Near Miss

He saw the flash of the car in the side mirror an instant before it passed him on the left. It was late afternoon in January and his headlights were already on. Diffuse gray clouds stretched from horizon to horizon, foretelling the snowstorm that was predicted to arrive in New England that night. He was settled into the center lane of the interstate heading southwest, hoping to get at least as far as the metropolitan New York City area before calling it a night. If he made it that far, he reasoned, he’d be south of the worst of the storm and able to continue his southerly run the following morning.

The silver flash — one of those foreign sedans that 20-somethings use for street racing — went past his eight-year-old Subaru wagon in an instant, doing a good 15 to 20 miles an hour more than he was driving.  And his cruise control was set to a notch below the de facto American freeway speed limit of 75. They were both passing the junction between belt route they were on and the north-south freeway from the nearby big city.

A few seconds before the silver flash went by him, a minivan had merged from the on ramp into the flow of traffic going in the same direction he was going. It then moved to the left again, taking up a spot in the center lane about five or six car lengths ahead of him. It paused for a moment in the center lane before signaling left again and moving into the passing lane though there was no vehicle in front of it in the middle lane. He thought to himself, “This is not good,” and pulled his foot off the gas pedal while glancing in the rear-view mirror.

Time came to a halt but the sedan never flinched as it closed on the minivan. Then its brake lights came on, a sudden bright-red explosion in the darkening sky, and the silver car swerved to the right to avoid this obstruction in the passing lane. The red tail lights then dashed across the scene toward the right of the highway as the sedan overcorrected for its sudden turn. The front bumper, now spinning into the left lane, caught the right rear of the minivan, sending it into a  spin in the opposite direction and careening toward the grassy median to the left of the passing lane.

White smoke and the smell of burnt rubber was already rising from the black streaks that had appeared on the pavement, and he slid his wagon to the right, into the merging on-ramp lane in front of an 18-wheeler joining the belt route from the north-south highway. A second, maybe two, seemed to take an hour as he passed without breathing half a car length behind the tail of sedan as it continued spinning, now back toward the middle lane and now beyond into the left lane.

He started to slow but saw in his mirror that the 18-wheeler was part of a wall of traffic bearing down on the scene. That wall had already begun a rapid deceleration and the truck was moving toward the highway’s shoulder when he realized that stopping, getting out and heading back toward the scene into the flow of traffic under darkening skies was not a healthy idea, so he continued on toward the southwest, as time and his breathing resumed their normal paces.

And he set the cruise control for a slower speed.

New England, Travel, , ,

Why Further?

The rites have been performed, the gods appeased. The ceremony is complete. The boat is now mine. And her name is Further.

I actually declared her name when I announced my purchase back in November. But the cold weather prevented the local graphics folks here in Annapolis from doing the work until just this past Tuesday. And once they applied the actual vinyl, protocol demanded keeping the name under wraps until a proper renaming ceremony could be performed. That meant as soon as possible because I couldn’t take the boat out (and it has been warm enough lately that the cove and creek leading to Chesapeake Bay have finally thawed) until the old name was exorcised and the new one christened. That the weather forecast for today, four days later, was nice — sunny and high 50s — sealed the deal.

Then I posted a photo of the covered-over transom on Facebook in an announcement of the impending renaming and friends started speculating about what the new name might (or should) be. Some suggested silly names that had been internet memes (Boaty McBoatface…really?!) while many suggested something referencing my late dog, Spooner. One friend remembered my earlier declaration and asked about the name; the showman in me quickly deleted his comment to keep the speculation going.

But Further it is. And Further it shall be. Why?

Well, for starters, I’ve had the name in mind ever since I started daydreaming as a kid about my future boat. When I thought about what I might call her, I kept coming back to what I wanted my boat to do: transport me — physically, spiritually, intellectually — to new adventures, new worlds, new lives. I realized Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters had the same goal in mind when they named their psychedelically painted school bus “Further” and made that the bus’ destination sign.

Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead (house band for the Merry Pranksters’ Acid Test parties) sings:
“The bus come by and I got on, that’s when it all began
There was Cowboy Neal at the wheel of a bus to Never Ever Land.”
The song refers to Neal Cassady, legendary inspiration for Jack Kerouac and the Beats, now leading Bobby, the Dead and the Pranksters as they sought the next level of human consciousness. And they sought it on board Further. Well now I’ve found my bus and with her I hope to seek out MY next level, through the grace of Mother Ocean rather than any man-made drugs. (I can assure you: music will be a big part of the journey on Further, and a lot of that music will be Grateful Dead.)

