My Nephew is Cooler than Your Nephew

My nephew is cool. I mean way cool. Cooler than cool. If a block of dry ice had a nephew, it would melt in the presence of my nephew.

Yeah, I know. You have a nephew. And I’m sure he’s precious. He wins the big game now and then. He gives you “big hugs” whenever you come to visit from your conspicuously hard-to-reach home base that you retreat to after increasingly shorter visits. He thinks you’re the “cool” aunt or uncle because you figured out how to hack your way through “Bang Your Head” on Guitar Hero I (though you did it on easy, and you have no idea what the orange key is for).

Whatever. Your nephew is nothing compared to my guy.

I spent a week with this rock star wiz kid recently. We were in Boulder, CO, visiting my brother and his wife (who are, incidentally, far cooler than your brother and his wife).

Let me set the stage here: Boulder, if you haven’t been, is a bastion of earthy crunchy eco-friendly outdoorsy types who use terms like “fourteener,” “stellar,” “awesome” and “hello” more than you thought possible. Boulder sits 5000 ft  and some change above sea level, is right at the foot of the glorious Rocky Mountains, and is full of earthy crunchy eco-friendly outdoorsy things to do, like hiking onto mountain tops and flinging yourself down grass-covered summertime ski slopes on 40 pound mountain bikes.

My brother and his wife are case-study Boulder: their diet is organic. Their garden is full of fresh herbs and veggies, and plays host to an ever-present cast of local animals, both domestic and not, that would put the cast of Mary Poppins to shame (even the chalk painting scene). Their garage contains 2 alpine trek back packs, 3 bicycles (fully functional, unlike yours), numerous skis and poles, footwear for every occasion, an endless supply of climbing equipment, and enough camping and high-altitiude adventure gear to open their own REI co-op. Their kitchen is a wonderful whirl of juicers, oat grinders, compost cans, ripening fruit, fresh spices and exotic teas. Their homey abode is adorned with photographs from adventures around the world and numerous testaments of their dedication to a peaceful, harmonious and Zen lifestyle.

My nephew lives in a small but funky burg in Virginia that also happens to be the stomping grounds of your intrepid blogger, as well other notables like Dave Mathews. He’s spent all of his young life there, and like most guys his age spends time with his friends, listens to music, works, rages against the machine and spends less time on the internet than you think. He’s been more places than I expect most dudes his age, including London and Dallas (both with their own mysterious and foreign cultures) but has never been to a place like Boulder with its alt culture and breathtaking landscapes.

When the invite came from the brother to come visit for a week the summer before the nephew heads off to college and becomes too cool for all of us, the nephew jumped at the chance. No hesitation. No follow up questions. This guy was up for it from the beginning.

Not one to miss out on a chance to a) see my brother and sister-in-law b) get the hell out of Texas for a while c) hang with my nephew before he goes off to college and forgets how cool I am (what does that orange key do?) or d) witness a potential train wreck, I signed myself up to come along.  We arrive at the Denver International Airport on a Saturday afternoon, meet my brother, grab our bags, hop in the car, and head west to Boulder.

On the action and granola-packed agenda for the week is downhill mountain biking. The brother and I are experienced mountain bikers. Between us we’ve logged thousands of hours on bikes separately and together. We have been on grand adventures in the deserts and mountains of this country and have raced at an amateur level in some form or another for the past decade. The nephew, however, has not been on a bike of any kind for the past 4 years. The nephew is 18. He learned to ride a bike at about 6 years old. This means that of the 67% of his life on this earth that he has known how to keep a bicycle upright, 22% of that time has been spent not riding at all.

Being more aware of this data than any of us, the nephew says “wow that sounds really cool.” Again, no hesitation. Now one might attribute this reckless abandon to youthful exuberance or lack of experience, but we gave him a pretty good primer on what to expect and he was still in.

Up we drive into the Rockies (you’ve never been? You’re missing out). We arrive at Winter Park, the off-season playground of downhill mountain bikers and non-skiing tourists. We walk down to the area bike shop, rent our bikes among a flurry of “dude” and “brah” and hit the lift of the mountain to the first run.

