We don't even know if he's straight yet

"We don't even know if he's straight yet."

This is what a friend whispered to me the day my first child was born, back in 1996. Our baby Ethan wasn't even 24 hours old, and his doting grandma had just suggested that he might grow up to marry a friend's newborn baby girl. At the time, I rolled my eyes at grandma but bristled at my friend's response. First-time dads can barely figure out which way to tape on a diaper; this "friend" could keep her insinuations to herself.

Twenty years later, I now think that every doctor should say that same phrase to every newborn's parents. Maybe not immediately after recording the Apgar, but at least once before they leave the hospital with their tiny squirmy poop machine.

Why? Because it reminds new parents that even the most "obvious" assumptions about our children could easily turn out to be wrong. Through the years, I've remembered that whisper and used it to check my expectations. My son doesn't like soccer? I'll get over it. My son has one weak eye and needs an eye patch for a while? He'll be fine. My son wants to join the military? Well... all right, I guess I'll get over that, too.

As for being straight, well... Ethan did in fact grow up to like girls.

He also grew up to become a creative, smart, artistic young woman named Emma. Emma came out to us as a trans girl about a year ago, and although the physical transformation will take a while yet, in our hearts and minds she is fully Emma. Medical records, tax returns, and job applications still say Ethan, but those will be corrected in time.

The people I've told about this, they praise me for being supportive and accepting. They tell me it must be hard for a parent to go through such a thing. And I can testify they're right. It is hard. It's hard to watch your child suffer with the choice of living in the wrong body, or living with prejudice and discrimination. It's hard to visit your child in a lock-down psych unit because depression drove them to the verge of suicide. It's hard to take 20 years of habits and expectations, and turn them inside out. But it has never been hard to love Emma, or to feel proud of her. Those are and will always be easy for me.

"We don't even know if he's straight yet."

That one sentence, whispered 20 years ago, may have been the preparation I needed as a parent to understand that my assumptions and expectations will not always be right, even when they seem obvious. Like "It's a boy."

Last week I introduced myself to a delightful young trans woman, a barista at one of my semi-regular coffee shops. She began transitioning a few months ago. I simply wanted to say hello and offer a few words of support. I'm glad I did; we only had a few minutes to chat, but she's very sweet. Unfortunately, her parents weren't able to accept who she is. Instead of realizing their assumptions about her were wrong, they reacted as if she had broken their trust.

If only the doctor had told them, "We don't even know if he's straight yet," they might have been better equipped to understand that her transition has nothing to do with them. Of course it makes them uncomfortable, but their discomfort is irrelevant. Their discomfort simply represents the gap between their expectations and reality. Reality doesn't change just because you wish things were different. But expectations can be changed.

Believe me, it's damned hard to discard assumptions you've carried for 20 years. If you accept that those assumptions were wrong to begin with, however, it becomes possible.

We are all just stumbling through life, figuring it out as we go. I don't know the right way to be the father of a trans woman. Twenty years ago, I didn't know the right way to be a father. All I really know is that it involves love and patience and acceptance. And I think I can manage that, especially for my own child.

This blog post is my first public reference to Emma's transition. Some of you who have known Ethan may be shocked and unsure how to respond. That's okay. No response is necessary. If you feel a need to say something, comment or DM or email or call. It's all good.

Anti-intellectualism cracks its knuckles and steps out of the shadows

Recently, a local online news source reported that California colleges affirmed their commitment to diversity and inclusion. Along with this, the local JC offered a 2 1/2 hour session this Monday as a "safe space" for students, faculty, staff, and others to gather and discuss their concerns.

This is exactly the role a community college should play. Colleges are places for expanding horizons, learning new things, and discussing different opinions. I think it's great that DVC is offering this. I hope students and others of all backgrounds attend and listen at least.

Then I read the comments on the article above. And on the facebook post of the article.

Most were mean-spirited attacks on the idea of a "safe space."

Liberals, please, quell your fears! You will likely still be able to receive welfare. You will likely still be able to live in your parent’s basements.

Oh goody! A communtiy college cry-in!

OK, now everyone just remember the upside here. These snowflakes, will never be able to hold a job. So the rest of us will be able to get and keep one regardless of their whining.

Bed-wetters and save space kids the election's over if you don't know what the hell happened take a civics class and learn something about how things work in our government if you're confused. ......

I embrace diversity. I frequent Taco Bell and Panda Express.

Ok cupcakes. Dont forget your safety pins

And on and on it went. This is in the San Francisco Bay Area, one of the bluest regions of the country. I can't imagine the commentary in deeply red areas. Those who tried to defend the colleges were, of course, attacked for being libtards.

