Behind the Wire

What I learned in German class today:

  • Seven hours on trains one day after seven hours on a plane is not a recipe for a healthy back.
  • When the pre-sunrise countryside is shrouded in frost and mist, the single trees make the world look like a tilt-shift photo, or a model train set.
  • Stuttgart looks like the grayest place ever.
  • The trains don’t all run on time.
  • I can survive an hour stuck in a town named Ulm.
  • I could probably survive a lot longer in Ravensburg.
  • There’s a youth group or something called Gegen Nazis. Which, it turns out, means “Against Nazis”, but I was freaked out when I saw a teenager stomping down the sidewalk with that on his T-shirt.
  • I figured I would end up in Germany trapped behind a fence, staring up at three tiers of barbed wire, but I didn’t think it would happen in my first full day in country.

Abyss Seein’ Ya

Sorry it’s been so long since I last posted. For what it’s worth, it’s not that I wasn’t writing; I just wasn’t blogging. I’ve been spending some time trying to write a piece of fiction, because I still labor under the weird notion that I’ll be able to craft something more emotionally effective or Important if I do it under the guise of fiction.

It’s really difficult for me, because I’m too respectful of (my version of) The Facts, and also because I tend to make characters who think and react like I do. So I’m trying to get out of that.

Which brings me to Germany. I’m writing this in a cafe of Museum fur Kommunikation in Frankfurt. I’m here for a big pharma conference. Given my family history, I’m not thrilled about being here. I used to tell coworkers & friends that I’d never come here. Why now? Well, business demands it, and I goofed on my coworkers for cutting me out of this event last year, when it was held in Paris, so it wouldn’t be right for me to subsequently blow it off out of personal preference. I mean, it’s not like I’m going to attend a show in Dubai or Saudi Arabia.

But that’s not the only reason I’m here. I wanted to come because I wanted to see what it would do to me. I have no gauge of it right now. I got off the plane a couple of hours ago after an overnight flight, and my room isn’t ready yet, so I’ve just been wandering around the museum district and taking pix. I’m somewhat zonky from the flight, so I haven’t thought too deeply about Germanness. I do find it funny every time I see a word that ends with “fahrt”.

At the end of the week, I’ll visit a pharma facility in Freiburg. My dad says his dad’s family comes from Freiburg. I wonder if part of my ambivalence about this country comes from that idea that it’s part of my heritage. It’s not just nemesis, Mordor, base of evil. It’s in me.

Here’s a sheep with an old telephone for a face:

There are little kids having a birthday party here. Germans are so goddamned strange.

Torah Strong

Commenting on my Rosh Hashanah post, Rabbi Zvi wrote, “Nice wrap up. What about your aliya to the Torah? No mention? Chag Same’ach”

Just what I need: more Jewish guilt.

Well, since you asked . . .

The Days of Awe were a bit rough for me: straight from the shofar to the ER, then a week of work-craziness and anxiety that left me fearing imminent death. At the end of the week (Friday into Saturday), we had Yom Kippur, in which we fast to atone for our sins. (And, as Rabbi Zvi has reminded us the last few years, to become like angels, who neither drink nor eat.)

I had an appointment in NYC on Friday afternoon, which left me stuck in weekend-rush-hour traffic on the way out of the city. By the time I got home, it was just about time for Kol Nidre, the service & prayers that signal the beginning of Yom Kippur. I talked myself out of heading back out to pray, on the grounds that I’m a crap Jew, tired, already starting my fast, and didn’t want to leave the dogs feeling neglected. I can justify virtually anything. I stayed in and wrote about my difficult, mortal week.

The next day, I was supposed to pick up my father for Yizkor, so he could pray for his departed parents’ souls. But that morning, he told me that he was having bad flu-symptoms from his flu-shot a few days earlier. I asked him to zap over his and his parents’ Hebrew names, which I’d need to give someone to make the prayer in his stead.

