Breaking the Silence

I'm tired of runnin' 'round lookin' for answers to questions that I already know

I could build me a castle of memories just to have somewhere to go

Count the days and the nights that it takes to get back in the saddle again

Feed the pigeons some clay

Turn the night into day

Start talkin' again, when I know what to say

-Blaze Foley

Been awhile, hasn't it? The last ten days have been a blur, and I don't have anything profound to convey from it all except that I'm tired and ever falling further behind as to all the things crying out for my attention.

Especially the LLM program. I need to complete something like ten or eleven video lectures in the next week. And these aren't light viewing, dealing with esoteric tax law and requiring that I read stacks of Tax Code and Treasury Reg provisions ahead of each. Peg likes to watch the videos with me, although she's made it clear that the utter density of the stuff as one digs deeper makes each session more challenging than its predecessor.

I'll get there, finish the videos ahead of the deadline. It's just going to be a difficult slog, and I risk not really learning stuff that's going to be tested in December.

So, how did I end up so far behind? There was that trial in late September, sucking the oxygen out of my world for the better part of that month. And then there was Helene.

That Thursday evening ten days ago, we went to bed figuring Wyldswood wouldn't survive. The damned thing was bearing down directly on Perry, bigger than Idalia and with the farm along the eastern eye wall, the exact place not to be in one of these storms.

Friday morning P was in tears as she left for work, anticipating the images that would follow as George and Clinton arrived at the property to survey the damage.

But, miraculously, it wasn't so bad.

Grateful for what wasn't lost, we left Friday night to spend a little time at the condo, enjoying a misty Saturday morning and a day spent, in part, watching video lectures on corporate tax law. How romantic.

Saturday night we had tickets to see Five for Fighting, one of your mawkish author's favorite performers, at the Corning Museum of Glass.

His stuff does tug at your heart strings, lyrics delivered in a high falsetto bathed in rich piano melodies.

[A client is texting me at 6:29 a.m. central because he needs a letter generated this morning so his daughter can buy a car. I hate my job.]

Anyway, it was a dewy-eyed hour or two, a beautiful performance with a wonderful backup band assembled from the local talent. One of the violinists has won a Tony. This place has a surfeit of extremely gifted people.

Why so emotional that night? The hurricane, I guess. If you've been through it, you know.

Sunday we gave ourselves the treat of driving up to Ithaca to visit its wonderful Farmer's Market.

Peg bought bags of organic chicken gizzards and livers, promising to broaden my culinary horizons, as well as a beautiful walnut rolling pin. There was live bluegrass music playing down by the edge of Cayuga Lake. Again, it's hard to describe how wonderful this place is to someone who's never been.

Afterward we rode into downtown Ithaca to discovery they were holding their fall festival. The place was crammed with folks, and thumping with live music from a band comprised of folks older than us, pounding out Motown classics. We felt lucky to find a table at our favorite Korean restaurant on the planet, where we ate bulgogi and shrimp soup washed down with warm sake. A great day.

Real life returned on Monday. I worked a little, then we rode out to the plane to fly down to Perry. The airport was closed for emergency ops, but our friend Ward the airport manager was nice enough to tell us to come on; we're local after all.

The flight down was uneventful, with a stop at the little executive airport in Columbia, SC, where we pulled up next to two big fire suppression airplanes, basically oversized cropdusters with seaplane pontoons. The pilots were stuck there because their aerial demonstration for the governor had been postponed due to the flooding disaster unfolding a couple hours to the northwest.

The airport at Perry was a sight--20,000 lineman and emergency workers housed in trailers lining the taxiways, with people and bucket trucks going every which direction like an anthill that had been poked. Ward told us we could finally use the hangar we'd been trying to rent for years, but a semi pulling a trailer filled with potable water blocked the door.

The farm was pretty much as depicted above. We were grateful to have a/c and a dry interior to the house, where we slept the sleep of the dead after a long day of travel.

The next two days were spent mostly working outside, creating burn piles of all the downed branches (and there were a lot), dragging chunks of roof from the porch into a tidy pile, and pulling the rake behind the John Deere to clear the smaller stuff. Dio arrived in the afternoon on the second day to help Peg plan what she was going to do with the porch after demolition. George arrived a little before him, shaking his head at our amateur cleanup efforts and jumping in the tractor to make short work of the project. After George went home, we all feasted on smoked ribs from the Traeger. Things could be worse.

Thursday morning we were back in PC so I could have a crown installed on the stump left when the temporary fell out, and then we settled into a sort of normal day. I worked in my office cave all day while Peg cooked in the condo for friends who arrived for supper that night.

Friday we departed PC early to drive back to Perry and the plane. We'd realized our absentee ballots hadn't yet arrived, which presented a problem given that we might not be back there for a few weeks. Fortunately this was Taylor County, and the nice lady at the Supervisor of Elections office (a converted convenience store, as near as I can tell) brought us two new ballots we filled out right there at the counter.

Once we dropped our ballots in the box, we drove back to KFPY, where I parked the truck in the new hangar before working myself soaked in the 92 degree heat loading and fueling the plane.

This hangar is going to be a game-changer, and it costs about a quarter of what it would in PC.

Taking advantage of favorable winds, I planned a one-hop back to NY. Peg quit drinking fluids well before takeoff, to avoid the need for a comfort stop. As it turned out, the winds weren't all that favorable, and it was around 4 + 25 before we landed at KELM. We'd talked about going to the condo that night, but declared ourselves too exhausted. Instead we drove back to Tara, ate something snacky, and crashed and burned for the night.

The next day we did in fact make it up to the lake, where we lounged along the shore and enjoyed the first hints of fall color on the hillsides.

We would've spent the night, but for the fact that I'd foolishly signed up to run the Wineglass Half Marathon in Corning the next morning. At the time it felt like a fun challenge, a way to show that as a newly-turned sixty-year-old I still had a little gas in the tank. But with virtually no time to train, at this point I was genuinely concerned about collapsing on the course. I debated whether to run, convinced myself I needed to follow-through on that commitment, and we drove down the hill Saturday night so I could walk from Tara to the bus that would take me up to Campbell in the Sunday morning darkness to the start line.

The race went okay. My time of 2 + 19 was nothing great, but not bad for an old guy who basically didn't train. And the race route was beautiful, winding through misty hills with folks cheering us on from the front porches of their little farmhouses. Generally, the people here are so incredibly nice that it calls you up short if you're from, say, southern California or north Dallas or the panhandle. It's the way I always hoped the world would be when I was young.

Pretty much all of Peg's old anesthesia team from Guthrie ran the race, as well. She lit up at getting to see them all again at the finish line, like visiting with family after a long hiatus.

After the race I hobbled up the hill to Tara, then realized I was getting pretty hungry. We decided to try the country club, which over the years has had its downs and lowers in the kitchen, so we could eat outside on the patio and enjoy the sun and fall color. My burger wasn't half bad. Things are looking up there.

Later in the afternoon I rallied even further, and we managed to go play several holes of gold before it got too dark and my screamingly sore hips demanded I go home and rest.

Peg certainly seemed to be enjoying the evening on the links.

Which brings us all current. Today I have a couple filing deadlines I need to meet in a truly silly lawsuit set for trial in December, which hopefully will happen before I leave at 9:45 for my audiology appointment in Victor--I'm going to try to get the VA to buy me some hearing aids in the not-so-distant future. I can't hear squat anymore, and my ears ring constantly. It'll make you crazy.

And so it goes.