“Here comes the reality check” you’re thinking to yourself. What you should be thinking to yourself, however, is “oh, I was thinking of MY nephew” because this guy was a monster. I mean he went for it. Down hills, up hills, over boulder, around trees. And, by the way, at about 10,000 feet above sea level now, where the air is thinner than Miller Light is light. Down the trails we barreled. Up the lift we went. 4 times in 4 hours overall. And at the end of it.. well, it was not easy to walk, I must say. Not for the nephew though. The mantra that night was “man, that was so cool. We should do that again.”

Though certainly a highlight, that was not by any means the only comfort-zone-stretching experience this guy had. Apple/carrot/celery juice, an 8 mile hike into the Rockies, 5 stages of the Tour de France, wheat-crust pizzas, bald-eagle spotting, cake baking, fish tacos, and endless probes about the upcoming college experience.

I don’t know about you, but when I was 18 the idea of leaving my back yard was pretty gnarly, much less the idea of plunging myself into what might as well have been a foreign country, so new and different was all of this. And had I managed to make it out of the back yard, I would have been so freaked out by the exercise, the new food, the unusual sights, and the endless hours of televised bike racing I would have been considering hitchhiking home.

Not my nephew. This guy is special. A rare breed at any age: a citizen of the world, a student of life. Wide-eyed, open minded, curious, just, honest, open, and a powerhouse. You could learn a lot from this guy. I know I have in the short time I’ve had the privilege to know him, and I’m anxious to get to know him even more as he gets to know himself.

When he graduated from high school very recently I walked into the room thinking “now is the time for us (his family, his elders) to teach him about life. After a week in the mountains with him, I’m just about convinced it’s the other way ’round.

TripCase: the handy mobile app for the traveling narcissist

If you travel, like to know when others are traveling, like others to know where you are and how you’re doing when you travel, or often stop to think “you know, people should be more interested in what I’m doing when I’m traveling” you need to check out Trip Case (http://www.tripcase.com/).

This little app, which I put on my iPhone (soon available on the Blackberry and Windows based mobile devices) is chock full of groovy little features. The main idea is that you create a trip, and in the trip you have all your hotel, flight, and car info. Sounds pretty standard, but the magic happens when you tell TripCase your flight info. After a quick entry of your flight #, TripCase comes flying back (no punn intended. Ok,  a little intended.) with all the info the airports and airline web sites can’t ever seem to get straight: your departure gate, your arrival gate, and your baggage claim. You can pretty much always get what gate you’re leavig from, but it’s damned near imposssible to get an airline to commit to what airport you’re landing at, or even landing at all, much less what gate. TripCase keeps a constant watch on this info and updates it regularly.

Now the REALLY sweet part is for those of us who are pretty sure that the citizens of the bit stream are desperate to know our whereabouts and what we think about them at all times. You can send a sort of invitation to people (just add their email address) and they are then attached to your “trip.” This has a couple uses, the first selfish, the second damned useful.

First, you can post photos and comments right from the app, and the people who are subscribed to your TripLog get an email alert that says you’ve posted some new stuff. Not to worry… the less beacon hungry among your subscribers can opt out of the emails. But why would they?? Who DOESN’T want to see a picture of the Denny’s Grand Slam you ordered on an unknown highway while road tripping through Maine? Seriously. And the photo tool in TripCase has a nice cropping feature, something it took Apple 3 evolutions to come up with.

Second, and probably more useful for people who have been, probably unwittingly, asked to play a part in your travel rhythms. The people who are dropping you off, picking you up, meeting you with your car, or otherwise in need of up-to-the-minute info on where the hell you are. People who are following your TripLog also get alerts when your plane is leaving your destination, if there’s a gate change, what baggage claim you’re at, and WHEN YOU’VE LANDED. That part is extra badass. And if there’s a change along your route like a delay, change in gate, etc, TripCase sends your eager followers an alert telling them that too.