I’d have said the prayers myself, but you’re supposed to leave the shul during those prayers if both of your parents are living. I can’t recall if I’ve ever asked the rabbi about it, but I think it’s verboten to stay in the shul for Yizkor prayers if your parents are still alive, even if one of them asks you to do it for their parents. Dad asked me to take care of this assignment a year or two ago, when his back/leg pain was too great for him to move. He e-mailed me the names: Abraham Ben Efraim [him], Efraim Ben Abraham [his dad], and Batia Bat Zelig [his mom]. I wrote them down (violating the Sabbath, holiday, and spirit of everything else), dressed nicely but not ostentatiously, picked up my tallis and yarmulke, and headed out.

Yizkor was scheduled for 11:30 a.m.; by JPT, that meant it would be shortly after noon. I left the house with plenty of time to get to the Courtyard Marriott where Chabad was hosting High Holiday services, but I didn’t reckon on an incredible traffic jam at the top of Rt. 287.

One of the key aspects of life in northern NJ is having alternate routes planned in case of traffic/accidents. But no matter how well you plan, you can get trapped sometimes, like when you’re on that eight-mile, exitless stretch of 287 from Oakland to Mahwah.

I crawled along for two miles on the highway, bailed at the 17 S. exit, and had to improvise a route to the Courtyard. I fretted that I would arrive too late for Yizkor. I had left my watch at home and had stowed cell phone and wallet in the glove compartment, so I wouldn’t be carrying all those concerns with me into temple, but the dashboard’s digital clock still taunted me. One voice told me that I shouldn’t be worrying so much, since all that anxiety helped wipe me out this past month. Another voice said, “You watch; this’ll be the one time a congregation sticks to the published schedule.”

I started to hurry once I was on 17, but decided to take it easy once I (safely) passed a speed trap. I realized I would have little chance of talking my way out of a ticket by telling a cop, “I was speeding to get to Chabad so I can pray for the souls of my father’s dead parents!” Perhaps if I pre-emptively put the tallis and yarmulke on, I would have garnered some pity and been let off with a warning. Better not to find out, I thought, trusting that Yizkor would run a little late.

I got to the Courtyard and parked next to a minivan. A gentleman in his 30s was standing at the back of the van, putting on a dark jacket. I thought perhaps he was also headed to pray, another part-time Jew like me. Then I noticed a duffle bag at his feet filled with two cases of Bud Light, and concluded that, no, he was not here for Yizkor. Probably a wedding, definitely a party. Clearly not fasting.

I grabbed my accoutrements, hurried into the building and found the hall that Chabad rented out for the holidays. The room was packed, with several men left standing in the back of the room on the other side of the mechitza, the partition that separates the men’s and women’s sections of a synagogue. The mechitza was wooden, with a lattice at the top. The door to the room was on the women’s (and children’s) side. As I walked in and hurriedly unpacked my tallis, Rabbi Zvi saw me through the lattice and said, “GIL! What’s your father’s Hebrew name?”

“Abraham,” I said idly. I think I’ve described Rabbi Zvi before. If not, here’s a picture:

Zvi

GIL BEN ABRAHAM!” he said, thumping the pulpit. I continued to unfold the tallis, making sure I had it oriented correctly. I reached around one of the overflow gentlemen to pick up a copy of the mahzor, the prayer book for the holiday. I looked for a seat, shook a hand or two with congregants and, as Hashem is my witness, was just trying to find somewhere I could creep in without making a scene.

“Gil!” Rabbi Zvi repeated. I looked to the front of the room, where he stood in front of an opened Torah. He gestured at it and said, “It’s your aliyah!”

I was being called up for a blessing of the Torah. That’s why Rabbi Zvi needed my father’s Hebrew name. That’s why everyone in my path was looking at me querulously and/or impatiently. Somehow, I was now the one delaying Yizkor.

I put the mahzor down and strode a few steps up to the Torah. I kissed the corner of my tallis, pressed it to the beginning and end-points of this Torah portion, then read the first blessing (which precedes the rabbi’s reading of that portion), which was written on a laminated page beside the Torah:

Barchu et adonai ham’vorach. (Praise the One to whom our praise is due)

The congregation responded:

Barchu adonai ham’vorach le-olam va’ed (Praised be the One to whom our praise is due, now and for ever)

And then I was like:

Baruch atah adonai, eloheinu melech ha-olam, asher bachar banu mikol ha-amim, v’natan lanu et tora-to. Baruch atah adonai, notein ha-Torah. (We praise You, Eternal God, Sovereign of the universe: You have called us to Your service by giving us the Torah. Wepraise You, O God, Giver of the Torah)

And I actually read them okay. I read from the Hebrew instead of the English transliteration beneath it, as is my prideful wont. Or it’s because I want to absorbe the shame of not being a very good Jew. Or some combo thereof.