What I saw most among these comments, besides the frequent references to special snowflakes and bedwetting, was an undeniable undercurrent of anti-intellectualism. Aggressive anti-intellectualism. A sense that if you go to college, you're weak and worthless.

This is Trump's America. Where ignorance and whiteness are to be celebrated, and knowledge and diversity are to be ridiculed. Where a white thug with a mohawk and camo pants feels like a success by insulting college kids. I know these white thugs won't show up at the discussion, either to share their feelings or to cause trouble. They're just punks posting shit online. And it's their right to do so.

But this is not the direction America should go. If we don't fight against this surge of white power and anti-intellectualism now, we're going to slip deeper into a dark future.

Yes, I realize you are not Archie Bunker. You're still racist.

People who voted for Trump are screaming "I'm not a racist" all over the Internet. Liberal whites are saying, "Trump voters aren't racist, but Trump says racist things."

I'm saying that yes, you are racist, Trump voter.

Our popular understanding of racism is a white hood and a burning cross lighting up a dark lawn. Or a white guy with a buzz-cut shouting spittle and venom at young black students getting off a school bus. Or a white kid fire-bombing a black church.

Our popular understanding of racism is Archie Bunker, a caricature spewing derogatory epithets so profoundly ridiculous that it becomes comedy.

Trump is Archie Bunker. Trump voters are not.

But Archie Bunker racism is not the racism I'm talking about. Racism is insidious and subtle. It is the undertow that drags us out to sea with a silent stealth until we can't make it back to shore no matter how hard we swim. It's the soft-foam mattress that feels so comfortable but is slowly killing us with cancerous chemicals. Racism is inside, and it's impossible for the racist to see or sense.

Trump supporters, I've noticed, use phrases like "I love people of all races."

I want them to stop saying that. I want them to say instead, "People of all races are equal to me. Children of all races are equal to my children."

Because racism isn't about your failure to love. Racism is about your failure to accept someone as an equal.

White Americans, especially Trump Americans, do not understand that they are members of a white culture. They consider themselves simply "Americans" or just normal people. Black people have culture. Native Americans have culture. Hispanics have culture. Asians have culture. But not me; I'm just a normal person, a normal American. I have American culture.

They think of America like they think of Disney World--there's Disney World, and within there's Epcot where all the other cultures can be viewed, interacted with, enjoyed, and learned from. They are neatly contained, well presented, and well behaved. But they're kept in their place. No need for them to be integrated into the rest of the park, which has always been perfectly fine.

This is how racism manifests in America. As long as other cultures are securely contained, well behaved, and not interfering with "my way of life," then we white people love them. We love all of them.

But that's not equality. That's exclusion. We allow other races into white culture if they act, sound, and dress white. And that's what Trump voters are really saying. "We exclude you unless you act, sound, and look like us. Because we are America, and you are something less." This is racism. Classism. Sexism. Religious discrimination. At its core it is exclusionary.

Build a bridge, or build a wall? Public works projects in the age of regression

On the second dawn of the Age of Regression, I am still struggling with a friend's suggestion that now is the time for me to "build bridges to the people who voted for Trump."

They feel forgotten. Left behind. Unheard. Their election of Trump was not, he said, a vote for misogyny or racism or trickle-down. It was a scream of frustration with the Establishment.

But it's impossible to build a bridge to someone who is busy building a wall. Their vote for Trump wasn't just a scream of frustration that needs to be heard by lefty liberals like me. Their vote for Trump was a vote for regression. It was a vote against diversity. A vote against globalization. A vote against women's empowerment.

As a straight white cis male from an educated middle-class background, I have all the advantages in the USA. All the advantages. This is true no matter where I live. Apart from those places no one of any background wants to walk at night, I can travel anywhere without fear of discrimination, without fear of being profiled by police, without fear of being raped, without fear of being assaulted for my gender identity or sexual orientation. I could probably find some kind of work anywhere, at least enough to get by.

In theory, I should be eager to reach out to these downtrodden rural Americans, to hear their story, to extend an olive branch and really understand why they hurt so much that they could elect a narcissistic con man who is no more qualified to be President than I am.

But I won't. The people who voted for Trump spent the last eight years fighting progress tooth and nail. They never wanted a black President, and when they got one they rejected him. They rejected his ideas and his attempts at collaboration and his compromises. They rejected diversification then, and the election of Trump is their crowning victory in this fight they've waged for eight years.

I read a great opinion piece on America's problem with women today in the New York Times. Then I read the first comment, which essentially said that liberals like me have it all wrong. The comment included this:

American (sic) are for the most part practical common sense people. We welcome the idea of a multi-cultural melting pot, and we welcome the best ideas other cultures have to offer.

Sounds great, and it's entirely true. Up to a point.