I expect the intrepid TripCase team is hot on the trail of new features that will kick this little baby up a few notches, though it’s already pretty sweet. If they’re listening, my wish list includes Facebook/Twitter integraion, a spot to remember where I parked my car, and train schedules added. But that’s just me.

So if you travel a lot, a little, or are as self involved as me, check it out! It’s free on iTunes and the iPhone App Store.

That Abe Lincoln could spin a good yarn

I took a walk on my birthday. Quite unintentionally really. I was dropping off a rental car at National Airport (real DCers still call it that. You can call it Reagan if you need to) and was intending to hop the metro home. But being a bit of a plane spotter, I hoofed it down the length of the one-building terminal and across the employee parking lot to Gravely Point, arguably one of the best spots in the US to see planes take off, if that’s your thing.

Not one to let the long way home pass me by, I followed the walk path down the Potomac until it (the path, and the river) met Memorial Bridge. After some pretty impressive car dodging I managed to slip across the road, up a steep hill, and to west side of the bridge. After a moment of silence and respect for the fallen at Arlington National Cemetery (yes, I really did this, and you should too) I started the trek across the bridge. If you haven’t done this, you should. The Lincoln Memorial sits majestically on a plateau of marble rising high enough to look as though it’s sitting on the high point of the arch of the bridge (check out the pics in this post).

Reaching the end of the bridge I decided to check out Mr. Lincoln’s impressive home in white granite. I’d seen it as a kid (obligatory for any grade school child living withing 200 miles of our nation’s capital) but really don’t remember. My family owns a house in North East and we often wander down to The National Mall to check out art, tourists, and Republicans (all entertaining in their own way) but we don’t ever seem to make it past the museums.

So up I go.. some 50 steps up to meet the man… Abraham Lincoln. 50+ feet high, sitting calmly, stately in a giant chair (not a throne) of white granite, looking weathered but hopeful.. he deserved to have a seat.

Flanking our 16th president are 2 chambers. To his right, the Gettysburg Address. You think you know it (four score and so on) but you don’t. Read it. To his left, his 2nd inaugural address. You definitely don’t know this one. Read it too. Seriously. Then come back and read on here…

Welcome back. Inspiring, no? I read both of these texts in 2 foot high letters carved into the walls of the Memorial and found my mouth literally hanging open at the end.  You’ve just read them (right?) so you know what I mean. That man stood in front of a few hundred Americans and spoke of sadness and turmoil, the heavy weight all the country was carrying from many years of civil war with little end in sight. He spoke of reaping what we sew, and even waxed over the possibility that God, though certainly punishing those fighting to perpetuate slavery, was indeed punishing all of the United States for its inability to see the obvious travesties the nation had committed.

And this got me to thinking about our new president, and modern statesmanship. We are so disillusioned and jaded by the false promises and tweaked out sensory overload of film, tv, the internet, and advertising that we hardly recognize true inspiration anymore. And I wonder if the people of Lincoln’s time didn’t feel the same way. They’d been lied to, or put out, or forced to war against their countrymen, and they were tired. And pissed off. And scared.  Did they look to Lincoln and see a talking head? Or did they take comfort in his deep grasp and ownership of the gravity of the days behind and ahead?

I see our president reaching for unbelievably lofty ideals of a country united, of the strong standing up for the weak, the rich reaching out to the poor. An exchange of ideals and principals, not a cataclysm of them. A call to service, to community, to arms, to industry. A true challenge to believe our great nation must not parish from the Earth, but must survive, through dedication, compromise and understanding.

Are these ideals long lost? Are these the words of elder statesmen quickly mentioned in history books and relegated to forever sit behind white granite pillars, reminding us of simpler times when words mattered before things became more complicated? Or are they the shoulders on which our statesmen today stand, reaching even further, through far more turmoil, conflict, and hatred than Lincoln did.

We can always be inspired. We must be. Our nation is the inspiration of the world…for better and/or for worse. But the time is never lost when a man or woman’s voice can raise above the rancor and tell us “yes, we can do great things. Those days are not lost, but just beginning.”

Everyone needs to check out this nifty widget on my blog home page.