Rabbi Zvi read the Torah portion, and then it was my turn to recite the second blessing.

Now, before I go into apologizing for messing this up, I want to offer up the following half-assed excuses:

a) I had a tough week and was still cognitively burned out,

b) I was fasting and hadn’t had coffee in 22 hours, and

c) I hadn’t had time to read along in Hebrew in the mahzor, which would have helped me get back into the annual flow of reading a prayer or two aloud in front of a few dozen people.

I do know exactly where I messed up in the second blessing:

Baruch atah adonai, eloheinu melech ha-olam, asher natan lanu torat emet v’chayei olam nata b’tocheinu. Baruch atah adonai, notein ha-Torah. (We praise You, Eternal God, Sovereign of the universe, You have given us a Torah of truth, implanting within us eternallife. We praise You, O God, Giver of the Torah)

And I screwed up on b’tocheinu. It’s got a slightly weird vowel and consonant combo, or at least one that I had so much trouble with in Hebrew school as a kid that I thought I might be slightly dyslexic. And, really, the fasting does make my tongue grow thick and unwieldy. (It’s not the lack of food so much as the water and, to a lesser extent, the caffeine.)

So I blundered my way through that one. Eventually my eyes darted down to the English transliteration so I could see how badly I’d messed up, and then I zoomed through the rest of the blessing, face a-flush with shame. The congregant called up for the aliyah before mine still stood beside the pulpit. I shook his hand, he returned to his seat, and I took his place, standing in front of the packed house. I thought, “Well, Yom Kippur’s not about being comfortable, and if I have to demonstrate my lack of Jewishness in front of a room full of observant Jews, then that’s on me.”

After the next aliyah, when it was my turn to sit down, I had to take a chair right in the front of the room, facing back at the crowd. Not my first choice, but it’s what was there, and abasement is abasement, as it were.

Two seats over from me was Guy, my dad’s Israeli pal. Guy had turned us on to this congregation a few years ago, when Dad told him my story about how our local shul kicked off Rosh Hashanah by opening with a prayer for the Palestinian victims of Israeli aggression. Guy & I chatted for a bit while the services continued.

I should note: this is what Jews do, at least in my experience. Sure, there are some prayers that are solemn, or otherwise performed in silence, or in unison, but during a lot of the time at shul, you’ll hear various conversations going on. Guy asked where Dad was. I told him about the bad reaction to the flu-shot, and he said, “I’ll call him tonight after the holiday. But how are YOU doing? Your father told me you were having problems with your heart.”

I’m starting to think that there are only two things over which my father has ever felt any bond with me: owning dogs and heart issues. I told Guy about the ER trip right after Rosh Hashanah, and we talked for a while more. I’ve perfected the trick of having trouble accepting other people’s concern for my health while also resenting people who don’t show concern. I’m a difficult man.

I asked Guy if he’d be able to say Yizkor for Dad’s parents, since he was going to be staying in to pray. He said he would, and I told him the Hebrew names of all involved.

During the services, both of the shul’s Torahs are held up and presented to the congregation. For the second one, Rabbi Zvi called up one of his regulars. The man was tall, older, powerfully built, with a pitted face and a short white beard (not a Hasidic beard, just a face-hugging one). He wore a large tallis draped over his shoulders like a lion’s pelt. It nearly reached to the floor, and he had to gather it up on his shoulders before he took up the Torah.

He held it aloft by two handles, and I felt a stirring of pride in my heart that nearly moved me to tears. (As I said, I’ve been much closer to my emotions these past weeks.) I looked at this middle-aged Jew in a hotel meeting room in suburban NJ, bearing the scroll that carries the word of the Lord and the history of our tribes. My shame at tripping over the aliyah melted away. I felt this wonderful sense of community, of a bond (okay, a convenant) that has been carrying on for millennia and would continue long after I’m gone.