As the Pranksters hoped LSD and their bus would do for them in the ‘60s, so I hope my Further will take me to faraway realms and bring me back safe and sound in the 21st century. And I hope you, my friends, will join me in the coming years in exploring this watery planet. I WILL need crew; I WILL need help. I can’t do it alone. Stay tuned for more details as they shake out, but stage one on the journey is to finish sorting out Further and get my sailing legs back while here on the Chesapeake. In May, we’ll return home to New England: I’ve reserved a mooring on the Merrimack River in Newburyport. I’ll go back to living at home on Plum Island and do a lot of daysails and short cruises in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine (maybe even Nova Scotia). And then, next fall, well, you’ll just have to tune in and see. Or better yet, come along on the ride to Never Ever Land.

Note: Special thanks to Chris and the folks at Accent Graphics in Annapolis. I showed Chris a photo of the bus, Further, with its destination plate and he created the font for the graphic used on the boat, Further.

New England, Ocean Fun, Travel, , , , , , , , , , ,

A Death Foretold

All things pass. That dictum is as true and irrefutable as death, taxes and the fact that the Earth is round (sorry, flat-Earthers).

And so it was that on September 20, 1977, the great Arthur Fonzarelli donned a pair of water skis and vaulted his way skyward, however briefly on television but eternally into the American idiom, jumping over a shark. Fonzie, Henry Winkler, and Happy Days were passing, as all things indeed must, and American culture would never be the same.

Fast-forward to the mid-2010s. There are roughly 17 million TV channels, and an almost-equal number of streaming websites, for the viewing public to choose from in this day of the 24-hour news-and-entertainment cycle. Even sports, that last bastion of it-has-to-be-live viewing, has fallen prey to the need to be constantly buzzing, constantly generating controversy — constantly garnering viewers/clicks/likes/whatever that media companies can somehow monetize.

As a result, sports channels don’t show a whole lot of sports anymore. Games — you know, what sports IS?! — are interspersed a steady stream of talking heads screaming at each other. And they’re not shrieking out facts. No, they’re yelling opinions at one another. Because that’s what sports in 2018 has become: opinion. Or rather, I should say: that’s what sports MEDIA has become in 2018.

I love sports. I’ve been playing sports since before I can remember and I still play regularly in this, my sixth decade on the planet. The whole point of sports is that it is the very definition of drama: there’s a contest between two or more forces and no one knows what the outcome is going to be beforehand. That’s why the games are played; that’s why we tune in.

Now, the games are an afterthought and today’s sports media has even me souring on its raison d’être. I was having lunch out today and the place had the idiot box on to a show featuring a whole table of people yelling at each other about what they think is going to happen to the Cleveland Cavaliers. Never mind that none of them KNOW anything definitively. Never mind that it’s only January. And to be even more blunt: I could not possibly care less what Stephen A. thinks about this, or Max says about that. Who cares what a former NFL player thinks about developments in the NBA? And there has never been anyone whose opinion means less to me on any topic, least of all sports, than Skip. They’re never right and yet they have no accountability. They provoke, that’s all. Throw in all the people bloviating online and it’s a dizzying waste of electrons bouncing around the atmosphere, making us all dumber and less civil.

The sad part is that between the pervasiveness of this obnoxious so-called “journalism” and the insufferable game broadcasts with their 8 million commercials and hokey promotions and sideline interviews and pre- and post-game shows and blah, blah blah, is that it is, as I say, souring fans on the sports themselves. It reminds me of back when the NHL was experiencing its first work stoppage and Wayne Gretzky responded to a question by saying he hoped the game would survive. My immediate response was, “Hey, Wayne? The game will ALWAYS survive. The NHL might not. And would that be such a loss?” It’s getting to the point where I don’t even want to tune into pro sports anymore. The sports themselves, they’ll survive. The media and the leagues? Hard sayin’, not knowin’. I’ll always be playing pond hockey. But watching the NHL? Meh.

Remember when MTV actually played some of the M part of its name: music? The day is not far off when we’ll remember back to the days when ESPN actually played some of the S part of its name.

Uncategorized