Middle America, the salt of the Earth, the practical common sense people who work their land and don't want government interference... these people, they do welcome diversity. But they welcome it like they welcome it in their television and movies.

Diversity is welcome as long as it's a secondary character in the white male narrative.

Diversity is welcome as a witty sidekick, or as a friend there always ready to lend a hand.

Diversity is welcome as a vehicle for allegory, a way for the white main character to learn something.

Diversity is welcome as a provider of ideas and cultural curiosity.

But diversity is not welcome as an equal. Not in middle America. Not where practical common sense Trump voters work the land and decry government interference.

I can already feel the hashtags swelling up: #NotAllTrumpVoters, #NotAllWhites, #NotAllMen.

But you'll get no sympathy from me. If you voted for Trump, you didn't just scream in frustration about an economic malaise covering rural America. You didn't just protest against a societal trend of liberals forcing you to change your ways of life. You were never really that concerned about emails or charitable foundations.

You voted for regression. You voted for suppression of women. You voted for suppression of minorities. You voted to persecute people based on their chosen faith. You voted to cut yourselves off from a changing world. Maybe fifty years ago that could work. But the internet exists, and walls can't hold out ideas or culture. Your only path forward is to open your mind and learn to live as equals with other people. Your privilege is being eroded by time, just as mountains flatten over eons.

Build a bridge? That's not worth my time because you don't want a bridge. You want a wall. I'm just trying to decide if I should spend the next four years trying to tear down your wall, or helping you build it higher and thicker from this side.

We all had a bunny named Cutie at one point

This is not a blog post about how heinous and atrocious the bigoted, fearful, anti-humanist religious right is in America. There's enough said about that, and their moral wrongness is self evident.

Today I read that the EU has condemned HB 2 for violating a UN treaty that the US signed on to in 1966. In response, the North Carolina governor's office quipped that "we relinquished our adherence to the British crown and European powers over 200 years ago," and another North Carolina Republican said that Democrats want to "install European socialist policies ... that are an affront to the common sense traditions of North Carolina and America."

Shortly after I read that piece, I walked by an essay one of my wife's younger writing students had written. It started

My bunny Cutie is very important to me, and in this essay I will tell you why my bunny Cutie is very important to me.

The handwriting looped with cheerful swoops and innocent smoothness. It wasn't hurried. There was no anger or bitterness in this kid's writing. It was simply a happy exposition on how much they loved their cute little bunny.

I try hard to remember that at some point in our lives, all of us (or nearly so) had a cute little bunny named Cutie, and that we all loved that cute little bunny.

I'll willing to bet that even people as cynical and hate-filled as NC Governor Pat McRory once had his own version of a pet bunny Cutie.

I wondered, as I thought about the two pieces of writing I had just read, how an innocent child who has a little bunny named Cutie, becomes trained into a person who thinks it's not only okay to discriminate against another individual, but to demonize a whole class of people and whip up hatred and fear about them. What skews that all-loving, all-accepting little soul into a prejudiced, bigoted zealot?

I think if everyone forgot about genitals, gender, sexual orientation, skin color, religious choice, and everything else, and if we all thought of each other as once being a little kid who had a bunny named Cutie, the world would be a far, far better place.

Even Governor McCrory appears to love animals. I wonder why he can't love people anymore.

Five truths about online charity auctions in the workplace

Recently my second blog post on CSR Wire hit the internet. It's a sum-up of a few things I've learned about running an online auction for charitable purposes.

I hate online auctions. They generate more risk than money, take a ton of time and effort to build and maintain, and get people into a lather about the most inane things. I have spoken to a few workplace giving managers who said they successfully killed their online auctions. I will have to learn how they did it.

Read it here:
The things I've learned from running our online auction

Six things I learned from five NaNoWriMo wins and one loss

I've published a number of books, none of which was written during NaNoWriMo. I have "won" NaNo five times, most recently this past November. That means that five different times, I wrote 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days. None of those has been published.

This year, my November total was 62,000 words. Today I'll write the final few paragraphs of the rough draft of that story, totaling out around 77,000 words, and I will not be publishing this book. That doesn't mean it was a waste of time, though. I learned some important things about myself, my writing process, and writing in general.

As I look back at the nine novels I've written in the past decade-plus, here are the top six things I've learned. Your mileage may vary, but there's truth in these lessons for every writer.

1. It is possible
My first NaNoWriMo, in 2005, taught me that I could actually complete a novel-length manuscript. It was brutal after the first week. By mid month I hated the story, hated the characters, felt a little lost in the plot. But I kept with it because I'd never written a complete novel before. 2005 taught me I could, if only I kept focused on daily goals and the idea of the ultimate product.