Of course, it was fleeting. I can’t even keep my own mortality square in my sights, now I’m going to target my soul and the spirit of Judaism?

I stayed at services another hour or two, said goodbye to Guy, and stopped at my father’s on the way home. We sat on his front step and he talked for an hour. He told me about Gene Simmons’ visit to Israel on his reality show, about his new brick driveway and how it may be sloped toward the garage instead of away, about his brothers, about some reality show he’s obsessed with in which people sell their homes and move to foreign lands about which they’ve done zero research, about how part of his family came from Freiburg, where I’ll be spending a day next week, about another reality show featuring Italian-American car mechanics who appear focused on eating themselves to death.

I told him about a fine meal I had at Mario Batali’s Manzo a day earlier. I didn’t talk about Love & Rockets or The Leopard. I wanted to tell him that I love him, which we say sometimes in conversation, but really tell him, tell him that I appreciate his concern for me, that I’m sorry we never learned to talk to each other. I didn’t. I didn’t hug him either, thinking his vaccine-induced flu might be contagious.

Amy was smoking a pork shoulder when I got home. It smelled awfully nice, especially since I was 21 hours into a 25-hour fast. She apologized for being the opposite of kosher, and we watched LSU destroy Florida State for a while. I broke fast with a 10″ pizza from my favorite (local) pizza joint.

The Heart Wasn’t What the Heart Wasn’t

I had an appointment with a cardiologist on Tuesday, to follow up on my symptoms from September. Looking over my EKG and checking my vitals, he seemed a little incredulous about my ER experience. I wondered if he suspected me of being an insurance investigator or something. He said that I was perfectly healthy, and supported my theory that the symptoms were a result of the stress-caffeine-anxiety axis. I’ve subsequently finished my two big stress-related activities, cut my daily caffeine consumption by around 45%, and am trying not to give a shit about little things.

(About the coffee: For the last few months, I was drinking 7 cups a day, and have cut that back to 4. I was drinking a 3-cup mug around 5:00 a.m., when Amy & I get up in the morning, a 2-cup mug of French press around 9:30 or 10 a.m., then another 2-cup French press at 2:00 p.m. The mid-morning once was the stress-related / stress-inducing one; I used to just drink the early morning and early afternoon ones, but found myself in the mid-morning routine as a result of “picking up something” on the way to the office. Starting the Monday after my ER experience, I cut the 5:00 a.m. mug to 2 cups, eliminated mid-morning, and retained the 2-cup 2:00 p.m. one. It’s my drug of choice, and I’m sure other people are just as exacting about their booze, cocaine, etc.)

Hearing about my family history of atherosclerosis (Dad and his far less obese brother both needed quintuple bypasses in their mid-60’s), the doctor wanted to perform a multifunction cardiogram (MCG). He left the exam room to check on my coverage, then came back to say, “It looks like your insurance doesn’t cover the test. I think you should have it, but it DOES cost $175 . . .”

“. . . And?” I said, reaching for my wallet.

“Well, you don’t have to pay for it all at once.”

“. . . No, that’s okay. I don’t mind,” taking out a credit card. A nurse took that and rang me up for it. I just spent $180 to get some Joost Swarte pictures framed, so I’d feel like a dolt if I complained that it cost too much to find out if I have early signs of arterial blockage.

The test went fine. It consists of a single electrode on the chest, plus 4 jumper-cable-style clamps on the wrists and ankles. The nurse reassured me that I wouldn’t get a shock from them. I had to lie still for 3 or 4 minutes, during which time I nearly fell asleep. That test, too, came back just fine.

The cardiologist and I made vague plans about a second date 6 months from now, and I drove home.

On the way, I noticed a bookstore. In suburban NJ (Hawthorne, in this instance), those stand out. Well Read was “New & Used,” which I feared meant a lending library of romance and James Patterson books, but I pulled over to check it out.

I was pleasantly surprised by the selection. Sure, no Anthony Powell or Richard Flanagan, but it had a non-pandering array of fiction, and some interesting selection on its comics shelf. Tthe YA section looked to be dominated by vampires, but hey.

