I’m sitting on Broadway in the doorway of an Urban Outfitters store, an overpriced trendster clothing store identical to the others around here which are all closed.

The doorway next to me has a contraption that places spikes on the steps so a bum couldn’t sit… the city. The only traffic car-wise is cop cruisers parked at the intersections. Sirens, loudspeakers, klaxons, and bullhorns are the extent of the noise. Though there is a fair amount of foot traffic… seems like the normal mix to me. Everyone seems a bit quieter and calmer than usual… solemn I guess.

Once again it’s a beautiful sky besmirched once again by the brown pillar that has replaced the magnificence that was Trade Center towers. Absolutely unbelievable.

12:20pm
At the 14th line of demarcation (Union Square), a girl next to me is on the phone trying to get a hold of lost loved ones… half crying… “we’ve called the hotline, I’ll keep trying…” horrible… the catastrophe. I just walked up a bare, end-of-the-worldish Broadway. I walked up the middle of the street at noon! At 10th, you could look straight down the empty avenue to the cloud of atomized cement glowering over the city like a mocking genie… given its probable origins, a “djinn” is the more appropriate spelling.
2:40pm
Now on the train sitting at Penn Station bound for Trenton, NJ. Heard all the NJ Transit trains are free as they’re just trying to get all the people trapped in Manhattan out… since all… repeat, ALL… airplanes are down. No planes flying in America save for military and emergency. At Union Park Square, there were banners laid out that people were writing messages on… pretty sad… mostly messages of hope and healing and remembrance … WTC always!

911: 9/11 on a rooftop in Brooklyn

9/11/01 2PM Tuesday

Well kids, if you look up the date I just wrote, you’ll see what I’m about to write about… and I was about 2-3 blocks from it!

They knocked down the World Trade towers!!

HOLY FUCK!!!

Right now I’m sitting on a rooftop in Brooklyn. The giant plume of ugly ashen smoke from lower Manhattan cuts a brown-gray swath across a beautiful hot sunny sky. The world’s greatest city is burning! Here’s how it went down…

Bryan, Alexis, and I were on the subway from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Bryan got off and Alexis and I headed toward Wall Street. It was the last day of a short stint in NYC and I was carrying my big bag. The plan was to drop off my bag at Alexis’ office at (fill in later) [the South Street seaport] and walk around the city on my own then pick up my pack and catch a train at Penn Station around 4:30. With visions of a nice cup of coffee and a bagel, I stepped off the train (very crowded) with Alexis at Fulton St. station. We walked toward the surface and emerged.

It must have been just after 9… I’ll check later. Anyway, something was up… literally. Everyone was pointing. I look up and see tons of smoke everywhere… a fire! There must be a big fire somewhere. At first all I think is inconvenience what with traffic and all but then as we get through the throng the realization dawns on me. The World Trade Center is on fire!

We stop at a corner [corner of Nassau and Maiden Lane at the Federal Reserve building] and since we brought the Kruels’ digital camera… I was going to borrow it for the Gotham trek… we started snapping pics. Oh my God! Look at the flames… it’s getting bigger. Wow!

The streets are filled with people pausing from their commute to stare in awe as this New York icon… Hell, this America icon burning. Wow, what are they going to do? They can’t get water that high… are people trapped? Wow! This is crazy! Millions of pieces of paper are fluttering down… only a few are really raining about us.

Suddenly there’s a huge crash! Not the deep rumble of an explosion you might expect but more of a metallic crash like a hundred car wrecks or a million beer cans being crushed. A huge orange-red-black fireball roils and grows filling the center of view we’re staring at.

Screams! Screams! Screams! Immediately and simultaneously, like an instant street marathon on speed, the entire crowd in front of us is stampeding at us.

I’m jumping up and down screaming “Holy Fuck! Holy Fuck! Ho-ly-Fuck!!!”

RT: Jets are flying overhead… the only things in the air right now are military… more later.

And Alexis is (new pen!)

More RT: Pieces of paper are fluttering down even over Brooklyn… 2 pieces settled about three rooftops away. Now I’m going to (I’m inside watching the news) go out and walk Devo with the Kruels and try to find a working ATM (they’re all not working).

Alexis is freaking but snapping pictures. I suddenly became aware of our danger with the stampeding crowd and pulled Alexis up against the building… but the panic eased enough as suddenly as it started.