2. It never gets easier
I expected my second NaNoWriMo, the very next year, to be a breeze. After all, if I'd done it once. I could do it again. How charmingly naïve I was! That November was brutal. I wrote more than the previous year, but neither the story nor the writing were as good as before. And there was nothing easy about this year, my 9th novel and 5th NaNoWriMo. Every day requires discipline, hard work, focus. Even producing this year's very mediocre manuscript was brutal.

3. It's okay to quit
One year I managed about 12,000 words on a NaNo novel before quitting mid month. I hated quitting at the time. I always hate quitting. That year, I knew the story actually stunk, the book had no future, and I was only writing to try to get a NaNo Winner badge. To me, that was no longer a worthy goal, not when I had another story brewing in my mind that I really wanted to write. (That idea eventually turned into Semper.) Quitting NaNo that year allowed me to grow more than finishing the crappy novel would have.

4. A cheering section helps
Part of NaNo's strength is belonging to a community of people all struggling through the same brutal schedule toward a shared goal. Cheering each other on, meeting other writers--these things help when writing gets hard. This is true for me even when I'm writing on a more reasonable pace. Having a couple of trusted friends or critique partners to keep tabs on me and occasionally offer validation stokes the fading embers back into a blaze when necessary.

5. Crap makes for good fertilizer
After that first win in 2005, I waited six months and then read that novel back. I didn't hate it nearly as much as I had while writing it. In fact, it had a lot of promise. This year, I started with an idea and characters I loved. Somewhere along the way, in striving for word count and just to pound out the draft, my writing got weak. The characters got predictable. The plot became linear and shallow. It's crap. But crap can make great fertilizer, and the sheer effort of completing the story has enriched the original idea and deepened it to the point were I can build something really good from it, eventually.

6. This is not a race
When I slow down and take a year to write a first draft, that draft is nearly complete. By that I mean it includes subtle foreshadowing, rich symbolism, clever echoes and intricate interconnections, and characters that have some depth. It still needs revision, but it doesn't need to be thrown out and rewritten. When I write fast, I get what amounts to 70,000 words of detailed plot summary. This novel I'm finishing today has little foreshadowing, a whif of symbolism, some intricacy that happened mostly by accident, and characters whose depth rarely makes it to the page.

And I think that's the key: a gripping story in a complete fictional world with intricate politics and deep-seated social issues is there in my mind. It took NaNoWrimo to help me see that world and work through its details, but it will take me a year to put that world, that story, and those characters onto the page so a reader can see them the way that I do.

NaNoWriMo 2015: win number five

2005
2006
2007
2012
2015

Wrote over 53,000 words in November on a new story that I hope to finish in December. While the book will clearly need revision (a lot of the writing is loose), the story itself is pretty well set. I think it may end up being the first in a five-book YA adventure series.

2006 revisited on the eve of going to college

On Wednesday, our firstborn goes to college for the first time. Huge moment in any parent's life, right? Tonight, our neighbor who is also off to his first year of college came over to catch up for a few minutes.

The boys grew up together, with cowboy Star Wars battles and races around the cul-de-sac and matchbox cars and video nights. But they haven't hung out together in years; in middle school they found separate friends. You know how it is.

But as our neighbor arrived, I remembered that back in 2006 the four boys--this neighbor, another neighbor boy who moved away, and my two kids--put together a time capsule. We didn't bury it, but we did hide it, Indiana Jones-style, in our garage among the tools and boxes of Christmas decorations and other unused things.

Of course I had to have them open it.

Ethan opens the protective plastic bag.

On the front were the names of the boys. The oldest was 11 at the time, and I think Ethan was just nine. Sam was only six, and apparently--according to the note included in the time capsule--he didn't contribute anything to the box because he was "selfish and evil." Later, though (as you can see from the inscription on the box itself), he added a marble.

Sam added the marble later. He wanted credit.

The note details what each boy put in and why. These were their "most treasured possessions," which might be a slight overstatement.

The note, and all the items. Pokemon, pennies, tamigachi, a Sierra Nevada bottlecap (?!?), plastic army men and soldiers... everything dear to a 9 year old boy, I suppose.

I've sealed it back up and put it back in the garage. Some day someone will find it or remember it, and wonder why we bothered to keep it all those years.

It's amazing how kids grow up so quickly. Young men off to college.

My favorite picture of the boys, EVER.

My entire YA sci-fi post apocalyptic trilogy is free on Kindle July 23-25

Pretty straightforward post today. Semper, Forsada, and Freda are all free to download from the Amazon Kindle store July 23-25. My hope is that you will

• tell a bunch of friends!
• download them
• read them!
• rate them on Goodreads and/or Amazon

I also deeply, sincerely hope that you enjoy them.

That's it.