I decided, “If they’re willing to keep a bookstore open in the suburbs in this day and age, they deserve my money.” I opened up the Amazon app on my phone and looked over my wish list to find something that I could buy. I was hoping they had Lucky Bruce, the new memoir by Bruce Jay Friedman, but no luck. And the new Neal Stephenson book is too huge for me to buy in hard copy; that’s a Kindle read for next summer.

Eventually, I settled on The Finkler Question, by Harold Jacobson. I hadn’t read it, but thought, “It won the Man Booker, and it’s about Jews in England, so that’ll make a nice gift for Mom.” I picked that up, thanked the clerk for fighting the good fight, and left him to the two old ladies who were trying to find “that book. No, I don’t know the title, but it’s about a detective . . .”

Now that I know I’m “perfectly healthy,” how do I keep from falling back into time-wasting routines? How do I stay up after the wake-up call?

I Don’t Know How She Does It . . .

“She,” in this case, being Joyce Carol Oates, who has lived with a diagnosis of tachycardia for the past 40+ years. I recall reading an interview with her a bazillion years ago in which she mentioned that the heart condition could kill her at any time, and that the knowledge of that potential sudden death helped her get over any anxiety she had about writing.

But maybe I’m misremembering that last part. Since getting out of the ER last Friday, I’ve been on a rollercoaster. The heart/lung symptoms that prompted the ER visit changed by the beginning of the week; the “weird fluttering” is gone, but I found myself having episodes where I was yawning repeatedly, almost compulsively, never quite able to get enough air. I’ve got a cardiologist appt. early next week, and I’m hoping to get confirmation that whatever-this-is is stress- and/or allergy-driven, and that my heart and lungs are fine.

It’s been a very difficult stretch for me, especially because I spend so much time alone. If I’m not talking to other people (or the dogs), I talk to myself. I’ve spent much of the past week with two voices in my head: one yelling, “You’re a hypochondriac!” and the other yelling, “You’re going to have a heart attack and die tonight!”

(There’s a third voice, actually: my dad’s. He’s been calling every day to see how I’m doing, which is kinda astonishing. At first, I was short with him, because I didn’t want to compare our respective conditions, or because I’m too cool, or because I didn’t want to let him in to see the dread that I’m experiencing. It took me a few days to really get the notion of, “This is your father, man. And, sure, his behavior in your childhood was a big part of the reason that you developed all that guardedness and anxiety, but he’s calling you because he loves you and can’t bear the thought of losing you, even if he can’t say that.” Tomorrow, we’ll go to the Chabad service so he can pray for his parents’ souls. I shouldn’t be writing on Kol Nidre, but I want to get this out because I haven’t really addressed how I’ve been feeling.)

All that anxiety magnified the severity of my symptoms, making it feel like I’ve got a time-bomb in my chest, making it more difficult for me to draw a solid breath and feel at ease, making me believe that the end is nigh. Is my right hand going numb because of an aneurysm or because I haven’t eaten for 8 hours? That crick in my neck from sleeping badly or is it an artery about to go? That stabbing sensation in my chest? Oh, wait, that’s just the itchiness from the hair growing back where they had to shave it for the stress test.

But when I could just talk to people about quotidian stuff, it would take me out of myself and I’d feel just fine. Either the symptoms would abate or I just become less aware of them.

As long as I don’t think about it, I think I’ll be okay.

So one part of me has been trying to maintain my routines and act as though nothing serious is happening, while another part is trying to total up all the things I should’ve done in my life and what I’ll still have time to do. I mean, what am I supposed to do? Quit work and go to an ashram? Be calm and carry on? I’ve got people out the wazoo telling me to relax, not to stress so much, but none of them offer to do my work for me. (And it was a lot of work, with a 150-page issue that had to go out by Wednesday in order to print and ship in time for a big show in Germany that I’m supposed to attend in a few weeks.)

On Tuesday night, things got so bad that I was afraid that I wouldn’t make it through to morning. I found myself regretting, of all things, that I wouldn’t get to read the newest issue of Love & Rockets. I’d heard that Jaime Hernandez had a monumental story in it, and it saddened me that I wouldn’t see it.

There weren’t a lot of other regrets that occurred to me on Tuesday night. I regretted being sharp with Amy during the drive home from the train station that night, but I knew she understood how shaken and scared I was. Once home I decided that, if this was to be my last night alive, then I’d go out with a little joy: having a fine gin & tonic and watching some baseball.