We walked down the street a halfblock and stopped. I figured something had exploded in the building due to the inferno. There was a huge damaged corner of the other tower that was surrounded with flames and burning/smoking sections… we couldn’t see the rest of this tower because of all the buildings. I figured a chunk or something from the explosion had hit the 2nd building… we both had no reason to think the 2nd tower had exploded, too! I just thought it was a big fire.

Then, from people running around on their cell phones, we started to realize a plane had crashed into the building. Oh wow, so that’s what caused the fire and explosions! We still didn’t know about the 2nd plane.

RT: Right now, the sun’s gone down and I’m back on the Brooklyn rooftop. The smoke plume is still growing strong and seems wider over Manhattan. For a short time before sunset, the pillar was pink. Right now everyone’s inside watching a TV as the events of the day are repetitively and agonizingly gone over and regurgitated to a hungry populous.

Alexis picked up a piece of paper ringed with char. There was tons of it coming down… just to the side of the tower it looked exactly like a ticker-tape parade from the newsreels. She handed me a piece neatly lined with black… turns out it was a sheet from a safety procedure with discussions of emergencies and and evacuations and such… ironic.

Our cell phones weren’t working… all the channels or whatever were slammed with traffic. The cops started clearing the area so we walked to Alexis’ office…

Oh, right after the explosion I saw a lady crying… an end of the world “how can this be happening” wail… chrissakes, this was a constant in the lives of New York, the fucking World Trade Center! Both buildings were on fire and burning strong, black smoke billowing skyward and the entire sky dotted by millions of elegantly falling pieces of paper.

It looked just like a scene from “Armageddon”, the horrible movie where in one scene, New York City is hit by meteorites. Someone in the business left a video game at Matt’s which he let me have called “Red Alert” which has scenes of NYC being attacked and skyscrapers burning from missile attacks. The World Trade Center is burning!

911: 9/9 on a northbound train in NJ

9/9/01
THERE ARE A MILLION STORIES IN THE NAKED CITY…
THIS
IS ONE OF THEM…

It was a beautiful sunny day in the city. A September afternoon with no signs of autumn to this untrained eye. I stepped off the train at Penn Station… in the same state of “What now?” befuddlement that afflicts everyone new to the din.

RT: Linden… about 30 more minutes till Penn.

Pulling along with the river of stone-faced denizens seemingly griping and unhappy with their lot (who else would travel the NJ Transit?), I spy a tall, lanky fellow who looks like he just left a lousy 80’s Brit-pop band to pursue solo projects.

Enough of this, back to journalistic-style… or lack thereof! We’re now in Elizabeth… North Penn Station is next according to the disembodied squawk overhead. North? Is there more than one place to get off? Ahhh!

There it is! The typical New York skyline view… Empire, Trade Center, and all… cast against… well, “backdropping” the stereotypical version of New Jersey… old, trashy, rundown buildings, factory shells, smoke stacks, hundreds of buildings resembling either government buildings from the 50’s or stalwart prisons… blech!

I think I heard the intercom wrong or it was wrong… I don’t think we’re near Penn Station yet but we’ll see… yeah, this is Newark. Penn is next.

Actually, I think I did this part (Newark to Penn) with Kerry last time but I’ll write about it this time anyway.

Warehouses, loading docks, rail yards, wires, nasty brown dead scrub… the city still looks like the dream city, the Emerald City, Cibola, or all those mythical cities whose names now escape me… what’s the one in Yemen?

Bridges, power stations, cable towers or whatever they’re called marching off like the robots in Berzerk. Empire State Building stands alone from out here… kind of a pretty little marsh right here.

About 10 minutes out, we’re underground!

911: Intro, 9/9 on a northbound train in NJ

Ok, here it is… basically straight from my journal. It is not chronological and jumps back and forth between just-happened events, things from the past, and even real-time (RT) happenings going on while I’m writing. Also, I guess my overall journal style is basically just getting the facts down… as if I were planning on writing a novel someday and I’m recording the bare-bones events planning to flesh out the reminders later. The end result of this is that it’s often pretty boring and trivial.

But that’s what I’m going for here right now. This is what I wrote down at the time… no hindsight and no elaborations. I have added a few things but they are very minor and they are enclosed in brackets. I’ve also omitted a little for personal reasons but you’ll probably end up wishing I had cut a lot more.

9/9/01
Here I am sitting on a train which I hope is bound for New York City… the numbers on the ticket don’t match the numbers on the info screen which don’t match the numbers on my internet printout which don’t match the @X!!*½%! numbers on the *@!?! train! Oh well, Danger is my middle name, yadda-yadda!