Why would I offer them free? I'd like to say that, like Bread & Puppet, I am a proponent of free art, but really I just want more people to read my stories. I like writing, and I like it when people like what I've written. I plan on writing more, and I hope people who read these books will look forward to the new stories I write. That's really it.

The free book deal is featured on Free Kindle Books & Tips July 23. Specifically here.

Please stop calling it a gender pay gap. Because it's not.

I just read yet ANOTHER article about the "gender pay gap" in soccer. The following comma splice in particular caught my attention:

Women’s teams play just as hard on the pitch as men’s teams, they should be receiving equal reward for their hard earned victory.

That is fallacious logic. A job's pay is not set by the effort a person puts in; it is set by the market value of what that job produces. This is why actors who perform in local theater don't get paid the same as actors who perform on Broadway, even though they may produce similar quality and work equally hard. Also, this is why male soccer players in MLS do not get paid the same as male soccer players in most European leagues, even though they play just as hard on the pitch.

Fairness and gender equity are noble causes. I support equal pay for equal work. But come on. The outrage flying around the internet this week is misplaced.

The outrage should be that a jersey that sells for $80 is sewn by someone who gets paid pennies a day. The outrage should be that billions are spent on stadiums that crumble into decay after the tournament is over, built by laborers who can't afford to buy a ticket to a game played there.

Can we stop talking about this as gender inequity, please? Because it's not, and calling it so undermines the real issue of gender pay gaps.

If you showed me a woman creating ads for the World Cup who makes 70% of what a man making ads for the same World Cup makes, then I'd feel the outrage.

THAT would be a gender pay inequity. Equal pay for equal work is not the same as equal pay for equal effort. Is the discrepancy in payment from the men's and women's World Cups unfair? Possibly. Should it be "corrected" by a new rule to ensure a "fair" or "equitable" situation?

No.

Well, I could imagine a scenario where you reduce payments to men's teams so they are equal to payments made to women's teams. Spend the savings on community improvement, education, and health care in the places where the laborers live.

If you want to talk about equity and injustice, let's start from there.

(The photos are just ones I took of soccer related stuff. They don't actually relate to the text except that they are soccer, and I took them.)

Free YA sci-fi books for Kindle

The third book in my YA post apocalyptic sci-fi trilogy, Freda, is free for Kindle at Amazon June 25 through 29. If you didn't know what to do for my birthday on Friday the 26th, then downloading the book, telling everyone you know, and reviewing it on Amazon would be fab.

Get it here: http://www.amazon.com/Freda-III-Eden-Peter-Dudley-ebook/dp/B00O9GAGXM/





More Free Books
The first two volumes in the trilogy, Semper and Forsada, will be free July 23-25.

Haiku Wednesday

This week's words are lump, nervous, puzzled

I haven't played Three Word Wednesday in... a very long time. Far too long.

---

nervous cat, puzzled
butt waggles, tail bristles, pounce!
carpet lump conquered

---

doctor prods the lump
nervous teen, puzzled parents

baby on the way

---

puzzled soldiers watch
roadside lump seen through binocs
nervous wives back home

Backpacking Joshua Tree National Park, with photos

We planned a short trip for Ethan's last spring break as a high school student. Just the two of us, in the desert somewhere. Never been to Joshua Tree, so a few google searches and we had our plan.

The Original Plan
We started in Vegas, visiting my mom over Easter. So we planned to drive the four hours from Las Vegas to Joshua Tree and hike in that same day. We could do 7.5 miles the first day to Upper Covington Flats, right? Then another 10 miles on Day Two to Ryan Campground, then 10 miles back to Covington, finishing with the 7.5 miles out on Day Four with the eight hour drive home to Walnut Creek the same day.

Then I read that the trail has no water and, in the desert, you should plan to carry a gallon per person per day, just for hydration. More if you want to cook, brush your teeth, or anything else.

You know how much a gallon of water weighs? A little over eight pounds. I thought about what it might be like adding 30 pounds of water to our packs.

The Revised Plan
I cut a day off the trip. We would hike in the 7.5 miles to Covington Flats, then hike to Quail Peak and back to the same campsite, then out the third day. Less water to carry, especially if we left Day Three's water in the car to drink when we get out. And only 25 or so miles over three days. We'd done 30 miles in three days last summer, so seemed achievable, if a little ambitious.

Unfortunately, we left Vegas two hours late so we arrived at Black Rock Campground at 4 p.m. instead of 2 p.m. Still, we had done a 3 mph pace before, so we geared up and headed out with 40+ pound packs.

Ethan with his pack, at the trailhead.

(Note to self: A 40 pound pack feels WAY heavier than a 28 pound pack. WAY heavier.)