And if it turned out that I was being a hypochondriac, then I figured the G&T would relax me a bit. And I’m a long way past getting worked up about a Yankees game.

I felt fine on Wednesday morning, and pushed on with a positive outlook most of the day. When I got home from the office (and that work-stress from the first three days of this week didn’t help me any), the annual issue of L&R was waiting for me at the door. I took the dogs for a walk around the block, then fed them and lay on the sofa with the new book. I cried like a baby at the final pages. It was that good and I’m that emotionally raw.

Now (Friday night, just about one week from when I left the ER) I’m feeling a million times better. I still get short of breath/yawny on occasion, but I’m almost certain it’s due to anxiety. Among the lessons I learned this past week, the big one is that my anxiety is so much more vast and subtle than I ever imagined. It’s one thing to actively think, “I’m going to die,” and trigger a fear-reaction. But no: I found myself falling into those thoughts only after these episodes began. I got a real taste of how dread works behind the scenes, the chimera obscura. The longer I went without talking to someone or opening myself up to something like music (even when the iPod in my car thought it would be funny to shuffle up Breathe or Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?) or a good podcast or some silliness with the dogs, the more this dread gathered.

Walking the dogs around the neighborhood last night, I wondered what it would be like if I could get those two voices in my head in harmony. What if I could be reconciled that I’d been worrying over nothing, but also retain that immanence unto death? Would there be some way to use it, like Ms. Oates did, to let that specter pervade me, guide me past my dissipated routines, let me face the fear of the end and shatter all this anxiety?

Can I write like there’s no tomorrow?

How I Misspent My Summer Vacation, 2011 Edition: Day 5

Monday, Aug. 15: Stanley Park Death March

Sorry it’s been so long without an update! I help throw a big conference every September, and the preparation & anxiety involved tends to preoccupy me. But it wrapped up on Sept. 23 and was a huge success. I wrote most of this before Rosh Hashana and my ER visit, and just remembered that I hadn’t cleaned it up and posted it. So now you get another installment of my summer vacation! And it’s already autumn! I suck!

The other reason I put off this post for so long is that I needed time to post my pix from that day onto Flickr. It was helpful to go over all those shots, since they brought back some of the less distinct events from the day. Here’s the photoset! (It includes the previous day’s meanderings, too.)

About that conference: one of the attendees was the guy from Spokane who died earlier in the year. We had a great time shooting the breeze after the conference closed, and he asked me how the rest of the vacation went. Which was his veiled way of saying, “Why haven’t you written up days 5 and 6 yet, jerk?”

Who am I to disappoint a guy who came back from the dead?

So, back by zombie-riffic demand: Monday was our last full day in Vancouver. We’d been advised by several parties not to miss Stanley Park, and figured we could meander through it for a few hours. Amy already had plans for our dinner, a can’t-miss Indian restaurant a short distance away from where we ate the night before.

As I’ve written, I did no research before this trip. In fact, the map we got from the front desk of the hotel didn’t include the entirety of Stanley Park. It cut off somewhere near the northern tip, but we had no idea how far. Amy & I are heavy-duty walkers, so we figured it couldn’t be too far.

We started our meander around 9 a.m. The previous day, I noticed a Sydney Opera House-looking set of white scalloped sails a few blocks down the street from our hotel, on the harbor. We walked down to it and discovered that they were part of the World Trade Office, which wasn’t nearly as exciting as discovering a shrunken version of Sydney’s architectural treasure. Boooo:

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We got some brunch at an Italian place called Scoozis, a Greek diner-y sort of place with a sprawling wall of fame. I can’t recall any of the celebrities the gregarious owner was standing with, but it seems he was a New York Giants fan, so that was something. It’s nice to have something to remind me of NJ.

Then we started walking along the riverfront to the park. My phone’s GPS was working just fine, so I had a good idea of where we were going, but it only occurred to me after the first mile-plus to turn on the GPS-X app, so we could track the whole shebang. We were still in the marina before the park when I did that, having passed the Vancouver Convention Centre, outside of which was a wacky sculpture and a giant Orca made of Lego:

Lego My Orca!