And not just because I said you should, though that’s not a bad reason if you think about it.

It’s this nifty little Google Maps based dealy called Platial.

Wait: let me caviate this in case this is like something everyone has had for like months as is way old new.

Ok, so, it’s awesome. It’s basically a Google My Maps, and lets you drop little pins and name them, add info, photos, etc. But it’s also a groovy social app where people can add their own pins and can also say “Hey! I’ve been there!” to a place you’ve been. I suppose people could also say “Hmmm.. I’ve been there….” too if they wanted. The internet is full of wonderous variety.

I like this thing because there are a lot of places close to my heart and I like that I can show people at a glance where they are. And I like to let people know when I’m in different places because a) it makes me feel like my friends and family are with me when I’m away from home and b) because who wouldn’t want to know where I am all the time? Seriously.

It’s also got a groovy little search feature and you can search for locations by name, address, tags, and fun things to do.

So check it out. You won’t be disappointed. And if you are, you probably aren’t doing something right and should call Google for support.

Frankie say RELAX… Frankie, it turns out, did not have an iPhone.

Wow, vacation is hard.

Relaxing, not thinking about the outside world, worry about what’s going on at the office. These things are HARD.

For some people I expect they’re not. People tend to look forward to forgetting their every day life like they look forward to forgetting to sign the check to the phone company.

I was looking forward to it, too, but I found that as the “vacation” went on, so did my preoccupation with the outside world. I know what you’re thinking, too, so before you keep thinking it (though there’s little I could likely do to stop you anyway), I tried the following techniques to fight this preoccupation:

1. I turned my phone completely off. This worked great for about 36 hours, until I had to turn it back on because several things required my potential attention, including the pending sale of my house and the pending possibility that I needed to book travel to Philadelphia. So I switched it on about 2 days into this “vacation” and of course the subject lines of several troublesome emails burned their way into my retinas. So now I’ve got relaxation-killing, client-related key words like “upset,” “disappointed,” “confused” and “um” bouncing around in my brain like children bounce around a bounce house.

2. I turned my computer completely off. This actually worked great, as the phone was taking up most if not all the slack for planting seeds of worry and preoccupation.

3. Drank. A lot. This worked pretty well off and on, but mostly because I couldn’t work the phone anymore. It inevitably exacerbated the issue, however, the next morning when I began to wonder if I’d either a) responded to an email without noticing it or b) not paid close enough attention to an email of epic proportions.

4) Told myself I would not, under any circumstances, think about work or emails or clients or anything other than the ocean and the sand. This was a pretty good plan, and the results averaged a shelf life of 48 – 192 seconds, depending on how much of technique #3 I’d employed that day.

5) “Checking in.” This is one I’ve employed in the past with relative success and, I think, the one that fits best with my particular psycho graphic slice of the pie: Type A white male, age 35-40, high-stress occupation, propensity for over-working, drives mid-size luxury crossover SUV, enjoys weekend junkets to exotic locales including the pool at the MGM Grand, Wrigley Field, and the bar at the TGI Fridays in most major US Airports.

Generally I opt straight for #5 no matter where I go, as I know that 1-4 are likely to be failures of some kind or another and ultimately lead to great stress. This vacation had all the makings of an off-the-grid experience though. Huge beach house, my most excellent family, and 6 solid days. Also on the side of work-free Nirvana were several capable people back at the office, a list of clients who knew I was on vacation, a relatively light work load to return to, and an agreement between me and the universe that this was the one, the one where I really just let it all slide.

Fat chance.

These things have a way of picking up momentum and mass, and by the end of the week I was intimately involved in high drama on multiple stages across several time zones and in multiple states of “it would have been fine if I’d just left it alone until Monday but now that you’re in it you might as well go for it.”

Sigh.

So, on the last day of this vacation, back from the beach, in a top 3 favorite city,  I’m feeling far more relaxed and serene than I have in 6 days. Ironic? Maybe. Let’s look at the factors:

1) Back to work tomorrow, so anything that has been irritating me or begging for attention, like a hang nail or compound fracture tends to do, can be dealt with.