The Actual Event
I should back up. We planned on hiking the California Riding and Hiking Trail, but we couldn't through-hike because we had only one car and just the two of us. We acquired our topo map at REI in Vegas, but we knew very little beyond the couple of web sites I'd seen and this map.

Covington Flats was our original destination for Day One.

What I didn't realize was that the first 6 miles of this trail is uphill and also like walking on a very soft beach... deep, soft sand apparently groomed for horseback riding tours. So keeping a pace of three miles per hour with 40+ pound packs uphill in the sand is kind of tough. If you didn't know it.

We got about this far

We got a little farther than this on Day One.

and started feeling pretty exhausted. Additionally, the wind was whipping around and it was getting toward twilight. So we decided not to try to get all the way to 7.5 miles, and we started looking for a place to spend the night. We tried a ravine off to the right of the trail about 4.5 miles in, and it turned out to give us a perfect site, slightly sheltered from the wind and not in a wash, just over 500 feet from the trail (i.e. a legal site). So we set up there. Short of our destination, but early enough to feel confident and prep for bed while it was still light.

Our tents, with our Nepali peace flags strung between.
Yes, they really are from Nepal.

Chilly morning selfie before breaking down camp.

Turns out that was a good thing because even though the forecasts called for the temperature to drop into the mid 40s (which we were prepared for), we actually enjoyed biblical winds and temperatures below freezing. This last part we calculated by observing the frost on our tents and the ice in our water bottles the next morning.

Before getting on the trail, we bushwhacked to the top of a peak next to our ravine to check out the views and see if we could get a cell signal (we couldn't). But the views were worth it.

This really was a view from our little peak

And we could see some random snowcapped mountain in the distance.

I really was there. These aren't just stock photos.

Hey, there's the trail, way down there, heading uphill. Wait. More uphill? Damn.

Our Revised Plan (see above) was to try to make it to the peak of Quail Mountain and back to a campsite in one day. After consulting the map and doing a quick calculation, we realized there was no way in hell we'd make it that far. So we revised the plan again, deciding to get to Covington Flats and see how we felt.

The trail kept going uphill for like a bajillion miles. And I swear the rangers put the mile markers at like 8,000 feet apart instead of the standard 5,280. But we enjoyed more desert scenery, including lots of wildflowers, over the next three miles to Covington Flats. There, we decided we'd go on to mile marker 9 and turn around, coming back for lunch. So instead of going 18 miles into the park and up to the peak, we were going 9 miles in. Fine. Discretion is the better part of valor, right?

A log on which we snacked, about 7 miles in.

Ethan hiking. Typical of the trail from mile 6 to mile 8.

A different random snow-capped mountain in the distance, framed by Joshua trees.

We made it to the Covington Flats trailhead! Someone was parked here, and someone left some water jugs free for the taking. We did not need it because we had plenty, but it was nice to see the generosity of strangers here.

Wildflowers!

Hard to see, but the trail is framed by wildflowers here.

Typical of the trail in the Covington Flats area.

Turns out we chose our route well because mile marker 9 is just at the beginning of a long, steep descent into a valley. We assessed the hill and our enthusiasm level, and we found ourselves very enthusiastic about not coming back up that hill, so we decided not to go down it. Instead, we turned around and headed back to Covington Flats trailhead where we paused for a half hour for lunch. It was warm when the wind stopped, which happened for a few seconds. Otherwise, it was kind of chilly. But still nice to sit on the rocks and rest.

Around mile 7 you cross an access road,
so there's a trail marker.

We began walking back toward our ravine where we had camped the night before, assuming we'd set up camp there again. When we got there, though, it was still only 2:30 p.m. and we were feeling very good after a hearty lunch and some preventative Advil. We'd made good time (nearly 3 mph) back from Covington Flats to the 4.5 mile mark, so I suggested we consider hiking all the way out and camping at Black Rock car camp instead of suffering through another freezing night in the wilderness. (I'd stop short of calling it "miserable," but it wasn't exactly enjoyable.)

So we double-timed it down to the car.

Interesting thing, hiking. The downhill seemed much less steep than the uphill had seemed the night before. And the sand was no less difficult to walk through downhill than uphill. So keeping a 2.5 mph pace was still a challenge. But we did it, after already doing 9 miles earlier.

We made it to Black Rock Campground about 4:30 p.m, only to find that all the campsites were reserved for the night. Maria, back at the mother ship, did some Trip Advisor searching to find a cheap rate at the Country Inn. A phone call and a short drive later, we were enjoying hot showers and comfy beds and indoor heating and no wind. Which I really appreciate tonight as I type this post since the drive home the next day was nine hours long. Maybe I'm a wimp, but I'd rather do that drive after a night in a comfy motel than after a freezing night on the ground and a five mile hike.