The day was beatiful and sun-drenched. You can get an impression of that from the pictures in my photoset. We weren’t taken in by the vague predictions of clouds and occasional rain, and dressed much more appropriately than we had on Sunday. Neither of us had optimal shoes for long walks, but we weren’t wearing blister machines, either.

In addition, I’d left my sunglasses in the car the night before. Rather than ask the valet to get the car so I could snag them, I wore my baseball cap. This turned out for the best, since I would have otherwise scorched my scalp from all that sun. Also, it was a Blue Jays cap, so I thought it might serve as protective coloration.

I decided that we could walk along the seawall path, and then head back up the trails into the park proper if we got bored or tired. Amy thought that sounded like a good idea, or didn’t tell me it was a bad idea, and so we leisurely ambled along, passed by roller-bladers and tourists on rented bikes. They were clunky, with chopper-like yokes. I thought about all the people I saw bicycling along in Copenhagen in ’04, and couldn’t remember the last time I rode a bicycle. Not sure when I last wore a baseball mitt, either; it can’t possibly have been when I was in grad school.

Our first stop in the park was the totem poles. I was disappointed to find out that they weren’t all old, but was heartened that one of the new ones appeared to be inspired by The Human Centipede:

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We decided to cut out the eastern loop of the seawall, missing a small lighthouse in the process. I checked it out on Google Maps Streetview; we didn’t miss much.

And we walked. I’m writing from more than month away, after an interminable amount of work has demolished my finer thoughts, so I can’t offer up too many details. They don’t seem to cohere into much of a narrative. That’s why I’m glad there are pictures for this segment.

What did we see? Those totem poles; a woman playing with her dog, throwing a ball into the harbor for him to fetch; a tree that had come down a few months before and had 117 rings; Girl in a Wetsuit; kids playing in a little park with water-rifles; the Lions Gate Bridge; Siwash Rock;

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tourists from everywhere; the harbor giving way to the big water of the Salish Sea; the beautifully stark rock walls that only revealed their faces when I took their pictures; a seagull doing a Zoidberg impression; the great open sky.

There was the smell of the sea and the wind and it was all so relaxing and wonderful that we tried to ignore the fact that we were walking an awfully long way.

I thought the GPS app had switched to kilometers, but no; we’d gone miles and miles on foot, and the map looked like we had quite a ways before we were back out of the park and in the city. (The park borders the West End, which border downtown, where our hotel was.)

We wanted to get off of the seawall path and cut back through the park to start our way home, but the rock walls precluded that. We considered tackling some tourists and stealing their bikes, but Canada’s politeness had taken hold of us.

SPEAKING OF WHICH! The evening after the first day of our conference, one of my advertiser pals texted me to say that one of the session speakers was a “rabid right-winger.” I’d seen the two of them talking during our post-show cocktail reception, along with two more advertiser-pals from Toronto. Pal 1, who’s from Texas, told me that the conversation among the four of them got heated, and the speaker declared, “You [Pal 1] are a liberal! And you and you [Canadian Pals 2 and 3] are socialists!”

I saw Pal 1 at dinner that night, and he repeated the story, adding all sorts of details about how the conversation moved from healthcare (it’s a pharmaceutical conference) into labeling all the participants. He said the speaker had grown so frustrated that he threw his hands in the air and left the conversation.

I told Pal 1, “That’s why I don’t talk to anybody about anything. You’re too likely to find out awful shit about people and who they are.”

But the next morning, I saw the two Canadian pals waiting for their ride to Newark Airport. I hurried out to say hello and find out if I’d have to do damage control. I didn’t want them boycotting the conference because of a bad experience like that, even though they’d been coming for years.

I said, “[Pal 1] told me you had an . . . interesting conversation with [the speaker] at the reception.”

They both looked at me a little puzzled. One said, “Yeah, we talked for a bit.”

“All good? Because [Pal 1] told me it got a little heated.”

“Really? I thought it was a pretty constructive conversation. [The speaker] is coming from a really different direction than we are, since we have socialized medicine back home. I don’t think it was a bad talk at all.”

I thanked them, wished ’em a safe trip home, and remembered the Foreign Office minister’s first line from In The Loop: “You needn’t worry about the Canadians. They’re just happy to be there. (Pause) Yes, well, they always look surprised when they’re invited.”