Ok, quick wrap-up of the Colorado trip. On Erik’s ATV I was going a bit too fast on the dirt roads and slid into a ditch and mashed my right index finger… no swelling , no cuts, no scratches but it hurts when I use it strongly (like opening a beer bottle) or push it up against something but the thing is, it hurts in exactly the same way and it’s been 1½ – 2 weeks. Hmmmmm…

We’re moving…NYC here I come…I hope!

I’ve only been on a train… a real train, I’ve been on Marta subways and subways in Toronto, Chicago… Actually, I guess the trains in Toronto and Chicago are trains and this is just a glorified subway so forget it… I know trains, I guess.

I’ve been to NYC once before but I think I covered it in this journal so no info here except that I was with Kerry and no locals so this trip should be different…on my own w/the Kruel’s.

Right now we’re [“we” referring to me and my fellow passengers] leaving Trenton, NJ, kind of a rundown city outside Philadelphia where we [now “we” is Team K] landed yesterday. We stayed at Aunt Mary Jane’s and Kerry, Liam, Helligram, and others are jetting down to Bethany Beach, Delaware, today. I’ll meet up with them Tues eve… Kerry’s Dad (Coach!) will be picking me up at Mary Jane’s and driving me down, Sat next week is Anne’s wedding on the beach and that’s why we’re up here.

Colorado! Climbed up Trinchera, another 13er, with young Erik [my cousin]. It wasn’t near as tough as West Spanish Peak in a couple of ways. We drove 3 miles up in his Cherokee which was actually a cool, 4WD road… definitely a Jeep road but really only a bit hairy in 2 spots. From the side of the mountain we started up on it looked like it was going to be an insane equipment-necessary rock climb but turned out there was a meadow going up the other side… though it was still steep it wasn’t as steep as WSP and not covered in tumbling rocks! There was a kinda-crazy rock climb at one point which was actually fun. Anyway, of course it was beautiful and windy and all that… loved it.

At another time, Kerry, Liam, and I were hiking around the cabin. We weren’t really on a trail and Kerry was a few feet ahead of me.

Real-time: All I see so far are nice green woods and cute country roads… very pretty especially considering all the bad press that New Jersey gets… wait, it’s getting uglier… no, it’s ok again… we’ll see.

Suddenly, Kerry turns back to me with this look of aghast on her face and I see a fairly-big bear (not huge but bigger than a big St. Bernard) lunging away from us across a little clearing. It was probably closer than 50’ from us where I saw it first… the closest I’ve been… especially scary w/ Liam & Kerry present! So we made a bunch of noise on our hike back… I was impressed with Kerry’s attitude esp since we kept off a trail in the woods… Aspelin is a bit freaked out by bears but I guess that’s the safe way. Puss!

RT: Wow, an Amtrak just passed by us. Even though it was going the same direction, it was a freakin’ blur! Better be, considering the cheapest Amtrak fare I could find was 5x what I paid for this NJ Transit train. It’s still going to take 1 hr and 15 min and it seems fine to me “niceness”-wise so I don’t know why the hell anyone would pay for the Amtrak. I have a feeling it’s all corporate paid for. Plus Amtrak is taxpayer subsidized! What the hell?

Just pulling out of New Brunswick, NJ, on-schedule and still pretty.

That same bear (we think) showed up that evening in the cow pasture behind the Aspelin’s cabin… just snuffling about. We took a bunch of pictures from the deck but who knows how they’ll turn out. The digital ones were lousy and even the little movie barely showed anything. I think that’s about it for Colorado but I may touch upon it again.

New Jersey is getting uglier (Metuchen, NJ) but old factories, junkyards, and warehouses could easily just be clustered next to the tracks.

RT: Metropark, train now crowded, trendite next to me.

Well, now it’s time to flip the book over [I write on both sides of the pages in my journals: one way on one side then flip the book over and go back on the other side]. Good thing because I think NYC is going to come into view soon… right now the train is at Rahway.

The Dart Chronicles - Intro

Ok, I don't really have a lot of time to post here but I'm trying to distance myself from the kitten fiasco...

The car I remember most from my college years was my 74 Dodge Dart Swinger and although it's condition was a far cry from the one shown here, at least you will (or hopefully will) see the allure... it's allmighty coolness. Mine was bright banana yellow with a white vinyl top.

Featured prominently in several of the stories to be told is a punch to the face in Daytona, a shopping cart, a newspaper machine, a hammer-beaten axle, and many cases of Busch beer.