Plus, the motel had complimentary breakfast.

I've had better, but the coffee was pretty good.

Overall, I'd say it was a terrific trip. It would be a beautiful through-hike if you cache water at the trailheads. We didn't see a single other person after the first mile, and the land was really very pretty. If you plan on doing this hike, you'll be tempted to skimp on the water. You'll say to yourself, "A gallon per person per day? That's over-planning. I bet I can get away with three liters. Probably even two!" Don't do it. By lunch on the second day (less than 24 hours into our trip), I'd already drunk four liters, and I don't tend to drink a lot when I'm hiking. AND the temperature never got over the mid 60s. So don't skimp on the water. Seriously.

I also wish we'd arrived a few hours earlier and were able to hike farther in on the first day, and that we'd been prepared for colder nights. I am a little disappointed we didn't camp both nights, but I do think we pushed ourselves. A 14 mile day with full packs is nothing to sneeze at for people who do one trip a year, right?

Finally: No backcountry travelogue is complete without a Blair Witch selfie:

Musings about Pi and Pi Day

Not so much about Pi Day but about Pi itself. I just watched the online World Clock turn over to 3/14/15 9:26:53, and it was... less moving than I expected. But I did take a screen capture to commemorate the occasion.

But all day I've been thinking, on and off, about Pi. Because I've been thinking a lot about life, and about spirituality, and about infinity. About religion and Religion, about God and god, about the connectedness of all things.

I have a theory that religious people and atheists differ only in semantics. Both are trying, in our finite and flawed human way, to get a grip on infinity.

Pi is an especially interesting representation of something that we mostly believe to be both infinity and perfection. Take a perfect circle and bisect it perfectly. Then divide the length of the bisecting segment into the circumference of the circle. You'll get this magical number that never repeats yet goes on indefinitely. It really is a beautiful number.

Now, of circles and bisecting them:

Circles figure prominently in our legends and lore, in our metaphors and our rituals. We use rings to symbolize union in marriage, we have family circles and circles of friends, we discuss the circle of life.

Division and union also figure prominently in our lives. Two hands that oppose and complement each other. Two sexes, required to unite for procreation. Yin and Yang, black and white, attract and repel. Marriage and divorce.

Pi has this sort of magical place in, around, and through all of this. Pi is sort of the God number. It is perfect and infinite, yet patternless.

I know Pi can be calculated in other number bases, but I'm too lazy to look up whether anyone has really studied those to see if they have the same mystical properties as Pi. I assume they do, since conversion from one base to another is pretty straightforward.

So it's not the number itself that intrigues me. It's the perfection of the ratio of the circle to the straight line that bisects it, in a perfectly mathematical world. But we do not live in a perfectly mathematical world. Our world is imperfect. Our perception is finite. We live in more than two dimensions. In our world, the perfect circle does not actually exist; it exists only in the theoretical, as described by mathematics. I suppose I would say that the same is surely true for the perfect being: a perfect being can only exist in the theoretical, as described by theology.

Pi exists where the theoretical touches the physical. We can't ever know the full extent of Pi because it is perfect and infinite, and therefore in its full and true form it can't exist in our finite and flawed world. But we take comfort in its existence and wonder at its majesty. We know in our hearts that it is there, that it is bigger than we can comprehend.

Adventures in formalwear

This weekend I'm attending my first black tie event in... many, many years. So of course I have to rent a tuxedo. Ever since I moved to California back in 1985, the place to rent your tux was Selix Formalwear. I remember for my fraternity formal, a bunch of us went to the one in Oakland and laughed about the Miami Vice pastels, ultimately settling (of course) on basic black.

So I sought out Selix and found one just a few miles away in Pleasant Hill, three weeks ago. Went in, got fitted, left a deposit, arranged to pick up the tux on Wednesday, February 18. Since we're flying to Los Angeles on Friday the 20th, this would cleverly give us one day for adjustments if necessary.

Wednesday the 18th comes. It's been a busy week. We rush over to Selix after work, arriving at 6:30 a full half hour before their closing time of 7 p.m. But they're closed. With a sign saying they'd be back at 10 a.m.

WTF?

So of course I did what any rational, angry person would: I tweeted about it.

It says 7 p.m. closing time RIGHT THERE.

I googled them and called the number that came up in the search results, but of course it was a fax machine. What the Fax, google. Seriously.

Then I went to the Selix web site and found this lovely note:

Um.

Wut.

We have less than 48 hours before our flight to Los Angeles, and the place that has my deposit and measurements is now in receivership. Lovely.

Long story short, Orlando at Men's Wearhouse in Walnut Creek set me up in under an hour. I ended up buying a tux for not that much more than a rental. Now all I have to do is either find more formal events to attend, or join the British Secret Service.