2) The immense pressure of feeling the not-as-stress-free-as-they-really-ought-to-seem-but-don’t minutes slip wastefully by is relieved.

3) Because I have the choice, if I want it, to do a little work correspondence here and there and to take a look at a few things requiring my attention, I have astoundingly removed the guilt I felt about not making the most of my vacation by working.

4) It’s my birthday.

Given the high premium people in this work-a-day world put on the increasingly illusive “down time,” I expect this is terribly troubling. But after a week of what became palpable and distracting amounts of stress over feeling stress, caused by desperately trying and miserably failing to not be stressed, I’ve developed a new set of techniques that I’ll employ the next time I attempt to jump off the grid. Feel free to employ these as well, but you might consider reducing the drinking bits by 1/2.

1) Just check in. If it’s that important to you that you know what’s going on, then check in. But do it once a day, get in, and get out. Try to leave a single person who can find you and pass along anything you need to think about, and who can relay your responses back to the grid.

2) Drink. A lot. But only after #1.

3) Give yourself a break if you’re thinking about life outside your vacation bubble. I suppose some people can unplug and say “ah, screw it.. It’ll be there when I get back” and if you’re one of them, and if you’re well respected and much adored for your whimsical and lighthearted approach to work, vacations, and flippant remarks about both, fantastic. I, however, am now in the camp of “ah, screw it. It’s 15 minutes of a day at the beach, and I’ll be far more relaxed for having done it.”

4) Put a really really really solid plan of escape in place far in advance of your departure. Tell everyone that will listen that you will be on vacation and unavailable, and MEAN it. I can only think of one person who has actually every successfully done this, and he plans his absence, not just his vacations, with military precision. Leave instructions, fall back contact information, and plenty of food in the fridge, just like for your baby sitter. If people know where to look, who to turn to, and what to ask for when you’re not there, it is much less likely they’ll need to bother you while off the grid, and things may actually get done while you’re away.

5) Cross off as much on your to-do list as possible before you leap. It’s incredible how little things build up in your mind when you’re trying not to think about them. “I have to call so and so as soon as I get back to the office” and “I wonder how that meeting went” will seep into your brain and stay there.  Stay late the week before you go if that’s what it takes. It’ll be worth it when you’re gone, and will likely give everyone else more to do during your absence which give them less time to remember how to dial your phone number.

We’ll see how this goes. I’m a small business owner and we all tend to fret like this, and not just on vacation. But a lot of small business owners go crazy. And end up going back to work for the guy they told to fuck off ‘cuz they’re starting their own business.  And he is likely to be grumpy about the “fuck off” incident, making their triumphant return to the gainfully employed less triumphant.

Not me though. I’ll stick it out, me and my stress, and will try my new list of techniques. The next long haul is Colorado in July, so Ill be testing these babies out. If you have some advice, I’d love to hear it. But please don’t call me on vacation. It stresses me out.

It’s my birthday!

And it’s lovely so far. Tho a bit cloudy. I’m sitting on the front porch at THIDC (The House in DC) at the moment, and though gray and a bit breezy, it actually feels lovely.

Jen and Stace both got me a kickass cap for my bday: Stace’s contribution is a sweet Life it Good cap that, as they always do, fits just right the second you place it on your head. It’s also got these groovy tears and distresses so it looks like it’s been worn for years. To add insult to injury and increase the awesomeness factor I wore it into the ocean a few times in Duck to really get ‘er worked in.

Hat #2 came from Jen: a copy of the cap she bought for herself on the Corner in C’ville when we where there for Brad’s graduation. I’d been coveting it since the day she bought it 2 weeks ago, and after some apparently rancorous traveling with Stacy to get ‘er done, she arrived in DC with said awesome cap. It’s sitting on my head right now and is doing a nice job of sitting there and covering my head and being awesome.

THANK YOU MY SISTAHS!!

Rest of the day? Hard to say.  It’s also Father’s Day, so I’m thinkin maybe a bday/dday lunch or din somewhere nice might be in order.

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me….