So we decided we just couldn’t mug people in Vancouver, and continued our Bataan Death March of Pleasantness. When we reached Third Beach, we found a road leading back into the park, and headed up to follow the interior trails back to the city. We grabbed some water and snack food at a concession stand, then got back to walking.

The trail, it turned out, shadowed the seawall path, but at least we were under tree cover and out of the sun. And it brought us by . . . The Lost Lagoon! (it wasn’t interesting, but had an awesome name)

We celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary last March, so maybe this will change later on, but we’re still in the “As long as we’re together, we can (generally) laugh about weird circumstances.” Like a walk that would ultimately hit nearly 10 miles over the course of a single vacation day.

I’m lucky that I found a soulmate who’ll see the adventure in experiences like this. Or at least one who doesn’t bitch and complain that I’m an awful husband for leading her on walks that neither of us are prepared for.

When we got out of the park, I tried to find a route back through the city that would put us near a cab. But my city of reference is New York, where it’s impossible not to find a cab if you’re, um, of a certain pigmentation. I have no idea how to find a cab in a normal city.

(About that pigmentation thing: I once stumbled out of a Halloween party in the west Village in a drunken, recently-passed-out-and-vomiting haze. It was 2 a.m. and I was covered in fake blood, having gone to the party as Roy (as in “Siegfried &”) and carrying a duffel bag with my regular clothes, so I could change the next morning. Within 10 erratic steps, a cab pulled up to see if I was a fare. Please keep a straight face when telling me that the same thing would’ve happened if I was black.)

We walked along some condo-lined streets, closing in on Howe and the Metropolitan. We didn’t come across any cabs and decided we could make the last mile-plus just fine.

Amy zonked out when we got to the hotel. I went out to get some Tim Horton’s (and stop in the at Harry Rosen, where I was assaulted by that Cuccinelli blazer I mentioned on Day 4). We both rested, cleaned up, and then got dressed for early dinner.

Amy’s food-blogger pals had recommended Vij’s as the must-go restaurant for any Vancouver trip. The place took no reservations and opened for dinner at 5:30, “so show up before 5:00 and wait,” she was told.

We did. There were already a dozen people waiting when we arrived. I let her stay in line while I walked around the neighborhood, clearly not having walked enough that day. I stopped in at a used bookstore and comic shop, but didn’t buy anything. I reminded myself about my shopping ban, and how I have more than enough to read for a while. As in, 40 years.

I rejoined Amy outside the restaurant, where customers were bantering away. Some had been to Vij’s before, and wanted to make sure they got the first seating. When the doors finally opened, I inadvertently cut off someone who had gotten there before me. I apologized profusely, because it was a clear breach of protocol to cut in the line. We hadn’t queued up outside; we just knew who had arrived when. It was vigilante seating.

It was a mind-blowingly awesome meal. For appetizers, we had

  • Pork belly (naturally raised) sauteed in tamarind, on paneer
  • Chickpeas in star anise and date masala on grilled kale

followed by

  • Rajasthani-style goat curry with lightly spiced vegetables
  • Beef shortribs braised in yogurt, tomato and cumin curry

On top of that, they served super-awesome chai. I’ve never been a chai drinker, but this was all that. They posted the recipe on their site

  • 4-5 orange pekoe teabags
  • 1″ cinnamon bark
  • 1 1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
  • 4 green cardamom seeds
  • whole milk
  • 5-6 teaspoons sugar
  • 5 1/2 teacups water (the actual size of the cup in which you’ll serve tea)

The pork belly was fine, but served shredded instead of in squares, which kinda removes the character. The shortribs were fantastic, better than the ones at Cru the night before. All in all, the meal was a fine reward for completing our Stanley Park Death March.

We finished dinner before 8 p.m. and drove back over Granville Bridge. I made sure to grab my sunglasses before getting out of the car. We conked out right after getting back to the room. We had a long day ahead of us on Tuesday.

Not that we knew it at the time.

Coming next: Day 6: Maple Salmon, Border Crossing, and Black Bottom

(I have an idea: why don’t you check out the whole Vancouver photoset?)