Walther PPK not included in base model.

Scientology, clearly you know nothing about science or religion.

Of all the Superbowl ads I saw today, one just keeps coming back to me and making me shake my head in wonder.

At about 13 seconds in, the narrator says, "Imagine an age in which the predictability of science and the wisdom of religion combine."

This is like saying, "Imagine an energy source in which the efficiency of gerbils on treadmills, and the cleanliness of burning coal, combine." W. T. F. Seriously.

Scientology, you just proved in one sentence that you actually know nothing about either science or religion.

The best scientists know that science is not predictable. If it were predictable, it would be called engineering because you'd already know the outcome of the calculations. Science is the work of trying things to see what will happen. We make guesses at what might happen, but we actually try it to see if we're right. And at the most interesting of times, we aren't.

As to religion: Religion is faith. Faith is the absolute conviction that something is true, without needing evidence to prove it. This is not wisdom; wisdom relies on knowledge and discernment, based on experience and thoughtful analysis. Faith relies only on conviction, frequently discarding both knowledge and discernment.

If you are paying attention, you will notice that science is the source of wisdom while religion enjoys complete predictability.

I don't know anything about Scientology, and I don't intend to find out. But seriously. If you are trying to attract smart people into your cult, you should at least try not to destroy your own arguments in your own ads with one single sentence.

The privilege of driving a stick shift in suburbia, and being able to laugh about it

My younger son recently got his learner's permit, and he's been eager to get out and drive as often as possible. He's only had four hours behind the wheel, and he's already almost--not quite, but almost--mastered the stick shift.

This is the car.

Last night he took me out for a practice drive. Fifteen minutes of warmup through our suburban neighborhood with broad, sparsely trafficked streets; gentle curves with good visibility and a few stop signs; and the mildest of hills. Christmas lights ranged from simple elegance to the most garish displays of electrical overindulgence I've seen anywhere. He almost missed one stop sign. Almost.

After the warmup, we went out on the bigger streets. Multiple turn lanes at stoplights, crossing major intersections, a lot more traffic. He was nervous but had done this once before and handled the vehicle well. Another stint through another suburban neighborhood... then:

He made a good start from a stop sign into a tight left turn despite the headlights of an SUV close behind. He got into second gear, then went to shift into third but missed and hit first again.

Have you ever accidentally downshifted when you meant to shift up? The car bucks like crazy, the engine fighting against momentum and slowing like you slammed the brakes. To his credit, he got it back to neutral and then found third gear almost immediately. He was flustered but not panicked.

Until the SUV behind us turned on its red and blue flashing lights. Yup, a cop. A cop at 9:30 p.m. on a Thursday night during the height of holiday party season. My son smoothly glided to a stop on the shoulder with a little coaching from me. The cop pulled up behind. My son was now very flustered as I retrieved his permit from the glove box and handed it over.

"Can I see your license, please?" The cop shined his flashlight into the car but stood behind the driver's window. I couldn't see him. My son handed out the permit, and I leaned forward into the light and asked if he wanted my license, too.

The cop's face broke into a big, knowing smile when he looked at the permit. "That explains it," he said. He said he was just making sure "we got home safely because from the sudden deceleration in the middle of the street, he wasn't sure we would." I.e. he though he'd spied a drunk driver. But it was just a kid, learning to drive a stick shift. A few more seconds of kind and gentle banter between us, with my son explaining the mis-shift, and he went on his way. My son did an excellent job of recovering, pulling away cleanly, and finishing the last 20 minutes of our drive without any mistakes.

For me, that is a great story, a funny anecdote, a memory I'll enjoy for decades. For my son, it's a great learning experience.

It wasn't until this morning that I realized it could have been a very different kind of story, a very different kind of learning experience.

If we hadn't been white.

I don't know the officer we met, and he was absolutely right to stop us to check us out. And he was right to be cautious as he approached the car. Once he saw us, though, everything changed. If we hadn't been white, would he have so easily dropped his caution? Maybe he would have. Maybe another guy wouldn't. With us, he was professional, kind, understanding, and efficient. If we'd been black, would we have gotten the same quick and cheerful dismissal?

I like to think in our town, yes. I like to think that our town is somehow more enlightened about diversity than the towns we've read about so often in the news recently. But I don't know. That's probably what the white people who live in those towns like to think, too.

For me, this is still a great story, a funny anecdote, a memory I'll enjoy for decades. And for my son, it's still a great learning experience. For him, the lesson is that he doesn't have to fear cops or be nervous if he ever gets pulled over again.

I wish that were the lesson that all 15 year old boys could get when pulled over for a simple shifting mistake while out learning to drive with their dads.

But I understand that's not the case.

Yet.

Some day. Some day.